November 6, 2023 • 22 mins
Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow, with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department.Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of two books: Irresistible (March, 2017), which considers why so many people today are addicted to so many behaviors, from incessant smart phone and internet use to video game playing and online shopping, and Drunk Tank Pink (2013), which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Adam has also written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Atlantic, WIRED, Slate, Huffington Post, and Popular Science, among other publications. He has shared his ideas on NPR's Fresh Air, at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and with dozens of companies, including Google, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch, Prudential, and Fidelity, and with several design and ad agencies around the world.Adam’s academic research focuses on judgment and decision-making and social psychology, with a particular interest in the sometimes surprising effects of subtle cues in the environment on human cognition and behavior. His research has been published widely in academic journals, and featured in dozens of TV, radio and print outlets around the world.He received his Bachelor of Science (Honors Class 1, University Medal) in Psychology from the University of New South Wales and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University, where he held the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Dissertation Fellowship and a Fellowship in the Woodrow Wilson Society of Scholars
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(00:00):
Whether you believe it or not,you are a leader in your everyday life.
Whether it's within your family, inyour work environment, or even online,
you can and will affect change inthose around you. Join me in
conversation with authors, professors and leaders, so together we can learn all things
regarding leadership and life. I amyour host, Fernando Carrillo, and welcome
(00:22):
to another episode of London's Leadership Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
London's Leadership Podcast. Today I'm speakingwith Adam Alta, who is an author.
He's written the book The Anatomy ofa Breakthrough, which I've been looking
at this week and it's really impactedme, so I'm really excited to speak
(00:43):
to his day Adam. But he'salso the professor of Marketing and Psychology at
New York University Stern School Business.Adam, why don't you tell us start
off by telling us a little bitabout yourself and how you came to write
this book, The Anatomy of aBreakthrough. Yeah? Sure, Well,
first, thanks very much for havingme on the show, Fernando. I'm
a professor of marketing and psychology,which means I'm interested in how humans make
(01:07):
decisions. How they spend their timeand money. And I'm especially interested not
in so much the traditional marketing angleof how you sell things to people,
but more the consumer angle, whichis how do we as human beings spend
our time and money and other resourcesto maximize our welfare. So all of
my work broadly focuses on that bigquestion, how do we live better lives
(01:27):
as human beings? Brilliant? Sohow did you come to get to this
book and the other breakthrough? Yeah? What stirred you to write that?
Yeah, I've been thinking about itfor a long time. One of my
early pieces of research as a graduatestudent about fifteen, almost twenty years ago.
Now, I was looking at howpeople in different parts of the world
(01:48):
anticipate change. And one thing weknow is that our lives change constantly.
There are always things that are shifting. People get married and divorced, they
have kids, they change jobs,they change careers. You know, things
are constantly shifting. For US.People in the West, in places like
the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, they tend to be blindsided
(02:09):
by change, whereas people in theEast, so we focused in particular on
Japan, Korea, China, theytend to anticipate change, they're not surprised
by it. And what that meansis that in the West we tend to
be blindsided by change and it makesus slow to adapt, whereas people in
the East are much quicker to adapt. And I realized that there was this
interesting cultural difference between how we dealwith periods of being stuck or dealing with
(02:31):
change, and so that's where theinterest began. And I've really been thinking
about that question how do we ashumans make breakthroughs and get unstuck for probably
almost twenty years, And the bookis the result of that, and I
think it's a really fantastic book.When I was listening to audio this whole
(02:52):
week, I was well, firstly, I was so convicted in so many
ways, but also is like it. I think it's particularly relevant for all
of us. Like if there's anarea of your life where you just feel
stuck, like it just really hardto make a decision, all in a
particular area, I think it's it'sa really and all of us get to
that point in some stage of ourlife. I think it's particularly relevant for
(03:15):
that. So why don't you talkus through the four what do you call
them? The poor segments or partsof the anatomy of a breakthrough. Talk
us through those, and as youstart, I might ask you some questions.
Yeah, of course. So Ithink what happens when you're stuck is
it's a very emotional experience. It'svery confronting. And so the book is
(03:37):
a sort of roadmap that has fouraspects to it that you've described as the
four parts. I just describe themall with a word that starts with the
letter H, So they're the fourhs. The first one is help,
which is a sort of demystifying ofwhat it means to be stuck. So
helping people understand, first of all, that being stuck is universal. I've
(03:58):
spoken to thousands of people their experiences, or at least have them respond to
surveys, and there is no onewho is not in some sense stuck in
at least one aspect of his orher life. And so even knowing that,
and knowing that the most successful peoplein their fields are stuck is a
liberating idea for a lot of people, because being stuck is often very isolating.
We don't tend to share that aboutourselves with other people, and so
(04:19):
you end up feeling that your ownpersonal barriers are unique and that no one
else is going through the same thingsyou're going through, which is just not
true. So that first part onhelp is it trying to explain to people
what it is to be stuck andwhy it seems to happen to us so
often in our lives. So that'sthe first section. Yeah, I think
that's so helpful because sometimes, likeif you feel stuck in a particular are
(04:41):
you just think, oh, I'mthe only one that feels this way.
I'm the only one who can't makea decision or move forward or take this
step. But I think it's sohelpful when you start to to help kind
of make people feel like, oh, I'm not the only one and it's
okay to understand that this feeling,what this feeling is, and how start
to overcome it. So that's ahelp. What's the other well, the
(05:03):
other three, Yeah, the otherthree are the actual roadmap itself. So
the first one is heart, andI call it heart because it's really about
the emotional consequences of being stuck.I think a lot of people when they
feel like they can't make progress,jump to act. They want to do
something right away. But the firstthing to do is to really understand the
(05:24):
emotional response you're having and to dealwith it in some way, to either
accept it or to marshal it asyou try to move forward. And so
that whole section. Each of thesesections is three chapters. So there are
three chapters there on how to dealwith the emotional consequences. I talk about
a lot of in particular athletes,but people in other spheres as well.
(05:44):
One of the case studies I focuson is Lionel Messi, the soccer player,
the footballer, and I talk abouthow anxiety at various points in his
career was paralyzing. It was verydifficult for him to cope with, and
what he did, paradoxically when hewanted to move forward was to slow down
to allow himself to cope with thatexperience. So if you look at the
way Messi plays, he spends thefirst few minutes of every game walking along
(06:08):
quite slowly well, where the restof the players are kind of running around
starting the game. He starts hisfootball matches by not moving much outside the
center circle and just looking around anddeveloping a good sense of what's going on
on the field, who's connecting particularlywell, who's struggling where might there be
a hidden injury? And then heuses that information for the remaining eighty five
(06:28):
plus minutes of the game, andit has made him a much more effective
player, And so he sacrifices thosefew minutes at the beginning to deal with
that emotional sense of being overwhelmed andthe anxiety of the match to then become
a stronger player for the other eightyfive plus minutes, which is I think
generally a good metaphor for the waywe often should but don't, deal with
being stuck, which is to slowdown initially to then speed up later on.
(06:55):
So practically for people in the workplaceor we have to meet decisions like
instead of just doing or acting,what I'm hearing you say is like to
slow down, I think through thethe scenario or take it in or what
(07:19):
are you like, what does thatlook like? Because I sometimes still like
if I slowed down, like Istill just feel overwhelmed by the decision I
have to make anyway, But thatmight just be me. Does that makes
sense? So if because I've triedto slow down sometimes and it's and it
feels like, well the thoughts ofthe decision, and Tony just continue to
(07:42):
just overwhelm me. I seem tonavigate through and just get to the other
side. Sometimes, Yeah, slowingdown is not doing nothing and just sitting
there and hoping the world will alignin the direction you hope it aligns.
It's got to be a strategic slowingdown. And so that's why, that's
why I could write three chapters onthe act of essentially slowing down. That
(08:03):
when you're slowing down, you haveto be doing something else, and it's
not acting, it's not committing toa certain action or path. And so
MESSI when he was slowing down inthat example, wasn't doing nothing. He
had a very clear sense of thestrategy he was taking, but he wasn't
acting. So everyone else on thefield is acting. He's not acting in
that moment. I think in termsof leadership, in terms of business,
in terms of the workplace broadly,what that means is that we rush to
(08:28):
act. And if you are pouringyour energy your resources into a particular action,
but it's directing you away from whatis the direction that is strategically best
for you, then it's counterproductive.So you've got to slow down just long
enough to figure out what the rightdirection is, and that's really what the
rest of the book is about.So once you slow down and you figure
out what you should be doing next, how to avoid certain traps that might
(08:50):
get you further away from where youwant to be, then you can start
to figure out what the best sortof mental strategies are and how to actually
act to get unstuck. That's slowingdown is partly to just calm yourself down,
which is very important to getting thebest out of yourself. And then
it helps you work out what thenext steps should be. Yeah, yeah,
and I complete and I definitely agreeas as I think through that,
(09:11):
and I noticed that when my lifeis most frantic or it's it's when those
decisions become harder and harder to make. So okay, so then that's that's
that's helped then Heart. What arethe other two hs? The other two
head and habit, So head isis essentially the mental strategies that you can
use to get unstuck. One ofthe things I talk about, for example,
(09:33):
is that we we sort of fetishizeoriginality, radical originality, this idea
that you have to be genuinely newand different and perfect and what you're doing
this there's never been anything like itin the world. We do that in
everything, We do that in business, in the workplace, in if you're
a creative who does art or writingor music or film or whatever everything has
(09:56):
to be, you know one hundredout of one hundred, and that is
deeply counterproductive. It produces often theworst kinds of work. It's paralyzing,
it slows you down. And soI talk about a couple of alternatives,
and one of them is what Icall recombination, which is that when you
look back at some of the bestcultural products of the last hundred years,
things that people who are experts pointto and say that is the height of
(10:20):
artistic or filmic or musical success,they point to things that are essentially the
recombination of old ideas. So whenpeople were asked who is the greatest,
most original Western musician of the twentiethcentury, the most common response, whether
you agree with it or not,was Bob Dylan. So artists think Bob
Dylan was the most original voice forthe twentieth century. But when you look
(10:41):
at Dylan's work, it's a combinationof all sorts of other musical styles,
and he himself has said I'm notoriginal I am the product of all these
different ideas that were combined in anoriginal way. And once you realize that
you can take these old building blocksand just find new ways to piece them
together, and it's very liberating andproductive. These strategies for getting unstuck,
these kind of mental approaches or waysof thinking, are very very helpful if
(11:05):
you know where to look and howto apply them. Yeah, I think
that's really I was when I waslooking at but I was fascinated by the
story I can't remember his name now, but the guy who who was before
Facebook, that he created this socialmedia platform, that Gosh Harris, Yeah,
(11:26):
yeah, that Josh Harris, thatactually he had kicked this thing off,
but he was he almost came tooearly, that the web wasn't ready
for what he had And actually Zuckerbergand Instagram, all these guys who came
afterwards were only a result of whathe had created. So I think that's
really important. I think also whatI was thinking about that when I read
that, I don't know this topicof perfectionism does does it relate to this
(11:48):
part like where where sometimes we getstark sometimes because we want to be really
original, like you said, oralso we're like, oh, unless it's
going to be the best or unlessi'm then then then then I just won't
move forward. I find that inmy life, like I feel that this
(12:09):
perspectionism tendency just holds me back somuch from making decisions like of things that
I really want, Like I getheld back by or unless it's the best
thing or the or or unless Ican be the best at it, then
I won't even try. Does thathave to do with the head, Yeah,
I think it's. It's it's alittle bit of emotions as well.
So the heart comes into it too, because we if you set the bar
(12:31):
very very high, it's it justnever feels like you're making the kind of
progress you'd like, and so youjust don't do anything. It's paralyzing.
So you're totally right about that,But I think it is It is very
much about strategy and and what's goingon inside the head. So one thing
to do is that you look backat great successes in business and in art
and music and so on in otherdomains, in athletics, in sports.
(12:54):
It doesn't matter what domain. Peoplewho are successful, they don't have one
thing that they do that's perfect.They have one hundred things that they do
that each get marginally better based onthe earlier failures or earlier shortcomings, and
so each successive step is not perfect, but what you end up with one
hundred imperfect steps later is an incrediblyphenomenal product. It's a great new way
(13:20):
of doing a particular sport, orit's a great new way of doing a
particular kind of art, or it'sa brilliant business idea. But all of
these people are unafraid to have theselittle bite sized steps happening along the way
that get them ever closer to thatpoint. But they recognize that those intermediate
steps are not perfect, and that'snot what they're striving for. And I
think that's really important to distinguish betweenthe decisions we make that we need to
(13:43):
do as well as possible, weneed to maximize, and ones that are
in contrast, what we call satisficing, where you do them just so they're
good enough, recognizing that tomorrow isanother day and you're going to have another
chance. And so I think that'sa very liberating idea helps you move forward
in general. Yeah, I thinkthat has to do as well with the
story you gave at the beginning ofthe book with Captain Marvel. Yes,
(14:07):
is could you want to just sharebriefly like her story which I thought was
so fascinated because I don't think manypeople know that, or you could just
because I think it has to doa lot with this part, isn't it.
I'm just thinking, not trying tobe super original, basic failures.
They can once the aut a timecoming back from Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
yeah. So this is about BrieLarson the actress. So Brie Larsen
(14:31):
has won the Academy Award for BestActress, which is the highest award in
acting that there is. She wasCaptain Marvel, which is one of the
most lucrative roles you can have.So she's achieved commercial success and she's achieved
critical success in a field that isvery competitive. So when you look from
the outside and you see that,you think to yourself, well, that's
(14:52):
she's had a charmed life. Youknow, her career has been a perfect
career. That's exactly what you wouldhope for if you want to be an
actor. You get both lots ofmoney, lots lots of attention, lots
of awards. What else what morecould you hope for? And one of
the things that's interesting about Lasson isshe's one of the rare actors who's very
transparent about her struggles. So shecreated a two part video and YouTube where
(15:13):
she talked about the fact that inher estimates, she has failed ninety nine
percent of the time. And shegoes and she lists all the auditions she
didn't get. She talks about whatit was like to be a child actor.
She talks about the times when shegot very close to getting a roll
but it didn't come through. Andthese two great successes in the form of
(15:33):
The Room was the movie that shewon the Best Actress Oscar for, and
then Captain Marvel. Those two successesbehind them are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of what she considers failures, butshe's transparent about it. Now, if
someone who's the very best at whatthey do has all these failures, that
should liberate the rest of us tosay, hey, it's okay if I
have some of those too. Imay not be the very best at what
(15:56):
I do in the world, orI may be very good at it doesn't
matter regardless. Everyone struggles, evenBria Larson does. And so that's I
think a really useful thing to recognizeabout her really really good. Okay,
so we've got help heart heads.And what's the final one? Final one
is habit. Habit is really whenwe get to the action phase, right,
(16:17):
you have to act eventually, andI think that's what most people do
a little bit too quickly. Butonce it gets there to that point of
acting, action is really really importantfor getting unstuck. So one thing you
can do this is an approach thatJeff Tweety the front man of a band
called Wilco and also a writer.He writes books as well. He's just
about to release another one. Whathe does is he wakes up in the
(16:38):
morning sometimes and he says, youknow, it's hard to be creative every
day. You know. I wakeup some days and I feel very creative,
but there are lots of days whereI'm tired or I don't feel like
doing whatever I'm supposed to be doing. So what he does is he says,
I know that more than anything,it's important that I do something.
So he lowers his bar of whatis acceptable action all the way down to
the ground and he says, I'mgoing to try now to write the worst
(17:00):
musical phrase that I can, orI'm going to write the worst paragraph I
can, and he starts doing that, and because he's good at what he
does, that's easy to do.Everyone can do the worst version of the
thing they're trying to do. Wedon't let ourselves do that very often.
But what you do by acting,even if their action is kind of sideways
or even backwards, is you greasethe wheels and things start moving fluidly again,
(17:22):
And all of a sudden, you'vespent ten or fifteen minutes doing that,
and it becomes much easier to dothe kinds of things you want to
do. And so not only doeshe sometimes find that these bad versions of
what he's doing are better than hethought, but also when he gets to
doing the good versions, he's madeit easier to get there because he's not
starting from zero. He's starting fromthis place where he's been acting fluidly.
(17:42):
The ideas have been pouring out,even if they're bad ideas. So that
whole section on action is really aboutthe importance of acting, even if the
action and in the moment right nowis not perfect, really good. So
we've got help part habit. SoI really want to encourage everyone to get
(18:03):
the book. The Amountic of abreakthrough if you feel like you're stuck in
a particular area. But Adam,before we go, I wanted to ask
you in particular, what does failuremean to you? Yeah, so you
know, I think back on myown personal experience and for me failure.
First of all, I think offailure as something that happens incredibly often,
and I think it's useful to thinkof that very loose definition of failure,
(18:26):
where every day you fail in smallways and that's okay. I think that
that it's a sort of f wordthat we find completely overwhelming, and so
if you can minimize what it meansto fail and make it less overwhelming,
that's useful. But for me,the biggest moments where I felt that I
wasn't where I wanted to be weremoments where I had been able to do
something and then I couldn't do thatthing moving forward, And so I think
(18:48):
about what happened when I first starteduniversity over twenty years ago. Now,
I had done quite well at schooland then I started a degree in actuarial
science on a fellowship and there weretwenty any of us doing this fellowship,
and I had gone from being oneof the students who was, you know,
had performed relatively well at school.I was one of the students who'd
got the highest grades, and thenI suddenly went to this program and I
(19:12):
was I think last or second tolast in terms of the grades I was
getting, And that was a hugeshift from what I've been used to.
It was a big departure from myexpectations, and I found that absolutely overwhelming.
I've never been in that position before. And I think what failure is
is that sense of departure from whereyou want to be and what you're used
to. That's how I've always thoughtabout it. Departure from where you want
(19:37):
to be, what you're used to. Yeah, really good, Okay,
So to us not failure, mesee what's been the biggest failure in your
life and how has that shaped youto be who you are today. So
I think that was probably the onethat stands out for me was moving to
this career that I thought was goingto be my life. It's not the
career I ended up pursuing. AndI spent about a year grappling with that
(20:02):
whole experience, and it was very, very difficult. It sort of changed
my sense of who I was andthen what it did was it did two
things. Ultimately, it paved theway for the career that I ended up
having, which is one that Ifind very fulfilling, that I'm very happy
with. I could not have knownabout this career path and how much I
appreciate it without that failure. Andso one thing it taught me was that
part of the value of failure isdemonstrating to you what not failing feels like
(20:26):
and looks like. It's like failedrelationships, it's like failing in a career.
It doesn't matter what it is.When things don't go the way they
should, they highlight for you whatis working, and sometimes it's hard to
know what's working if you haven't gotthose failures. The other thing it does
is it tells you where you shouldbe pouring your attention. So I realized
that this was a thing that Iwas doing that wasn't working for me,
(20:48):
and so I realized that I shouldbe pouring my energies. I only had
enough energy for one lifetime in acompletely different direction. So I think what
failure does is it helps train yourattention on the right things, tells you
to perhaps avoid something or if it'simportant and you can't avoid it. It
tells you that it's a thing thatyou need to improve. So perhaps it's
something that's not optional. There arethings you're going to need to do to
(21:10):
improve it. So if it's thething that you're the worst at, either
you do something else completely or youfigure out how to make that thing that
you're not doing very well a littlebit better. And so it teaches you
where you should be pouring your mentaland intellectual energy. Wow, really helpful,
Really helpful, Adam, Yeah,because I think if you had you
carried on on the original career path, you might never have written this book,
(21:33):
or that might not be getting todo the things that you're doing now.
And it's interesting how failure sometimes tous hard in the moment, but
when we shift, we end upbeing in a better place than we ever
even first imagined. So I don'tthank you so much for your time today.
It's been so helpful. Your book'sbeen incredible to me, and I
hope to speak to you again.Yeah, me too. Thank you so
much for having me, Fananda,see you next time. Everybody on London's
(21:56):
Leadership Podcast, thank you so muchfor joining me today. I can't wait
to see you next time. Rememberto leave a review, let me know
what you think and if you needhelp implementing anything we've discussed, or you
just want to say hello, feelfree to email me at Fernando at London's
Leadership podcast dot com. Until nexttime, remember to live and lead with
(22:18):
love every day
Whether you believe it or not,you are a leader in your everyday life.
Whether it's within your family, inyour work environment, or even online,
you can and will affect change inthose around you. Join me in
conversation with authors, professors and leaders, so together we can learn all things
regarding leadership and life. I amyour host, Fernando Carrillo, and welcome
(00:22):
to another episode of London's Leadership Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
London's Leadership Podcast. Today I'm speakingwith Adam Alta, who is an author.
He's written the book The Anatomy ofa Breakthrough, which I've been looking
at this week and it's really impactedme, so I'm really excited to speak
(00:43):
to his day Adam. But he'salso the professor of Marketing and Psychology at
New York University Stern School Business.Adam, why don't you tell us start
off by telling us a little bitabout yourself and how you came to write
this book, The Anatomy of aBreakthrough. Yeah? Sure, Well,
first, thanks very much for havingme on the show, Fernando. I'm
a professor of marketing and psychology,which means I'm interested in how humans make
(01:07):
decisions. How they spend their timeand money. And I'm especially interested not
in so much the traditional marketing angleof how you sell things to people,
but more the consumer angle, whichis how do we as human beings spend
our time and money and other resourcesto maximize our welfare. So all of
my work broadly focuses on that bigquestion, how do we live better lives
(01:27):
as human beings? Brilliant? Sohow did you come to get to this
book and the other breakthrough? Yeah? What stirred you to write that?
Yeah, I've been thinking about itfor a long time. One of my
early pieces of research as a graduatestudent about fifteen, almost twenty years ago.
Now, I was looking at howpeople in different parts of the world
(01:48):
anticipate change. And one thing weknow is that our lives change constantly.
There are always things that are shifting. People get married and divorced, they
have kids, they change jobs,they change careers. You know, things
are constantly shifting. For US.People in the West, in places like
the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, they tend to be blindsided
(02:09):
by change, whereas people in theEast, so we focused in particular on
Japan, Korea, China, theytend to anticipate change, they're not surprised
by it. And what that meansis that in the West we tend to
be blindsided by change and it makesus slow to adapt, whereas people in
the East are much quicker to adapt. And I realized that there was this
interesting cultural difference between how we dealwith periods of being stuck or dealing with
(02:31):
change, and so that's where theinterest began. And I've really been thinking
about that question how do we ashumans make breakthroughs and get unstuck for probably
almost twenty years, And the bookis the result of that, and I
think it's a really fantastic book.When I was listening to audio this whole
(02:52):
week, I was well, firstly, I was so convicted in so many
ways, but also is like it. I think it's particularly relevant for all
of us. Like if there's anarea of your life where you just feel
stuck, like it just really hardto make a decision, all in a
particular area, I think it's it'sa really and all of us get to
that point in some stage of ourlife. I think it's particularly relevant for
(03:15):
that. So why don't you talkus through the four what do you call
them? The poor segments or partsof the anatomy of a breakthrough. Talk
us through those, and as youstart, I might ask you some questions.
Yeah, of course. So Ithink what happens when you're stuck is
it's a very emotional experience. It'svery confronting. And so the book is
(03:37):
a sort of roadmap that has fouraspects to it that you've described as the
four parts. I just describe themall with a word that starts with the
letter H, So they're the fourhs. The first one is help,
which is a sort of demystifying ofwhat it means to be stuck. So
helping people understand, first of all, that being stuck is universal. I've
(03:58):
spoken to thousands of people their experiences, or at least have them respond to
surveys, and there is no onewho is not in some sense stuck in
at least one aspect of his orher life. And so even knowing that,
and knowing that the most successful peoplein their fields are stuck is a
liberating idea for a lot of people, because being stuck is often very isolating.
We don't tend to share that aboutourselves with other people, and so
(04:19):
you end up feeling that your ownpersonal barriers are unique and that no one
else is going through the same thingsyou're going through, which is just not
true. So that first part onhelp is it trying to explain to people
what it is to be stuck andwhy it seems to happen to us so
often in our lives. So that'sthe first section. Yeah, I think
that's so helpful because sometimes, likeif you feel stuck in a particular are
(04:41):
you just think, oh, I'mthe only one that feels this way.
I'm the only one who can't makea decision or move forward or take this
step. But I think it's sohelpful when you start to to help kind
of make people feel like, oh, I'm not the only one and it's
okay to understand that this feeling,what this feeling is, and how start
to overcome it. So that's ahelp. What's the other well, the
(05:03):
other three, Yeah, the otherthree are the actual roadmap itself. So
the first one is heart, andI call it heart because it's really about
the emotional consequences of being stuck.I think a lot of people when they
feel like they can't make progress,jump to act. They want to do
something right away. But the firstthing to do is to really understand the
(05:24):
emotional response you're having and to dealwith it in some way, to either
accept it or to marshal it asyou try to move forward. And so
that whole section. Each of thesesections is three chapters. So there are
three chapters there on how to dealwith the emotional consequences. I talk about
a lot of in particular athletes,but people in other spheres as well.
(05:44):
One of the case studies I focuson is Lionel Messi, the soccer player,
the footballer, and I talk abouthow anxiety at various points in his
career was paralyzing. It was verydifficult for him to cope with, and
what he did, paradoxically when hewanted to move forward was to slow down
to allow himself to cope with thatexperience. So if you look at the
way Messi plays, he spends thefirst few minutes of every game walking along
(06:08):
quite slowly well, where the restof the players are kind of running around
starting the game. He starts hisfootball matches by not moving much outside the
center circle and just looking around anddeveloping a good sense of what's going on
on the field, who's connecting particularlywell, who's struggling where might there be
a hidden injury? And then heuses that information for the remaining eighty five
(06:28):
plus minutes of the game, andit has made him a much more effective
player, And so he sacrifices thosefew minutes at the beginning to deal with
that emotional sense of being overwhelmed andthe anxiety of the match to then become
a stronger player for the other eightyfive plus minutes, which is I think
generally a good metaphor for the waywe often should but don't, deal with
being stuck, which is to slowdown initially to then speed up later on.
(06:55):
So practically for people in the workplaceor we have to meet decisions like
instead of just doing or acting,what I'm hearing you say is like to
slow down, I think through thethe scenario or take it in or what
(07:19):
are you like, what does thatlook like? Because I sometimes still like
if I slowed down, like Istill just feel overwhelmed by the decision I
have to make anyway, But thatmight just be me. Does that makes
sense? So if because I've triedto slow down sometimes and it's and it
feels like, well the thoughts ofthe decision, and Tony just continue to
(07:42):
just overwhelm me. I seem tonavigate through and just get to the other
side. Sometimes, Yeah, slowingdown is not doing nothing and just sitting
there and hoping the world will alignin the direction you hope it aligns.
It's got to be a strategic slowingdown. And so that's why, that's
why I could write three chapters onthe act of essentially slowing down. That
(08:03):
when you're slowing down, you haveto be doing something else, and it's
not acting, it's not committing toa certain action or path. And so
MESSI when he was slowing down inthat example, wasn't doing nothing. He
had a very clear sense of thestrategy he was taking, but he wasn't
acting. So everyone else on thefield is acting. He's not acting in
that moment. I think in termsof leadership, in terms of business,
in terms of the workplace broadly,what that means is that we rush to
(08:28):
act. And if you are pouringyour energy your resources into a particular action,
but it's directing you away from whatis the direction that is strategically best
for you, then it's counterproductive.So you've got to slow down just long
enough to figure out what the rightdirection is, and that's really what the
rest of the book is about.So once you slow down and you figure
out what you should be doing next, how to avoid certain traps that might
(08:50):
get you further away from where youwant to be, then you can start
to figure out what the best sortof mental strategies are and how to actually
act to get unstuck. That's slowingdown is partly to just calm yourself down,
which is very important to getting thebest out of yourself. And then
it helps you work out what thenext steps should be. Yeah, yeah,
and I complete and I definitely agreeas as I think through that,
(09:11):
and I noticed that when my lifeis most frantic or it's it's when those
decisions become harder and harder to make. So okay, so then that's that's
that's helped then Heart. What arethe other two hs? The other two
head and habit, So head isis essentially the mental strategies that you can
use to get unstuck. One ofthe things I talk about, for example,
(09:33):
is that we we sort of fetishizeoriginality, radical originality, this idea
that you have to be genuinely newand different and perfect and what you're doing
this there's never been anything like itin the world. We do that in
everything, We do that in business, in the workplace, in if you're
a creative who does art or writingor music or film or whatever everything has
(09:56):
to be, you know one hundredout of one hundred, and that is
deeply counterproductive. It produces often theworst kinds of work. It's paralyzing,
it slows you down. And soI talk about a couple of alternatives,
and one of them is what Icall recombination, which is that when you
look back at some of the bestcultural products of the last hundred years,
things that people who are experts pointto and say that is the height of
(10:20):
artistic or filmic or musical success,they point to things that are essentially the
recombination of old ideas. So whenpeople were asked who is the greatest,
most original Western musician of the twentiethcentury, the most common response, whether
you agree with it or not,was Bob Dylan. So artists think Bob
Dylan was the most original voice forthe twentieth century. But when you look
(10:41):
at Dylan's work, it's a combinationof all sorts of other musical styles,
and he himself has said I'm notoriginal I am the product of all these
different ideas that were combined in anoriginal way. And once you realize that
you can take these old building blocksand just find new ways to piece them
together, and it's very liberating andproductive. These strategies for getting unstuck,
these kind of mental approaches or waysof thinking, are very very helpful if
(11:05):
you know where to look and howto apply them. Yeah, I think
that's really I was when I waslooking at but I was fascinated by the
story I can't remember his name now, but the guy who who was before
Facebook, that he created this socialmedia platform, that Gosh Harris, Yeah,
(11:26):
yeah, that Josh Harris, thatactually he had kicked this thing off,
but he was he almost came tooearly, that the web wasn't ready
for what he had And actually Zuckerbergand Instagram, all these guys who came
afterwards were only a result of whathe had created. So I think that's
really important. I think also whatI was thinking about that when I read
that, I don't know this topicof perfectionism does does it relate to this
(11:48):
part like where where sometimes we getstark sometimes because we want to be really
original, like you said, oralso we're like, oh, unless it's
going to be the best or unlessi'm then then then then I just won't
move forward. I find that inmy life, like I feel that this
(12:09):
perspectionism tendency just holds me back somuch from making decisions like of things that
I really want, Like I getheld back by or unless it's the best
thing or the or or unless Ican be the best at it, then
I won't even try. Does thathave to do with the head, Yeah,
I think it's. It's it's alittle bit of emotions as well.
So the heart comes into it too, because we if you set the bar
(12:31):
very very high, it's it justnever feels like you're making the kind of
progress you'd like, and so youjust don't do anything. It's paralyzing.
So you're totally right about that,But I think it is It is very
much about strategy and and what's goingon inside the head. So one thing
to do is that you look backat great successes in business and in art
and music and so on in otherdomains, in athletics, in sports.
(12:54):
It doesn't matter what domain. Peoplewho are successful, they don't have one
thing that they do that's perfect.They have one hundred things that they do
that each get marginally better based onthe earlier failures or earlier shortcomings, and
so each successive step is not perfect, but what you end up with one
hundred imperfect steps later is an incrediblyphenomenal product. It's a great new way
(13:20):
of doing a particular sport, orit's a great new way of doing a
particular kind of art, or it'sa brilliant business idea. But all of
these people are unafraid to have theselittle bite sized steps happening along the way
that get them ever closer to thatpoint. But they recognize that those intermediate
steps are not perfect, and that'snot what they're striving for. And I
think that's really important to distinguish betweenthe decisions we make that we need to
(13:43):
do as well as possible, weneed to maximize, and ones that are
in contrast, what we call satisficing, where you do them just so they're
good enough, recognizing that tomorrow isanother day and you're going to have another
chance. And so I think that'sa very liberating idea helps you move forward
in general. Yeah, I thinkthat has to do as well with the
story you gave at the beginning ofthe book with Captain Marvel. Yes,
(14:07):
is could you want to just sharebriefly like her story which I thought was
so fascinated because I don't think manypeople know that, or you could just
because I think it has to doa lot with this part, isn't it.
I'm just thinking, not trying tobe super original, basic failures.
They can once the aut a timecoming back from Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
yeah. So this is about BrieLarson the actress. So Brie Larsen
(14:31):
has won the Academy Award for BestActress, which is the highest award in
acting that there is. She wasCaptain Marvel, which is one of the
most lucrative roles you can have.So she's achieved commercial success and she's achieved
critical success in a field that isvery competitive. So when you look from
the outside and you see that,you think to yourself, well, that's
(14:52):
she's had a charmed life. Youknow, her career has been a perfect
career. That's exactly what you wouldhope for if you want to be an
actor. You get both lots ofmoney, lots lots of attention, lots
of awards. What else what morecould you hope for? And one of
the things that's interesting about Lasson isshe's one of the rare actors who's very
transparent about her struggles. So shecreated a two part video and YouTube where
(15:13):
she talked about the fact that inher estimates, she has failed ninety nine
percent of the time. And shegoes and she lists all the auditions she
didn't get. She talks about whatit was like to be a child actor.
She talks about the times when shegot very close to getting a roll
but it didn't come through. Andthese two great successes in the form of
(15:33):
The Room was the movie that shewon the Best Actress Oscar for, and
then Captain Marvel. Those two successesbehind them are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of what she considers failures, butshe's transparent about it. Now, if
someone who's the very best at whatthey do has all these failures, that
should liberate the rest of us tosay, hey, it's okay if I
have some of those too. Imay not be the very best at what
(15:56):
I do in the world, orI may be very good at it doesn't
matter regardless. Everyone struggles, evenBria Larson does. And so that's I
think a really useful thing to recognizeabout her really really good. Okay,
so we've got help heart heads.And what's the final one? Final one
is habit. Habit is really whenwe get to the action phase, right,
(16:17):
you have to act eventually, andI think that's what most people do
a little bit too quickly. Butonce it gets there to that point of
acting, action is really really importantfor getting unstuck. So one thing you
can do this is an approach thatJeff Tweety the front man of a band
called Wilco and also a writer.He writes books as well. He's just
about to release another one. Whathe does is he wakes up in the
(16:38):
morning sometimes and he says, youknow, it's hard to be creative every
day. You know. I wakeup some days and I feel very creative,
but there are lots of days whereI'm tired or I don't feel like
doing whatever I'm supposed to be doing. So what he does is he says,
I know that more than anything,it's important that I do something.
So he lowers his bar of whatis acceptable action all the way down to
the ground and he says, I'mgoing to try now to write the worst
(17:00):
musical phrase that I can, orI'm going to write the worst paragraph I
can, and he starts doing that, and because he's good at what he
does, that's easy to do.Everyone can do the worst version of the
thing they're trying to do. Wedon't let ourselves do that very often.
But what you do by acting,even if their action is kind of sideways
or even backwards, is you greasethe wheels and things start moving fluidly again,
(17:22):
And all of a sudden, you'vespent ten or fifteen minutes doing that,
and it becomes much easier to dothe kinds of things you want to
do. And so not only doeshe sometimes find that these bad versions of
what he's doing are better than hethought, but also when he gets to
doing the good versions, he's madeit easier to get there because he's not
starting from zero. He's starting fromthis place where he's been acting fluidly.
(17:42):
The ideas have been pouring out,even if they're bad ideas. So that
whole section on action is really aboutthe importance of acting, even if the
action and in the moment right nowis not perfect, really good. So
we've got help part habit. SoI really want to encourage everyone to get
(18:03):
the book. The Amountic of abreakthrough if you feel like you're stuck in
a particular area. But Adam,before we go, I wanted to ask
you in particular, what does failuremean to you? Yeah, so you
know, I think back on myown personal experience and for me failure.
First of all, I think offailure as something that happens incredibly often,
and I think it's useful to thinkof that very loose definition of failure,
(18:26):
where every day you fail in smallways and that's okay. I think that
that it's a sort of f wordthat we find completely overwhelming, and so
if you can minimize what it meansto fail and make it less overwhelming,
that's useful. But for me,the biggest moments where I felt that I
wasn't where I wanted to be weremoments where I had been able to do
something and then I couldn't do thatthing moving forward, And so I think
(18:48):
about what happened when I first starteduniversity over twenty years ago. Now,
I had done quite well at schooland then I started a degree in actuarial
science on a fellowship and there weretwenty any of us doing this fellowship,
and I had gone from being oneof the students who was, you know,
had performed relatively well at school.I was one of the students who'd
got the highest grades, and thenI suddenly went to this program and I
(19:12):
was I think last or second tolast in terms of the grades I was
getting, And that was a hugeshift from what I've been used to.
It was a big departure from myexpectations, and I found that absolutely overwhelming.
I've never been in that position before. And I think what failure is
is that sense of departure from whereyou want to be and what you're used
to. That's how I've always thoughtabout it. Departure from where you want
(19:37):
to be, what you're used to. Yeah, really good, Okay,
So to us not failure, mesee what's been the biggest failure in your
life and how has that shaped youto be who you are today. So
I think that was probably the onethat stands out for me was moving to
this career that I thought was goingto be my life. It's not the
career I ended up pursuing. AndI spent about a year grappling with that
(20:02):
whole experience, and it was very, very difficult. It sort of changed
my sense of who I was andthen what it did was it did two
things. Ultimately, it paved theway for the career that I ended up
having, which is one that Ifind very fulfilling, that I'm very happy
with. I could not have knownabout this career path and how much I
appreciate it without that failure. Andso one thing it taught me was that
part of the value of failure isdemonstrating to you what not failing feels like
(20:26):
and looks like. It's like failedrelationships, it's like failing in a career.
It doesn't matter what it is.When things don't go the way they
should, they highlight for you whatis working, and sometimes it's hard to
know what's working if you haven't gotthose failures. The other thing it does
is it tells you where you shouldbe pouring your attention. So I realized
that this was a thing that Iwas doing that wasn't working for me,
(20:48):
and so I realized that I shouldbe pouring my energies. I only had
enough energy for one lifetime in acompletely different direction. So I think what
failure does is it helps train yourattention on the right things, tells you
to perhaps avoid something or if it'simportant and you can't avoid it. It
tells you that it's a thing thatyou need to improve. So perhaps it's
something that's not optional. There arethings you're going to need to do to
(21:10):
improve it. So if it's thething that you're the worst at, either
you do something else completely or youfigure out how to make that thing that
you're not doing very well a littlebit better. And so it teaches you
where you should be pouring your mentaland intellectual energy. Wow, really helpful,
Really helpful, Adam, Yeah,because I think if you had you
carried on on the original career path, you might never have written this book,
(21:33):
or that might not be getting todo the things that you're doing now.
And it's interesting how failure sometimes tous hard in the moment, but
when we shift, we end upbeing in a better place than we ever
even first imagined. So I don'tthank you so much for your time today.
It's been so helpful. Your book'sbeen incredible to me, and I
hope to speak to you again.Yeah, me too. Thank you so
much for having me, Fananda,see you next time. Everybody on London's
(21:56):
Leadership Podcast, thank you so muchfor joining me today. I can't wait
to see you next time. Rememberto leave a review, let me know
what you think and if you needhelp implementing anything we've discussed, or you
just want to say hello, feelfree to email me at Fernando at London's
Leadership podcast dot com. Until nexttime, remember to live and lead with
(22:18):
love every day
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