0
SPEAKER_00
Anyone can be creative if they have the right process.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what the process ought to be is a process that forces you to think about your own experiences and to juxtapose your own experiences in new and original ways.
0
SPEAKER_01
Welcome to The Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
0
SPEAKER_01
Today we re talking with Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter, Faster, Better, The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.
0
SPEAKER_01
You should listen to this show if you re interested in the science of motivation, internal versus external locus of control, and how that relates to motivation and learned helplessness, and something called cognitive tunneling.
0
SPEAKER_01
when it affects us, and how we can use mental models to avoid it and move forward through emergencies, disasters, or just crummy days where we run into cognitive tunnels.
0
SPEAKER_01
Last but not least, how to increase creativity even when we hit a block.
0
SPEAKER_01
So enjoy this one with Charles Duhigg.
0
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox where we discuss things like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, mentorship,
0
SPEAKER_01
and everything else we teach here at The Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_01
In the United States, you can text charmed, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
0
SPEAKER_01
Everywhere else, you can go to theartofcharm.com.
0
SPEAKER_01
Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes.
0
SPEAKER_01
Alright, here s Charles Duhigg.
0
SPEAKER_01
So first of all, thanks for joining us today, Charles.
0
SPEAKER_01
Very, very cool.
0
SPEAKER_01
Read both of your books and saw your talk as well, so excited to do the show.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, thanks for having me on.
0
SPEAKER_01
What would you say you do, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
You re a writer, clearly, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
But do you fall more on the side of journalist or are you more going towards science writer these days?
0
SPEAKER_01
You ve got kind of a diverse perspective here.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I m a journalist.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I wrote The Power of Habit, now Smarter, Faster, Better, that both of them are sort of rooted in looking at neurology and psychology is sort of a happenstance because the truth of the matter is that I started as a business journalist and so most of what I look at are business questions and then those end up becoming life questions, right, about how we
0
SPEAKER_00
habits emerge in our life, or how we can be more productive.
0
SPEAKER_00
These are things that oftentimes corporate America starts thinking about before the rest of us do, but the lessons that come out of that tend to be universal lessons.
0
SPEAKER_01
In the book, Smarter, Faster, Better, The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business, one of the key concepts that I really like, and this show, The Art of Charm, is all about how you think.
0
SPEAKER_01
This book is about managing how you think rather than what you think in order to transform your life.
0
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us the distinction between managing how we think rather than just changing what we think?
0
SPEAKER_01
Because it seems almost like the same thing when you read it at first.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, and I think that that s really the insight.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think there s a basic lesson, which is that we are living through a period of rapid change, an economic revolution on par to the agrarian and industrial revolutions, and also a revolution in culture and what we know about how people behave with each other, how people behave in organizations, how people behave in life.
0
SPEAKER_00
we ve learned a lot about how our brain works as a result.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the sort of core lesson that we ve learned is that in contemporary society, it is possible to become so busy that you stop being productive, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Each of us wake up and our phone is buzzing and there are people asking to have meetings with us and there s a thousand things to do and emails that need to be returned, and you can become so busy that you lose the capacity to focus on those things that are actually important, that you ll have time
0
SPEAKER_00
to really focus on the things that matter.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so when we talk about knowing how to think as much as what we think about, what we re really talking about is these lessons from neurology and from psychology and from behavioral economics that tell us how to structure our thinking, how to build what psychologists refer to as contemplative routines that allow us to stay focused on the things that matter the most.
0
SPEAKER_00
What are contemplative routines?
0
SPEAKER_00
So contemplative routines are essentially habits that we build that give us the space to think about the right things.
0
SPEAKER_00
So there s myriad contemplative routines, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
For some people, it can be as simple as on your way to work, thinking about visualizing the day that s coming up.
0
SPEAKER_00
Psychologists refer to this as building mental models.
0
SPEAKER_00
Essentially, if we tell ourselves a story about what we expect to unfold, it tends to prime our brain much better to pay attention to the things that matter and ignore the things that are distractions.
0
SPEAKER_00
A contemplative routine could be simple as on my subway ride into the New York Times each morning, I take 10 minutes and I just try and visualize with just half a degree more specificity than most people what exactly is going to happen that day.
0
SPEAKER_00
For other people, contemplative routines can be something that s much more active.
0
SPEAKER_00
For instance, in the book, we tell the story of the making of West Side Story.
0
SPEAKER_00
One of the things that s interesting about Jerry Robbins, the choreographer of West Side Story and really the designer of it, is that he had this contemplative routine of writing these letters.
0
SPEAKER_00
He made himself into what s known as an innovation broker by exposing himself to all kinds of different ideas and different types of artistic expressions.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then he would write these long letters to his friends, like 20 or 30 page letters each night.
0
SPEAKER_00
That act of writing the letter, that wasn t to educate his friends.
0
SPEAKER_00
That was to help him think through what he had seen that day, to make sense of the ideas he had been exposed to.
0
SPEAKER_00
So for Jerry Robbins, his contemplative routine is writing letters.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s any habit that we get into that pushes us to think a little bit more.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because throughout history, the killer app has always been thinking, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
The thing that distinguishes the most productive people from everyone else is that they have these habits that push them to think a little bit more about what s going on.
0
SPEAKER_01
So what s your contemplative routine?
0
SPEAKER_01
Is it writing books about subjects that you re interested in?
0
SPEAKER_01
Because so far, you re doing pretty good with that.
0
SPEAKER_00
So writing a book would be almost too big to be a contemplative routine, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
In general, contemplative routines should literally be habits, things that we do on a daily or a couple of times a week basis.
0
SPEAKER_00
So for me, one of my big contemplative routines, besides every morning sort of just taking 10 minutes to try and visualize the day with some degree of specificity, is that I also have this rule where I tell my wife basically everything that s going on in my life.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, both the things I m like proud and psyched about and the things where I think I screwed up, the meetings I had where I could have done better, I described them to my wife.
0
SPEAKER_00
I forced myself to describe them to her.
0
SPEAKER_00
I found that for me, verbalizing what s going on, it pushes me to think a little bit more deeply about like, why did I make that mistake?
0
SPEAKER_00
Or why did that one meeting work out so well?
0
SPEAKER_00
And so every night I do that with her.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I think all of us have a lot of contemplative routines.
0
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes we don t even realize that they exist.
0
SPEAKER_00
But they re oftentimes the parts of our life that we find we enjoy the most.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that sometimes are hard.
0
SPEAKER_00
but that end up being the most meaningful.
0
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think that I do this as well.
0
SPEAKER_01
Certainly the show is a contemplative routine.
0
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it s a habit, so maybe it s a little bit too big, but I do multiple shows per week about things that I ve read and learned, and it forces me to outline and think about the concept, but I definitely do the verbalization.
0
SPEAKER_01
There are many, many times where I ll be on the phone with somebody
0
SPEAKER_01
repeating things, or saying things in different ways, or explaining to Jenny, my fiance, different things about, today this happened, and then this happened, and she doesn t really need to know it.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s just me thinking through it, and a lot of insight comes out of that.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like, oh, why did that happen?
0
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes she ll even ask me a question that gets me thinking in a different direction, which enhances that routine even more.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s really, really important, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Because I think what happens when we have these routines is that we stop having to think about the process and we can just relax into relying on the activity itself.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, one of the big challenges in contemporary life is that simply all of us want to think more, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
There s nobody out there who says, I really wish I was thinking less about the important things each day.
0
SPEAKER_00
And yet, one of the challenges is, and within the sciences, they refer to this as the problem of metacognition.
0
SPEAKER_00
that oftentimes we get so wrapped up that we forget to think, not because we don t like thinking, but because there s always a thousand things on your to-do list before think about the problem in front of you, or think about your priorities.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so the question is, how can you trick yourself?
0
SPEAKER_00
How can you kind of come up with a hack that forces you to think, that makes it easier to think, without having to stop and say, now s the moment that I should be thinking?
0
SPEAKER_01
One of the examples that I saw from the book as well, that if you read a book filled with new ideas, force yourself to put it down and explain the concept to someone else in theory.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think that most of us aren t doing this.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like you said, there s so many distractions to get onto the next thing, and we seem more productive by just diving into the inbox or something like that, but there are so many times where we learn things and we just don t absorb them.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I m thinking of,
0
SPEAKER_01
even seminars and things like that.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, how often do we go to a seminar and we take a bunch of notes, and that binder that they give you is dog-eared and it s amazing, and you come home and you re so tired and you re so stoked, and you set it on the shelf, and then three months later, someone s like, hey, can we throw this away?
0
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, yeah, probably.
0
SPEAKER_01
And you just never looked at it again.
0
SPEAKER_01
No, there s no review, nothing to go through and study it, or you reviewed it on the flight home and you just re-read your notes,
1
SPEAKER_00
all fine and dandy, but you didn t really learn the material.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what s interesting is that the students who take notes by laptop, they tend to record much more information.
1
SPEAKER_00
So because we can type faster than we can write, students who are typing on their laptop tended to take about three times as much information from the lecture.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they tended to copy what the professor was saying verbatim, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So they could actually transcribe what the professor was saying.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what s interesting is they took all of these students, the handwriters and the note takers by laptop, they took all their notes away and they asked them to come back three weeks later.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then three weeks later, they gave all of them a test about what they had learned in that interview.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they found that the students who had taken notes by hand, they scored fantastically better on that test.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the reason why is because when you re taking notes by hand, you can t write so quickly.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to actually listen to what s going on and say to yourself, okay, I just heard three sentences.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let me summarize that in my own words.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let me get at the core idea.
1
SPEAKER_00
And by doing so, they actually introduce what s known as disfluency to the process of recording information.
1
SPEAKER_00
They force themselves to think about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that act of thinking encoded that knowledge so much more deeply in their brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then comes the next question.
1
SPEAKER_00
So let s say I m taking notes by hand.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m forcing myself to think as I m listening to what the person is saying.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m summarizing their big ideas.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m making sense of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m acting in a disfluent manner.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, how do I take that information and make sure that it doesn t exist just for that lecture or just for that seminar or just for that conference I m at?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, one of the things that we find is the most productive people, they tend to have this kind of check-in system, where very frequently on a Sunday afternoon, they ll set aside two hours and they ll say, for these two hours, I m going to look at what happened in the past week, and I m going to plan the coming week.
1
SPEAKER_00
or they have a regular meal once every three weeks with one of their best friends.
1
SPEAKER_00
And at that meal, they do the same thing every time.
1
SPEAKER_00
They talk about what s happened in the last three weeks, the best ideas that they ve been exposed to, and they describe those ideas, and then what they re excited about that s coming up in the next three weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
We think of those things as things that are social opportunities, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
That we tell our friends about ideas because we want to educate them.
1
SPEAKER_00
But what s actually happening is that we re educating ourselves.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re remembering the most important idea.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re rephrasing that idea in a way that forces us to make sense of it, to see how it actually interacts with our life and how we can use it.
1
SPEAKER_03
In Smarter, Faster, Better, you write that the most productive people, companies, and organizations, they don t merely act differently, they view the world and their choices in profoundly different ways.
1
SPEAKER_03
What is the distinction here?
1
SPEAKER_03
Because, of course, we know to be more productive, we do need to act differently, we do need to set up systems, and we need to set up stop gaps, and calendar systems, and reminders, and alarms, and efficient processes, and automate things, and outsource things.
1
SPEAKER_03
what are these other organizations, these other people, what are they doing, what are they viewing, and how are they viewing things that make them so much more effective?
1
SPEAKER_00
So let me answer that in a couple of different ways.
1
SPEAKER_00
So one of the things that we know about the most productive people is that they tend to perceive choices where others see just chores, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
The first chapter in Smarter, Faster, Better looks at what we know about the science of self-motivation.
1
SPEAKER_00
because we know that your ability to motivate to do hard tasks, that s something that the most productive people have in spades.
1
SPEAKER_00
They manage to plow through that email inbox, even though it s a real drag, faster than other people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the way that they do that, the way that they motivate for that, is that they look for choices where others might not perceive them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so one of my favorite examples of this is the Marine Corps.
1
SPEAKER_00
About 15 years ago, the Marine Corps changed how it does basic training.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what they did is, we all think of the Marine Corps as a place where you go in basic training to learn obedience and discipline, and that s still a big part of basic training.
1
SPEAKER_00
But what this guy named Charles Krulak, who is the head of the Marine Corps, did is he started forcing all of the recruits to make choice after choice after choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in your first week of basic training, it s pretty typical that you go into the mess hall, you have a big lunch, all of the other units leave, and then your drill sergeant says to you, now you need to clean the mess hall.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you re a recruit, you re an 18-year-old who doesn t really know what they re doing, you say, okay, so where are the cleaning supplies?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he says, it s not my job to tell you where the cleaning supplies are.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you say, should I throw away these hamburgers, the leftover hamburgers, or should I put them in the fridge?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he says, look, it s your job to figure that out.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what he does is he forces people to start making choices, to start seeing choices where otherwise they might not even realize that they exist.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is, within psychology, known as developing an internal locus of control, or a bias towards action.
1
SPEAKER_00
The people who are best able to self-motivate are the people who look for choices that they can make that make them feel like they re in control.
1
SPEAKER_00
So for instance, when someone s replying to all those emails, which is like a real pain, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
You have an inbox full of emails you gotta deal with, it s boring, you don t wanna do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
People who look for some type of choice they can make right away, that helps them get motivated to start.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if someone says like, hey, can you have lunch tomorrow?
1
SPEAKER_00
Typing as your first sentence, I d love to have lunch, but I d like us to have Indian food.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or can you meet tomorrow at 11 o clock?
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure, I can meet you at 11 o clock, but I m only gonna stay for 20 minutes.
1
SPEAKER_00
I gotta be out of there by 11.20.
1
SPEAKER_00
By making a choice that makes you feel in control, it s much easier to activate those parts of your neurology where motivation resides.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that works really well for small tasks, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Turn a chore into a choice, and it s easier to get that chore done.
1
SPEAKER_00
The other thing that really productive people do is that they understand that the way to motivate themselves for long-term tasks
1
SPEAKER_00
is to force themselves to ask why.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why am I doing this thing?
1
SPEAKER_00
One professor I was talking to in particular, this guy is a PhD MD in oncology, and he told me that what he hates doing most of all is grading students  papers.
1
SPEAKER_00
He finds it insanely boring.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just like this task he has to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
He hates it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so what he does is every time before he starts grading a student s paper, he goes through this mantra, which is he says to himself, okay, if I sit down and I grade all these papers, then the university can collect tuition dollars.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if the university can collect tuition dollars, then they can fund my research in the lab.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if they can fund my research in the lab, I can try and solve the problem of cancer.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if I can solve the problem of cancer, I can save millions of people s lives.
1
SPEAKER_00
So by grading this student s paper, I am saving millions of people s lives.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, what s interesting about this is that, first of all, that s kind of ridiculous on the face of it, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s a little bit reductio ad absurdum there.
1
SPEAKER_00
But second of all, a guy who has an MD, PhD, the fact that he has to go through this mantra to motivate himself is a clue to how people who are genuinely productive see the world differently.
1
SPEAKER_00
They have mantras like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
They force themselves to ask why.
1
SPEAKER_00
They remind themselves why this boring task is so important, because it s connected somehow to our deepest aspirations and our deepest values.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s how the most productive people see the world differently.
1
SPEAKER_00
They understand that our brain is something that we can choose to manipulate, that we can choose how much control we feel towards the world, we can choose how we run a process of innovation to become an innovation broker, to speed up the process of creativity.
1
SPEAKER_00
They see opportunities to control themselves that other people don t even perceive.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s how they see the world differently, and that s why they re so much more productive.
1
SPEAKER_01
Hey, Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
1
SPEAKER_01
Winning is an everyday mindset, and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
1
SPEAKER_01
On Ways to Win podcast, Craig and Coach Cal use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems.
1
SPEAKER_01
Whether it s trouble at home or a workplace dilemma, the coaches will help you find a winning formula for success.
1
SPEAKER_01
You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them into the leaders they are today.
1
SPEAKER_01
And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
1
SPEAKER_01
Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_02
Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
1
SPEAKER_01
They say if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
1
SPEAKER_01
But if you re an entrepreneur, you know the hard work that comes with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s why you need Kajabi.
1
SPEAKER_01
Kajabi makes it easy to run your entire online business from one platform so you can focus on what you love, creating.
1
SPEAKER_02
Kajabi is the ultimate all-in-one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs build successful online businesses by unlocking predictable recurring revenue.
1
SPEAKER_01
No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, and experiences into enriching online courses, exclusive membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and more.
1
SPEAKER_02
The best part could jobby doesn t cut into your revenue because.
2
SPEAKER_02
Everything is owned and controlled by you.
2
SPEAKER_02
So keep 100% of what you earn.
2
SPEAKER_01
And with Kajabi, you also get robust analytics, easy payment options, email marketing tools, and customizable website templates, all built in.
2
SPEAKER_02
You don t even need a huge audience to make sustainable income.
2
SPEAKER_02
There are thousands of creators on Kajabi making six and seven figures with less than 50,000 followers.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right now, Kajabi is offering a free 30-day trial to start your business if you go to kajabi.com slash charm.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s K-A-J-A-B-I dot com slash charm.
2
SPEAKER_02
Go to Kajabi.com slash charm and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over seven billion dollars.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now, back to the show.
2
SPEAKER_03
So if we can use that to motivate ourselves, how can we use it to motivate other people?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, so it s interesting, I mean, so I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, and we work really hard to do a couple things.
2
SPEAKER_00
First of all, to teach them to see choices, so that if my son comes in and he says, I m bored, the first thing I say is, well, I want you to tell me three things you could do right now, and then tell me which one you want to choose to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not solving his problem for him, but teaching him to see choices.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then the other important thing with other people is how we praise them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of this goes back to a researcher named Carol Dweck, who s worked on this concept of internal locus of control and what s known as a growth mindset.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right, she s been on the show, so we definitely are familiar with her, good callback.
2
SPEAKER_00
So one of the things that Carol says is when your kid comes home and they got an A on a paper, the wrong thing to say is, you know, I m so proud of you, you are so smart.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because what you re teaching them is that they have an innate quality.
2
SPEAKER_00
something outside of their control that determined whether they did well on that exam or not.
2
SPEAKER_00
The thing that you ought to say to them is, I m so proud of you, you worked so hard to get that A. Because what you re reinforcing is, you actually have control over whether you got that A, or you made a choice to work hard, and it paid off in a good grade.
2
SPEAKER_00
We can train our children, our spouses, ourselves, our coworkers, we can train them to see these opportunities for control that they have.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in doing so, we help them motivate to get things done.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, I think that s part of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But there s also other things, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You had asked about sort of how we work with others.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the chapters from the book was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine, and it was about Google s quest to build the perfect team.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for like four years, Google studied this question of how to build the perfect team.
2
SPEAKER_00
and they spent millions and millions of dollars.
2
SPEAKER_00
And initially, they thought that the way that they would answer this is that the secret was to figure out who belongs on the team together, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you put friends together so that they can all get along really well, or maybe you put a mixture of introverts and extroverts, or maybe it s all introverts, or maybe you put people who all crave the same type of management style.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what Google found is that who was on a team didn t actually matter very much for whether that team was effective or not.
2
SPEAKER_00
What mattered much, much more was how the team interacted.
2
SPEAKER_00
what cultural norms emerged.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in particular, they found that there were these two behaviors that made a team more effective, almost regardless of who was on that team.
2
SPEAKER_00
The first was that everyone on the team had to speak in a roughly equal proportion, what s known as an equality in conversational turn-taking.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, that doesn t mean that in every meeting, everyone has to speak the same number of words or the same number of minutes, but it means that over time, everyone roughly speaks up the same amount, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
That you don t go into a meeting and there s some people who are just consistently sitting on the periphery and not saying anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
But getting people to all speak up, that s not enough on its own.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you wanna make a team productive, if you wanna motivate a team to really come together, then the second thing you also have to do is you have to engage in what s known as ostentatious listening behaviors, which basically means I show you that I m listening by doing things like picking up on nonverbal cues, or by saying, Jim, what I hear you saying is this, that I demonstrate to you that when you speak, I actually hear it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like a kindergarten teacher who s like, hmm, yeah, yeah, when we go outside and play, we have fun, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
Almost like that, only hopefully a little less condescending.
2
SPEAKER_00
But we ve all been in those meetings, right, where someone says like, hey, Jim, that s a great idea, what I hear you saying is X. Like it feels like finally somebody gets me, they understand what I m saying.
2
SPEAKER_00
These two behaviors, this equality and conversational turn-taking and this ostentatious listening,
2
SPEAKER_00
What Google and many other researchers have found is that it creates this atmosphere that we refer to as psychological safety that allows people to come together as a team much, much better, allows them to gel and work together.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you might be on a team with people that you don t like, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You think they re boring or you think they re dumb or you just don t get along with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
They wouldn t be your friends.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if everyone in that room feels like they can talk up and they re all speaking up and everyone in that room feels like each other is listening,
2
SPEAKER_00
that team is gonna end up being much more productive than another team that might be filled with geniuses, but where half of them are silent half the time and nobody really feels like anyone s listening to them.
2
SPEAKER_03
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s kind of like talking to my dad, where you re not sure if he s listening or if that even heard you at all, and then when you say, hello, are you paying attention?
2
SPEAKER_03
He says, yeah, I heard you already.
2
SPEAKER_03
You have to actually make people feel valued, feel heard.
2
SPEAKER_03
This is almost Pavlovian, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, people care about what I m saying.
2
SPEAKER_03
I m gonna be more engaged, therefore be a little bit more present.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to be more present.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I spent a long time in Google and one of the chapters is actually about how they do this at Google.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they ve come up with a bunch of like simple rules to help this happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
And one of the rules is that when a meeting starts, everyone s supposed to close their laptop because by closing your laptop, you have to make eye contact with each other much more often.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can show that you re listening much better if you re making eye contact.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the interesting thing about this is that if you think about it, Google as a tech company, right, as one of the most successful tech companies on Earth, has a rule that you have to close your computer when you start a meeting because they know that that makes the meeting and the team more effective.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the people who recognize what implications their behaviors have, the people who recognize how to discipline their own thoughts and their own actions,
2
SPEAKER_00
Those are the people who tend to engage more in these contemplative routines.
2
SPEAKER_00
They tend to have these practices, these habits that force them to think about what s really going on.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that really pays off over the long run.
2
SPEAKER_03
This is a phenomenon that happens to you sometimes whether you want it to or not and can cause death and destruction.
2
SPEAKER_03
So let s move from motivation and being more productive and more present to death and destruction and how to avoid it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Tell us what this is and throw a little backstory in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure, so this is one of my favorite stories from the book, is the story of Qantas Flight 32, which most Americans aren t familiar with, because it was an Australian airline that in 2010, Qantas Flight 32 was an Airbus A380, one of the most complicated airplanes on earth, that took off from Singapore airport, headed to Sydney, Australia.
2
SPEAKER_00
And about 20 minutes into the flight, it s a textbook perfect takeoff, it s a beautiful clear day, about 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot s sitting in the cockpit, they hear this sound like thousands of marbles being thrown against the hull, the fuselage of the plane.
2
SPEAKER_00
Unbeknownst to them, what had just happened is that there had been this freak accident.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the fan blades on the turbine in the jet s engine had become detached from the shaft.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it had broken off and it had shot through the wing, causing this hole in the wing that was as big as two people s bodies side by side.
2
SPEAKER_00
And at the same time, that turbine actually hit another turbine fan blade.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it caused that fan blade to explode into thousands of pieces.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was like the shrapnel of a bomb going off inside the wing.
2
SPEAKER_00
It cut through the electrical lines and the fuel lines and the hydraulics lines.
2
SPEAKER_00
When people later saw the wing, they said that it looked like someone had taken a machine gun and had just raked the bottom of the wing.
2
SPEAKER_00
As you might imagine, this isn t great for an airplane, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
In fact, it knocked out 22 of the 24 major systems that make an airplane work.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the worst mechanical mid-air disaster in modern aviation.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what s interesting is that the pilots, and particularly the captain, a guy named Richard Decrebny, they re sitting in the cockpit, and suddenly their dashboard lights up with all these alarms, and they start responding to them, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So Richard Decrebny had been trained by the Australian Air Force how to fly.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you re trained by the Air Force in being a pilot, they tend to teach you this thing known as situational awareness or building mental models.
2
SPEAKER_00
What we know is that building mental models, it s at the core of how we teach ourselves to focus.
2
SPEAKER_00
People who are better at focusing, they tend to be ones who build mental models with a little bit more detail than everyone else.
2
SPEAKER_00
Essentially, a mental model is like a story we tell ourselves.
2
SPEAKER_00
about what s happening as it occurs.
2
SPEAKER_00
And our brain uses these mental models to figure out, what do I pay attention to, what can I safely ignore?
2
SPEAKER_00
And Richard McCrudden was so into this idea that he actually had taken his co-pilots through building mental models earlier that day as they had taken a shuttle from the hotel to the airport.
2
SPEAKER_00
He had asked them basically to tell them
3
SPEAKER_01
a series of stories, you would say things like, okay, so let s imagine engine two goes out, what s the first words out of your mouth?
3
SPEAKER_01
Where do your eyes go?
3
SPEAKER_01
What are you going to do with your hands first thing?
3
SPEAKER_01
So as soon as this emergency happens on Qantas flight 32, if you listen to tape recordings of the cockpit, what you basically hear are people speaking in very short
3
SPEAKER_01
calm sentences.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s almost as if they re reading from a script, because they had practiced what they were going to do in case of an emergency.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in most flights, that would have saved everyone on board, because this is how, in an emergency, you know how to focus, is you ve thought ahead of time of how things are going to unfold.
3
SPEAKER_01
In this case, though, the mechanical damage was so extreme that there was no way to have enough scripts in someone s head to keep track of what they ought to pay attention to.
3
SPEAKER_01
As soon as they would solve one problem, 10 more alarms would go off, and they would solve some of those alarms, and that would set off another 10 alarms.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at that moment, Richard Decrebny starts falling into what is called a cognitive tunnel, which you had asked about.
3
SPEAKER_01
A cognitive tunnel is something that we ve all experienced, which is that when there s too much information around us, too many stimuli, our brain tends to start focusing on the most obvious inputs possible.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you ve ever been driving down the road and you re going the speed limit, and you see a police car, and you suddenly hit the brakes, even though you don t need to,
3
SPEAKER_01
That s because you ve fallen into a cognitive tunnel or if you ve ever walked into a meeting and There s three people talking to you and your boss has a question and you blurred out a reply to that question Instead of taking a minute to think about what you really want to say.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s because you re in a cognitive tunnel You re overwhelmed by the amount of information around you that you stop thinking and you start reacting And if you re in a meeting or if you re in a car
3
SPEAKER_01
that s really, really dangerous, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because instead of trying to figure out what are the problems I should be thinking about, you simply start reacting to all of the emergencies around you.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at that moment, Richard Dicrebny does this kind of interesting thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
In order to pull himself out of this cognitive tunnel, because he feels himself being drawn into it, he knows how cognitive tunnels work.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you know when you re falling into a cognitive tunnel?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it just, I m only thinking about the next emergency and you don t zoom out and take the time to look at the bigger picture because you re panicking?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is there some sort of flag where we can go, oh, I m in a cognitive tunnel or I m about to go down a bad path.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do we stop ourselves?
3
SPEAKER_00
What signs are we looking for?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think we all know when we re in a cognitive tunnel, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
We all feel that instinct where we sort of feel a little bit overwhelmed.
3
SPEAKER_01
Instead of being in control, instead of being in charge of ourselves, we simply start reacting.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve all felt that before.
3
SPEAKER_01
And more importantly, the more that we think about and realize that this can happen, the more we re prepared to recognize it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think for all of us, this is why building mental models is so important, is because if you sit down and you visualize this meeting that s about to occur, and most of us, when we re looking at our schedule, we say, okay, I have a meeting from 10 to 11, and my goal is that I wanna get my idea out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
The most productive people, what they do is they visualize that meeting, they come up with a mental model, they tell themselves a story that s just half a degree more specific than everyone else.
3
SPEAKER_01
They say, okay, I ve got a meeting at 10 o clock, and the way it s gonna start is that Jim is gonna bring up his dumb idea, because Jim always brings up his dumb idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then Susan is gonna disagree with Jim, because Susan hates Jim.
3
SPEAKER_01
They used to sleep with each other.
3
SPEAKER_01
She always disagrees with him.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at that moment, that s when I m gonna come in with my brilliant idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
And because I m gonna be the voice of reason, everyone s gonna listen to me, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s how we avoid cognitive tunnels, or that s how we recognize them, is that we think through, with a little bit more specificity, what we expect to occur.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then when we re sitting in that meeting,
3
SPEAKER_01
almost subconsciously, our brain starts comparing what s actually happening to the story that we told ourselves.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s inside our head.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in doing so, if suddenly something goes completely off the rails, if suddenly I find myself not paying attention to what s actually going on, or I m simply reacting, or I m feeling overwhelmed,
3
SPEAKER_01
we re much more likely to recognize that if we have a vision in our head of what we expected to occur, if we ve been telling ourselves a story of how we expect our day or this meeting or this conversation to play out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s really, really important.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s why mental models are so powerful, is that they give us an opportunity to compare what s happening to a story inside our head
3
SPEAKER_01
and to ask ourselves, like, am I acting the way that I wanted to, or am I simply reacting to all the stimuli that s around me?
3
SPEAKER_00
The mental model stuff is super interesting to me because, at least when I was a kid, I started visualizing things like this, and I know that when I played sports, I visualized things like this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And even football coaches would be like, go through the plays in your head on the bus on the way to, you know, the next middle school or high school or whoever you were playing against that day.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did your coach ever do that stuff with you?
3
SPEAKER_00
The like, basic visualization.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this seems like,
3
SPEAKER_00
It s very similar where our coach would say something like, what happens when you miss your block?
3
SPEAKER_00
What happens if you see a hole and it s not the hole you re supposed to go through?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you do?
3
SPEAKER_00
Look at this, think about this, and you re going through this in your head, and I think it s very important to do that, even in your business or in your family or in your daily life, because if something doesn t work out, if you ve got the backup plan, and it s not just a backup plan, but something you ve gone through
3
SPEAKER_00
in your head so that you ve emotionally prepared yourself plus came up with a backup plan or a plan to deal with that particular scenario, that panic wave doesn t really hit you or it doesn t really hit you as strongly because instead of slamming you into a wall, it just changes your direction.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s exactly right.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re very accustomed to athletes talking about how they visualize.
3
SPEAKER_01
In fact, Michael Phelps, in The Power of Habit, there s this whole section about how Michael Phelps  coach taught him to visualize every single race, to what it would feel like for his hand to come out of the water.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as a result, when you talk to Michael Phelps about what it feels like when he sets a world record, he ll tell you that it actually feels kind of anticlimactic.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s just following the script inside his head.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s just doing what he s imagined thousands of times before.
3
SPEAKER_01
Doing it isn t that different from actually just imagining it, and that s why he s so fast.
3
SPEAKER_01
He doesn t have to think.
3
SPEAKER_01
It becomes a habit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening and supporting the Art of Charm.
3
SPEAKER_00
For a list of all the amazing sponsors and discount codes, visit theartofcharm.com slash advertisers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, back to the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
Shifting over to creativity as well, you ve got a lot of great information about this.
3
SPEAKER_00
First of all, how do you measure creativity, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
You have some tips and some ideas on how to manage and increase creativity, but how do you manage something like that?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you measure something like that?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think what researchers have looked at is they ve looked at why some people seem to be able to be more creative on a productive schedule.
3
SPEAKER_01
So why do some people have the ability to say, if you say to them, I need a good idea in two days, they come back with a good idea in two days.
3
SPEAKER_01
There seems to be some process, and in fact that s what we know about creativity, is that most people think of creativity as like the expression of an artistic mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
but that that tends not to be true.
3
SPEAKER_01
The breakthroughs that in retrospect people end up saying are the most creative, they tend to be the product not of a particularly creative individual, but rather a particularly creative process, and that people who are creative tend to commit to that process, and it yields a new idea kind of on a schedule.
3
SPEAKER_00
And how do we increase creativity?
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the examples you give is creating artificial deadlines.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, for example, if we need brilliant ideas in two days, we make the deadline, what, one day, and then hope we can clean it up slightly thereafter?
3
SPEAKER_00
What other ways do we have of increasing creativity on demand?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think the point is, there s not a lot of research to show that an artificial deadline helps creativity.
3
SPEAKER_01
What we do know is that when people tend to have a process that they go through, that that process brings them to a conclusion on a predictive schedule.
3
SPEAKER_01
So one of my favorite examples is Frozen, the making of the Disney movie Frozen.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everyone knows that Frozen is like this huge blockbuster.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what most people don t know is that Frozen was literally on the brink of disaster until just months before it was in the theaters.
3
SPEAKER_01
But Disney has this basic philosophy, which comes from Pixar, because the guys who run Disney are the guys who founded Pixar.
3
SPEAKER_01
And their basic philosophy is anyone can be creative if they have the right process.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what the process ought to be is a process that forces you to think about your own experiences.
3
SPEAKER_01
and to juxtapose your own experiences in new and original ways.
3
SPEAKER_01
So rather than coming up with a completely original idea, the goal of the process is to get you to take old ideas, old cliched concepts, and to put them together in new combinations.
3
SPEAKER_01
The way that this worked with Disney and Frozen is that they had been working on the movie for like two years.
3
SPEAKER_01
Basically, it wasn t working.
3
SPEAKER_01
They had all these original scripts.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the original script, Elsa and Anna, the two main characters, they re not sisters.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re like enemies.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of them is the Snow Queen, and she s this evil woman who lives up on a hill, and she attacks the town.
3
SPEAKER_01
Then they had tried making them sisters, but one of them is like an orphan who didn t know she was sister.
3
SPEAKER_01
They tried all this stuff, and it just didn t work.
3
SPEAKER_01
They sat down and they said, look, we re almost out of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
We gotta figure out how to make this movie work.
3
SPEAKER_01
Here s what I want you to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
They had this big off-site meeting.
3
SPEAKER_01
The producer of the movie said, I want us to go around and I want you to talk about the two ideas that are most important to you, whether those ideas
4
SPEAKER_00
to work together or not, let s just get cliched ideas on the table to play with.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they went around, and the first idea that people said is, well, look, we want to tell a story about princesses, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because Disney knows princesses better than anyone else.
4
SPEAKER_00
We know that we can tell a story about princesses better than anyone, so that s the first cliche we want to deal with, is princesses.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then the producer said, okay, so princesses, let s start there.
4
SPEAKER_00
But we need another idea, we need something to juxtapose with that that seems creative and new.
4
SPEAKER_00
And as they were going around, he said, look, draw on your personal experiences.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they re going around, and what s interesting about Frozen is that there was an unusually large number of women working on that project.
4
SPEAKER_00
In fact, the co-director is the first female director in Disney s history, a woman named Jennifer Lee.
4
SPEAKER_00
And as they re going around and they re talking about this, the women who are working on it, and the men, but most importantly the women, start saying, you know, one of the ideas that s really important to me
4
SPEAKER_00
is sisterhood.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s interesting about sisterhood is it s complicated.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not that usually there s a good sister and an evil sister.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s that both sisters are usually kind of screwed up, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You come together and you re friends, and then you have a falling out, and then you come together again.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sisterhood is kind of cliched, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s all these books about sisterhood.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s literally hundreds and hundreds of books about sisters.
4
SPEAKER_00
But we don t have to reinvent the wheel here.
4
SPEAKER_00
All we have to do is find two ideas that seem interesting and then figure out how to jam them together.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so they said, look, what if we wrote a movie where it s about princesses and those princesses are sisters and the sisters save each other?
4
SPEAKER_00
Instead of a prince coming in and saving the princess, the sisters both save each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
And once they did that, all these creative opportunities opened up, because now you can have a prince, and it can turn out that the prince is the bad guy, but we don t have to reveal that to the end of the movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
And moreover, we can have these two sisters and they re fighting with each other, but you don t know which of them is good and which of them is bad, and then what if it turns out that they re both kind of good and they re both kind of bad?
4
SPEAKER_00
All of a sudden, these creative opportunities opened up, but it was only because
4
SPEAKER_00
they took these two cliches, princesses and sisters, and pushed them together, that they felt this opportunity to be creative.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is called innovation brokerage.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what it reflects is that the most innovative people, the most creative people, they tend to be people who collect ideas, and then figure out how to fit those ideas together, rather than trying to come up with a completely new idea on its own.
4
SPEAKER_00
West Side Story is exactly that.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s taking Romeo and Juliet, and it s taking racial gang warfare in the 1950s and jamming them together.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or Hamilton, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Hamilton is taking hip hop, which has been around for 25 years now, and the Founding Fathers, which is like the most cliched story on the face of the planet, and jamming them together.
4
SPEAKER_00
or the invention of the bicycle helmet.
4
SPEAKER_00
The invention of the bicycle helmet happened when a guy who used to build boat holes was hired to come up with a new football helmet idea, and he said, why don t I just build a boat hole as big as someone s head?
4
SPEAKER_00
None of these on their own are creative ideas, but they become creative when these two old ideas are pushed together.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s how you make productivity happen on a schedule, is you say to people, don t come up with something entirely new.
4
SPEAKER_00
Instead, look at the ideas that to you seem meaningful, seem old.
4
SPEAKER_00
Are these ideas that you ve played with for years?
4
SPEAKER_00
And figure out how to juxtapose them together.
4
SPEAKER_01
How do we get people to generate these types of ideas?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it seems like a big blank slate.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everybody s full of ideas, everybody s full of input throughout their life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is there anything that you can point to that allows this to come out more easily?
4
SPEAKER_00
I think we can do it right now, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, what s a creative project that you have?
4
SPEAKER_01
I create this show and I interview people multiple times per week.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, the interview is pretty much a cliche, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You ask people questions about what they ve got going on.
4
SPEAKER_00
When you have conversations with friends, what s the most meaningful part of those conversations?
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you find is important about the last conversation you had with a family member or a friend?
4
SPEAKER_01
Huh, interesting.
4
SPEAKER_01
Probably their feelings about whatever it is we re talking about.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, we have two cliches, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
The interview program, someone s written a book, you re gonna ask them about their book.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we have another cliche, which is that when you talk to your friends, you like to talk about feelings.
4
SPEAKER_00
You like to talk about what s going on with their emotional lives.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you juxtapose those and you ve got a creative show.
4
SPEAKER_00
You say, look, I m going to talk to you about your book, but rather than just asking you to tell the stories about your book, tell me why you wrote this book.
4
SPEAKER_00
What are the emotions that are driving this book?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why did you spend two years trying to take these ideas and put them down on paper?
4
SPEAKER_00
That s Terry Gross.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s fresh air.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly what she does for the most popular interview show on radio.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s how you create something new, is you look for these things that seem important to you, so important you ve maybe stopped paying attention to them, and you try and push them together in new ways, and something creative comes out.
4
SPEAKER_01
I know everyone s expecting this, so I m just going to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why did you spend two years creating this?
4
SPEAKER_00
writing this book.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the reason I spent two years writing this book is because I wanted to figure out why I wasn t as productive as I should have been.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I started working on this book the same year that The Power of Habit was published.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d written The Power of Habit, and I wasn t certain that anyone would read it, and then it ended up doing really, really well, like way better than I expected it to, and I felt really lucky about that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that same year, I was working on a series for the New York Times called The I Economy that ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so professionally, it was like a great year for me, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I have a book that s doing well, I m working on this big important series for the New York Times, and I would come home and I would say to my wife, like, if this is what success feels like, then like sign me back up for failure, because like this is miserable.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would get home every night and I would have like 100 emails to deal with, and I would have all this crap I should have done during that day, and instead of like having dinner with my kids and putting them to bed, I would have to like sit in front of my computer and deal with all these tasks, and I thought to myself like,
4
SPEAKER_00
Why does it seem like there s all these other people who are so much more successful than I am without being stressed out of their minds?
4
SPEAKER_00
President Obama only has the same number of hours in each day that I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why does he get so much more important stuff done?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do I feel so overwhelmed by the minutia and the chores of life?
4
SPEAKER_00
And honestly, it was really devastating, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I had worked for so long to try and write a great book.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had worked for so long to become a great newspaper reporter.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now that I m doing both of them, it s like a punishment.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s why I wrote the book, was because I wanted to understand, there are these people out there who seem more productive.
4
SPEAKER_00
They not only seem like they get more done, they seem happier getting things done.
4
SPEAKER_00
They seem like they re in more control of their life.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to understand what was the secret that they had found.
4
SPEAKER_00
How can I be successful and accomplish the goals that are most important to me without making huge sacrifices, without feeling emotionally adrift?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so that s why I wrote the book.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you feel like you ve come much closer to accomplishing that goal?
4
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
4
SPEAKER_00
Once someone teaches you how to think about thinking, once someone teaches you how to take control of your life and your brain,
4
SPEAKER_00
It s transformative.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I have all these contemplative routines now, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I go home and I tell my wife about what s going on with my day, the parts that I like and I dislike that I mentioned before.
4
SPEAKER_00
And like, as a result, I m so much less stressed about the choices I have to make because I know that I m gonna have a chance to review them with my wife.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I make a mistake, that s okay, it s just an experiment.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna get to review the data with my wife later on and learn how not to make that mistake again.
4
SPEAKER_00
In the morning when I m riding the subway, as I mentioned, I kind of visualize my day.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now when I go through my day, I get so much more done and it s just that anxiety of like making the wrong choice, that s kind of been removed because I know how I want my day to unfold.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know what the most important thing to get done this morning is and I know how I think I m gonna get it done.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have all these contemplative routines, these habits that I ve tried to build into my life
4
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, not only do I get more done, but when I get home, I get to have dinner with my kids and put them to bed, not feel like I m running all the time just to stay in place.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, Charles, thank you so much.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is there anything else that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver to the AOC family?
4
SPEAKER_00
We are living through this really interesting and weird time.
4
SPEAKER_00
The world is literally changing around us.
4
SPEAKER_00
And for years, I was skeptical when people would say everything s different now.
4
SPEAKER_00
But most economists, most social scientists, they agree, like, we are living through an economic revolution that will leave our society as profoundly changed as the Industrial Revolution did and the Agrarian Revolution.
4
SPEAKER_00
The thing about times like this is they are very anxiety-producing.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you go and you look at diaries from 100 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, what you ll see is you will see people freaking out about how the world is changing and feeling completely uncertain.
4
SPEAKER_00
And at the core of these changes are usually debates over the definition of productivity.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is it more productive for me just to create widgets?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or is it more productive for me to sit and daydream and come up with a brilliant idea?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or is it more productive for me to spend time with my kids and be happy?
4
SPEAKER_00
A debate over productivity is happening now in a way that our parents and our grandparents didn t really have to experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the fact that people feel anxious about that, that is okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
they shouldn t feel bad about feeling anxious.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s just a characteristic of this period, but there is an answer to it.
4
SPEAKER_00
The answer to it is to figure out how to push yourself to think more, how to push yourself to focus on the right goals and to write to-do lists the right way and to become an innovation broker
5
SPEAKER_00
and to build mental models so you can focus better.
5
SPEAKER_00
For the first time, we actually understand how the brain works well enough that we can govern our thinking in a way to become more successful.
5
SPEAKER_00
Teaching yourself to think more, that relieves the anxiety because once you are in control of how you think, there s nothing that you can t get done.
5
SPEAKER_01
Charles, thank you very much.
5
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like this science of motivation, internal versus external locus of control, and the idea of choices.
5
SPEAKER_01
The fact that we can teach other people to create and see more choices is extremely powerful, especially if you re a parent or you manage just about anybody, or you want to be more persuasive.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right up our alley here.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Charles on Twitter.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ll have that in the show notes as well as the books.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can also tap our album art in most mobile podcast players, so you can see the cheat sheet for this episode.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ll link to the show notes right on your phone.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm, and I reply to everybody there for the most part.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a great way to interact with us other than email, which is a nightmare in a handbasket.
5
SPEAKER_01
Bootcamp and Art of Charm live program details.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s our live training program out here in L.A.
5
SPEAKER_01
sold out a few months in advance, but is seriously life-changing, very, very cool, amazing program.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you re thinking about it a little bit, get in touch with us, we ll get you some info, you can plan ahead.
5
SPEAKER_01
And also we have our social capital challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or here in the States, you can text charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s about improving your networking and connection skills, and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve also got regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every week.
5
SPEAKER_01
It ll make you a better networker, it ll make you a better connector, and it ll make you a better thinker.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed in the US to 33444.
5
SPEAKER_01
For full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
5
SPEAKER_01
This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFillippo.
5
SPEAKER_01
Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
5
SPEAKER_01
Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
5
SPEAKER_01
Go ahead and tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else either in person or shared on the web.
5
SPEAKER_01
So stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
5
SPEAKER_02
Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
5
SPEAKER_02
Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.