Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize Winner and Best-Selling Author of "The Power of Habit" and "Smarter Faster Better"
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and this is Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:49]I'm here today with Charles Duhig.
[0:52]Charles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.
[0:55]He's the author of two New York Times bestsellers, the power of habit, why we do
[0:59]what we do in life and business, and smarter, faster, better the secrets of being productive
[1:04]in life and business.
[1:05]He went to Yale and Harvard Business School, both with me.
[1:08]He's a frequent contributor to NPR in this American life, and a fantastic speaker for
[1:12]hire.
[1:13]So welcome, Charles.
[1:14]Thanks for having me.
[1:15]No problem.
[1:16]Let's start with the power of habit, which is a completely life-changing book.
[1:21]In the book, you outline in great detail how habit formation works.
[1:25]First, there's a queue, then a routine, and then a reward.
[1:28]And by the way, all the illustrations and examples on this process throughout the book,
[1:32]and your website and your speeches has now created a habit in me.
[1:35]I see the Louvre.
[1:36]I start taking notes, and then I feel sweeter.
[1:38]Excellent.
[1:39]That's exactly what we had in a while.
[1:40]There we go.
[1:41]Can you explain to listeners the process by which habits are formed?
[1:45]Yeah.
[1:46]Absolutely.
[1:47]And the best way to explain it is to talk a little bit about where this science came
[1:50]from, which was a laboratory initially at MIT, and a woman named Angrae Beall, who is
[1:56]an amazing scientist and neurologist, who basically spent her entire career trying to figure
[2:01]out how to get little sensors into rats' brains so she could measure neurological
[2:06]activity.
[2:07]And after a while, she figured out how to do this, and what she would do is she would
[2:10]take each rat that had this surgery, and she would put them in a maze that looked just
[2:13]like a tee with chocolate at one end.
[2:16]It was like the world's simplest maze.
[2:18]And what she would try and figure out is when you drop a rat in a maze like that, what
[2:23]does it do?
[2:24]Because if you just observe that rat, it looks like rats are like the laziest creatures
[2:30]in the case of the planet.
[2:31]It'll take 20 minutes for a rat to find its way up a maze shaped like a tee and find
[2:35]the chocolate at the end.
[2:36]Right?
[2:37]It's not even like a maze, but what it will do is it will like scratch the walls and
[2:41]sniff the air and wander around and then double back and eventually find the chocolate.
[2:46]But when now that she could look at the rat's brain activity, what she would see is that
[2:50]the rat was actually thinking hard the entire time, right?
[2:52]When it would scratch the walls, the motor functions of its brain would light up with
[2:56]activity.
[2:57]And if the air, the olfactory senses would light up with activity.
[3:00]And what we now know is that this is what's called unmediated learning.
[3:03]This is what children go through when they're trying to learn something without any kind
[3:08]of hypothesis about what's going on.
[3:10]And so she would drop each rat in the maze again and again and again, about 150 times
[3:15]per animal.
[3:16]And what she'd find is that over time, the rat would get faster and faster and faster
[3:19]if running the chocolate.
[3:20]Right?
[3:21]It would almost become a habit.
[3:22]There was this partition that you would hear a click and the partition would move and
[3:25]then the rats free to run through the maze and it would actually find the smallest
[3:28]number of steps it had to take to get to the chocolate.
[3:32]But what was interesting is as that behavior became more and more automatic, the rat started
[3:37]thinking less and less and less.
[3:40]So there was less and less brain activity as the rat got better and better at finding
[3:44]the chocolate.
[3:45]In fact, there was, if you looked at a simplified neurological graph of its brain activity,
[3:49]what you would see is almost like the rat's brain had fallen asleep.
[3:53]And what she figured out, Dr. Gabriel, is that this is what a habit looks like when we are
[3:58]in the grip of a habit.
[4:00]It's almost as if our brain turns off and this is enormously helpful from an evolutionary
[4:05]perspective because it means that we can take that brain activity and we can apply it
[4:10]to other things like inventing fire or spears or aircraft carriers.
[4:15]But it also means that when we're in the grip of a habit, we've literally stopped thinking
[4:19]about it.
[4:20]So as a result, we do things automatically without having the capacity to even reflect
[4:24]on what we're doing or realize what we're doing.
[4:27]And as a result, that's why habits are so powerful is because we've literally stopped thinking
[4:32]when they take over.
[4:33]It's like what I'm driving and I realized I'm like two miles from my last eight attention.
[4:38]That's exactly right.
[4:39]But you haven't crashed the car.
[4:40]Right.
[4:41]You managed to navigate the car.
[4:42]And what's important is that this question emerged, like how do you do that?
[4:45]How do I do that?
[4:46]Why does our brain know when to go into automatic mode and when to pay attention?
[4:51]And you mentioned this habit loop, which is at the core of this.
[4:54]Our brain has a part of the brain known as the basal ganglion.
[4:57]Every animal has this that exists basically just to create habits.
[5:01]It's one of the oldest neurological structures in evolution.
[5:04]And what it does is it looks for these cues, right?
[5:07]These triggers that tell the brain, okay, you can kind of shut off now and go into automatic
[5:12]mode.
[5:13]Here's those cues with routines or behaviors.
[5:15]What we normally think of as the habit, what you actually do.
[5:18]And the way that the brain knows to remember that pattern for the future is that every
[5:22]single habit has a reward, even if you're not aware of it.
[5:26]Now there's a woman named Wendy Wood at Duke University who's at USC now who's followed
[5:30]around about 1,000 people for a year trying to figure out how much of what they did
[5:34]was decisions and how much of what they did were habits.
[5:36]And what she found out is that about 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit, right?
[5:42]So almost half of what you do every day is a habit.
[5:44]And if we could somehow look at that, like you drive into work or backing your car out
[5:48]of the driveway or reacting automatically when you see your kid with the screen and saying,
[5:52]I told you not to use that screen or your kid with the screen, what we would find is
[5:56]that every single one of those behaviors has some reward associated with it.
[6:01]Even if you're not, even if you're not certain what that is yourself.
[6:05]That makes sense.
[6:07]So let's take an example.
[6:09]Let's say there's a tired mom who always has the glass of wine, maybe a bowl of popcorn,
[6:13]maybe with some chocolate chips poured on top every night when her kids get a screen.
[6:17]No one I know.
[6:18]Let's just say that this happened.
[6:20]And let's say now her jeans are not fitting so well.
[6:23]How would you cure her of this habit knowing the steps of this process?
[6:27]Right.
[6:28]Knowing the habit loop.
[6:29]The first thing I would say is it is totally okay to have that happen.
[6:34]I have many, many bad habits.
[6:36]Sometimes people ask me like, like, how do I get rid of bad habits?
[6:39]And the truth of the matter is your brain does not distinguish between like a good habit
[6:42]and a bad habit.
[6:43]It just creates habits, right?
[6:45]It's up to us to decide which ones we like and which ones we don't like.
[6:48]And by the way, having a glass of wine at night, if that's not a, if you enjoy that,
[6:51]that's totally fine, right?
[6:53]That's, that's it.
[6:54]It's not that you do say like, okay, I want, I want to like, I want to cut down on that.
[7:03]So the first thing to realize is what's known as the golden rule of habit change, which
[7:06]is that once a habit is inscribed in your brain, once a neural pathways associated with
[7:10]that cue, that routine, that reward, it's basically impossible to extinguish it, right?
[7:16]We know this from experiments that if you take rats and you build a habit in that rat,
[7:20]and then you like move that rat to a new environment.
[7:23]And then two years later, put them back in the habit environment, the habit will reemerge
[7:27]immediately because that neural pathway is still there.
[7:30]So now through willpower, you can try and like muscle through that habit, right?
[7:34]Try and like basically ignore it.
[7:36]And that works for a long time for most people, but it's hard, right?
[7:39]So the, the much better way instead of thinking of breaking a habit or killing a habit is
[7:44]to think of it in terms of changing a habit because if you can identify the cue and identify
[7:48]the reward and then find some new behavior that corresponds to that old cue, corresponds
[7:54]to that old reward, then it's much, much easier and you're going to be much more successful
[7:58]at changing that habit.
[7:59]So let's take, let's take this habit for instance.
[8:01]Okay.
[8:02]So what, what would you say the cue is when, um, let's pretend it's you like when you,
[8:09]when you get that urge, that craving to have a glass of wine, it's not popping the popcorn.
[8:14]Like what's going on?
[8:15]What's the, what's the trigger for that?
[8:17]Maybe when all the kids are finally asleep, okay, no one's bothering me anymore.
[8:21]Okay.
[8:22]So it's like the end of the day.
[8:23]End of the day.
[8:24]Success.
[8:25]It's over.
[8:26]I've made it through.
[8:27]That's exactly so most cues fall into one of five categories.
[8:28]It's usually a time of day, a particular place, um, the presence of a certain person,
[8:35]a particular emotion or a proceeding behavior that's become ritualized.
[8:39]And so it sounds like for you, it's probably two of those, right?
[8:41]It's probably that it's evening, right?
[8:43]It's kind of like relaxation time.
[8:46]And number two that you've gone through this ritualized behavior, the kids are down.
[8:49]You get to think about yourself.
[8:51]When, do you find that you're doing the same thing when you, when you do this, like
[8:54]is it like, you go and watch TV or you read like, what do you do when you have the glass
[8:58]of wine in the popcorn?
[8:59]Or is it different from day to day?
[9:00]It's different.
[9:01]Mostly I have to deal with my emails.
[9:02]Okay.
[9:03]Okay.
[9:04]So, so it's probably just these two things, right?
[9:05]Time of day, putting the kids down.
[9:08]So now we figured out the cue.
[9:09]Now we have to figure out the reward.
[9:11]What do you think the reward is, um, feeling great?
[9:17]Feeling more relaxed, um, um, see the, and this is, something different from the whole
[9:25]day.
[9:26]And this is a really interesting thing about rewards, particularly neurological rewards,
[9:32]is that they're oftentimes very hard to figure out exactly what the reward is.
[9:37]In part because, again, our brain turns off when we're in that habit, so we're not
[9:40]really paying attention to ourselves.
[9:42]But secondarily, most of the things that we think of as rewards are actually a bundle of
[9:46]many different rewards, right?
[9:48]So, um, you mentioned that you put chocolate chips on the, on the popcorn, so, so some
[9:53]people might say, look, like the, the, the reward is that burst of chocolate, right?
[9:58]It tastes good to eat chocolate.
[10:00]or maybe it's a glass of wine, maybe it's a,
[10:03]we know that wine, you know, it's alcohol,
[10:05]it helps, it's a muscle relaxin,
[10:07]and it helps us relax very, very quickly.
[10:09]And it could be both of those things,
[10:11]they're either of those things.
[10:12]It could also be other things,
[10:13]which is that it could be that you've gotten into this habit
[10:16]where when you have that glass of wine,
[10:18]you're signaling to yourself, oh, like my job is done,
[10:22]I get to allow myself to relax at this point, right?
[10:25]Or it could be that maybe when you're having that glass
[10:29]of wine, like you and your husband have a glass
[10:31]of wine together, and you-
[10:32]I'm not a fanata wound.
[10:33]Right, and so like,
[10:34]it helps to do that.
[10:35]No, no, it's still,
[10:36]if you're drinking by yourself,
[10:37]I have a bottle of tequila on the desk,
[10:39]and I go to town.
[10:41]And then you just start emailing.
[10:42]Yeah, that's like all my work done.
[10:45]That's it.
[10:46]But it could also be that this has just become a ritualized
[10:49]behavior where like the wine actually doesn't matter,
[10:51]it's that you're having these conversations, right?
[10:53]And you have some sort of like,
[10:54]there's a social reward.
[10:56]And the thing that is really useful
[10:58]is to figure out what reward is actually driving this habit.
[11:03]And the way that you do that is you simply start identifying
[11:06]rewards and trying to isolate them, right?
[11:07]So, so let's say our initial hypothesis for day one was,
[11:12]it's the alcohol that's the reward,
[11:15]the relaxation from the alcohol.
[11:17]So maybe like tonight, like you would have like a shot
[11:19]of tequila instead of a glass of wine,
[11:21]and see if it like, if it gives you
[11:23]that same sense of satisfaction.
[11:24]My guess is no, right?
[11:25]And my guess is that like the alcohol plays some role,
[11:28]but not the predominant role,
[11:29]because you're drinking wine,
[11:30]you're not like doing shots and you're doing a whole bottle.
[11:33]No, I know, just to put it up, I'm gonna hold this.
[11:35]And then, and then like tomorrow night,
[11:36]what you might do for instance,
[11:37]is not have a glass of water,
[11:39]but sit down with your husband
[11:41]and have the same conversation that you would normally have.
[11:43]And see if you feel like as satisfied as you would normally.
[11:46]Do I get the popcorn?
[11:47]You can still get the popcorn.
[11:48]Okay, because we're changing one element at a time.
[11:51]And it's basically I have a hypothesis, right?
[11:53]My hypothesis for today is the reward is social companionship.
[11:58]So I'm gonna try and get rid of the other stuff
[12:00]and just really accent social companionship.
[12:02]Or maybe it's that you're hungry
[12:04]and the popcorn is satisfying hunger.
[12:06]So maybe the next night you have an apple
[12:08]instead of having popcorn to try and figure out,
[12:10]like does that satisfy this craving you have,
[12:13]the craving that's driving this habit?
[12:16]And the truth of the matter is,
[12:18]you're probably not gonna figure out
[12:19]with a hundred percent precision what's going on.
[12:21]But that process of doing experiments,
[12:23]what's really interesting is it will essentially wake up
[12:26]your brain, right?
[12:27]If a habit exists and it has power
[12:29]because our brain turns off,
[12:31]when you start playing with the variables,
[12:32]what you're doing is you're essentially forcing yourself
[12:34]to start paying attention to what's going on
[12:37]when you're in the grip of this habit.
[12:38]This is known in simplified habit reversal therapy
[12:41]as cue and reward awareness.
[12:44]And what we find is that our brain has this kind of
[12:46]magical ability on its own
[12:48]to figure out what's actually going on.
[12:50]And so you'll in the really just like four or five days,
[12:54]you'll basically kind of work your way into a new behavior
[12:58]that you like more that will correspond to that old cue
[13:01]and deliver something similar to that old reward.
[13:04]Once you have, habits are very strong,
[13:07]but they're incredibly fragile, right?
[13:09]Like once you wake up your brain in the process of habit,
[13:12]you're able to sort of fiddle with its gears very easily.
[13:15]And your brain actually knows how to do this better
[13:17]than you do, right?
[13:19]We have a part of our brain is devoted to this.
[13:23]But the key is to wake up your brain
[13:24]by basically sort of going in and trying to play
[13:27]with the pieces of the habit
[13:28]and giving yourself a chance to really understand
[13:31]what's going on instead of just going along mindlessly.
[13:34]All right, well, as I sit here tonight
[13:36]with my glass of water in an apple,
[13:38]I email you and my email house,
[13:40]go out and work it.
[13:42]You can try the tequila one first,
[13:44]say if, so in both your books,
[13:47]which are so well written obviously,
[13:49]I mean, they've gotten so many accolades
[13:52]and everything, I don't need mine,
[13:53]but just they were amazing.
[13:56]What I liked so much is that you use all these
[13:59]really relatable stories, one person's story after another.
[14:02]So it's not so scientific,
[14:04]but everything is really just made clear through the story.
[14:08]So where do you find all these studies
[14:10]and how do you even get the details of the man
[14:12]who's walking around the neighborhood
[14:14]and can't draw a map of his house?
[14:15]And yet he goes outside with no memory
[14:17]and can find his way back to the couch
[14:19]or the son of drug addicts
[14:22]who now takes over being a manager at Starbucks.
[14:25]These stories have such a granularity in detail
[14:28]and they're so relatable, where do you find them all?
[14:31]How do you find them?
[14:31]It's just a huge amount of reporting.
[14:33]So actually, the story you mentioned about Travis,
[14:36]the kid at Starbucks who's parents were drug addicts.
[14:39]I can't even remember how I came.
[14:42]I think I was talking to one person like an academic
[14:45]and I said, what company is great
[14:47]at teaching its employees?
[14:49]And they said Starbucks.
[14:51]And then I think I called like,
[14:54]I think I just started randomly calling Starbucks managers
[14:57]and like the managers of Starbucks stores
[14:59]and asking them like, who is someone who Starbucks
[15:01]is like changed their life?
[15:03]And pretty early in the process,
[15:05]someone mentioned this kid Travis out in California.
[15:08]And so that one, I mean, there was probably like
[15:11]four or five days of making phone calls
[15:13]before I found Travis.
[15:15]But the rest of it, you know,
[15:16]like for every chapter in each of my books
[15:19]probably has three or four stories in it.
[15:21]And I probably evaluate 15 to 18 stories
[15:26]to find those three or four.
[15:27]And it's really just a process of calling people
[15:29]and saying like, doing interviews with academics
[15:31]and then saying some version of like,
[15:33]you know, what's your favorite story
[15:35]to tell it a bar over beers?
[15:37]Or when you're teaching this material in class,
[15:39]what's the anecdote that you find yourself coming back to
[15:42]again and again and again?
[15:44]And you just sort of like,
[15:46]it's the most frustrating process on earth
[15:48]because if an interview is going really well,
[15:50]it should feel sort of awful in the middle of it, right?
[15:54]Because there's no,
[15:56]because you're basically asking someone else
[15:58]to think on your behalf, think for you
[16:01]and to give you something where you don't even know
[16:03]what you want.
[16:06]But if you just spend enough time making phone calls,
[16:08]it works.
[16:09]Eventually someone says like, oh, you know,
[16:11]that reminds me of this like story involving like,
[16:13]this one airplane flight quantus flight 32.
[16:15]And then you're like, oh, that sounds interesting
[16:17]and like an airplane and like, you know,
[16:19]they almost crashed, but then they didn't.
[16:21]Like that's something that is a reporter right here
[16:22]and I'm like, I can absolutely tell that story
[16:24]because anytime I'm playing almost crashes,
[16:26]there's all these documents associated with it.
[16:28]And in this case, no one died.
[16:29]So I can actually call up the captain
[16:31]in terms of even wrote a book about it.
[16:33]But it's just this process of like constantly asking
[16:36]other people for advice and suggestions on anecdotes.
[16:41]And then once they're giving them
[16:42]trying to get all the reporting that I can about them.
[16:47]Tell me about now that you have all the stories,
[16:49]how do you outline the books?
[16:51]How do you take the 15 stories?
[16:52]Do you have sticky notes all over your desk?
[16:54]Like, what's it like?
[16:55]What does it look like for you?
[16:56]So what I do is I write, so for my two books so far,
[17:01]I write them chapter by chapter, which means
[17:02]I'll write one chapter, I'll send it to my editor
[17:05]and then I'll start on the next chapter.
[17:07]So I don't have, I don't have to deal
[17:09]with like an overarching arc as much as just thinking
[17:13]about like 10,000 words.
[17:15]And I go through and I basically figure out
[17:18]the three or four stories.
[17:18]I figure out the idea I want to explain.
[17:20]What is the central idea that I want to convey?
[17:23]And then what are the three or four stories
[17:25]that allow me to do that?
[17:26]To segment it into interesting aspects of that.
[17:29]I'm sort of an evolution of that idea.
[17:31]And then what I'll do, usually,
[17:32]and this changes from chapter to chapter,
[17:33]but like, usually what I'll do is I'll write my editor
[17:37]on this kind of Andy Ward, a long letter.
[17:39]That's like totally like messy, but just says like,
[17:42]here's all the things that I learned
[17:43]and here's how I'm thinking about it.
[17:45]And just the act of like, right,
[17:46]and then I don't use any notes, right?
[17:47]I'm just literally like sort of writing from memory.
[17:50]And the act of doing that helps me figure out
[17:53]like what the basic structure is.
[17:55]But once I have that, and me and Andy will talk about it
[17:58]and sort of figure out like this part doesn't work
[17:59]or this part is actually saying the same thing as this part.
[18:01]So you don't really need it.
[18:03]Once I have that, then I go and I usually use no cards
[18:07]and I'll go through all of my reporting materials
[18:09]and I'll basically write each detail on its own note card.
[18:12]And then I arrange the note cards into piles
[18:16]based on what belongs with what.
[18:17]And that allows me to sequence details and facts, right?
[18:20]So now I have a sense of like how things start
[18:24]and where they're going and when they get interrupted
[18:26]by other stories and why they get interrupted that way.
[18:29]And then from that, I oftentimes start writing
[18:33]the actual thing and I have to figure out
[18:36]usually what the lead is, what the opening is
[18:38]before I can really like start leaning into it.
[18:41]And in that process works.
[18:43]Now what's interesting is that the end product
[18:46]will only end up using, like when I write those note cards,
[18:49]I might have like 150 or 200 note cards per chapter.
[18:53]And I probably end up using like 30 or 40 of them
[18:56]up here in the chapter.
[18:57]And I don't know which 30 or 40 are gonna appear
[18:59]in the chapter.
[19:00]It's just that once you start writing,
[19:01]you begin figuring out like, oh, this whole block
[19:03]of note cards that I spent a day and a half writing
[19:06]and like three weeks reporting, I don't even need.
[19:10]But that process ultimately like,
[19:14]ultimately if a piece of writing works,
[19:16]it works I think because of the structure
[19:20]because somebody has thought about a beginning,
[19:23]a middle, and an end.
[19:24]And they've created something compelling
[19:26]that drags you through the chapter, right?
[19:29]Because otherwise at any point,
[19:31]there is something more important than reading to do.
[19:35]And usually that's suspense, right?
[19:37]Or very often that's suspense.
[19:39]You can say like, you know like little did he know
[19:41]that he would be dead 12 hours later.
[19:43]And you wanna find out who he's gonna die.
[19:44]But some of the best writing actually doesn't have
[19:46]suspense at all.
[19:47]It's just that there is something that there is a hinted
[19:50]at forward motion that compels you to continue reading.
[19:55]Like I'm reading this book right now.
[19:57]I'm Rachel Kushner's new book called The Mars Room.
[19:59]Where.
[20:00]like it's a woman who's in prison
[20:02]and really all you know about her is she's in prison
[20:04]and then she started starting her life story
[20:06]in her life story is like just so sad and tragic
[20:10]and depressing.
[20:11]And like the fact that she's in prison,
[20:14]it's not enough suspense to keep you going
[20:16]but it's clear that the author has thought about
[20:19]the forward momentum.
[20:21]She's thought about rewarding you for sticking with the book
[20:24]and that's what you wanna convey in a chapter or in a book.
[20:26]Like I have thought about this structure well enough
[20:29]that you believe me when I make you a promise
[20:33]that if you keep going,
[20:34]if you think what's your reading is kind of interesting,
[20:36]if you keep on reading, it's gonna get better.
[20:38]It's gonna come to some resolution.
[20:40]Because as humans, we always want that forward narrative
[20:46]momentum and as long as you can signal
[20:48]that you're providing it, the person will continue reading.
[20:51]It's so interesting.
[20:52]Yeah, that's so cool.
[20:53]I mean, that's my theory.
[20:54]I think your theory's working.
[20:57]I liked reading how you will not,
[21:02]I didn't like that you were struggling
[21:04]but I liked reading that you admitted
[21:05]you were struggling to finish your first book
[21:08]and deal with your kids and deal with your life
[21:11]and stay up late and not get everything done
[21:13]and not take the vacation, do you want it?
[21:14]And you had said that in the context
[21:16]I'm trying to find an expert
[21:17]which eventually led to your next book.
[21:19]Right. But how do you get it all done?
[21:21]How have you used the tips from your productivity book
[21:24]in your own life?
[21:25]So the biggest insight from Smarter Faster Better
[21:29]is that there's this real difference
[21:33]between busyness and productivity.
[21:35]And that wasn't always true.
[21:36]And in fact, until about the 1970s, it wasn't true at all.
[21:42]Like if in 1956, just these were enemy word,
[21:45]if you were busy, odds are pretty good
[21:47]that you were also productive, right?
[21:49]That's not necessarily true for all professions.
[21:52]But for most of America, if you worked in a factory
[21:56]and a lot of people did, or if you were a delivery person,
[21:59]then every hour in which you were busy
[22:01]was also an hour in which you were productive
[22:03]because they were somewhat synonymous.
[22:04]The society was built to make them synonymous.
[22:07]That's what the Industrial Revolution is.
[22:09]But then the Knowledge Revolution comes along
[22:10]and sort of the world that we live in now
[22:12]where you could spend an entire day
[22:14]replying to emails and really get nothing important done.
[22:17]In fact, you've done anti-important stuff
[22:20]because as the next day,
[22:22]you're gonna have even more emails to deal with, right?
[22:25]Because they become self-perpetuating.
[22:27]And so what's really important is to recognize
[22:29]that there is a difference between busyness
[22:30]and productivity, and then the question becomes,
[22:32]so how do we figure out how to be productive
[22:35]and not just be busy?
[22:37]And the answer is that throughout history,
[22:38]it has usually come down to thinking more deeply, right?
[22:41]Thinking more deeply about what is actually important
[22:44]to get done right now.
[22:45]What are your actual goals?
[22:48]Are you prioritizing things correctly?
[22:50]Are you setting aside and ignoring the things
[22:52]that are distractions that are simply busyness?
[22:55]And instead of focusing on the things
[22:56]that are gonna move the needle for you,
[22:58]which means knowing what the needle is, right?
[23:00]Knowing what makes you happy or what makes you satisfied
[23:02]or what you really actually wanna get done.
[23:05]And so one of the things that I do is I try
[23:07]to be much more deliberate about that now.
[23:09]I was a reporter at the New York Times for about 11 years
[23:11]and then decided to leave the Times as a staff writer
[23:14]and become a magazine writer.
[23:15]In part because I really wanted to write magazine pieces.
[23:19]I wanted to write long-form pieces.
[23:21]And the busyness of the New York Times was so overwhelming
[23:25]that it was really hard for me to define the space
[23:27]to do that.
[23:28]Similarly, I give a ton of speeches right now
[23:31]and I need to figure out what is my mental model
[23:37]for the time I spend giving speeches,
[23:39]which is it lets me sort of talk to new people
[23:43]and introduce these ideas to new people.
[23:44]It's also like an important sort of financial source
[23:47]of income that supports the writing that I do.
[23:50]And so I'm very deliberate in sitting down and saying,
[23:53]like what are the things that are important to me?
[23:55]How do I prioritize those?
[23:57]And then how do I get rid of everything else?
[23:59]Like most people who email me,
[24:00]they don't get an email back.
[24:02]I don't, if I spend more than,
[24:04]if I spend more than 20 emails in a day,
[24:07]it's like, that's a failure
[24:10]because I wanna send less and less and less emails
[24:13]unless it's something that's important to me.
[24:16]Otherwise, it's just other people putting stuff
[24:18]on my to-do list.
[24:19]And so like I think very deliberately about that stuff
[24:23]and in doing so I think hopefully become more productive.
[24:28]I feel like I need to come in my life
[24:30]and go through every area.
[24:32]Like I just need to apply the do-hig model to everything.
[24:36]And then like kids, I think you're a good example of this,
[24:37]right?
[24:38]Because like there is this very easy,
[24:41]busy thing that you can get into
[24:43]where you're simply spending time with your children
[24:45]but not actually interacting with your children, right?
[24:48]And there's an interesting question
[24:50]that I don't know the answer to,
[24:51]which is, is it more important just to like hang out
[24:54]with your kids for large quantities of time
[24:57]or small quantities of time with them
[25:00]but have these deep conversations?
[25:01]And I actually don't know the answer.
[25:03]I mean, I'll tell now basically what I've done is
[25:05]is small quantities of time
[25:06]and try and interact with them a lot.
[25:08]My wife is going on sabbatical
[25:10]and we're gonna leave the country for six months.
[25:12]And like I'm basically gonna do the opposite
[25:14]which is be with my children all the time,
[25:18]which seems a little terrifying and honest.
[25:21]But like, and like I'm kind of curious to find out
[25:24]like which one actually matters more.
[25:27]My guess is that the quantity of time
[25:30]is that a quality of time actually is more important.
[25:33]Quantity just being around.
[25:34]Yeah, I think so.
[25:35]I think so.
[25:36]I think that that like,
[25:37]I think that there's a satisfaction and a reward
[25:39]that comes from that.
[25:40]But I think the point is that
[25:43]that it's very infrequent that we get the chance
[25:47]to think that way.
[25:49]Usually we just sort of exit it into like
[25:52]what our relationship is with time in our kids.
[25:54]And, but I think that people who are the most
[25:57]successful are the ones who spend time thinking it,
[26:00]asking themselves those questions.
[26:04]Yeah, this whole tip on giving in your book,
[26:07]sorry, let me start it.
[26:08]In Smarter Faster Better,
[26:10]you say that giving team members more control
[26:13]empowers them, makes the whole team function better.
[26:15]Do you think this can apply to your kids
[26:17]or should you not give them the power?
[26:19]Oh, absolutely.
[26:20]Actually, I mean, in fact, what we know is like
[26:23]the best form of parenting is frankly
[26:26]giving kids more and more control, right?
[26:29]I mean, like it, there's a friend of mine
[26:33]as a book coming out called like,
[26:35]I just blurbed it and I can't remember the name now.
[26:38]Like being a happier parent or happier parenting,
[26:42]I'll figure out what it is.
[26:44]Who's got it?
[26:45]It's KJ, who writes for the New York Times,
[26:48]who's last name, of course I can, I should.
[26:50]That's it.
[26:51]But I'll put on your website.
[26:54]And like her whole theory on basically like how you should
[26:59]take siblings who like fight with each other
[27:01]is like just let them fight, like it's not,
[27:04]like they're not fighting with you,
[27:05]they're fighting with each other,
[27:06]like let them work it out
[27:07]and like just ignore your children
[27:08]when they're like arguing with each other.
[27:11]Which I think is pretty good advice, right?
[27:13]Like because it's hard for the parent,
[27:15]in fact, to me and my wife were doing it on the car yesterday.
[27:17]And it like makes you crazy
[27:18]because you just wanna be like stop doing that.
[27:20]But like there's no situation in which like people
[27:24]in the real world are fighting with each other
[27:26]and having like a referee comes in,
[27:28]like makes it less likely that they're gonna
[27:30]not fight the next time, right?
[27:31]Like the whole point of kids is to develop
[27:34]this internal locus of control,
[27:36]that's concept that they control the world around them
[27:39]as opposed to the world controlling them
[27:41]because we know that an internal locus of control
[27:44]is associated with much greater success in life.
[27:48]And that's one of the reasons why, for instance,
[27:50]when your child does well,
[27:51]you don't tell them like, oh, you're so smart.
[27:55]You tell them, oh, you worked so hard
[27:57]is because you wanna reinforce this belief
[27:59]that they control the outcomes that it influence them.
[28:03]And similarly, I think when you're parenting,
[28:06]it's about trying to teach your children
[28:09]that they actually have control over all the things
[28:12]that they might not suspect they have control over, right?
[28:14]Like like everything about life when you're a kid,
[28:20]you're powerless and it's super frustrating.
[28:22]But oftentimes the reason you're powerless
[28:24]is because no one's taught you how to seize that power,
[28:27]right?
[28:28]No one's taught you that you can go up
[28:29]and you can basically like get the adults to trust you
[28:31]to do whatever you want if you like are polite
[28:34]and you seem like mature.
[28:35]And so if you teach them how to do that,
[28:37]you're teaching them how to succeed.
[28:41]I like how you are so methodical
[28:43]and how you approach your parents.
[28:44]And in the book, how you were like,
[28:46]after you went on vacation with your kids
[28:48]and they got used to having dessert on vacation,
[28:50]that was the best part.
[28:51]How you came back and you're like,
[28:51]now we have to mix up the reward.
[28:53]Right.
[28:54]Now we're gonna give them a treat,
[28:55]but it's gonna be a two in the afternoon.
[28:57]And it's like there'll be these little lab rats.
[28:59]Yeah, it's, I would say it is 50% methodical
[29:03]and then 50% like I'm distracted
[29:05]and all I wanna do is just like watch TV
[29:07]and I'm like, okay, okay, okay.
[29:09]You can do whatever you want.
[29:10]Just like, you're driving me crazy right now.
[29:14]In smarter, faster, better,
[29:15]you have a goal setting flowchart,
[29:17]which starts with stretch goals,
[29:19]like say writing a book or potty training your kid
[29:22]or something.
[29:23]Can you give a quick example of one of your flow charts
[29:26]and how that can make the flow?
[29:26]Yeah, sure.
[29:27]This is basic idea in goal setting,
[29:29]which is there are two opposing tensions in setting goals.
[29:34]Setting goals is really, really important
[29:35]because people tend to do,
[29:37]tend to do one of two things that's kind of wrong.
[29:40]The first is that they tend to set
[29:41]these very, very practical goals
[29:45]that they can definitely get accomplished.
[29:47]And oftentimes it's because of this thing
[29:48]called a need for cognitive closure,
[29:50]that it feels good to like get things done.
[29:52]That's also why we do emails, right?
[29:53]You're like, oh man, I got on my emails done
[29:56]without stepping back to the thing,
[29:57]like was that worth the time I spent?
[30:00]on it. The second mistake that people oftentimes make, and not a mistake, but something
[30:04]that leads you awry, is that they might have a to-do list that has like, you know, 30 things
[30:10]on it, right? They basically use a to-do list as a memory aid rather than a prioritization
[30:14]device. And it's good to have a memory aid. You should not try and keep everything in your head,
[30:18]because it'll make you crazy. But if you have a list of 30 things, that shouldn't be your to-do
[30:23]list. That should be your memory aid, right? The place where you list everything so you don't have to
[30:29]remember it. So what the research shows is that you want to take these two instincts
[30:34]to try and do everything and to try and be really practical. And you want to marry them together,
[30:39]and you should be really deliberate about it. So the first thing you should do is you should figure
[30:42]out what is your stretch goal, right? Like, what is this big thing that you actually want to get done if
[30:47]if you only have a month left to live, right? Like, what's the one thing that you really want to get
[30:52]done within the next month? For that matter, what's the one thing that you really want to get done this
[30:56]week? The thing that maybe you've been putting off or the thing that if you get it done,
[30:59]you'll feel so much better or it could be transformative. What is your stretch goal of this big
[31:04]ambition? The problem with the big ambition is that it's overwhelming. We don't actually know where
[31:09]to start. And we'll, we'll, we'll waste a lot of time. So in addition to having a stretch goal,
[31:15]and identifying what that is and writing that down, what researchers recommend is that you then
[31:19]write down a to-do list that's just made up of three things, right? The most important thing
[31:25]to get done today, the second most important thing to get done today. And if you happen to do those
[31:29]two things, what you would get done tomorrow, all right? So just three things are on your to-do list.
[31:34]And you can pull that off for that list of 30, like that, but just identify three things.
[31:39]And though, how do we make that into a plan, right? How do we take those three things and make
[31:44]them into something tangible? What researchers talk about is just using a process. And one of the
[31:47]most popular is this thing called smart goals, right? And smart is an acronym. It means, you know,
[31:52]specifically what do you want to accomplish? How are you going to measure success? Is it achievable?
[31:57]Do you have the resources you need? Like you'd like, are you going to be able to close your door
[32:02]for an hour so you can actually work on it? What's the timeline? What, when are you going to start
[32:06]this? When are you going to stop it? It takes like 30 seconds to go through SMART for those three
[32:11]things on your list. But once you do that, you pretty much have like a concrete plan, right? Like
[32:16]when you wake up the next morning, you know exactly what to do. And it's much easier to start
[32:21]because you know what to do. And so what researchers say is identify those stretch goals,
[32:26]know what your big goal is. And then take a stretch goal that maybe is like something that it's
[32:30]going to take a month or a year and break it down into three smart goals for today. And eventually
[32:37]you're going to get there, right? Like we waste a lot of time doing stuff we don't have to do. We
[32:42]shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing because it feels good to get it done. And we waste a lot of time
[32:47]waiting to start doing the things that are important. If you can collapse those two things,
[32:53]you're going to get to that stretch goal much faster.
[32:56]But you say, you know, motivation becomes easier when we transform a chore into a choice and doing
[33:02]so gives us a sense of control. And that's great. But what about all these things I have to get
[33:07]like we have to get done like paying the bills or filling out school forms or some of the emails
[33:12]we can't just ignore. Sure. Absolutely. So, okay. So, so, so let's say today for you, like what's
[33:19]what's something? I don't mean to make this. I mean, what's something that you feel like you have
[33:26]to do today that all things being equal, you would rather not to. I can't even think what I have
[33:35]to do today. Or like this week. I have to order like camp supplies for my sense. Okay. Okay.
[33:41]You have to order can't enjoy doing that or isn't like, okay. So, so how do you take that
[33:46]chore and make it into a choice? So, there's a couple ways to do it, right? Like, first of all,
[33:51]you can decide when to schedule it, right? Instead of saying like you're like, be like, look,
[33:56]like after I have my glass of wine in my, my, right, my apple or, or my, or maybe maybe what
[34:02]you're going to do is you're going to reward yourself tonight with the glass of wine and the popcorn
[34:06]and the chocolate chips after you order camp supplies. And so that way, like, you're kind of choosing
[34:11]like, like, I actually deserve that popcorn and chocolate chips and glass of wine because like,
[34:16]I'm getting these like stupid camp supplies out of the way. But then the other thing you can do
[34:20]is you can kind of decide like, there's probably in those camp supplies. There's probably like,
[34:26]some part of it that's a little bit fun and some part of it that's not, right? Like, like,
[34:30]I like ordering for my kids. I like ordering like all the technical stuff. Like, which knife should
[34:35]they get? Like stuff like that. Maybe you enjoy ordering like the clothes or like, so like,
[34:40]like decide whether you're going to do that first or last. That's the part of the chore that's
[34:45]your favorite part of the chore. Are you going to do it first? Are you going to do it last? Are
[34:48]you going to use it as a reward or not? You're finding these little choices that you can make and
[34:53]it's going to, and it's so much easier to start, right? Because once you've sort of asserted your
[34:58]control over it, then it's not, it's just not as hard to start. I'm not saying it's going to be
[35:04]like your favorite part of the day, but you have to do it. And the question is, how do you make
[35:08]it as painless as possible? How do you make it as fast as possible? We know that by making these
[35:13]little choices, it's actually going to be faster and less unpleasant than you think it would be.
[35:19]Email is another great example. Like, the way that I do email is that I, I hope, like, if I have,
[35:25]you know, like, I go through my inbox if there's five responses after right, I'll hit reply to
[35:29]all of them and they're all on my desktop. And I'll go into each one and I'll just write like,
[35:32]half a sentence. And it's always a choice. Like, like, they'll be like, hey, can you have lunch
[35:37]and I'll be like, sure, but I like to eat Indian food or, you know, can you, can you do this thing
[35:42]for me and I'll say like, no, I can't do that thing for you. I'll make some choice because once
[35:47]I've got the choice in a half sentence in the email, I can write the rest of the email around it.
[35:52]It's really easy to do that. Like, hey, Jim, thanks so much for your note, but it's the choice
[35:57]that's the hard part. And once the choice is on the screen, the rest of it just like zips through.
[36:03]Hmm. Okay. You can try it. I'll go to chat. Can we talk for just a minute about what it was like
[36:10]working for the New York Times? Sure. All this year is like, what, tell just how, just give us a little
[36:17]painted picture for us and what it was like and how you dealt with the office and the deadlines
[36:21]and the reporting and what you love the most. So most of the stuff that I worked on was long
[36:25]investigative projects. And so I would spend, you know, months working on something before
[36:32]a period of print. Which was great. And is actually like a weirdly unique skill within a newsroom
[36:39]because most people love writing stuff on a regular basis. And there is something super satisfying
[36:45]about having like a story. They're called dailies when you need to write a story that appears the
[36:49]next day in the paper. Like, that's very satisfying because like, it can't be that great. Like,
[36:55]you're like, you're better than anyone who's faster than you and you're faster than anyone
[36:59]that's better than you. And so it feels very, very good to like get a story out into the world.
[37:05]I don't know how much there else there is to say, you know, it's the, um, it's a newspaper
[37:10]that everyone reads. And so as a result, you're, you have to be very, very careful about getting
[37:17]everything right. But at the same time, um, surprisingly few people read most articles. And so
[37:23]oftentimes you'd be surprised how frequent like on the most email list how few people have
[37:28]actually emailed those articles to get them on there. So I don't know. I liked it. It was a,
[37:33]it was a good place to be. And what was it like winning a Pulitzer Prize? Tell me the
[37:38]cool thing where you were. Did you find out by phone by email? Like, I was on, I was in the car
[37:44]driving back, um, or I was, I was in a taxi, um, driving back from the airport to my house on a
[37:51]Friday, because they, they always announced the prizes on a Monday. And, and then they let the
[37:56]papers know on a Friday, who's one. And I got a call from my editor. And like, I wasn't certain
[38:01]that I'd heard him right. Like I almost called them back. And I was like, wait, wait, I just want
[38:03]to make sure you said that I won, right? Like I just wanted to like, but like, um, yeah, I mean, the
[38:08]thing is that like, this is sounds like a cheesy thing to say. And it is great. And I'm so appreciative
[38:15]to have won the prize, the Pulitzer Prize. Um, but you know, I mean, it's like, it's, it is a nice
[38:23]thing. And it's a nice accolade. But compared to like everything else, it's, it's one small
[38:29]part of like a life, right? Like, so compared to actually writing those stories and feeling like
[38:34]those stories are working and feeling like those stories make change in the world. Um, the prizes
[38:40]a nice recognition of that, but like the stories are more satisfying in some respect. And, you know,
[38:47]and I won five years ago now, um, it is really nice because it's just something, it's like a
[38:53]shorthand that you can use with people that they know that you're a good writer. But the truth
[38:57]of the matter is that like within most of the world of media, everyone's like, well, what have
[39:01]you done in the last six months? And I've got these like two stories I'm working on right now
[39:05]that like are sort of like stressing me all the time. And so hopefully those, if those stories
[39:11]turn out well, then I'll probably feel as satisfied as one of them. Can you share what they're about?
[39:17]Yeah, one of them is about Silicon Valley and sort of, um, this character within Silicon Valley
[39:21]and another one is about, um, trying to understand why the nation is so angry right now and kind
[39:26]of what are the, what do we know about how anger functions? So hopefully they'll, yeah, hopefully
[39:32]they'll be good. And are you thinking about another book? I am. I am. I'm supposed to talk to my
[39:36]book editor later today actually about the next book, which, um, I will hopefully figure out.
[39:43]I'll give you a question. And just to close, do you have any advice who aspiring authors or journalists?
[39:49]Yeah. So here's what I would say. I mean, I think that, um, I mean, obviously like read as much as you
[39:55]can, right? And like read people who think about the structure of writing like John McPhee's
[40:00]latest book draft number nine. It's kind of amazing in that respect because he
[40:04]thinks a lot about how writing works and just reading good writers like I
[40:09]think that like Jennifer Egan once said this thing that she said like the
[40:14]most important not the most important but an important thing that writers can
[40:17]do is to like read to protect what you read right so that you're reading
[40:22]other good writers which I don't adhere to all the time because sometimes
[40:27]they're just trash because I love it but but I think that is helpful but I
[40:31]think the most important thing is to figure out like why do you like the things
[40:35]you like right there there something you read that you like there is some
[40:40]secret code about how they did it that made you like it and and if it's really
[40:47]good it's not obvious right so so the the best writers obsess about
[40:52]structure but by the time you read what they've written the structure is not
[40:56]obvious at all in fact it's very hard to understand the structure because
[41:00]they've gotten so deep into that structure that it almost occurs at like a
[41:03]metastructural level that does not mean though that there isn't a structure
[41:07]there and that they haven't thought about structure and so for someone like me
[41:11]like structure is the most important thing or one of the most important
[41:15]things because because that's how I get people addicted to the to the
[41:19]writing and that's also why I love the writing that I love to read is because
[41:24]there are people who think about structure take care of the reader who
[41:27]like want to entertain me and other people other people love different kinds of
[41:32]writings for different reasons but oftentimes we read and we absorb without
[41:38]actually looking too closely or paying attention to like what all the
[41:43]like the wires and the the tricks are that the person are using but those
[41:47]wires and tricks that's actually how you learn to do that thing right so so if
[41:52]you love you know Gretchen Rubin who writes in a very very different way than I
[41:57]do like like studying how she actually does it like sometimes I actually go
[42:02]through a book and I'll like I'll create an outline of what I think the
[42:06]structure was for the writer sometimes I'll only infrequently have I done
[42:10]this I'll actually rewrite I'll take an article and I'll actually write the
[42:14]words of that article out on a piece of paper just to try and figure out like
[42:18]why they made the choices they did about how those words fit together and I
[42:23]read what what writers write about writing all the time and think about it a
[42:28]lot so I think that like at the end of the day like writing is writing is all
[42:35]about an act of making choices right there's a lot of creativity and you just
[42:38]hope and pray that like you have like some clever way of like getting into
[42:43]something but most of what makes it up is making choices making very
[42:48]deliberate choices and if you understand the choices that your favorite
[42:52]writers are making then it tells you what what library of choices are
[42:58]available to you and most people go through the world look at reading things and
[43:02]not understanding that there were a thousand other ways to write that but
[43:06]there are and when you can identify those thousand other choices that's when
[43:09]suddenly you can start making them too that and I would say like the more
[43:14]reporting you do always the better well thank you that was amazing I feel
[43:21]like I've learned so much I have a whole new plan for my own lives
[43:24]listeners out there feel like they can fly at their lives or else it's just
[43:27]been a self-serving interview thank you for coming on and just a reminder
[43:33]this has been sponsored by Chloe's fruit the cool way to eat fruit check them
[43:36]out at Chloe's fruit dot com thank you