Latest / Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby / Feeling Paralyzed? Why You Can't Make a Decision (Even When You Have Great Options) | Happiness | E548

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Feeling Paralyzed? Why You Can't Make a Decision (Even When You Have Great Options) | Happiness | E548 · Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

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0:56
Speaker 2: People are having trouble figuring out what to do.
1:06
Speaker 1: Analysis paralysis is the not so technical term for the
1:11
Speaker 1: experience of feeling frozen in the face of often big decisions.
1:29
Speaker 1: Sometimes small decisions like figuring out what show to watch
1:32
Speaker 1: can feel overwhelming, but when it comes to deciding on
1:36
Speaker 1: a career path, on a relationship, on a major life transition,
1:40
Speaker 1: whether to have a kid, where to move, or which
1:43
Speaker 1: house to buy, it can feel absolutely overwhelming.
1:47
Speaker 2: The rulers and religions that structured much of life for
1:51
Speaker 2: better or worse, have receded in importance, and now people
1:54
Speaker 2: are on their own.
1:56
Speaker 1: If we don't know how to manage these moments, we
1:58
Speaker 1: can freeze, nursia takes over and we choose to do
2:03
Speaker 1: nothing at all. There's a better way, my friend, And
2:10
Speaker 1: on today's episode of Love, Happiness, and Success, I have
2:13
Speaker 1: invited a very special new friend to come and talk
2:16
Speaker 1: with us about this.
2:17
Speaker 2: I'm David Epstein. I'm a science writer and former investigative reporter,
2:22
Speaker 2: and I write books that look at the science of
2:27
Speaker 2: human performance, and I take that very broadly, from athletic
2:31
Speaker 2: performance to finding satisfaction in life.
2:35
Speaker 1: He is a New York Times best selling author of
2:39
Speaker 1: multiple books. The most recent is called Inside the Box,
2:45
Speaker 1: which specifically addresses how we can cultivate clarity, confidence, and
2:51
Speaker 1: also contentment in the decisions that we make. David, it's
2:56
Speaker 1: such a pleasure. Welcome to the show where are the
2:59
Speaker 1: Strange Era? Where there are so many charismatic people with
3:04
Speaker 1: strong opinions and great haircuts talking about all kinds of
3:07
Speaker 1: things related to you know, how we should live that
3:11
Speaker 1: when you really dial into it, are really their opinions
3:15
Speaker 1: or based on their own life experience, which is certain
3:17
Speaker 1: laid not without value, but yours is grounded in research,
3:21
Speaker 1: which to me as a different layer of trustworthiness.
3:25
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. So it's and also my haircut's not
3:29
Speaker 2: good enough to make it in that other way, I
3:32
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
3:33
Speaker 1: It's a vibe.
3:34
Speaker 2: It's good. My background before I was a writer, I
3:36
Speaker 2: was training to be a scientist in environmental science, so
3:40
Speaker 2: not in the social sciences, but I lived in a
3:42
Speaker 2: tent in the Arctic, and I was studying the carbon
3:44
Speaker 2: cycle no care. When I became a writer, I felt
3:46
Speaker 2: that was the unique value I had, Like I'm very
3:49
Speaker 2: interested in science. I had a strong quantitative background and
3:52
Speaker 2: those sorts of things, and so that's just sort of
3:55
Speaker 2: always been part of the DNA of my writing career basically. So,
4:00
Speaker 2: to be quite frank, it's probably not maybe the best
4:03
Speaker 2: way to be in this day and age. But I'm
4:05
Speaker 2: just like not a hot take kind of person. Maybe
4:07
Speaker 2: I'm just a slower person. I need to stop and
4:10
Speaker 2: think about it, and I'm often not that confident in
4:13
Speaker 2: my first reflexes. I mean, my first book, I spent
4:17
Speaker 2: a year figuring out that everything I thought and wrote
4:19
Speaker 2: in the proposal was wrong and then had to start over.
4:22
Speaker 1: There are so many complexities and different things are true
4:25
Speaker 1: for different people. And so what I hear you saying
4:28
Speaker 1: is you take a more thoughtful and nuanced approach, which
4:31
Speaker 1: actually is kind of bringing us into that central topic. Right,
4:36
Speaker 1: I mean, so your latest book. Why don't you give
4:38
Speaker 1: an introduction of your latest book, so I don't butcher it,
4:42
Speaker 1: but not the choice.
4:43
Speaker 2: Right. It's called inside the Box How constraints make us better?
4:48
Speaker 2: And it's about how we overvalue limitless freedom and how
4:52
Speaker 2: boundaries can actually be the best tools we have for
4:56
Speaker 2: everything from prompting creativity to finding personal contentment. And I
5:02
Speaker 2: think we often underestimate how useful some constraints can be.
5:06
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this is going to be so good,
5:08
Speaker 1: because David, I think I probably one of the people
5:11
Speaker 1: that you wrote this book for. I personally, I want
5:16
Speaker 1: all the choices right, and I like possibilities and I
5:19
Speaker 1: get excited about things. But I think I also suffer
5:22
Speaker 1: personally because I try to do all of the things
5:26
Speaker 1: and then get to this point where I'm like overwhelmed
5:28
Speaker 1: and it's too much. And so I think maybe there
5:31
Speaker 1: are some answers to my problems in your work. So
5:35
Speaker 1: take us into this. If somebody like me, I'm exhibit A,
5:38
Speaker 1: I like options, I like to have freedom, what's the
5:41
Speaker 1: problem with that?
5:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's not abnormal, right, That's how we're wired.
5:46
Speaker 2: Because for most of history, having too much choice and
5:48
Speaker 2: too much freedom was a non issue. You don't really
5:51
Speaker 2: see this issue of heaving.
5:53
Speaker 1: It by the way, but you that it was a
5:55
Speaker 1: non issue, that people were limited just by virtue of
5:59
Speaker 1: their circle.
6:00
Speaker 2: Not really until like the late nineteenth century, when you
6:02
Speaker 2: start to see it pop up among preeminent philosophers, this
6:06
Speaker 2: issue of people are having trouble figuring out what to do.
6:09
Speaker 2: The rulers and religions that structured much of life for
6:13
Speaker 2: better or worse, have receded in importance, and now people
6:16
Speaker 2: are on their own to figure out what to do,
6:18
Speaker 2: and they're struggling, and anxiety is rising in some cases.
6:22
Speaker 2: Like Emil Durkheim in his seminal study of suicide, found
6:25
Speaker 2: that as people were getting more and more freedom, they
6:28
Speaker 2: were having trouble finding meaning and became more likely to
6:31
Speaker 2: get anxious and depressed and sometimes die by suicide. And
6:36
Speaker 2: so I think the issue is that we always want
6:39
Speaker 2: more options and more freedom because we think that will
6:42
Speaker 2: lead to better decisions that will make us happier. And
6:45
Speaker 2: that is in fact how humans are modeled in neoclassical
6:50
Speaker 2: economic theory that the more options is better because you
6:53
Speaker 2: have more things to choose from, you'll make a better choice.
6:56
Speaker 2: But in reality, it actually doesn't work out that way,
6:59
Speaker 2: and when people have too many decisions one they're more
7:01
Speaker 2: likely to just not make a decision at all, to
7:03
Speaker 2: just step back from it, and even when they do,
7:07
Speaker 2: they're more likely to be unhappy with that decision because
7:11
Speaker 2: they're thinking about all the other things that they could
7:13
Speaker 2: have done. Because we are these comparison engines. Basically, our
7:17
Speaker 2: brains are yeah and we have a bias. Humans have
7:21
Speaker 2: a bias called additive bias and its cousin subtraction neglect bias,
7:26
Speaker 2: which are named for the fact that we always try
7:29
Speaker 2: to solve problems by adding more things. Environment in which
7:32
Speaker 2: our brains evolved, having too much was not a problem,
7:35
Speaker 2: but having too little was, and so we're wired to
7:37
Speaker 2: accumulate and do more and add more. And there's all
7:40
Speaker 2: this interesting research showing that people overlook substress solutions for
7:43
Speaker 2: things that involve taking away and always pile on more tools,
7:48
Speaker 2: more obligations, you know, more than they can actually get done.
7:51
Speaker 2: And it's unless we're forcibly subtracting, we will end up overwhelmed.
7:58
Speaker 2: And I honestly think in the AI age it's even worse,
8:02
Speaker 2: like it's never been easier to do too much because
8:05
Speaker 2: the cost of starting things goes to zero, and so
8:08
Speaker 2: people are starting this incredible number of things and not
8:12
Speaker 2: doing the hard work of figuring out what it is
8:15
Speaker 2: they should not be doing.
8:17
Speaker 1: So you were talking about how difficult it becomes for
8:23
Speaker 1: people when they have so many choices that there can
8:27
Speaker 1: be this paralysis or also if you do make a choice,
8:30
Speaker 1: and was it the right choice? Because there were all
8:32
Speaker 1: these things what immediately started coming into my mind? Or
8:35
Speaker 1: two examples of this. So, you know, a therapist and
8:39
Speaker 1: a coach would do a variety of things, but have
8:41
Speaker 1: clients who would like to do something different with a career.
8:45
Speaker 1: And these are right, competent, resourceful people who could really
8:51
Speaker 1: quite plausibly go in a lot of different career directions
8:56
Speaker 1: and would probably be successful and relatively satisfied in a
9:00
Speaker 1: variety of different occupations, you know, and so they actually
9:04
Speaker 1: have a lot of legitimate choices, and it comes down
9:06
Speaker 1: to what would you enjoy the most, what would be
9:08
Speaker 1: most in alignment with your career path, and people are
9:11
Speaker 1: so paralyzed because of that making the wrong choice. And
9:18
Speaker 1: I'm also thinking of a different example of this with dating.
9:21
Speaker 1: I'll get you to talk about that one in a second,
9:23
Speaker 1: but first, is this what you're talking about? If I
9:26
Speaker 1: could literally go in every direction?
9:29
Speaker 2: So yeah, and there's actually some evidence that people with
9:35
Speaker 2: more options end up sort of less happy with the
9:39
Speaker 2: decisions that they do make, which is obviously contrary to
9:42
Speaker 2: what you would normally expect. I mean, in my previous book,
9:45
Speaker 2: I wrote about the benefits of doing lots of different things,
9:47
Speaker 2: and I think those are real. I think the challenge
9:50
Speaker 2: is in the scenario that you're talking about where people
9:53
Speaker 2: could go in these different career paths, people are often
9:56
Speaker 2: sort of trying to optimize without having information that would
9:59
Speaker 2: really allow them to do that. So the Nobel Lauriate
10:02
Speaker 2: Herbert Simon wrote about this where we think we can
10:05
Speaker 2: evaluate all these options and make the best decision, but
10:08
Speaker 2: we actually can't because we have limited ability to compare things,
10:11
Speaker 2: We have very limited ability to predict the future and
10:13
Speaker 2: the repercussions of our decisions, and so I think one
10:17
Speaker 2: helpful thing is to try to shrink that decision to
10:21
Speaker 2: some degree and not make it feel so big, so
10:25
Speaker 2: that you don't feel like you're having to make it perfectly.
10:27
Speaker 1: So.
10:27
Speaker 2: Herminia Ebara, for example, a professor at the London Business School,
10:30
Speaker 2: studied people followed people through real life work transitions, just
10:34
Speaker 2: sort of documenting how it works, when it's successful and
10:38
Speaker 2: when it's not. And the not pattern was more like
10:43
Speaker 2: how I think of Clark Kent running into a phone
10:46
Speaker 2: booth and coming out as Superman. It's like, I'm making
10:48
Speaker 2: this huge flying change. I've decided on it. That's what
10:50
Speaker 2: I'm doing. The successful pattern was much more like, here's
10:54
Speaker 2: a key, here's a small, lower stakes way that I
10:58
Speaker 2: can get a little bit of ex exposure to that
11:00
Speaker 2: possible career path. If that seems good, then I'll get
11:03
Speaker 2: a little bit more exposure and a little more and
11:05
Speaker 2: a little more. And so instead of having to to think,
11:09
Speaker 2: you're like, I'm choosing this path and all the other
11:11
Speaker 2: ones around boats, Yeah, what's the smallest way that I
11:14
Speaker 2: can dip a toe into this and get a little
11:17
Speaker 2: bit of feedback, and so I think that can be
11:20
Speaker 2: helpful for people when they're overwhelmed with options that just
11:23
Speaker 2: to shrink it so they don't feel like I'm making
11:25
Speaker 2: this decision once and for all and burning the boats,
11:28
Speaker 2: as you said.
11:28
Speaker 1: And to make space for you know, I think there's
11:32
Speaker 1: always such a difference in how we think something will
11:36
Speaker 1: be when you're not actually doing it yet we get
11:39
Speaker 1: a vage it all kinds of stuff versus the experience,
11:41
Speaker 1: which is so instructive.
11:43
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, people are really bad at knowing how they're
11:46
Speaker 2: going to feel about something. So the idea that you
11:48
Speaker 2: can make that perfect decision and it's going to be
11:51
Speaker 2: what you thought. How did you get into like you're
11:54
Speaker 2: doing something unusual here? Right? This is not being a
11:57
Speaker 2: podcast host, is not your academic back. So how did
12:01
Speaker 2: you start dipping your toes into this career that's obviously
12:04
Speaker 2: become something maybe larger than you thought it would when
12:07
Speaker 2: you started. I don't know.
12:09
Speaker 1: I'm still having a good time, So that's really the
12:13
Speaker 1: win here, David. But that's a good question, And honestly,
12:18
Speaker 1: it was motivated by a couple of things. I love learning.
12:21
Speaker 1: I just I am a sponge. I like learning new
12:24
Speaker 1: things and interesting people and research, and I'm like, oh,
12:27
Speaker 1: that's really cool. So I'm a naturally curious person. I
12:30
Speaker 1: think that's part of the reason why I went into
12:32
Speaker 1: counseling psychology is like I'm curious about this person, what's
12:36
Speaker 1: going on in the situation. But also just I think
12:38
Speaker 1: on a more macro level, like sociology, how do people tick?
12:42
Speaker 1: Why are things the way that they are?
12:44
Speaker 2: I mean, so that's great because you identified something that
12:47
Speaker 2: you wanted satisfy your feed your curiosity, and something that
12:50
Speaker 2: you thought was of service, and then this just happened
12:52
Speaker 2: to be a vehicle for it. So I think that's
12:54
Speaker 2: like really instructive too, is instead of this career path
12:57
Speaker 2: or that career path, what are some things? And this
13:00
Speaker 2: actually showed up in this study called the Harvard Dark
13:02
Speaker 2: Horse Project about how people find fulfilling work, where they
13:05
Speaker 2: would kind of bounce between things and start to identify
13:08
Speaker 2: less with a particular job and more with what are
13:11
Speaker 2: the things that they like or that they find engaging.
13:15
Speaker 2: It's curiosity service and then you find the vehicle for it.
13:18
Speaker 2: So sometimes I think we're doing it backwards. It's like
13:21
Speaker 2: this is the job instead of spending the time thinking
13:24
Speaker 2: of what are sort of the things that I find
13:26
Speaker 2: engaging and meaningful, and what are the sort of potential
13:28
Speaker 2: vehicles for that.
13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I'm almost I don't know if you're
13:32
Speaker 1: saying this, but this is kind of like what I'm
13:34
Speaker 1: hearing that. It's not like you're playing mental mind games
13:37
Speaker 1: with yourself per se, but I'm sort of hearing you say,
13:41
Speaker 1: don't actually make a choice, just like kind of do
13:44
Speaker 1: it a little bit and see how it feels and
13:47
Speaker 1: kind of get deeper into the pool without put you know,
13:50
Speaker 1: planting a flag, and like this is what I am.
13:53
Speaker 1: You know, because that's when it gets not only overwhelming,
13:57
Speaker 1: but also probably premature because you don't know yet.
14:00
Speaker 2: Is that fair to say? Psychos computer scientist would call
14:03
Speaker 2: it premature optimization where you you lock in your code
14:06
Speaker 2: before you're really totally sure what you should be doing.
14:08
Speaker 1: So giving yourself permission to just experience something. Now, if
14:13
Speaker 1: it's okay with you, let's talk a little bit when
14:15
Speaker 1: it comes to relationships and you know that level of
14:19
Speaker 1: choice because what I see there, and so you know
14:21
Speaker 1: my background dually am a psychologist. I am also a marriage and
14:24
Speaker 1: family therapist, and so work with people a lot around relationships,
14:28
Speaker 1: and I think it's a big pain point for many people,
14:30
Speaker 1: especially in the world these days, where there feels like
14:33
Speaker 1: this infinite ocean of possible partners and so many different options,
14:39
Speaker 1: and a lot of people there feeling very frustrated because
14:42
Speaker 1: it feels like they're, you know, trying things out and
14:45
Speaker 1: talking to a lot of different people but not really
14:48
Speaker 1: finding what they want and maybe there's something better out there,
14:52
Speaker 1: and so I don't know, maybe that's true, but at
14:54
Speaker 1: the same time, I think that they're especially in the
14:56
Speaker 1: early days of a relationship, be like less I don't
14:59
Speaker 1: want to use the word c commitment, but it's easier
15:02
Speaker 1: for people to just kind of like move on with
15:04
Speaker 1: the expectation that there's going to be something better just
15:06
Speaker 1: right around the corner. And that I think goes back
15:08
Speaker 1: to that idea of so many choices, whereas in the
15:11
Speaker 1: past we really didn't have as many options.
15:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that ability to always say there
15:19
Speaker 2: might be something better around the corner can be really harmful.
15:24
Speaker 2: Like it's good. You want to get a better fit
15:26
Speaker 2: and partner, right, you want to take some data, you
15:27
Speaker 2: want to learn about yourself, you want to learn about
15:29
Speaker 2: your options. Yeah, but the infinite comparison ability, and often
15:34
Speaker 2: on the dating apps, it's often a blind auction basically,
15:37
Speaker 2: where you know, you have no idea what's really going
15:40
Speaker 2: on behind the scenes there. And it reminds me of
15:42
Speaker 2: this story I Love by the Japanese novelist Ruki Murakami,
15:46
Speaker 2: where he writes about these two young people who meet
15:49
Speaker 2: and they just intuitively recognize that they are the as
15:52
Speaker 2: he put it, the one hundred percent perfect match for
15:54
Speaker 2: one another, and they hold hands, they sit on a
15:58
Speaker 2: park bench. They talk for hours, and this sliver of
16:01
Speaker 2: doubt creeps in that they say, you know, is it
16:03
Speaker 2: really okay for someone to find happiness this easily? So
16:06
Speaker 2: they come up with an experiment where they'll part and
16:11
Speaker 2: if they meet again, clearly it was meant to be,
16:13
Speaker 2: and they'll get married on the spot. So the boy
16:15
Speaker 2: walks off east and the girl west, and they never
16:18
Speaker 2: meet again. They really were one hundred percent perfect match
16:20
Speaker 2: for each other, but they never meet again, right, And
16:23
Speaker 2: so I feel like that that can be some of
16:26
Speaker 2: what's going on, where there has to be like nobody
16:30
Speaker 2: is perfect now, there has to be some level of
16:33
Speaker 2: good enough, and relationships take work, and one of the
16:36
Speaker 2: things I find a little scary is this research done
16:39
Speaker 2: by the relationships like coologist Scott Stanley and what he
16:42
Speaker 2: calls sliding versus deciding, where he's finding that younger people
16:47
Speaker 2: particularly are doing what he calls sliding, which means that
16:51
Speaker 2: they'll get into a relationship, but because they're like there
16:53
Speaker 2: could be something better around the corner, they're not committed
16:57
Speaker 2: in their mind. So the commitment we'll start escalating even
17:01
Speaker 2: though they're saying I'm keeping my options open. But really,
17:04
Speaker 2: as time goes on, commitment escalates because that's how relationships work.
17:08
Speaker 2: And so if they do that and they end up
17:10
Speaker 2: sliding into marriage, for example, they're much more likely to
17:12
Speaker 2: get divorced and be unhappy versus people who decide and
17:15
Speaker 2: say either I'm in or I'm out, and you make
17:18
Speaker 2: a decision instead of just proceeding always with part of
17:22
Speaker 2: your mind saying I'm keeping my options open, Like at
17:25
Speaker 2: a certain point optionality. You don't want optionality to become
17:29
Speaker 2: an end unto itself, right, You want options to get
17:32
Speaker 2: to a better decision. But you should have good enough
17:35
Speaker 2: criteria for everything in life, like there might be a
17:38
Speaker 2: better job, there might be a better place for you,
17:39
Speaker 2: to live. There might be a better whatever it is
17:41
Speaker 2: you're buying on Amazon, but having good enough criteria your
17:45
Speaker 2: needs and not basing them on someone else's vacation on Instagram.
17:50
Speaker 2: I think is really important in this day and age.
17:53
Speaker 1: To be able to know yourself well enough and to
17:55
Speaker 1: be able to understand the options well enough to say
18:00
Speaker 1: I choose this with some confidence, because what you're really
18:06
Speaker 1: talking about between the lines here right now is like
18:09
Speaker 1: the ability to find peace and contentment in a decision.
18:15
Speaker 1: Is that it?
18:16
Speaker 2: And the psychologist Mihi Chicksen Mihai, who is most famous
18:20
Speaker 2: for coining the term flow to describe the feeling of
18:23
Speaker 2: immersion in activity, he wrote something.
18:25
Speaker 1: So impressed with your pronunciation of that name?
18:28
Speaker 2: Oh, oh really good? Yeah, And he wrote some about
18:33
Speaker 2: relationships and saying that accepting certain limitations can be liberating.
18:37
Speaker 2: Like one of the good things about being in a
18:38
Speaker 2: relationship if you're committed, if you've committed by your own choice,
18:41
Speaker 2: is that you can stop spending all your energy wondering
18:44
Speaker 2: how to live and start spending that energy living. Yeah.
18:48
Speaker 2: And so I think to some degree, the problem with
18:51
Speaker 2: infinite options for dating is that you might never get
18:57
Speaker 2: to a headspace where you say to me, this good,
19:00
Speaker 2: it's something that I have to work on and instead
19:02
Speaker 2: can just be like turning the page endlessly, and that's
19:05
Speaker 2: probably not a recipe for satisfaction for most people.
19:08
Speaker 1: No, Oh, my gosh, I'm thinking of my This is
19:14
Speaker 1: a much lighter example of what you were just talking about.
19:17
Speaker 1: But I don't know, can you relate to this? I
19:19
Speaker 1: have literally spent an hour and a half flipping through
19:23
Speaker 1: all the possible shows I could watch on you an evening,
19:27
Speaker 1: on Netflix, HBO, we have all the channels, and I
19:31
Speaker 1: watch all the trailers, and then finally I just hand
19:33
Speaker 1: the remote control to my husband and I'm like, pick
19:36
Speaker 1: something you have good taste, and he does, and it's
19:38
Speaker 1: always some dystopian horror show. But it's still interesting anyway.
19:41
Speaker 1: But it's like, it's that kind of thing, but applied
19:44
Speaker 1: on very large scale with relationships, with career choices, with
19:49
Speaker 1: where I want to live. That breeds this like angst
19:52
Speaker 1: that it's always the wrong thing, and this is really
19:55
Speaker 1: getting in the way I think of happiness.
19:57
Speaker 2: I mean, what you're describing is essentially one of the
20:01
Speaker 2: questions on the questionnaire of what's called the maximization scale
20:04
Speaker 2: so the scale started, you know, like twenty years ago,
20:07
Speaker 2: and so first it was like for people flipping through
20:11
Speaker 2: radio stations. You say, if there's something on the radio
20:14
Speaker 2: and you like it, but you still need to flip
20:16
Speaker 2: through all the stations to see if there's something better,
20:18
Speaker 2: you know, that would score you some points as a maximizer.
20:21
Speaker 2: That's on one end of the scale, and the other
20:23
Speaker 2: end of the scale is a satisficer, which is a portmanteau.
20:26
Speaker 2: And the main binding of that research, if I had
20:29
Speaker 2: to condense it into a small nutshell, is that it's
20:32
Speaker 2: almost always a bad thing to be a maximizer. Not always,
20:35
Speaker 2: but almost always we're maximizers. So these are people who
20:38
Speaker 2: are really want to evaluate as many options as they
20:41
Speaker 2: can before they make a decision. I also have these tendencies,
20:45
Speaker 2: so US two tend to be less happy with their decisions.
20:48
Speaker 2: They tend to be less happy with their lives because
20:50
Speaker 2: they're more prone to regret. They often prefer reversible decisions,
20:55
Speaker 2: even though that just prevents them from committing one way
20:57
Speaker 2: or the other, and they're happier turns out with the
21:00
Speaker 2: reversible decisions. And there's some evidence that maximizing tendencies are
21:05
Speaker 2: on the rise throughout the world. I don't think anybody
21:08
Speaker 2: knows for sure why, you know, I think my guess
21:10
Speaker 2: would be the endless comparison engine that is social media.
21:14
Speaker 2: So I think it's for me. After having read that research,
21:20
Speaker 2: you came up with a fix. You hand the remote
21:22
Speaker 2: to your husband. Y, it's a good fix exactly. In
21:25
Speaker 2: some of this research, maximizers who knew their own tendencies
21:28
Speaker 2: would find ways to block themselves from seeing tons of options.
21:33
Speaker 2: And you know it's so. I think for me now,
21:37
Speaker 2: I often before I make a choice, like especially before
21:39
Speaker 2: I get on Amazon, I decide what is the thing
21:44
Speaker 2: that I need this item to do, and once that
21:47
Speaker 2: is met, I don't look for the item that does
21:50
Speaker 2: all that plus has lasers shooting out of it or
21:52
Speaker 2: whatever it is, right, I don't read every single review.
21:56
Speaker 2: It's like, if it meets the criteria I set ahead
21:58
Speaker 2: of time, I'm done. Because the search is a cost
22:01
Speaker 2: itself that we usually discount.
22:04
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how much of my life has
22:06
Speaker 1: been spent scrolling through the options and watching the videos
22:10
Speaker 1: and reading the reviews. It takes hours, I.
22:12
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, and you probably end up more likely to
22:16
Speaker 2: feel like whatever you got is like maybe not the
22:18
Speaker 2: best one.
22:20
Speaker 1: Well it comes and then I'm like, oh, should I
22:23
Speaker 1: have gotten the other one? So you're saying here that
22:27
Speaker 1: one very powerful lever we can all pull in our
22:30
Speaker 1: own lives to feel happier, more peaceful, more content with
22:34
Speaker 1: where we are and what we have, is to operate
22:37
Speaker 1: with more of a constraint or restraint type mindset where
22:41
Speaker 1: choices are actually limited. But as you pointed out earlier
22:45
Speaker 1: in our conversation, we are living in a moment in
22:49
Speaker 1: history where there have never been more options for literally
22:54
Speaker 1: every single thing it requires like brain power to sort through.
22:58
Speaker 1: So in this context, I cannot wait to hear your
23:01
Speaker 1: advice on how we can start to limit some of
23:04
Speaker 1: those things and feel good about it so that we
23:06
Speaker 1: can achieve this zen of which you speak. So can
23:10
Speaker 1: we talk about that on the other side of our
23:11
Speaker 1: first break?
23:12
Speaker 2: Sure? Absolutely.
23:22
Speaker 1: I have been living in Quinn's dresses all summer. I
23:25
Speaker 1: am recording this right now in my washable silk slip
23:28
Speaker 1: dress because it's about one hundred and thirty cruise outside
23:31
Speaker 1: and this dress is so cool and comfortable but also
23:34
Speaker 1: gorgeous enough to walk right out of my office and
23:37
Speaker 1: into the nicest restaurant in town. Feeling like a million
23:40
Speaker 1: bucks kind of feels like I'm cheating every time I
23:43
Speaker 1: wear Quints, and that's how it is with them. They're
23:46
Speaker 1: using premium materials like European linen and organic cotton that
23:50
Speaker 1: look as good as they feel, but also fifty to
23:53
Speaker 1: eighty percent less expensive than similar brands because Quins is
23:57
Speaker 1: dealing directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middleman,
24:01
Speaker 1: so we're paying for the quality, not the markup. Nothing
24:04
Speaker 1: not to love about the situation. Upgrade your every day.
24:07
Speaker 1: Download the Quinn's app for up exclusive offers, or go
24:10
Speaker 1: to Quinns dot com slash lahs for free shipping on
24:13
Speaker 1: your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns
24:16
Speaker 1: now available in Canada and the UK. Two that's q
24:19
Speaker 1: u i ncee dot com slash lhs. True story. I
24:27
Speaker 1: got so excited about an idea I had for funny
24:32
Speaker 1: therapist T shirts that I could make them. But then
24:36
Speaker 1: I had a crisis. I was like, oh wait, how
24:38
Speaker 1: would that actually work? But then I thought, at showpify
24:42
Speaker 1: dot com slash lhs, I set up a free trial,
24:46
Speaker 1: set up my storefront. Now the second a customer is
24:50
Speaker 1: ready to pay for said t shirt. Check out handles.
24:53
Speaker 2: All of it.
24:56
Speaker 1: One tap the shirts on the way their details are saved.
25:00
Speaker 1: Shopify Runs is set up in the checkout so I
25:03
Speaker 1: can just create and grow. With Shopify, nothing stands in
25:08
Speaker 1: between your idea and a real business, So make it one.
25:13
Speaker 1: Start your free trial at shopify dot com slash lhs.
25:17
Speaker 1: That's shopify dot com slash lahs. You guys were back
25:28
Speaker 1: with David Epstein, science writer and author of the new
25:32
Speaker 1: book Inside the Box, where he's talking about how to
25:37
Speaker 1: intentionally change our relationship with all the choices that we
25:41
Speaker 1: have in this world so that we can feel more
25:44
Speaker 1: content about the decisions that we make. So, David, just
25:48
Speaker 1: before our break, you were about to share with us
25:53
Speaker 1: some of the things that you've learned through your research
25:55
Speaker 1: but also your experience, around how we can begin to
26:00
Speaker 1: cultivate some narrow way in this ocean of options we
26:06
Speaker 1: all have, which are quite frankly exhausting.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
26:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:11
Speaker 2: One I think exercise that's really useful for people that
26:15
Speaker 2: I've found useful for myself and then I've seen used
26:18
Speaker 2: with teams is to try to make all of your
26:21
Speaker 2: current commitments visible everything you're doing. This could be volunteering.
26:26
Speaker 2: This could be your job is to be parenting, whatever
26:28
Speaker 2: it is. And typically what happens when people do this
26:31
Speaker 2: is that they realize that they are over committed because
26:35
Speaker 2: we tend to only add things to our plate and
26:40
Speaker 2: then to do a subtraction audit basically say, you know,
26:43
Speaker 2: if I had to cut out one of these things
26:45
Speaker 2: in the next ninety days, what would it be, And
26:47
Speaker 2: then take that thing out or move it to the
26:49
Speaker 2: back burner. And you're probably not going to be able
26:53
Speaker 2: to get to all those things anyway, so moving something
26:56
Speaker 2: off might feel bad, but it actually forces you to
27:00
Speaker 2: i orify your priorities. And because we only add an
27:03
Speaker 2: add an ad, if you do this regularly, you probably
27:06
Speaker 2: end up with sort of more time and energy focused
27:09
Speaker 2: on the things that are most important to you. And
27:12
Speaker 2: when I did this, I realized that I had things
27:14
Speaker 2: that were kind of medium priorities that we're competing with
27:17
Speaker 2: some of the bigger priorities, and so really sort of
27:19
Speaker 2: stripped some things out of my life that would have
27:21
Speaker 2: been nice to do. But we are finite, and so
27:24
Speaker 2: you have to face our mortality and prioritize ruthlessly.
27:30
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, because like as you're talking about this,
27:33
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of my own task list, even just in
27:36
Speaker 1: like the business part of my life. I actually abandoned
27:40
Speaker 1: a project management system once because there were literally thousands
27:43
Speaker 1: and thousands of tasks that were for me that I
27:46
Speaker 1: was never going to do, and like I couldn't even
27:48
Speaker 1: handle it anymore. So, you know, there are all these
27:51
Speaker 1: things that we put on our list. It's the intention
27:53
Speaker 1: of doing. And you're saying that even if it feels
27:57
Speaker 1: bad to intentionally say, you know what, I'm going to
28:00
Speaker 1: do that, the reality is that you aren't anyway. But
28:03
Speaker 1: so then for somebody like me, because what comes up
28:06
Speaker 1: for me is I think, oh, what I really want
28:09
Speaker 1: to So I'm just going to keep this here on
28:11
Speaker 1: my list. I think it's not wanting to let go
28:13
Speaker 1: of the possibility of it, that's right, Like, how did
28:16
Speaker 1: you manage that when you were like delete?
28:20
Speaker 2: Because we have this like strong impulse to think that
28:24
Speaker 2: if we just got the right system down, or we
28:26
Speaker 2: just cleared the decks of everything we have now that
28:28
Speaker 2: we can do that other thing, or that if we
28:30
Speaker 2: just figured out the right productivity hacks, all of this
28:33
Speaker 2: stuff would be possible. It's really an illusion, you know,
28:36
Speaker 2: you're still the bottleneck ultimately your attention, and so you
28:39
Speaker 2: just need to cut some of those those things out.
28:43
Speaker 2: But it's very very you know, it's very very difficult
28:47
Speaker 2: to do that because that illusion if I can get
28:49
Speaker 2: this done. So let's say one of the things, I'm
28:51
Speaker 2: super attracted. I read a ton, but I'm also I'm online.
28:54
Speaker 2: I see articles, like so many article headlines appeal to me. Yeah,
28:58
Speaker 2: and see them and I'm like, I have to know
29:01
Speaker 2: what this thing says. Like headline writers just work on me.
29:05
Speaker 2: So I would sometimes spend like hours reading articles that
29:08
Speaker 2: were legitimately interesting, but I would get to the end
29:10
Speaker 2: and often say, you know, I think that half hour
29:15
Speaker 2: or hour was not aligned with my most important priorities.
29:20
Speaker 2: So now I have a system where if I see
29:21
Speaker 2: these articles, I will bookmark them and put them in
29:24
Speaker 2: a certain folder, right, And this gives me the feeling of, oh,
29:27
Speaker 2: it's saved somewhere, and if it's still in my mind,
29:31
Speaker 2: like a day later, that I need to read that thing,
29:33
Speaker 2: I will actually go back and read it. But this
29:36
Speaker 2: means that ninety percent of those things I never go
29:38
Speaker 2: back to and I don't worry about it because I
29:40
Speaker 2: feel like it's saved somewhere, like the possibility is still there,
29:44
Speaker 2: but it's not really going to happen. And so I
29:47
Speaker 2: try to put a little delay between my impulsiveness for
29:51
Speaker 2: consuming things, and then if it's really important or super interesting,
29:54
Speaker 2: I'll come back around to it.
29:55
Speaker 1: Okay, I've actually implemented in my own life. I have
29:59
Speaker 1: to keep not just a list of what I need
30:02
Speaker 1: to do, but a list of ideas. I have to
30:04
Speaker 1: have like a parking lot a corral for like all
30:07
Speaker 1: the ideas or the articles or the books. I still
30:09
Speaker 1: have way too many books, but like, yeah, so those
30:13
Speaker 1: are some of the things we can do to like
30:15
Speaker 1: manage the reality of having way too much.
30:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and having that I mean, I consume a ton
30:22
Speaker 2: of information. I have spark lists that I call with
30:24
Speaker 2: all these different ideas that I turn to. I buy
30:27
Speaker 2: books that I'm not planning on reading right away because
30:29
Speaker 2: I want shelves that I can surf for the right time.
30:32
Speaker 2: So I'm not against any of those things. It's just
30:35
Speaker 2: it's like, again, we have this feeling that I'll get
30:38
Speaker 2: to my important thing when I clear the decks of
30:41
Speaker 2: all this other stuff, and the decks are never going
30:43
Speaker 2: to be clear. So Oliver Berkman talks about this, like,
30:46
Speaker 2: if you're going to if you've identified something as important,
30:50
Speaker 2: the impulse shouldn't be I'm going to get to it
30:52
Speaker 2: as soon as I clear all the other stuff out
30:53
Speaker 2: of the way. It should be I'm going to do
30:55
Speaker 2: it now, because there's never going to be a time
30:57
Speaker 2: when all this stuff isn't in the way. So for
30:59
Speaker 2: me an important practice, I use that I've come to
31:02
Speaker 2: call the Hemingway principle for myself, because Ernest Hemingway would
31:05
Speaker 2: stop his writing days in the middle of a sentence.
31:08
Speaker 2: So I make my last act of every workday, I
31:10
Speaker 2: write down the important thing I'm going to start with
31:12
Speaker 2: the next day. And I think it helps save me
31:16
Speaker 2: from mindlessly drifting to my inbox or to various feeds,
31:21
Speaker 2: and helps with what's called the mere urgency effect, the
31:25
Speaker 2: fact that people will prioritize things that feel urgent, like
31:28
Speaker 2: answering an email, over things that are actually important. And
31:33
Speaker 2: so you mentioned this sort of endless list of things
31:36
Speaker 2: to do that you had in this project management tool.
31:40
Speaker 2: I had that with to do lists, right whether the
31:41
Speaker 2: to do list would grow to do lists and eventually
31:44
Speaker 2: I'd turn it over because it was so stress inducing
31:46
Speaker 2: to look at and then now I have one thing
31:48
Speaker 2: at the top that if that one thing gets done,
31:51
Speaker 2: something was accomplished this day. There can be other things
31:53
Speaker 2: that are bonuses, but there's one thing that I know
31:56
Speaker 2: is the important thing that if that gets done today,
31:59
Speaker 2: it was a productive day. Because too many of the
32:01
Speaker 2: things you just like end up opting for things that
32:05
Speaker 2: can be done more quickly or feel urgent over the
32:07
Speaker 2: thing you identified as important.
32:08
Speaker 1: So can I ask you a question if this is okay?
32:11
Speaker 1: You know, going back to your question for me, like
32:14
Speaker 1: why did you start doing this podcast? I think, yes,
32:17
Speaker 1: curiosity of being of service, but I also I'm so
32:19
Speaker 1: excited to talk with people where I can also like
32:22
Speaker 1: learn something personally that I apply in my own life
32:26
Speaker 1: because I'm still doing my own work and I'm always
32:28
Speaker 1: so curious about my guests. And I'm wondering if this
32:31
Speaker 1: is true for you, if part of the motivation to
32:34
Speaker 1: turn the laser beam of your scientific inquiry to this
32:38
Speaker 1: specific topic pain point in your own life, like was
32:43
Speaker 1: there a time and space when you were feeling that
32:46
Speaker 1: overwhelmed paralysis? Like what is going on? Or was this something.
32:51
Speaker 2: Else my publisher told me never to use this word.
32:53
Speaker 2: But there's a huge amount of research in the book,
32:57
Speaker 2: like I'm.
32:58
Speaker 1: Researching something that's exactly what it.
33:00
Speaker 2: Is, researching something that I was. They said, you know,
33:03
Speaker 2: don't say that word because it'll make people feel like
33:05
Speaker 2: the book is only for you. And I'm like, well,
33:07
Speaker 2: there're probably other people struggling with this too, and you
33:11
Speaker 2: I've written three books and it's been six to seven
33:13
Speaker 2: years between each one, and part of the reason for
33:15
Speaker 2: that is that I've been terrible at drawing boundaries around
33:18
Speaker 2: my own work, and so it just expands and expands,
33:23
Speaker 2: and because I'm really curious, and so with the first
33:26
Speaker 2: two books, I wrote basically one hundred and fifty percent
33:31
Speaker 2: of the length A lotted and then had to cut
33:33
Speaker 2: back to get a book. That's an incredibly inefficient way
33:36
Speaker 2: to work, you know. And once I became a parent,
33:37
Speaker 2: I didn't want to be taking research trips that weren't
33:41
Speaker 2: going to be useful or that weren't going to end
33:43
Speaker 2: up in the book. And so this time around, I
33:47
Speaker 2: forced myself, like I came up with all my notes
33:49
Speaker 2: and things. I ended up with one hundred thousand word
33:52
Speaker 2: note sheet basically printed it out Reddit and then forced
33:55
Speaker 2: myself to outline on one page and one page only,
33:58
Speaker 2: like a structural plan for the book, and that forced
34:01
Speaker 2: me to prioritize ruthlessly. And if it wasn't on that page,
34:04
Speaker 2: it didn't go in the book. It's actually this is
34:07
Speaker 2: the page. As you can see, I wrote as small
34:11
Speaker 2: as humanly possible to try to like. It really made
34:15
Speaker 2: me prioritize, and I did this exercise that actually one
34:18
Speaker 2: of the people I interviewed, this guy Tony Fadell, who
34:20
Speaker 2: was the lead designer of the iPod. He was one
34:23
Speaker 2: of the first people I talked to about constraints before
34:25
Speaker 2: I knew I was writing a book, but I was
34:27
Speaker 2: interested in the topic, and he was like a Zelot
34:32
Speaker 2: for putting constraints on his teams. For Nest, he made
34:34
Speaker 2: them design the box before the product because he said,
34:41
Speaker 2: this will force us to prototype this to get on
34:44
Speaker 2: the box only the things that we think are the
34:46
Speaker 2: most important features to communicate to consumer, and so if
34:49
Speaker 2: it doesn't fit on this box, we're not doing it now.
34:51
Speaker 2: Because it protects against what designers call featuretis, right, like
34:55
Speaker 2: your desire to put every cool thing in, which is
34:57
Speaker 2: what I had that vision of featuritis in writing, and
35:00
Speaker 2: he encouraged me to write the press release for the
35:02
Speaker 2: book before I started writing the book, and it was
35:07
Speaker 2: a really interesting exercise because it forced me to condense
35:12
Speaker 2: the problem I thought I was approaching onto one page,
35:14
Speaker 2: think about the people I thought I was writing it for,
35:16
Speaker 2: even make up. He encouraged me to make up fake
35:19
Speaker 2: blurbs about what do I hope people would say about
35:21
Speaker 2: it once it's done, and I found that incredibly helpful.
35:25
Speaker 2: And so this book I actually turned in early and
35:28
Speaker 2: didn't write over length. And so I think the whole
35:33
Speaker 2: process of the book was partly me addressing something that
35:37
Speaker 2: had made me both less productive. If I had been
35:42
Speaker 2: using the process that I had now, I would have
35:44
Speaker 2: written more books than I have and just feel more
35:48
Speaker 2: chaotic while I was, you know, it made me feel
35:50
Speaker 2: less chaotic compared to how I had been in the
35:53
Speaker 2: past while I was doing the work. It came out
35:55
Speaker 2: of things that I was bad at.
35:57
Speaker 1: But it's so amazing though, because like in the craft
36:00
Speaker 1: of the book itself, you were able to prove the
36:02
Speaker 1: concepts that you were writing about and really have this
36:06
Speaker 1: be an example of the power of doing this in
36:11
Speaker 1: your own life. And so you applied it to your work.
36:14
Speaker 1: We need to take another really quick break, David. But
36:16
Speaker 1: on the other side of this, I'm hoping that we
36:19
Speaker 1: could dig a little bit more deeply into some of
36:22
Speaker 1: the other use cases. For lack of a better word,
36:25
Speaker 1: I mean our friends listening to this conversation right now
36:28
Speaker 1: who are feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, chaotic to use, burned out,
36:33
Speaker 1: like just drowning in a sea of information and everything.
36:37
Speaker 1: Some simple ways of starting to reduce, cut, minimize, create
36:43
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38:16
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38:19
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38:22
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39:08
Speaker 1: back with David Epstein and David Before the break, you know,
39:11
Speaker 1: we were planning on using the remainder of our time
39:14
Speaker 1: together to talk about different applications, like what are some
39:21
Speaker 1: of the strategies that you uncovered through your research and
39:26
Speaker 1: your writing that could apply to so many different dimensions
39:31
Speaker 1: of life where people are feeling so overloaded from shopping online,
39:37
Speaker 1: just like opening up email or social media or choice everywhere.
39:41
Speaker 1: Where do we even begin?
39:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk about something that might feel narrow,
39:47
Speaker 2: but that I actually think infects most of those places,
39:53
Speaker 2: and that is how we structure our attention. So I
39:57
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time research and then writing about
40:00
Speaker 2: the work of a psychologist named Gloria Mark and Professor
40:04
Speaker 2: Mark has been studying people at work for about a
40:08
Speaker 2: quarter century and what she found when she started about
40:12
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago, was that people were switching tasks
40:15
Speaker 2: about every three minutes on average, and then by twenty
40:17
Speaker 2: twelve it was about every seventy five seconds, and then
40:19
Speaker 2: by twenty two twenty two it was about every forty
40:22
Speaker 2: five seconds. And that the number of switches that someone
40:27
Speaker 2: makes one is a negative predictor of their productivity at
40:31
Speaker 2: the end of the day, and two is a positive
40:33
Speaker 2: predictor of their stress as measured by physiological measures like
40:37
Speaker 2: heart rate variability. Yeah, and so these switches that were
40:42
Speaker 2: constantly doing are terrible for us, worse than you think. Like,
40:47
Speaker 2: as Professor Mark says, your brain's like a whiteboard, and
40:50
Speaker 2: when you switch tasks, you erase, but there's that residue left,
40:54
Speaker 2: like on the whiteboard, and that takes up some of
40:58
Speaker 2: your cognitive band with for the next thing. And you
40:59
Speaker 2: do that all day long and then you can't really
41:01
Speaker 2: clear it until you sleep.
41:03
Speaker 1: Essentially or not sleep as a case maybe or not sleep.
41:07
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just thinking.
41:07
Speaker 1: About like the that comes when you do that.
41:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's even some new evidence that it might the
41:13
Speaker 2: amount of switching you do might impact your immune function
41:16
Speaker 2: in a bad way. It's bad for you physically and professionally,
41:23
Speaker 2: and so I think we have to find ways to
41:27
Speaker 2: limit that multitask. Let's say you need to answer all
41:30
Speaker 2: those emails that you were doing emails, answer them, but
41:33
Speaker 2: instead of doing eighty different little blocks of email answering
41:37
Speaker 2: and checks, can you put that into one or three
41:41
Speaker 2: or five larger blocks over the day where you're doing
41:43
Speaker 2: email and then you're not doing email, so emails not
41:47
Speaker 2: infecting every other thing that you're doing throughout the day.
41:50
Speaker 2: You just want to limit the number of switches that
41:53
Speaker 2: you're doing so that you're monotasking and then longitudinally doing
41:58
Speaker 2: different things through the day in monotas asking blocks basically
42:02
Speaker 2: like I am doing emails for the next twenty minutes
42:04
Speaker 2: and this is all I'm doing kind of and you're
42:06
Speaker 2: not doing anything so batching your work and that can
42:10
Speaker 2: be Just being able to monotask is like magical. And
42:16
Speaker 2: I have to say, like again, since you've been asking
42:18
Speaker 2: about things that I've used, that is a game. It
42:21
Speaker 2: was a game changer for me. You have to be
42:23
Speaker 2: a little more thoughtful ahead of time about structuring your
42:26
Speaker 2: work so that you're not just maybe I feel like
42:30
Speaker 2: checking email. Now you know you plan it out, and
42:32
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this in this batch and this
42:34
Speaker 2: other thing in this certain time, So you have to
42:36
Speaker 2: put a little more forethought. But there was a time
42:39
Speaker 2: when I felt so scattered that I really wasn't enjoying
42:42
Speaker 2: my work anymore, which is work that I've chosen because
42:44
Speaker 2: I'm curious and i like researching and writing. And then
42:47
Speaker 2: when I got back to having monotasking blocks, I remembered
42:51
Speaker 2: I love my work when I'm allowed able to focus
42:54
Speaker 2: on it for some blocks. And so this would look
42:56
Speaker 2: different for everybody, depending on what their work is. But
42:59
Speaker 2: if you can decrease those switches, even modestly, it pays
43:04
Speaker 2: dividends and how you feel about what you're doing.
43:07
Speaker 1: I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the relevance of
43:13
Speaker 1: like personality or core wiring when it comes to this
43:18
Speaker 1: and relationship to choice. And because I value choice and agency,
43:27
Speaker 1: I attempt to teach people a framework to find their
43:32
Speaker 1: own way of doing things. And what I've learned is
43:37
Speaker 1: that there is a subset of people who really like that.
43:41
Speaker 1: They do not want to be told specifically what to do.
43:43
Speaker 1: They want some freedom, and so that's like compatible and
43:47
Speaker 1: I've actually modified some of my curriculum to have a
43:50
Speaker 1: pathway for people who are like, tell me exactly what
43:55
Speaker 1: to do in what order one, I will do this
43:59
Speaker 1: session too. I will do that as they want this.
44:03
Speaker 1: They want to be told, because I think there's so
44:06
Speaker 1: much anxiety that comes when they have to kind of
44:08
Speaker 1: figure things out. And I'm wondering if that has come
44:12
Speaker 1: up in your research at all. Around that feeling like
44:15
Speaker 1: you're kind of locked into a pathway can feel very
44:19
Speaker 1: comforting and almost a reduction and anxiety for some people.
44:25
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it may go up.
44:26
Speaker 1: I don't know.
44:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think individual personality differences are important
44:34
Speaker 2: in literally every aspect of life. I think some of
44:38
Speaker 2: those are innate. My first book was about genetics, and
44:40
Speaker 2: the first law of behavioral genetics is that all behaviors
44:44
Speaker 2: have at least some genetic component. Sometimes it's big, sometimes
44:46
Speaker 2: it's small, but it's always there.
44:48
Speaker 1: Will you come back on the show and talk about
44:50
Speaker 1: that sometimes, because I'm sure I would love to have
44:52
Speaker 1: that conversation.
44:53
Speaker 2: Well, my speculation is that some of this has to
44:55
Speaker 2: do with personality type. Some of it might have to
44:57
Speaker 2: do with like where I feel with myself, where once
44:59
Speaker 2: I became a fully independent writer. I think I started,
45:04
Speaker 2: you know, when I was more when someone else was
45:07
Speaker 2: kind of structuring my work for me. I was craving
45:10
Speaker 2: more freedom and do it my own way. And then
45:12
Speaker 2: once I was responsible for everything in other areas of
45:15
Speaker 2: my life, I was craving a little more like, maybe
45:17
Speaker 2: tell me how to do it, because yeah, so I'm
45:19
Speaker 2: not making every decision about everything at all times, right.
45:22
Speaker 2: I noticed even when that happened, once I became sort
45:25
Speaker 2: of in charge of all my decisions in my own work,
45:27
Speaker 2: I simplified my wardrobe, you know. I think it was
45:30
Speaker 2: sort of an outgrowth of all, right, I'm just getting
45:32
Speaker 2: five versions of the same T shirt, right, And so
45:35
Speaker 2: I wonder if some of it also is just to
45:38
Speaker 2: some degree, like a balancing of what feels unbalanced based
45:41
Speaker 2: on the rest of the person's life.
45:43
Speaker 1: But that's also a great point and a good takeaway too, Like,
45:46
Speaker 1: especially if you're a person who maybe professionally you're in
45:50
Speaker 1: a role where you do have to make a lot
45:52
Speaker 1: of decisions and there is no defined pathway you have
45:56
Speaker 1: to figure it out, like if you're an executive position
45:58
Speaker 1: or whatever, that there might be areas of your life
46:01
Speaker 1: where every single day, I wear the same thing and
46:04
Speaker 1: this is what I have for breakfast, and this is
46:06
Speaker 1: my routine, and it's actually quite constrained so that you
46:09
Speaker 1: have space for this other stuff. Is that a strategy
46:13
Speaker 1: that you would advise or would you think of that differently?
46:15
Speaker 2: No, I would. I mean again, I'm speculating a little there,
46:18
Speaker 2: but that makes sense to me. And Rick Ruben, the
46:21
Speaker 2: great music producer, writes about this in his book about
46:23
Speaker 2: how it's this sort of discipline and ritual and habit
46:27
Speaker 2: that frees these incredibly. You know, He's worked with some
46:30
Speaker 2: of the most creative people alive that freeze them up
46:33
Speaker 2: to then play in the sandbox within that, and so
46:36
Speaker 2: it felt to me reading his work that there was
46:38
Speaker 2: this like balance between the structure and the total freedom.
46:42
Speaker 1: Well, then, before I let you go, David Epstein, give
46:45
Speaker 1: us an example of what that might look like.
46:49
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, let's take someone like I don't know
46:53
Speaker 2: if this is the kind of example that you're looking for,
46:56
Speaker 2: but like Maya Angelo, right, obviously an eminent writer, and
47:00
Speaker 2: she was so focused on focusing that when she would
47:06
Speaker 2: do her work, she would go to a motel and
47:09
Speaker 2: have them take even the artwork off of the wall
47:14
Speaker 2: so that she wouldn't be distracted, right, supreme focus. But
47:18
Speaker 2: then she would also bring things like crossword puzzles. And
47:23
Speaker 2: she called this toggling between her big and little mind,
47:26
Speaker 2: where when she was using her big mind for writing,
47:28
Speaker 2: she'd had this incredibly structured approach, but then she wanted
47:31
Speaker 2: to toggle over to these other spots where she gave
47:34
Speaker 2: that a break and kind of did whatever came up
47:36
Speaker 2: and what came easily in these sorts of things. And
47:38
Speaker 2: that toggling is what really helped her produce the incredible
47:42
Speaker 2: things that she did. And obviously, I'm a writer, so
47:45
Speaker 2: I'm interested in writers. But that's so much of a
47:49
Speaker 2: theme if you look at great writers, like one of
47:51
Speaker 2: my favorites, so I write about Isabella Ende, who's one
47:53
Speaker 2: of the greatest living writers. She didn't really start publishing
47:57
Speaker 2: books until she was forty, right, she was all over
48:00
Speaker 2: the place. She'd been a journalist for a little while,
48:02
Speaker 2: and then she was running a school and all this stuff,
48:04
Speaker 2: and life was kind of chaotic, and then she developed
48:06
Speaker 2: this writing habit where she would have certain hours every
48:11
Speaker 2: day she would need quiet. Sometimes that could be in
48:13
Speaker 2: a closet. When she started, you would go in a
48:15
Speaker 2: closet and close the door. She would find ways to
48:18
Speaker 2: start and stop her workday, like lighting a candle to
48:20
Speaker 2: start it and then blowing it out to stop and
48:22
Speaker 2: saying it's done, and this sort of ritual. It was
48:26
Speaker 2: almost like she moved into this phase of her life
48:28
Speaker 2: where if you ever see a basketball player and they
48:30
Speaker 2: bounced the ball two times and clapped their hands twice
48:32
Speaker 2: and touched their face before they shoot a free throw,
48:34
Speaker 2: it's like doing these things that became associated with getting
48:38
Speaker 2: in her performance mind space, and that ultimately led to
48:42
Speaker 2: her writing a best selling book about every eighteen months
48:45
Speaker 2: for the last forty four years. And this started midlife
48:49
Speaker 2: when she really came up with this, this ritual and structure.
48:52
Speaker 2: This was I don't know where this ends, but it's
48:54
Speaker 2: a thing that I'm doing every day at this certain time,
48:58
Speaker 2: in this certain way. And eighty million in books later,
49:01
Speaker 2: copies of her books later. She's one of my favorites
49:04
Speaker 2: and one of the great living writers.
49:06
Speaker 1: What an inspiring place to land, David. You know this
49:09
Speaker 1: idea that as much as people like me I have
49:13
Speaker 1: this like you want me to say no to things,
49:15
Speaker 1: what you're really saying is that the laser beam of
49:20
Speaker 1: focus that comes when you can commit to something, to
49:23
Speaker 1: one thing, this is what I'm doing, and use a
49:26
Speaker 1: variety of different strategies to help yourself stay locked into
49:30
Speaker 1: That is very powerful stuff. Thank you so much for
49:34
Speaker 1: sharing some of these examples, and I'm sure there are
49:38
Speaker 1: so many more in your book, So tell us a
49:41
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, and then where to find it,
49:43
Speaker 1: Where to find you if people want to stay connected
49:46
Speaker 1: with you.
49:46
Speaker 2: That's inside the box How constraints make Us better. And
49:49
Speaker 2: it's just became a New York Times bestseller, so that's nice,
49:52
Speaker 2: and the congrats. The stories range from business, to art
49:55
Speaker 2: and music and to personal things, and people can find
49:59
Speaker 2: more information my website David Epstein dot com. And I
50:02
Speaker 2: just started a YouTube channel that's making videos about some
50:05
Speaker 2: of this content.
50:06
Speaker 1: So just what's your YouTube channel.
50:09
Speaker 2: It's just David Epstein. My YouTube handle is David Epstein author.
50:12
Speaker 2: Oh great, it's new.
50:14
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations on the book and the channel, and I'm
50:17
Speaker 1: already excited about book number four. And now that you
50:20
Speaker 1: have all of these strategies, you too are going to
50:22
Speaker 1: have eighty million books like pour Out. It's going to
50:25
Speaker 1: be amazing. Thank you again, so much for spending this
50:28
Speaker 1: time with us.
50:29
Speaker 2: Today, David, thank you for having me.
50:41
Speaker 1: What a good conversation. I would strongly encourage you to
50:44
Speaker 1: check out David's latest book, Inside the Box, to get
50:47
Speaker 1: more insight into the research behind the things we were
50:50
Speaker 1: talking about today, as well as some of the strategies
50:53
Speaker 1: he suggests to be able to reduce the chaos in
50:57
Speaker 1: your mind, get clear, and then come with confidence to
51:01
Speaker 1: a decision. I will also say that sometimes it can
51:04
Speaker 1: be really helpful to have a ideally therapist who is
51:09
Speaker 1: trained as a coach to help you dig into this,
51:12
Speaker 1: particularly to help you get the clarity around the big
51:16
Speaker 1: picture stuff. Who are you, what are your core values,
51:20
Speaker 1: What do you care about the most? What is most
51:22
Speaker 1: meaningful and important? That you know what is your lighthouse
51:25
Speaker 1: that you want to sail towards, Because then you start
51:28
Speaker 1: to have a filter that will help you weed out
51:31
Speaker 1: the things that don't match the big picture must have
51:35
Speaker 1: in your life, and you start to create more confidence
51:38
Speaker 1: in the things that do fit what you're looking for,
51:41
Speaker 1: so that you can say yes to the right things
51:43
Speaker 1: easier and more effortlessly. Of course, if you'd ever like
51:47
Speaker 1: to do that type of work, Colm, check out the
51:49
Speaker 1: opportunities we have available for you in my group growing Self.
51:53
Speaker 1: Come to growingself dot com to request a free consultation
51:57
Speaker 1: with one of the very well qualified specialists in my network,
52:02
Speaker 1: all fully licensed therapist certified coaches who can help you
52:05
Speaker 1: dig deep into relationships, career, just yourself and your life. Additionally,
52:10
Speaker 1: you may have heard me talk about this on the
52:11
Speaker 1: show before. We have a very special program I call
52:15
Speaker 1: it Unstuck in eight weeks where you get to work
52:17
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52:21
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Speaker 1: through my coach training program, which is exclusively for licensed
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Speaker 1: mental health professionals to become board certified coaches. If you
52:33
Speaker 1: want to learn more about that, come togrowingseelf dot com,
52:36
Speaker 1: forward slash grow and I think at this point you
52:40
Speaker 1: can join the wait list for that program for when
52:43
Speaker 1: it enrolls again. All right, thanks again for spending this
52:47
Speaker 1: time with me today.
52:48
Speaker 2: I hope this was as.
52:49
Speaker 1: Interesting for you as it was for me. I got
52:51
Speaker 1: so much out of this conversation and I'll be back
52:53
Speaker 1: in touch with you again very soon for another episode
52:56
Speaker 1: of Love, Happiness and Success. I think