You Don't Want Autonomy With David Epstein

Okay, so I only had like an hour to write this morning. I thought I would get more time, but weirdly not getting my cuz my day is disrupted because I'm doing something later. I feel like I actually had a more productive day because I knew I only had an hour. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I find that completely right. It's like Duke Ellington famously said, "I don't need time. What I need is a deadline." >> Yes. because he couldn't like monotask unless he had a deadline. I kind of find that same thing. If I don't have a somewhat compressed time, I'll start thinking about all the different things I could be doing. Whereas, if I have a compressed time, >> it's like drives me to focus really carefully. And I think that's like there's actually research on creativity that shows that deadlines can either boost or inhibit creativity depending on if it leads you to monotask or multitask. If it leads you to monotask, it's wonderful and you're more productive and more creative. I think it's just generally the idea is like we think we want it how we want it. Like we think we want freedom. We think we want >> preference. We think we want it the way we want it. And it's actually usually when you don't get it the way that you want it that you do your best. >> Yeah. I mean, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, as he says, you think your brain's made for thinking, but it's not. It's made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible because thinking is like energetically costly. >> Yeah. And so left to your own devices, your brain goes for convenience, like doing things you've done before, not working too hard, all these things. So it's only if you block that proclivity for convenience that you can actually do hard things. basically by having some kind of constraint, whether it's a deadline or it's, hey, you're going to have to you're going to have to bang this out on an airplane or you've got to do the call between calls or or not not having it the way that you want it to be forces you out of your comfort zone and forces you to do it >> fresh and flexibly and all these things >> and and also I think to clarify the core of what you're trying to do. So, so one of the things, >> you know, one of the things that I hope >> maybe the mindset shift that I hope this book engenders is >> from seeing obstacles as just limiting things to seeing them as opportunities to clarify priorities and launch productive exploration. And I think when you have not everything you want, whether that's too little time, too little resources, >> you're forced to clarify what are the really important things here. I mean right on a larger scale things like momento my right it's like >> you don't have all the time you might want so you better clarify your priorities so in some ways it's like that on a more tactical scale I guess >> yeah if it forces you to question your assumptions because you don't have it the way that you want it to do so you're have to jettison some of the stuff it's like if they came to you and said hey you got to throw 20% of the cargo overboard you're going to ask yourself okay well what is the important cargo or if they said hey you can't do it the way you normally do it, you got to do it differently. You really think about what you were doing and why you were doing it and what you were trying to accomplish in a in a fresher way that that that you just didn't have to do it before. >> Totally. And I think you hit on kind of two separate important things there. One is that jettisoning 20%, right? Is which think about our writing. How much other stuff do you want to get into every book? Yeah, >> you write. How many other ideas do you >> I mean I often give like when I send the book to people, I don't go give me your thoughts because they're usually garbage. I say it, [laughter] if you have to cut 15% of this, what would you cut? Yeah. >> Or I go, what what part uh do you like the Tim Ferris >> did this to me a bunch of times, so now I do it to other people. I go, uh, here's the book. It's 12 chapters. Uh, tell me your favorite chapter and your least favorite chapter. Interesting. >> And and if you had to cut one chapter, what chapter would you cut? Yeah. And then they go, "Oh, like I >> I I mean I wouldn't cut anything, but if I had to." And now all of a sudden they give you more honest feedback because it no it it would have to be pretty bad for you to read like your friend's book or watch your friend's movie or whatever it is and go, "Yeah, this whole part sucks. Just get rid of it." Right? But if you said, "Hey, no, no, no. You I have to cut 15 minutes from this speech. >> What would you cut?" Now all of a sudden they're going to go like, "Okay, well this is the part that I feel like is actually not as good as the other parts." So, so it's it's sort of a forcing function to get feedback and criticism that you wouldn't ordinarily get. >> And I mean that kind of discipline is crucial, right, for the stuff that we do. I mean, this time I will say one of the reasons I got interested in this topic, there's like a hefty dose of me search because basically I sucked at putting there's a reason why I've come out with a book every six to seven years, right? And then the first two I wrote 150% of a book to get one book. >> And then after the last one after Range I became a dad and I said I cannot do that again. I can't I caught a trip to Arctic Sweden for my first book. Right? Like you don't want to be in that position. >> And so this time I made this thing I call my master thought organizing all my ideas. It it was 100,000 words long. Printed it out on paper. went to a hermitage in the garden of a Franciscan monastery for two days and just read it with, you know, no Wi-Fi, no read it one page at a time and then as soon as I was done, it's whatever salient stuff is in my brain, I'm making an outline on one page with it right now. And if it's not on that page, it's not going in the book. And this is the first time I wrote to length. The book's 20% shorter and I think tighter than my others. And I turned it in early, >> which is like for my first book, I had to get a year extension. A year. like you'd write eight books in that time that I got an extension and this so this time I I was done early and I thought I just like sat on it for a few weeks. I didn't even know what to do and turned it in early. But that those forcing functions like you said are crucial. when the reason you I I imagine a little inside baseball for people but the forcing function for you and this is probably why sometimes uh like there's a sophomore slump or people's other work isn't as good is that one of the things that happens is because of your success and and your first book was good and and and successful but then range was a a smash like you can now do whatever you want. >> Yes. >> Right. And not only can you do whatever you want, but then in the instances when you might be challenged or you might not be bringing your best self to something, people will indulge you. >> Yes. >> Right. So, you could have had a mediocre idea. You could have had a very self-indulgent idea. You could have had a a book that was too long, a book that was actually two different books smashed. You could have gone in a bunch of not great ways. What success often does is obliterate constraints. >> Yeah. >> And you would think that would be winning, right? Just like you'd think that, hey, I have a full day to work on this project. That's great. That's actually not great cuz you you'd probably do better if you only had an hour. Or if you had to to truly earn selling this book in a way that your previous success wasn't exempting you from some of the stuff, you wouldn't work as hard. >> Totally. Totally. I mean, it's actually given me some insight into why I think a lot of musicians when they break out, they then make like a terrible second album, basically. And that that kind of exactly happened to me after my first book actually, you know, did pretty well. Then I was given an offer to basically sign a blank book contract like without an idea, right? >> Yes. >> And I almost did and then I didn't. Thank goodness because >> it's a terrible thing to One reason I needed an extra year in my first book is because I hadn't done like enough research ahead of time because I hadn't been forced to because I was already a writer at Sports Illustrated and it was based on a long article I'd written. So, I didn't really have anything forcing containment, right? So, I I'd been so bad even with range, which worked well. I was terrible at like drawing boundaries around my project, which was bad for my personal life, first of all, but also the book probably could have been a little more coherent in some respects. And >> this is actually, not to go aside, but I just remembered we were at a writer's retreat >> together once, yes, after Rain came out, and we were asked, >> "What are you optimizing for this year?" And I said autonomy because when I finished range, I left my job. I was working at ProPublica as an investigative reporter at the time. But then I left that and for the first time had total freedom and I said I want to spend every minute of the day in a manner of my own choosing. Yeah. Right. Fast forward two years. Definitely such a thing as too much autonomy. >> Now I've been reeling that back, right? Containing my workday. Joined a nonprofit board in my community. like inconveniencing myself to sync up my schedule with other people and to find ways to contain my workday so it isn't just, you know, expanding into every nook and cranny. It's like I I think about when Mark Zuckerberg first advertised the metaverse. Yes. >> And he said it's going to be amazing. Everyone is going to live in a universe totally tailored and individualized just to them. >> And I didn't think about it that much when he said it at the moment, but now I'm like that sounds like hell. You know, that's like the path where I was going with so much freedom. It's like you're just living on your own. >> The irony is the metaverse was itself a terrible idea. Yeah. >> And that if Mark Zuckerberg had a different corporate governance structure around him, like he didn't control Facebook so much and Facebook wasn't so immensely profitable. That terrible idea would have been killed and because it's on its face stupid uh [laughter] and and and lame if he had us advisers. If only. >> Yeah. But no, but I'm just saying like that would ended up being like a 40 or$50 billion like yeah mistake that that like I think most reasonable people and I don't mean this in like sometimes there's groundbreaking ideas and you don't get it. It it it's just like you were solving a problem that no one asked you to solve. doing the thing that people don't want to do. Yeah. >> And probably >> even if it was an experiment could have been done much smaller and more effectively gotten the feedback that you overwhelmingly got on this enormous experiment later like maybe before you changed the entire name of the company to reflect this new thing like so again you think you want >> total freedom you think you want absolute power. You think you want no constraints and and I think you used the word contain there earlier. We tend to think of constraints as the bad thing but the other side of constraints is containment. It contains the downside risk of you being catastrophically wrong or out of touch or whatever. >> I mean even had the you said you know most reasonable people could see that the metaverse was stupid. I think even had it worked, I think it would have been terrible for people cuz again I I was starting to do that in real life going into a universe of my own creation where I was on my own schedule and you know not inconveniencing myself. So I think maybe a lot of people actually would have gone for that but it would have been terrible just like a lot of people would go for what I was going for and saying I can spend every moment in my own individualized world now because it seems so attractive. It feels like what you want, but it's actually bad for for how humans, you know, a hypersocial species can thrive. >> Again, this is a little inside baseball, too, but I think it it you can see where it applies to other things is like one of the reasons I don't like self-publishing is that again, you think you want to get the final say on all things and be able to do it. I find most self-published books take longer than expected. They're not as good as they could have been. There's all these reasons they don't work that it turns out that the inefficiencies and the frustrating nature and the bureaucracy and the constraints of traditional publishing prevent from happening. I would say I'm well aware that I don't want the final say like in book project. So this is at least from the time of signing contract to turning in. I turned in a little early but it was meant to be two years and the first year I don't write all just architect like the more experience I've gotten the more I realize it's about the architecture one of the sentences. >> And there is a certain point where I realize I have completely lost perspective. There's that idea if it's interesting to other people anymore. And so that involves, you know, a journalist called drowning some of my kittens or killing your babies where there are things that I think are really kill your darlings. Yeah. >> Or and that I think are really painful, >> but I'm aware enough that I've just lost perspective and that you really need that that other person. >> Well, it's also just like, hey, like you throw off all the rules. You can do it can be as long as you want. It can come out whenever you want. The cover can be whatever you want. You don't have to compete with other t all that again it seems like it'd be freedom but in a way it's kind of a prison because now you have to make all these decisions instead of going like >> hey this is how we do things here and hey you got to make this decision by this date and this decision like also to go back to deadlines which is where we started >> if every deadline is movable because you're actually in charge >> that's a real problem to be in that's a real problematic space too >> when I sign this contract I tell my agent he knows that I freak out as soon as I sign the contract I'm like what did I Can we get a Did I sign it in pencil? Can we erase it? And >> and >> his reaction this time was like, look, as you know, most people don't meet their book deadline. It's just a suggestion. I'm like, don't say that. Do not tell me that. I need to treat this thing as super real. It was like I was reading about Hay Miyazaki, the great animated filmmaker. >> And he had a colleague who called him the never-ending man because he was like, if we didn't say, "This is the day we're showing this in a theater." Yes. >> He would never stop tweaking. He would never stop. And and as you get more successful and you have more leverage, all those things do become more flexible. The governance has to become a form of self-governance. Either you have to force yourself into things that you can't >> wiggle your way out of or you have to say no no no this is the deadline and I'm holding myself to it or this is the way it's going to go today. >> Yeah. Fre freedom within a framework. And I and I find that even within my days, like one of the things that once I became like not a daily employed journalist anymore, I would also say like my competitive advantage is going to be I'm going to let this project swallow every moment of my life, right? >> And so I found that I also had to start, you know, not being in an office anymore, containing my own workday. >> I sort of stole from Isabelle Yende, who's a I think one of the not just I a lot of people think is one of the greatest living writers where she'll light a candle at the beginning of every workday and then blow it out at the end and she's like, "That's the end." and closes the door and goes out and I didn't say like when the candle runs out she's done which would also be powerful. Yes. It's like you flip an hourglass and you're like I have two hours or whatever it is. >> And I I mean I use electric candles. I'm not as brave as her and have too much paper in my office. But it was the first time where like once I was out of office I realized I needed a way to end the day basically. Otherwise it's like >> I'm thinking about it while my I'm doing stuff with my son and all that kind of thing. So yeah just all the structure is on you. Well, people sometimes are worried, you know, like having kids or having uh getting married will like sort of tie you down. And I go, yeah, to reality. Like it's a it's a constraint in a good way in that there are suddenly other important demands on your time. There's this Philip Roth quote that I hate um because [laughter] he's well he also sucks but it was in my life there's always an emergency and I'm the emergency or what like his point was it's all about him >> because he's the center of gravity of this whole universe as this powerful big writer person and like yeah you actually don't want your work to consume your life. You want it to be an important part of your life, but not the totality of your life. And having soccer practice or a kid that's sick or somebody who's going to be mad at you if you uh if you blow off dinner, whatever it is, it actually forces you to keep some semblance of regularity or normaly, which is turns out is actually very important. >> Totally. And that not only for your well-being, but also for kind of your your rhythm. Yes. You know, like people need rhythm and like seasonal seasonality in their lives. And I I don't think it impairs perform. Like I don't think we're saying don't be ambitious or anything like that. Like I think I'm better now than when I >> in the past when I did let it totally swallow my life. It's the most important thing to me in that hour that I have or that two hours. >> But you only have the hour. You only have two hours. >> That's right. And I I find that incredibly helpful and and and like I feel now like I could write more books too because I have a better balance in that way. Like I have more constraints ultimately more sustainable. >> Absolutely. To your to your marriage point by the way. So, another problem I had with excessive autonomy was I said, "Gosh, a book is so consuming. I'm not going to write one until I find the perfect topic." >> So, I spent all this time dipping my toes into topics and saying, "This is really interesting, but not perfect. I'm going to keep looking." >> And I spent like a long time doing that, you know? I mean, the pandemic was involved, but let's say two years. And then I come across this Mihi Chicks and Mihi quote, the psychologist who coined the term flow for the feeling of immersion in activity. And he's talking about marriage, but it could be applied to anything where he says one of the great things about being committed if you're committed by choice is you can stop wondering how to live and start living. Like you don't spend that energy wondering is there a next better thing, right? >> And that's what I immediately realized that's what I was doing with topics and you're never going to get the perfect one, right? >> So it's like that day I was like I'm super interested in constraints. I obviously need them. I'm writing a proposal on this right then. And of course, you know, two weeks later, I'm five times as interested in it as I was before I started. >> So when I think about the idea of constraints, the the first thing in my mind is actually this quote from Cleanths, who's one of the early Greek Stoics. He's talking about poetry, and he's talking about how the fedters of poetry, the the constraints of the length, but also the the rhythm and the rhyme structure is what creates the beauty of the poetry. And he says this is also true with a trumpet or a musical instrument. It's it's in sort of channeling and funneling the sound that you you get anything. Now, obviously, in in the centuries since we've invented sort of free form poetry and other forms of art, which I I guess are great, but there's a reason I think the haiku structure works or even just the rhythm and and rhyme structure of poetry. Again, you'd think it would be constraining artistically, but in fact, it is what makes the art. Totally. And this is like that that reminds me of Robert Frost's writing free verses like playing tennis without a net kind of thing and >> just hitting a ball around. >> Yeah. So let's take Harold Bloom. Love him or hate him but clearly one of the greatest literary critics ever. I think he would have said that the two greatest writers ever or at least most influential were Shakespeare and Dante. Dante chose to write to make up a rhyme scheme called Turszarma. ABA BCB CDC and and wrote all of the Divine Comedy in that Shakespeare as I learned in writing this book copied like crazy. Like he is I mean he >> he steals all the plot structures from >> sometimes he steals exact lines like some that's stuff that probably wouldn't go over as well today but that's like you know Andy was writing anamic pentameter which is not that wasn't that wasn't the way they talked to that like that's a thing he was doing. So these the two greatest most innovative writers were shackling themselves like crazy. And I think it's because they knew in some way or another long before neuroscientists did that your path goes down that path of least resistance unless you're unless you you block the solutions that you're used to is the only way you can really get to invention and creativity. >> When and Cleanth was talking about poetry as a metaphor for life which is you think you want things to go a certain way. You think you don't want to come face to face with obstacles or difficulties or doors being slammed in your face, but just like in art, this is what's actually directing or channeling your life in a way that you can't comprehend. And and it's also what's challenging you. Like if your poem could just be you going whatever you think, it's it's like it's not that it's not that cool. Like the the whole point is that like, oh, they they had to make this work and how did they pull it off? That's that's what it is. >> I think that's why like the speaking of it as a metaphor for life. I started a practice of like daily writing a haik coup. >> That's probably the simplest constraint in the book. Whereas haik coup used to be the beginning just the intra. So three lines five seven five syllables. >> And there's other constraints actually. It's supposed to always present tense and it's supposed to describe something real in the real world like as if you're taking a moment. And I I think I wrote of it as like cupping a firefly in your hand to show someone else. It's supposed to be something real not just your feelings. And this the sort of this guy Matsu Basho kind of the a Zen student who's like the Japanese Shakespeare lpped off those three lines and turned them into their own serious art form basically. And there's a reason why like kindergarteners do it because it makes anybody creative instantly. So you have these incredible fedters >> and immediately you're like how can I use certain words? Like what can I do with this? What can I do with that? And I would read about it as I was researching haiku and I kept seeing this phrase the way of haik coup. And I'm like what is the way? It's like a poetic form. I've never heard of a way of limrich or something. But it's because it was really part of a life practice that's supposed to look for places you can be bound and what you can do within that. You know, being creative with something small, doing one thing at a time. You're supposed to focus on and describe one thing. And so really it's this this this way of being of embracing obstacles because you understand they can take you somewhere you wouldn't get otherwise. >> Yeah. We went to this Japanese garden party the over the weekend and the kids were supposed to recite poetry at it and so my son gets up gets up and does this haiku that he I think he'd worked on in school but it was like it was a haiku about haikus. >> Okay. >> And and it was about meta. >> Yeah. And it was funny. He was talking about it's supposed to be it said something about like nature or wildlife and then it was very clear at the end he he he didn't know what to say and so it just went for the last three syllables it was 575 [laughter] >> and I was like oh that's so funny like you're even putting the instructions poetically and and even if he stole this from someone that that he recognized that that was clever is interesting to me. But yeah the way of the haiku is kind of what you were saying in the sense you're like I'm going to do a haiku every day. That's the way of the haiku in that you're going I'm going to force myself into a creative exercise which itself forces me to express that creativity in a certain way as opposed to what we often do which is get in our own heads or we only do it when something flies into our heads uh which which we would call inspiration and like the the idea of like no no no you do it because you're supposed to do it and you're supposed to do it this way and that sometimes takes you ironically in very unexpected directions. >> Totally. And I always felt I mean in some ways I think this gets at you know one of the threads obviously your work's very diverse like we've both written books that if someone just picked them off and they didn't have our names they might not know that that it was us but a thread I think in a lot of your work is that all this stuff is a practice you know whether it's discipline or wisdom or finding stillness is a practice and for me the main reason I embraced this way of haiku was not because I was inherently interested in poetry necessarily but actually because it caused me to slow down. Yeah, >> like you have to stare at something and you think in this very slow way. And so I kind of find that it would reset me and reset my writing a little bit if I was getting like too maleifuous with my writing or something like that. It was like taking a deep breath every day kind of. Well, I mean every day for the last 10 years I've done the daily stoke email and then I do the daily dad email also. One of the things I've start I mean I don't write it every day. I I write for it most days but I don't write the day's email that day, right? like I wrote five this morning and then maybe I won't write in this weekend but like um one of the things I've started doing as kind of a a forced exercise is so I have the idea usually what happens is I'll like I'll hear a song lyric or I'll see a quote or something I'll be like oh that would be a good sort of premise for a daily stoic email but one of the things I've started doing recently just to keep it interesting to me is I have the premise and then I'll write that premise three or four different ways >> so Like I was doing one about how like we were going to go to this kids concert. We were like, "Do we want to go?" Uh, you know, it's like we got to drive like 30 minutes there. The kids have loved it, but like are they going to care going for the 30th time or whatever? And then we're like, but they're not going to want to do it that much longer. So the the the premise it was like how much longer are they want going to want to do that? And so I could write it about this specific concert thing. And I did. Uh, this is for Daily Dad, not for Daily Stoic, but I was like, "Okay, that's one take on the premise, but then is there another take and another take and and so I wrote maybe five on the same premise?" Now, now they they're all going to have to be spread out because they can't run the same the same thing five days in a row, but it was like, "Oh, okay. So, previously I would just I would have the idea and then I would just explore it whichever way sort of naturally fit." And then I would go, "Okay, now that avenue is closed off, what's a different direction I could take it? What's a a third direction I could take So now I'm kind of riffing on the same idea from a couple different angles and then from a content perspective it's nice cuz I'm getting you know three or four bites at the apple but it's also forcing me to not just settle for whatever the most natural first >> iteration of the idea is. >> And so the all five will be based on this will they want to keep doing this and just the first one is on the concert the others will be something else right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe maybe one's about a concert and then another is about like hanging out with you and like I forget exactly how I did them, but it it's also it's like yeah and those five emails can go out over five months because it's an important idea, but it's just forcing me to to take the idea and go, okay, maybe the first time I'm putting it up top and then the second time I'm going to build it around this other like when you're starting a chapter in a book or whatever it is like there's a lot of ways into the idea. >> Yeah. And oftentimes you just go with whatever you went with because you went with it because it's the first most >> you're not going to rewrite it. If it's if it's good, you're going to stick with it. But like if it got deleted and you forgot it, you would do it differently the second time. >> Totally. So you're forcing yourself to be resourceful. And also your first idea probably isn't the best one, right? This is like Conorman's availability heristic. It's just the thing that's like most recent or pops into your head. >> And there's something called the creative cliff illusion. That is the idea that people think that their like best creative ideas will come first or not at all. Yeah. And actually they tend to come later in a session after you've thought for a little while. >> And so in many cases you're probably coming up with better ideas later on. >> It also kind of reminds me now you have three or four you've you've warmed up. It's forcing you to spitball. Okay. Now you you took all the stuff right off the top of your head. Now you actually have to do some cognitive digging. >> You got to do work. Yes, that's I mean that's what good constraint one of the things good constraints do. They make you do work that you wouldn't do otherwise. And that really reminds me of like in chapter two of inside the box I read about Pixar's three pitches rule where they force directors to pitch three ideas because they found otherwise they just get so attached to their first idea and it usually wasn't their best idea. Like it usually was not the film that they wanted that they ended up making. Not that it was a bad idea, but it wasn't their best. So So that was a rule like you cannot bring us one pitch. There have to be three quality pitches. >> I I have the managing editor of D. token daily data. Her name is Katie. I write all the emails and then I write the subject line. And if we were in 1998, that subject line would be what goes out on the email. But we're not. Now you can AB test what performs better. So an AB test premises that you do here's A and here's B. But actually, we use this company called Kit to send out the daily sto emails. Well, you can test five ideas. >> So like she has to I like I'm like I'm going to write one and then you have to write four other ones. >> Interesting. >> Yeah. And then and then so so again the forcing function of like okay well here's one that's good but if if I just said you could accept that she would accept it and if I said no you have to write an alternate one she would write one good alternate one but then it's it's really in the digging on the other three that some like I would say most of the time mine is best and or hers is best but it's actually in the other three that some percentage of the time you come up with something that really works. Interesting. So, so sometimes it is those other three that are getting picked. >> Yeah. But most of the time it's not, right? Like, so, so I think, you know, constraints aren't magically always the best, but it's that sometimes they are, and it's enforcing you to do it the other way. Like, who knows? Maybe the fir if I write five emails on an idea, maybe the first one's best or the second one's best. >> Sometimes the fifth one is best. It's not like always the fifth one's best. Otherwise, there would be a rule that you have to do it five times every time. >> So, because writing one email is always going to happen. Like, that's the obvious thing. So, it's putting something in place that forces you to sometimes get your best work that you would not have gotten otherwise. You always write the >> Hey, think about it from a different angle. Like comedians will talk about this, too. They're like, "Tonight, like open with your closer." >> Oh, and like like whatever you think is your best performing joke, you have to open with that >> and then so one, you you start off really hot, but then it forces you to elevate your other material and perform it as if it's a closer. And so again, just kind of just doing it differently, those kind of forced constraints or forced functions just forces you to perform and act and try things from. >> I think it's like almost I don't want to extend this too far, but it's like almost anything that blocks doing what comes to you intuitively. >> Yes. >> Is going to be generative in some way. Almost anything. >> Yes. And not always generative at the same level, but like sometimes it will. >> Yeah. You know, sometimes it will. is what Patricia Stokes, a psychologist, calls a preclude constraint where you preclude the previous way you've solved things and it's like she goes through sort of artistic innovation history and it's like the thread that she pulls on it's every you know whether it's Picasso or whoever it is they they do something that often intentionally but not always sometimes it's forced upon them sometimes they choose it to block whatever it is that came intuitively to to them and usually and to their peers. So what are desirable difficulties? That seems like an an oxymoron. That's a term psychologists use first the psychologist Robert Bjork to describe learning tactics that make learning slower in the short term often more frustrating but make it stickier and more flexible in the long term. So things like you know we think of tests as only for evaluation but in fact before you even study something or try to learn it you should take a test on it. You should quiz yourself. It doesn't matter if you get everything wrong. It's so it feels terrible, but it actually primes your brain for the subsequent learning. It's called the generation effect. So when I'm with my kid, I always ask him to guess things before I tell him because it doesn't matter if he gets of course now he makes me guess everything too, but it primes your brain to then retain the information. And the the more wrong you are actually, the more likely you are to retain the information. It's called the hyperorrection effect. >> Isn't there probably also something in just like tests are stressful and getting comfortable being stressed and challenged has benefits too? Like you know what I mean? It's not just like, oh, you're taking the test so that they can track whether you're retaining the knowledge or not, but like life is full of tests metaphorically and otherwise. And like when people are like, oh, I'm just bad at taking tests. It's like seems like you're going to have a hard time just being a person then >> because like we're all and you have to figure out how to get good at the things that you're bad at. That's for sure. But on a tactical level, like if you take two people and you give one a half hour to study the material and the other a half hour, you know, they take a test, they know nothing about it and then they see the answers. The retention like a week later, >> they were they they had to come face to face with not knowing a thing and then they learned the thing after they learned that they didn't know it and then they remember >> there's some priming of your brain that's like I don't know this. I'm I'm ready to receive it now. And so a few of the other desirable difficulties, one called interle or people call mixed practice if they want to use English, [laughter] you know, psychologists not so good at marketing their ideas, but it basically means like if you have a bunch of things you're trying to study, material, math problems, uh styles of a painter, whatever, instead of studying all one type at once, you should mix them all together. And then instead of it, it forces you to create these more generalized mental templates where you understand the structure of a problem. So to give an example, there was a randomized study that put middle school classrooms and either they got what's called blocked practice where it's like problem type A a aaa bbb etc. or interled mixed practice where it's like you threw all the problem types in a hat and draw them out at random. That group slower, more frustrating. They often rate their own learning lower in that kind of condition. But instead of just executing procedures, they're forced to match a strategy to a type of problem. And when they all were tested on new problems, the mixed practice group blew the block practice group out of the water. It was like the equivalent of taking a kid from the 50th percentile and moving them to the 80th. They studied the same thing, but in a in an order that made it more difficult for that one group that kind of forced them to do the hard mental work. or one one you might like in particular uh because it it comes from some of Senica's wisdom is dokendo discomus which is by teaching we learn. So if you are there there are studies where people are told that they're going to have to teach some material and even if they don't the best is actually if you do have to teach it but even thinking you're going to have to teach it causes you to organize it more coherently in your mind and so you're much more attentive to like what are the main ideas? How are things connected? And so that you know that old wisdom of like you learn what you teach turns out to be now centuries later >> because validated you're understanding that going into you're gonna have to understand it at a level that allows you to explain it to someone else. So you can't just sort of Yeah. Yeah. I think I get it. >> Yeah. So you're not just thinking of like memorizing things. You're think how how can I coherently structure this. And the weird thing is you'd think well I can just I can just do that right. I'll just I'll just coherently structure this time. But it just doesn't work. You know you actually have to put yourself in that spot of I'm going to have to teach this. So, it's a good idea to if you really want to learn something to try to teach it to someone. >> When the Roosevelt was president, he would take his kids on these walks actually through Rock Creek Park, which I know is near you. Yeah. >> And and the the the rule of the experience was if they ran into an obstacle or impediment, they were not allowed to go around it. So, if they came to a river or a stream or a pile of rocks or a tree that fell down, they were not allowed to go around. They had to figure out a way to go over it effectively. And so he's basically just taking his kids out on an obstacle course every day. And that that he thought this was great for sort of physical fitness but also kind of mental stimulation. And then of course it's a metaphor for life. I love that. I love that. If if next time you're in my area, I want to take you over to Boulder Bridge where I can show you an old picture because I went on like a guided nature walk in Rock Creek >> of Roosevelt and there's this one kind of bouldering spot that's really picturesque where he would take people who were visiting from other countries and like clamber up it and then laugh at them trying to do it. So you can see people in like formal clothing trying to get up these rocks. >> He'd be like, "Hey guys, I think we got to take our clothes off to ford this stream." [laughter] They're like, "What the president?" But that was his kind of thing is he I think he just he loved challenges and he loved >> like having to do hard stuff and he he also lost a gold ring right by that bridge and put an ad in the newspaper. So there's like an you know a more than century >> old ad that's like president's gold ring lost reward and it's never been found. So >> that's amazing. Could still be in there. >> Could it's probably under you know however many meters of sediment now. But yeah, >> it just strikes me as so different than kind of what you can instinctively want to do as a parent and then sort of culturally we do as parents, which is like >> how do I make things as easy as possible? Like they call him snowplow. Like that's the opposite of being a like helicopter to snowplow, right? Just clear the road. I mean, I find this with with my kid >> all the time. I mean, I was interviewing Jonathan Height for the book, and I remember one of the stats he was telling me was that a remember the exact age, but I think it was like a 15-year-old boy has about the same odds of breaking their arm now as a 50-year-old man, whereas a generation ago or two generations ago, a 15-year-old boy was way more likely because clambering on rocks or whatever it is. And so since then, I kind of I'm not saying I like not like push my kid off a ledge or anything like that, but but I've internalized, okay, I accept the increased risk that he is going to break his arm or something bad is going to happen in return for kind of letting him wander some and you know, maybe get hurt. I'm like I I tell him like, as long as you don't break your head, >> yes, >> it's okay. We'll fix anything else. >> And like look, some of it's for the best. I mean, my dad broke his his neck as a kid. Like that's what you don't want to happen. like that. That's cuz he was on monkey bars without the you know the stuff at the bottom and then I'm sure no one was watching and like the idea that we were doing it well in the past is probably yes a delusional uh you know >> monkey bars over concrete that's like 20 ft high. Yeah. >> But but yeah, are your kids experiencing discomfort and struggle? And then you can see it clearly how it's key in the your kids development. What about you? Where where especially in a world where you can get everything delivered? You know, you can so easily specialize all the ways that we just sort of naturally and almost gravitationally just remove the constraints and difficulties that that by the way you're struggling and getting better for having to deal with >> everything is so convenient, right? It's like and if you're if you're working from home too, right, as I do, it's like everything to you and everything is super convenient. But but I just don't think convenience as our renant value is actually the way that people thrive. >> If you're going to eliminate inconvenience in one area, that ought to be with the idea that you are finding other places, more meaningful or significant ways to struggle elsewhere. >> Totally. I mean once again once I got on my own individualized schedule because I don't really have I ceased to have colleagues when that happened. I didn't realize how much I would miss that. So one of my practices in reeling back my excessive autonomy I guess you'd say was I'm like I am not having enough embodied experience with strangers. Yes. >> So I started going places. I mean I started going these like dance meetups and and class you know just to be somewhere with strangers again. Here's one I found that's going to sound a little humble braggy but I was like I found I was not going into rooms very often where I was not like a special person. Like it would be like this person is meeting me in the lobby to take me upstairs to the thing where everyone knows where I'm going to be and then I'm introduced. I wasn't like in a lot of there's an awkwardness to that to be sure, but I wasn't in a lot of like awkward social situations where I was like I come and I'm like, "Hey, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do." You know, like and and and so like one of the reasons I like it's like, "Okay, my kid just started lacrosse, so it's like I got to do go do that for him." >> Yeah. >> And we're like, "Hey, we don't know what to do." like how do you how are you in those situations where there's social discomfort and unfamiliarity? You're the one that doesn't fit in. You figure out how to handle those situations and then you become a person who can handle those situations. And if you don't do it, you become conversely the person who can't handle those kinds of situations. They're very unfamiliar and >> uncomfortable for you. >> Highly recommend some uh beginning dance classes. does have to say you go in there like >> I went in it's like I'm probably I probably single-handedly raised the average age by like 5 years >> and was this a kids dance class >> younger people you know 20s mostly >> I thought you would lower I thought it'd all be old people who are retired and doing salsa or whatever >> no no shuffling so I got interested in it because I watched a documentary I I mean I've always liked I like dancing in general but this kind of dancing was created in crowded clubs in Melbourne Australia because people wanted to be able to change directions and do stuff in a really small space which probably why it's good for like Instagram because you're going back and forth the same space. >> And so I showed up at these things and it's like not only am I older, no, nobody cares what other stuff you've done, right? Total beginner and it's scary. Like I I don't even know the etiquette, you know, warm me what do I what do you wear? >> Yeah. >> But it's also kind of wonderful in that way, right? Because it's so different and and you get a chance to be a beginner again and >> it's low stakes practice for awkwardness, right? And I've always been a fan of that because when I started in journalism, I switched over from where I was training to be a scientist, got into writing >> and was certainly more introverted. Like I would pace around before I would interview somebody. Talking to strangers was not my thing. But the only job I could get starting at midnight and going to the morning at a tabloid in New York City, right, where nothing happened. Yeah. >> This happens between midnight and 10 a.m. is going to New York Daily News. >> So for low stakes practice, I would go in elevators and force myself to talk to people because it's over in 30 seconds to a minute no matter what happens. super awkward, but it's like great low stakes practice. So, I'm I'm a big fan of low stakes practice for awkwardness. And low stakes, hey, we're going for a walk in the woods, and the rule is just going to be we're going to go over the obstacles instead of finding the easy way. And then you go, hey, I'm I'm confident in my ability, literally and figuratively, >> to figure out how to deal with stuff that's in my way. >> And and if you're not, where do you expect somebody to learn how to get over obstacles if you're not taking those, you know, if you're doing the snowplow thing? Yes. Like then don't be surprised when you're not there and they run straight into a snowbank. >> One way I think about it is like okay it is inevitable that you are going to experience difficulties and adversity and obstacles in life. >> Do you want when that happens for it to be the first time you are dealing with it in a serious way or do you want to go I deal with [ __ ] like this all the time and so you're you're developing reps. you're getting comfortable with an uncomfortable thing and then when it happens in a big way, it's not unfamiliar to you. >> You just you just reminded me of a line I probably haven't thought about in 20 years back when I was like reading NZ, which I haven't read in a long time, where he says something like, gosh, I hope I don't brutalize this. It's something like, if your friend asks for a bed, give them a bed, but give them a bed that's cold and hard because life is cold and hard. Or something like that. And you know, whatever. I would give my friend a fine bed if they came over. But the idea >> that you want to be prepared for this stuff, right? You don't want to be surprised when things get hard. >> Well, there's actually an idea with the Spartans. If they were faced with this predicament, they would give their friend the comfortable bet and they would take the uncomfortable bet. And like it the idea of exposing forcing challenges on other people other than your kids is not your role in my in my view, right? But the idea of of yeah, getting comfortable with cold and hard things is a is a good place to be. I mean, I worry for sure more with my kid about adversity deficit than I do about too much adversity. They're both have cause for concern, but I'm more worried that he won't have enough adversity in the early going. Talk to me about your thoughts on on AI cuz like what it does is it makes a lot of really hard time consuming things easy. >> Yeah. >> And so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? >> Yeah. A few things. I mean I think that so we were talking about desirable difficulties things that make learning more difficult and so far this this kind of first let's say like first run of research on AI looks terrible from that respect like there was an MIT study that got a lot of headlines talking about brain rot how using chat GBT will rot your brain but there was actually more nuance in the study so can I describe what what happened in there So, so these MIT students were had to write essays on different topics and they were broken up into groups. One group had to just write using their brains and one group had write using chat GPT. They could use chat GPT. They didn't have to. And they write on these topics and then they're brought I think they wrote three essays and then they're brought back sometime later and they have to write on the same topics again and they're asked about the things they wrote and this time they're switched. So the brain first group can now use chat GPT and the chat GPT can now go to brain and basically everything for the chat GBPT group looked worse. They didn't remember anything they'd written. Their their essays were more uniform and homogeneous and less interesting. Whereas the group that used chat GPT second did did quite well. You know there were stuff about their brain activation but I don't like to lean on fMRI data. So I think the the rule that comes out of their suggestion would be brain first tool second. And there's just this mounting evidence that's saying that people are using it to kind of replace their thinking instead of to supplement it and that that's bad because then they do not learn. Like if they have it right their first draft, they have real trouble recalling any of the content. It's actually even if they're like and then I go over it, >> right? >> Writing the essay is is to write the essay, not to have the essay, right? It's it's right. It's it's to force yourself to do a hard thing, even if it's somewhat arbitrary thing, a teaching thing, to do it coherently, >> right? It's to force you into this structure that requires you to think and comprehend and communicate in a certain way. And then you on the other side of it, yes, you do have the essay, but more importantly, you have the skills of having done the thing. >> I mean, a huge portion of the writing that everyone does, especially when they're younger, is not because you care about getting the best essay. >> Yes. It's because you're learning how to make an argument, how to think. You're learning the material that's in there. You're learning how to organize things coherently. It's not because you need the most polished essay in the world. So, you know, we're still early days for this research, but so far it's looking pretty bad for how it affects people's thinking. I think there are other I find it fascinating. Like there's a research use I have for it that turns something that would take me 10 hours into one >> of what? So I use this site where I can upload a paper, scientific paper, and it will immediately create a map of other papers that cite my paper with bubbles of different size showing how cited those papers are. So I can see which are the real big deals in this field that cite my paper. It'll try to automatically organize them into supporting or refuting. I'd say it's right like say 75% of the time. and then it will make a list that excerpts a few sentences around the the the mention of the paper that I'm interested in. That's something I used to control f my way through PDFs for for hours and hours and hours. So that's amazing. And I mean I find it interesting in all sorts of ways. At the same time, I think there's that issue with the undesirable ease that it does the thinking where it's, you know, it depends how you use it, but most >> that the the task is supposed to be hard. >> The task is supposed to be hard. That's the nuance that was lost in the brain rod headlines, which is that it did actually show that if you used brain first, it was good. The other thing I think is it just gives people an infinite capacity to just start a bajillion different things and to create, you know, now you're hearing this term work slop to just create a ton of mediocre stuff that buries the people, >> can you research this for me? And then they give you 80 pages of [ __ ] they printed out as opposed to thinking about. >> So it's like creating more work in the system. It might offload from one person, but there's this cartoon where someone is like, "AI is great. I gave it these four bullet points. It turned it into a six-page email." And then the other end, the person gets the email like, "AI is great. It took this six-page email, turned it into four bullet points." >> So, I think there's a lot of that going on. And I I think, >> you know, through the lens that I'm thinking of the world right now, I think there's going to be even more need for proactive constraints because you can start so much stuff and do so much stuff. There's actually like one AI company that I've spent a bunch of time with because I know the founder and I wanted to understand how these things work, how they train. So, I sit in on their demos and all this stuff. I've talked to other companies that use them. And one of the things I've noticed is most of these companies are saying, "I need AI. I know I need AI." So, they implement it, >> but they didn't identify a problem. >> Yes. >> And define it well that the tool matches, right? And so they'll end up implementing it and it starts generating. Yeah. And they're they're you know generating more of this work slop and all this stuff. And so I think we're often skipping over the define the problem and then let's see how the tool fits with this because there's this race you know you feel so behind if you haven't implemented it everywhere. >> Yeah. I I was thinking about AI in in the through the lens of your last book about range, right? Because obviously if you only do a very specific thing >> Yeah. the chances of it replacing you, I guess, would be higher. Yeah. In some ways, right? Like we've been spent the last 15 years telling everyone to become coders and now it's really good at coding. And uh >> that was like supposed to be the safest job 5 years ago. >> That's not great. But I've also found it in my use of it, which is that like if I have a a a decently broad base of knowledge about an area, I'm actually I find the the AI is is not that great because I I'm able to spot all the ways that it's wrong. And it's in fact where if you're a specialist, you're actually more vulnerable to this because you don't know what you don't know and then you're more reliant on like so there's some stuff it does really good, but I'm finding to be good at it, what you have to have is kind of a broad liberal arts knowledge base. Recognizing slop requires a lot of knowledge. >> Yeah. I think it requires actually knowing a ton of stuff first of all like knowing information. Yeah. Which people think is just obiated now. and just having a good sense of kind of information hygiene like where to say this doesn't sound right. >> So to your point I mean two two things to your point. First of all, I had this experience recently of conversing with AI, I guess, and it brought up a fact that I was like, how did you know that? It it was about the number of Charles Darwin's pen pals that he kept and he would like hit them up for information on. And I was like, man, that is a very obscure fact that I happened to know because I read this specific paper that went into range for it. And then it talked about the the researcher that studied his pen pal correspondence. I'm like, that is so weird. I know both of these things and that's the right fact, but the wrong researcher. and it's creating this whole narrative about it. >> And so I started asking, "What's your source?" >> Yeah. >> It turns out it's me. It was excerpts that somebody somebody put up on Goodreads or whatever, some part of my book, and it had taken two things that were close in physical proximity, >> mashed them together, and then like filled it out with a narrative basically slop on top of it. >> Yeah. I'm like, you would never like I might be the one person that would have caught this particular thing, right? >> Yes. >> So there's that aspect of it. And also, I mean, one thing that's happened, Range is kind of having a little bit of a second life because the the beginning of the book is framed early in this like looking at kind and wicked learning environments in the world like these situations that are sort of more stable. Will you solve the same problem over and over versus those where you have to kind of reinvent and learn new things all the time. And increasingly, we're all in that wicked world where like work next year won't look like work last year. And the argument it makes is that people with breath are particularly prepared for that kind of world and even gets into, you know, using human computer chess partnerships as a model like where things are going. And I had no idea where we were going to be with AI now, but people have started to view that as preant as this argument for like these synthesizers being more powerful and like anthropic just said they only want programmers with side quests. And uh the Financial Times just did this big analysis that showed that the returns to like collaborative and coordination skills are accelerating and how fast they're outpacing like just technical skills. So I think we're going to need people building the LLM of course or specialists, but but other people are going to have to learn broadly and reinvent if they want to not just be producing a ton of slop. >> When you think even like what they call sort of prompt engineering engineering, but like if you're like, "Hey, draw me a picture of this." It's going to give you some random slot basically. But if you're like if you're able to go, hey, I want a picture of this in the style of this artist from this era. By the way, I don't want it to look like X, Y, or Z. Like, the more precise you're able to be. And the the irony of that preciseness coming from your broad sense of of all the different avenues that it could go, it's really important. Like, you have to have this sense of knowledge. Like I I was having it do something in this book I'm researching now. I'm exploring like this brief period in somebody's life when he was on a college football team. And I I I have this letter where he's listing some of the people he remembered playing with. And so I like upload this chunk of the letter and I'm able to I'm I'm asking okay like what did these people go on to do? Right? And so this is 70 years ago or something. You know some of the names are common some of them are not. and and it's it's telling me, oh, this person went on to do this and this person went on to do this. This person went on to do this and like it it it makes this one confusion. It, you know, Stan Turner goes on to play moderate professional football career and it's like, okay, no, no, >> this is clearly Stan's Field Turner who goes on to be the the director of the CIA in the Carter administration. Like, but I knew enough to go, hey, you've confused this person and this person. hit is never going to be like it could be this person or it could be this person. I don't know. >> It's going to confidently give me the answer and I have to not confidently but but be just unsure enough that I go are you sure you don't mean this? And then we're able like so you have to have this basis of knowledge that allows you to spot [ __ ] >> Yeah. Yeah. And then just like anyone that's ever used a research assistant, also you have to have this meta understanding that you can never trust anything anyone gives you. If someone is prepping stuff for you, you have to then go independently verify all this information or there's a a vulnerability in your system. And so like the ability to know have that sort of just intuitive [ __ ] detector and then the knowledge base to to know what's not working and not working and then also the standards which is like I will never turn in or publish or show anyone anything that I haven't personally >> vetted. These are all skills that you're going to need to function in this. I >> I think those take a while to develop though too. When I think about some of the mistakes I made as an early journalist, I didn't recognize certain potholes that are obvious in retrospect until I like got something wrong. Yeah. You know, or had >> you trusted a source and then your editor was like, "Well, what do you mean you just printed what they said or whatever? You you learn >> and and you don't even know some of the assumptions you make, right?" Like, so in this book, I mean, I hired a I ran a I ran a lot of stuff. I was writing through AI, you know, for facte, but I had a hired a human facteer also. Yes. And I was a fact checker in the past and I also went through it myself like line by line crossing out one line at a time. And when I finished the book because I kept really good in my my first book, The Sports Scene. I was a little sloppy with citations. I was like, "This is so interesting. I'll remember where this came from." And then it took me six weeks to like recreate my sources and do bibliography. With range, I kept better track, but still sometimes was trying to recreate something. This time it was like every line I annotated so I wouldn't be. So this time when I finished with inside the box I was like >> do I need to spend 10 grand on a fact checker? Like I think I was really careful this time. I probably nailed it. >> And then I fact checked myself. I probably made a change on every page right >> going back through like you just are not attuned to all the assumptions you make. And if you're slowing down to catch them all, you never get the thing done. Also, >> well isn't that one of the benefits though to to flip your book's premise on its head, right? Like there are things that constraints would prevent you from doing, right? So it's like I would say AI is not great at fact-checking, but it's also free. Yes. >> So So like I Yeah. On my last book, I ran it through or even stuff as I'm writing now, I'll run it through and I'll go, "Hey, what am I missing? Where could this be better? What's wrong? You know, is anything jump out at you as being incorrect?" And I would say 85% of what it brings up is totally wrong. like like it it caught this thing um where it was like hey you know it says this that can't possibly be true and it's like okay well I have a a letter from 1962 like where this is in fact exactly what happened it's false positives are very high >> but if it gives you one or two or three or 10 things that you wouldn't have caught otherwise >> and all you're paying is this monthly fee that's great right like you probably wouldn't have hired two fact checkers or three fact checkers so you still do it the old way and then you get this other way on top that's and only upside >> and in this case right only upside because you're just saying oh I better take a closer look at that essentially you're not saying this is going in right so it's just attuning you to things you may have overlooked which I think is great and I would say for for people that are listening to us and thinking about using it in this way >> I would say use >> a very very small chunks when you put that in because I I think that people have a tendency if it spits out a long answer >> the like the the more text you're looking at at once the the less meticulous I think you're going to be about like questioning this. Um, if it gives you a few sentences, I think you're going to focus in and question the things that it said. If you're like, fact check these 20 pages and it spits out 20 pages, I just don't think you're going to be as careful. So, I would do it in very one chunk, two chunk, which again is hard because you could throw in hundreds of pages and say, fact check this thing, right? Well, the and then the other interesting thing about constraints, right, is like so you you can have you read this section, give me your notes, and then it does it. And then you can you can do as you wouldn't do with a person because you're not a monster, you'd be like, do it again. do it again. Do it again. And what's remarkable is how you'll get different answers each time. And so again, the lack of constraints, the reduction in cost, let's put aside the environmental impact, which I don't know enough about to speak authoritatively, but you can you can have it do the task many many times. Like, so if you're like, hey, I'm I'm I want a picture for a presentation. I want it to look like this. I want it to look like this. And then it does it and you go, okay, try it again. Actually, give me three options. Give me Yeah. Right. You just say, make it better. and you get and so the reduction in constraints allows you to get things that you wouldn't get out of a human which is five options and then you can mix and match them together and and there there's benefits there too. >> For sure. For sure. And I mean that's like the march of a lot of efficiency in a lot of our tools, right? They or what Clayton Christensen called empowering innovations. They bring something that you know maybe someone with a staff could have done but now someone without a staff can do it much more cheaply. It's like where you know you used to have to have like a desktop computer and then it gets cheaper and everybody can carry one around with them. But I do still think it's incumbent upon people to put a lot of constraints into that process or else you just end up with the work slop stuff and try and outsourcing your thinking completely which is a whole other problem. Like I wonder for some jobs now you know so five years ago is coding is you learn to code you'll never need another job. Now it's like the least safe thing maybe other than some of what we do. I don't know. But I wonder how do you get kind of senior coders if you don't have junior like where are the minor leagues for a lot of these things or when I didn't end up working as a I mean I did when I was a grad student work as a scientist but >> how do you get your hours to be the same person >> like I developed in so much of my work has been based on research peer-reviewed research that I thought was wrong that I picked out because I had a strong quantitative background and I got that intuition from being in grad school for geology. Right. Right. Right. And so it's like where do you if you just skip over that, you don't really get that intuition that allows you to pick out stuff that's wrong. >> Totally. All right. So la last question for you. I think the first time we talked you had just had your son. >> Yeah. >> And I've often said that I think range is a parenting book in disguise. >> Yeah. I love that. >> Um which I did not see until then it would once I had a son I was like, "Oh, it's obvious." >> So funny that you didn't think that when you're like here here's how these two athletes were raised very differently to be great at what they do. That you wouldn't see that as a as a parenting angle. cuz that just came out of me like arguing with Malcolm Gladwell while we were running together, you know? So, I just thought of it as my my argument with Malcolm. >> How was your son? >> He's seven. >> Seven. Okay. So, seven years in. How's it changed you? Has it changed how you think about things? >> Yeah. Being a parent either just as a person, but also maybe even the range versus specialization dichotomy or or even now with constraints. I mean, so I in the past I would have been let me go back even to my first book because I think I would have been like a 10,000 hours kind of parent because I was sort of that way with myself more >> and in that first book I didn't write about it so much only a little but I read a lot of behavioral genetics and the first law of behavioral genetics is all behaviors have a genetic component. It's it's never 100% but it's never zero. >> I mean it's never close to 100%. It's never close to zero. And so one of the things I realized in that is that parents are not like molding from a a blob of clay their kids to the extent that they may think that they are. And so at first I thought that was kind of a bummer or fatalistic. And then I was like well maybe I actually I don't really want to have to micromanage somebody like and just like help them become and explore their options. And so it actually made me feel a little better about having a kid later. And so with range, it kind of extended that where there there's this part in the book where I really mostly wrote about in the afterward I added to it about what the ar this army program called talent-based branching where they had these huge retention problems and they they implemented this program first they tried to throw money at people and it didn't work. half billion dollars taxpayer money down the drain, only taxpayer money, so who cares? But didn't change retention at all. And then this these programs like talbased branching where they'd say, "Hey, instead of picking your career tracking, going on the upper out uh kind of ladder will pair you with like a mentor coachlike figure. You have to dip your toe into at least five different career paths, you reflect on how it fits you with your mentor. You have to keep track of the reflections in an online portal." 90% of the cadets who went through it changed their career preference. Oh, >> and that improved retention where money bonuses had not just this ability to have this sampling period and explicit reflection which is super important. It turns out we don't explicitly reflect enough. And so I kind of view my role as a parent as like the coach figure in that talent based branching where I arrange some options and the real goal is how can I heighten the learning signal that my kid gets from each of those things about what he's interested in, what motivates him, what challenges him and then within that also to build in certain skills like he's into violin now, right? Of course, I end up being a violin parent. Yeah. >> But >> at first, we would listen to music a lot and I said, "Well, we've got a piano, we've got a guitar. Why don't you try those?" >> But we went to a block party and he was like, "Violin sounds the best." Like, "All right, you're not going to argue with that." >> So, we're doing violin, but within that, I implemented some of the things I know from range, which is training by ear first. So, he learned the sound instead of the grammar. So, he's all trained by ear. So, he can copy, but he can't read music. >> I mean, he will get to that, right? that's how I started >> instead of the part that can be the part that makes it not fun. >> Right. Right. And and also I mean I think there's just clear learning benefit to like with the language analogy is you want to be thrown in first and you learn the grammar later, not the reverse if you want the knowledge to be more flexible. >> And within that I'm like I don't care if it's violin or juggling or whatever. Now we're going to learn some practice habits and getting him to what what do you think went wrong there? What what surprised you? what could you just facilitating this really explicit reflection to the point where he's becoming sort of more of the maestro of practice in some ways than I am >> and I don't care what it is that he's doing to get those habits. So arraying these options, helping him understand what does he like. I'll even tell him, I'll be like, you know, you seem to be you seem to like performing at things cuz he's he's he's always does his best when in these little performances much more so focused than in practice. And so just highlighting for him stuff that he's good at. And then he'll start to be like, >> well, back what you're noticing he's doing well >> and then he starts internalizing it, right? So and I'll be like, gosh, you're really interested in science. Like here's what scientists do. Let's read new scientists together. Maybe that question you asked someday you could study that as a scientist. And then Thanksgiving they have this thing you had to color in at school. It says I'm it's a turkey. It says I'm not a turkey. I am a fill in the blank >> scientist. Yeah. Right. Wow. >> And so >> just highlighting so that I can help him get the biggest learning signal he can out of each thing he's doing because I realize I'm not going to make him from a blank slate. He's very different than I was a crackhead for sports when I was his age and he's not interested. >> That's fine, right? Not trying to make him something he's not and more trying to help him become and and give him fruitful experiments. So like with the constraint stuff, if he's drawing, I'll be like, "You know what? Try your left hand. Try both hands at once." >> And often that leads to pretty cool stuff that he likes. Like I'll force him into some experimentation. So, just trying to use those things that I've learned to to >> make sure that I'm pushing him in certain ways. >> Yeah. >> And helping him understand who he's going to become and developing >> what's really called self-regulated learning where when you're reflecting on your own learning while you're doing it, trying to and that that's like one of the like absolutely almost ubiquitous behaviors of people who get off of performance plateaus like keep getting better and better is they're like thinking about their own thinking. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm trying to also just be like patient. Like it's like I found what I do late but also early. Do you know what I mean? Like like there's people who are like, "Oh, I've always wanted to be a writer and did you or people ask me, did you always know you wanted to be a writer?" And it was like I didn't even think it was I I I didn't even wrap my head around it being possible to actually be a writer. Like I loved books, but the idea that there were like people who did them and that that could be a job that someone like me could do was not something that occurred to me until >> like >> 20, 19, I don't know, later, right? >> I didn't even become a big reader until I was in my late 20s. That's early. >> That's what [laughter] I mean. It's it's ear it's early and it's late. Like it's it's late compared to some people and then early compared to if if someone was >> 40 right now and they were like, I don't know what I want to do. I'd be like, "There's still time." Like, you know what? Like, you could. So, it's both it's both late and early and and I just try to I'm trying more more than anything to be patient and go like, "Look, you're what you're doing is finding the things you don't want to do." >> Yeah. Totally. And also, the other thing is h how can you know, right? Like nobody can I still know what I'm going to be when I grow up. For the third time, I'm saying never again with a book, right? I say it every time. Although, I'm less burned out this time than I was in the past. >> It's like you you just don't know. like nobody knows what the jobs are going to be, what we're going to do, but what's most sort of futurep proof, it's a broad range. It's it's it's like the the specialization thing works if your timing is impeccable. That's right. That's a great way to put it actually. >> And and it's like it's a much small it's potentially a more lucrative, but it is a much smaller target. And even to go with like it's like okay if you pick chess for your kid and then you make them do a lot of chess you could you could of all the things that maybe you picked right and they actually are uniquely suited they love chess and they're genetically and you know dispositionally inclined to it >> but the chances are low >> the chances are low I mean the more >> the earlier you pick the more likely you put the wrong person in the wrong thing. >> Exactly. So, so the the longer you wait, the the chances of the late blooming aligning is higher or the the chance if you have a a broader range of skills, the chances of you hitting a target is a broader target is higher. >> Totally. I mean, so and the Wall Street just did this future of work thing and and we're interviewing these experts and and some of them were saying like people are going to have to be broader because they have to connect things. They have to human coordination problems are not going away to do all these broader things. So, it's clearly a thread that's showing up in lots of popular media now. But you you just made me think of this new study that came out in science or really a meta analysis which is one of the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world that looked at careers of I think it was about 26,000 athletes, musicians and scientists. And what they their main finding was that the things that led to peak youth performance were negatively associated with peak adult performance. So if you wanted the best youth performance, you specialize early basically and really narrowly. And if you wanted the best adult performance, you start broader. So the Nobel laureates in the study, for example, progressed more slowly in their careers than peers because they were more interdisciplinary early on, right? They got 10 years more slowly all this. You know, the athletes tended to have a sampling period. And they cited a lot of the studies that I cite in range. But >> there were and and plus some newer ones, but there were three main buckets that they divided the benefits into. One was what you were mentioning, match quality, the degree of fit between the thing you picked and who you are. And the the first of all, the more things you've tried, the better is going to be your match quality. And that's hugely important for performance and your sense of fulfillment. The second bucket was generalized learning advantage when you've done sort of a variety of different things. >> Um like if you've played three different attacking sports, for example, that's where you have to judge bodies or balls. You'll have an advantage for learning subsequent skills after that. It's like kids who are bilingual have some advantage for for new languages. And the third was resistance to physical and psychological injury. basically resistance to burnout and overuse energy resilience. And it wasn't even about the total volume of activity you were doing. It was about like diversifying it. So those were kind of three main buckets that just came out in this this like kind of blockbuster uh science report. >> Well, this athlete said to me once that their her coach cuz she was pushing pushing herself too hard in practice, he was like, "Do you want to be fast now or you want to be fast later?" [laughter] >> Yeah. It's tough. >> And it's like, "Do you want to be the best at 17?" >> Yeah. >> Or do you want to be the best >> at 57? That's there's this guy named Ian Yates I used to talk to who he was what's called a performance pathway director. I think it basically like helping a talent development pipeline for the in UK sports and he was saying one of the things that was starting to happen was parents were coming in and saying I want my kid doing what that >> gold medalist is doing now not what that gold medalist was doing when they were 12 which is totally different. It's like you want to skip ahead. >> Yes. >> But it doesn't work that way. >> Yeah. It's like, and again, do you want to pe when do you want to peak? When do you want to peak at 16 when the benefits aren't there or you want to peak there? There's different >> different sort of processes you're trying to set in motion. >> I mean, these days I could see someone making an argument that like, no, I want my kid to peak when they're 13 for some like >> Yeah, cuz then I selected this. They're never going to go pro, but this is when they get the this endorsement or something. I mean, I when I lived in New York, I don't live there anymore, but the last place I lived, there was a U8 travel soccer team that met across the street from me. I don't think there's a human being in the world that thinks seven year olds can't find good enough competition in a city of nine million people that they have to travel, right? >> But that's like an adult locking in their customer pipeline, right? It's like you're not on U8, you can't be on U9. So none of that stuff is about optimal development, >> right? And then none of it has anything is anyone putting any thought into what is contributing to the most welladjusted, happy, you know, thriving individual. >> Not in this country. There are other places like Norway where they just blew another they just won 50% more gold medals than Winter Olympics, but they win a lot of summer stuff too. They win they won I think it was two Olympics ago beach volleyball which you don't usually associate with Norway. But they have some of the best soccer, tennis, runners, golf and they don't allow sorting of kids before age 13 because they view mass participation as aligned with >> participation. it own goal. Everyone participating >> and they view it as aligned with elite participation because more people are in big and you get people, you know, they get to try different things so they fit better and all this kind of stuff and you're not deselecting kids so early, >> right? >> Because pathway directors will talk about the fast risers and the slow bakers. The kids who are like six feet tall when they're 10 and then but most of the what they call serial champions are slow bakers who you did not pick out as that prodigy early on. And the problem is if you push selection too young, you deselect those people and then they don't even have a chance. >> They hate basketball before they've even gotten a chance to win. >> Yeah. Right. So I think I just saw like Kupal who maybe will win NBA Ricky saying that he was not into basketball early on even though he was from a basketball family and came to it later. But yes, you don't want to do deselection too early. The thing in America is we have so many more athletes than everybody that like so I was a college runner >> and there's 30 to 40,000 young adults in the NCAA system. That's probably equal to the rest of the world combined. So, we just have this incredible funnel. So, we so we end up doing well at the top. >> All right, let's go next door and check out some books.