909: How to Stay Engaged and Accomplish Your Hardest Tasks with Tracy Maylett and Tim Vandehey

Pete Mockaitis
Tracy and Tim, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Tracy Maylett
Thank you. A pleasure, Pete. Thank you.

Tim Vandehey
Thanks. Thanks very much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book, Swipe: The Science Behind Why We Don’t Finish What We Start. I am guilty of starting a lot of things that are unfinished, so I’m particularly jazzed to get into this. So, maybe, for starters, could you share, was there a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you made while researching and putting together Swipe?

Tracy Maylett
This was interesting. We didn’t set out to start writing a personal book about finishing what I, as an individual, start. We originally set out to think about why people are leaving organizations or disengaging in organizations. So, to answer your question, I think the big aha for me, as we went through this, was this is not just about the workplace. This desire or inability to continue what we start is actually something that’s applicable to ourselves as individuals, not just only in the workplace.

Tim Vandehey
Tracy and I have done two other books prior to this together, with me as a ghost writer. And we got together at the very beginning of 2020, really before the world shut down, and talked about, “Okay, what’s our third book going to be?” It was intended to be the same kind of collaboration. And we came up with this idea about kind of the metaphor of swiping your smartphone as a shorthand for the distract-ability of, in this case, the employee. We’d done two books on the employer’s responsibility for getting people to engage.

And so, we had this idea, and we liked it. We went away to our own little personal writing caves, and started making notes, and working on things. And, at some point in the summer, the COVID summer of 2020, we connected and we said, “This is a bigger book than just about employee engagement. This is something everyone does.”

And coming from the world of writing, I’ve been a freelance writer for almost 29 years now. My life is filled with people who have tried to start books and never been able to finish them. So, it immediately resonated that, “This is a universal thing.” I remember our conversation, I was sitting in my backyard, I said, “This is a bigger book, isn’t it?” And Tracy agreed, and we realized it was this was universal.

And so, that’s what we discovered not long after we came up with the concept, was this was something applies to just about everyone.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the ghost comes out of hiding. It makes sense.

Tim Vandehey
Yes. I don’t show up on film, which is a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Anyways, your whole career is built on this principle of people not being able to finish what they have started.

Tim Vandehey
That is very true. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s a fun perspective there. So, lay it on us in terms of the idea, what do we mean precisely by swiping? And can you paint a real clear picture for all of us there?

Tim Vandehey
Well, the idea behind the Swipe, again, we started off borrowing from the analogy of swiping on a smartphone. The swipe, as we call it, and swiping, the verb…

Pete Mockaitis
Swipe, swept, has or has swepened.

Tim Vandehey
Yes. Well, we haven’t really gotten into swept, haven’t really gotten into the past participle and so on. Nice to meet a bigger grammar nerd than myself. This idea that when we are confronted with an uncomfortable situation, or with discomfort, particularly, in this case, as it pertains to attempting things that we have not been able to do yet.

So, when we find ourselves disillusioned, embarrassed, doubting our abilities, etc., rather than stick with it, we take a cue from the smartphone, let’s say, where it’s very easy to change your experience, sort of change your reality, just with the tap of an app symbol or the swipe of a finger. Boom, you’re immediately onto something else.

So, the swipe, that reflexive, what I like to call hitting the eject button, from whatever it is you’re doing that’s making you uncomfortable. And in the case of what we’re talking about, it’s attempting something that you may not have done before, and you reached that point where you’ve written 50 pages of your novel, and suddenly you have no idea where to go, and you say, “Ah, to heck with it. I’ll try this again later.” That’s what swiping is, it’s that reflex of, “I’m not comfortable where I am. I’m going to immediately, reflexively change my reality so I don’t have to deal with that discomfort.”

Tracy Maylett
And we started in the workplace here. This is all about, this was pre-Great Resignation. This was, as we’re starting to look at what’s causing people to disengage in their jobs. It was based on a 50 million survey, employee survey responses, so this is not a small dataset, saying, “Why are people leaving their jobs when these were once wonderful jobs, and these are great people?”

We don’t show up to work thinking, “I sure hope today is awful. I hope the life gets sucked out of me in my job today.” That’s not natural human nature. The same thing when we’re at home. Also, we don’t begin projects with the idea that, “I’m going to not finish this project.” So, as Tim mentioned, it’s very reflexive. The swipe is reflexive. We don’t take this time to stop and think about it. And this book is really focused on that reflex and how to avoid that reflex.

Pete Mockaitis
And I feel that in terms of it’s like procrastinating except broader. I think it’s how I’m hearing and receiving that, in that I might be doing a thing, it’s kind of hard, it’s kind of unpleasant, it’s like, “Well, let’s just maybe process some emails instead. That’s easier.” So, I have shifted my reality. If it were on the smartphone, I would swipe. On a Mac, I would Command Tab. It’s like we’re just going to move away from that window, and onto another window of experience, which feels a little bit more manageable here.

So, I’m imagining that is not optimal for human wellbeing and thriving. Could you paint a picture of just what are the consequences when this is a habitual reflexive lifestyle for folks?

Tracy Maylett
Let’s talk about the neuroscience piece here for just a moment. Swipe actually changes the way our brain functions. When you think about it, what’s happened with technology over the last while, it’s even changed the way we read. We read differently. We don’t read left to right. We read top to bottom. And what causes us to do is move through pieces very, very quickly.

Also, we’ve come to an age where we’re making very, very quick decisions in the things that we do. We don’t take the time to stop and think something through. That’s the nature of the swipe. It’s very reflexive. It’s something that we have become natural at, something that’s new to us. And because of that, that changes our entire thought patterns and the things that we do. One of the reasons that we decided to go down this route was Tim was looking to this and started talking about the pain and the regret that this causes.

We find some interesting statistics in the workplace, for example. Right now, there are a number of statistics to show when somebody does leave that job, when they swipe past that job. We’re seeing that as many as 30% of those individuals, within the first 90 days, quit the next job or regret that next job. So, we develop patterns in our own lives. Those patterns become a part of who we are.

Tim Vandehey
The other thing, I think, to continue Tracy’s neuroscience track, is that what we also found is when there’s the idea of mastery. The more you do something, the better you get at it. I’m not going to cite the whole Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. That’s been debunked. But the idea is if you follow through on something, you get better at it.

What we found is that that really only applies when you get past a certain point, when you finished, when you’ve finished something to completion, typically, because you have to get all the way through that awful first draft of your novel. To know what you’re doing, you have to get through that workout program to understand how your body has been changing, and how to do it, how to work out in the future.

And what we found is that when people swipe repeatedly, because this is a repeated phenomenon. That’s one of the things that distinguishes it from procrastination is most people, they don’t quit something, they don’t swipe on a goal once. They go back and try it again and again and again, usually, from the same strategy. They don’t really make changes, and think, “This time I’ll do better.” And they end up doing the same thing.

And over time, what happens is we don’t become good at the task we keep attempting and failing at. We become good at swiping. We become good at bailing out of the boat when a couple of holes get poked in it because that’s what we’ve done repeatedly, is we’ve jumped out and away from that task because we felt some sort of emotional response that made us uncomfortable.

Tracy Maylett
We even end one of the chapters by saying when we continue to swipe, we practice, and we practice, we become good at it, and the only thing that we actually master is the swipe itself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, can you share with us perhaps an inspiring story of someone who was habitual swiper, and then had a turn around?

Tim Vandehey
That’s a good question.

Tracy Maylett
One of the things that really impressed me as we were starting to write this book is Tim brought up this concept of National Writers Month. And the concept that we have an opportunity here for people to actually finish something, finish what they actually started. And the numbers, to me, was just staggering. Tim, it was just amazing to see the number of authors that really get in.

Tim Vandehey
That’s actually a great example. That’s a great example. That was probably the thing, the idea that inspired the book. I don’t know if you’re familiar with National Novel Writing Month.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve heard of it. So, you write a novel in a month?

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, if you can suss that out pretty easily but, yeah. So, I think they came up with it, God, back in the early ‘90s, I think. But, basically, the gist of it is you sign up to write a 50,000-word manuscript in 30 days in November. It happens every November. You have to write the book within the 30 days. Quality is not an issue. The idea is to finish something, which tells you how compelling the idea, at least in the world of writing, in my world, the idea of finishing a book is, and how much of a Holy Grail it is.

So, 250,000 people have managed to not swipe during that month of November and finished something. Now, most of the books, from what I understood, I’ve read a couple, they’re dreadful as you would expect. Now, there had been a few, Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants was one that was written that as that was a National Novel Writing Month book, and I think that was not only a New York Times bestseller but I think it became a movie. I think.

But that’s the best example I know because that’s a lot of people who have managed to do that, something that they’ve struggled with, in some cases, for decades. And that points to something, if I can transition, because that’s a logical transition, to some of the preventive issues that we have figured out in writing this book that can keep people from swiping. They are on display during National Novel Writing Month in spades.

Pete Mockaitis
Lay it on us.

Tim Vandehey
There are really two issues. One is expectation management. The other is motivation management. So, what we have found is that people who go into a task, and it could be their tenth time, it doesn’t matter. If they have erroneous expectations, false expectations, expectations that’s not based in reality, they are far more likely to swipe, to quit, because, of course, they go into it naïve, possibly.

I remember when I tried to write my first book, I can’t remember how long ago it was, I had no idea how hard it would be past the burst of energy. And it was gut-wrenching after maybe 35 or 40 pages. We actually use a term, page-one energy, to talk about this enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of the naïve before they realize what they got themselves into.

So, with National Novel Writing Month, again, to go back to that example, the whole culture of the things is, “This is going to be hard.” And people lean into how hard it is. They have the last week, the whole country is dotted with National Novel Writing Month sort of sleepovers where people get together for a week and just write, and write, and write, and get little snatches of sleep, and sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. And it becomes kind of like camp for crazy people.

So, the expectations are managed. You go into it knowing “This is going to suck,” or, “These are the results I’m going to get.” The analogy I like to use is working out. You go into a workout program, and you think, “I’m going to be jacked after a month.” And then you look in the mirror after a month, and you’re not jacked, you might’ve lost a little bit of weight, but you don’t look like The Rock.

If you actually had an expectation, you’re likely to say, “Forget it,” throw up your hands, “I’m done. This is stupid.” So, expectation management is incredibly important. The second part is about motivation. Why are you doing this? Are you doing it because you’re envious of someone else who did? Or, you think you’re supposed to? Or, your family expects you to do this? Or, what’s the reason? Because the motivation is what you need when you hit those roadblocks to keep you going.

And National Novel Writing Month, the motivation is, “I’ve told a whole bunch of other people in my community…” because the organization has little chapters all over the country, “…all these other writers that I’m going to do this, so they’re going to hold me to it. And I really want to do this but, more importantly, I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of all the other people who are going to keep going and keep doing it if I slack off, then I look like a loser and they don’t.” So, motivation matters.

And when people get both of those things right, it’s not to say they won’t swipe, they still might but they’re much less likely to.

Tracy Maylett
As we were looking to writing this book, and Tim corrected me on this as we were doing it, which was wonderful because, through my work, working with people at tops of organizations and Tim’s opportunity to meet lots of really cool people through his authoring, one of the things we started to do, or I started to do, is throw in examples of really high-profile people, these individuals who everyone knows are three-time Olympians, etc.

And we started looking at this, and saying, “That’s fantastic,” and people are setting their sights on that, and they’re seeing these wonderful powerhouses. But the reality is every single one of us still witnesses this at some point in their lives and multiple times in our life. This is not written for that, “How do you go win the bobsled race in the Olympics?” This is really written to that individual who is trying to complete something who’s not been able to do that, and is now suffering those negative effects because of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, this notion of the expectation and the motivation making all the difference seems quite resonant. And I’m thinking about, are you familiar with Andrew Huberman with the Huberman Lab?

Tracy Maylett
No.

Pete Mockaitis
I feel like I talk about him nonstop. Well, he’s a neurobiologist out of Stanford who’s got a huge podcast, so he’ll just multi-hour conversations about different topics in biology or science and science-based tools for everyday life is his thing.

And so, he has millions upon millions of downloads and views and all that, but he mentioned, I think it’s intriguing that what he calls the Holy Grail of motivation is if you can find motivation in a form of enjoyment in the pain and suffering and challenge of the things, and he holds up David Goggins as archetypical example here, super ultra marathon, Navy Seal, like hardcore pain experiences over and over again, and to find a sort of a fuel and enjoyment and motivation within that.

And what you described here in the writing context, as opposed to like the physical ultra marathon context, is that, “Hey, this is going to be hard. At times, it is going to suck that may require sleepovers to actually pull it off.” And rather than that turning people off, like, “Ugh, no, thanks. I don’t want it. I don’t care to deal with all that hassle,” it’s kind of like, “Ooh, heck, yeah. Aargh, let’s get after it.”

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, it’s a shared experience. Well, it’s funny because I’d done a lot of writing in the endurance sports world, not recently, but in the past, and one of the mottos of marathoners, and ultra marathoners, and triathletes, and ultra triathletes is that, “The winner is the one who can out-suffer everybody else.” And, in fact, I did a book for Chris McCormack who was the Australian, one of the best triathletes of all time. And he used to say his motto was “Embrace the suck.”

So, it’s going to suck, accept it, get into it, make it part of the experience, is that you’re going to give yourself over to that, and part of the satisfaction is knowing that, “That really sucked and I got through it.”

Tracy Maylett
Well, you look at that in the workplace also, and as soon as we receive a difficult assignment, or don’t get that promotion that we’re after, the tendency now is to just say, “Okay, I’ll go down the street.” And the reality is it’s the journey that’s the valuable piece here. It’s not just the end state. It’s the suck. It’s the part that was really, really difficult that made those individuals who they are today.

And when they confront that again, now they’ve learned to confront that. If I am in a workplace, and after two months I have a project that I don’t necessarily enjoy, well, yeah, that’s part of life, that’s what we deal with. But it’s those pieces that are difficult that make us who we are. And this is really about to value those pieces, embrace those pieces that may be more difficult because that’s what really builds the character and builds that individual.

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, one of the things that we probably, if we had more time and more pages, we would’ve looked at what happens to someone after they don’t swipe, after they actually finish something that they have been trying to do for a long time. And, again, going back to National Novel Writing Month, one of the things that they found is success in that area becomes kind of addictive. You did it once, you’re going to go back and do it again and again.

There are people who have written 20 novels through that program. I have no idea if any of them were any good, but once they know they can do it, it becomes kind of intoxicating. I have no data on this, and we didn’t look at it, but my guess would be that’s probably true for a lot of people in a huge range of endeavors, that once you actually able to get…especially if you’ve failed a lot, if you’ve swiped repeatedly, and you finally hit the finish line.

I’ve been at the finish line of the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii and watched people who managed to finish their first Ironman. The age groupers have to finish in under 17 hours, and they finished at 16:55 the first they’ve been able to do it after multiple failures. All the pain goes away. They could not care. Their bodies could be falling apart. It’s absolute exultation because they finally made it. It’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, you also have a bit of an acronym to help us cure swipe – MAGIC. Can you walk us through this?

Tracy Maylett
Yeah, MAGIC was based on our work with employee engagement, what causes someone to engage in their job. So, looking in the opposite side of this, we know what causes people to swipe, what causes people to stay. Now, this isn’t just specifically towards employment. This is any relationship. This could be with my children. This could be in my community. It could be in a workplace, but the idea here is when these five elements, and MAGIC is an acronym, when these five elements are present, I will tend to engage.

And the degree to which these are important to me, some may be more important than others, and the degree to which these are fulfilled will cause me to choose whether or not I’m engaged and will continue forward. So, that acronym is MAGIC, M-A-G-I-C. The first of those is meaning, so the M is meaning. When I find purpose beyond just the job itself, or when I find a reason why I choose to learn the piano, etc., there’s something that’s valuable to me, a purpose, I will stay and I will continue to do what I’m doing.

The second piece is the A, which is autonomy. Autonomy is not anarchy. That’s not our A. Autonomy is to be able to use our abilities in the best way possible, have the freedom to do so. So, in the workplace, it does not necessarily mean I have free rein of anything I want to do but I’m able to channel my skills and abilities to make that happen. That happens in a marriage, that could happen in any relationship that we have.

When I use my abilities, then the next piece happens, which is G, growth. The opposite of growth is stagnation. If I’m stagnating in a community, if I’m stagnating in a workplace, I will disengage, I’ll swipe, I’ll move forward. The I stands for impact. Impact is seeing the results of your effort. So, if I continue to work out day after day after day, and I’m not seeing a result of my effort, the likelihood of me swiping is going to be pretty high. So, we measure that, we gain tiny successes along the way.

And the final piece of that is C. The C which is connection. Connection is a sense of belonging to something beyond just yourself. That could be a social connection. One of the reasons why the National Novel Writing Month is successful is not just I’m buckling down. It’s that I’m commiserating with other people. Other people are doing this with me at the same time, that ability to establish those connections, connection to the workplace, connection to the environment that I’m in.

When those five elements are present – meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection – that’s kind of the anti-swipe. It keeps me from moving forward. This was based, again, on we started with 14 million employee survey responses, and moved actually to 50 million employee survey responses, but we found that that’s not just the workplace phenomenon. It happens in our lives as well. And so, that’s kind of what we saw as one of the areas for anti-swipe.

Tim Vandehey
Speaking of the anti-swipe, and related to what Tracy said about the workplace, the sort of counter-phenomenon that we defined in the book, as opposed to the swipe, was something we called tapping out. And that is especially relevant when it comes to the workplace. It’s relevant in other areas as well. But where a swipe is a reflex that comes from discomfort, from fear, embarrassment, disillusionment, etc., and usually leads to regret because the things we swipe from are generally things that are good for us and that we want to do.

We really want to finish that book. We really want to get in shape. We really want to save money, etc. A tapping out is an affirmative act. Tapping out is not reflexive. We’re choosing to walk away from a situation that is bad for us.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re in a chokehold, you’re starting to black out, I think now would be a good time to stop.

Tim Vandehey
So, now the example I like to use is not a workplace example but it’s perfectly illustrative of this, is the gymnast Simone Biles back in 2020. She chose to walk away from the team Olympic gold in the 2020 Olympics because she was having what they called the twisties, where she was unable to perceive her position in space while she was doing vaults and things, which, of course, for a gymnast can be incredibly dangerous.

And she made an affirmative choice to walk away and choose her own physical and mental health over competing in the events. And there was a little bit of pushback but most people praised her for it. They praised her for putting herself first, and it was, obviously, a decision that she felt good about. That is the polar opposite of a swipe. Tapping out is an affirmative act, you feel good about it, it is not something you regret. It is something when you say, “This is not a good situation for me,” probably most commonly in a job.

Now, the Great Resignation we talked about, a lot of those people probably disengaged in ways that had nothing with to do with anything healthy. Some people probably tapped out because they said, “Look, I’m not being valued here, I’m not being compensated properly, I’m not being listened to, I’m not given opportunities to grow,” and so they chose to go elsewhere, and that is a tap-out, and it’s important to distinguish that from a swipe.

Tracy Maylett
The key difference here is a swipe is, Tim, would you agree with this, it’s purely reflexive.

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, it’s system one. It’s system-one stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to get your views then, zooming right into the heat of battle in terms of you’re feeling some discomfort, you’d like to quit or change a channel, any pro tips for right there in the here and now, what do we do to persist?

Tracy Maylett
Tim just mentioned something that’s important, which is system one. This is by the work of Daniel Kahneman. It was really interesting. He said our brain is, really, our mind, is divided into two systems, system one and system two. System one is very reflexive. I don’t stop. It’s a reflex. So, it’s something that I do out of habit, something I do just as a reflex rather than something I have to stop and think about.

System two, the acts that takes place in system two is very reflective. It is something I stop and I think about, I pay attention to, I have to evaluate, I have to take thought that’s in this. So, the reason I’m mentioning these two systems is because swipe is truly a system one reflex. It is, “I don’t stop and think about it. I don’t consider the consequences. I don’t consider my motivations. I don’t consider what really is involved in here, the expectations.”

System two requires that you stop and think about that stuff, “Why am I doing this? What’s important? What would be the end result of this?” So, in the book, we give a series of steps that you can actually go through to distinguish between the two of these, and one of those is to play it through to the end, “If I make this decision right now, and it were recorded on a VCR, how would this movie end?” Do we even do VCRs anymore? “If this were part of a film, how would this film end if I were to make this step right now?”

So, that’s one of the things to consider, “What will be the end result of this action, not just this temporary relief of discomfort? What will be the final result of this?”

Tim Vandehey
And it’s very easy to say that people should do what Tracy just described. Tracy described it perfectly. But we all know that’s a lot more difficult to actually do that in real time. So, a big part, and I think the power of what we did in the book was to simply call out the fact that this phenomenon exists. It’s knowable. It’s somewhat predictable and it’s understandable. And I think the key to being able to do what Tracy described, to play it through to the end in real time is to go into the next attempt at whatever it is that people have swiped from multiple times in the past.

Knowing that this happens, knowing that, “Okay, after I get to page X, I am prone to swiping, I’m prone to panicking, becoming embarrassed, doubting my abilities as a writer, and saying, ‘To heck with it. I’m going to delete this file and I’ll try again in five years or something.’” And to say, “Okay, I’m watching out for when those impulse strikes, and instead of just blindly blundering in, thinking, ‘Well, maybe this time it’ll be different.” The four of the worst words are, “This time it’s different.” They say that in finance a lot.

Instead, saying to yourself, “I’m going to be watching for those signs that I’m feeling that panic reflex,” and instead catching yourself be mindful enough to say, “Okay, hold on. Hold on. What will happen? What am I going to feel if I walk away for the sixth time?” As opposed to, “What if I actually get through this? And what if I do like all the people doing National Novel Writing Month, and I finish this?” or, “I finish this workout,” or, “I train for the marathon and actually run it.” It doesn’t matter.

One of the keys here, that’s why National Novel Writing Month, I keep referring to it, it’s so brilliant, is it’s not about the quality. It’s about finishing. It’s about finally breaking the tape, “And how will I feel when I actually do that?” Odds are people are going to feel pride and tremendous sense of accomplishment.

So, projecting into the future that way, that’s the ultimate preventer, really, and the expectation and motivation things we talked about before help, but, ultimately, you have to be able to catch yourself in real time, and say, “Whoa, okay. Take a deep breath. Let’s keep going because I know if I do, I’m going to be glad I did.”

Because what we see is that overwhelming regret. We talked to someone who’s quit something time and time again, who swiped over and over again. I always hear the same thing from writers, “God, if I had only kept going. If I’d kept going back then two years ago, I’d have two other books written by now.” I hear that all the time, and we all do that, “If I kept working out, I’d be in like the P90X guy kind of shape right now,” etc.

And so, if we can catch ourselves, if we can be mindful that the swipe is a thing, that’s what makes it possible to catch ourselves in real time and make that choice.

Pete Mockaitis
What really comes to mind here, we talked about the reflexive actions versus remembering to stop and think about the consequences, what will happen, projecting into the future, is I had a buddy who wanted to stop vaping. And so, I don’t know if this is a very clever idea, he had a bunch of index cards, and he wrote on each one of them a reason why to stop vaping or how life would be better if he were not addicted to this anymore.

And he placed them on top of his giant vape stick, and so whenever he wanted to reach for it, he had all these reasons, and that was sort of his rule, it’s like, “Oh, well, you’re free to vape, just you have to read all of these first.” And it worked for him.

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, that’s great. There’s a great thing by a comedian Jim Jeffries who talks about gun control. He talks about, “Everybody should have a gun. That’s fine. But everybody should have a musket because the great thing about a musket is it gives you a lot of time to calm down.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Tim Vandehey
You’re pouring in the powder before you get a shot.

Pete Mockaitis
I saw a musket in Boy Scout Camp. That was my first firearm shot.

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, the example was a good one. I mean, giving yourself time to let that impulse fade, giving yourself something else to focus on to let that impulse to quit, because you’re always glad you didn’t. You’re always glad, if you keep going, you’re like, “Oh, thank God, I didn’t mess that up.” It’s that moment of panic and fear. A lot of what I see in the writing world, when it comes to not finishing, is self-doubt or embarrassment.

People are embarrassed to let people read what they’ve written or they just get to a certain point, they think, “I’m not a real writer because I can’t get past page 55.” Well, unless you have an outline and a bunch of character studies mapped out, neither can I. I’ve got to have a whole plan before I can do that. I’ve been writing for 30 plus years. So, yeah, that’s very well-taken is finding a way to slow that impulse down and give yourself a chance to say, “Woo, I don’t want to mess this up. I’ve come this far.”

And there also is a sunk-cost aspect to this. The farther you get into something, I think it is harder to swipe because you have more invested. If you’re on page 250, it’s probably a lot harder to swipe than if you’re on page 45, so.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Tim, Tracy, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear some of your favorite things?

Tim Vandehey
I think we covered the high points.

Tracy Maylett
I think so but I do want to talk about some of our favorite things here, if we can.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Can I hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tracy Maylett
I’ll start on this one because it’s one that kind of, as we started writing the book, this came to mind, and then all through the book, we used it a number of different times. And we credit a couple of different authors for this one. Just the simple quote that, “Wherever you go, there you are.” And that has a couple of different meanings behind it.

The first one, when it comes to swipe, is if I am the person who swipes at this, and then I swipe at the next thing, and the next thing, that’s who I am. That’s what I do. I swipe. Just moving situations, moving jobs, I’m still the same person moving to a different job, and nothing has changed about me. Swipe doesn’t allow us to change. Swipe causes us to be the same person who we are, and then we expect to be somewhat different in a different environment. It just doesn’t happen. So, that was the first part of the swipe that I had to really understand for myself, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

The second part of that says is when you think mentally here, supposed I’m sitting on the couch with my granddaughter, she’s four years of age, and she’s just fantastic, and she talks and talks. And I may be thinking of something else, and I may be answering texts, and I may be thinking about my workplace. Well, I’m not actually, although my body is physically with my granddaughter, my mind is 2,000 miles away, my mind is on the East Coast, my mind is somewhere else. And that happens a lot.

Swipe can happen mentally also. It’s not just physical doing. I can swipe out of something mentally. I can swipe out of relationships. So, the idea that I might as well be sitting on a couch somewhere in Boston versus Salt Lake City, Utah, that’s what happens when my mind swipes and goes to a different place as well. So, that’s one of the biggest pieces of learning for myself, personally, as we went through here, “Wherever I go, there I am,” the most do context.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Tracy Maylett
One of the things that I teach, I teach at universities, and it’s been very interesting to work with students, particularly rising generations of students. Some of these are extremely bright individuals. A lot of times we’ll have them do a change project, “Change something about yourself.”

And what’s interesting is that about half of those change projects come back, saying, “I feel like I’d become something different because of social media. Maybe I feel like I’m feel less self-aware. I pay attention to some things that are as important.” Some people were spending as much as five to six hours a day wasting their lives on social media.

Well, social media is not necessarily a bad thing. And this is not a bash on technology but the idea here is that if I’m spending all of my time on a very small screen, I might as well be somewhere else doing the things that are on that screen. And so, some of these real success stories that have come from this is the ability to recognize that, and say, “That’s not who I am. That’s not what I want to be. I want to be in the moment. I want to pay attention to this rather than swiping and going somewhere else.”

So, one of the big successes here is it’s been really interesting to see some of these very, very bright students made changes in habits because they realized that fact that, “That’s where I actually am. My mind is somewhere else rather than here in front of people having a good conversation.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Tracy Maylett
A lot of some of the research that we’ve done is based on the work of Daniel Kahneman, and really some interesting studies as he’s put out regarding the mind and the brain.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And is there a resonant nugget, a key thing you share that really seems to connect with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Tracy Maylett
No, just the idea of the swipe, in general. It’s something that people can immediately identify with in their own lives, they say, “Oh, yeah, okay. I get it.” And we’ll give credit to Tim on this title here, the idea that a swipe is something that we’re all familiar with, and that they start to identify, “Yeah, that’s the reason why I don’t finish what I start is because the swiping,” I think it’s just intuitive, and it’s really resonated with people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Tim Vandehey
SwipeTheBook.com. It has information about the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Shall I steal it?

Tim Vandehey
Yeah, swipe it. Exactly. It’s a command. It’s an imperative. Yeah, SwipeTheBook.com is where you can find reviews. Obviously, the book is on Amazon and so on. Actually, we will be launching a new site here once I finish it, sometime, hopefully, October. So, that’ll have some more goodies on it, I think, a survey and hopefully some videos and some more content.

Tracy Maylett
It has been fun to see the people come up to us, and say, “This was me. This is me. And this has helped.”

Tim Vandehey
Oh, yeah. Everyone I’ve told about this book says, “Oh, I need that,” because I know a lot of writers and musicians, so they’re all artistic flakes to a degree, so.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Tim Vandehey
Well, I would say look at your expectations and look at your motivations. Getting those two things dialed in is critically important, especially expectations. I think people at a job feel motivated by the fact that they don’t do the job, they’ll get fired. But, of course, that just makes someone work just hard enough not to get fired. They don’t necessarily engage. I don’t think people take a good look at their expectations.

By the way, do I get to share my favorite stuff?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear a favorite quote and book, please.

Tim Vandehey
The quote is actually a quote about writing from Stephen King from his book on writing, which is a wonderful treat, it’s on the art of writing. And he says, “Writing talent is like a knife. Some writers are born with God-awful big knives but no writer is born with a sharp knife.” And that’s his way, of course, of saying that talent is one thing, but you don’t get anywhere without a lot of hard work.

Did you ask me about a book?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, please.

Tim Vandehey
It’s Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. I’ve always thought that’s one of the most brilliant books ever written in the English language. I’m a huge Tom Wolfe fan.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Tracy, Tim, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and very few swipes.

Tracy Maylett
Many thanks.

Tim Vandehey
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.