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Apr 20
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1147: How to Optimize Your Space to Thrive with Leidy Klotz

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Leidy Klotz shares simple shifts for creating more spaces that improve well-being.

You’ll Learn

  1. The three core needs that well-designed spaces meet
  2. How to feel in control of spaces you can’t control
  3. How to harness the “home turf” advantage anywhere

About Leidy

Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. He has written for the Washington Post, Fast Company, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review; has published his work in top journals like Nature and Science; and has been interviewed on Hidden Brain, Freakonomics, Mindscape, and The Atlantic’s How to Build a Happy Life. Klotz has advised clients ranging from the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security to CapitalOne and Amazon.

Resources Mentioned

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Leidy Klotz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Leidy, welcome back!

Leidy Klotz
Thanks, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your latest work, In A Good Place. Last time, we were talking about subtraction and how that can enrich our lives. Now we’re talking about locations. Could you kick us off with a particularly surprising or fascinating discovery you’ve made about this stuff?

Leidy Klotz
One of the things, when I was going through the research for location, that just struck me was there’s a study of nursing home residents, and they found that in the study that they did, one group of residents was able to, like, customize their space and another group was not.

And then they came back to the people 18 months later, and of the people who couldn’t customize their space, they were 50% more likely to be dead. Like, we all know that space is important, right? But the degree to which it was important in that case was really striking to me.

Pete Mockaits
Yeah. Well, that’s so fascinating and alarming. And what’s interesting is that customizing your space, boy, it’s almost like that’s hitting multiple key human needs all at once, you know? Like, autonomy, agency control, as well as, like, beauty and mobility.

Leidy Klotz
Growth and, like, learning, right? You’re learning how you like it. You’re learning that you can move things around in the world. So, yeah, all of those things. I think that probably with the nursing home study, a lot of it had to do with kind of agency and feeling like you still have a say in the world around you. But, yeah, so it’s not a trivial thing to be able to interact with your surroundings.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and part of me is wondering, and I’m sure we’ll get here, many of us have the ability to customize our space, but maybe we haven’t thought to bother much. Can you make the case? So if we’re not in nursing homes, we’re living our lives in homes whether owned or rented, as well as workplaces, offices, what’s kind of at stake with us thoughtfully optimizing these spaces versus just going with the flow?

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, I think it really comes down to whether or not our core psychological needs are met. And like you said, these core psychological needs, basically agency, growth or competence, and connection. And these are all things, right, that we hope we get at work and everywhere else.

And we think about them as important, but we often think about them in terms of, you know, tasks that we’re doing. The original way that we met these needs was through our interactions with our surroundings, right?

If you think back to our ancestors trying to survive against predators and the elements, the ones that were compelled to shape their surroundings to provide shelter, the ones that were compelled to figure out how their surroundings work, were more likely to survive and become us.

So these are like long-standing, deep-rooted psychological needs that we have, and we can meet them in other ways, not just in our surroundings, but we still can meet them right there in our surroundings. So that’s the case. It’s like here’s this amazing opportunity that we have all around us that we can take advantage of to thrive.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, let’s talk about these three needs. This reminds me of self-determination theory. I’ve heard of different adjectives used for these three components. Tasha Eurich talked about some of this in her book Shatterproof, which was rather potent. So can you expand on these?

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, and I’m so glad you brought up self-determination theory. Sometimes people don’t want to know the theory. The theory is really important here because this isn’t just Leidy’s research figuring this out. This is decades of people studying this across different contexts in different cultures. And self-determination theory is, like, the best understanding of motivation that we have and agency.

So this is our ability to have a say in our surroundings, so the ability to do something about the world around us, that’s agency. Competence is actually doing it, right? So competence is showing other people that we can affect change in the world around us or that we can interact with the world around us.

And then connection is maybe the easiest one to understand, you know, connecting with other people, but also just connecting with something bigger than ourselves. And that’s, you know, spaces are part of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you tell us a story of someone in a professional context who had an okay space, but they thoughtfully put some effort into making it extra awesome and what happened for him?

Leidy Klotz
I’ll give you an extreme story. So Nelson Mandela, we know that he was imprisoned on Robben Island. And one of the things that I learned he did there, obviously, you’re incredibly constrained with your agency when you’re imprisoned.

But when he was in prison, he found a space on the roof that was bathed all day in sunlight, he wrote. And he negotiated with the guards to be able to have a garden up there and then go up and tend to the garden.

And obviously, Mandela is one of these people who you think of never getting rid of his agency no matter what, right? Even when he was in prison, he was still campaigning and getting information out, but he also exercised the agency in his surroundings, right?

And I think we’re not, hopefully, imprisoned but when you find your agency being constrained in one way, like, I’m like everybody else. I’m in an office. I can’t just go tell my boss that I want a different office or that I want my space renovated overnight.

But if I’m frustrated by that, I can realize it and then find adjacent freedoms, right? I can go work somewhere else if it’s nice outside, or I can move the arrangement of my desk to face the window. And now, all of a sudden, I’m taking back control in that environment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you share with us, what are some key shifts that can make a boatload of difference in our spaces?

Leidy Klotz
For me, the biggest one is, and this seems to resonate with people when I talk about it, is to make use of the spaces that we have available to ourselves, right? I’ll use myself again because this is a self-depreciating example.

I live in a house, I could work anywhere in that house, and I find myself sitting in the same chair and typing on my computer no matter what the task is, right? But if I think about it, I’m like, “Well, I could move over to this desk that’s facing the window, and write on a notebook when I need more creative ideas.”

I could shift my seating based on, you know, how my body feels. I could move throughout the day based on how the light’s moving. So there’s this example where I have all this space available to me, and just by my tried and true habits, I’m only using a small slice of it. And I think that’s a principle that can help everybody.

And we immediately jump to, “Okay, how do I change this space? How do I renovate this space?” And before we’ve thought about like, “Well, here are all the spaces where I could go. Let me make use of those before I start changing things.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot. It’s funny, I have a camping chair that has a little bit of a recline and a swing, a rocking to it. But what’s really fun about it is, sure enough, you can put that anywhere in terms of, like, a park, by a window, in different zones of a backyard or front yard.

And I don’t often think that I have that option available to me. Although, there was a season in which it just lived in my trunk, and from time to time I was like, “You know what, I’m going to do my work over here now because I can.” And it’s a good feeling.

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, yeah, it’s good, because you’re comfortable, but also you made it, right? Like, you’re making the world how you want it to be. So I love that story because it’s very small, but you’re making your space in all these different places.

Pete Mockaitis
And sometimes, I’ve also had the experience, I’m thinking about, I’m just tidying up an area that’s long been untidy, and it really does feel like it’s meeting deep psychological needs because it’s, like, I’m finding like a deep sigh of rightness and peace.

And I’m not like a neat freak by any means. My wife and others can attest to this. And yet, when I go there, it’s often I’m surprised, like profoundly edifying. And I think Marie Kondo, she wrote a book with title, right, “The Life-changing Power, Magic of Tidying Up.”

Leidy Klotz
Yep, “The Life-Changing Magic.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, can you speak to this notion?

Leidy Klotz
There’s a lot going on there, but I think the number one thing is probably back to this, like, agency and competence, right? That psychologists, and I’m not a psychologist, but like one of the things that they’ll prescribe for depressed people is to say, like, “Hey, you just reorganize a room,” or, “Tidy up a room.”

And it’s not necessarily that the tidy room makes you less depressed. It’s that the act of feeling like you have control over some aspect of your life starts to make you feel better. And then, hopefully, that feeds on itself, so you feel you have control in tidying.

And then you realize, “Okay, I have control in these other ways,” and then you start to kind of get yourself back. So that’s probably the main thing that’s happening there. I also think that there’s some small bits and pieces.

You know, a tidy space is going to have less distraction, less cognitive load on you so you’re not coming in every time even if you’re not noticing. In my house, it’s shin guards and boxer briefs strewn about.

And even if you’re not noticing them, they’re, like, taxing you a little bit mentally. But the main thing is just, “Hey, I can do something about my situation.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay, so first point, principle, just use all the space available to us. We might just totally be forgetting, “Oh, yeah, I have all these options available, and I just never use them.” Where do we go from there?

Leidy Klotz
Well, and also I’ll just give one more. At work, right? Like, so many of our offices are designed to, you know, there’s your office or wherever you’re supposed to sit, but then there’s all these spaces that are meant for other things. And I think that, you know, we’re not fully taking advantage of those a lot of times.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, those architects and contractors were paid a pretty penny to get those in there and we’re not using them.

Leidy Klotz
And your bosses are thinking about it, right? They’re like, “How do we make this space so that people like it?” And yet, we never get past that barrier of, “No, you can actually use it.” Even something as simple as the conference room, right?

Like, every time you go into the conference room, technically, you could set it up differently for the meeting at hand. And yet, how often does that happen? Usually, you’re just accepting it the way that it should be.

But if you showed up 15 minutes early and set that conference room up, you’re getting a hit of agency, plus you can make sure that you’re sitting next to the people that it’s important to sit next to in the meeting. So there’s just a lot there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, while I’m visualizing a conference room, what are some little tweaks that can enhance my experience of being in that conference room?

Leidy Klotz
Well, I mean, I think like there’s all the power dynamics stuff, you know? But I think everybody knows the kind of, “Put yourself in the position of power, and sit at the head of the table.” And I think most of what we’re trying to do in a conference room is, typically, kind of put people on equal footing.

And so, say you’re a boss, and you want to get people’s input in the meeting, don’t sit at the head of the table and maybe set up the room so that it kind of makes everybody feel like they’re sitting around a campfire where we’re all kind of equal. And then you will be more likely to get that input from people, right?

The conference room can be an example of this principle where, like, you’re saying one thing, and the space is saying something totally different. You’re saying, “Oh, we want all your input. It really matters.” And then you march in, sit at the head of the table, everybody else is just staring at you, and you control the slides. And do you really want people’s input? So I think that is one example.

Pete Mockaitis
So, Leidy, I should stop making every other seat in the conference room way shorter than my own? Because that’s what I do every time I go into a meeting. I should stop doing that?

Leidy Klotz
That trick is so hilarious. I mean, do it if you want to. It just depends. So it’s, like, move among the spaces we have access to. I think there’s another principle that’s, like, align the space with your goals. And sometimes the goal in the conference room is to be dominant.

Sometimes the goal in the conference room, hopefully, more often, is to have an exchange that helps everybody’s ideas move forward and get better. And so thinking about what those goals are and then lining the space up to suit it.

One of my favorite studies that’s, like, along these lines, there’s a study of negotiations and they wanted to see like Home Field versus Away turf negotiating. And this is, we know that location matters in negotiations. Diplomats will negotiate the location before they negotiate the treaty.

But the study was brilliant in its simplicity. All they did, they had two groups, the control and experimental group. In one group, they had sit in a room for 20 minutes, and then they had the other group come into that room to negotiate.

And the group that had been in the room for 20 minutes achieved better outcomes in the negotiations. That’s something that anybody can do. You can show up 20 minutes early for the meeting and just feel more at home. And, apparently, that is going to help. So, yeah, it’s powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
I have had that experience when I’m doing keynote speeches. It feels very nice to get into the room early, not just for the sound check, you know, AV stuff, all that, but even before those people are there, and to just walk through the whole space, and the seats, and just behold that large, empty space, and to feel like it is mine.

I don’t have any hard scientific evidence on it, but I really do feel more comfortable, confident, and ready to own the stage and the whole auditorium because it’s, like, “Oh, well, you are my guests because I was here first.”

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, no, that’s a great example. And you’ve probably done more of these than I have, but if I can’t do that, if I can’t have enough time to, like, totally take in the space, I’d rather be dropped in right at the end.

The worst situation is when you’re there for, like, 30 minutes and you’re watching the person before you, and you’re sitting in the audience and you don’t have enough time to kind of, like, fully appreciate the space, and then you have to run and jump up on the stage.

So the other option, I call it just kind of getting off the bus and play. Like, you go to the green room and then you just come out on the stage, and you know you’ve done your talk so many times that then you’re not, like, kind of inundated by these external forces in the space.

There’s science here. Probably the best science for yours and getting acclimated is, I mean, it’s not a scientific study, but all these sports teams, right? Their whole profession and livelihood and success depends on winning or losing. And they will all get there at least a day before the game and do a walkthrough on the court and try to make it as familiar as possible.

And then, on the other side, where if you don’t have time to kind of fully take it in, try to avoid the awkwardness of what’s happening when you come into a new space, is you’re trying to figure out the new space, right? Your brain is going to that.

And our brains have limited resources. And if our brain is trying to figure out the space while trying to think about how to deliver a keynote, it’s not going to go well. And so we want to not have the space taxing our mental resources when our job is to connect with other people, whether it’s from the stage or whether it’s in a conference room.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. What else should we be thinking about here?

Leidy Klotz
Growth. I think that growth or competence. So we’ve talked a little about agency and then connection. But growth is, like, we grow from interacting with our spaces. We learn. We were talking about kids earlier.

When you watch kids, as a parent, one of the most freeing things was to realize how much they were learning from the world around them, because I was worried that, “Okay, I’m going to have to describe to them how all this stuff works,” right? They just watch and they watch you, and then they interact with the world.

And so, maybe kids playing with a sand castle on the beach seems like they’re innately drawn to it. But, like, when my daughter is building a drip castle, for example, she’s learning about the fluid mechanics of the drip of the water.

She’s learning about material properties of sand and water mixed together. She’s learning about herself, right? She’s learning that, you know, if there’s some adversity, like her brother knocks down the castle, she can build it back and she’s going to feel good from overcoming that adversity. So this is, like, how we learn by interacting with the world and seeing what happens.

And I think we talked about screens last time. I think one of my favorite stories was yours, talking about subtracting TVs from the bedroom. And you can go back and listen to the subtract episode about why you would want to do that.

But so much of our life is on screens now which is convenient in a lot of ways, but when you’re navigating with your phone, for example, you’re not really taking in the city the same way you would be if you were trying to find it based on street addresses or just trying to walk based on directions that somebody gave you. And so we’ve engineered out a way that we might, otherwise, kind of learn about the world around us.

And I get that that’s probably an example where I’ll keep using my Google Maps because I want to just get there as quickly as possible. That’s convenient. But we’re also, then, engineering out these kind of opportunities to stretch our brains, and to work that learning muscle. And so I think growth through our spaces is something that we need to pay attention to.

Pete Mockaitis
So just the navigation in and of itself. What are some other ways we grow by interacting with our spaces?

Leidy Klotz
There’s the navigation. There’s the renovations that you talked about before, where if you are kind of setting up your space, and you’re realizing that, “Okay, that doesn’t work. I don’t like it, and I can change it back.” So now you’re learning things that you like and don’t like, but you’re also learning about yourself and that you can do these things.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m thinking a little bit back to my conversation with BJ Fogg on the show, and we’re talking about making things easier for behavior design. Like, if we make something easier, we’ll do more of it. And I notice, it’s so funny, in my office, which I really love, I found myself having a little bit of resistance to just going down and sitting in the chair and doing the work, even though, “Hey, I’ve got a great monitor. I’ve got a sit-stand desk.” It’s so good.

It’s like, “What’s the deal? This should be like the top place I want to sit and do work, instead of over on the couch on my sort of smaller screen laptop situation.” And I realized that my wheeling office chair, you know, the wheels on it, were getting kind of stuck in the carpet a bit, and so it requires a little bit of, “Ugh!” like, awkward effort to shimmy it out of the ruts to get into where I want.

Well, it’s funny because it’s a visceral thing. It’s a little thing, and yet, it’s something that can pass right through my conscious awareness, but have these associations. And so I said, “Well, by golly, I got to get a mat.”

And so I did, I got the mat. And now there is less resistance. And so I’m more likely to get in my battle station with all the goodies and the big monitors because, “Oh, there was a tiny thing missing, a mat under the rolling chair.”

Leidy Klotz
I’m so glad I couldn’t think of a story and you chimed in with yours that was much better than what I would have said. You’re also illustrating this beautiful concept of, like, how these principles that were originally physical principles.

Like, friction, right? How many people are talking about friction in the workplace when they’re talking about task completion and like removing friction or adding friction. You, literally, identified physical friction on the chair as the thing. So I think, yeah, and that’s a great tip that was one of the other ones is just like kind of removing constraints, right?

Like, thinking about your space and what are the constraints that are holding you back in that space. And that’s something. If you walk into the office on Monday morning, whether you’re an employee or the boss, you will find things that are constraining you that you can then remove immediately. In your case, you removed the friction and make your space better. That’s a beautiful example.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I like that a lot. And so now I’m thinking about, you know, it could be the temperature, it’s like, “Can I adjust that, or can I hold a cold bottle of water, or, like, have a little hot pad under my butt?” Or it could be the lighting, the temperature, the sound with noise canceling headphones and/or earplugs. What are some other constraints that show up that we might want to do something about?

Leidy Klotz
I think there are unwritten constraints, too, where you kind of assume that this space is for that thing, and then you don’t question it. This is probably less about in your home, but more at the office. Like my editor actually, she had a space in her office that was supposed to be a flex space. It was a super nice flex space.

But the problem was there was, like, an executive in her office who would use it periodically. And it wasn’t like all the time, but it was enough that people were like, “Is that actually flexible space or am I going to…is the exec going to think that I’m trampling on their territory or invading their territory?”

And so I think if you’re in a position where you can articulate to people, like, “These spaces are for these things, and we really want you to use them,” but then also, if you’re willing to experiment yourself and kind of like try things out in your office, then go use spaces for different things and to be a leader, right? If there’s a room, a conference room, or a flex space that’s never being used, try using it and see what happens.

So that one is more about like just having more clear definitions about what can be done in the spaces and not assuming. So the constraint there is in our heads.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Or, we just have these assumptions, like, “Well, the conference room is for conferencing, and so it would not be appropriate for me as an individual solo person to get up in there.” It’s like, “Well, that may or may not be true based upon the needs of the organization and the space.”

Leidy Klotz
Exactly, yeah. And, I mean, there’s all this work trying to make offices more flexible and suitable for different tasks. And again, part of that is in the physical world, but part of it is in our heads, right? Have we tried using it for the task and seeing how it works?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, one thing that’s coming up a lot is in terms of like our own needs and desires and what works for us and customizing. I’m curious if you had any discoveries about, like, universal good things for a space in terms of is it light or nature? Or is there anything that just about all humans do better when these components are in the space or are not in the space?

Leidy Klotz
I have another example from my editor’s office. She’s going to have to listen to this podcast. But she said that they wanted to bring more nature in, so they put like AstroTurf on the steel columns to try to make it feel more natural.

But that’s not the kind of nature that’s helpful. So it’s less about, like, bringing nature inside, and more about trying to mimic the patterns that are found in nature. And one thing that’s in nature a lot is this kind of balance between order and complexity.

So there’s this classic interior design advice that’s, like, kind of layering the materials and textures and fabrics, but also having kind of, like, an underlying, “This is the idea.” And I think the kind of the way that that design advice has been backed into, and the way it works, and the reason it works is because we like being surrounded by things where there’s, by the natural world.

And in the natural world, there’s like, you know, a pine tree, the way it grows. It’ll grow in fractal patterns where little small pieces of the pine tree look very similar in terms of like the shape as the larger scale. And so there’s this regularity, but it gives rise to something that looks more complex.

And if you look at, like, a brick facade, for example, I mean, it’s the same thing. It’s this big, massive facade that you don’t pay much attention to and, generally, feels pretty natural and soothing, but there’s also an underlying pattern, whether it’s the bricks are staggered by one half on each level, or maybe one is stretched long ways and one is stretched short ways and then you keep repeating the pattern.

So there’s complexity but it’s resulting from a simple pattern. Is that too abstract or is that okay?

Pete Mockaitis
No, I hear you. And then I’m thinking about, I’m just looking at a bookshelf right now. And I had a buddy, once we were at a party. He was looking at the bookshelf, he said, “What’s up with women organizing their books by color?” which is a huge generalization. I’m sure men do it, too. But I thought it was kind of funny because both he and I have bookshelves and plenty of books and do not organized by color.

But yet, I got to say, when I was beholding this bookshelf, visually, it looked quite lovely. But if you can’t recall what a book spine looked like, you might have a harder time fishing it out of that bookshelf. But I think that speaks a bit to the pattern, is there is a certain order and beauty that is peaceful to having the books organized by color.

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s totally an example, right? You can see that this looks aesthetically pleasing and it’s because, “Okay, I see that there’s some logic here to the pattern.” And if you do it by a rainbow, then that’s something that’s actually found in nature. So that’s the kind of the deepest one.

I would say the other kind of general rules about what we like is we like where we’ve been. There’s this research on mirror exposure in the most extreme. The most interesting study, I think, is one of the original ones.

They put chicken eggs that hadn’t hatched yet and played music. And then when the eggs hatched, they had the ones that had heard the music and hatched chicks that hadn’t heard the music, and they put them in a pen and played music from one end. And the chicks that had heard the music went to the music.

So what’s happening, it’s like this demonstration of that, like, familiarity breeds liking. So if you’ve been surrounded by certain things throughout your life, you’re probably more likely to like them in the future. Like, I live in a house that has angled bedroom ceilings, a gravel driveway, and a kick wall for a soccer ball.

And that’s like some of the same features as the house I grew up in, right? And so the things that we’re kind of familiar are going to just take less cognitive effort and then we’re drawn to them as a result.

And then the last little piece is, this is, I think, the most freeing one, is that we’re also wired to like what we’ve chosen. So if you’ve picked the thing, like if you organized the books the way that you want to organize the books, Pete, don’t change it, right? Like, you are going to kind of justify it and like it because it’s you who did it.

And I think that’s as many kind of general rules as I think are worth thinking about when we’re thinking about our spaces.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, there can be a certain delight in that. And I think you maybe see this in maybe couples arguing about how to load the dishwasher. It’s, like, each way feels very right to each of them. And you can argue, I don’t know if dishwasher engineers would have a point of view on what’s optimal from a cleansing perspective.

But we can get really, really attached to how we’ve arranged things. And I guess, as you opened us up with everything, it could be life or death, potentially, in terms of the ability to be able to arrange things to our liking.

Leidy Klotz
Yeah, I mean, we’re laughing about, well, not laughing, but, the nursing home study is an extreme example. But in some of these studies of self-determination theory in the office and in large scale in, like, across different examples, they correlate agency, growth, and connection and, like, health outcomes. And there’s a correlation there, so it’s a big deal.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, is there anything we should talk about with regard to connection in our spaces?

Leidy Klotz
I think that we’ve talked a little bit about, like, home and away, right, and thinking about how the space is going to make you perform. Is it an away space? Is it a home space? I think, “How can you make it a good space for connecting?” is maybe something that we should just hammer home because, most of the time, what we want to do in the space is have meaningful interactions with the other people who are in it.

And so if you think about people coming to your office, you don’t want them maybe distracted by a mess in the space. And the mess could be, like, the mess that our parents talk about, but also it could be a mess where the space is just not easy to navigate, right? It’s hard for them to get around and, therefore, they’re worried about that, and, therefore, they’re not being able to focus on you.

So I think, you know, how do we make the space as kind of neutral as possible? And sometimes, I think, that’s, for me, the thing that works is, you know, I’ll go outside my house and then just open the door and say, “Okay, I’m coming into this as a visitor would and now I’ll start to notice some of the things,” and then I can remove them and make it so that my guest is able to connect with me and vice versa.

Pete Mockaitis
Very nice. Well, Leidy, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Leidy Klotz
Just one really powerful thing, I guess, is that the space is a really awesome way to advertise your values, and it’s advertising that never turns off. We think about how we present ourselves with our clothes. We think about how we, like, articulate what’s meaningful to us. And yet, our surroundings are also sending messages about those things.

And so I’m not telling you what your values should be, obviously, but I’m saying your surroundings are a way to share those values. If you’re the company that says you care about employee input, and yet there’s cubicles for certain people and, like, nice executive offices around the outside, well, your space is saying something different than your mission statement. And it’s the same on an individual level.

So I would just say that this is an opportunity to, like, put your values into the world, and it’s an opportunity that never, never stops broadcasting once you’ve got it right. So just some motivation for people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Leidy Klotz
One of my favorite quotes are different versions of that it’s less about what happens to you, and more about how you react to it. I guess a Viktor Frankl version of that most recently about life, like, it all being in the space between the stimulus and the reaction. But I really like those.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Leidy Klotz
The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people, they quote it back to you often?

Leidy Klotz
I think the biggest key nugget is that people find it empowering to take advantage of the spaces to which they have access. And I think people realize that they do, in fact, have more options than they thought.

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

Leidy Klotz
LeidyKlotz.com, and then the book In a Good Place is available wherever you buy books. All the good stuff is in the book, but if you want to learn more about me, I’m easy to find on the internet.

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

Leidy Klotz
Notice. So take in the spaces around you and just pay attention to how they’re affecting you, and get some joy out of them, too. There’s beauty in the world around us, and something as simple as just the way the light reflects off the wall in different times of the day can be a source of joy. And that’s something that our screens, fundamentally, can’t give us. So notice and enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Leidy, thank you.

Leidy Klotz
Thanks, Pete.

Apr 16
0

1146: How to Reclaim Your Focus and Unlock Your Genius with Memory Champion Nelson Dellis

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Memory champion Nelson Dellis shares simple techniques to upgrade your thinking to genius level.

You’ll Learn

  1. The core skills behind genius-level thinking
  2. How to learn faster and better using one powerful tool
  3. Why you shouldn’t write off your intuition

About Nelson

Nelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion, two-time Guinness World Record holder, Grandmaster of Memory, keynote speaker, and world-renowned memory coach. He teaches at the university level, holding degrees in computer science and physics, and is also an accomplished mountaineer with four Mt. Everest expeditions. 

Beyond the classroom and the mountains, Nelson has medaled in international competitions, contributed to remote viewing research on stock prediction, and even played on a professional card-counting Blackjack team that won over $100,000. He shares his passion for unlocking the mind’s potential with over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, where he makes complex skills practical, fun, and accessible to anyone willing to train their brain.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Nelson Dellis Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nelson, welcome!

Nelson Dellis
Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to talk about becoming more of an everyday genius. You are a six-time memory champion. Could you tell us one of your most amazing feats of memory ever?

Nelson Dellis
Let’s see, I’m most proud of having memorized 10,000 digits of pi. That was a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
10,000 digits. Wow! Now that sounds like a record to me, I don’t know.

Nelson Dellis
Oh, it’s not. Although, you know, if we’re talking about how many digits someone has used their memory to store, it’s many tens of thousands. The unofficial record is, like, a hundred K, but the official record is 70,030. Yeah, both are insane.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild. How does a person do such a thing?

Nelson Dellis
Well, first you have to have the desire to do such a thing. I’ve known of people who have done it without really much of a technique other than brute force repetition and a lot of time. That sounds horrible. And I would ask the question, “How?” That sounds crazy.

But those who are more well-versed in memory techniques would look at numbers and have some way of converting them into more meaningful things, things that are easier to visualize in your mind than these abstract symbols. And then encoding it all into some elaborate story that connects them in order.

And that is the basics of memory techniques in a nutshell, honestly.

Pete Mockaitis
So now I remember reading a book about this in terms of, like, each digit becomes a letter or sound, like one becomes T or D, and two becomes N and so forth. Is that what you’re talking about in terms of making them more meaningful?

Nelson Dellis
That’s one of the methods. With abstract symbols like numbers, for example, the system is to, yes, convert it into words that, then, you can visualize, right? You look at numbers, it’s maybe hard to visualize them, maybe not individually, like, if I see a seven, I can visualize a seven or seven things.

But if you are talking about a huge sequence of numbers, there’s only 10 different digits. So if there’s a lot of digits, you’re going to get a lot of those repeating. So it’s hard to think of, like, “Oh, I’m picturing a seven, then I’m picturing an eight, then I’m picturing a seven.”

It would be easier if you could collect groups of numbers and then have images preset for certain combinations. So instead of saying, I don’t know, 124, I see Michael Jordan, maybe, you know, that would always encompass with one and two and a four together, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, okay. So, like, he’s number one, and his number is 24. So he’s one, two, four.

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, you’re not too far off. My system is a little…

Pete Mockaitis
Wait, wasn’t he 23? Wasn’t 23 his number? And I’m not a sports guy.

Nelson Dellis
Exactly, No, no. So 024, the 24 is Kobe Bryant. That actually was his number. So all of the 24s, this is the way I do it. There are different ways to do it. Some might argue that my way is a little more complicated, unnecessarily, but it works for me.

Anyways, so 024 is Kobe Bryant. So all the 24s, things that end in 24 are shooting guards in the NBA. So 124, I made Michael Jordan because, you know, after Kobe, he should be number one, right? Yeah, and then I just go through a bunch of different NBA stars there for the 24s.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that was fun. So then you’ve taken some time in advance to construct this whole rubric.

Nelson Dellis
Language, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s like a Nelson only. It’s pure custom, what does 24 mean to you? What’s one-four mean to you?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah. And that’s the most important part about coming up with visuals to remember is the more meaningful they are to you, the more rich they are with associations to you, the better they’re going to stick.

So, yes, somebody could learn my system. And, again, this is, yes, a pre-learned system so that when I’m encountering numbers in competitions or day-to-day life, I have a way to look at them and already have something set up to visualize instead.

But it is maybe not advised to take my system and learn it as is because there’s going to be a lot of images for numbers that mean nothing to you. Like, I have my personal friends in there. I have characters from books and shows that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life.

Some people might have never seen those shows, you know. Or, basketball, maybe nobody cares about basketball. And while you could, I guess, learn to visualize Michael Jordan, but why not choose something that’s, you know, you like to visualize or that’s easy for you to visualize?

Pete Mockaitis
But I think that speaks to a principle. Well, you tell me, a potential principle in terms of, if something is deeply meaningful and emotionally resonant to you, it is more memorable. Yeah, sometimes, people say, “Pete, you have the most amazing memory that you remembered this thing.” And I was like, “Well, no, that thing was very important to me in that moment of my life,” versus, I guess, for everyone else, was just like, “Yeah, whatever.”

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, exactly. Our brains are designed to remember novel things that stick out, and then the stuff that’s every day, commonplace. Like, it decides usually to drop that information. It treats it like noise.

And if you think kind of evolutionarily way back when, our brain was designed to remember these novel things, because it usually was tied to survival, right? Like, “This plant here has this pattern on it,” visual, “if I eat this, I will die because it’s poisonous with this pattern on it,” right? So simple things like that.

Nowadays, there is so much information, I think our primitive brain doesn’t do a very good job of isolating the things that are actually important because it’s not so tied to survival anymore, versus things that are noise.

Even though you may have the intention of you’re completely interested in this thing, your brain might be not so convinced, you know? And so it doesn’t stick, even though you’re paying full attention to it.

So it does start with things that you’re more interested in, that are paying attention to, tend to be memorized better, but it’s a complicated world out there, and our brain is trying to figure it out.

So if you can tap into kind of its evolutionary traits, which is we remember pictures that are associative and filled with sensory information and are meaningful, those are the things that you’re going to remember.

A great example is like, think of 9/11, right? We all remember where we were, what we were doing, sometimes even what we ate that day, what we were wearing that day, what somebody said that day, and that’s because that day was all of those things.

It was memorable. It was emotional, terrifying, scary, and it was out of the ordinary, for sure. We saw things on TV that we will never see in our lives probably, so it sticks out. Versus, you know, last Tuesday, what did you do?

Probably went to work. Did the exact same thing you usually do. Maybe a slight variation here and there, but nothing to the effect of something that dramatically different.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so we learned, your subtitle is “Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem Solving, and Much More.” We talked about a hack for numbers, which is kind of interesting.

But I’m guessing for your person who is interested in becoming awesome at their job, memory contests are not their job, but you’ve got some goodies for us. Tell us, what’s sort of your main message or big idea in the book, Everyday Genius?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, so the main point of the book is that I believe that there are plenty of mental abilities that we can train and learn that are associated with genius. And in the process of learning them and mastering them, you tap into that and could even convince yourself that you have a higher intellect, that you are genius, or can tap into genius from time to time.

What I learned over the years doing the memory thing, I didn’t have a background in memory techniques. I had an average memory, but I learned about them. I trained them obsessively, to a point where I could win these competitions and do break records and such. But it wasn’t a gift I was born with.

And that was always an amazing thing that, “Oh, wow. I thought memory was a fixed thing. And that super smart people had good memories and dumb people had bad memories,” right? But it’s not like that. It’s memory is a skill. And that was a huge thing for me to kind of unlearn.

And then, over the years, doing 10,000 digits of pi or 20 decks of playing cards in an hour, crazy feats of memory, people will throw out that label of genius just because they don’t understand it or don’t think it’s possible.

And I hate that. I’m not a genius. Like, I’m just like anybody else. I just have a skill that I learned. And I could teach you how to do this skill, and the person down the street, how to do this skill.

So genius is definitely a subjective term, ultimately, you know? People use it very flippantly. If they see something that looks smart, you consider someone smart, but that might not be the end of the story. Someone might not actually be as smart as you think. They just showed some quality of intelligence in a moment, in some situation. but I think we all can kind of uncover that.

And that’s what the book explores, the different pockets of mental abilities that can be taught and learned if you spend a bit of time on them, or understood how they worked. And then you can have some fun with it, right?

You can do it for show. You can do it for improving your life. You can do it to just be a better person. It’s up to what you what you want to do with it, but we all have access to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you lay out a few core skills of genius. Can you share those with us?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, so I started the book off, the first half of the book kind of laying this foundation, which, and again, this is largely my opinion, but I think many people might agree that memory is a cornerstone of genius.

I think if you have a good memory, you can do a lot with that to do some genius kinds of abilities. So that’s talked about at the beginning of the book. And in tandem with that, long-term learning, better study tactics. So being able to take your memory and use it for the long-term.

Reading faster. I think if you can read more, that’s how you learn more. That’s how you learn more about the world. So if you can consume more written content, more books, you can increase your knowledge base.

I also talk about focus and attention. So if you can master the ability to hone in on something when it counts and to block out distractions, you, of course, can put more efforts into learning things or outputting more, right?

And then, using those foundational techniques, I go into more nuanced parts of genius. Social genius, like how to interact with others around you. Mental calculations, so being able to calculate with numbers faster. Creativity, problem solving, even in the last chapter, it’s a little woo-woo out there, but intuition.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, that’s a lovely lineup. Well, let’s hear, when it comes to, let’s talk about memory and social at the same time, if I may. How can we do a better job of remembering people’s names and faces?

Because I think that can make a huge impression in terms of like, “Oh, wow, like that person, he remembered my name and he said it to me. He seemed happy to see me.” It’s just like it skyrockets your likability real quick. So give us some hacks for this one.

Nelson Dellis
I mean, Dale Carnegie said that the most interesting person is the most interested person. And I think there’s nothing more than, bigger than, or showing more interest than if you remember somebody’s name. And it’s just a little memory trick, right?

And it’s such a small thing, it’s just this little word, sometimes a longer word, but a word that represents this person, but it’s so powerful and so meaningful. So I treat it as this very special, delicate thing that a person can present to me.

And I want to know this thing. I want to store it in my mind because I know how powerful it could be. And so memory techniques will serve you perfectly for this situation. And, again, tapping into what I mentioned about the numbers, you’re taking some piece of information. It’s not a number this time. It’s this word, this label of a human that’s in front of you, and turning it into a meaningful picture.

And so what that typically means is you hear a name, hopefully, maybe, but sometimes maybe not, it reminds you of something. Maybe a person you know, close to you, or a celebrity, or someone, an athlete, whatever has that same name. You can think of that person. There’s a picture suddenly in your mind for that name now.

Or, maybe if you don’t, maybe if you can take a syllable, the first syllable of the name, or a couple of the syllables, and those individual atoms of the name, maybe come up with a picture, create a picture for you. Like Nelson, maybe you think of Nelson Mandela, okay?

Maybe you don’t, maybe you’ve never heard the name before. So what could you do? Well, Nell, Son, okay, maybe Nell makes you think of like a nail, like a hammering nail. And then Son, sun in the sky.

So both are pictures, right? Either Nelson Mandela, even maybe Nelson from the Simpsons, if you’re a Simpsons fanatic, he’s a character on the show, or you have this image of a nail being driven into the sun. So that’s a representative thing for the name. That’s a little more tangible than this collection of letters that’s somewhat abstract.

The next thing is to find a way to always be able to reliably pull it back when you need it, pull it out of this person when you have to call them that name to remember it. And that’s where this other part of memory is super important, which is how we organize and store information.

There are methods to do this, and we don’t really think about it when we try to remember something. But one of the techniques, and this applies for names, is anchoring it to something that will be helpful to retrieve it.

And for names, it’s the person. The person is who’s going to show up, whether it’s online in the form of a picture or in front of you at a party. They are the one that shows up, and at that point is when you usually have to remember their name, right?

So you can attach it or anchor it to a physical feature. I think that’s the best way to do it because you’re usually looking at the person in the face, so why not choose something that you notice on the person’s face?

So whether it’s a big nose, like a five o’clock shadow, a big forehead. I’m just pointing out my flaws here. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even have to be a flaw. It’s just whatever you notice. Maybe they have pretty eyes or like a little dimple or a little wrinkle, whatever.

And you could come up with a story or some kind of way to attach the image to that feature. The weirder, the better, the crazier, the better, but that’s what makes it memorable, unforgettable.

So if I imagine Nelson Mandela jumping off the edge of my huge nose, the next time you see me and my big nose, you’re going to think, “Oh, there’s Nelson Mandela jumping off his nose. Nelson.” You say this all in your mind though. You don’t say this out loud. You can get into some trouble there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, talking about getting into trouble, I’m wondering, like if I did choose your five o’clock shadow, and then you showed up clean-shaven, like am I out of luck, like, “Oops”?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, I would lean towards not choosing things that could change but, again, yeah, somebody could get a facelift, too, and then what do do, right? But I honestly think that the technique is really good for in the moment, getting the information in your mind quickly.

And then a big part of being able to remember it, say, the next time is a bit of review. So when you’re learning the person’s name and interacting with this person and talking to them, or you’re perusing around the party, like schmoozing, learning other people’s names.

When you come back or say goodbye to that person, or maybe you look around the room and you see that person, tell yourself, “Okay, this person, that was Nelson, okay,” you review. Like, we need to review things to remember them for the long term.

The technique I just said is very good for getting information in your mind quickly, and it often imprints for quite a while. But if you truly want to remember names for a long time, you have to be super intentional about all of it. You have to review it.

I do a tremendous amount of review for the people I meet. I’m a different story because, as a memory champion, of course, everybody expects me to remember everybody’s name. So there’s a lot more riding on me remembering a name than most people.

But I keep, like, a name journal, so when I meet people after the event or the party or whatnot, the meeting, I always keep track of the mnemonics, and the names, and the people and the context of those people, and I review that from time to time.

And some of those people in that book, I will never see again. They’re just filling up pages in my name book for no reason. But in the off chance I bump into one of those people, and I can say their name months later, years later, it’s so powerful, right?

They’ll think like, “Wow, that person remembered me? Whoa, I must have made an impression,” or, “What an interesting person. Wow! It shows a lot that he thought about me,” and who knows what they’ll think, but it’s usually a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Well, now can you give us a hack for just learning better, in general. Like, I’m trying to pick up a skill, whatever that might be. It’s coding. It’s AI. It’s copywriting. I’m trying to figure out some new stuff.

Nelson Dellis
So now you’re getting into the process of learning, right? And so to learn, obviously you got to have techniques to remember things quicker. That helps. The review part is so much more important because, if you truly want to know something to your core, it needs to be almost automatic, right?

So there’s this idea of two kinds of memory. There’s declarative memory, where you can pull things out, think about it, and then declare it. Kind of like remembering somebody’s name. And then there’s procedural, which is another fancy way of saying muscle memory.

So let’s take the example of remembering somebody’s name. This is a good example. When I’m learning somebody’s name for the first time, I’m using this technique, right, to store their name. And then, when I see them, I’m going to have this effort to kind of collect it, to declare it.

But there’s a point where, let’s say, you know, you just started this job, you started working with this one person, you learned their name using a technique, and you use it every day, and they become close to you, you become friends. You’ve worked together for five years.

In five years, let’s say you are very close to this person, you know this person’s name, you don’t have to declare it anymore. They are Bob instantly. Like, it’s part of you. You don’t even have to think about it. Like, think about your siblings and your mother, like you know their name. You don’t have to pull it out of your brain. It’s just there, right?

That’s procedural. It’s something that’s rehearsed so much that you just know it, right? So the goal is, with long-term learning, whether you’re learning a language or some programming language, you want to get it to a point where you don’t have to sit there and get it out of your brain.

But there will be a point at the beginning where that has to happen. That’s just how our brains work, unfortunately. So the question is, “How do we hack getting things from our declarative, which is always the first step, into a procedural process, into muscle memory?”

And, unfortunately, while declarative has tons of little hacks, all these little memory techniques, and that’s what all of chapter one is about, the procedural isn’t as easy to hack. The best strategies we have are active recall. So actively trying to access the information in our mind.

So by closing your eyes, and you don’t have to close your eyes, but just to prove the point further, you know, when you’re trying to get the information out, the more you access it, the more you kind of fire those neurons, those connections, the better it’ll become automatic.

And that shouldn’t be a surprise to many people, right? The more you do something mentally, the more automatic it becomes. You strengthen those neural pathways and then it becomes more automatic.

But a lot of us, when we study, we think about it wrong, right? We think we have our notes in front of us and we just look at it again and again and again. And you feel like you have this sense of familiarity with the information. You’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got it.”

You’re going even through it and you’re maybe even ahead of where you’re reading saying, “Yes,” and saying it before you read it. But that’s not active recall because you have the information in front of you. It’s not true declarative, right?

So if you can put that information away and struggle to get it out, which it always is a bit of a challenge, but that’s where the magic happens, right? When you do that active recall, go through that process of the nitty-gritty of pulling it out, that’s where you are building these neural pathways, strengthening these neural pathways to procedural.

Space repetition, so there’s plenty of studies around this where, if you are doing everything, studying for something all in one session, well, yes, you could use memory techniques and it might work for the short term. In the long term, you will forget more of it.

Our brain likes to work on things for a little bit, take a break, and then come back, because I guess there’s that, in that moment when you come back to it, you do have to kind of struggle with it to get it back to where it was. And I think that repetitiveness of, or that repeated action of going back to it, almost starting a bit more from scratch is where you strengthen those neural pathways again.

And then the last tip on that is something called interleaving. So if you can, in a study session, let’s say, interleave, in a similar set of what you’re studying, different kinds of things.

So let’s say if you’re studying for a language, and you do a lot of problems or questions or quizzes or testing yourself on verb conjugations, and then maybe you just do straight up vocabulary training, and then maybe, I don’t know, you study basic phrases or something like that.

They’re all different, right, but they all have to do with you learning language. But if you can go in between and kind of alternate, maybe every 15, 20 minutes, that is proved to be better than just studying for one big chunk of time, say, verbs, right?

So we found that if we switch up the task, but keeping it in the same domain, actually we learn better. And I think it’s a similar principle to space repetition. But, yeah, it’s a tedious process to learn. But if you understand how to hack the brain in that sense, you can learn more efficiently and faster.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting with active recall, in some ways, you need a little bit of a prompt in terms of like, “What is that thing I’m retrieving?” And so, I suppose there’s many ways you can do this. Like, people use flashcards, or I guess now with AI, you can just say, “Hey, this is what I’m trying to learn. Ask me questions now, one at a time. Go.” And so then you’re practicing the active retrieval.

But I’m hearing you that the key point there is I’m not looking at the thing. I am hiding, I’m covering up the thing, and I am depending on my ability to pull it out from the depths of my memory.

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, that’s better for learning, and there’s different ways to do it. As you mentioned AI, you know, it’s proven to be, or increasingly been proven to be detrimental to our memories because we’re doing a lot of cognitive tasks, using the tool rather than ourselves.

But, I think, as a sparring partner, as a coach, or a quizzer, I think it could be super powerful because it can give you all sorts of ways to do that active recall. Another great method, I don’t know if it was invented by him, but it’s been coined as named by him, it’s the Feynman method.

So Richard Feynman was a legendary physicist who was really well-known for being able to explain things, complicated things, in physics really well. And the technique is, basically, when you’re learning something, try to explain it to somebody else in the most basic way possible.

And as you explain it, you’ll quickly find out what you truly know and don’t, and it’s a way of kind of refining the weaknesses and strengths of what you’ve studied. And, again, it’s active recall in disguise.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, now let’s hear about focus in terms of just being able to hunker down and do stuff.

Nelson Dellis
Well, in this day and age, it’s extremely difficult to focus, and so I feel like a big part of finding how to pay attention to something is figuring out what are the points of distraction for you, and being ruthless in kind of eliminating them preemptively.

Thinking about there’s, like, this planner in your mind that says, “Okay, in the future, Nelson needs to focus on this. So I’m going to make sure that, when he’s working, the distractions are at bay.”

And there’s plenty of tips on how to do this. It depends on what is the source of your distraction, but, oftentimes, it’s the internet or your phone or some device. So blocking that in some case, maybe going analog during a session, putting your phone out of sight while you work on a task.

The goal with paying attention, you want to have this deep work at your disposal. And oftentimes, we’re really doing what’s called shallow work, where we’re like low value, low focus tasks that don’t really push you forward, like you’re checking your email, you’re responding to messages. You’re not doing the deep work that you need to do, the deep focus.

And it often comes to your environment. Like, put yourself in a place isolated and work on this problem or thing that you need to get done, and you’ll have tremendous focus on that thing.

Another thing is we get tired, especially nowadays, where we’re so used to being stimulated all the time. It’s not our faults. Devices around us are designed to distract us as their main purpose.

And so, if you can put these things at bay, but also train your mind to work for longer and longer periods of time without being interrupted or needing to kind of satisfy yourself with dopamine hits somehow, so there’s this idea called a Pomodoro technique, where you can set a timer, preferably an analog timer so you don’t have your phone near you, but for 20, 25 minutes.

And the idea is that you work intensely for 20, 25 minutes, and that’s doable, right? If you can say that to yourself, “I’m just going to work hard, focus on this one thing, nothing else for 20 minutes,” and then you get a five minute break to do something mindless.

And then you dive in back again. Do another Pomodoro session for maybe 20, 25 minutes again. And you can stack these, and then every maybe three or four, you can take a longer break.

And it turns out it’s a lot easier to get work done. And, oftentimes, you maybe get started with 20 minutes, and you end up working for an hour because you just needed to get started.

So, oftentimes, the focus thing is a trained ability. And the more you work on it and the more you set yourself up to have success without getting distracted, the longer you’ll find that you can focus on things more intently. And when you can do that, you can get more work done, you can have better memory, read more, all those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Now I’ve heard with this, it’s cool, we can practice, we can get better and better. I’ve heard that the quote, “human limits”, given ultradian rhythms, is something like 90 minutes. Like, you probably need a break by then.

Although, occasionally, I don’t know, every once in a while, I get uber fascinated by something and it goes way longer. So what’s your take on this one?

Nelson Dellis
I agree. I mean, I think we all will get burned out at some point. And so I think, over time, I think prepping for that eventual mental deterioration in the session by breaking it up, it’s like in a workout, you have a lot of reps to do. It’s tempting to just get them all out of the way, but you might crash pretty quick versus breaking them up early into sets of 10.

Something that seems too easy, but you could do 10 at a time, and you could almost never stop, right? So I think the same kind of idea applies mentally that, even though it seems like, “Oh, I’m going to get an hour and a half of studying in,” it might be better to break that up into multiple shorter sessions so that you can actually be productive, fully productive, really not mentally fatigued for longer, and make more progress that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And this speed reading, how much of that is a real thing?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, I’m careful about that term, and even though I call the chapter’s title “Speed reading,” I quickly changed it to “Focus reading” because I am aware of some of the associations or the connotations with speed reading.

There’s a lot of history in scam-y programs and bogus claims of people being able to speed read thousands of words per minute. The average person is somewhere between 300, 400 words per minute.

And so what my chapter is truly about is learning how to optimize or make your reading more efficient, and having the skills to be able to turn up the dial of your speed and to turn it down, right, because not everything needs to be speed read or read fast.

There are going to be things you just need to drink right and chug, versus like a fine wine where you’d rather smell it, take a sip, enjoy it, maybe even go back and have another glass, you know?

So I think reading is really up to what the person is trying to get out of it, and being able to kind of work with how they know their mind works and how to read better, and remember what you read better using some basic strategies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what are the strategies?

Nelson Dellis
Well, there’s a big part of, again, paying attention, so putting yourself in the right frame of mind to read, having an intention to read. A lot of people want to read a lot of things, but they just pile up books.

So being more intentional about getting through the books you’d like to actually read, which means making time for it. There are so many things that we spend time on that do not advance us in our books.

And if you can just make it more of a thing that you purposefully do every day, whether that means you have to carry a book around with you all the time, I always do that, or you have always got a book by your bedside or on your desk, and you take five minutes here, even just to get like a little chapter out of the way.

You’re always reading in some form. It’s like what you do. Just like maybe you’ve made working out an exercise just as important in your life. Reading should be as well. And I think there are so many benefits to reading. So it’s hard to tell me that maybe that’s not a good thing to read so much.

There are some other more physical, tangible techniques. For example, if you want to increase your reading speed, some suggestions in the book are, if you use some kind of pointer, I know it sounds very infantile, but what happens to most readers is, if they don’t have some kind of guide, they’re often subject to their eyes bouncing around the page or backtracking a lot.

So if you can have some pointer, whether it’s your finger, a pencil, a spaghetti noodle, I don’t know.

Pete Mockaitis
Uncooked, yeah.

Nelson Dellis
An uncooked spaghetti noodle, to guide your eyes across, you’ll find that you backtrack way less, if at all, and you can make more progress through the pages, the chapters that you’re trying to go for.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, when we read, we don’t read every single thing. Our eyes are constantly jumping in what’s called saccades. And if you look at somebody, for example, if you look at someone on a train looking outside of the train, you’ll see their eyes are like jumping, jumping, jumping, jumping.

That’s because it’s kind of trying to track the moving landscape. And even though the person looking out the window doesn’t feel like their eyes are like jumping like that, that’s just naturally what our eyes do. And we do it when we read as well.

And so what you can do, since we don’t need to read all the words, we’re actually skipping around a lot because we can cluster words, we can actually see things in our peripheral as well, and oftentimes we can piece together clumps of words, like just by context, right?

We know what’s going to come next, so do we actually need to read the word? Sometimes we aren’t, even though we feel like we have to. So what you can do is play around with this. I like to draw some, with pencil, some margins inside. Maybe, like, you can start kind of shallow, so maybe a half inch or an inch on each side of the page.

And then as you’re guiding yourself, you just stay between those lines and you realize that, “Oh, shoot, I’m not reading the outskirts of each line of the page. Like, I’m maybe missing hundreds of words per page if I do that,” but you still can remember and read what is on the page partly because peripheral is picking up on that, but also again, context, you can figure it out.

And so if you can even narrow that further, you find you’re just, like, reading a very central narrow part of the page, you can still read the page. It’s really fascinating and fun to play around with.

And this is just to train you, right? Like I’m not saying go through all hundreds of pages of your books and put margins. But if you can train a little bit, this purposeful practice, again makes you better, this training, you can get better at doing that kind of automatically without having to guide with your finger all the time and write these margins in there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Nelson, tell me, what are some of the top hacks that absolutely most professionals could benefit tremendously from adopting that we haven’t already covered?

Nelson Dellis
I’m a big fan of the chapter on intuition. I know it’s a less of a thing that you can kind of hold and, like, purposefully grasp in your mind the results. But I think there’s some kind of intangible thing to it where people can recognize that it’s doing something for them or not.

And so that whole chapter is about tapping into kind of, like, this gut feeling and how to listen to it better and to hone it better for things that don’t necessarily seem like they’re in your vicinity to make decisions on or perceive.

And I know that sounds a bit out there, but there are techniques out there to hone that. And I don’t want to get too deep into it because it gets a bit weird, but I think the short of it is to listen to your intuition more.

Not that it’s always correct, but if you do listen to it more and open up to it, you’ll find that it often has something important to say, whether it’s about a deal you’re about to say yes to, or some turning point in your life, or the people that you hang out with.

I think if you listen to them, you get those bouts of intuition. I think you get more information about the world, and then you can have more at your disposal, right, more information. I think about what’s happening around you can only be better.

So I’m really happy about that chapter in the book. And I encourage people to kind of explore that a little more.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I think that there’s a lot to that in terms of intuition. I don’t know the neuroscience, but I think I’ve heard, or at least my hot take is that our advanced brain nervous system has just oodles of associations all over the place from all of our experiences. And sometimes it’s not yet conscious.

Like, I could not articulate why I’ve got a weird feeling or a bad feeling about this contract or this deal. And yet, there’s something to it. And I like what you said. It’s not necessarily correct, like, “Oh, absolutely, trust your guide every time. It’ll never lead you straight.” I don’t think that’s true.

But it is surfacing information, and I think it’s funny. It’s almost like, well, I’m thinking about, we had Joe Navarro, the FBI agent who does body language stuff. And I think he said it well, in terms of like, you can’t like prosecute someone based on, like, a body language situation, like, “Judge, jury, there you have it, you know? He crossed his legs at the wrong time. He’s guilty of sin.”

But what you can do is say, “Hmm, this thing right here seems worthy of additional investigation, additional resources. Let’s go search the apartment of his mom. Oh, and what do you know? We found the key item there because we listened to those clues from from the body language.”

And, likewise, I think that when you listen to your intuition, and say, “Hmm, something about this deal feels off. I’m just going to run it by a lawyer.” And the lawyer says, “Oh, my gosh, this is a terrible deal. Look at all the things you have to do, and almost nothing that they have to do. Do not sign.” It’s is like, “Oh, okay, well, it was good move that I checked my intuition.”

Or you might talk to multiple trusted advisors, and said, “Ah, yes, it could feel sketchy. But, in fact, that is just how this whole industry operates, so you got to choose. Are you down with that or are you not?”

And then I think it really can be a valuable tool or indicator to point you into where we’re going to dig deeper.

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, and I think, more than anything, our brains are very logical and rational, and we tend to always think with that, and I think that’s great. I mean, we should be logical about the real world and information around us.

But our brain isn’t always, like, what we think logically. It’s not always getting it correct, you know? There are many things that can alter what we think is correct, and the brain is not quite getting it correct.

So I think this mix of having a well-founded logic in life, but also using intuition when it needs to and listening to it more often, again, not necessarily to make the decisions, but to maybe factor in as part of your decision-making can really make a difference in how you navigate your life or your job, how to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Well, anything else you want to share before we hear about your favorite things?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, no, I’m so happy with this book. I always talk about memory, and over the years, I’ve just been always fascinated by the brain, clearly. And I’ve kept little notebooks of all these cool tricks, mental tricks that I’ve been taught or stumbled upon because of my memory explorations, and it’s all in this book.

And I’m so over the moon about this book. And I think it’ll help a lot of people. And it can be fun, it can be serious. You can use it in so many different ways. And so I hope people go and check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nelson Dellis
This is always changing, but this one has always stuck with me, and it’s by Albert Einstein, who I talk about a lot in the book. and it’s that, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

And I’ve always loved that because, especially coming from him, you know, you’d think like of Einstein, he just knows so much. That’s how he figured everything out, but he actually figured everything out his staple discoveries from just imagination exercises.

And oftentimes, silly ones that, like, broke the boundary of what you’re supposed to think about, I guess, for some physics examples. And that’s how innovation came about for him. And I think that’s, in general, how innovation comes out is by bending the rules, which can only happen in your imagination.

And so I think if you think that way, that it’s more valuable to have these imagination, visualization skills, which you can train and practice, it’s often more important than what you know.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah, I’m a bit biased, but I was a part of a study at Washington University in St. Louis, where they were, you know, there’s been memory studies forever, and people have been subject to fMRI scans to look inside the brain, but they’re largely uncomfortable machines to sit in for very long.

So, typically, studies in the past have taken a lot of large quantity of people in the machine for very short periods of time, and kind of taking averages. They’ve never really done in-depth long hours in the machine study.

So they took me, how many hours did I do? It must’ve been at least 15 to 20, maybe more. And then they have maybe 10 controls, who also volunteered. I don’t know who these people were. They must’ve been incentivized, somehow.

But anyways, the results are finally, they were published this year, and they’re trying to get it published in some well-known journals. But, ultimately, what came out of it, there’s a few things that came out of it, but one of the most striking or kind of, I don’t know, controversial, but against what most people might’ve thought is that the hippocampus for most people is where the magic happens with memory.

There’s a lot of activity when somebody is using their memory. And for a lot of the tasks they had me do in the machine, it showed a very different structure, that I’m actually not using, well, I am using my hippocampus, but I’m using more of my brain, that the pathways and the parts of my brain that I’m using when I’m memorizing is completely different than the normal person.

And this is trained, right? So the ultimate finding of the paper is that memory training literally rewires your brain. And that’s always been said, you know, anecdotally, but now there’s proof.

This is literal proof that anybody can change the way their brain works. And also that memory doesn’t fully work the way we think it does because how can Nelson here be memorizing all these sorts of crazy things, and it’s not through the conventional systems that we see when people use their memory.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Nelson Dellis
I’d have to say Godel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Nelson Dellis
My brain, seriously. You know, it might be easy to say, like, “Oh, I have this app for this, and then I use tech or AI for this.” But, honestly, my favorite tool is my brain, and I really try to use it whenever I can, even though there might be an easier way, more efficient way. I don’t want to lose the ability to use my brain and to think.

And I feel more terrified than ever in modern day, just because I feel like we’re losing the ability to think. We’re outsourcing it so much that I don’t know what our future looks like, honestly. So I’m loving my tool in my head that I’m purposefully using to keep it strong and to fight the trend.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Nelson Dellis
My favorite habit is just always working out early in the morning. The first thing I get out of bed, and I do some intense exercise, that, to me, I don’t even, I mean, yeah, it’s just what I’ve programmed myself to do. And if I don’t get that done, my day just is shot. When I get my workout in early, it’s just sets the tone for productivity throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Nelson Dellis
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s using your memory, being intentional about memory, and understanding that the memory is something that can be worked on. If you say to yourself that, “I don’t have a good memory. I forget names. I’m just that person who is forgetful,” yeah, sure, you’re going to be that person.

You get to decide what your memory is. And I find that’s the most profound thing people get out of my talks or my content is that the brain is malleable, and that nobody has a bad memory. They just have untrained memories. And that’s usually the nugget that changes a lot of their perception on what their brain is capable of.

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

Nelson Dellis
Best is just to go to my website, NelsonDellis.com. You can find everything about me there, my books, my coaching, memory coaching, my YouTube channel. A lot of content out there teaching how to do this stuff, and, yeah, exploring my books. But NelsonDellis.com, you’ll find it all.

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

Nelson Dellis
Yes, use your brain more. I know it can be challenging right now, and oftentimes, you use it and you’re maybe let down, but it’s, again, it’s plastic. It can be molded. It can be trained. So the more you use it, the stronger it gets. So give it a shot. You won’t regret it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nelson, thank you.

Nelson Dellis
Thank you so much.

Apr 13
0

1145: How to Flourish in Chaos and Build Adaptability with Anne Grady

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Anne Grady shares expert tips for developing your capacity to adapt, change, and grow during times of uncertainty.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why to seek out the (second) greatest threat to your brain
  2. How to optimize your three most precious resources
  3. The trick to stop dwelling on your anger

About Anne

Anne Grady is a keynote speaker, bestselling author, and resilience expert who equips leaders and teams with practical tools to adapt, lead, and grow through change. With a master’s degree in organizational communication, she blends neuroscience, psychology, and real-world experience to make complex ideas simple and actionable. Her work helps people build resilience, strengthen leadership, and thrive in times of uncertainty.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Anne Grady Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anne, welcome back!

Anne Grady
I am so happy to be back, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to talk about your good stuff, EvolvAbility: Growing Forward When Life Goes Sideways. We were just chatting, Adaptability on the StrengthsFinder Assessment is my dead last strength. You might even call it a weakness, but that’s forbidden in their world to say such words. So, yeah, this sounds very useful.

Anne Grady
Good.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you kick us off with a really surprising discovery you’ve made about this stuff while putting together the book?

Anne Grady
Well, it was kind of what led me to write the book. So I’ve got a long history of my child has some severe mental illness and autism and developmental delays, and so I spent years kind of in crisis mode.

And a few years ago, my friends tried to get me to go camping for my birthday. And I would have rather had a colonoscopy than go camping. Like, it was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

But long story short, I went, I fell in love with it. We ended up buying a small travel trailer. Fast forward a decade, and I’m now living in the middle of the country with cows and donkeys on a 20-acre ranch. It’s everything I never knew I wanted.

And what I learned through this journey is that we wear these identities like labels, “I’m not athletic,” “I’m not an outdoorsy person,” “I’m this,” or, “I’m that.” And comfort is really cozy until it becomes a cage.

And so that journey of going from being absolutely convinced I didn’t want to do something, to being so in love with it, I created a whole lifestyle around it, was this way to show me that you’re never too old to adapt and evolve. You can always continue to grow. The question is whether you do it purposefully or whether you just default.

And so the goal is, “How do I design a life so that I can adapt on purpose, not just end up where I’m headed and hope that this draws a bulls-eye around it and hope this is where I was supposed to go?”

Pete Mockaitis
And what happens if we don’t adapt on purpose? What paths are we likely to find ourselves in?

Anne Grady
Well, you’re going to evolve one way or another. The question is, “Do you do it by design or default?” And so what happens is a lot of us are so, me included, we’re raised for achievement. Even your podcast, right, is about, “How do I love my job?” And so we talk about growth and achievement.

But sometimes we get so busy in the doing, we forget that there’s growth and achievement in the being. And I think that if you want to live a life that is purposeful, that is in alignment with your values, that is something you not only survive but enjoy, then adapting purposefully is the way to go.

Because the world is changing faster than most of our nervous systems can keep up. So it’s about how we move through that journey. And for some people, they look up and 20 years has gone by and everything is hanging an inch lower, and you may or may not be any closer to achieving your goals. And for others, it’s like, you know, we’re designing the life we want to live.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s quite the visual. Thank you.

Anne Grady
Gravity.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking about, yeah, I am 42 now.

Anne Grady
You’re a baby.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’m thinking about when you mentioned, “Faster than our nervous system can keep up with.” I feel like I’ve viscerally had that experience in terms of just in the course of a day, and sort of like, “Ooh, this thing happens. Oh, okay, not what I was expecting. Okay, but you know what? Okay, you know what? Okay, we’re going to take a breath, just reset, get in the groove, know, refocus. Okay.”

And then it happens again and again and again. And then after, I don’t know, like the ninth one is just, I’m just about ready to flip a table. And so, it really does, when you say your nervous system, it does, for me, feel like a physiological phenomenon.

It’s like, if someone were to like, I don’t know, give me a stab with a fork, I’m like, “Huh! Oh, okay. All right. There’s a big unexpected shocker of a change, but, all right. You know, I can…”, but you know, the pain subsides and you get back in a groove.

But then that happens enough times and I’m just, it’s like, “I’m just done. I’m just done. I should probably just go in a room and not spread my negativity and toxicity to others around me at this point.” So that’s what it feels like for me.

Anne Grady
But you’re not alone and it’s actually what’s happening. I mean, there could not be a better way to describe what’s happening. And because your brain craves comfort, not chaos. So other than death, uncertainty is the greatest threat of all to the human brain.

So it is, literally, hijacking your nervous system and keeping you in a heightened state of fight or flight, chronic hyper-vigilance. All you have to do is check social media, turn on the news. I mean, we are wired for craving certainty.

And when there’s lack of that, or when things change very rapidly, unless we train our nervous system, its job and our brain’s job is not to keep us happy. It’s just to keep us alive and efficient.

The good news is, though, we can train it, most people just aren’t aware they have that power, and this applies at work, at home, anywhere in between. You know, the goal of the EvolvAbility is to help people recognize that adaptability is not a personality trait, it’s a skill.

And the way you build it is normalizing that discomfort, right? It’s just your body sending you a signal. I saw something on social the other day, and I loved the reframe. It said “Instead of thinking you have anxiety, think of it as your body is clapping for you because it’s excited.”

And so we have this relationship with anxiety and stress where we’re programmed to think it’s bad. And in actuality, in small doses, not only is it useful, it’s incredibly good for you. It improves every measure of physical and mental performance.

Now, chronic stress and anxiety takes a toll, but in the moment, just because it feels bad, it doesn’t mean it is bad. It’s actually just your body preparing you.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting. I was thinking about why some tasks or activities feel very boring versus thrilling. And sometimes, uncertainty is exactly what you want. I’m thinking about a game.

If I am playing with an opponent or a difficulty level that is, you know, so, and I think Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about this, like the flow stuff. If it’s so boring or so easy, I know I’m just going to crush it, then it’s not that interesting. It’s kind of boring.

And then if it’s so brutally hard, there’s not a chance that I’m going to prevail, you know, it’s sort of overwhelming. I don’t even want to start. And yet, when it’s dialed in just right, that uncertainty is a whole lot of fun. It’s like, “Ooh, am I going to come out on top? I don’t know, let’s keep going,” and it’s a lot of fun.

And, likewise, some tasks feel the same way to me in terms of, medium-sized goals with a touch of uncertainty are, in fact, quite thrilling and engaging for me. I had a professor who once said, “I guess, when it comes to uncertainty, you know, we have insurance companies and we have casinos because some people want less and some people want more.” So how do you think about all this stuff?

Anne Grady
You know, there’s a difference between knowing it, thinking it, and practicing it. So I’m the first to admit that just because you know something, doesn’t mean you always practice it. And there are times where I’m stuck in a place of uncertainty, whether it’s work-related or whether it’s personal-related, and I’ve noticed what you notice.

There are times where it’s exciting and thrilling and there are other times where it’s not. So I tried to dig into the research behind that. Why are there some things that we’re okay being uncertain about and others that we’re not?

And, for me, personally, when I deal with a lot of uncertainty, I was diagnosed with clinical depression at the age of 19. And trust me, the irony of a depressed motivational speaker is not lost on me. And I share it openly because I think so many people struggle.

The idea of uncertainty when it has low risk, like playing a game, or when it’s like, “What are we going to do today?” It’s such low risk that your body and brain aren’t bracing for impact.

But when you feel like the stakes are high, that’s when this becomes important because in that moment, your ability to shift the way you think, the way you behave, your mindset, your approach, all of that determines the outcome more than your skill set.

So we tend to think, “If I have subject matter expertise,” or, “If I’m good at something, then the outcome will be okay.” But in reality, we can retrain our brain so that regardless of the stakes, we’re able to adapt and adjust.

Think about it like this, if you’ve got a brain surgeon or an astronaut, right, these folks are put in really ridiculously stressful situations daily so that when they’re actually in that discomfort, when they’re actually in a crisis, they’re able to think clearly and logically.

For the rest of us, we avoid discomfort so much that we don’t build our capacity to meet it. And part of the solution is being willing to put yourself in really tough situations. So if you want to build resilience, you have to overcome adversity. It doesn’t happen during a day at the spa.

If you want to build adaptability, you have to shift the way you think and react and process. If you want to build confidence, you have to make decisions yourself, sometimes the wrong ones, to prove to yourself that you’re able to navigate it. So the thing that we’re avoiding is the very thing that can help us build the skill.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. When you think about building a skill or a capability, I’m thinking about measurement. Like, if I’m developing physical strength or speed or endurance, I can look at the weight or the reps or the miles or the miles per hour.

I’m curious, in the literature or research, like what is the means by which we measure and assess progress and growth in this dimension?

Anne Grady
So, for example, if you’re indecisive and really struggle with making decisions, you can measure how many times you flip-flop back and forth or how many people you ask for their input or their advice.

If you’re trying to measure anything, right, it boils down to, “Can I build the skill of optimizing my time, energy, and attention?” Sure. How many interruptions do you allow per hour and how long does it take you to recover? So you can measure anything. Because you’re right, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
The problem is you can learn it in a classroom, but you have to constantly be put in situations that force you to practice it, which means that if you don’t have a chance to build these skills at work, you should be building these skills at home.

So at work, it might look like taking on an assignment or a stretch project that you don’t feel ready for, or that you’re not 100% confident that you’re able to do it. At home, if you’re not able to do that at work, it’s taking up a new hobby. You have to be brave enough to suck at something new, and most of us don’t like that.

The beginner’s mind, this ability to start over and learning is so foreign to us as adults because we’ve already gone through the discomfort. Now, if you think about a baby, right? Like, if a baby starts to walk and they fall down, the baby doesn’t go, “Screw it. I guess walking just isn’t my thing.” They keep falling down until they get balance.

We get to a certain age and we’re like, “I don’t want to fall down anymore. I’m tired of falling down. I just want to succeed.” The only problem with that is, you know, wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from failure. And failure is the price of admission for growth.

So we have to reframe the way we’re looking at the failure as feedback, not a judgment on our character. We have to shift our relationship with discomfort. All of my research in the past has been on resilience, “How do you bounce back?” But that’s survival. That’s not thriving.

So if you want to have a life that feels good to live, then we have to make conscious decisions about what we’re willing to embrace. And, for me, learning how to sit in the anxiety and sit in the discomfort and sit in that has ended up teaching me how to build the skill to do it better without such discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting in terms of training or working this capacity because it seems like you could overwhelm yourself and go overboard, and sometimes life already feels overwhelming without taking on any additional stretch, challenges, and opportunities.

So you’ve got a handy little acronym – emotional aptitude, values, optimization, leadership, versatility, empowerment. When it comes to the optimizing of things, like how do you think about that, to take on some challenge, but not too much challenge, to know when you should back off versus really get after it?

Anne Grady
To answer that question, which is a great question, you have to go back to the second pillar of values, which is, “What is most important to me?” And this changes through the course of your life and at different stages in your career.

But when it comes to the question earlier of, “Well, sometimes I don’t want to be uncomfortable. Sometimes there’s enough stuff going on in my life to where I’m already stretching, I’m already growing,” it determines what your value is at that moment.

So if your value is balance, “Do I take on the stretch assignment? Maybe not.” If the goal is to have more balance in your life, then perhaps that’s something that you put on hold. If the goal is achievement or growth or learning, then that answers that question.

So the concept of understanding your values is more than just a feel-good concept. It’s driving your decisions, your expectations, your behavior and your boundaries. When it comes to optimization, if you think about the way we live, it’s kind of nuts, right?

We protect our data with passwords. We protect our money with budgets or banks. We protect our house with a lock. But when it comes to our most valuable resources, your time, your energy, your attention, we hand them out like free samples at Costco.

And so part of optimization is learning how to manage your attention, build your ability to focus, and manage some of the distractions that are making you not as productive as you could be. It’s about how to optimize your energy. Energy is like hot water or WiFi. You don’t notice it until it’s gone.

And then time, we all have the same amount of time in a day, 86,400 seconds. Every single day we get the same amount of time. So it’s not a question of, “How do I manage the time?” It’s, “How do I manage me in that time?”

So optimization is the skill of learning how to maximize the resources that you have so that you’re not burning out, which is where a lot of people find themselves right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like a super duper handy skill. What are your pro tips in assessing, monitoring, engaging with the development of this skill?

Anne Grady
All right, so let me ask you a question. Have you thought about something else other than what we’ve been talking about since we’ve been talking? Like, has your mind drifted anywhere?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Anne Grady
Of course. Yes, of course it has, right? So has mine, right, “I need milk.”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not you, it’s me.

Anne Grady
Right. Exactly. That’s so true. Yeah, exactly, right? But all of us do. Like, your listeners, since you’ve been listening to this, you’ve thought about other stuff. We spend half of our time mind traveling.

Depression is linked to the past, being in the past. Anxiety is linked to being in the future. Your brain is happiest when it’s in the moment you’re in even if what you’re doing in the moment kind of stinks. So attention is our most valuable resource. It is one of the only things we have complete control over, and it is under attack.

So a couple of techniques for maximizing attention. One, reduce your biggest distractions. Are you willing to play a game with me real quick, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Anne Grady
Okay. So I want you to say the first seven letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, as fast as you can.

Pete Mockaitis
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

Anne Grady
Good. That was great. Okay, now I want you to count to seven as fast as you can. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Go.

Pete Mockaitis
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Anne Grady
Perfect. All right, now you’re going to alternate every letter number, letter number. So A, 1, B, 2. There’s only five more that you have to remember.

Pete Mockaitis
A, 1, B, 2, C, 3, D, 4, E, 5, F, 6, G, 7.

Anne Grady
Okay. So you’re one of the very few people who has done that without making a ton of errors, but it did take you about…

Pete Mockaitis
I was trying hard. I was working. I didn’t want to let…I got an audience here. I’m trying to look good.

Anne Grady
You can’t let them down, right? No, but it did take you about twice as long. And so one of the things that is the biggest detractor of our ability to pay attention and remain focused is this idea that we can do multiple things at once, and we can’t.

Your brain is not actually multitasking. It’s rapid task switching. And every single time you switch a task, even if it’s your own thoughts, it’s like shaking a mental snow globe. Your attention gets buried under a pile of glitter. And the more often you shake it, the harder it is to settle into stillness.

So every time you allow a distraction, you’re training your brain for short bouts of attention instead of sustained focus. That’s why for kids, one of the absolute worst things for kids right now is these short videos on social, these 60-second reels, because it’s like a flood of dopamine, but you’re training your brain to crave novelty instead of the reward of focusing on something, like reading a book and finding the outcome.

So for attention, your phone is the other greatest distraction. It’s something, I mean, most of us would rather leave our house without pants than without our phone. It has become everything to us.

But the average adult spends over five hours a day on their phone. The average 11- to 14-year-old spends nine hours a day on their phone. That’s more than a full-time job. And it all comes with a cost.

So, for your attention, two things. One, you’re going to gasp when I suggest this, but do it anyway. It will change your life. Charge your phone in a different room at night and don’t touch it for the first 30 minutes after you wake up. And I know you’re probably like, “But, Anne, it’s my alarm clock.” They make those.

Your phone is the smallest slot machine in the world, but it is constantly triggering a cascade of hormones and chemicals in your body. So if you do reach for it, pay attention to why. Are you reaching for it out of habit, boredom, to avoid a task? What need is that filling?

So sleep with your phone in another room and go 30 minutes without touching it. Eighty percent of adults check their phone within the first few minutes of waking up. And it is one of the fastest ways to trigger our brain into a negativity bias.

Meaning, we will spend our day looking for what’s wrong instead of what’s right. We’re putting our brain in a chemically-induced state to focus on what’s wrong.

But the other, when people told me to meditate, I got to be honest, I was such a cynic. I would joke, like, “I’m not going to sit in a Full Lotus and drink green tea and find my Zen.” Like, nothing about that sounds appealing to me.

I was completely off base. That’s not what meditation is. It’s brain training. All you’re doing is training your focus, training your attention. So you focus on something – a song, a spot on the wall, a mantra, your breath. It could be anything.

You get distracted, because you will, and you come back to it. That’s a rep. And over time, when you learn to choose where you direct your attention, you build the capacity to hold it for longer. So attention is huge.

Energy, I would say, one of the biggest drains on our energy is the number of decisions we make a day, “What do I wear?” “What do I eat?” “What do I respond to?” “What do I watch?” And all of these questions, none of them are huge, it’s not the life-changing decisions, it’s the 50 little ones that ambush you before lunch. They drain cognitive fuel.

So if you want to make better decisions, make less of them. Start with the recurring ones every day. What do you eat? What do you eat for breakfast? What do you eat for lunch? Pick the decisions you make every day.

On one of them, create a go-to solution. I eat eggs every day for breakfast. It’s boring as hell. But I never waste a second of energy on what I’m going to eat. I pick out my outfits for the week, the Sunday before. So every morning, I’m not having to go through the mental cycle.

Because the later in the day you get, the worse your decisions become. And it drains your energy for the things that are really important. And then time, well, there are a million strategies for time.

One of my favorites, I’ll give you two of my favorite, one is kind of a play on that Mark Twain quote, “If the first thing you do every day is eat a frog, nothing else seems that bad for the rest of the day.”

And Brian Tracy wrote a book called Eat That Frog. And he says, your frog is the thing that you’re dreading doing. It’s the podcast you don’t want to prepare for. It’s the conversation you don’t want to have.

Pete Mockaitis
Never.

Anne Grady
Never. But it’s the thing you don’t want to do. And so we waste an inordinate amount of time and energy dreading that thing. Whereas, if you were to just do it, then you would have not only the energy that you need for more critical decisions, but you’d also get a huge dopamine hit, which is like motivation in molecular form because it keeps you going.

But the other thing with time is we get overwhelmed with all of the things we have to do. And when I feel that sense of overwhelm, because I get it too, I do a focus filter. And a focus filter for me is, “What are the three most important things I need to do this week? What are the three most important things I need to do this day? And what are the three most important things I can do in this moment?”

And sometimes the most important thing you can do is nothing at all, because your brain needs rest. Rest is not a reward for productivity. It’s the fuel for it. And I’m not talking about like binge watching your favorite show. I mean, even Netflix shames us into getting up off the couch. Have you ever been watching Netflix so long, it’s like, “Are you still watching?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Maybe take a break.”

Anne Grady
“Are you still watching, Anne?” “Yes, yes. I’m just trying to finish the season. Yes.” But we actively do it.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know, I’m so cynical now, it’s just like, “They just want to make sure their metrics are accurate. So they don’t actually care about my wellbeing. They just want to make sure that someone is in front of this screen, and there are metrics and recommendations are still fueling that engine.”

Anne Grady
Well, and we could learn a thing or two from Netflix, because if you want to create a new habit, right, you have to make it easier to do. So, for example, one of the things I talk about in the book is emotional aptitude, checking in with ourself to figure out what emotions are running the show.

Well, you have to check in with yourself multiple times throughout the day. So why not tie it to something you already do? This is James Clear, you know, Atomic Habits. But you go to the bathroom multiple times a day, so check in with yourself while you’re there.

When you’re washing your hands, ask yourself, like, “What emotion is running the show? And how do I want to show up next?” So Netflix has taken the way our brain works and monetized it.

They’ve said, “Okay, a habit is easier to stick with if you tie it to something you’re already doing. They’re already watching a show, let’s just assume they want to watch another one. Let’s start it without them even having to press a button.”

So the question is, “Where in your life can you optimize your environment so you’re not relying on willpower?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like a lot when you talk about the curiosity associated with your emotions. Those questions are so nice, “What emotion is running the show right now and then how do I want to show up next?”

I think I’ve fallen for a problematic curiosity about emotions loop in terms of, “What am I feeling? And why?” Because the why, for me at least, is very troublesome because if I’m feeling annoyed, frustrated, irritated, it’s like, “Well, I’ll tell you why.” And then I, you know, begin the litany.

And then I’m like revved up at worst, it’s like, “Oh, maybe I just shouldn’t have been curious in the first place.”

Anne Grady
But what you said there, Pete, is so important because anger, frustration, disappointment, are, like, anger is a secondary emotion. If you’re feeling angry, one, it’s not bad to ask why, but once you answer the question, dwelling on it isn’t going to change it.

So the thing I’ve had to learn for me is that just because a thought pops up doesn’t mean you need to give it a microphone. Most of our thoughts are the mental equivalent of junk mail.

So you might feel annoyed or angry, but the question that I would ask is, “Okay, what emotion is that protecting me from?” Because if you’re angry, chances are you’re either hurt or disappointed or sad or embarrassed.

Anger is the secondary emotion. So what most of us do is we try to analyze where it’s coming from and we try to think our way out of it. You can only think your way out of a worry because worry is the cognitive component of anxiety. You can’t think your way out of stress. You have to feel your way out of stress.

So rather than digging into “Why I feel it,” process it. And what I mean by that is, if you’re feeling angry, stressed, frustrated, those are physical sensations. You have to get out of your head and into your body. So bring yourself back because you have to physically get back into your body to pay attention to it.

And so we’re taught to dissect our emotions and try to understand the backstory, but that doesn’t change what you do about them in the moment. So, like, therapy is wonderful. It’s great to figure out where these feelings are coming from, but once you know that, it doesn’t change the way you address them in the moment.

So we often go to that step, let’s replay why it’s happening, which just feeds the emotion even more. Instead of going, “Is this serving me? Is what I’m feeling or thinking helping me? If not, I get to make a choice. Just because I’m having it, doesn’t mean I have to engage with it.”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that lot, that distinction, in terms of you can think your way out of worry, but not other emotions. Because without that distinction, you could fall into a trap in terms of, “Huh, well, last time I felt bad, very general, bad. I thought, and then I felt better. Ergo, thinking is the solution when feeling bad.”

But you’ve got a much more precise point on it there, it’s like, “Well, if the flavor of bad is worry, thinking may very well be just the thing.” So you have a game plan to get to mitigate your risk, etc., a deal with the worst case scenario, blah, blah, blah.

But if you’re feeling stressed, angry, thinking about it, it’s like, “I’m so mad that guy did this thing.” It’s like, “Well, it’s not that big of a deal.” That doesn’t help the anger situation, having those sorts of thoughts.

Anne Grady
Well, this is where the versatility comes in, right? Because if the way you have always reacted to anger is to get tense and frustrated and your fists get tight and your natural reaction is to go fight it or run away from it or whatever your natural reaction is, you can build a skill to navigate that differently, but it has to happen in real time.

So that’s where that emotional aptitude pillar comes in. It’s learning to recognize what’s happening within you in real time so that you can respond to what’s happening around you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us about this versatility. So we tend to have a groove, you might say stuck, in terms of how we think and operate and interpret and believe and associate what’s up. Can that be shifted and how?

Anne Grady
Yes. It’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it. I had a situation happened when I was in the fourth grade that completely shifted my perspective of myself. So remember dodgeball, you know, like a big red ball that has the pattern crosses on it, that like get in your face?

So we were playing dodgeball. It was my first day of fourth grade in Corpus Christi, Texas. We had moved from Connecticut, and everyone was playing dodgeball, and I had never played dodgeball in Connecticut. Apparently, children as human targets don’t go over well there.

But when my coach told everyone to line up, we did and I started throwing a few balls and dodging a few balls. And then Angela Douglas, the biggest kid I had ever seen, I mean, we were in fourth grade, I’m pretty sure she was 19. She pegged me so hard in the face that my nose started to bleed and all the kids started to laugh.

And my coach, in a very nurturing way, said, “Well, Anne, athletics just aren’t your thing.” I’m 50, I’ll be 51 next month. I still have never joined a sports team. The feedback that you get, whether it’s your StrengthsFinder Assessment that you mentioned, or whether it’s feedback from teachers or parents or colleagues, or even yourself, that feedback forms our identity. And we behave like the person that we believe ourselves to be.

So the question is, “What labels have you stuck on throughout the course of your life? And who have you told yourself you are?” “I’m not a morning person.” Great. Well, what does that mean? It means you snooze the alarm. It means you need two cups of coffee before you even contemplate a conversation.

The reality is there’s no such thing as a morning person. Sure, there are people who like being awake in the morning more than others, but we believe ourselves into behavior. We can also behave ourselves into believing.

So if it’s time to out-date those labels, that’s what camping did for me. It became a way to show myself that that label of Anne being unathletic was just attached at a time when I was really molding my identity, and I wore it like it was the truth for years.

Well, you have to be really athletic to camp, to hook up, to tear down, to do all the things, right? So I had to learn how to do, but in order to do that, I had to take that label off. So the question I would ask you is, and you can answer this personally, like, “What labels are you still wearing that no longer serve you?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, part of me is having a hard time even grabbing onto…Oh, you know, okay, I am not an employee person. I think I would have a hard time having someone else be the boss of my work.

Anne Grady
So then you have a choice, right? Because I feel the same way. I’m the same way. Then we have a choice. We can either stay and work for somebody else and complain that we don’t like it and I’m just not an employee kind of person, or we can go out on our own and risk consistent revenue and, you know, not always having the answer, not having health insurance, all of those things, right? You can take the risk to go do that.

But it’s because you don’t want to have the discomfort of continuing to wear that label, right? So I did the same thing. I had a pantry full of Spam and $3,000 in my savings account and didn’t like being an employee. So I went out on my own. In hindsight, it was kind of stupid and unhinged the way I did it. But if I hadn’t had done it then, I don’t know if I’d have done it later.

So the key is asking yourself, like, your belief system shapes your behavior, and if you’re not happy with the outcomes you’re getting, you either have to shift the belief or you have to shift the behavior. Otherwise, you just stay stuck and complain about it.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting, and I guess in the United States, there’s a little bit of entrepreneurial hero worship at times. But I could see how that label really could, in certain contexts, hold you back.

Like, who knows? Maybe a listener emails, like, “Pete, I have the most amazing company. We’re starting it. We’ve got $80 million of funding. And because you are rocking How to be Awesome at Your Job, I think you should be our chief program officer for this thing that’s going to revolutionize higher education.” It’s like, “Oh, that sounds really, really cool.”

And so then if those sorts of opportunities appeared, and you have that label, it’s like, “Well, hey, that sounds really great and all, I’m flattered, but I’m just not an employee person.”

That really could be to my detriment, and it’d be well worth it to have a good look. It’s like, “Well, what exactly does that mean? And how true is that? And what’s the real trade-off and is it worth making here?”

Anne Grady
A hundred percent, and that’s a great way to look at it. I look at it like this. We have the same routine every day. We brush our teeth in the same sink. We do the same thing. We roll over in the same side of the bed.

Life can become monotonous, but when you build versatility, it’s never ending because you’re always learning, you’re always building new skills or new behaviors or new beliefs. And so what that allows you to do is it takes away the monotony, it takes away the boredom.

If you’re constantly trying stuff, whether it’s work or personal, then you’re stretching and growing. And, by the way, you don’t always have to stretch and grow. You mentioned it earlier, like, “What if there’s enough going on in life?”

I told you, I have a child with mental illness and autism. I mean, he tried to kill me when he was three years old. He was on his first anti-psychotic at four. There were plenty of times I did not want to stretch myself professionally because I was already at my capacity personally.

Versatility doesn’t mean that you have to continue to always learn new skills, but if you’re feeling stuck, right, a way out of that is to try something you’ve never tried before that you’re almost certain to be bad at.

There’s also cognitive flexibility, right? Like, I was the president of my debate team in high school. I was not one of the popular kids, but we had to prepare for a debate topic. And so I think the last topic that we debated my senior year was that showing disrespect is antithetical to fundamental American values.

So, first, I had to look up antithetical – deeply opposed to. But then I had to research both sides of the issue, regardless of what I believe. Like, it didn’t matter what I believe. I had to be ready to argue the issue with evidence on both sides.

And I think, in today’s divisively split, politically unhinged society, at least in the U.S., I think sometimes we have to be willing to look at things from different perspectives, but our confirmation bias is dangerous because Google is always your friend.

Google will give you research, or ChatGPT or whatever can show you research that just about anything is true. So I could say, “Hey, Pete, I no longer eat strawberries because they cause cancer.” Well, I don’t know that strawberries cause cancer, but I’m sure I could find an article somewhere that the pesticides they use is a contributing factor, right?

So everyone is so sure they’re right all the time, they forget the goal is getting it right, not being right. So it’s not just about shifting what you do. It’s shifting how you believe. It’s being willing to shift how you think to meet the situation.

I mean, when was the last time you changed your mind, not because you were forced to, but because you were wise enough to know there could be a different way? And so we get so caught into our way is the right way that it’s creating a huge divide. And people are lonelier than they’ve ever been, even though they’re more connected than they’ve ever been.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Well, Anne, tell me, anything else you want to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Anne Grady
I would just challenge you to pick one area of your life that is not going the way you want it to go, and ask yourself, “What’s one action I can take immediately after I play this episode to do something about it?”

Because agency is the greatest form of motivation. It’s easy to feel like a victim to our life, “If I had a better boss,” “If I had a better salary,” “If I had better coworkers,” “If I had a better partner,” “If my kids behaved better.”

There will always be things outside of your control. Pick one thing that is in your control and take one small action. It could be take a breath before you respond. Send one email. Make one phone call. Brush your teeth. Get up off the couch.

These don’t have to be huge. And little results create big results over time. Instead of trying to change everything at once, take one action. That’s what I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anne Grady
My favorite quote, and I think it’s the one I shared with you five or six years ago when I was on the show, is still my favorite quote, and it’s from Mary Anne Radmacher. And she said, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’” And that’s true courage to me.

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

Anne Grady
I love Alia Crum out of Stanford, and all of her work around mindset and understanding the impact of the way you think about stress, the way you think about things shifting your biology. I love her work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Anne Grady
Emotional Agility by Susan David. I love Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck. You mentioned StrengthsFinder earlier, Now Discover Your Strengths is a great one. There are so many.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, folks quote back to you often?

Anne Grady
I think one of the big ones is stop trying to be right and focus on get it right.

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

Anne Grady
Evolvability.com. You can even take an adaptability index to see where you currently sit.

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

Anne Grady
Try something new today, especially if it’s uncomfortable and scary. Try one thing that is new. Take a different route home from work. Sleep on a different side of the bed. Brush your teeth with a different hand. Try something different.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anne, thank you.

Anne Grady
Thank you for having me, Pete.

Apr 09
0

1144: Getting More of What You Want through the Art of Persuasion with Joshua Bandoch

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Joshua Bandoch reveals how to persuade better in accordance with our natural human wiring.

You’ll Learn

  1. The major misconceptions hurting your persuasiveness
  2. The six moral tastes to appeal to for more persuasiveness
  3. How to get your stories to really resonate with people

About Joshua

Persuasion expert Joshua Bandoch has spent over a decade uncovering the secrets of persuasion. He’s mined psychology, neuroscience, economics, public policy, and history for cutting-edge techniques that work. He’s put them to use in hundreds of speeches written for senior government officials delivered to just about any audience. 

Bandoch uses and refines these persuasion techniques on a daily basis as a think tank leader, where he crafts and communicates policies on issues like poverty, social mobility, education, and the economy to politically diverse audiences, including elected officials, local and national media, and grassroots activists.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Joshua Bandoch Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Josh, welcome!

Josh Bandoch
Pete, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. I’m excited to talk persuasion. And can you tell us what’s perhaps the most surprising and fascinating thing you’ve discovered about persuasion from all your years of studying it?

Josh Bandoch
Maybe we’ll start with this one, which is that persuasion, people think persuasion is about getting somebody to do something. And it’s actually much more about removing barriers to doing things.

And if you don’t understand what’s stopping somebody, they’re never going to actually do what you want them to do. So unless you remove those barriers, you’re not going to persuade anybody to anything, because there’s always that thing somewhere stopping them.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s about removing barriers instead of, I guess, incepting them, like, “That’s never occurred to me before. How wonderful. I’d love to do that.” It’s less of that and more of, “Oh, you got to hangup over here. Well, let’s address that.”

Josh Bandoch
Well, so it could be, and sometimes, “That’s an amazing idea,” and still, they’re not going to do it unless you remove a barrier. It’s something that we don’t think about. So we can talk a lot today about things you can say and do to increase the chances of getting people to do what you want.

My book is called How to Get What You Want, and there’s a lot that goes into that. And one thing that we don’t think about is, no matter how brilliant we are, and how tight our reasoning is, and how high our emotional intelligence is, how great all the other tools and strategies that we can talk about today, if we don’t remove that barrier, someone is going to stay stuck and they won’t do what you want them to do.

So you have to look for those barriers and we can talk about how you can do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, I do want to get into that. And maybe to zoom out a little bit, what would you say is sort of the big idea or core thesis of your book, How to Get What You Want?

Josh Bandoch
So maybe let’s start by thinking about what persuasion isn’t and what it is. So I think another thing that’s kind of related to this is that people tend to misunderstand persuasion.

There are three really common misconceptions that I encounter whenever I talk about this – workshops, lectures, whatever. The first is that people think that persuasion is about winning. And, Pete, if I win against you, what does that make you?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m a loser.

Josh Bandoch
“Loser!” And do you want to work with somebody who makes you feel like a loser?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Josh Bandoch
No, not at all. And then people think it’s about convincing somebody to think just like them. And the trouble with that is that the Latin root of the word convince actually means to vanquish or to conquer. And conquest is barbaric, it’s not persuasive.

And then people think that persuasion is all about just making the right arguments. Well, I got into this, but the reality of how this thing, the human brain works, is that we feel first then reason. And so when you just start by launching your logic at people, you’re missing the entire boat.

So kind of big picture, staying zoomed out for a minute, I think persuasion has three parts or three steps. Step one is to adopt what I call the persuader’s mindset. And this is a little bit counterintuitive because it’s not how we’re wired. And we’re wired to think about ourselves, and you need to put them first because you’re trying to persuade someone else to do something. You’ve already persuaded yourself that you’re right.

Step two is to use knowledge of how the human brain works to your advantage. So what I dive into in part two of the book is all the ways that we’re wired, and just accepting those cognitive realities, challenging some of them more like, I hate some of the things that are there. I absolutely hate it.

And yet, that’s just how all 8 billion of us are wired. And so my recommendation is navigate those cognitive realities instead of fighting them. And then the third part goes into it’s a little more tactical, some techniques you can use to further enhance your chances of getting what you want. That’s the super zoom out version of it all.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, super. Well, that all sounds really fun. I’d love to dig into some of those, you know, tactical tidbits. But can you tell us, really, what’s at stake in terms of if we’ve mastered this well, that’s your subtitle, “Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion,” what do we stand to gain or lose if we master this art and science versus if we kind of continue chugging along, you know, as mediocrely persuasive in our professional lives?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, the difference between having a great idea and having someone else embrace that idea is persuasion. You might go to your boss and say, “Boss, I have a great idea.” It might truly be a great idea. And if you don’t present that idea persuasively, then it’s not going to land the way you want it to.

And then, I mean, sometimes we think we’re being persuasive and it’s actually the exact opposite – we’re being aversive. And one of the big motivations of writing this book is that I’ve just encountered so many brilliant people, whether it’s in academia or in sales or fundraising or whatever, that are super smart and it’s not what they’re saying. It’s how they say it.

And because they don’t deliver their information, their ideas, persuasively, they either don’t get anywhere or they don’t get nearly as far as they could. So that’s the difference. Do you want people to embrace your good ideas?

Pete Mockaitis
Could you tell us a story of someone who upgraded their persuasion art and science skills and saw cool things come from it?

Josh Bandoch
I’ve coached people close to me on getting raises and getting promotions. And these are people who are terrified to advocate for themselves, even though they were doing great work.

Consistently got great reviews and paltry raises. Especially when the opportunity presented themselves, when they were asked to take on more responsibility, I coached them to advocate for themselves persuasively, to really understand what their organization needed.

And then to show how they could just over-deliver on those needs, especially if they were being asked to adopt more responsibility, and then say, “By the way, since I’m adopting more responsibility, and I’ve been over-delivering, like, maybe now is the time for a salary increase or a promotion or both.”

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, can you tell us like what kinds of promotions we’re talking, or what kinds of money dollar increases we’re talking?

Josh Bandoch
In one case, it was just basically, “Hi, we need you to take on this new role. It’s going be a lot more responsibility, and we’re going to give you a title that, at best, would seem like it’s a lateral move” to getting a title that was two levels up.

And instead of getting no pay increase, I think it ended up being about an $8,000-pay increase plus like a $5,000 bonus. That’s not bad when none of that was on the table. All those gains compound over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s so funny, I think I’ve been learning recently, with regard to titles, like, I used to not care. I was like, “Oh, who cares? It’s just a title, whatever.” I’m coming to learn, you know, who cares is the next person hiring you. That’s who cares. And then the money dollars attached to those roles. So that’s who cares.

Josh Bandoch
A hundred percent. And it doesn’t cost your current employer anything to give you a better title right now. And then two things happen, when you apply for that next job, then you have that better title and they don’t know that you’re underpaid.

So, also, once you are in a higher title, even if you tell your employer, “Look, just give me a better title,” six months down the road when you’re over-delivering, then you say, “Look, this is the pay range for this title, and I’m below or at the very bottom of this pay range, and I’ve been over-delivering,” and now they see you in that role and they can pay you in that role.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, let’s walk us through these three components then. So, the persuader’s mindset.

Josh Bandoch
We are wired to think about ourselves, which makes sense. It’s a survival mechanism.  If we didn’t think about ourselves, who would? So when our ancestors, many moons ago, they were wired to be sensitive to threats and take care of themselves, and that’s why we’re here today.

And actually, we love talking about ourselves, too. People talk about themselves 60% of the time, and on social media that raises to 80% of the time. Talking about ourselves generates the same sensations in our brain as sex and money. So it feels great.

So we adopt what I call a me-first mindset. The trouble with that is that, Pete, if I’m bringing my me-first mindset to our conversation, what does that mean for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Then I’m second.

Josh Bandoch
At best, right? At worst, it’s going to be extremely annoying, or you’re going to feel like neglected, disrespected, whatever, because you’re trying to share some of your feelings and thoughts with me, your perspective, and I’m just, “Nope, it’s all about me, it’s all about me, it’s all about me.”

And so my recommendation is that we flip this, we adopt a them-first approach, that we put them first, because the goal is to persuade somebody else to do something that you want them to do.

So how do you do this? Well, by putting them first, you’re really understanding them. So that starts with listening. And what you’re looking for when you listen is opportunities to share action, because that’s what persuasion is. And there’s always going to be overlap. And if you listen hard long enough, there’s going to be way more overlap than you expect.

And, ideally what you’re listening for is for your counterpart to recommend what you want to do. So instead of going to meet with your boss, and saying, “I think we should do X, Y, and Z,” or, “I want X, and Z,” you could just ask them, “How do you think we should proceed?” and then let them talk.

And then they’re going to probably identify a couple ways to proceed that are exactly what you wanted or even better than you wanted, and then you just do those things, and then maybe you can add a little bit on top of that.

But by listening and identifying areas for overlap, that’s the best way to share access with somebody because that’s what they want and overlaps with what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example story of this in process?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, so I used to work in fundraising, just sales for a nonprofit. And most fundraisers approach, and just most salesmen approach sales this way. They say, “Hey, I have this great product, and this is why you should want this product. This is why you should move over to our product, or whatever, buy from me.”

And the trouble with that is that, in fundraising, a lot of people kind of get it backwards. I think that fundraising is 99% about the investor, the potential donor, 1% about the organization, and 0% about the fundraiser.

But a lot of people make it way too much about the fundraiser, or the salesman way too much about the organization. And these donors, they see the organization as a vehicle to realizing their vision for a better, whatever it is, education, healthcare, whatever, pick your favorite nonprofit space.

So when you bring your why to them, that may not be their why. So what I always did is I just listened, listened, listened. And I actually thought that I failed once, and then I’ll give you a success story, but I went up to a guy in Wisconsin. He had given us money off of a letter.

People give money off of direct mail, which is wild, just, “Here, here’s money. I got a letter from you. Amazing. Cool.” So I drive up there, and I sit in this guy’s office, in his house, about an hour and a half, and he talked 85-90% of the time.

And I was new and I thought my job, selling my nonprofit, was to tell him all the amazing things that we were doing. And I’m like looking for ways to interject, and this guy just wouldn’t stop talking. I was like, “Oh, my God.”

So the meeting was pretty much over, and I’m like, “I am such a failure.” I went to my boss and she’s going to be like, “Dude, man, you messed up.” And then he said to me, he said, “I have such a better idea of what you all do now.” And I thought, “No, you don’t. How could you possibly?”

And then I realized I was dead wrong, and he was completely right, because he felt like he was connected to me and my organization. I had said just enough to help him understand, “Yeah, yeah, like, we’re on the same page,” and that was all he needed.

Pete Mockaitis
So in practice, when we’re making it all about them, what are the things we should do and not do in those conversations?

Josh Bandoch
Start by listening. And there are three ways to listen. You can listen passively, just, essentially, close the front door and open your ears, right? We have one mouth and two ears for a reason. So use the ears way more than the mouth.

And even in simply listening, you form that connection, and people love to be listened to and feel heard. So listen passively first, practice that, which is really hard for a lot of people.

The second step would be to actively listen. Ask them questions that really just open up information, say, like, how or what questions that can’t be answered yes or no, and just let them talk. But you’re gathering information about important topics.

Like,“What are your priorities in your philanthropy?” “What are your priorities with our team?” whatever it is, right? Eventually, you’re going to move to what I call proactive listening, which is moving the conversation in a way that is going to align with your needs but also really meets your needs.

So then you’re asking questions like, “How do you want to proceed?” And then they’re going to tell you, and at least part of how they would proceed is going to probably work for you really well.

And if they lay out something that is a complete disaster, then you say, “Nah, that doesn’t work for me.” And if you can do all these things, you become what I call the ultimate listener, and you’re a phenomenal listener who knows how to listen to get what you want.

And that’s the best way to put them first is to form those connections, demonstrate understanding, find all the ways you can work together. People think this is impossible, but, so, part of my work is in public policy.

And people who are on different sides of the aisle, some of the partisan warriors think, “I can never agree with that person.” And people who are on totally opposite sides of the aisle, I can look at many areas of overlap. I find it because I look for it.

And a lot of people just don’t want to look for it, but it’s always there, whether it’s on policy issues or sales or your boss or whatever. There’s always a ton of overlap there. So find that first.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, and particularly that question, “How do you want to proceed?” Because I’m thinking about when I’ve been on the receiving end of sales pitches, a lot of the conversation is not how I want to proceed.

I’m hearing a lot about, “Okay, all your features, the demo of the software, the history of the founder and the story, yada, yada.” And so I guess what I really, really want to know most of all is bring me the juiciest evidence that you can, in fact, solve my problem, make my world better.

And so a lot of times if that’s like a marketing or operations kind of a thing, it’s like, “Show me some amazing case studies with really rich, lots of numbers, and folks very much like me who did a thing and saw the result. Like, yes, like that gets me excited.” As opposed to, “Okay, I guess that’s cool that you can do that, but what I really want to know is that this is for real.”

I’m thinking about like AI stuff, for example. I don’t know how many times I said, “Wow, that sounds like an amazing AI tool. Oh, except it won’t actually do what I want it to do. So I guess I have to move on to the next.”

Josh Bandoch
Because it doesn’t meet your need, right? So unless I know what your needs are and I can frame things in terms of your needs, we aren’t going to get anywhere or we’re not going to get nearly as far as we could.

If I understand, “Okay, so like, what do you need from your AI tool? Okay. Like there are these three things. Does my AI tool deliver that? Oh, yeah, it does. And it delivers all them. And on one of these, we are best in the business. So, Pete, you know, cut me if I’m wrong, please, these are your three priorities with what you need from AI. Yeah, okay, cool.”

“Here’s how we can meet those needs. I want you to know we are best in the business with this first one, and it’s super important. And here’s what distinguishes our product. We’re really good with these other things, too.”

If I, instead, go in there thinking that there are three totally different features that you should want, and you don’t want them, oh, it’s like, “You know what you need to eat for lunch? Pizza.” And you’re like, “I don’t want pizza.” “No, no, like, you need to eat pizza.” It’s like, “Well, actually, I wanted a salad.” “Hey, you know what you need? Pizza,” right? Like this isn’t going to get us very far.

But if I understand that you want a salad, like, “Ah, what do you want in your salad? Oh, yeah, I can provide that.” And a lot of people try to force feed people to see things the way that they see them. And there’s only one person who sees things the way that you do anyways. That’s you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well said. Okay. Well, now let’s talk a little bit about understanding how we’re wired and accepting these cognitive realities. Tell us, what are these troubling realities that we want to fight against and not accept?

Josh Bandoch
So there are four cognitive realities that I dive into in part four, and it all starts with this first one. And I hate it because I’m a former academic, and academics are taught, you know, tight reasoning, well-written sentences, blah blah blah, that stuff, peer review.

So academics think, “Launch your logic at people and, you know, like, the best logic and reasoning and data will, like, win the day.” And this is how our brains are wired. We feel first, then reason.

Sometimes it’s feel but reason, sometimes it’s feel than reason, sometimes it’s feel and we never get to reasoning. We’ve all been there. I have. So what does that mean? That means that persuasion starts with feelings. So we need to start with feelings.

So it turns out that people who, through brain damage, lose the ability to emote. Their reasoning is actually impaired. So emotions actually improve our reasoning.

So what this means, partially, is that the logic-first approach to persuasion that a lot of people adopt, it’s actually illogical because it’s not how our brains are wired. And I fought this for a long time, and I’ve just embraced it because our feelings, our emotions, our intuitions, they’re really powerful, they’re really quick, and they’re grounded in reasons.

When you something doesn’t feel right, when you reflect on it, there’s almost always a good reason for that. So, boom, I just want to trust my intuition.

So you have to think about how you want your audience to feel and how you’re going to generate those feelings, and also understanding how your audience is feeling because maybe now is not the right time to engage somebody, or you just need to get a pulse on them.

So here’s a really stealthy way that your listeners can figure out how somebody is feeling. Ask them. So instead of asking, “What do you think about this product?” “What do you think about giving me a promotion?” “What do you think about…?” whatever it is, fill in the blank?

Ask somebody how they feel about something. And this generates a radically different answer. Because when you say, “Think,” okay, you have to pause, “Brain do this thing.” Feeling, it just comes out.

So just test this a couple times. I encourage your listeners, just test it on like a friend or a spouse or partner, whoever, “How would you feel about X?” And you’re going to get such different answers, their unguarded answers, the mask drops, and people just tell you truthfully. So then you know how they feel about something.

“How would you feel about doing this thing?” They’ll tell you. So you have to start with feelings and just accept that that’s a cognitive reality. It begs the question, “What feelings are persuasive?” and I’ll get there, but I’ll pause just for a second.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that distinction a lot, asking, “What do you feel about this?” as opposed to, “What do you think about this?” Because I’m just thinking about any number of questions, like business-to-business enterprise, you know, big kinds of transactions in terms of like, “What do you feel about this?”

Like, “Well, I guess I’m kind of worried that you’re going to go out of business in three years, and we’re going to be kind of in a tight spot because we’re already, like, roped into your solution.”

It’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s much better than ‘What do you think?’” It’s like, “Oh, this appears to meet our future needs.” You get very different answers and they’re probably the ones that you want, just by asking, “What do you feel about this?”

Josh Bandoch
The thinking question gives you guarded answers, “Well, I don’t know. I have to think about it. Let me go back to my team,” whatever.

People don’t, whether it’s buying a house, buying a car, you know, or making a big multi-billion dollar deal, those things, ultimately, they all start with feelings. Even if you just feel like, you know, “Ah, you know, I don’t know if I can trust this person,” or, “I trust Pete, unquestionably. So if he tells me we’re good, I feel good about this.”

So if I say, “Pete, look, I mean, how do you feel about this?” You say, “Josh, I feel great. You know, I think this is a great idea.” And you’re like, “Man, you know, it’s like…” And I’m like, “Well, what makes you feel that way?” “Here, look, we’ve been working together for years. I totally trust you. Cool.” Right? Like, what more do you need to know?

Two questions, the feeling question and the follow-up feeling question, “What makes you feel that way?” Okay, boom, there you go. And these are quick, unguarded, intuitive reactions that are grounded in reason, but they just come out, boom, and they’re so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, what’s next?

Josh Bandoch
So then the question is, “Well, what kinds of feelings are persuasive?” And we live in an age of toxic polarization. When I was writing the introduction to chapter four, which is where this comes from, I looked at the homepages of Fox News and MSNBC, and I found, collectively, over probably about 200 articles. I found one positive article. One.

So the data would indicate that negative feelings are persuasive because they were all negative. And I would ask you, I’ll kick it over to you. If you think about some of the most persuasive Americans of the 20th century, you don’t have to be partisan about it, because people go like, like, “Yeah, they were really persuasive.” Who are some of the folks who come to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m just thinking about, we say famous in 20th century, I’m just thinking about famous speeches, you know, JFK, MLK, they all have initials, I guess, you know.

Josh Bandoch
Exactly, yeah. And then could I add, like, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama to that?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Josh Bandoch
So JFK, he said, “Ask not.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream.” Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city. And Barack Obama talked about hope and change. And I said, “Okay, those are all positive things.”

No one ever says, “No, not JFK. Walter Mondale.” No one says, “Oh, no, no, not Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X.” No one says, “Not Ronald Reagan. Barry Goldwater,” right?

So we know, intuitively, really, we know what kinds of feelings are persuasive. Positive feelings. And the best leaders, the most persuasive people, they are for things. So how do you generate positive feelings? You be for something. You think about what you are for and you lead with that.

So if you are a leader of a company, like what are you for as a leader? What is your company for? How do you lean in with those things? In my policy space, I work at opportunity policy. So I’m for opportunity. I’m for independence. I’m for dignity through work. I’m for strong families, I’m for communities, all these things.

In my personal life, I’m for empowering people to unleash their potential. That’s what this book is about, because it’s going from great idea to presenting that great idea persuasively. Boom! Potential unleashed. So it’s, like, what are you for? How do you lead with those things? And how do you use that to generate persuasive feelings?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. In terms of being legendary, long lasting, the positive being for something resonates and inspires. And yet, in terms of grabbing our immediate clicks, it seems like the negative does better.

Like, I’m just imagining like, let’s say I’ve got a YouTube, a sea of YouTube thumbnails and titles, and yours talks about what you’re for, that might be a bit of a snooze in terms of,  “Oh, man, this one is terrifying. What’s that about?” Click. As opposed to, if I’m actually strapped in for the speech, yeah, the inspirational stuff will linger for the ages.

Josh Bandoch
And the deep-down wiring reason for that is that we are wired, going back to the wiring again, so we are wired with something called negativity bias. And this is a survival mechanism.

The problem is while it helps us survive, it impedes thriving. Like, do you really want to follow somebody who is just negative all the time, who’s just tearing things down, and who doesn’t know how to build things up? That’s not a recipe for long-term success, either in your personal life or in your professional life.

If you’re a manager who just goes down and says, “Well, this is all terrible.” Maybe, but, like, what are you, what is organization, what is your team for? Like, where are you going? And what are these things?” Because it’s those positive things that motivate people to do things repeatedly over a long period of time.

So it’s, essentially, fighting your wiring, but also trusting your intuitions because people give the same answers that you did, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. People like that. Like, we know deep down. So it’s fighting part of our wiring, but also kind of trusting our intuitions a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so we feel first, then reason, what feelings are persuasive. What’s the next piece about feelings?

Josh Bandoch
Well, so then how do you generate feelings for something?

Josh Bandoch
And then what are the best mechanisms for that? Okay. So, two. The first is to appeal to your audience’s values, to their moral taste. On our actual physical tongue, we have five or six tastes wired into it: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, maybe fat, oleogustus.

In the same way, hundreds of thousands of survey responses, research from moral psychologists that’s been, I think, widely validated, show that just like we have these physical taste receptors on our tongue, we have six, maybe seven moral taste receptors that are wired, and that’s important, into our hearts and minds.

They are care, essentially sensitivity for suffering; equity, a concern for equal outcomes, proportionality, which is about hard work and merit; authority, which is about hierarchies; loyalty, which is in-group, out-group; purity, which is like things that are sacred or things that are disgusting; and then liberty, essentially being free to live how you want.

So I say wiring because research shows that 30-60% of our values are wired into us. We know this through studies of twins. So, like, our values are at least 30% genetic, which means that rather than hating somebody because they have different values than you, you just accept that that’s largely wired into them.

So what you’re trying to do is understand the sorts of values that resonate with your audience, and then appeal to those tastes. This is important because would you serve a vegetarian veal? Would you force feed bacon to somebody who keeps kosher? I hope not.

So in the same way, you’re simply accepting your audience’s values and trying to frame things in their terms. And then what’s the absolute best way to do that? It’s to tell stories.

So let me give you an example from the policy space to make this a little bit concrete. There are these things called occupational licenses. They are a government permission set to work in industry. So about one in four Americans need an occupational license to do a job.

Sometimes this makes sense. I don’t want my surgeon to not be licensed. Fine. In some cases, these burdens are either too big or even unnecessary altogether. So there are a lot of fields like in Illinois, it takes a year to go to cosmetology school to get a license to be a barber. And that’s just not necessary, I don’t think.

So when I present my recommendation, which is to reduce or eliminate these burdens, I have to still be really mindful of how I frame that. So if I’m talking to somebody who’s more progressive, then I’m going to talk about how the current laws are inequitable, right, the equity thing, and how they’re uncaring.

So here’s what I would say. And then I would ground this in data. Data is important, too, right? We feel first then reason, “So there’s data, I believe it’s from the Minneapolis Fed that shows that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately hurt by, like, a really big gap by occupational licensing laws.” So it’s inequitable and it’s uncaring to these groups.

And these laws also hurt poor people more. This is all true grounded in a ton of data, and I’m framing it in their terms. If by contrast, I’m talking to a conservative or libertarian, I’m going to say that, “These laws are unfair because it impedes on somebody’s freedom to work in a space and hard work, proportionality, hard work should determine how successful you are.

I’m making the exact same recommendation, but if I go to the conservative, and I say, “This is inequitable,” they’re going to be like, “Ehh.” If I go to the progressive, and I say, “Freedom and hard work,” they’ll say, “Ehh, probably not,” right?

So if I understand their values, same recommendation, I’m authentic to myself, “I want to reduce these burdens,” and I frame that differently. I’m being really sensitive to my audience. And that’s, I think, a powerful way to connect.

So that’s a policy example of what that looks like. You can do that in your business space, your personal space, too, by understanding what some of these values are and appealing to them rather than beating them over the head and force feeding them with your values.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I think these six are a phenomenal starting point and really good to stretch you, to flex you into different ways of speaking about the same suggestion for different audiences.

But then you might also have very specific things that totally vibe for someone, like someone super into safety, someone super into maximizing their wealth, someone super into having a really fun time. And so you could do the macro and the micro customization.

Josh Bandoch
Totally. That’s a total yes and, 100%. So these are kind of big picture things, just like in general things, people are sensitive to. And then, totally, like these things manifest themselves in people in different ways. Hard work and freedom might manifest themselves in some person, it’s like, “That feels a little greedy. Okay, fine.” Or like, “Super greedy.”

So they can manifest themselves in a different way, like care or loyalty isn’t only one thing. So you have to individualize it 100%. Because even if someone is like, you know, they’re sensitive to care, equity, like what exactly do they care about? What exactly sets them off? Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us about telling great stories.

Josh Bandoch
So before we are logic processors, we are story processors. And stories are, by far, the most persuasive tool that exists. If you can give a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation chock full of data in seven point font, airtight logic and everything, or you can tell a 30-second story, you got to tell the story. You got to tell the story.

So, just an example again from my policy space. There was a report that came out about a year and a half ago from a Harvard professor. It talks about social mobility. And it says that the single biggest driver of whether somebody experiences social mobility in their life is whether they grew up in an environment, not a home, but in an environment where adults work.

I’ve tried for a year and a half to explain that report clearly. That’s the best I can do. Even that’s a little confusing for me. So, instead, I could do this. Just after that report came out, I was at a conference, talking to a colleague of mine, and she was just talking to a foster mom.

And that foster mom said that her foster kid came up to her and said, “Where do you go all day?” You know what the answer is? Work. And an adult going to work was a foreign concept for that kid. How can you possibly expect that kid to understand how important work is to your professional and personal success if he’s never seen an adult go to work?

That’s the story version of that. So you got to start with stories. And the question is, “Well, what kinds of stories?” Because we hear stories, fine, stories, stories. There are hundreds, thousands of great books, tell stories. And I think one of the unique things about my book, really, is what kinds of stories.

It’s morally motivating, emotionally intelligent stories. So people need to feel something. What are you trying to get them to feel? And especially making these moral appeals gets them to feel those things, so tying back to the couple of things we’ve just discussed.

Pete Mockaitis
So you mentioned that stories are more impactful and persuasive than logic. Can you expand on that?

Josh Bandoch
Absolutely. One of the hats I wear is I work in opportunity policy and I’m working to alleviate poverty. So I get up and talk to all kinds of groups of people.

And they have to know that I, sure, I get it, but also that I’m authentic and that I care about this. And when I’m up there talking about poverty in a suit, this is not a very impoverished look. So I have to disarm them right away.

The last thing I would ever want to do is go up there and say, “The Census Bureau shows that 12% of Americans live below the poverty line, which is X dollars,” right? And just go into these sorts of things. Terrible, boring snooze. And they have to know that I care about this stuff.

So I just reach for the most authentic personal story that I have, and that’s my family. I tell them, I say, “Look, you all are wondering why I care about poverty. I don’t look impoverished. I’m wearing a suit. I get it. So I care about poverty because it’s seared into my family history.”

“My mom grew up dirt poor. My grandmother had to raise five kids by herself. They were so poor that my grandmother had to count pennies.” See, sometimes I even get emotional doing this, which I am right now, so I’m sorry.

“And every year my mom wondered if there were going be presents around the Christmas tree because most years there weren’t. And that poverty scarred my mom and her siblings.”

“And I don’t want anybody to suffer through poverty the way that my mom and her siblings and my grandmother did. So that’s why I care about poverty, because it’s a terrible scourge and I want to do everything I can to reduce or eliminate it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. And you could see, I mean, the story hits home and is memorable and touching and impactful. And the statistic is just like, “Okay, those are some numbers. It’d be nice if we had better numbers than that.” as opposed to something really heavy that sits with you with your story.

Josh Bandoch
And it’s so raw where I pause there. Sometimes I’ve just started crying because it’s authentic and it’s real and it’s emotional and I don’t do it on purpose. It’s kind of embarrassing.

And yet when it’s happened, people come to me afterwards and said, “Wow, man, like that was really powerful.” So they know, they feel so viscerally that, like, I am all in on this stuff. I am totally authentic.

They can trust me and they can work with me in a way that my presentation of the data, as exact and compelling as somebody might think it is, that will never come even close to what I can do with an emotionally intelligent, morally motivating story.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, just like in ordinary business-y world, it’s like, “I’ve got a cool idea. I would like my boss to do it. I would like for him to feel excited about my idea and the possibilities for what could happen if we did it.” So what kind of stories do I create in that context?

Josh Bandoch
Part of it is trying to just grab real stories. So, like, if you’re presenting, say your manager, tell stories about the great things that everyone on the team did, “Bob did this. Susie did that. Maria did this. Andre did that.”

Tell stories about what they did because it makes it real. It celebrates your teammates. Those are tangible actions that they took. You’re also trying to craft meta stories for an organization. If you’re like a leader, CEO on the board, whatever, that’s like the vision there.

They’re really big picture things about what you’re doing and who you are and what they care about. So try to tell real stories. You don’t even have to make things up. I mean, sometimes you can. Hey, like imagine a situation, but first try to grab real stories that are authentic to you.

Maybe it’s something personal, good or bad that happened, and start with that. Because if you’re trying to solve a problem, maybe you need to start with a story that’s like, “You know, our customer, or I, or somebody, like we had this problem. And here’s a story about that.” And then there’s a story about how you can solve that problem or how that product has solved the problem.

So if you’re talking to a client and they’re like, “Well, why would I buy it from you?” And you’re like, “Well, you know, let me tell you a story about another one of our clients.” And you can tell them a story about how your product solved their problem, which incidentally is the same problem that this potential client is having.

So instead of saying, “Let me show you the data, right? Our product is 27% better than the nearest competitor. On this metric, we are 12% better. On this metric, we are 37% better. On this metric, we’re 19% better,” just tell them a story about how one of your customers, their performance, their profit, whatever, just skyrocketed because of your product. And that’s going to stick.

Instead of the data, tell them about like, company X, “Company X did this. They worked with us. It was great for them.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, any other top do’s and don’ts to put out there before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, so chapter eight is called “Go Beyond Words.” And we think that persuasion is all about words. They’re super important and there’s so much more that goes in persuasion than words. So I’ll flag two things. Three, because we have control over them.

The first is to be likable. It doesn’t mean that people will like you, but be as likable as possible. And we tend to underestimate how important this is. And just think about a time when you liked what somebody was saying, and because you didn’t like that person, you’re like, “Nah, I’m not going to work with them. I’m not going to do this.” So be likable.

The second is to be curious. And that actually makes you more likable. And that goes back to the questions, right, taking interest in the other person. People love talking about themselves. So be curious about them and about what their priorities are.

And the last is to control your tone. Because if I say, “Pete, that’s a great idea!” You’re like, “Okay, he probably thinks it’s a great idea.” If I say “Pete, ahh, that was a great idea.”

They’re the exact same words, and you got to, especially when you’re not calm, maybe you’re nervous, you’re overwhelmed with negative emotions, you got to control your tone because we can intuitively pick up on that tone, and it’s like, “Hmm, what’s going on there?” which also means listen for tone in your counterpart.

While you try to remain super calm, because that’s the best tone, calm, if you notice that somebody is a little anxious, again, that’s especially where those feeling questions, “You know, well, how do you feel about this?” “Oh, I don’t know, man. Like, I’m not sure if this works for me because of X, Y, and Z.” So watch your tone and watch their tone, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Great. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Josh Bandoch
It comes from a poem from Samuel Beckett. The six lines are, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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

Josh Bandoch
The intuition stuff that we talked about a lot today. As reluctant as I was to accept it at first, A, it’s true, and, B, it’s really powerful. So I think our intuitions are just the coolest thing ever now, whereas, I used to think, “Ah, I don’t know about this stuff.” And there’s just an abundance of research that has showed that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Josh Bandoch
Danny Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Josh Bandoch
A notebook. I think in a digital age, we forget how powerful it is to pause, close a computer, get out your favorite pen – I’ve been using the same pens for 30 years – and just write your thoughts down and capture them. When you’re in a meeting, write things down in a notebook. It’s so powerful, and it’s a forgotten superpower to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Josh Bandoch
My new favorite habit, I try to just add new habits in over time, is to meditate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really connect and resonate with, they quote back to you often?

Josh Bandoch
Yeah, this is maybe a good concluding point. I think that, every day, in our personal and professional lives, throughout every day, we are faced with a decision, “Do I want to be right or do I want to make a difference?” It’s really easy to be right.

You go on Twitter X, whatever, you blog post something, right, send that email that you wish you hadn’t sent. Being right is really easy and, oftentimes, it’s counterproductive. Making a difference, by contrast, that’s what persuasion is all about.

And that’s a much more satisfying and, upfront, a more time-intensive enterprise. And that’s how you succeed time after time after time again. That’s how you get what you want.

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

Josh Bandoch
JoshuaBandoch.com, connect with me on LinkedIn. Check out the book, just go to my website or just Google How to Get What You Want. My last name, Bandoch, B-A-N-D-O-C-H. It’ll come right up, and check out the book.

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

Josh Bandoch
I would say it’s returning to that in every interaction, “Do you want to be right or do you want to make a difference? And if you want to make a difference, what do you do?” You have to put them first, be extremely attentive to feelings, and bring a lot of attention to generating the right feelings.

And if you do that, you’re going to grease the wheels for shared action time after time after time after time. It’s magical once you get it going.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Josh, thank you.

Josh Bandoch
Pete, thank you so much.

Apr 06
0

1143: How to Build a Career that AI Can’t Replace with Aneesh Raman

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Aneesh Raman guides you on how to use AI and turn it into a competitive advantage.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why you shouldn’t see AI as competition
  2. How to make the most out of AI in your workflow
  3. What AI can’t replicate–and how you can double down on it

About Aneesh

Aneesh Raman is the chief economic opportunity officer of LinkedIn, where he works with leaders across societies and sectors to shape the global response to the historic changes hitting work. 

Previously, he served as senior adviser on economic strategy and public affairs to the State of California, led economic impact at Facebook, worked as a presidential speechwriter, and was a war correspondent. 

A graduate of Harvard College and a former Fulbright Scholar, he serves on the boards of the College Futures Foundation and Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Aneesh Raman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Aneesh, welcome!

Aneesh Raman
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear your insights about AI and economic opportunity. Could you maybe kick us off by sharing what’s the most surprising or counterintuitive thing you’ve discovered about us career professional folks and AI?

Aneesh Raman
Ooh, it’s a big one. It’s an existential one that we have internalized this diminished sense of self as humans at work across the industrial age. When AI broke out, what now three, four years ago, immediately, there was this great fear.

Immediately, the conversation was, “We’re done. We’re at the end of the road for humans at work. We’ve got this thing that can beat us at these things. It’s going to beat us at those things next. It’s going to beat us at everything soon.”

And I just sort of, like, intrinsically, didn’t believe that. I was starting from a place where, for a long time, I had thought the labor market did a horrible job matching talent and opportunity, indexed on pedigree signals like your college degree, “Where did you work?”

So I just knew there was so much human potential out there that had been blocked out or locked out of economic opportunity all over the world. And so I just didn’t believe that humans were done. I kind of felt like we hadn’t even begun yet.

And the more I sort of thought about it, the more our CEO and I talked about it, what led to the book was this realization that humans are more than we’ve been at work for a couple hundred years now. For a couple hundred years, we have been about one thing above all else – efficiency.

And we sort of told ourselves a story that the knowledge economy moved us out of the industrial age, of people working on factory floors on assembly lines. But it didn’t. Even if you were with a laptop in an office, you were doing more, better, faster, more, better, faster, more, better, faster. Everything was about efficiency and productivity.

And we had derided almost these skills that make us, us. We called them soft skills. We said they were nice to have, not must have. And all the math worked in terms of the industrial age and what the economy valued in terms of technical and analytic abilities.

But I think what’s been most surprising to me is that AI is forcing us to reassert ourselves because it is going to out-machine us, it’s going to out-efficiency us. And yet, our human brain, which is I think still the most incredible object in the known universe, it’s been around for tens of thousands of years, long before the steam engine arrived, and the industrial age descended upon us.

And so we’re going to pull from these strengths that we’ve had for millennia, that we talked about in the book, and it’s going to be a moment to reassert ourselves and our capability, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow! These are big ideas.

Aneesh Raman
Welcome to my brain.

Pete Mockaitis
“Internalize the diminished sense of self.” My goodness. You know, it’s funny, I was just chatting with Claude last night because I think the First Lady was with a robot doing an education event. And I was like, “Oh, can that robot finally load my dishwasher for me? And when can I buy one?”

And so, I was looking at that, and it said, “Oh, this robot is impressive because it could figure out how to fold a towel with just 80 hours of video.” I was like, “Oh, well, my five-year-old figured out how to fold a towel in about four minutes of instruction with a hug.”

So, yeah, I’m with you, our brains are spectacular. But, yeah, there are some domains in which we are being out-efficienced by the AI.

Aneesh Raman
Yeah, and I think that’s okay. It’s not okay right now because it’s causing a massive disruption to work. It’s changing the rules of the game, which are hard to manage if you’ve been playing the game the old way and you’ve done everything right and, suddenly, you know, old math won’t solve new equations. But I think it’s an opening for people that see it.

We were never meant to be machine-like. We were never meant to spend our days doing the work of efficiency and more better faster, more better faster, more better faster. I mean, at one point, as we were reporting in the book, you know, thinking about those people on assembly lines who are fastening that one widget over and over again, or the knocker uppers that we talk about, the people who their job was to shoot peas at windows to wake people up as this sort of human alarm clock.

I looked up and they were just at this coffee shop, four people sitting next to each other, on their laptops, just slamming through emails. And it just connected for me that this is all still ever been efficiency work. And so, I think the real opportunity we talk about in the book is to see this as a big change to everything, to be understanding of the fear that that’s going to cause, because the human brain is wired to fear change. It is not wired to get exponential change. We are in a moment of exponential change.

But then act despite that fear, push past it, because while it’s understandable, it’s also unhelpful. And if you start using these tools and using them not in ways that then just take all the work out of your day, but start to take away the stuff that’s mundane, routinized, efficiency work, free up time to do more cool things with these tools, to learn new things in new ways, to build new things in new ways.

And then to open up space to do the things we uniquely do, to give yourself time to think critically, to think about ethical implications of what you’re building if you’re an engineer, to spend time brainstorming or partnering with other humans.

The turning test started us down this path of AI versus human, and then it beat us here, it beats us there. But that’s not where the story goes. There’s no innovation. There’s no growth if it’s just all about AI. Humans are illogical. We’re unpredictable. What works for us requires someone to be us, to be human, to in-tune that.

So, really, the test we should be doing is human versus human with AI, versus humans with AI, because we always do the coolest stuff together. And that means think about yourself five years ago, think about yourself today, “What are you doing that’s new and better and energizing that you couldn’t do without these tools five years ago?”

And in the book, we talk about an easy way to start this. Put your job title aside. It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO. It doesn’t matter if you’re a senior director. It doesn’t matter if you’re the newest hire at a company. Your job title is irrelevant for the purposes of this exercise.

Every week, you do about a dozen tasks, list them down, and then you’re going to put those tasks into three buckets. The first bucket are tasks that AI can now do or can soon do. So coding is in there, quick summary, quick analysis, first draft of content, meeting notes, like all that stuff’s in bucket one.

Bucket two is stuff you’re doing with AI that’s new. It’s not just additional stuff that you’re putting in bucket one. It’s, “Are you learning something new with AI?” “I’m on marketing, I got to talk to the sales team. They speak a different language. How do I close that expertise gap in what I’m trying to pitch them?”

Are you building something new? “I have to present. What’s a cool image I could associate with this idea? A video? How do I make this land in a more visceral way to the people I’m trying to convince to back this project?” So that’s bucket two.

And then bucket three is, with the time you’re saving in bucket one, with the cool new stuff you’re doing in bucket two, what are gyou doing that’s uniquely you? And that starts with what’s uniquely you as a human, your ability. We have the five Cs in the book, but with those, think critically, “What’s an ethical implication of what we’re doing?”

But then are you spending new time with people to try new things, to test something out as a partnership, to get advice on how to pitch something. And as you sort of move the tasks of your job away from bucket one towards bucket two and bucket three, you’re adapting your job. You’re redefining your job.

We have a statistic at LinkedIn, 70% of the skills for the average job will have changed by 2030. Now, the old way that disruptions hit meant that, at some point, in six months or a year, your boss, your boss’s boss would come to you and say, “Here’s how your job has changed by 70%.” Because old disruptions from the steam engine to electricity to the internet, they played out over years and they came top down.

This one is different. Your boss actually doesn’t really know how your job is supposed to change. Their boss doesn’t know how their job is supposed to change. CEOs are trying to figure this out at an organizational level. So we get to change our jobs now. We get to start figuring out where these tools come in and then what that opens up in bucket two and three, not just because we’re human, but because we’re us.

We have a chapter in the book, “No One Beats You at Being You.” That’s where it’s going, is that you’re going to shift your job and then re-center your career around your unique curiosities and capabilities.

Pete Mockaitis
No one beats you at being you. And it’s funny, I’m thinking about, you know, so me here now, here we are having a podcast about professional skills development, and there are a lot of places where you can get such things.

And it’s interesting how, if I talk to an AI about such a matter, I might get the answer, and it might be quick. And yet, it is not as satisfying, complete, thorough, giving rise to new ideas and connections, the way hearing a full blown conversation between two folks on a matter is. And I think that that really resonates.

Aneesh Raman
And I think that it’s really important. Yeah, I’m glad you’re saying, because right now there’s this sort of idea to AI or not AI, as if it’s binary. And if you AI, you’re doing everything AI. If you’re not, you’re rejecting it for righteous reasons, and that’s where you’re at.

And in the book, we have the story of Neil Pretty, whom really, he embodies this idea that you need to use AI, but you cannot misuse it, nor should you overuse it. And Neil starts using this tool to help him prepare for different presentations, and he overuses it and realize it doesn’t sound like him and it’s not going to distinguish him. And he dials it back and he uses it differently.

Instead of asking it to tell him what to say, it says, “What would this CEO say about what I said, or this academic? Give me 12 reactions to what I think.” And then he would use that to even get better at what he was going to say that would have taken much conversation with many people ahead of a meeting.

So you can overuse AI. And MIT has done cognitive scans and come up with this term cognitive debt. Like, if you’re sitting at work and your boss asks you something, you copy and paste it in the tool, then you copy and paste the answer back and send it to your boss, you might be doing efficiency work more efficiently.

But if you run into your boss a week later, and they’re like, “Hey, that was a great idea. How did you think of that?” you might not even remember that exchange because your brain is not tracking it, and you will have brought no critical thinking to it. So that muscle is atrophying. So you got to make sure that you are using this tool to do better things yourself. You cannot outsource to it.

Pete Mockaitis
So in the universe of more, better, faster efficiency work, how would you suggest is the contrast? If I’m thinking efficiency work AI stuff is in the land of more, better, faster, what is the land of our humanity?

Aneesh Raman
This is the first time someone’s asked me that. Because what’s crazy is we had to define what makes us us. We had to define what makes humans unique in the arena of work.

It turns out not much work had been done around that. As you started talking to neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists, behavioral economists even, when I’d ask like, “Who from companies or from the world of work comes and talks to you?”

One neuroscientist said, “Not many. Like, athletes will come because they want to push their brain to the limit. The military will come because they can’t hire from another military. Hedge funds will come because they want a cool like summit speaker. But you were not getting incoming from everyday practitioners of work.”

But now the mind is going to the center of work, not the machine. And so what does it all lead to? You know, in the book, we identify the five Cs that we think are at the core of human capability – curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage and communication. Those are what we offer up at the intersection of our IQ and EQ of our consciousness and conscience.

Then we say there’s some habits we all need – resilience, adaptability, handling hard well, failing fast, learning quick. And we sort of bundle it all into this idea of being entrepreneurial in our habits and in our thinking. And we know that in saying that, we lose a lot of folks who think being entrepreneurial means starting a business, and that is not for them.

Paul Cheek from MIT, who’s a professor on entrepreneurship there, has an amazing definition for it. “Entrepreneurialism,” he says in the book, “is doing more than is reasonable with the resources you have.” So every one of us every day has a task, has a project, has something we’re doing at work, what’s more than is reasonable that we could do with these tools and with others with the resources we have?

And then what that leads to is a flip. Instead of more, better, faster, I think we’re doing new, bigger, bolder. We are creating a whole bunch of new ideas, a whole bunch of new ways for businesses to grow, a whole bunch of new businesses to go after, a whole bunch of new areas from climate to healthcare to all sorts of stuff that we could create technology for businesses to address, at the local level for just a community, or at the country level, or at the global level.

So, to me, “more, better, faster” becomes “new, bolder, better” and not just in terms of work. Like, I think if we do this right, and it isn’t just us as individuals. Institutions need to completely redesign the systems of work from employment to education, entrepreneurship.

But, ultimately, we get to better work for each of us, better work for all of us, better defined by just more human work, more fulfilling, more high value, more impactful. But that all leads to greater prosperity and progress because of this sort of innovation explosion, this entrepreneurialism that can take root.

Pete Mockaitis
And to these notions of efficiency work versus newer, bolder stuff, I’d love your hot take on these AI layoffs. I mean, some say, “Oh, well, that’s just AI washing. They over-hired, interest rates are worse. It makes a better story for Wall Street to say, ‘Oh, it’s because of AI efficiency.’” But others say, “Oh, no, no, no. Sure enough, one person can now do what things that previously require two, three, or four, and thus it makes sense to shed those jobs.” You’ve got an interesting vantage point. What’s your take on this?

Aneesh Raman
I mean, we’re seeing jobs get added, one million plus jobs around AI. That’s not just the sort of like hardcore engineering jobs. That’s also the data centers. We know sectors are hiring, like healthcare. Look, there’s these two truths we have to hold at once that are somewhat inconsistent.

The first truth is we know at the other end of all of these moments of disruption from technology, we generally see an increase in employment, and the Fed is out there sort of repeatedly with that. Jobs change, new jobs emerge. MIT has a stat, 60% of employment in 2018 didn’t exist in 1940. Creator wasn’t a career 10 years ago. Data scientist wasn’t a job 20 years ago. So we, generally, do see employment go up.

That happens after a messy middle where a lot of lives get upended and it’s really hard for people. But we do see employment go up. That sort of thing one, truth one. Thing two, truth two that contradicts that is we’ve never been here before in terms of this technology. It is fundamentally different in terms of what it’s able to do.

And I think predictions are unhelpful right now. Anyone with absolute certainty about what’s happening to a job category or to all jobs or to jobs in this sector, let’s see how it turns out in five or 10 years. Like, I think it’s just impossible for anyone to know with certainty anything absolute.

The one thing we do know, to contradict myself a little, is the only thing that matters right now is what we believe, and what we choose to do, and what decisions we make, and what steps we take. And that is true for us as individuals. It’s true for us as organizations. It’s true for us as societies. It’s true for us as humanity.

If we decide that worse is more likely, and we make decisions that make worse more likely, worse is more likely. If we decide that better is more likely, and we make decisions that make better more likely, better is more likely.

So in terms of where employment goes, there’s so much in the air. I mean, we’re going from an old world to a new world of work. There’s so much macroeconomic muckup that’s going on on interest rates and geopolitics. Every company is going through its own moment of business transformation.

Some over-hired and now they’re managing that. Some are built with an org chart for stability, order, predictability. That isn’t going to help you innovate, be agile, and grow. They’ve got to manage that. There’s no one truth to everything that’s happening.

And so I think for folks who are looking for a single answer, who are looking for someone to tell them what to do, who are looking for an off-the-shelf playbook as an individual or as a company, like, that’s not this moment. It’s not like back when it was like everyone get a CS degree or bootcamp certificate in coding if you can find one, because that’s the ticket.

There is no “it” right now, but that’s it. We’ve all got to start to figure this out on our own, use these tools, and with these tools start to understand our own unique interest, capabilities, where those could go, where we would pitch ourselves across a broader set of job opportunities that we might, otherwise, have looked at. And I think that’s what we’ve got to do is look. It’s a metacognition sort of moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. But you do have some interesting data. 85% of people are in jobs where AI can automate at least a quarter of routine tasks. Can you tell us a little bit about that data and what sorts of things we’re seeing automated now with AI?

Aneesh Raman
A big thing we’ve been trying to push people on is to look at jobs as a set of tasks, not as titles. A good example of how not to do it, I would say, is looking at software engineers. And for a bit coming out of the gate with AI, everyone said that title describes all software engineers in one way, and that one way is that they code. And as AI got better and better at coding, it became, in that line of argument, intuitive that software engineers were done.

We’ve actually seen recent data where the hiring for software engineers is going up because as AI is able to do more coding, more companies want to build tech, so they’re hiring. And the job of software engineer was never limited only ever to coding.

Some of those jobs, entry level jobs, even middle, they were, but the job doesn’t have to be just that. In fact, as AI is able to do coding, it shifts to reviewing the code, or talking to customers, or having those conversations about ethical implications of what’s being built. It’s the same three buckets and things move.

ATMs are a good example, we talk about in the book. When ATMs hit in the late ‘70s, everyone thought bank tellers were done. We have a quote from the New York Times. It basically says bank tellers are done. Bank teller jobs, like, doubled between that moment and 2010, and they doubled because you had more banks opening so you needed more tellers because ATMs allowed it. The job of the bank teller shifted to being more about relationship banking.

Now, there were some debate over whether the quality of the job went up, but in an absolute term, you know, the jobs went up. They came down after that because of the iPhone and the smartphone and all the banking we’re now doing. But you couldn’t have predicted that in the ‘70s.

So that’s all to say our data doesn’t look at job titles. It looks at jobs. It looks at the tasks people are doing. And it says, if you are in a job where a lot of your job is that bucket one, that’s worth knowing. That doesn’t mean that entire job is going away. And it doesn’t mean you are done at work. It means you’ve got AI coming for well over 50% of the jobs in that task. So you want to start on your own moving tasks in your day to day to bucket two and bucket three.

And if you do that, don’t worry about the job category or the job title you have. That’s all secondary now. It used to be job title mattered first because you’d reverse engineer from it. Job title matters last now because we’re going to be reshifting work.

And so depending on your number, and you don’t need us to tell you this data, you can do an evaluation of the tasks in your job and look at where you’re heavy. Anyone who is heavy in bucket one, okay, what do you got going in bucket two and three? How can you build out from that?

If you’re in a job category that feels really volatile, okay, what are the transferable skills you have across two and three that could take you into other job functions or job categories? But it’s not an overnight, everything is done end of day sort of thing. It’s a step-by-step incremental of, “How do I manage this change sort of thing?”

Pete Mockaitis
And we had a really good chat with Jeremy Utley, who suggested shifting perspective from AI is not the oracle with the answers, but rather like a collaborator, a teammate, and that’s been pretty helpful. I’d be curious to hear, for those whose AI use is limited to sort of an enhanced Google or enhanced Bing, where do you think are the most promising opportunities, like, “Hey, go do this right now with AI, and you’re going to see some cool career benefits”?

Aneesh Raman
This is another one where there’s no one answer for everyone. I’m sorry to tell folks. Like, you’re going to have to go to the gym. You’re going to have to try things out, test things out, and figure out what is the high value of AI for you.

It could be learning new things. It could be building new things. It could be coaching you on new things. You got to keep trying the tools. Like, to your point, I think too many folks either are afraid of AI and don’t want to touch it. Or, if they’re using it, they’re using it just for a better search.

We have five Cs I talked about, and curiosity matters most right now as individuals. And the first place to start is be super curious about these tools, because their capabilities are changing every day. It’s almost like a skill of tool dexterity.

I use multiple tools every day. Every once in a while, I shift to the dominant tool. I use them for all sorts of things. Every week, I’m trying to push a new task out to the tools so that I’m constantly testing what new things that I’m working on can it help with.

It helped with writing at first, and then that pushed me to realize, “Okay, I got to focus on how I elevate what I can get help with on the research or first draft side. But also how do I spend more time doing in-person communication?”

So I started studying, like, theater actors who have it down, who know how to command a room, command energy. What can I learn from them now that my bucket three is going to be more of this? Right now, I’m using the tools for a lot of coaching. I want to send this email. I’ve told the tools what I’m working on, which is sending less emails that are less lengthy with less ideas to people like Ryan, who I can bombard with ideas.

And so it’ll say like, “Hey, you just got yesterday, like take a day off,” you know, like stuff like that. So it’s not so much about the tool capability. It’s what is the human capability you’re working on in that moment? Because we’re all going to want to keep growing right now in new ways, which is fun. It’s hard, but it’s fun.

And then you’re going to use the tools differently based on what you’re working on. If you’re just doing search, that’s an issue. So the easiest way to do it is find the hardest part of your tomorrow. You got something at work tomorrow that you’re not looking forward to, that is either monotonous and drudgery or complicated and a hard conversation you got to have, or you’re suddenly going to have to come up with an idea and you’re bit freaked out about that.

Whatever is your hardest thing tomorrow, start going to the tools and asking them how they can help you with that. And they might not be able to help you. Okay, that’s like a good example of a tool that isn’t there yet, or a task that isn’t there yet, but they’ll give you something. And that’s the sort of rhythm you want to get in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you give us some fun examples of folks who saw some really great tactical good things flowing from tools into what they’re up to tomorrow?

Aneesh Raman
My favorite from the book, probably, I mean, they’re all stories of individuals who are using these tools to get jobs, keep jobs, and change their career, build businesses, like, all of it. But Jonetta Gresham is in her 50s, and because of her age, she came to AI with, in her words, a “Hell, no to AI,” mindset, because she had seen Terminator and Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, and really felt like this was a robot apocalypse come to life.

Again, she had a task at one point, which was to get her resume ready. And she used a tool to just help her do that. And she was blown away at how the tool helped her articulate skills that she had and better organized experience that she had in a way that made her so much more employable for the job she was going after.

And so that sort of opened up her eyes to like, “Okay, maybe this can help me.” And a little bit later, she was taking an IT certification course. And she is someone who, in various moments of education, didn’t feel like she was being taught in the way that she would like to learn, in the way that her brain process information, and in the way that would feed her curiosity.

So she told the tools to help her learn all the stuff she had to learn in the ways that she likes to learn, with stories, with analogies. The tools did that, she passed the test, she got the certification.

It can personalize against your needs in a way that no technology has before. It can close learning gaps. It can close entrepreneurial gaps or building gaps. You just got to get in the rhythm with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot in terms of, if you’ve got a laser focus on, “This is the thing I need to go learn,” and then how can the tool facilitate that, I found that rather handy. Like, I found myself getting in the Mac OS Terminal bash command line, and I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s like, “Hey, if you want to, you know, do this automatic downloading of stuff, you’re going to need this tool.”

So I was like, “Go to GitHub,” it’s like, “Okay, no, you’ve already lost me.” And so I say, “Explain it like I’m five.” And it’s really funny, it’s like asking the robot to go to a store. It literally explains it like I’m five. But that was very handy. And I’ve heard that theme from a number of people.

It’s, like, they know a little something about the domain that they’re after or looking to enter for perhaps the first time, but not nearly enough to actually achieve anything. But with this sort of mega-crutch, they’re saying, “Oh, okay, I can kind of fake my way through step by step.” And then afterwards, like, “Oh, hey, I guess I know how to do this now. How about that?”

Aneesh Raman
Yeah, we’ve got a great story of a guy named Diego, who’s in Texas and is trying to push for rural entrepreneurship with AI to really inspire more folks to realize they can build businesses. Often, folks who couldn’t afford to go to college for whom entrepreneurship is, as he calls it, this permissionless path, this ability to go build your career on your terms.

And he has a great line, which is, “We are no longer limited by what we know. We are only limited by what we can think to ask.” And just imagine what that means for all people all over the world who have access to these tools, who hopefully have electricity and AI infrastructure.

But you’re only limited by what you can think to ask. All of us as humans are innately curious about things, wildly different things. That’s what’s amazing. We all have different perspectives, different things that drive us. But imagine now having this tool that can sort of feed that curiosity and help us align it with the work we do and the impact we want to have and the purpose we want to bring to our jobs.

That’s where you start to get excited. I think we are collectively doing a horrible job telling that story and making it clear, that hiding in plain sight is this thing that is going to make all of our jobs more interesting and more fulfilling, and all of our efforts lead to greater impact for good in the world.

And that’s now on us to try and reset that story and that conversation, which is like the big reason we did the book.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that, “What you can think to ask.” Have there been some power questions that you found transformational?

Aneesh Raman
I think a lot of it is, right now, for folks around, “Where do I start?” or, “What do I do about? How do I think about AI? How should I use AI? When should I not use AI?” You can just dump that in as a voice memo into one of these tools, and it gives you a start. It gives you something to react to.

Again, it doesn’t give you the answer. It gives you an option. And it’s your job to push back on it or to pull from it, and then try and learn something here. Ask it to challenge your thinking over there. One of the things we talk about in the book is like the, I think, it’s a hundred to one rule.

I mean, “You pick your number, but give me like 80 versions of something,” and then you react to which of those you like. And then you can start to think about why and build from that. Or, “Give me the five best arguments against the thing that I think is true about what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

That’s where I think people are really starting to get good results from it. Not, “Give me the answer,” but, “Give me a way to get to a better answer.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I like what you’re saying with regard to the challenging is because it seems like that’s the default setting is sycophancy in these AI tools. It shows me a study. I was like, “Wow, that’s very compelling.” I was like, “Do we think this is real?” It was like, “Actually it has all the hallmarks of being a fraudulent paper mill submission.” I was like, “It’d be nice if you proactively shared that.” But, yeah, to ask it to do the challenging is great.

And you said voice memo and I think that’s a brilliant hack right there in terms of not just the one sentence, but the five minutes of verbiage can make all the difference.

Aneesh Raman
And you can just dump it all in and it’ll organize it. I know someone who does a call with AI every day. They do the chat functionality because you can also, without having to type in or do a voice memo, you can literally converse with these tools.

And they go out for a walk, and they just talk about everything on their mind, “I’m like thinking about this, I had a hard conversation with this person.” And over time, what these tools start to have is longitudinal data on us. They aren’t another person. They are just a collection of insights and knowledge that’s out there. And then, increasingly, if you give it context and give it info, insights, and thoughts on us over longer and longer periods of time.

And so in these conversations, the tool will start calling out, “Hey, you’ve talked for a few times now about wanting to learn more about neuroscience, or how that’s going to relate to work. Here are some, like, podcasts you might want to listen to.” Or, “I’ve noticed, like, anytime you have to have a conversation that’s tough, and it is how you end your day, it really upends your day. Like, have you thought about making those conversations happen at the start of a day?”

It starts picking up on stuff for us that we might miss in the day-to-day of just life being busy. So the key thing is, like, this is a tool that is the easiest technology humans have created for humans to use. It is literally like just talking to someone else at the most basic level. You don’t have to go learn AI. You just have to, like, sign up for a free tool or watch a couple of free videos on it, and then just start using it.

Pick a thing. It can be an exercise plan, a meal plan, or something at work, a project, or a set of tasks you’ve got going, and just start using it. Like, it’s sitting there for any of us to use. So you got to just start using it and keep using it but don’t outsource to it. Use it to then start building you into a better person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Aneesh Raman
I think it goes back to your opening question. Like, it has been surprising how we have internalized a diminished sense of self, and yet it is a reality. And so the biggest thing I would tell people is, like, what matters most right now is your belief in yourself.

You’re going to have to bet on yourself. That’s the future of work and then push your leaders, and we’re pushing them, to build systems that make that bet pay off. But the thing that starts it all is going to be that you believe in yourself and you’re going to bet on yourself. And that’s going to take some work because we are all coming out of an era for work that wasn’t about betting on yourself.

It was turning yourself into whatever the job description needed, whatever the job category needed. So it’s going to be a flip for your brain. The good news is, and there’s a great book, Tiny Experiments, a bunch of them on neuroplasticity and how we can rewire our brain to become a different person.

The good news is you got a human brain and it is able to be rewired and you can become a different person. You can get to belief. You can get to a place where you know exactly how and why you’re going to bet on yourself, but it’s going to take some work. But that’s where it starts. That’s what I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Aneesh Raman
I like the, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” That drove me for a while. I think, right now, it’s more “Be curious, not judgmental.” I think it gets appropriated to Walt Whitman.

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

Aneesh Raman
Mine, I mentioned at the MIT one, 60% of jobs in 2018 didn’t exist in 1940. That’s just like a good number for us to keep in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Aneesh Raman
A bunch of them. My favorite hits at a certain moment in life, that sort of like hits me deep as it relates to this conversation, Sapiens. I read that in August 2023, GPT had gone global the prior year, and it is a brief history of humankind.

And so it just helps you have a sense of, like, how incredible the human brain is, but just also how much has happened across millions of years when we all focused on a few hundred years. So that really widened my perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Aneesh Raman
Copilot, I’m using it a lot because I work at LinkedIn. My co-author is working on Copilot. So it’s kind of a default because I can go tell someone if there’s something we should make better out of it. But it can really give me good advice on, “Should I send this email?” or, “What am I overspending my time on?” because it’s got my calendar, it’s got my email, it’s got the team’s messages. So, for me, right now, because a lot of my growth is growth I want to do at work, it’s been helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Aneesh Raman
This is probably controversial, because I don’t know if people would say this. My favorite habit is small talk, actually. I love small talk. I think every human is like a documentary unto themselves. There’s this great word, sonder, that I won’t do it justice, so people should look it up. It’s a word someone made up, I think, five, 10 years ago. But it’s that every human around you is living a life as complex and interesting as your own.

And that’s true across human history, or at least since we’ve had the brain we have with the ability for complex thought that we have. So I find small talk just amazing. I love meeting new people and just, I’m sure I’m awkward about it because I ask like deep questions sometimes really quick, but I just, like, love learning about people.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people really connect and resonate with and quote back to you a lot?

Aneesh Raman
Hard things are hard. That’s a good one. You know, at one point, someone asked me, “What’s been the hardest part of your career?” And I was like, “You know what? All of it.” And I did it kind of, like, begrudgingly. And then as stuff has stayed hard in just figuring this story out, I revisited, you know, when I worked for President Obama, he had a “Hard things are hard” plaque on his desk because at certain moments when legislative victories were hard fought, people would remind each other hard things are hard.

And that just has led me to become a real believer in the bigness and value of hard. I have, like, an ode to hard things. It’s got, you know, quote from a stoic Marcus Aurelius, who’s like, “The obstacle is the way,” to “Hard things are hard,” to Carl Lassen, the Duke women’s basketball coach who has a viral video that’s amazing about how the whole thing in life is, “How do you handle hard well?”

Roger Federer had a commencement speech a few years ago about the mastery of hard things. Nvidia CEO Jensen was at Stanford Business School and said, “I wish upon you pain and suffering,” because his point to these Stanford Business students was, “You got to build resilience and you got to go through hard for that.” So, yeah, hard things are hard. I think I’ll take that.

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

Aneesh Raman
LinkedIn. The sleeper functions on Linkedin, I think, that people don’t know enough about is you can follow people without connecting to them.

You can go follow folks and they’ll be in your feed. So I am, I’d say, regularly, every three months, unfollowing some people where my curiosities have moved somewhere else, following new people who are talking about the things that I’m newly curious about.

So follow me until you get bored of me. Follow others. All the people in the book are on LinkedIn. And then the book, Linkedin.com/opentowork, that’s where you can go find out about the book.

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

Aneesh Raman
Bet on yourself. Find your way to betting on yourself and you’ll be okay.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Aneesh, thank you.

Aneesh Raman
Thanks for having me.