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1072: Reclaiming Your Creatvitity–No Matter Your Role with Tania Katan

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Tania Katan reveals tricks for turning daily drudgery into opportunities for innovation.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why creativity can be an antidote to burnout
  2. How to find inspiration in the everyday
  3. Creative hacks to make meetings more human and engaging

About Tania

Tania Katan is a global transformational speaker, award-winning author, and co-creator of the viral social impact campaign #ItWasNeverADress; a movement that has inspired over 100 million people to see, hear, and celebrate creativity and diversity. Her visionary way of formulating ideas led to her award-winning book, Creative Trespassing: How to Put the Spark and Joy Back into Your Work and Life (Penguin Random House),  as well as the award-winning memoir, My One Night Stand With Cancer (Alyson Books).

Katan is highly sought after to teach people and companies how to generate unlimited creative breakthroughs in less overtly creative industries, work cultures, and lives. Some of the organizations and major conferences impacted by her talks and workshops include: CiscoLive!, Expedia, Amazon, Talks at Google, Etsy, TED Talks, American Express, and more. 

Resources Mentioned

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Tania Katan Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tania, welcome!

Tania Katan
Pete, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited. We’re pushing record right away because we noticed that there’s something unique about us, or noteworthy, I should say, about us. You and I, we talk differently and we are also super into being creative and doing creative things. Is there a thing at play here, Tania?

Tania Katan
Totally. The reality of it is we were all actually born creative period. And, unfortunately, based on systems and well-meaning or less well-meaning parents and teachers, all the creativity was sort of, like, slapped out of us on our wrist. We were taught to kind of follow the rules and not think differently and all this.

But there is actually a study that proves that zero- to five-year-old kids are creative geniuses, which, means we’re born to think divergently, come up with infinite solutions or ideas for any problem or prompt. And then at 10 years old, that drops off to 50%. And then at 15 years old, we just can barely get out of bed and be creative. And then by the time we’re full-grown adults, all the creativity is gone unless we choose to cultivate it.

But the good news is that we were born with it so we can get it back. But I do like your enthusiasm for you and I being extraordinarily creative. Clearly, we’ve been stretching our muscles for a long time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, you know, but I guess, if I may, and maybe I’m grasping at straws or trying to find something that’s not there, but I think there’s really something to that, that notion of we start creative and it’s beat out of us in all kinds of little ways, and we’ll dig into it.

And so, I think, perhaps, you and I, both have just doggedly refused to allow the world to wring the weirdness from us and how we choose to express ourselves. And so, we’ve held on to a bit of a unique flavor in how we express ourselves, as well as the capacity to continue pumping out a lot of ideas.

Tania Katan
Totally. Well, the good news is, guess who caught up with us weirdos? Forbes. You know it’s over. But, in all seriousness, about a year ago, Forbes said that the most important skill that we all, and by we, I mean, the workforce needs to learn and have, is creative thinking for the next four years. So, us suckers who double down on our weirdness and awkwardness and silliness and play, we’re the ones shining right now.

And that, I mean, Pete, I would be curious about your background. Like, my background ended up being, I went to theater, I did improv, all that kind of stuff. But it was because it was my natural instinct and I couldn’t fit into any other box. Like, I tried so hard. I was like, “I want to be straight. I want to have straight hair. I want to do like everything.”

And just my nature was such that I didn’t have any other option, but it did take a long time, quite seriously, and quite honestly for the workforce to catch up with what me and my parents thought were cool attributes about being creative and coming up with cool and interesting ideas. It took a while for me to find my place and for me to convince companies that, maybe, hiring me because I don’t fit in will be valuable to your bottom line and top line. And that took a long time.

And what for you? Were you just like, “Hey, I’m cool and quirky and weird and Pete, and hug me. Hire me”?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny how, like, oh, wow, there’s a lot I could go into, and some of it I have with therapist and others. But I did, I was into some theater in high school. It was just sort of fun, and I liked doing it. And I guess I just like performing in the stage, in general. And then when I was in high school, I thought, “I want to be a motivational speaker. That’s the job I want for myself.”

Tania Katan
You did?

Pete Mockaitis
I did. So, I was reading the book Speak and Grow Rich when I was like a 16-year-old. Like, “How does one become a professional speaker?” So, I was digging that, having fun with it. And I did an improv intensive course once just for fun. It was so funny, I was told that I’d really mellowed out. Some mentioned I’d really mellowed out a lot, and they liked that.

And it’s funny, I did not like that. I wanted to be un-mellow. But I think it’s funny how it is beaten out of us. It could be explicit or subtle. Like, there was a string of times I got dumped. I had some girlfriends, things seemed like they were going awesome, and then I just got dumped, and it wasn’t quite clear why. And it could be any number of things.

But what I managed to piece together from the little things they did say, was because some of them even said, it’s like, “Hey, no, I think we’re great one-on-one but, like, in group settings, it’s like a little off.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m too weird for you that I embarrass you.” It’s like that’s what I’m gathering, right? It’s like I am entertaining and amusing like a comedian, like, “Ha, ha, this is fun. I like this guy.” But it’s like, “Oh, but actually, I’m associated with you publicly, and that’s kind of uncomfortable.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, or then, like very subtly, I recall…well, I just recently bought a house, and it’s funny, I remember I was with a buddy, and I was helping him move, because he was also buying a house, and he said, “Hey, well, I’m going to the closing. I mean, I don’t know, you could keep boxing my stuff or you could join me at the closing.” I was like, “Hmm, joining you at the closing sounds much more fun.”

And so, I was intrigued because I’d never seen this before. I’d only seen like the episode of “The Office” where Michael Scott closes on his condo. And so, I was into it, and I was like, I had like young, childlike enthusiasm and excitement for the experience. And it’s funny, they asked, “Oh, can I get you…?” like the realtor or the closing agent or a title person, someone asked, “Oh, can I get you some coffee or anything?” And I said, “Oh, yes, please. I want the full experience.”

And, like, my buddy who I was with, he’s like, “Come on, man, don’t be weird.” And I think that’s the messaging. It’s usually fairly subtle, not like a heartbreaking dumping, but it’s like, “Hey, so like kind of just sort of be more like normal and not like you. And that would be more comfortable for all of us, please.”

Tania Katan
I love it. Pete, so, basically, what you’re saying, in essence, a couple of things. Well, one is you have been a creative trespasser your entire life, and me, too.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose I have.

Tania Katan
So, I, basically, have been you in a parallel lesbian universe.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear it all the time, Tania.

Tania Katan
Yeah, I’m like you, only lesbian. But in all seriousness, I was the one who was like, “Buddy…” and I would say things that people wouldn’t say, and people would either laugh, crack up, or be totally embarrassed and everything in between. And at some point, they realized, “Wait a second, I want to be funny or I want to speak up, whether it’s like hanging out or in a meeting or all these spaces in between.”

And I think people started to see me as like, “Well, how do I get some of that? Like, how do I do it my own style?” And I’m like, “Ooh, what’s emerging here?” And then when I went into the workforce and, ironically, I didn’t study a book to be a motivational speaker. I was actually writing a book at 16, and a motivational speaker came to our high school, and I can’t believe that bastard.

We were in, like, a super impoverished school. We were like just a bunch of poor kids, and this guy comes in with an over, like, a cartoonishly large can that said, had printed on it, “Success comes in cans, not in can nots.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m inspired.

Tania Katan
And then, wait, and then proceeded to talk about, like, “If you aim too high, you’re going to miss. If you aim too low, you’re going to miss. But if you aim right in the middle, that’s where success is.” And so, my message was, “Oh, so, if you aim for mediocrity…” Like, that’s what you teach poor kids, “Aim for mediocrity.”

But somehow through all of that, and through me in the same way that you couldn’t help yourself from being funny, and by funny, really, I’m guessing we pointed out obvious things or two things that seem sort of weird and stuck them together, and made new meaning. People were like, “Yeah, I want in on that, too.” By nature, again, we just get all the playfulness, all the creativity, all the fun sort of, like. beaten out of us in all these systems, and especially as adult people.

And again, this is where we are right now where everybody needs this stuff. So, at some point, I’m like, “What is this thing that I’m bringing to teams and companies? And are there other people bringing it to this level of joy that makes us want to contribute more or makes us want to bring literally our whole selves to work and we feel safe? What is it?”

And I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, it’s creative,” but we’re bringing into spaces where it’s not invited, but it’s desperately needed. And now that people have experienced it, they can’t live without it. Okay, creative and trespassing, that’s when you sneak shit in that doesn’t obviously belong. But then now it’s invited in through the front door many times. I mean, sometimes it’s not, but here’s where we are. We are basically kings and queens of the nerds. And I’m happy about this anointment.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so trespassing, I really like that. So, that’s the title of the book, Creative Trespassing: How to Put the Spark and Joy Back into Your Work and Life. And so, trespassing, like, it wasn’t invited or asked for, and it kind of seems like it doesn’t belong, frankly, “But now that you’re here, okay, we’re kind of seeing that it’s nifty.”

And that’s interesting then in terms of, so our unique flavor of expression, you and I, it resembles that of a child before it’s been beaten out. And, I guess, is the connection then, because we’re more free to explore weird, wacky, unconventional things, some of them end up being very useful innovations along the way?

Tania Katan
Yeah, and also in that, though, is the practice of doing that. It’s not just like we wake up one day after having all the creativity taken away from us, or a lot of it, because of systems and people and all that jazz, and then we believe it. We believe all this sort of default crap of like, “Oh, I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m not smart enough,” or, “I’m not funny enough,” or, “I don’t belong here,” or whatever.

And then you and I, clearly, have maintained the practice of believing like, “Huh, if I double down on everything that I’ve got, which is creativity, ability to come up with weird ideas quickly, and also not to feel ashamed or threatened by others if the ideas are wrong, to take risks and generate more ideas than not in order to get to something.” That’s interesting.

And, in fact, I was just giving a talk at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and one of the things in my book, and that I engage this audience in is, I said, “You know, why don’t you come up with, find a problem that nobody’s looking to solve, that nobody’s looking to solve in the world? It could be local, it could be small.”

And that in itself was a trigger for people to be like, “Wait, I can just look for something that I wasn’t told to look for? I can look for something that might be invisible and kind of bring it to life?” And I had people partner with people who didn’t know each other. So, it was this older woman and this young kid, they’ve faced each other and they did the, you know, what could they solve.

And then afterwards, I’m like, “Okay, so what did you do?” And they’re like, “Well, there’s a really great restaurant in Santa Barbara, but they’re really garlic-focused and a lot of people go there for dates. So, the problem is, is you don’t want to, like, make out with somebody if you got garlicky breath. So, we’ll plant a mini garden, like a little flower box of parsley right outside the restaurant, have some colorful scissors so people can cut parsley on their way out, eat them and they don’t have to worry about garlic breath.”

Now this seems sort of like simple, but it’s actually brilliant. I mean, it’s genius. It’s like a really great idea. They had three and a half minutes to come up with this solution. And they did. And there were other people who figured out how to clean oil from the beaches, how to grow wine grapes in the sea, like all of these things.

And so, I think the first part of that is to give ourselves permission, which obviously you and I have been doing for a long time, to sort of stretch our creative muscles, trust our instincts, and be prepared to take risks and be wrong a lot. Who cares, right? Like, in the pursuit of that one sort of solution, you have to have wild, weird, outlandish ideas, and see what comes out of them.

It’s not like be perfect right out the gate. That’s ridiculous. That’s not prototyping. That’s not innovation. That’s sort of the antithesis of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s interesting. Let’s talk about that emotional notion of being beat down. It’s funny, sometimes when I’m brainstorming or whatever, I have zero offense whatsoever. I provide an idea and it’s just like shot down summarily and robustly. Often, that will bother me not at all. It’s like, “Well, hey, I’ve got 20 more, so next. Let’s go.”

But other times, it hits hard, in terms of it feels personal, like a rejection of me and myself-ness. And I don’t know where the distinction is. Maybe it’s about self-expression as opposed to ideas that feel a bit removed. But, help us out, if the world is going to beat us down, and sometimes we won’t care, and sometimes we will, how do we take it and keep on trucking?

Tania Katan
Well, first of all, I’ll give you and everyone who’s listening the gift of a question, which is, “What if?” What if…? So, the minute we kind of engage this question, what if it allows for possibilities beyond this time and space? What if kind of softens the blow or lowers the stakes of, like, “I need to be responsible to come up with a solution to solve the problem of lack of women in technology.”

What if it’s, like, “What if we decided to look at something differently? Like, what if we decided to come up with the wrong answer? What if we decided to launch a campaign in outer space? Like, what if?” So, there’s something about this question that I always give to people, I’ve had it in my back pocket since I went to theater school, that lowers the pressure and the taking it personally, and making it about yourself.

It’s like a gentle punting of a question into the ether, and maybe a solution will come. Even your voice goes up an octave when you ask “What if?” as opposed to like, “Okay, here’s my solution.” And also, it decenters. It’s not about you. It’s not like, “I have an idea. I have a solution.” It’s like, “What if…?” It offers it up to everyone.

So, I think that taking it out of yourself, decentering you and our egos in our brains, and allow it to sting. It does sting. I remember coming up with the idea for, “It Was Never A Dress,” which I don’t know if you’ve seen, but I’m sure your listeners have, and they can envision in their mind’s eye, you know, the bathroom lady, the symbol? And so, she’s wearing, what is she wearing, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I know better. She’s wearing a cape.

Tania Katan
Oh, come on. Gosh, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I’ll play along. Oh, she’s wearing a dress, Tania. She’s wearing a dress.

Tania Katan
Thank you for playing. We have some lovely party gifts for you, Pete. Right. So, I came up with this idea in a meeting and, literally, to your point, there were people who were like, “That is the dumbest idea ever in our team meeting.” And some were like, “That’s the best idea,” and everything in between.

And, to me, the moment that I took that personally was when I knew it was such a good idea, I was willing to fight and push for it to be in the world. That’s when I took it personally. But before that it was like, “Well, here’s some ideas. Let’s see what happens.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. By saying “What if,” it is, it’s not about you. It’s not about your ideas, your contribution, your smarts, your worth, your value to the team, yada, yada. It’s like, “Hey, we’re just going to play a game here and we’re going to step into this world, and we’ll kind of see what happens when we play around here.

Tania Katan
Totally. You remind me of a phrase that I loved so much and nobody ever uses it, but I bet you do, Pete. Spitballing. And when I think about spitballing, I think about saliva leaving your mouth in an ungraceful way, and just like shit kind of getting messy and all over the place. And so, thinking about spitballing as a way to just kind of like, “Eh, you know, if a little spit gets somewhere, it doesn’t mean it’s not about perfection. It’s actually the minute I open my mouth. It’s about messy imperfection.” Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, so sometimes, when we’re talking about creativity on How to be Awesome at Your Job, a listener will think, “Well, you know, I’m not really in one of those creative-type jobs.” Do you have a response to that? And how can we think about creativity impacting all humans and workers?

Tania Katan
Yeah, so, really, there have been studies to prove that we are all creative. There’s one, and for those people who say that, they probably have a lot of constraints in their job. Maybe, like, “I don’t have time. I don’t have a budget. I don’t have a team.” I’ve been that person many times. And there was a seminal study by Patricia Stokes with rodents, rats. And she took two groups of rats; they each had a bar they had to push.

One could use both paws. One group could only use one paw. And the group with two paws just pushed the lever, pushed it, pushed it, pushed it, and fine. The group with one paw, they pushed the lever, they pushed the lever, and they are, like, hold up. Then they pushed it behind their back, then between their legs. They came up with hundreds of ways to push this freaking lever.

And the point was that, when we have constraints, we actually are more generative. We come up with more creative ideas. So, my challenge to those people who are like, A, “I’m not creative,” you were born that way. It’s your birthright so let’s tap back into it. And, B, constraints actually foster creativity. And creativity is, literally, just coming up with infinite ideas and solutions for any problem, challenge, obstacle. Period.

So, there’s two C’s of creativity. There’s the big C, which is like, “I’m a painter,” or, “I’m a playwright,” or, “I’m a choreographer, and that requires training and maybe some innate ability.” But the little C is we can come up with infinite solutions and ideas, and that’s within us. So, constraints, so I dare you to take these constraints.

There’s actually an exercise I give in Creative Trespassing, which is come up with like the positive opposite of this sort of problem that’s ailing you. So, I don’t know, Pete, who have you had on your show that’s like, “Ah, creative? I work at a call center”? Or, I don’t know, what do you, or what kind of person or industry are you talking about?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you nailed it in terms of the constraints, in terms of if a person feels constricted as though they don’t feel they have the authority or resources or autonomy to go invent a new approach to whatever, it’s sort of like, “Well, hey, the processes have been established, and my role is to execute them.” Like, that’s kind of the vibe or context where they’re coming from.

Tania Katan
Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll give you an example from the art world, which is where everybody gets their goodies. There is an artist named Meg Duguid, and years ago she just wanted to open a gallery, right? She had met all these cool artists from around the world, and she’s like, “I live in Chicago. I want to bring all these artists in.” And then she went to look for a gallery.

And guess what? It’s very expensive, she’s not making much money, and this is her dream, and she doesn’t have investors. She’s not friends with VCs or whatever. And so, she had a choice. She’s like, “I could just let my dream go away, or I could find a creative way to deal with these constraints of no money, no space, no patrons, nothing.”

And so, she started Clutch Gallery. And it’s, literally, she has a…do you know what a clutch purse is? It’s like 10 inches by 10 inches, and hers is sort of hard shell. And she has, if you open it up, there’s rotating exhibitions in there. There’s, like, really tiny, she had a painter who had to do like, half-inch scale paintings. She had a performance artist who had to figure out a way.

So, the point is that, instead of giving up on her dream of owning a gallery, she decided to make it 10-inch by 10 inches. And if you call her, she’ll come with the gallery and meet you anywhere, like a coffee house or on the streets or whatever, and she’s showing art of people that she admires around the world.

And then they have the constraint and challenge of “How do they make their work fit within 10 inches and 10 inches?” And these are people who show in massive museums or galleries that are more typical. And I just thought that was the best way. I had some engineers come up to me after I gave a talk at Uber, and they’re like, “We want to start an innovation lab. But we don’t have money or buy-in or anything.” And I’m like, “Why don’t you get a clutch, okay?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s where it all starts.

Tania Katan
That’s where it all starts, yeah. And we’re laughing, and whenever I share this with people at Fortune 500 companies, they laugh, and then they’re also like, “Yeah, actually, I guess I do have some less obvious resources that would be really interesting and actually fun to activate and play with.” And that’s real innovation, not bullshit like, “Oh, I’ve got a ton of money and a whole team.” I’m sure you know, anybody who’s done anything that we admire was not necessarily done with a whole team and a lot of money.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s really interesting about, it is creative in so far as it is novel, like certainly, like that hasn’t been done before. But then interesting implications sort of unfold from that, like, there is one clutch and she has it.

And so, like, if folks who are into a unique, cool, arty experience, if you have a money problem, may very well be, it’s like, “Well, shoot, how am going to get all my art friends together? And if I want this gallery to come to our event, well, now there’s a supply constraint so there might be a substantial fee associated with it.” It’s like, “You want the clutch? Yeah, well, your fancy friends, that’s going to be $800 for me to truck it on the L over to you there.”

Tania Katan
I like how you went to scale and capitalism in, like, one beat. Man!

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Yeah, thank you.

Tania Katan
I like that. I like it a lot. Nice transition. So, yeah, but that’s just like saying, “Oh, somebody came up with a project management SaaS we can’t come up with anymore,” right? But the cool thing is when somebody comes up is first to market, whether that’s a clutch with a miniature painting show in it, or a software as a service, and it becomes a North Star for everybody else to tap into.

Like, “Okay, how am I going to use my unique voice, brand, style, tone to connect with my intended audience in a positive way. What’s my clutch? What’s my clutch? Ooh, hashtag, I see a new campaign. #WhatsMyClutch.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s really interesting. You mentioned, like a software as a service project management piece, and it’s like, “Oh, well, that’s already been done. There are multiples.” And yet I’m just thinking, I see so many variants, and they’re kind of fun. I’m thinking randomly about the CARROT Weather app.

Tania Katan
What? I don’t know that.

Pete Mockaitis
It’ll give you attitude. You could choose from several personalities and how you want it to tell you about the weather, from professional to friendly, to snarky, to homicidal and overkill. So, it brings that fun to a very mundane activity, like, “Oh, what’s the weather? There’s plenty of weather apps. Well, if you want your weather app to have some attitude, you’ve got CARROT Weather,” and it has a boatload of users. It’s really taken off.

Tania Katan
Well, because what it’s done and that, to me, is the ultimate expression of creativity. Just taking something that’s seemingly mundane, or every day, or overlooked, and actually turning it on its head or upside down or inside out so that it can really engage people in a fun, uplifting, and positive way. Really, I mean, that’s what we need in all industries in all areas.

You’re reminding me of this, my side hustle in which I don’t get paid, but I’m turning to you to understand how to commodify and scale it, sir. But which is, whenever I’m on hold with like the bank or any kind of institution, which is all the time, they always have their hold music. And so, I decided to start doing dance and performance with the whole music and just videotaping myself, and sharing it with anybody who’s had to be on hold, and it’s so much fun.

And so, it turns something that’s not only just mundane, but actually frustrating. And sometimes when I’m haven’t had a nap, just downright irritating, I become the nasty carrot, more like a gourd, I feel. And, yeah, and so it’s taken something that I have to do, that we all have to do, which is engage with customer service in a way that’s sometimes, and oftentimes, not enlivening.

And it all starts with the canned music, and turn it into a performance or dance even if it’s just for myself, especially if it’s for my friends, and we can all enjoy it a little bit more. So, I love the CARROT.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that is fun. And I want to talk about some additional examples of that because it’s your subtitle, “How to Put the Spark and Joy Back into Your Work and Life.” Let’s talk about some mundane dimensions of work life.

Let’s say answering emails and participating in, we’ll say, Zoom meetings, that you know they’re not the most interesting and maybe not the most essential, but, nonetheless, you’re expected to be there. And there’s probably a few minutes that are actually really necessary for you out of the 60. So, how might we bring a little bit more of that zest to these experiences?

Tania Katan
Well, first of all, I consider this one-inch by one-inch frame in our camera as a stage. It’s not this sort of, like, passive participant. We can engage with this as if we’re as a speaker, as a motivational speaker. I give a lot of talks on Zoom. And so, if you are conducting the meeting, then I would recommend that you start with seeing the space as an active, alive, performative one, not performative work, but more performance-based.

So, for example, Pete, if we were just entering a Zoom meeting, and I was “running it,” I would say, “Okay, Pete, our meeting today is creativity. We’re talking about creativity. So, you know what? Let’s start with something creative. We’re going to leave the frame and we’re going to count to three on our own. One, two, three. And when we get to three, enter the frame in a new way. You ready? Let’s do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Tania Katan
“Okay. We’re going to leave the frame. Bye.” Okay, so, look, here’s the deal. A lot of people forget thought and form, right? The thought is, “Why have we all convened? What’s the theme? Why are we here?” And if it’s about creativity or innovation, a lot of these meetings we’re having are for a reason and we forget about it. We get just perfunctory and, like, we check off the bullet points on the agenda.

0And I’m here to tell you that connect what you’re talking about to the actual form in which it takes. So, don’t start a meeting about innovation by saying, “Okay, who has the notes from the last meeting? Hey, Pete, can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

I mean, why wouldn’t you engage people with the substance that you’re trying to sell, to commodify, to champion as, like, “This is our vision and mission.” And yet, it’s the first thing to go away when we sit down at a meeting or when sometimes we engage in practices that we think are like less interesting.

Having that connection to what we do and why we do it is so important. And I don’t think it should be left out of anything. It needs to be brought into everything. And I promise you, it’ll change culture and it’ll change your mindset and change how fun Zoom meetings are.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, that’s fun. I’m imagining, when you talk about the little camera square as a performance space, like a stage, well, I‘m imagining from “Arrested Development,” Tobias Fünke, you know, placed aside his artist’s smock to adorn his director’s hat or whatever, you know, get props, get silly with it. And that’s kind of fun.

I want to hear your take on email. You reminded me of some things. I’ve only done this a few times. I guess I was that desperate, like, “I need to do these emails and I really, really don’t want to.” I put on a headset, which kind of helped because I was doing some dictation to speak a little bit. But more so, I was pretending to be the character Chloe from “24,” talking to Jack Bauer about some very urgent situations as I was quickly typing away on the screen, because that’s what Chloe always did.

And it was life or death, terrorism, you know, big high stakes, just to put a little bit of juice into the email processing. And that kind of worked. I’ve also tried timings, like, “Oh, it’s a race. Let’s try and get 100 by these many minutes or whatever.” So, I’d love your hot take on how do we bring some more spark and joy back to email processing.

Tania Katan
So, I love that you created a whole meal out of your persona to sit down to respond to emails but you’re not responding in their vernacular or like with their language. It’s Pete responding, but you’re giving yourself that urgency and excitement of being the character.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, but if I don’t answer these emails, the terrorists are going to win.

Tania Katan
So, you’re holding yourself hostage.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, put some duct tape on your mouth, “Hmm, hmm.”

Tania Katan
I’ll approach it from another way, which my clients, who I worked for like big tech companies, like Expedia and stuff like that, and they have to construct the most boring emails to people who have not read anything that they were supposed to read, in a way in which suggests, like, “I’m sure you read the 20-page reports. And here’s blah blah blah.”

And so, what they do that is really exciting, is they just throw in an Easter Egg, because not everybody has tapped into that. So, it’ll be all about like the new version of, you know, whatever, the new release of the technology, and they’ll throw in like a few Easter Eggs from Star Trek or whatever film or TV show, to see if they’ve read the thing they should have read.

And if they do then, they get bonus points. And the person who’s on the other end gets excited, they’re like, “Okay, I’m going to read that because I know there’s going to be some Easter Eggs in there.” I’ve never tried that, but I’m going try adapting. I feel like my persona is just so I’m always performing in relation to that. I love that. I’m going to start using that. I’ll hashtag, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I’m on it. Thank you.

Tania Katan
I’ll TM you. I love that. That’s such a great way, is to like put on the hat of whatever character you think is sort of weird and wily and wonderful, and get all the high-pressure stakes that they have in their situation, and respond to an email about the next team meeting. I think that’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Fun. Well, is there anything you do when drudgery enters your work life? What are your personal practices for spicing it up?

Tania Katan
Well, first of all, this is really practical spice and it’s a tomato. I feel like you had a carrot. I should bring some vegetable-fruit to the table. And the Pomodoro method, I know this sounds sort of boring, but this is the best thing that I’ve given to all my clients. It’s a time management. It’s a constraint. So, basically, it’s started with like a tomato timer, but set a timer for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and get done what you need to get done. And when the timer goes off, you take a break.

You dance, you work out, you breathe, you jump up and down, whatever the hell you want. You drink a coffee, and then you set it again. So, creativity isn’t always like, “I’m racing against time in, like, a larger sense.” Sometimes it’s all about, like, “I give myself this constraint so that I can approach what I’m doing in a way that’s, like, doesn’t beat me down, feels kind of fine. And I can move on to the next thing that’s actually more fun for me.”

So, I know that’s not sexy, but tomatoes can be sexy sometime, time management can be sexy, because it allows us to do the things that we really love to do. Thus, the gift of AI, I’ve got to say. I mean, that’s where, if you really want to be developing your creative muscles, let something else do the boring tasks. Boom!

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, when it comes to AI, I would love to hear your pro tips, do’s and don’ts. I mean, I think we’ve seen AI really go both ways in terms of a worker has used it to be more effective and efficient, and a worker has used it to embarrass themselves royally because these citations or legal cases don’t exist, or they let it sort of do all. They actually let it do the fun parts for them. So, help us out, what are your do’s and don’ts for AI in helping us have more fun and creative goodness in our work?

Tania Katan
Okay. Here’s the deal. I did a thought experiment. So, I was an early adopter with ChatGPT, and you can’t forget the learning part of machine. It’s machine learning. So, it’s what you’re feeding it and what we’re all feeding it, whether we’re feeding it burritos or like Twyla Tharp, you know. It’s getting a lot of stuff in its pie hole, and that’s part of the process.

But for me, early on, with ChatGPT, I realized, what AI won’t do is it won’t write 50 shitty pages in order to get to that one line that you’re like, “Oh, my God, I thought my book was about this, but it’s really not about that.” It’s not process-oriented, it’s a process-er. And we are process-oriented and we are driven to have those moments where we doubt we could write the book, we doubt we could write the code. We doubt it.

And in the doubting, we dig in deeper and then we find a totally different way to do it, a way that isn’t a pattern that is less obvious. And that’s the beauty of us being human beings.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, agreed. So, then is there anything you think it’s handy for?

Tania Katan
So, I find it really effective and efficient for the stuff that slows me down as a creative, right? Making the bullet point list, organizing thoughts and ideas into a clear form that I can take to a company that I just met with. And I’m like, “Here.” I met with them, I’m like, “I can help you tell your story in all these different ways, engage your audiences.”

And then I get home and I’m exhausted. I don’t want to sit down and make a proposal that’s cogent. So, I’ve really worked with ChatGPT and helped it nail down the tone, and do the hard stuff. That’s what it’s there for, is to do the stuff that is boring to me. That’s why I love it so much. And also, and in fairness to this processor that is kind of gleaning and gathering all kinds of information, because I’ve fed it so much over the years, it can be kind of a thought partner.

I guess I think about it as like a very high achieving intern. It’s not, like, it’s shabby ideas, to your point. It can come up with creative ideas, but that’s based on years of me sort of showing how I think, how I feel, how the people I work with think and feel. And so, it can be really good, like an intern who’s like, “Hey, Tania, I have a really good idea.” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s good. It’s super good.”

The tone isn’t there yet, but that’s my job. That’s what I delight in is the creative crafting of that, of the messages. So, I think it’s a good thought partner, first drafter, and definitely great with the tedious tasks that us humans shouldn’t be doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and it’s intriguing. Tedious tasks, in some ways, to get philosophical, it’s a bit in the eye of the beholder insofar as an attorney might delight in crafting a contract that seems, oh, so thorough and risk-mitigating and comprehensive. Or, maybe they hate it, too, Tania. I’m not sure.

Tania Katan
Yeah, but, no, conversely, to your point, Pete, so if that’s your creative output is the sort of the tasks and the focusing in on the details, then you’re training it to come up with the creative ideas that you’re feeding into it.

And maybe those ideas aren’t perfect, but maybe within the realm of the people that you’re engaging with, that those are like really radical ideas that you can explore together as humans and see if they work. Test them out.

So, use them for the opposite, the person who’s expressing or sort of stretching their creative muscles all the time, desires to use it for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, any final thoughts, tips, do’s and don’ts about creativity and joy?

Tania Katan
There are no don’ts. It’s do’s. Creativity is the new job security. Pass it on. Really, I mean, in all seriousness, back to the full circle to the Forbes quote, I mean, they’ve literally doubled down. In four issues, they’ve written about how important creative thinking is for knowledge workers, because AI will be able to do everything we can do and faster.

And if we don’t cultivate our creative thinking, if we don’t get back to our birthright of being creative individuals who can solve any problem, accept any challenge, and even turn ourselves into a character that has high-pressure stakes in order to answer emails, we’re going to be out of a job. And I don’t want us to be like that. We’re the ones who created AI. So, let’s wield the power of technology rather than it dragging us around.

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

Tania Katan
Maya Angelou all the way, “People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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

Tania Katan
The Patricia Stokes study on rodents and creativity and constraints.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Tania Katan
Yeah, Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart. That’s my favorite, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön, all the way. It’s a good read anytime, especially now.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Tania Katan
An espresso cup.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Tania Katan
Laughing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that people quote back to you often?

Tania Katan
God, no. What people say is, “Oh, Tania, I love what you said. Can you say it again?” And I say, “No. Whatever comes out of my pie hole is there for you to use or throw away immediately. There’s no in between.”

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

Tania Katan
TaniaKatan.com, T-A-N-I-A Katan.com.

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

Tania Katan
Lower the stakes. Take some risks. Do it in places and with people you feel safe first, and then expand the circle, and then expand the circle even more until it’s so big that every place is a place for you to take risks and find some joy, and double down on being a creative human.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Tania, thank you.

Tania Katan
Thanks, Pete.

1067: Better Decisions through Neuroscience with Emily Falk

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Emily Falk reveals the hidden science behind how we make decisions—and how we can harness that to make more fulfilling choices.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to make doing hard things easier
  2. The one belief that’s limiting your possibilities
  3. How to disarm resistance to change

About Emily

Emily Falk, author of the upcoming book What We Value, is a professor of communication, psychology, and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania and the vice dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, where she directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. 

Falk is an expert in the science of behavior change. Her award-winning research uses tools from psychology, neuroscience, and communication to examine what makes messages persuasive, why and how ideas spread, and what makes people effective communicators. 

In What We Value, Falk illustrates how we can transform our relationship with the daily decisions that define our lives—opening pathways to make more purposeful, fulfilling choices; more successfully change our behavior; and influence others to see differently—by thinking like neuroscientists.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Emily Falk Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, welcome!

Emily Falk
Thanks so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to hear some of your goods. So, then, tell us, with your book, What We Value, what’s the big idea or core message here?

Emily Falk
Well, the big idea in What We Value is that our brains shape what we value, and that happens in ways that we might not realize as they’re unfolding. And my hope is that if people can understand how their brains are calculating value that that has potentially a lot of benefits.

That one possibility is that we can feel more compassion for ourselves and for other people when we make decisions that don’t necessarily make sense to us. That it might also help us make choices a little bit differently or also communicate more effectively with one another.

So, the book is in three parts right there. The first part that explains how this all unfolds in the brain, then there’s a second part that focuses on what we might do if we want to change those kinds of processes, and then the third part focuses on how we connect with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you discussed the value calculation. What is that? And, ultimately, how are we generally going about making decisions?

Emily Falk
Well, your brain has a set of regions, a system that neuroscientists call the value system, and it takes inputs from lots of other brain regions, and integrates them into a subjective assessment of how rewarding each of any different possible options might be for you. And this kind of unfolds in three phases.

So, in the first phase, your brain identifies what the things are that you’re choosing between. And then in the second part of that, it assigns a subjective value to each of those possible options, which is really weighted towards things that are psychologically close, meaning things that are immediately relevant to you, like rewarding soon.

Geographically close to you, like, stuff that’s happening here in my community, as opposed to, like, across the world in Sudan. And, also, socially close, like, people who are similar to me or people who I know really well, as opposed to people who I think are really different from me or far away.

And in the brain, you can see that these kinds of psychological distance are computed similarly. So, like, future me is similar to a different person. So, in that second phase, your brain assigns a subjective value to how kind of immediately, presently rewarding things are likely to be. And then it connects to other systems that execute the choice.

So, we choose the one that we think can be most rewarding, and then keep track of how it went afterwards, like, “Was that actually as rewarding as I thought it would be?” And if it’s better than you thought it would be, like, let’s say, that you are at work and you sign up for an assignment that you’re willing to do, but it turns out that it’s like way more fun that you thought it would be, it generates what’s called a positive prediction error, and that makes it more likely that we’ll do that thing in the future.

Rather than something that you were really excited about, turns out to be worse than you thought it would be, it generates this negative prediction error, and we learn so that, in the future, it’s going to be an input to future value calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s what’s going on underneath the hood when we’re thinking about, “Do I do a thing?” And so then, if different people choose differently, I guess, what are the primary variables that explain it?

So, if someone says, “Hey, some guys are getting together for a fishing trip,” and then some people on the email say, “Yes, I’m in,” others say, “No, I’m not,” I’m sure there are all kinds of things that are happening externally in their life and their situations and their travel plans. But internally, what are the core things that might make the difference between folks saying, “Yes, I’m in,” versus, “No, I’m out”?

Emily Falk
Well, each of our choices that we’re making in a deliberate way like that are shaped by our past experiences, like we just talked about. Our current context, which can include a lot of different things.

Like I said, there are all these other brain systems that are feeding into our value calculations, which include what we think about ourselves, like, “Am I the kind of person who goes fishing?”

What we think other people around us might be thinking or doing, like, if many other people in the chain have already replied enthusiastically, then that signals that this is, like, maybe something that is going to be fun or beneficial. And those kinds of social influences are really powerful in shaping our value calculations.

Our current mood and our emotional states impact our decision-making, and there are lots of other things as well. So, there’s all of these different context cues that feed into our subjective value associations. And so, the difference between somebody making the choice of say yes to the fishing trip or no to the fishing trip is going to be dependent on all those different things.

But I think one of the things that’s really helpful to understand is that we can shift how we feel about it depending on what we pay attention to.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about shifts, can you tell us the tale of Ernie Grunfeld’s parents and how that brings this to life?

Emily Falk
Yeah, Ernie Grunfeld, for folks who don’t know, was a star NBA player and went on to become the general manager of several major NBA teams. So, he’s had a really star-studded career in basketball. But when he first came to the US, he immigrated from Eastern Europe, and his parents and he were Holocaust survivors.

And they ended up in New York, and his parents made all kinds of sacrifices to get the family to the US. And so, when they arrived, his parents set up a store, and Ernie would help out at the store on the weekends. He enrolled in school. His parents prioritized sort of higher-rent housing situation in order to be able to get him that education.

He came from this family that had a really strong core set of values related to those things. But, on the playground, it turned out that Ernie was amazing at basketball. And so, Ernie started to play on the playgrounds in New York, and then eventually, in high school, he got really, really good. But his parents were really busy working and they didn’t know that.

And so, his son, Dan, wrote a book where he describes the high school basketball coach calling up Mr. and Mrs. Grunfeld, and saying, “Your son is incredibly talented, and this is something that he could pursue as a ticket to college. Like, it’s going to be his ticket to getting scholarships. He’s going to be able to pursue this education,” in a way that really resonated with them.

And I’ll also add that Ernie’s dad, Alex, was an athlete himself. He had been a star ping-pong player, among other things. And so, the conditions were really right, where you could imagine some parents being in the situation where they’ve sacrificed so much for their kid to be able to be in this new place and pursue an education.

And if Coach Isser had focused on other things, like, for example, maybe how talented he was at basketball and what a gift it would be to the sport for him to play, like, I don’t know how that would’ve changed his parents’ calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, good for basketball, that’s not our priority right now. Okay.

Emily Falk
Yeah. And so, the people who are receiving the message, his parents, have one set of things that’s really important to them, and through this conversation, Coach Isser was able to kind of highlight for them what an amazing opportunity this talent that Ernie had could afford. And so, there’s a really incredible story of them coming to the gym one night to watch him play basketball. They closed the store, which was something that they never typically did.

And they came in to the gym, and they didn’t even recognize him on the court in his uniform and playing, and so they were like, “Where’s our kid?” And then, it turned out that there he was, like, being amazing on the court. And after seeing that, I think that made it even more concrete and vivid for them, like what was possible.

And so then, they became really big supporters of him playing basketball. They released him from his duties working at the store. And he did go on to have a really incredible college career and, eventually, moved into the NBA.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you mentioned releasing duties from the store. So, whereas, before, it sounds like, was a bit more of a, “Okay, we tolerate this basketball thing because it’s a thing you like to do,” and then they got shifted over to, “Oh, wait a minute. This is the ticket to all the things that we’ve been trying to create for you, so now we’re all in on you and basketball.”

Emily Falk
Yeah, I’m not sure even how much they talked about it before Coach Isser brought it up, right? Like, this incredibly amazing story that highlights his parents not even recognizing him at the gym. I think it wasn’t on their radar that this was something he did. Like, he went to the playground, he played with his friends, he did whatever he did after school, and then the coach kind of brought that into their focus.

So, thinking about that first part of decision-making process of, like, “What possibilities are even available?” Coach Isser sort of foregrounded this as something that could be a path for their kid, where I don’t know how many conversations Ernie and his parents were having before that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s say that we’re to utilize to use this cool brain science to see some good results in our lives, and maybe there’s any number of behaviors that we would like to change, maybe, “I wish I could focus longer, or on difficult strategic high-impact career things, or exercise, or have some challenging conversations with folks.”

If we want to make a shift in what we’re doing to doing more of the things that we think we “should” or would be good for us to do, where do we start?

Emily Falk
Yeah, let’s stick with the Ernie example for a little bit longer there because I think, although we’ve been talking about sort of his parents’ decision-making process, thinking about that long-term future for him, which is often something that his parents or as managers are trying to do, Ernie had different motivations for playing basketball.

He was playing basketball because he loved it. It was a way to make friends. It was a way to do something that felt really joyful for him in the moment. And I think that is a really instructive path towards success.

So, in particular, we often focus so much on distant outcomes, and in doing the thing that we think is going to be the best for us that we disregard or down-weight the things that, actually, is going to make the process joyful.

And so, going back to that idea that our brain has this system for calculating psychological distance, like our self-relevant system calculates what’s me and what’s not me, and it prioritizes the things that are immediately rewarding, that are socially similar to me, that are geographically close to me.

And so, when we think about how we can make those choices that you’re describing easier, I think one of the things that we can do is try to being them psychologically closer, try to bring the rewards psychologically closer.

And so, just to be concrete about what I mean, so you’re talking about, like, networking as one example. Sometimes we think about how we can take advantage of a conference or a new situation or we’re going to meet people at work as an opportunity to network and to build relationships that are going to be useful in the future.

But I think when people think about it that way, it’s kind of obvious why you would dread that, it’s like, “I’m going to kind of muddle through these maybe awkward interactions in service of some payoff that’s in the distant future.”

Whereas, if we think about, like, the chance to get to know somebody now and to actually have fun with a few people that we care about, like our peers, I think that can be a more successful strategy because it’s fun in the moment. So, it’s rewarding now but it also is building those bridges to the future.

And what I would say about that also is when we think about research on conversation, that people often underestimate how fun conversations with strangers are going to be. And so, maybe we are dreading things unnecessarily. Like, when you actually start to ask people questions that you’re curious to know the answers to, rather than just kind of the trite small talk stuff, then it actually can be really fun.

We also tend to underestimate how much other people like us. And so, people sometimes avoid having conversations because they’re worried that other people don’t want to have them but then it turns out that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you’re great, Emily, and I like you.

Emily Falk
I think you’re great, too, Pete. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we bring it close to us. And then I want to hear a bit about, when you say “like me” or “not like me,” my buddy, Scott, gave me a tip from somewhere about how it can actually be quite powerful to say, as we’re doing a thing that we want to do more of, it’s like, “Oh, it is so like me to wake up early and exercise.” And I was like, “Is that a real thing, Scott?” Tell us, Emily, is that a real thing?

Emily Falk
Yeah. Well, that is a good strategy in terms of thinking about the ways that the things that we want to do can be congruent with aspects of our personality or identity already. So, in the book, I talk a little bit about an experience that I had talking with my brother who is a real athlete. And when I was growing up, I didn’t really think of myself as specifically an athlete or a runner. I run to de-stress, I exercise for my mental health, but my siblings have always been much more athletic than I am.

And one day my brother came to me, and he said, “You know, if you did some targeted workouts, you could get much faster.” And initially I was like, “Why would I want to do that?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Speed? Who cares?”

Emily Falk
Yeah, right. Like, “Why do I need to run faster? Like, I have this other goal in mind.” And he was like, “Well, if you got faster, then you could hear the gossip on runs with me and Lily,” my sister. So, that was one motivation. But in terms of whether I was capable of it, he said to me, “Academics often make really good runners because they know how to plan and work hard towards a goal. And you already have all of these mental skills that you would need in order to be a really good runner.”

And so, he kind of reframed what I would think of as like a dichotomy previously of like nerd versus jock, like, “I’m really good at math and science, and I really like school.” And, instead, he said, “No, actually those things that make you really good at your job also could make you really good at this other thing.” And so, by connecting that aspect of my identity with this thing that he wanted me to do, he opened up that possibility.

And so, it’s not like, all of a sudden, I’m running marathons as quickly as he is but sometimes, I’ll add a few sprints to the end of my run now. And then there’s this kind of feed-forward cycle, where when we do do a thing that’s compatible with the longer-term goal, then that can become more a part of our identity. So, like, “I am a person who could run faster,” right? And so, then once I have that in mind, it makes it more motivating to do it in the future.

And underneath that, when we think about what’s happening in people’s brains, what we see is that self-relevance and value are really deeply intertwined. Like, there’s been research that Rob Chavez and Dylan Wagner did, where they showed that the same patterns of brain activity that can distinguish between whether somebody rates, say, a photo of a puppy as good or bad, positive or negative, that value calculation, can also distinguish whether somebody, that same person, will say that a given adjective, like boring or intelligent or messy, describes them.

And so, what that means is that, since the brain is kind of conflating self and value in these ways, that we tend to prioritize choices that immediately kind of feel like me and that sometimes we cut off or take off the table of possibilities for things in all different aspects of our life because they don’t necessarily immediately resonate as something that someone like me would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about Bob Cialdini’s work with, who’s on the show and he’s amazing, Pre-Suasion, where he asked folks, I think the study was they asked folks to check out a new energy drink or a new food or beverage of some sort. And most people are not interested, like, “Hey, I’m just trying to shop, like go away.”

But if he prefaced it with, “Would you consider yourself an adventurous person?” and most people are like, “Well, adventurous is good. And I guess kind of, yeah.” It’s like, well, that was the pre-question. And then he asked, “Well, would you like to then try this new product?” The response rates went up because I think, in so doing, he made kind of a bridge in terms of, “Oh, yeah, trying this new product is congruent with who I am. I am an adventurous person and, therefore, I try new foods and beverages. Why not?”

Emily Falk
And that’s a great example of sort of that second part of value calculation, where if you want to change the way that you’re responding to something, or the way somebody else is responding to something, that the context matters so much, right?

And so, in general, maybe you’re moving through a supermarket and you’re thinking about one set of factors, like, “Am I thirsty? Like, have I already had a cup of coffee today?” whatever, right? But, by focusing on this aspect of your identity, like, “Oh, actually, I’m an adventurous person,” that is shifting the spotlight onto a different part of, like, the choice space, right? And so, it’s making it easier for you to say yes to that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, you also had some research showing that our brain activity in the value system predicts whether or not we’re going to do some stuff better than whether we, ourselves, say we’re going to do the thing, whether it’s about using sunscreen or reducing smoking or exercising more. Can you speak a bit more on this?

Emily Falk
Sure. And I would say that those sources of information complement each other. So, it’s not necessarily that the brain is better, but that sometimes it gives different information than when we ask people about things like their intentions to change their behavior or their confidence in their ability to do it or their attitudes, like about the behavior in question.

And so, just like you said, we found that when you look at what happens in people’s brains, as they’re being exposed to these messages about all different kinds of behaviors, it can help predict not only whether people are going to change their behavior, but also what kinds of messages are going to be effective in shifting people’s preferences or other kinds of things that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, under the hood, is it that we can observe, I’m talking about, brain waves or activation energy? What is the thing we’re seeing? And what does it mean in terms of “activity” in the value system?

Emily Falk
There are a lot of different neuroimaging techniques that scientists use to measure brain activity. Most of the studies in what we value focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, which uses changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated blood as a proxy for brain activity. So, the way that MRI, magnetic resonance imaging technology works is that there’s a big magnet and a changing magnetic field, and all of your blood has hemoglobin, like little tiny bits of iron that are susceptible to that magnetic field.

And so, what we can do is we can follow the change in concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood that are going to fuel your brain cells. All of the cells in your body need oxygen and glucose in order to function. And so, that’s why when certain parts of your brain are firing a lot, then they’re consuming more of that energy, and so the blood flow changes in order to supply that.

And so, the fMRI tracks, over the course of seconds, how much is the blood oxygen level dependent signal shifting. And so, when we say that the activation within the value system is changing, what we mean is that certain neurons in your brain are firing in a way that is then changing how the blood is flowing and supplying them with energy, and that we can pick up on that proxy for brain activity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Because I’ve read that a lot, I was like, “Oh, FMRI studies show activation,” I was like, “How exactly does that even work?” So now we know. Thank you. That’s fun.

So, then, I guess I’m curious, it sounds like, as I’m imagining a person who’s hearing about a message about exercising more, and who ends up doing it, and then someone who doesn’t, the difference is that, in their brain, the parts associated with the value system are kind of they’re working it, they’re in it, they’re fired up, they’re doing the thing. And then someone else is, I guess, less so into it.

So, I’m curious, could you maybe venture to speculate, what are the kinds of things happening inside someone’s mind? What does it sound like when their value system activity is revved up versus what is it not? What is maybe a snippet of example illustrative internal dialogue sound like?

Emily Falk
Great. So, we started to talk a little bit before about some of the things that might make people more open to changing. So, one of them is feeling like there’s a more immediate reward.

In studies that we’ve run, looking at people who were relatively sedentary, and we’re trying to coach them to be more physically active, we may give them messages about how or why they would do that.

So, stuff like, “People who are at your level of physical inactivity are at increased risk for heart disease,” or, “The best parking spots are the ones that are farthest away. So, park at the edge of the parking lot and get some extra steps as you’re walking into your office.” And for a lot of us, when we get this kind of coaching that suggests that stuff we were doing in the past might not be optimal, one of the reactions that it triggers is defensiveness.

And that goes back to the idea that we conflate self and value, so stuff that I did in the past, we tend to be biased to think like, “Well, that was me, and so, ideally, that was a good decision.” And so, messages or coaching or feedback that suggests that what we were doing in the past isn’t optimal can be threatening to that sense of self.

And so, people, their internal dialogue might be something like, “Yeah. Well, okay, some people who are sedentary are at increased risk of heart disease. But I eat a pretty good diet and I try to keep my salt down, so it’s probably not that big of a deal for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, this is what low-value system activity kind of sounds like.

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, if it’s like coming up with reasons why this doesn’t really apply to me, or that this information, or advice isn’t particularly valuable, then we’d expect to see less activation within the value system. And so, in the study that I’m describing here, one of the ways that we tried to help people be more open to that information was a process called values affirmation.

Where before they got any of the coaching, half of the people are randomized to get these values affirmations where they choose a value that’s really important to them. And then we have them think about scenarios where that value is going to come into play. So, like, what’s a value that’s really important to you, Pete? Friends and family, creativity, spirituality?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say learning.

Emily Falk
Okay, great. So, learning is a value that’s really important to you. So, we’d have you maybe vividly imagine situations where, like, what’s a time that you have learned something that was really amazing that helped you do your job better? Or what’s a time when you have learned something that changed the way that you interacted with other people? Or what’s a time in the future where learning is going to open new doors for you?

And so, we might have you reflect on these different kinds of scenarios and imagine them vividly. And that would be the values affirmation. People in the control group would do a similar kind of thing but we would give them a value that’s not important to them.

And what we saw was that then going into those coaching messages, which are literally the same for everybody in the study. The only thing that’s different is whether they’ve gotten to reflect on that value that means a lot to them or not beforehand.

The people who got to do that work of kind of zooming out and thinking about what actually matters to them, I think, could then see that, like, whether or not they parked in the farthest parking spot from their work, or actually we’re moving around as much as the federal guidelines recommend, that that doesn’t actually determine whether you’re a good person or not. It’s not the thing that determines your self-worth.

And so, that’s one possibility for why we would see more activation in the value system, more activation in the self-relevant system when they’re exposed to those coaching messages after getting that chance to zoom out.

And then the last piece of the puzzle was the more people showed increased activation in the value or self-relevant system as they were getting those coaching messages, the more they went on to actually change their behavior.

So, for the month afterwards, we sent them text message reminders that were kind of little boosters and measured their physical activity with accelerometers, like imagine a Fitbit that doesn’t give you feedback.

And so, it seemed like the intervention that we did, made people’s brains more receptive to the information. And then the more they were receptive to that information or the more they showed activation in these brain regions, the more likely they were to change their behavior afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool and actionable. Thank you. I guess I’m curious, if there’s many, many different values, it seems like some of them would seem to map better to exercise more than others. But just doing it, value affirming any one of your values, makes you more down to exercise kind of whatever the value, regardless of the value?

Emily Falk
Well, there’s two different pathways that I think you’re pointing at. So, one is, in values affirmation, in that literature, mostly people focus on values that don’t have to do with the behavior that you’re trying to change, because the idea is you’re trying to get somebody to kind of zoom out and reduce the threat of the thing that you’re asking them to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so defensive reduction happens regardless.

Emily Falk
Exactly. So, you’re trying to reduce their defensiveness by anchoring them in something that kind of is bigger than themself, right, something that connects them to other people, ideally, like something that is self-transcendent.

And so, when they reflect on those kinds of things, then the logic is that it can help them see that, like, like I said, whether you exercise or not this week doesn’t make you a good or bad person, right? And that there could be useful information in this coaching, even if it means changing something about what you were doing in the past. So, that’s like one pathway.

You’re also kind of highlighting, though, with your question that, like when my brother tried to connect my identity as an academic with the possibility of running, that’s sort of a different way of tapping into a connection between something that we value and our identity, and tailoring a message in that way can also make it more effective. So, there are tons of studies that have shown that when messages are tailored to people’s values and to their lifestyle and to their demographics that it can make the messages more effective.

So, for example, in a study that Hannah Chua led at Michigan, looking at smokers, when smokers received messages that were tailored to their personal motivations, let’s say, it’s like they’re motivated to quit because smoking is really expensive, or they’re motivated to quit because they have kids and they’re really worried about the effects of secondhand smoke, that those messages both increased activation within parts of medial prefrontal cortex, which is core to several of the kinds of key systems that we’ve been talking about. And that those tailored messages are more effective in changing their behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now that you got me thinking about those tailored messages, do we tend to get better results stoking our fears or by amplifying a beautiful positive vision, or the combo?

Emily Falk
There have been meta-analyses that show that fear appeals can work. So, you can get people to change their behavior by highlighting the negative consequences of things that’ll come.

There’s also a set of research on what’s called mental contrasting with implementation intentions, where the idea is that it’s not enough to just fantasize about a future that you want, like the good things that would come. You have to identify what the gap is between where you are now and that future state. So, that’s the mental contrasting part.

And then once you’ve figured out, like, what are the things that are potentially in the way of you moving from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future, then you can use the second part of that MCII, mental contrasting with implementation intentions, the implementation intentions part, which is those if-then plans where you say, “If I’m in this situation, then I will do this.”

So, for example, this has been applied to voting, like making detailed plan of like, “When it’s Tuesday morning and if it’s raining out, I’m going to get my partner, get an umbrella, and go to our polling station anyway,” or, “I’m going to get a ride from my mom,” or whatever the thing is that’s going to help you overcome the obstacle that you’re perceiving.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Emily, in our final minutes here, can you share what are your top-top do’s and don’ts you recommend if we are looking to make a change? Do more of something or do less of something, we want to, if we could, as close as possible, flip the switch, wave the magic wand so that we’re now behaving the way we’d like to be?

Emily Falk

One is, I would say, do think about how you can make the process joyful now. Like, don’t just save all the rewards for later. So, if you’re trying to get more exercise and you really hate running, like, go dancing or choose something, which is gonna be…

Pete Mockaitis
Pickleball.

Emily Falk
Yeah, Pickleball. If you love pickleball, play pickleball, right? Do the thing that’s going to be fun now and also compatible with the longer-term goal. Or if you’re trying to eat healthier, like, choose things that are both tasty for you now and healthy. Like, surely there are things that are at the intersection of those rather than just, like, stomaching something that you are not going to want to do over and over again for the long term. So that’s one thing.

Another thing I would say is thinking about that defensiveness and making sure that when you go into a conversation or situation where you’re going to get feedback, that you don’t throw out helpful advice because it’s potentially threatening to your sense of self, right?

So, knowing that our brain’s default is to kind of conflate self and value, we can be aware and on guard for that kind of feeling. And instead, think about, like, “What are the things that we can learn from the feedback that we’re getting? What are the pieces of feedback that can help us grow and change and do what we want to do?”

And then the last thing that I would say, that we haven’t delved as deeply into, is that social rewards are incredibly powerful. And so, for all of these things, as we’re trying to think about, “How can we make something more rewarding now that the long-term payoff is far in the future?” We can do it with other people who also care about it.

In my lab, we often work together on tasks that are the least fun tasks, work on that thing you don’t want to work on. An acronym for that, that my grad school pal, Elliot Berkman, coined is wotty’d wot wot. And when you do it with other people who also value the goal and the work, then it’s more fun.

And, likewise, you can think about, like in this moment, looking around and trying to think about like, “What can I do to improve the situation that we’re all in?” like, that can feel vague and distant and in the future. But if you think about like, the most important thing is just to do something, right? Like, think about what you want to change, and then do it visibly with other people. That can also be a really powerful reward. So, those are a few for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you, Emily. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Emily Falk
Yeah. One of my favorites right now is the study that I talked about where they showed that the same brain patterns that can classify whether something is good or bad can also classify whether something is me or not me.

Because I find, personally, that that’s so useful to keep in mind, that those things are getting intertwined in our brains in ways that we may not necessarily be paying attention to, and then can have all of these knock-on effects in terms of making us feel defensive or on the other side, restricting the possibilities that we see for ourselves and others.

And that same research team has gone on to do a bunch of other interesting research about, like, how we represent our sense of self and relate to other people. So, that’s one of my favorites right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Emily Falk
One that I used as a foundation for the last chapter in the book is Maria Ressa’s autobiography, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. And one of the things that I really love about that story is that it highlights how the person that we become, and when we do big hard things like she did, that it’s really a series of these tiny little decisions.

And so, as we think about the choices that we’re making on a day-to-day basis, Maria Ressa went on to get a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in journalism, making all of these extraordinary and brave choices. But when she describes the process of growing up and the things that shaped her values and the things that shaped her daily decisions, it feels accessible and ordinary. So, that’s a book that I really loved recently.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Emily Falk

One of my favorite tools in the lab is what we call fast friends. And fast friends is a protocol where you can randomly assign people to have a friend in the lab. And sometimes you want that because the real history of people’s friendships comes with all kinds of baggage and different people have different kinds of friendships and so on.

So, psychologists develop this tool called fast friends, which starts out with surface-level questions, like, “If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be?” or, “What constitutes a perfect day for you?” And then the questions get increasingly intimate, building to things like, “If you were to die tonight, what’s one thing that you haven’t told anyone? And why not?” And asking your partner for advice.

And so, over the course of like an hour, you actually become friends with someone. So, that’s a favorite psychological tool for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this the same questions to fall in love with anyone?

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, the media has often characterized this as, like, 36 questions to fall in love. And, yeah, great, use it for that. But also, I’ve done it with my grandmother. I’ve done it with my father-in-law. I’ve done it with my kids.

I’ve done it with, recently, I went to an experience potluck, which was super fun. People brought different experiences with them and then offered them to each other, kind of like a food potluck, and I brought fast friends, and I got to do it with a stranger who’s now my friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Emily Falk
Making time to actually focus on quality time with my partner. So, a habit involves something where there’s a cue and then a thing that you repeat and then kind of a reward that you get at the end. And so, after our kids fall asleep, that’s the cue, and then there’s like half an hour to an hour where we hang out in the kitchen and try to actually focus on the present.

And the reward is getting to feel close to a person that I care about. I don’t always do that perfectly. So, I don’t know if it fully counts as a habit because the definition of a habit involves essentially doing it fully on automatic pilot, and that’s kind of the opposite.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you’re being quoted back to yourself often?

Emily Falk
That we’re not ever really making decisions alone.

So, we imagine that we’re making decisions independent of lots of other factors, but the data really bear out the idea that our brains value systems are deeply influenced by what other people are thinking and feeling and doing in so many different areas, ranging from what foods we like to who we think is attractive, to the art that we hang on our walls, to whether we vote.

And so, that idea that we’re not deciding alone and that it’s not just that we’re performing some kind of conformity, but that our value calculations are actually deeply shaped by the people around us. And so, I think that really kind of, like, complicates the idea of authenticity, right? That, like, often, sometimes people think that, when they’re conforming or when they’re following along with other people’s preferences, that that’s somehow inauthentic.

And actually, I think, the people that we choose to spend our time with are really deeply shaping who we are in so many important ways. And so, we want to be aware of that, both in terms of who we’re choosing as role models, and who we’re choosing to spend our time and energy with, and how we’re showing up for our kids and our friends and our colleagues because we’re shaping them also, right? So, the kind of future and the way that the world is going to unfold is starting also in our own minds.

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

Emily Falk
Well, my lab’s website, FalkLab.org, has all of our research papers for free. I also share research, both from our team and others on LinkedIn. And then our lab has a bunch of other social media channels that you can find on the website.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Emily Falk
Just like we know that other people influence us, we’re influencing other people. And so, when we look around and we see big challenges or hard things that we want to have be different in the world, then it’s not that we have to have a perfect plan, but that if we choose something and start to move towards it in a way that prioritizes doing it in a way that feels fun and joyful, and then we can bring other people in and show them what we’re doing, that I do think we have the capacity in aggregate to make big changes.

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, thank you.

Emily Falk
Thank you, Pete. So great to talk to you.

1058: Getting Creative Breakthroughs and Turning Them Into Action with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle

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Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle shares the tools and strategies for seeing the creative process through from start to finish.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to feel more confident taking risks
  2. How to make creative blocks work in your favor
  3. How to get the most out of AI for work

About Zorana

With more than 25 years as a scientist studying creativity, Zorana brings insights into the nature of the creative process, from the first decision to engage with new ideas to its culmination in creative performances and products. She is a scientist at Yale University, author, and speaker. Zorana’s work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post.

Resources Mentioned

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Zorana Ivcevic Pringle Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Zorana, welcome!

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom and talk creativity. And I think it’s important that we address, right at the beginning, if professionals listening, say, “You know, I’m not really in one of those really creative roles,” what do you say to that? How does learning about creativity help every professional become more awesome at their jobs?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It helps a lot because creativity is not just for creative industries. It’s not just for R&D. It’s not just for artists. Creativity is really for everybody. And one of the favorite examples of creativity that I encountered in my consulting work was actually a supervisor in the food services unit of a large hospital. Now do you expect it there?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, that doesn’t sound like we’re creating TV or plays or anything in such a role.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
No, but he was really influential because he has created a completely new workflow for his workers, and that really improved their health outcomes. They were not as stressed and frustrated in their work. It was easier.

They did not have aches and pains from reaching for things, but also it made it safer for the patients they are serving because it was easier for the workers to do the job and food is part of treatment. Everybody was winning in the process of something that this particular supervisor created.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nifty. So, the creation was kind of rearranging where the stuff was in the process flow by which we move the food and the ingredients and the serving items?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, it was completely rearranging where things were, where the individual orders for tickets of what’s supposed to come on a tray were, and where individual food items were placed.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it feels like this could be a TV episode on HGTV or one of those restaurant turnaround situations. I could visualize how that could be transformational, and then maybe someone is crying toward the end because of the dramatic turnaround that has unfolded with this makeover.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It could be. It could be. It certainly made them more awesome at their job.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, I was just going to ask for an inspiring story, and that’s a cool one. Can we have another?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, I think that, really, whatever you are doing, you can do something creative. I’m a scientist and I oftentimes get the question, “What is your creative outlet?” with an assumption. Well, creative outlet should be something artistic, but my creative outlet is my science and communicating about my science.

We can use creativity in everyday life. I remember a couple of years ago we had one of the really impossible seeming problems of how to arrange our summer travel. Our child was young, there were these constraints from my end, from my husband’s end, and he completely transformed this seemingly impossible puzzle problem into something that was more interesting to deal with, and that we approached in a different way when he said, “Hey, let’s take this as a creative problem.”

What happened with this challenge is that our thinking changed from, “This is an impossible problem. This cannot be assembled into a coherent puzzle,” into, “Well, how do we play with the pieces, move them around so that they end up snapping together?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, emotionally, that sounds a whole lot more fun and uplifting and edifying. But, well, now we’re in suspense, what was the ultimate solution here?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, what happened was that, because of different sets of travel for work for my husband and for myself, I ended up traveling with our son, who was young at the time, to Croatia where I grew up for him to see grandparents, stayed there for a week.

Then my husband came, joined me there, and ended up staying there with the child while I ended up traveling for my own work purposes. So, all was possible to do. And even, in the meantime, my husband and I went on just two of us, a trip together.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic. Well, well done. And I really like what you had to say about science being a creative outlet. I am the kind of dork who will read the full text of many scientific journal articles. And it’s actually fun to peer inside the brains of the researcher. I was just reading one about a human randomized control trial about a yoga intervention.

And so, you can tell they were really racking their brains for “What’s the control here?” Because there’s consequences. Folks could feel disappointed if they’re into yoga, and they say, “Actually, you’re in the control group. You’re not doing any yoga.” And that could skew the results one way.

And so, they were very clever, they said, “Okay, we’re going to teach them about the history of yoga and some of the language and words and context and background, and then tell them that, after the education, they’ll get a chance to do the exercises.” And that seemed to be as satisfactory as they could come up with, and there was some real creativity there.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, certainly, there’s lots of creativity in designing the studies and coming up with questions, and seeing how different pieces fit together and in communicating that in coherent and persuasive ways.

Pete Mockaitis
So, your book is called “The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action.” What’s the big idea here? What is the creativity choice?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
There actually isn’t the creativity choice. That is a title that was a little provocative, but there isn’t one creativity choice.

We start with a single choice, but then we have to make many more, because it is not as if, “Okay, you made one choice, and now you are done.” It is recommitting to the process of choosing creativity, choosing the challenging option, the original option that could produce something of interest and something truly awesome repeatedly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the A choice, or a key choice, from which many subsequent choices flow is just that we are going to try to create something new and different here, as opposed to just kind of continue on going with the flow.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, the first choice is the one, “Okay, you have an idea. Now you are deciding to do something with it.” Oftentimes, people have lots of ideas, but don’t do anything with them, don’t develop them, don’t have performances or products that come out of them. It stays in the realm of imagination and fantasy. You know, you meet over coffee with your best friend, you talk about your ideas, but it stays there.

And we oftentimes ask the wrong question of, “How did you come up with that idea?” Where, really, the more difficult question is, “You had that idea. How did it happen? How did you take something that is just in your mind into something that is in the real world?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Absolutely. It’s funny, I had the idea for Airbnb along with a friend, and then again with another friend, because we were in consulting and/or accounting, and seeing, “Hey, there’s a lot of travel, a lot of empty bedtime in this apartment. Maybe that should really turn into money somehow. This could really be a thing.”

But we proceeded to do nothing about it after we, I think we chatted with a Hyatt executive that we knew, and he said, “Oh, man, that’s a liability nightmare. Random people inside your house and vice versa. There’s going to be crimes. There’s going to be problems. It’s going to seem…” It’s like, “Okay, yeah, you’re probably right.” And then just never did anything with it. But the Airbnb folks have done pretty well for themselves by pursuing it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I had the fabulous idea also. I am very small, so I get cold all the time. I live in New England and I had this idea to create a coat that, would from the outside, look just like a wool fancy fashion coat, and then the inside, have heaters so that you are always warm. Never did anything with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Did somebody else?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Apparently, it seems that it’s starting. So, there are now coats you can buy with heaters. On the outside that don’t look up to my standards, but it’s just a matter of time at this point.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes. Well, so then, you make the argument that creativity is more about decision-making than self-expression. Can you expand on this?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I think it’s about both. So, creativity is about self-expression, in some ways that creativity happens. So, in the arts, there’s lots of self-expression. In the example I shared before with developing a new workflow, it’s not really about self-expression, it’s about solving a problem. And in other domains of creative work, it may be about something different, but throughout, no matter what is the psychological process by which something is done, the constant is this making of choices.

So, at any given point, you are facing a choice whether you will do something that is more commonplace, similar to something you have done before, or something that will be different, but still can work in some important ways, still effective for whatever you are after. And there are many choices along the way.

Like, I’m a scientist, there are choices of what research question you’re going to ask, how you’re going to ask it, what kinds of measures you are going to use in addressing it, in asking the question, how you will set up your studies. Will it be an experiment? Will you go into observing something that happens in the real world outside the laboratory? So, these are all choices that have consequences for what you end up doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I’m curious then, since you and I have both had ideas we have not pursued, what are your pro tips for wise decision-making amongst our ideas in terms of what are the best practices or processes by which we discern whether to go ahead and go after something versus just let it lie?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, it is really hard to get going. It is hard to get going. There are lots of uncertainties in this process. There’s an uncertainty of what psychologists call intellectual risk, a risk whether you can make it happen, whether you have what it takes to develop your idea and to build it. And then there are social reputational risks, “What are other people going to say?”

And in the example that you have mentioned with you invented Airbnb, you actually went to somebody, and that somebody told you all the reasons why it couldn’t be. And so, these are the risks, social risks of embarking on something, and they can stop you in the tracks. Well, what do you do for that not to happen?

Well, maybe you could have talked to more people, and maybe different kinds of people that is not just somebody who is an executive in Hyatt and who has a self-interest in business as usual, but maybe some other kinds of perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Was he torpedo-ing our idea on purpose? I think he’s a pal. I think it came from the heart. But you’re right. Why not say, “Oh, that’s a great point, liability. Let’s also talk to some people in insurance to hear if that’s the kind of thing that there is insurable against and how that even works”? Because it’s not like a home or auto or life policy that I know about. It’s a whole other thing. And then I could get educated there.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, exactly. And there are actually things like Airbnb in different parts of the world, existed in some shape or form before. So, you could learn from experiences there. I grew up in Croatia and there is a great tradition of renting rooms in houses, in private houses. Didn’t exist here in the US, but maybe you can learn from other perspectives and from other ways of doing it. So, that is one big barrier.

Another big barrier is we don’t feel confident. We don’t feel that we can picture 10 steps ahead, and this feeling of, “I don’t have the self-confidence for it,” can be in our way. But when we say that we are making this assumption, we are making an assumption that you have to be 100% confident to try anything out.

Well, if we take an analogy with fuel, confidence being fuel of getting you started and getting you going, well, you only need enough fuel to go for a few miles until that first little task along the way, and then you refuel. You refuel by realizing, “Well, I was able to do something. Therefore, chances are I can do another task along the way,” breaking one big thing into smaller chunks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, little steps, one bit at a time, gathering input from other sources, seeing what’s next, not getting overwhelmed. I like that. I also want to hear your perspective on putting more of an emphasis on problem finding as opposed to problem solving. How do you think about that?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
If you want to say it in, like, one sentence, problem finding is a way to problem solving. When psychologists called this process that happens in creative work problem finding, they made our communication a little bit more difficult because it suggests that, “Okay, you find a problem and then you solve it kind of step by step.” They didn’t really mean that.

They mean problem finding is a process of exploration. You identify a big umbrella problem and then you are approaching with curiosity and experimentation what it could be under that big umbrella thing. And you are asking the question in different ways in the process. You are arranging it and rearranging it in different ways.

If you are designing a website, you try it one way and then you move different things around, so you can see it visually as moving pieces. Sometimes it’s physically moving pieces in different places. Like, in studies, we sometimes arrange it so that people can physically manipulate objects versus they cannot physically manipulate objects in the process of design. And if you cannot physically manipulate objects, well, you are going to be less successful in it in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Could you give us some more examples of that in practice?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, to give you an example from a research study, one of my favorite research studies of all time, actually, it was a study of art students. And researchers invited them into the lab and said, “Your task is to make a drawing of a still life.” And they give them lots of different objects. There were more than 30 objects on a big table. They could choose whatever they wanted.

And the researchers observed what these art students were doing. And they found out that those who were judged to have produced the most original, most creative drawings in the end, did not just take a bunch of objects, arrange them, and then spend a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of detail into the minutiae of creating the drawing itself.

Rather, what they did is they played with the objects. They would physically lift them up, feel them, weigh them, compare them. If they had mechanical parts, play the mechanical parts. Think of why are they playing the mechanical parts? They’re never going to be seen on the 2D drawing, right? You’re not going to see what this toy is capable of doing or how it moves.

But if you did that anyway, it ended up being more creative in the end. You’re getting more feel of what the objects are, what their potential is, what it could suggest. And if you didn’t try just one possible arrangement of objects, but try different ones, sketched a little bit, came back and rearranged them, your end product is more creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really resonates. And I’m thinking of how that can work even in a more abstract sense. Like, if I’m working on a thing, I’m thinking about a thing over time, and then I’m just exposed to more stimuli, like just things, environments, ideas, perspectives, it’s like they just collide.

And it’s really, really handy and beautiful in terms of, like, what can someone use to lean on when their ankle is sprained. It’s like, “Well, lots of things. It doesn’t have to be a cane per se. It could be a baseball bat. It could be a wood, for example. It can be a broom.”  And so, it’s interesting, and these ideas did not even occur to me until I actually had that problem in mind, and then bumped into those objects in the environment.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, that’s a great example in everyday life. There are examples in the world of work. There was a study that analyzed 1.2 million companies in the United States, big database with lots of information about companies. And they wanted to see, out of those 1.2 million, what will happen to startups, depending on what point they scale up and whether they engage in this problem finding, this construction and reconstruction of what you’re actually doing.

And they found that those companies, those startups that scale after two years, as opposed to in the first six months or 12 months after being founded, are 20 to 40% more likely to survive. That is a huge difference. That is a huge effect. And the reason for that was that they engaged in lots of testing, testing of their ideas, seeing how it worked, going back to the drawing board, and not scaling until they figured it out a little bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. I’d also love to hear a little bit about the emotional groove, if you will. Because sometimes I feel like I’m in a spot where ideas are just flying left and right, quick, quick. And other times, I am just bone dry, got nothing. What’s behind this? And is there a way we can kick ourselves into high creative gear?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, there is. What you are describing there is the fact that how we are feeling influences how we are thinking. And the good news is that we can use those connections to our advantage. So, what you noticed is that there are times when ideas are flowing and flowing and flowing, and you are feeling positive and you’re feeling energized. And when you are in these kinds of moods, you can very quickly come up with ideas.

But at other times, ideas are not coming. and everything seems stupid, right? Well, it turns out that those kinds of feelings are also useful. They’re just not useful for coming up with ideas. They are very useful for critical thinking. And if we take creative work as not just coming up with ideas, but also developing them, making them into best products we possibly can, then you see how this could be helpful.

So, you are feeling happy, energized and upbeat. You come up with lots of ideas. At a different time, you are feeling down, you are feeling gloomy, you are feeling maybe grumpy. You can very much evaluate, successfully evaluate those ideas, find all the problems potentially with them, and then problem solve around those problems. We need both.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Yes, so the grumpiness is just like, “Oh, I’m out of luck. There’s no value in this grumpiness,” but, oh, no, perfection. Critique away now. You’re in the groove for that.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. And you can use it to your advantage. So, for instance, I am not a morning person. People know to stay away from me in the morning. And so, I use that to my advantage. In the morning, I can really tear apart things that I have written before. I can find all the things that are not clear, all the things that are flat, that fall not quite just right. And I can mark them. I can solve problems around them. And that is something that you need in creative work too.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s a great perspective there, is match the work you’re doing to the mood you find yourself in. That’s really cool. And I’m also curious, is it possible to make the shift? I am in the grumpy mode, but what is needed from me in the moment is creative, generative mode. Do you have any tips or tricks to manage our own emotional states to find that groove?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, the good news is that we have more agency in relation to our moods than we seem to, and then we oftentimes believe we do. And a very powerful tool there is how we think about the situation. We assume that situation, emotional reaction, one comes immediately after another, but there’s something that happens in between, actually.

And what happens in between is how we think about the situation. And if we think about the situation as a threat, it’s something that is one way or another dangerous to us or can put us at a risk, then we are going to have less control over it, and it will be experienced in a more negative and unpleasant way.

But if we shift how we look at the situation, and say, ‘Hey, right now, I’m about to give an important presentation, but I’m feeling nervous. If I’m really being truly honest, I am feeling anxious right now.” But if you say to yourself, “Hey, yes, you are feeling anxious. However, you are feeling anxious not because you are not prepared, not because you are not ready for this, but because you truly and deeply care about it. This is important to you,” you are going to do better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, the interpretation, the meaning that the frame we’re putting on, it makes a world of difference. I suppose at times, it’s perhaps easier said than done to choose an empowering, useful, effective frame. Any pro tips in the heat of battle?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes, we just cannot make that happen. And at those times, an emotion can already happen, we are already experiencing something unpleasant and something that seems to be getting in our way. Sometimes the only thing we can do with those instances is to choose how we react. So, what our physical reaction is going to be like. That can be influencing the activation in our body by taking a deep breath, by taking just one moment before we react.

I give a lot of talks, and sometimes you get unexpected questions. And when you get unexpected questions, you can start to feel your body getting jittery. So, you take a step back and take a breath. Taking a breath can make you seem thoughtful to the audience, but it’s also going to calm your physical reactions. And as your physical reactions calm, your emotional ones do too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. I also want to hear your take on creativity and AI. What are the best ways to engage with it and the worst ways to engage with it as we do creative stuff?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, the worst ways. The worst ways are the easiest.  The worst ways is you ask ChatGPT or whatever is your AI of choice, a question. You copy paste that answer and you are done.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
And you are laughing at it, but you are laughing at it because you wouldn’t do it like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those who have, I’m thinking about attorneys and others have faced severe consequences of the negative variety.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, it is a chuckle for us here in the conversation because we wouldn’t do it, but people are doing it. So that’s clearly the worst-case scenario. What are better ways of using AI is a little bit of a sparring partner. I oftentimes use AI when I’m writing, and I don’t necessarily use anything it produces. It is more of asking a question, “How could this chunk of text be said in a different way, be expressed in a different way?”

And I have heard stories from writers who are using it in a similar way, never actually taking the output itself, but having it as inspiration, as a jumping point, as, “Oh, I didn’t think of it to put it that way.” And it could be in opposition to it, or in agreement with it as a different perspective.

So, engaging with AI as a tool, where it could be a conversation partner that has a perspective of having swallowed the internet, can be something to make you think, make you think in a different way, make you arrange what you’re doing in a different way.

You are the one asking the question. Always remember you are the one asking the question, which brings us back to what we talked about earlier of creativity and the importance of problem finding in creativity. You are always the one doing the problem finding when working with the AI agent. It can give you answers, but you are the one asking the questions, asking the questions in a different way, formulating it and reformulating it to find different angles.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think that often what AI will produce is the opposite of novel and innovative and kind of the most obvious standard issue, “This is what the internet says, response on a matter,” which can be helpful.

It’s like, “Oops, I overlooked that.” And also, it gives you, what I find is my experience is like a lot of great reminders, like, “Oh, of course, I should have thought of that. And because you mentioned that, this makes me think of this other thing.” So, a sparring partner is a great way to put it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, “It makes me think of this other thing,” is really interesting. Sometimes we do that with other humans. It’s just, this AI is readily available at any time, and it has the knowledge of the whole internet so it can be useful in that way, even if it is to point to you the usual commonplace ways of looking at something. And the usual and commonplace is not creative, but usual and commonplace can be a starting point from which you make something creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Zorana, tell me, any other top things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
The one that I want to mention is, “How do we make creativity reliable? How do we ensure that we are not a one-hit wonder?” and in the context of your job, that you are sustainably and reliably and sometimes on demand, doing creative things.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, the secret is it’s not secret. The key is in the social nature of creativity. When we are creating, when we are doing something, even if the act itself is solitary, like writing a book, I was the only one writing it, but there are social influences on it. There are the voices of colleagues who you interacted with and from whom you have learned. There are those lessons from having read, in my case, journal articles and books that influenced your thinking that became part of what you write and what you do.

And then there are those social influences that create an infrastructure or an ecosystem of the job. And when that climate, that job climate is one that is favorable to creativity and innovation, then it can really flourish and not just once, but sustainably.

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

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It is by Frank Barron, a creativity researcher from the 1950s and ‘60s, and he said that creative individuals are occasionally crazier, yet adamantly saner than the average person.

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

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
One study that I find very intriguing is a study where people have looked at the influence of instructions on creative thinking. So, there was a standard test of creative thinking, but one group of people was given the standard instruction, “Come up with as many ideas as you can.” And the other group, that same instruction plus three words, “Please be creative.” And those three words made a bunch of difference. When we ask people to be creative, they rise to the occasion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
My favorite book on creativity, since we are at the topic, is a very old one. I like to uncover things that are sometimes forgotten. And it is from 1975 by Rollo May, and the title is “The Courage to Create.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Make it a habit to learn what works for you. So, to learn that, yes, all the advice out there says, “Write first thing in the morning,” but if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it that way. Create your own way that works for you, depending on who you are as a person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget, a sound bite, a Zorana original that you’re really known for?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Creativity is social even when it doesn’t feel like it is.

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

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, my website is Zorana Ivcevic Pringle with dashes in between, and that is the best way to find how to reach me, or all the information on what I’m doing and how to stay in touch.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome on their job?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Look around you. If you have a point of frustration, it is telling you that something could be done differently, and that it is ripe for problem solving.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Zorana, thank you.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you.

1049: What Dyslexia Can Teach Us About Creativity, Problem Solving, and Critical Thinking with Kate Griggs

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Kate Griggs discusses the untapped power of dyslexic thinking—and how professionals everywhere can harness it.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why dyslexia matters for everyone in the workplace
  2. The surprising indicators that you may be dyslexic
  3. How anyone can develop dyslexic thinking skills 

About Kate

Kate is a proud dyslexic thinker and has dedicated her career to shifting the narrative on Dyslexia and educating people on its strengths. She has written two best-selling books on Dyslexic Thinking, published by Penguin: This Is Dyslexia and Xtraordinary People, and has shared her wealth of expertise in Made By Dyslexia’s free training courses for schools and workplaces on Microsoft Learn and LinkedIn Learning. She is one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices and is also the host of the chart-topping podcast, Lessons In Dyslexic Thinking, and the presenter on the University of Dyslexic Thinking DyslexicU courses.

Her innovative approach to social change and advocacy has garnered global recognition, with major publications including BBC Morning Live, This Morning, and Harvard Business Review covering her efforts. Her powerful TED talk has also inspired countless individuals and organizations to rethink how they perceive Dyslexia.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Kate Griggs Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Kate, welcome!

Kate Griggs
Thank you. It’s great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat. We’re over a thousand episodes into this series, and not once have we had an episode on dyslexia. So, I would love to start by putting you on the spot and tell us, why should the average, you know, knowledge working professional give thought and attention to understanding dyslexia and its impact at work?

Kate Griggs
Well, for several reasons. Firstly, dyslexia is one in five.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Kate Griggs
So, it’s 20% of us in every workplace will be dyslexic. A lot of dyslexics won’t know that they’re dyslexic, though, because it isn’t routinely picked up at school. So, a lot of people discover through their kids, where maybe their children are having struggles at school. But the reason it’s really important that you should know about it is that dyslexic people have exactly the skills that our AI world of work needs.

So, we index very highly on all of the soft skills or power skills that we’re now beginning to call them. So, things like creative thinking, complex problem solving, interpersonal skills, innovation, all of those things are things that dyslexics are naturally really, really good at. So, it’s important that you recognize those skills and lean into them as a dyslexic person.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s an intriguing setup right there. Thank you. So, if one in five of us have it, and yet very rarely is it diagnosed. How do we know? Are we one of those five? How do we determine that?

Kate Griggs
When you know about dyslexia, it’s actually quite easy to spot. Dyslexic people have what I describe as a spiky profile. So, with a normal cognitive profile, people are sort of in one either average or above average or below average across most things. Dyslexic people have things that they are exceptionally good at.

So, they’ll be in the top percentiles, but they’ll also have things that they’re exceptionally bad at, which is in the bottom percentiles. And those things are the things that we tend to measure intelligence with. Certainly, exams and tests at school and a lot of psychometric tests are based on our kryptonite, if you like. Whereas, the superpowers that dyslexics have are these soft skills of creativity.

So, you can spot a dyslexic person if they appear to be really, really brilliant at something, but then their work, their written work just doesn’t give you the same indication. So, that’s a really easy way of spotting a dyslexic colleague. But also, if you’re a dyslexic person, it’s just that you find something is really, really easy and other things really tricky.

And I think the other thing that almost every dyslexic will struggle with throughout life is bad spelling. So, I think if you spot a spelling mistake, think dyslexia.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, you mentioned bad spelling, and I think that’s what most of us, when we hear the word dyslexia, that’s what we’re thinking, it’s like, “Oh, it’s kind of hard to read because letters are mixed up and it’s tricky.” But are there, in fact, sort of multiple varieties or categories or facets associated with dyslexia?

Kate Griggs
There are. The sort of spiky profile that I mentioned, you know, not all dyslexics are going to be bad at the range of things that dyslexics can be bad at, or good at them either. So, I’ll give you an example. My entire family are dyslexic. So, my dad was, my brother is, both my kids are, my husband is as well, and I think we all have a sort of different pattern of strengths and challenges.

So, my husband’s actually really good at spelling because he has a really strong visual memory, so he can visualize a word to spell it. So, he might struggle with some sort of irregular words, but mainly he’s a very good speller. Some dyslexic people can be actually very, very good at math. I am in the camp that is not so great at math. So, your eyes seem to be really good or really bad.

It is a real pattern of strengths and challenges that that’s why it’s important to really understand what you’re good at and do much more of it and delegate what you’re not so good at.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I suppose, or maybe this is my big reveal that I’m dyslexic.

Kate Griggs
That happens a lot, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, I guess I sort of assumed that all humans had areas in which they had great strengths and yet also great deficiency. So, for example, what comes to mind for me is I can just generate ideas by the boat full. So many ideas it’s overwhelming and I can’t even possibly execute all of them, and so that’s kind of cool and handy.

But on the flip side, I will have a really hard time if someone gives me directions to sort of just, “Oh, go back the way you came.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s not going to work for me.” In the world before ubiquitous Google Maps on smartphones, I got lost kind of a lot.

And I’ll also get lost if I’m even playing a video game like Fortnite, So, does that sound like a dyslexic profile or something else?

Kate Griggs
It does sound like a dyslexic profile. Like I say, it’s a real pattern of strengths, and there’s just irregular things, things that most people are really good at that you really struggle with. And I think it definitely does sound like a dyslexic profile but, I mean, you’d have to tell me more about what you’re bad at, probably, for me to be able to tell you. I’m sure you don’t want to share all that.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, drawing three-dimensional shapes, I am bad at that. I would say processing mail and email, more so just because I find it kind of boring and I have so many exciting ideas I want to run after. Yeah, those are some things I’m bad at.

Kate Griggs
Yeah, if you think of dyslexia is really just a different way of processing information, and the regular way that we process information in work and in education is very much a sort of written format with lots of information coming at you as words, and dyslexic people are not brilliant at that. They have other strengths.

But that’s not to say, if you’re picked up and given good reading instruction, every dyslexic person can read so it isn’t just not being able to read either. But there’s loads and loads of information on our website, or we’ve done some training with LinkedIn that’s free on LinkedIn Learning because we work with LinkedIn to make dyslexic thinking a skill. So, it’s a searchable skill now on LinkedIn. So, there’s lots you can learn and we have our own podcast called Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking. So, if you start learning about it more, you’ll soon understand whether you are or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there, what’s perhaps the quickest, easiest way of assessing?

Kate Griggs
We’ve actually got a checklist test on our website, so check that out, because that’s a really good indication as well. I mean, it is just a checklist test, but if it says you’re likely to be dyslexic, then you almost certainly are.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s talk about this dyslexic thinking skills in a moment. First, I’d love to dig into, perhaps, the dangers or the dark side, because, generally, I think there’s vast levels of unawareness to your message and what you’re putting out here, that dyslexia is quite common. And what are the dangers of folks not knowing this and making assessments or judgments or decisions in that darkness?

Kate Griggs
I think the not knowing is a really big cause of low self-esteem. It’s a big cause of people not actually pushing themselves to the jobs and the opportunities that they really should be pushing themselves towards. So, there’s even more of a dark side that we tend not to talk about as a charity because we’re very sort of pro the positivity.

But if you look at children that are excluded from schools, or even straight through into the prisons, very over-representatively high number of people are dyslexic because, particularly, if you are not taught to read and write properly, your trajectory in life is pretty bad. And for a lot of people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, that can be a really big issue.

So, there are some real societal issues of not identifying dyslexic or dyslexic people. But I think the main thing from a personal level is that you can go through life thinking you’re not very good at all sorts of things, and also not realizing the things that you are good at, you’re actually really good at them, and they are dyslexic thinking skills and that’s so important. You just assume, like seeing the big picture, that’s something that dyslexic people are absolutely brilliant at.

So, we solve problems from looking at the big picture, the top down, and that’s just something that we have to do because it’s the way we think, but that’s a hugely vital skill in anything that you do. And we really are better at it than people who are not dyslexic, or most people anyway. So, it’s really just understanding those skills.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you there, certainly. So, if one were to internalize a belief like, “Oh, I’m dumb,” or, “I’m no good at blank,” a broad domain, when, in fact, the truth of the matter is more nuanced. It’s like, “Oh, actually, I have some superpowers over here, and some difficulties over there. But when I compare my difficulties to whatever else seems to be doing just fine with no trouble whatsoever, I might falsely infer that, ‘Oh, I’m just not that bright. I guess certain career opportunities are just not available to me.’”

Kate Griggs
Yeah, and it’s that thing, “I’m not that academic” is one that I hear a lot. But Cambridge University always says that they have a huge number of dyslexics on those PhD programs. So, if you can, you know, dyslexics can get through education and can excel. And I think you’re quite likely to be put off the academic route at an early age when you’re struggling at school.

I had a really, really tough first few years at school, and at sort of eight years old I thought I was really stupid because I couldn’t do what the other kids could do. And there was, no, I wasn’t picked up as dyslexic then, and there was no support for my strengths. And I then went to a new school that was phenomenal, and they instantly picked up I was dyslexic. They gave me incredible support for the things that I was struggling with but also were just interested in, as much interested in what I was good at and really nurtured those strengths.

And I think that’s something, the whole reason I do the work I do, and write the books I write, and do the podcasts I do, is because I really want people to understand, dyslexic people to understand, that they are brilliant, they have a different way of thinking, and it is a phenomenally brilliant way of thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s unpack that. What is this different way of thinking and its advantages and the dyslexic thinking skills?

Kate Griggs
So, as I mentioned before, dyslexic people have, well, according to the World Economic Forum, and according to some research we did with Randstad Enterprise, the foremost sought after skills are creative thinking, communication into interpersonal skills, adaptability rather, and resilience, and complex problem solving. All of those skills are things that dyslexics really excel at.

And I can give you, as well as knowing that they’re the skills that every workplace is looking for, I can give you some real-life examples of where organizations or career routes really fit well into those thinking skills. So, for instance, we work very closely with GCHQ, which is the British intelligence agency. They have actively been recruiting dyslexic spies since they started a hundred years ago.

And the reason that they are actively recruiting dyslexics is because dyslexic people are really good at this sort of complex problem solving and connecting the dots. So, they can connect completely different things together to spot a pattern of communication or to spot a trend, and that’s an intelligence, or the sort of intelligence that GCHQ do, that’s exactly what they do.

They’re looking for cyber-crimes or they’re looking for communication to see where terrorist groups are connecting and planning things. So, they can, dyslexic people are really good at looking and joining up those interconnected things. Forty percent of entrepreneurs are dyslexic and that’s because dyslexic people need to be able to see the big picture, be able to sell their ideas, but also build incredible and motivate incredible teams around them.

So those are two areas where dyslexic people really excel. You also find lots and lots of dyslexic people in things like, surprisingly, journalism, and TV presenting, or communicating, podcast hosts, or YouTube channels, channel hosts. A lot of those people are dyslexic because we’re very good at storytelling. We’re brilliant at simplifying things, sort of seeing really complex issues and simplifying them. So, they’re all skills that we don’t test in schools, and a psychometric test wouldn’t pick up, but they’re really vital skills in every workplace now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you help me understand what it is about our brains and the means by which they go, they process, they interact with the world and process information, such that a person with dyslexia will typically struggle with one set of things but excel in the other? Is there a common linkage or big picture factor that kind of illuminates or explains what’s going on here?

Kate Griggs
So, it is, literally, the way our brains process information. So, for instance, dyslexic people, we think holistically, if you like. So, we like to see the big picture, we like to see all of the facts so we can then come down and drill down into how we’re going to do things. Non-dyslexic people tend to think sequentially, so they’ll go step by step by step. Whereas, we need to see “Where is the end? Where does it all join together? And then, let’s come back and go through the process.”

We also are very multi-sensory thinkers. So, when we’re making decisions, doing things, we tend to take in lots of different things, which is what makes us very good with people, because we can read people, we look at cues that maybe other people wouldn’t see. We’re kind of seeing the person as a whole, if you like, and the situation as a whole. So those are two areas. Whereas, probably most people who are not dyslexic may be a little more less multi-sensory, it’s more sort of what you see is what you get and may not be reading the nuances.

Then when it comes to the struggles, we tend to have problems with our working memory. So, if you think of memory as a shelf and you’re putting books onto the shelf, so if you’ve got lots of books on the shelf, that is a real problem for dyslexic people because we tend to focus on one, two, or three, and then we’ve forgotten those one, two, or three as you get onto the next one.

So, that’s when you’re, if you’re giving a dyslexic person lots of commands, and saying, “Right, I want you to do this and then do that and there’s something else and something else,” you tend to kind of lose where you’ve got to. An example of that would be if somebody gives you directions. Thank God for Google Maps.

But when somebody gives you directions, that are like, “Go down the road, and you turn right, and then you walk for 10 minutes, and you turn left, and it’s the first next, left, the next right.” I mean, but I’m kind of thinking, “Hang on a minute, I get to the end of the road and am I supposed to go right or left?” because I’m trying to remember what they said next, and I’ve forgotten them.

But if I see a map, I can visualize where I need to go. So, it’s just a different way of processing the instructions versus looking at something which is as clear as daylight to me where I need to be going. So, it’s that kind of thing. And dyslexic thinking, actually, was put into the dictionary as a noun back in 2022 when it was also added as a skill on LinkedIn.

And the dictionary definition for dyslexic thinking is an approach to problem solving, assessing information and learning often used by people with dyslexia that involves pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, lateral thinking, and interpersonal communication. So, that, in a dictionary definition, sums up what dyslexic thinking is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so, yeah, let’s hear some examples of cool stories of people with dyslexia working their strengths and skills to achieve great results.

Kate Griggs
So, a great resource for cool stories is my podcast, Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking. We’re just, next week, about to release our third series. The first person that I interviewed for the third series is Erin Brockovich, the amazing campaigner who featured in that film of her life, which Julia Roberts acted as her.

Dyslexic people do tend to make really brilliant changemakers. We don’t like the status quo. We love a challenge. If you tell us something can’t be done, it just makes us really want to do it. And you often find that we have a really strong sense of justice and right and wrong. Erin tells the most amazing story about how she, basically, she kind of worked her way into a job that she was completely unqualified for as a legal clerk working for a law firm in California.

And I think the guy who hired her actually felt sorry for her because she was a single mom and she needed some money. So, he gave her a chance and gave her a job, and basically said, “You know, go do this filing. Just, here’s loads of boxes. Just go and do the filing.” And she opened up this box that was all Hinkley, the place that we know she went on to do the big lawsuit against.

And she looked through all the files, and she could see a pattern of things going wrong and health issues for all of the residents in Hinkley. She was supposed to be just putting the filing away and just sticking things into drawers but she started looking at everything that was there, and she’s got a really amazing visual memory.

And she could see that there were these children were getting sick and things were going wrong. So, she went to her boss, and said, “Look, I’m looking at this, and I think there’s a really big issue here.” And he said, “Look, you’re supposed to be a filing clerk. You need to just file things away.” And she was so dogged because she could see there was something wrong.

And, eventually, her boss let her go out to Hinkley to meet the people and understand what was going on. And from that, from her spotting a pattern in the paperwork that she saw that something was going wrong, she then went and found out about all of the things that were happening in Hinkley, and the fact that the big company was poisoning the water. And saw that right through to the end until they got the biggest legal claim in American history. So, that was somebody who had no qualifications, was incredibly determined, and really wanted to make a difference.

Another amazing story, actually, in the last series, I interviewed Bob Ballard, who is the explorer who discovered the Titanic, and he talks about how he was on, he was doing a project for the Navy, and he was out at sea, and he’d been looking for the Titanic for ages and ages, but he was actually doing another project, and it was in the area that they thought the Titanic was.

And he just got a sense that the Titanic was exactly where he was in the ocean, and he persuaded his team to dive. And they were all saying, “Look, there’s no evidence here.” And he said, “Look, I just know it’s here. I sense it. I feel it. I’m putting all these things together. It’s here.” And they did a very, very deep dive and, sure enough, found the Titanic. So, that’s using intuition and actually putting interconnected pieces together.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And with the Titanic and the Erin Brockovich story, it is very effective in highlighting the unique ability that can also lead to social difficulty. It’s like, “What do you mean you know the Titanic is here?” And then, like, I could see how, in many circumstances, what happens is, “Oh, we don’t go searching for the Titanic. We go and say, ‘That guy has a screw loose,’” or some sort of demeaning, unfair judgment or characterization. Or, “No, this is not your job. Go ahead and continue filing the things.”

It’s seeing something that others don’t is already a cause for potential social rebuke or isolation. And then it’s not too hard to believe, “Oh, I guess I just don’t know, and they would know better. They’re the lawyers, they’re the divers and explorers.” And so, I see that pattern, how that could very easily unfold there.

Kate Griggs
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it’s having that understanding work environment, where people will allow you to make those leaps of reasoning. I was talking to, also on my podcast, I’ve talked to the former director, actually, of GCHQ, and we talked to spies at GCHQ as well, and they have something called the 24/7 center.

And that’s where you have a series, lots of spies, actually sitting there, looking at communications right around the world. So, from emails to, I mean, it’s amazing how people spy on us, isn’t it? But it’s a good thing in this instance, stopping cybercrime and terrorist attacks. But they look at right across social media to look at seeing if they can find patterns.

And in the 24/7 center, what happens if you think you’ve seen something, you then go to your boss, and say, “Right, this is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing a whole pattern of things happening here.” And because they need to act quickly, and it needs to be an instant, “Okay, there’s a problem. We need to stop it,” they don’t have to do what you would normally have to do in the workplace, which is, “Okay, I get where you’re going with this but go away and tell me how you’ve actually made those connections. I need to see the process behind how you’ve made those connections.”

They don’t have to do that because they are well-enough qualified and experienced enough to know that if they see a pattern, there’s a problem. They need to do something about it. And I think what’s frustrating for so many dyslexic people is that until we have the confidence to really believe in our abilities, we can see patterns, we can spot things, we can see opportunities in businesses and things.

But, often, other people can’t see those things until we explain how we got there and we often can’t explain how we got there. It’s just a sense or we’ve put some thoughts together, two plus two equals ten. And often, it’s very frustrating and until your teammates understand your strengths and you really understand them yourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, how do we build on those strengths, these skills?

Kate Griggs
First thing is to learn about them. So, as I mentioned, we have free training for the workplace. We actually have free training for teachers in schools. We have the podcast. We have a whole series of information on our website. So, the first thing is to learn about them. I also have two books. I have a children’s book which is being released on the 27th of March on Dorling Kindersley, and I have a book on Penguin called This is Dyslexia, which is out at the moment.

And that will teach you lots and lots about dyslexia and dyslexic thinking as well. And once you start unravelling it and learning about it, you’ll either spot it in yourself or you’ll definitely spot in colleagues and friends around you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, any top tips, do’s or don’ts, you want to share before we hear about your favorite things?

Kate Griggs
If you’re a dyslexic person, don’t spend time trying to get better at your weaknesses. Delegation is the key to everything. And every successful person, dyslexic or not, has learned that delegating what they’re not so good at is the best way to be productive. So, lean into your strengths 100% and be open about your strengths and your challenges with others.

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

Kate Griggs
When we did our first report, “The Value of Dyslexia,” with EY. The then CEO of EY said, “You wouldn’t employ Superwoman and tell her how bad she was with kryptonite. You’d make sure that you told her how brilliant she was with all the things that she was good at.” So, I think that’s probably my favorite quote, and I try and live by that. I try not to do my kryptonite.

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

Kate Griggs
We’ve just done an amazing report called Intelligence 5.0. It came out, we launched it during UN General Assembly week, at the time we launched the University of Dyslexic Thinking, which is a short course university on Open University. The Intelligence 5.0 report is full of incredible, incredible insights, research from all over the world, but also really leans into the fact that the way that we’re testing and measuring in schools is completely outdated in an AI world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Kate Griggs
A book I read many years ago, which sort of started me on my journey of really understanding dyslexic thinking, was Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind. It’s old now but I love that book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Kate Griggs
I try and just have a few minutes of calm every day, whether it’s sitting in the garden, taking in nature and listening to the bird sounds, but just trying to take five minutes a day to do nothing and clear your mind.

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

Kate Griggs
Do what you’re good at. Do what you love. Find your passion. Do what you love, because that will take you far in life, whatever it is.

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

Kate Griggs
Kate Griggs, you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m a top voice on LinkedIn. MadeByDyslexia.org is our website. And both my books are available in all good bookstores, but also on Amazon, so, This is Dyslexia and Xtraordinary People, for kids.

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

Kate Griggs
I think, for every dyslexic, just learn, really, really learn about your dyslexic thinking skills, and understand what they are, and add that you are a dyslexic thinker to your LinkedIn profile because companies are now actively looking for dyslexic thinkers. And if you don’t add it as a skill, they won’t be able to find you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kate, thank you.

Kate Griggs
Thank you very much. Great to join you.

1025: Boosting Your Learning and Presenting with the Science of Memory with Dr. Charan Ranganath

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Dr. Charan Ranganath discusses the science behind our brain’s capacity to remember (and forget) and how it can help you make better decisions and impressions.

You’ll Learn

  1. How emotions shape memory
  2. How to hack your brain for enhanced retention
  3. The 4 C’s of memorable messaging

About Charan 

Charan Ranganath is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California.

Resources Mentioned

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Anna Dearmon Kornick Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Charan, welcome.

Charan Ranganath
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to hear what you’ve got to say about memory and your book, Why We Remember. And could you kick us off with a particularly fascinating insight you’ve discovered about us humans and memory from all of your research?

Charan Ranganath
Two things that I think are particularly interesting, one is really recent research is showing how much we reuse the same kinds of elements across different kinds of memories. In other words, you think like, “If I take a bunch of pictures of my dog, my phone will store different photos of my dog. It doesn’t reuse the same space on my phone for multiple pictures, but my brain is really using a lot of the same elements across multiple memories that overlap.”

So, memory seems more like a structure that you would build out of Legos, and you could just as easily take those Legos apart and use some of the same Legos to build something completely different, right? And that’s, I think, what I’m most excited about right now, is just seeing how economical our brains are. It’s not laying down something brand new for every event that we experience. It’s really doing a lot of recombination.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is really intriguing. And then there could be some interesting implications there associated with misremembering things. Like, if your brain has a Lego block for dog, your dog, and then your dog may have had a very different, I don’t know, facial expression, posture, whatever, in a particular memory, but if you’re using a more generic dog memory, then those nuances are not present and perhaps more prone to distortion. I’m just totally speculating, making things up here.

Charan Ranganath
No, that’s absolutely true. In fact, what happens often is, as people remember the same event multiple times, the memory drifts more and more towards what people kind of knew beforehand, and you get less and less of the details that are unique to a particular event.

So, what we think the brain is doing is it’s taking this kind of a template and then it’s tacking on some details that make this particular moment unique. And so,  you might remember something specific about what your dog actually did the last time you took your dog for a walk, but most of that memory, the backbone of it is going to be based on just my general knowledge of what happens when I walk the dog and the expectations that I have about it.

If you actually look at brain scans of people who are, let’s say, watching a movie, what you find is that if people remember the movie, you’re using a lot of those same Legos as you do when you’re watching the movie. And then if you ask people to imagine something completely new, we think what’s going to happen is that you use some of those same Legos again to imagine something that hasn’t happened.

In other words, when we remember, we’re using those Legos basically to assemble a little model of the past, to imagine how the past could have been. But you could just easily take those Legos and assemble a little model of the future, or assemble a little model of what’s happening right now. And I think that’s a pretty profound idea that we’re very excited about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then that gets me thinking about the sort of like the state or mood that we’re in and how that’s influenced by what we’re focusing on, and whether in the present or what we’re choosing to reminisce about, whether that was a very pleasant or unpleasant experience, or what we choose to imagine about the future, whether that’s a worry or a visualization of a dramatic victory that you’re going through.

So, that would seem to imply that we have a tremendous power within us in terms of what we choose to focus on and visualize and the moods and, I guess, vibe, presence that we bring into a given moment. Is that accurate?

Charan Ranganath
Oh, that’s totally accurate, yeah. In fact, what you can find is that when people remember an event, you can say, “Hey, try to remember it from the perspective of this other person who’s part of the event.” And people will remember a lot of details that they didn’t remember before. So, we can always reframe and revise our memories of the past by looking at it from a different perspective, right?

But, likewise, what can happen, especially when we’re in particularly emotional experiences, is the emotion kind of puts us in a particular frame of mind and filters a lot of the way that we think about the memory later on. So, I think with emotional memories, especially more difficult memories, people feel a bit stuck, and often you need to actually talk about that information with someone else to be able to incorporate a different perspective and see the experience from a different way of thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I mean, this is just intrinsically fascinating stuff. We could poke and dive into all kinds of tidbits, but how about you give us the broad frame for it? What’s sort of the big idea or core message from your book, Why We Remember?

Charan Ranganath
The core message is that memory isn’t this repository of the past that is keeping a comprehensive library of everything that we’ve experienced it as we’ve experienced it. It’s much more about the present and the future than it is about the past.

And so, the analogy that took me months after writing the book, but I really like it because in the months after publishing the book, I’ve been traveling a lot. And one of the things I came to notice is that when I’m packing, I’ve become very good at anticipating what I’ll need. And so, you don’t want to pack too much because then you’re lugging around a bunch of stuff. And if you pack really too much, you’ll never find what you’re looking for. And you don’t want to under-pack and miss out on the stuff that you need that you’re going to use all the time.

And I think it’s like people approach memory as if we’re supposed to take everything that we’ve ever experienced with us on the journey of life. And I think our brains are much more designed to pack just what you need so that you have it when you need it. I mean, there’s all sorts of stuff that I own that I like, like my lamp and stuff like that, that I’m not going to take with me when I go on trips. And I think our brains are really designed to take what we need and to leave a lot of the rest behind so that we have the information that we need when we need it in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting, and yet it seems sometimes I have memories that seem to be not at all helpful, and, in fact, counterproductive that I would like to forget. What’s this about?

Charan Ranganath
It’s a great question. And sometimes those counterproductive memories can be because we just happen to be zoning out and paying attention to something and got excited about some random factoid during the moment. And that excitement can actually create a memory or kind of improve your ability to remember something later on.

Sometimes it’s because we’re not focusing on what we’re supposed to be focusing on, and so we end up going on these, having difficulty filtering out our experiences. And, in fact, there’s some work suggesting that, as people get older, that inability to filter out what’s irrelevant means that you end up remembering stuff that’s irrelevant at the expense of the stuff that’s important and relevant. So, that could be a factor too.

But you can also think of it like we don’t necessarily know what we need later on. And so, sometimes our brains are probably just taking their best guess. And it could be because something was just a little surprising and made you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” Or it could be because you were in a particular emotional state at the time, or who knows, right? It’s really hard to reverse-engineer a particular memory that you might have. But there are all sorts of reasons why you might have access to some memory that seems really random.

Pete Mockaitis
And since there’s so many dimensions or directions we could take this into, what do you think are some of the top implications of this research for our professional lives and careers?

Charan Ranganath
I think that one big implication is if you’re trying to communicate, which is essential to almost all jobs, but especially in knowledge-based jobs, I feel like you need to start with the assumption that most of what you communicate will be forgotten. And so, that is very, very important because once you start with that, then you can say, “What are the key points that I really want someone to take away?”

And you can use some strategies to really emphasize those key points over and over again. But I think often what we can get caught up in doing is we just say a lot of things and then we expect everyone to remember them later on.

Likewise, one of the things that you find is that people will usually tell me, “Hey, I have a terrible memory. Help me out.” But then in the moment, they assume that everything that’s happening, they will remember it later on. So, people have this weird overconfidence in how much they’ll remember.

And so, if you’re listening to someone else, it’s also really important to factor in that you’re not going to be able to remember everything. And so, that can be very important, too, because sometimes you might need help to document all the things that are going on if it’s something that’s super memorable. I feel like it’s really good to rely on devices that have a photographic memory because humans don’t.

And so, when it comes to reminders of things, I think devices are great. Now there’s all sorts of problems with our devices that can cause problems for our memory, but we can talk about that, too. I mean, I think that’s another big important thing for the workplace, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, just because it’s hanging in the air. Problems with these devices, are you talking about like interruptions or what do you mean?

Charan Ranganath
Yeah, so the problems with the devices, the biggest one I would say is interruptions, but not only interruptions that are external, but our own kind of conflicts that are happening in our heads. So, in other words, you have a phone, let’s say if I have my phone in front of me, and I know I have my phone there, well, that phone is associated with checking email. And if you have a habit of checking email on your phone constantly, even when you’re not checking email, you might have an urge to go on the phone and check your email because it’s there, it’s around. So, it’s this cue.

Pete Mockaitis
Ah, it’s reminding you of the behavior, “So, let’s go ahead and do it.”

Charan Ranganath
Exactly. And so, the phone itself isn’t the problem. It’s the habit that’s the problem. And, likewise, you have social media. If you check social media habitually, if you have social media apps on your phone, every time that phone is around, you’ve got a little bit of an urge to check it that’s going on in the background.

One of the weird things, I’d learned about this after I wrote the book is when you do something, let’s say that’s long and tedious, like we often have to do at work, what tires you out is not necessarily doing the tedious work as much as the fact that our brains start to ask ourselves, “Okay, what could I be?” And I realize this is sounding very unscientific, but there are more mechanistic ways of describing this.

But essentially, our brain starts pulling up other options the longer we persist on something that’s not rewarding to us. Our brain starts popping up other options, they’re going to give us immediate rewards. Our brains really like things that are immediately rewarding, as opposed to activities that have some benefit in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, intriguing. Well, could you tell us a story of someone who struggled in some of these dimensions and then implemented some of your approaches and saw a cool transformation as a result?

Charan Ranganath
I can talk about myself as somebody who struggles with all these issues and talk about how I’m trying to transform my life. I mean, it’s not easy, right? I get all sorts of messages from people that are labeled urgent. And so, it’s very hard for me to completely disengage from things like email. In fact, actually, come to think of it, I should quit my email program that’s running in the background right now.

And I have to say, I don’t know how they actually came to this conclusion, but my school, when I was a kid, told my parents that I have ADHD. And this was long before the whole, like, thing where schools had real benefit in actually assigning these diagnoses. Back then, it was just like nobody even thought about this stuff. And so, more recently, I’ve kind of come to terms with that. I sort of stuck that, that was in the back of my mind for a long time.

And then, recently, after the book came out, I had some reminders that brought that to mind. And I started to go, “Oh, yeah.” And then I had this aha moment of all of these things that I do and things that go on in my life that are seriously problematic because of ADHD. And so, one of the things that I’ve done is really tried to engineer my environment. And what I mean by that is I’ve removed my social media apps from my phone.

I was getting really stressed out about the presidential election, so I removed all my news apps from the phone. I’ve really removed all the alerts except for things that are calendar alerts. I removed everything else from my phone so that I’m not getting notifications. I have a whole kind of set of things that I do for planning and so forth, but I guess relevant to memory, the biggest things that I do are things that involve minimizing distractions, trying to reduce switching.

Switching is very costly to us in terms of our mental resources. And if we switch too much between things, what can happen is that that leads us to have very fragmented memories of the activities that we’re doing so that’s not a really good thing either. So, on an ideal day, I might block off time to do things like social media and email and so forth, and then block off time where I’m going to be doing other activities. So, I would say that these are some tools.

But I think the biggest thing is that I’m learning that slow thinking is a lot more effective than fast thinking, and really trying to catch myself when I’m going into this kind of panic mode of all the hundreds of things I have to do, catching myself and then kind of taking one thing at a time. And the reason is that, if I am scattered too much and I’ve got too many things going on that I’m thinking about, I really will have no memory of that day afterwards. So, that’s a big thing.

I guess another thing I’ll say, this is probably the biggest transformation that I made, is I really think about bigger decisions in life in terms of how I want things to be remembered. And what I mean by that is, like, we just all got through the New Year. And every time you get to the end of the year, it’s natural to reflect on what happened earlier in the year. And then people make their resolutions for the next year.

And I feel like it’s really important to ask yourself, for all the things that we do, “Is this how I want to remember this year that’s gone by?” And there’s all sorts of activities that we do that we won’t remember. And even if we did remember, we won’t want to have remembered our lives that way. It’s not like you sit around and go, like, “Boy, I’m really glad I spent like four hours watching TikTok videos,” or something. Nobody says that, I don’t think.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, this is powerful stuff. Well, so let’s put some things into action. Let’s say, in the course of doing my professional duties, I want to learn some things. I want to develop some skills and recall some key information, tips and tricks, and insights from the How to Be Your Job podcast, etc. Like, I’m learning some stuff and I want to remember more of it. What are some best practices?

Charan Ranganath
One of the best practices, I would say, if I had to pick one thing, is give yourself the chance to fail. And what I mean by that is you tend to think, “Okay, well,” and realistically speaking, I mean, it’s a very understandable intuition that if I’m trying to remember something, if I’m trying to memorize something, saying it to myself over and over, is the best way to do it.

But, in fact, if you give yourself the chance to try to remember it later on, and you don’t remember it, and then you give yourself the answer, that’s going to give you far better retention of the information than if you didn’t give yourself the chance to do it. It’s called, I talk about this in my book, as error-driven learning. Other people talk about it as active learning.

But this error-driven learning principle is so powerful that even before you learn something, if you test yourself on what the answer could be, you’ll remember that answer better than if you just tried to memorize that answer. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes, I hear you. We had Dr. Manu Kapur on the show, and talking about, I think the label he used was productive failure. And this very notion that, and I’ve noticed it myself ever since he tuned me into it, is that if I do a thing and then fail, and then I learn what happened there, it is so much more impactful in terms of, “Oh, it feels like an epiphany. Like, that’s where I went wrong, of course,” as opposed to I’m just passively receiving one of thousands of things in the day, which can wash right over me.

Charan Ranganath
Yeah. Yeah, and it’s really funny because in certain activities, it’s almost a given that that’s going to be the way you want to learn. Like, if you’re going to be in a play, you don’t just sit around and memorize the script. You actually try to recite the lines. And that’s when you realize how little you know, but also your brain can repair those memories and optimize them so they’re more accessible later on. Or if you’re learning to play basketball, you don’t watch a bunch of footage. You actually do it, right?

And, likewise, I think we don’t do this with other things. I mean, if you look at school, school is all about good performance. It’s not about learning. It’s really about mastery. And I think it’s what you really would want to do is be able to encourage people to push themselves to the point where they’re getting C’s and then they learn the answer, and then they actually get better as a result. But we don’t really do that.

And so, I think that’s why there’s this intuition out there that we’re just supposed to be good at remembering, and that’s not true. I mean, you’re going to be better at remembering if you fail to remember and then learn from that mistake.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now you got me thinking about my kids and the learning that’s happening right now. So, I’ve got my five-year-old Mary, we have a keyboard, a little Casio. She’s been playing around on it, and she was trying to learn how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” And it was so interesting to watch because she would get a few notes right, and do the wrong one. And she could hear and recognize that it was wrong. And she would sound so frustrated, like, “Aargh!” It’s like, “It’s totally okay. This is just how it works.

But, in a way, that frustration, that “Aargh!” moment is, in fact, quite valuable. Like, she’s better off, for the purposes of learning “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as far as I understand it, experiencing that than not experiencing that to cement the learnings.

Charan Ranganath
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And the key is that you have to, and I know this is kind of a hot topic because of all the stuff with the growth mindset, for instance, but it’s absolutely true. The key is that you have to see the mistake as an opportunity to learn. You don’t want to see the mistake as evidence that you have a bad ability. You want to see the mistake as, “Okay, here’s how I fix this memory.”

And that’s really key because you want to be able to focus your efforts on the right answer as opposed to simply, like, just getting mad at yourself and kicking yourself. That doesn’t help you. And so, what’s important about that is, again, we don’t really do a great job of incentivizing people to try and fail. And, at the same time, I think it’s also important, in the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” case, it’s good to have a teacher who can actually say, “Here’s how you should do it.”

On the other hand, if she knows how to do it, she could take a moment to slow down, and then say, “Okay, here’s where I made the mistake. Let me try this again and focus on the right answer.” And that is where, again, you can get the biggest gains.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I was also thinking about, talking about kids and learning, I was inside the Khan Academy app. And so, my other child, Johnny, we were doing some math stuff. And I had these thoughts about productive failure in my mind. And I noticed just from top to bottom, the sequencing is, first, “Here’s the video of how to do the math problems. And here are some math problems to do.”

And I wondered, not to think that I know better than the mighty Sal Khan, but it’s like, “Would it be better if this were completely flipped in terms of ‘Try to do these math problems and fail miserably. Now, hey, here’s how to do them.’?” That might be a better way to learn, even though it’s the exact opposite of what I’ve done in my learning and how the app is set up. What are your thoughts?

Charan Ranganath
Yes. Yeah, I absolutely think that would be the case. It might be better to give yourself the chance to screw up and then, after each problem, get “Here’s how you do it.” And then get another problem, because this is a general skill that you’re trying to learn. You could give the question, give yourself a chance to screw up, get “Here’s how you do it,” then get a similar question, and then screw up, and then, “Here’s how you do it” again. And keep giving yourself those opportunities and keep bringing up.

I mean, the algorithms could easily bring up the ones that you’ve struggled with the most and give you very similar problems. And I think that’s a much more effective way to learn than to, you know, it’s still good that they include those tests in there, but I think it would be better if you could really optimize it in a way that’s sort of pushing people to struggle a little bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s flip it. Let’s say we are the dispenser of wisdom, knowledge, information as a presentation or training or any form of communication. You said it really is helpful to think about, “Hmm, give most people will forget most of what we have to say, really hone in on the top key messages that we wish to be remembered.” Do you have any pro tips on how we implement that in practice?

Charan Ranganath
Yes. And, in fact, I actually wrote an article about this in Harvard Business Review. It was the four C’s of memorable messaging, is what I called it.

Okay, so one is chunking. So, chunking is a principle by which you take all the things that you’re like, let’s say, if I’m presenting information, and there’s all these details, you want to be able to explicitly tie it into, like, one chunk. So, for instance, what you can do is you can start to say, “Okay, here’s a general principle.”

I’m trying to tell people to basically try to take care of their brain health. And I’m trying to remember what all the things are there that I tell people because there’s a hundred different facts I can tell people about how to improve their brain health. Well, one of the key principles is your brain’s a body part. So, what’s good for your body is good for your brain.

Now you start for that and you can say, “Okay, well, what’s good for my heart?” “Oh, yeah, so doing all these things to reduce your blood pressure, to reduce your cholesterol and so forth. Those are things that you could do to improve your brain health.”

And then another one is callbacks, where you want to keep going back to what you said previously. So, now people have to take a moment to remember what they were just being, what you told them about five minutes ago, and they’re tying together what’s happening now with what’s happening then. And, again, you’re creating this little chunk of knowledge.

Another is curiosity. And so, you were asking me before about one of the discoveries from my lab. And one of the things that we discovered, which really surprised me, was how curiosity can drive learning. And it relates to this error-driven learning stuff that we talked about, where we were interested in this idea that being curious is a motivator.

And when you look at other motivators, like, people trying to get money, for instance, or people trying to get food, what you find is that you get activity in these areas of the brain that process dopamine. And dopamine isn’t really a reward chemical. It’s really about energizing you to get reward and teaching you about what’s rewarding.

And so, what we found is that when you give people a question and they’re really curious about the answer to this question, they don’t know it, what happens is there’s an increase in activity in the areas of the brain that process dopamine. And it’s triggered, as I said, by the question, not by the answer per se. Now, if the answer is surprising, then you might get more of an effect. But, in general, just getting a question can energize people and drive them to find the answer.

And when they’re in that state of curiosity, they’ll be better at memorizing things that they’re not even curious about. So, if you can start off by getting people interested in the question before you give them the answer, that’s really important. And so, for instance, when I wrote my book, I had to relearn this principle and I had to really think about, “Okay, what are the counterintuitive in memory research?”

Because once you highlight a counterintuitive, then you can start to ask, get people thinking about your points in a way that gets them more likely to stick because they really are going to be curious to find out the answers to these questions. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it does. And I’m thinking about, yeah, I believe Bob Cialdini in his book Influence mentioned that this was an approach he liked to use in the classroom, in terms of, he generates a question and then deepens it a little bit, so it’s like a full-blown mystery. And some YouTubers do this very well in terms of like there are many documentaries. And so, that’s a good tip is like we start with the question.

But then help me out. If we ask a question, but then, sometimes when I hear a question, I just don’t care at all. And so, then it feels like I’m not getting the benefit of that curiosity in terms of, “Okay, you asked a question, I don’t care.” So, I guess that’s a tricky number. How could I…?

Charan Ranganath
Well, so the question needs to trigger curiosity. And for people to be curious, you have to hit this sweet spot. Because if it’s something where you have just no knowledge about anything in that area, well, you’re not going to necessarily be curious about it because, “Yeah, of course I don’t know the question. I don’t know the answer to this question.” And if you know the answer to the question, then you’re not going to be curious if it’s obvious.

Where you really want to get people is where there’s a gap between what you’ve just told them and what they need to know to answer the question. And that gap should be something that is bridgeable. So, one way you can do it is by highlighting this thing that people go, “I hadn’t thought about that,” or, “I thought I knew this topic but now there’s something I realized that I didn’t know.”

So, I mean, I’m just pulling something out from just random, but if somebody were really into The Beatles, and you said, “Hey, do you know the lyrics to the song?” and they hadn’t heard that song, they would be really curious about it. But another way to go is to also be able to say, “Hey, there’s this thing that you thought you knew, but, in fact, I’m going to flip it on its head, and, in fact, I’m going to ask this question that really prompts you to realize that there’s an error in what you thought you knew.”

So, in general, these tools to increase curiosity are driving what’s called prediction error, which is essentially you’re expecting to know the answer to something, and then there’s, all of a sudden, this gap between what you knew and what you’re actually getting. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s actually perfect, thank you, in terms of, I’m thinking about, I had some podcast sponsors for like really deep software technology things, as come through the agencies, like, “Hey, do you want this sponsor?” And then I go to their website, it’s like, “I have no idea what they’re even saying about some deep cloud architecture something or another.”

“And so, they may very well be solving an important problem for somebody, but I feel like I’m not your guy to speak this advertisement because, if I don’t know what it is, I’m not going to be compelling. And I can’t vet it properly in terms of whether it really is a good, cool thing or not.” And so then, there’s no curiosity because I don’t have a clue. I’m not even on the same map.

And then on the flip side, if I have full knowledge, they’re like, “Hey, Pete, you’re a podcaster. Do you know the number one thing podcasters do to grow their audience?” Like, “Yes, I do.” So, it’s like, “You were trying to make me curious, but you failed because I already know it.” And so, I think that’s perfect with the gap.

And, in fact, you’re identifying one of my favorite types of books, which is an event occurred some time ago, and we have some perspective on that in deep layers in terms of the author went deep with the interviews of the people like, Bethany McLean, her books are so great. Like, the smartest guys in room about Enron. It’s like, “I know, I’ve heard about Enron.” “Well, here’s what really went down and all the details.”

Or, the housing finance crisis in 2008, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I kind of know a little bit about it.” It’s like, “No, here’s all the details.” And so, Bethany McLean just lays it all out for me. I love it. And it’s exactly that, it’s, like, I have some knowledge of the thing, but there’s some gaps, and she fills them with gusto and it’s a delightful experience.

Charan Ranganath
Yeah. And I think it’s like in the current age of the internet, you have to be careful because it’s like, I know for me, I’ve seen enough stuff now where it’s like people sell a book and they say “Everything you used to know about this topic is wrong.” And I think there’s a little bit of fatigue that you get from reading those kinds of things.

But to the extent that you can highlight a genuine counterintuitive or a genuine gap that people just hadn’t actually thought about, I think that’s going to be effective at triggering curiosity. And your example actually brought up something else, which is another point I talk about is making things concrete.

So, your example of the AI companies, if you’re talking about these very abstract concepts, it’s really hard for people to remember that stuff. But if you give people a concrete story or a concrete example, they’re going to be much more likely to remember that. And, in fact, it’s going to dominate their judgments about whatever it is you’re telling them about because it’s going to be so memorable.

So, when I wrote my book, this was a big challenge because, in science, we’re often in our heads in this very abstract world, and we’re trying to make these arguments about things that are very not tangible. And I had to come up with stories, which you try to write from your experiences, so there are stories from my life all through the book that talk about all these crazy things. But those stories make concrete some point that I’m trying to convey.

Or they open up this question that people wouldn’t have necessarily thought about it and again trigger their curiosity. But either way, that concrete story, especially if it’s emotionally engaging, it will plant itself in people’s memory. And then anything that you attach to that story now becomes more memorable too.

Pete Mockaitis
And it also helps explain why I can binge watch TV shows because the gap is “What’s going to happen to this character?” And I’m situated, I’ve got the scene, I know the context, the environment, the stakes, what they’re trying to accomplish, but what I don’t know is how it’s going to turn out. And I might just have to watch many episodes to satisfy that.

Charan Ranganath
And that’s why if you’re watching it something with commercials, they always stack the commercials towards the end because, by that time, you’ve built up enough knowledge about what’s happening that you’re really urgently trying to figure out what’s happening. And so, if you put a gap there and you have a commercial break, people are in the state of curiosity, and, in some sense, they’re going to be more receptive to that commercial.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, Charan, before we hear about some of your favorite things, any key things you want to make sure to mention or put out there?

Charan Ranganath
I would say one big one is, since we’ve been talking about AI, humans are very different in the way that we learn and remember relative to machine learning. And I think I like to get this point out, I don’t get enough opportunities to say it because there’s just so much hype and, frankly, a lot of bullsh**.

There’s so much bullsh** out there about AI and this concept of artificial general intelligence, which is a very dumb concept. Because, essentially, if you look at the kind of constraints on machine learning and the constraints of human learning, they’re very, very different. And, realistically speaking, humans are dumb in many ways that machines aren’t, and machines are really dumb in ways that humans aren’t.

And I realized that you need to have a lot of humility when you talk about where technology is going because there’s lots of stuff we haven’t been able to foresee. But the thing is that the human brain basically evolved to get certain things done, basically to propagate our genes, to keep us alive long enough to propagate our genes, and to get the offspring protected and so forth, and be able to help us find a mate.

Machine learning doesn’t have those constraints. So, machine learning doesn’t have the same resource limitations. I mean, if you look at like ChatGPT, it can take down an entire power grid. I mean, the carbon footprint is huge. My brain is using less power than an incandescent light bulb. It’s just orders of magnitude different.

And people will say, “Oh, that’s because we just need neuromorphic computing and everything will figure itself out,” and that’s just not true. The principle of human learning is we try to get as much information as possible from as little information as possible. And so, there’s this kind of sense in AI where it’s like we just dump enough training data and these machines can do everything.

And humans are like constantly reducing the amount of data that they get, the amount of data they process and work with, but we’re doing it in a way that’s fairly intelligent. It’s optimized for the information that’s new and surprising. It’s driven by things that are biologically significant to us. And so, you can hook up a camera to a kid and train, like use the video information to train like a state-of-the-art AI system, and it’s going to do all sorts of interesting things.

But that’s because the kids done the hard work of looking at everything that’s important. So, ChatGPT can do a lot of cool stuff but that’s because humans reasoned about all these things, put it in writing, and then it’s just memorizing what we’ve given it, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “You don’t get the credit for all that.”

Charan Ranganath
Exactly. Now, that doesn’t mean that algorithms, in general, are consistent, and they can have a memory that is more faithful to what it’s been trained on than humans can be. And humans have all sorts of biases because, I have a whole chapter talking about this, that there’s a lot of learning that happens under the hood in our brain that we’re not necessarily aware of. And that learning can bias us in a lot of ways.

It can make us go for things that are very familiar. Like, if you hear the word Budweiser over and over again, it’s going to seem like it should be a better beer than some beer that you’ve never heard of before, because, like, if it just is a generic store beer. And, of course, for people who are into beer, they might not think Budweiser is good. But the point is that Budweiser advertises, even though you’d think everyone knows what Budweiser is.

But Budweiser advertises because if you say that, you get that name out in front of people and you put some image in front of people enough, maybe you’re going to be 5% more likely to pick out Budweiser than Miller Lite at the grocery store, and that translates to huge amounts of sales. So, I think that’s something where humans are really susceptible is in our biases.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Charan, this is fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for sharing the time with us. And I wish you many happy memories.

Charan Ranganath
Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a lot of fun and it was a memorable conversation.