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Hey, it's Adam Grant, host of the TED podcast,

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Work Life. This season, we worked with

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Hey, everyone,

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it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking,

0:26

my podcast on the science of what makes us tick.

0:29

I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you

0:31

inside the minds of fascinating people to

0:33

explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

0:36

Rethinking

0:40

My guests today are Barry Schwartz and Coco

0:43

Crum. Barry is a psychologist

0:45

and one of my favorite intellectual provocateurs.

0:48

He's best known for his TED Talk and best-selling

0:50

book on the paradox of choice, where

0:52

he asked the question, what if having fewer

0:55

choices can sometimes make us better off?

0:58

Coco is an applied mathematician with a doctorate

1:00

from MIT and recently released her

1:03

first book, Optimal Illusions, about

1:05

our cultural attitudes toward optimization.

1:09

Despite coming from very different disciplines,

1:10

Barry and Coco have arrived at a common

1:13

conclusion. Aiming for the best

1:15

isn't always good for us. I

1:17

was excited to bring them together to rethink our

1:19

obsession with efficiency and explore

1:21

how we achieve success without sacrificing

1:24

happiness.

1:25

Rethinking My

1:28

podcast on the science of what makes

1:30

us tick is brought to you by the American

1:33

Psychological Association.

1:35

I've known Barry for, gosh, 20 years

1:37

now, but Coco, we have not met.

1:40

I've known Barry now for 20 minutes, so it's

1:43

been a pleasure to chat a bit before you got here. 20 minutes

1:46

versus 20 years. We'll see who knows him better by the

1:48

end. Good to see you, Barry. Good

1:51

to see you, too. I actually

1:53

originally was thinking I was just going to invite both of you onto the

1:55

podcast separately, and then I realized that using

1:58

slightly different language...

1:59

you're both pushing

2:02

our culture in, I would say, a common

2:04

direction. So I thought it'd be extra

2:06

fun to see what sparks fly bringing you together,

2:08

and I'm delighted that you were both on board for

2:10

that. It's fair to say that you

2:12

both have some problems with maximizing efficiency

2:16

and optimizing our lives. And

2:18

I'd love to know how you got curious about

2:20

this personally. So Barry, let me start with you. I'd

2:22

love to hear a little bit of the backstory, maybe

2:25

dating back to the one relationship you've ever

2:27

had and the one job you've ever had. I

2:30

wish I could say that either

2:32

of those things were the result of

2:34

my being mature enough to

2:36

know at the ripe old age of 14

2:39

that that was the way to live your life. But

2:42

I was just

2:45

born to appreciate good enough. Maybe

2:49

it's the Eastern European

2:51

heritage and escaping from the

2:54

Tsar and the Nazis that

2:56

put a kind of pessimism in me so

2:59

that when you found something that worked, if

3:02

it ain't broke, don't fix it. But it's

3:05

only in retrospect that I realized that

3:07

I had chosen the job that was for me

3:09

the best possible job. I certainly

3:12

wasn't looking for the best possible job.

3:15

I guess I was looking for the best possible spouse,

3:17

but what great luck that I found

3:19

her. I do know what got me

3:22

on to the evils of maximizing,

3:25

of trying for the best. And that is

3:28

a close relation of mine

3:31

is that way and

3:33

has just a horrible,

3:36

horrible time making decisions of any

3:38

kind, no matter how trivial they are. And

3:41

it's just not worth the torture and

3:43

she knows it's not worth the torture and

3:46

she can't help it. And

3:49

it's also an illusion because there is

3:51

no best in most areas

3:55

of life.

3:56

And so you drive yourself crazy for

3:58

no good reason. And economists

4:01

love it and anything economists love

4:03

I try to find problems with

4:06

spoken spoken like a true psychologist

4:09

Pocos and anything economists

4:12

believe that's my aim Very

4:15

I also love your psychologist

4:17

response to you know someone Well

4:19

who can't stop maximizing and the way that you're gonna

4:21

try to change her mind is You're gonna publish

4:23

papers on it and gather a bunch of evidence that

4:26

what she's doing every day is not good for her

4:28

Well, I tried it's a more direct way

4:31

Adam, but I didn't get anywhere

4:33

Fair enough. Okay Coco that brings us

4:35

to you I

4:37

think Barry just told us that from his point

4:40

of view and we'll get into some of the data as we go But

4:42

from his perspective optimizing is not optimal

4:46

You have a book on this How did you come to this

4:48

realization? Were you one of the people who suffered

4:50

from trying to optimize everything or

4:53

are you like Barry? Somebody who never

4:55

really has and thinks everybody else

4:57

is missing the boat

4:59

Well both in a certain way and in

5:01

some ways. I'm a recovering optimizer

5:03

Although I've never been a very good optimizer,

5:06

but optimization has been in the

5:08

water for me for probably

5:10

my whole life Maybe this is why you brought us together

5:13

But I've got Eastern European roots as

5:15

well and it's sort of a doom

5:17

and gloom in my genetics My

5:19

mother got to this country because she

5:21

was an optimizer She was studying

5:24

operations research and got a scholarship

5:26

to go to Berkeley and finish her PhD there And

5:28

it was a ticket out of a country. You didn't

5:31

really want to be in at the time I grew

5:33

up with two engineer parents. I

5:35

grew up in the Bay Area which was on

5:37

the cusp of this tech boom

5:40

and soon to become a center

5:43

of optimization and

5:46

I just Kind of had the

5:48

feeling that it made me a little sick to

5:50

my stomach I was just waiting for things to fall apart

5:53

and all around me people were talking about scale

5:55

and faster and bigger and better at

5:58

the same time I I've

6:00

looked for little ways in my life to

6:03

be better and more

6:05

true to my values and

6:07

more expressive

6:11

and expansive and doing the

6:13

things that I love and that I think are good for the world.

6:16

Maybe not optimization in the way we

6:18

think about it today, but it certainly has

6:20

involved elements of wanting

6:23

to do that in the best possible way.

6:25

You said you're a recovering optimizer. Is

6:28

there an example or two of something that you

6:30

used to do that you're not proud of?

6:32

I think it's more just

6:35

ways of thinking

6:38

that didn't serve me. I've always

6:40

loved running, so

6:42

I was never doing it because I was training for something

6:44

in particular. There

6:47

were, there have been times where I

6:49

routinized it in a way that

6:52

wasn't productive. I'm much more kind

6:55

of flexible with

6:57

it now. I just do it when I want to and have

7:00

tried to do that not in a dilettante

7:03

way, but in a happy way and with a

7:05

lot of areas in my life.

7:07

I just wanted to add one thing that I got very

7:09

much from reading Coco's book.

7:11

You can only optimize with respect

7:14

to things that can be measured and

7:16

put on a common scale. And

7:18

what that does is it forces you

7:21

to ignore, to put off screen

7:23

all kinds of effects that

7:25

are not easily quantified in the same

7:27

way as the things that you actually care about.

7:30

And so you do damage

7:32

outside your frame that's invisible

7:35

to you,

7:36

all while optimizing inside

7:38

your frame. And one of the things I took away,

7:40

at least from Coco's book, is her awareness,

7:42

growing awareness, that that's one

7:45

of the consequences of optimizing

7:47

is you destroy communities, you destroy

7:50

individual people's lives, and

7:52

none of those things get measured. So

7:54

to me, it's not just

7:57

that it puts the focus in the wrong

7:59

place. place, it's also a

8:01

deception.

8:03

The very idea is a deception.

8:05

And if we want to bash an economist a

8:07

bit more, right, the economist's response to

8:09

that is something's left out of the frame,

8:11

right, an externality or, you know,

8:13

just haven't incorporated it into the model,

8:15

we'll just

8:16

shove it in. Yeah. Yeah.

8:19

But you also have to be able to measure it in

8:21

a way that's commensurable with the other things

8:23

you're measuring. And even if you shove

8:26

it in, the measurement tools may

8:28

distort it so much that you can't

8:30

actually get what you're trying to get

8:32

with the measuring instrument that you're using.

8:35

I'd love to talk a little bit about what the costs

8:37

are of maximizing efficiency and optimizing

8:40

our lives. So, Barry, talk to us a

8:42

little bit about your maximizing, satisfying

8:44

research. Half a century ago, more

8:46

than half a century ago, Herb Simon,

8:49

psychologist economist,

8:51

made this distinction between maximizing

8:54

on the one hand and satisfying

8:57

a term he invented on the other.

9:00

Satisficing is looking for good enough,

9:02

maximizing is looking for the best. And

9:05

his argument was not that there was anything

9:07

sort of logically wrong with maximizing,

9:10

but that we simply didn't have the cognitive

9:12

resources to do it successfully.

9:15

It was asking too much of us. And

9:18

in a world where choice has proliferated

9:21

the way the modern world has, it's easy to see

9:23

how you'd spend your whole life looking for the best

9:26

cereal and starve to death. So

9:29

he said that's an inherent limitation

9:31

of all organisms. What isn't

9:33

impossible is to be looking

9:36

for good enough and able to

9:38

notice better when it happens

9:41

by accident. So you're

9:43

satisfied with cornflakes every morning,

9:45

and then you stay at a friend's house and they

9:47

don't have cornflakes, they have something else. You

9:50

have it and you say, oh, this is better than what I have.

9:53

And so now you've got a new good

9:55

enough cereal that's better than your old good

9:57

enough cereal. And over the course of a life,

9:59

you keep on escalating your

10:02

standards as you encounter

10:04

things that are better than the things that had

10:07

been good enough before. So

10:09

we created a scale to assess people

10:11

on this dimension and indeed

10:14

people differed. Some people are more

10:16

likely to think only the best will do

10:18

and others less likely. And

10:21

what we found in general

10:24

is that maximizers

10:26

do better and they feel

10:28

worse. They feel

10:30

worse about the process of choosing

10:33

and they feel worse about the thing they've actually

10:36

chosen. Because one of the things that happens

10:38

if you're a maximizer is that your standards

10:41

keep going up. And the question

10:43

you ask when you eat at a restaurant

10:45

is not was this a good restaurant

10:48

but was this as good as I expected it

10:50

to be? And if your standards are

10:53

very high, the answer to that question

10:55

is invariably going to be no. And

10:58

there's no room for pleasant surprises. Things

11:00

can't be better than you expect them to be because

11:02

you expect everything to be perfect. So

11:05

we found this with people who were looking for jobs,

11:08

college seniors, maximizers got higher

11:10

paying jobs and they were less

11:12

optimistic, more pessimistic,

11:14

more depressed, more anxious,

11:17

more stressed than the satisficers

11:20

who got worse jobs. So that leads

11:22

to the question, is it better to

11:24

do better objectively and worse

11:27

subjectively or to

11:29

do better subjectively and worse objectively?

11:33

And I think in general, how you feel

11:35

about your decisions is at least as

11:37

important as how good they are on

11:40

some objective scale. So that's what the

11:42

work on maximizing and satisfying

11:45

has been about.

11:46

What I read of the evidence that followed is

11:48

that high standards are less of a problem than

11:51

wide search. That it's not

11:53

so much wanting a great job that

11:55

then makes people miserable. It's the

11:57

idea that I've got to compare the job in front of

11:59

me. to not only all the other offers

12:02

I might get, but also every job that's ever existed

12:04

in human history. And if there's a possibility

12:07

that even one is worse, then I'm gonna

12:09

be miserable.

12:10

That's right. As long as you're looking for good

12:12

enough, and you're good enough

12:14

can be higher than my good enough.

12:16

But

12:17

when you're looking for good enough, as soon as you

12:19

encounter it, you can stop looking.

12:23

If you're looking for the best, you can

12:25

never stop looking.

12:27

And you're not only assessing how good

12:29

your thing is, but you're also looking at

12:31

the things your friends and acquaintances

12:34

have, in case maybe they're better than the

12:36

things that you have, or the job

12:38

that you have, or the romantic partner

12:40

that you have. So exhaustive

12:43

search is exhausting, and

12:45

it also is defeating. So

12:48

I think you're right. This is not an argument

12:50

for settling for mediocrity. It's

12:52

an argument for settling for

12:55

good.

12:55

I'm curious, Barry, if anecdotally you see

12:58

sort of the quotient of satisficers

13:01

and maximizers. Has

13:03

it been stable over time? Is it stable across

13:06

cultures? Is it stable in one individual? Or

13:09

do you see more maximizers as

13:11

we

13:12

go on with time? I don't really have

13:14

systematic evidence on that. We've

13:16

studied it in several different cultures, and

13:19

it doesn't look dramatically different. The one

13:21

interesting difference is that

13:24

in China, and this was not a representative

13:27

sample. This was university-educated,

13:29

city-dwelling Chinese

13:31

people. They were just as

13:34

likely to be maximizers, but they were

13:36

less disappointed by the results than

13:38

Americans. But I don't have systematic

13:41

evidence, and I certainly can't tell

13:43

you whether the trend has increased.

13:46

My sense is that the trend

13:48

has increased because it's almost

13:51

un-American to look for good

13:53

enough. The

13:55

word settle. Settle

13:58

is not a neutral descriptor. Descriptor

14:01

if somebody says he settling

14:04

that's a criticism.

14:06

And what is that is fighting

14:09

is settling. And

14:11

so it seems to me that the ideology

14:13

that we live it amidst is one

14:16

that keeps pushing us always

14:19

to reject low standards

14:21

whatever that might mean and demand

14:23

higher and higher standards in the things

14:25

we get the people we spend

14:28

our time with. But I don't really

14:30

have evidence

14:32

on that.

14:34

Cocoa I was curious to get your take since

14:36

you had mentioned that you were bothered

14:39

by the zeitgeist of optimizing I've

14:41

been teaching berries work on maximizers and satisficers

14:44

for the better part of two decades. And

14:46

whenever I share the findings that he just summarized

14:50

their knowing looks from students they

14:52

know this is a problem. But they

14:54

don't seem to do that much about

14:57

it so what why

14:59

is this idly is this such a zeitgeist

15:01

the idea why is it on American to

15:04

not maximize or not optimize.

15:07

I think it's fascinating even

15:09

how these sort of algorithmic

15:13

principles or ideas have just

15:15

percolated into our modern language

15:17

and in such a striking way. In

15:20

some ways it's a very old American

15:22

idea that we pull ourselves up by

15:24

our bootstraps right and where the result of our

15:27

work and we can go

15:29

from zero to infinity

15:32

and we're in fact even delusional in our beliefs

15:36

along those lines obviously and I

15:38

think that's led to some really wonderful

15:40

things but. Take

15:43

into an extreme it is making us miserable

15:46

if we believe that on every

15:49

access we should be. Seeking

15:52

the best and all of a sudden, as you

15:54

guys alluded to right we have this explosion

15:57

of options and sometimes

15:59

we don't. even know what the best

16:02

is. So we spend a lot of time and energy

16:04

trying to kind of search the social

16:06

space and to first define what the best

16:09

is and then to try to get there.

16:11

Do both of you think there's a danger of stopping

16:13

to search? I'm on board with the idea of saying

16:15

let's set the standard at what

16:17

we think is actually good or excellent depending

16:20

on how important the decision is. And

16:22

then you know as soon as we find an option that meets our standards

16:25

we'll accept it. Is there

16:27

a danger though of tunnel vision? If we don't maximize,

16:30

if we don't optimize, do we ever risk missing

16:32

out on the possibility that maybe our

16:34

standards were too low and we won't stumble across

16:37

the better option? I think this is

16:39

the nightmare scenario that maximizers

16:41

deal with a lot. Like no if I stop

16:43

my search it might be that the next job

16:46

or the next date could have

16:48

been dramatically better and I didn't even know

16:50

it was out there.

16:51

I'll just jump in there. There are some very

16:53

successful techniques and

16:56

in sort of algorithmic machine

16:58

learning around regret minimization

17:01

and I think we're all trying

17:03

to do this in certain ways when

17:05

we act as maximizers. That's

17:08

part of the driving desire

17:10

is to not miss out, to not regret things.

17:13

One kind of folk wisdom answer

17:15

I found is instead of trying

17:17

to minimize regret you just sort of rewrite

17:20

the story after the fact. When

17:22

you cohere or adhere to a

17:24

choice that you've made by retrospectively

17:28

writing the story that it was in fact the best

17:30

you're more satisfied

17:33

with that decision than if you continue

17:35

to question it.

17:37

So this is the don't make the right decision,

17:39

make the decision right advice.

17:41

But there's also Adam more

17:44

than one kind of tunnel vision

17:46

and you had one kind of thing

17:48

in mind which is you choose whatever

17:51

it is and then you sort of close your

17:53

eyes to the possibilities that something

17:55

better might turn up. The

17:57

other kind of tunnel vision one that worries you.

18:00

me more is that the amount of

18:02

energy and

18:04

focus it requires

18:07

to choose the best

18:09

blinds you to aspects

18:11

of the decision that might not have occurred

18:14

to you would matter. And so

18:16

you're less likely to stumble

18:18

onto things that are

18:21

surprising in how good they are.

18:24

I want to get both of your perspectives on other strategies

18:26

for getting the good without the bad because

18:28

the inevitable question when you hear

18:31

the objective subjective trade-off is, okay,

18:33

I want the success that comes from

18:36

high standards and I want the happiness

18:38

that comes from knowing when

18:40

to accept the option in front of me. So

18:43

what other techniques can you both recommend

18:45

to us?

18:46

I always get a little annoyed at this kind of question because

18:48

sometimes it's phrased in this kind of

18:50

overly like a sort of calculating

18:54

way, right? And

18:56

you're sort of optimizing the process of

19:00

finding optimal success

19:02

and happiness. I see it so

19:05

often we're optimizing the process

19:07

of slowing down or you know,

19:10

we're like, what's the optimal time

19:12

to listen to my 15 minute meditation

19:14

app so that I could be optimally

19:17

productive after I meditate?

19:19

Yeah, I hear that, Coco. There's a part of

19:21

me that says though, and I say this begrudgingly,

19:24

economists are right. There

19:27

is a limit to the number of hours we have in

19:29

the day. We have time

19:32

and attention are our scarcest resources. And

19:34

so if we don't ever try to optimize them,

19:36

we're going to waste them. Or you'll waste them

19:38

searching for the thing that will

19:41

protect you from wasting.

19:43

So how often do you settle down

19:45

on a Friday night to just relax watching

19:47

a movie and you go

19:49

to Netflix and two hours later,

19:51

you turn off the TV

19:53

and glumly go upstairs, having

19:56

seen no movie because you spend

19:59

two hours trying to. decide which movie

20:01

to see.

20:02

So economists talk about opportunity

20:04

cost, and

20:06

every second you spend searching

20:08

is a second you are not spending experiencing

20:12

the thing that you might have chosen

20:15

with a more limited search. If you

20:18

devote all your energy to search, you don't

20:20

have the time or energy left to

20:22

build.

20:23

I think Adam's question is a good

20:26

one, despite my knee-jerk

20:28

reaction, right? If I can rephrase it

20:30

a little bit, it's how do we balance

20:32

between sort of drifting aimlessly

20:35

through life and overly

20:38

focusing on one specific goal.

20:41

And for me, it's involved

20:44

sort of increasingly

20:47

adhering or cohering

20:49

to what I've known and in some ways

20:51

are sort of my true values and principles

20:53

and hopes and dreams

20:55

and desires. I

20:57

think this goes to a few of the practical

20:59

strategies that I've found helpful

21:01

and also have some grounding and evidence. So I wanted

21:04

to put a few on the table and get either or both

21:06

of you to react to them. And this

21:09

segment is really for the recoverings

21:11

or not yet recovered maximizers

21:13

and optimizers who are with us. So,

21:17

Barry, you advised that we should choose when to

21:19

choose. And I remember when I first read that

21:21

advice, I thought, okay, I should

21:23

maximize more on important decisions

21:26

and less on trivial decisions. So

21:28

choosing which college, which job, which

21:31

partner, a little more sensible to

21:33

maximize than which restaurant or which

21:35

Netflix show. And then

21:38

over time, I've started to add to that equation

21:40

also, not just how much

21:42

does the decision matter, but also,

21:44

do the options really differ

21:46

objectively, or only subjectively?

21:49

This does seem un-American, because it seems

21:52

like you're giving away some of your autonomy.

21:54

You need a new phone, a new cell phone,

21:57

and your friend recently got one. And

22:00

you can just call your friend

22:02

and say what you get how do you like

22:04

it. Now is there a better

22:07

cell phone out there possibly

22:10

maybe even probably does it

22:12

matter almost certainly no.

22:15

So there's a kind of sense in which you

22:17

delegate decisions to other people.

22:20

Can you become the expert in one thing

22:22

and somebody else is the expert in some other

22:24

thing and get the second point

22:26

you make which i encountered as

22:28

what's called the principal of the flat

22:31

maximum. Which is once you

22:33

are in a region of excellence

22:36

the differences among options are

22:38

either non existent or

22:41

non discoverable you know. Is

22:44

i there's a there's a cartoon that i show

22:47

and i give talks of a young woman with

22:49

a sweatshirt that says brown and

22:51

big letters. What my first

22:53

choice was yale in smaller

22:55

letters now if you go to brown

22:58

with that sentence in your head you're

23:00

not gonna get as much out of brown

23:02

as you otherwise would because everyday

23:04

you'll be thinking life would be better at

23:07

yale. Are there differences between

23:09

brown and yale of course there are are

23:11

there differences that you can know about in advance

23:13

almost certainly not. And a lot

23:15

of those differences are going to be the result of happenstance

23:18

who your roommate is in your freshman year

23:21

who happens to be teaching bio one when

23:23

you take stuff like that. So

23:26

you're already in the region of

23:28

unimaginable excellence and

23:31

there's no reason to drive yourself crazy

23:33

about this deciding which of

23:35

these incredibly excellent. Play

23:37

this is the place that you should be spending the next

23:40

four years but it's hard if

23:42

this is a i don't know what your experience

23:44

has been i find it impossible

23:47

to convince young people that what i just

23:50

said is true.

23:51

I wanted to try to talk to the editorial

23:53

side about like these.

23:58

Somebody called it sort of like math. customization

24:01

that I think is

24:03

increasingly sort of a trend or

24:05

aimed at the millennial generation where

24:07

you are made to feel that

24:10

your choice you're given these this limited

24:13

set of options right and

24:15

that you could customize and in a certain

24:17

way whether it's with room decor or a

24:20

meal somewhere an outfit and you're

24:24

allowed to feel that that's special because you've

24:26

sort of chosen it even if it's from this

24:29

this limited menu of option I'm curious what you guys

24:32

think about that. I think it's an invitation

24:35

to make things worse

24:38

the more you give people the opportunity

24:40

to customize the less reason people

24:42

ever have to be satisfied

24:45

with good enough since they can make

24:47

it better and if you allow them to customize

24:50

on five dimensions they'll be asking

24:52

why couldn't I customize on the sixth dimension

24:55

also and I had this incredible experience

24:58

I gave a talk once and there was a guy taking

25:00

photographs of the event and

25:02

he was listening to my talk while I was shooting

25:05

and afterwards he came up to me and he said you

25:07

know I make most of my living by

25:10

doing weddings and other big deal

25:12

affairs and I switched from

25:16

film to digital because

25:18

that way I could give my clients

25:20

so many more options to choose

25:22

from because it's free

25:25

basically to just keep snapping digital

25:27

photos and he said and

25:29

what happened was

25:32

nobody ever made a wedding

25:35

album and you've explained

25:37

to me why because they couldn't decide

25:39

which 40 pictures to put in from

25:41

the 4,000 that I sent them he

25:43

was going broke because he wasn't making

25:46

any money selling wedding albums

25:48

to his clients but he'd given them too

25:50

many essentially equivalent options

25:53

to choose from

25:54

you're a satisfying purist it sounds

25:56

like

25:56

I well I guess

25:59

Coco, where did you come down?

26:01

Like Barry, I'm sympathetic to that view

26:04

that it's a false solution. I think

26:06

in the short term, it might be as it's sort of band-aid,

26:09

right? It's not solving anything,

26:12

but I think there

26:14

is a certain slice

26:16

of the younger generations that really

26:19

feels adrift

26:21

and miserable and not

26:24

sure why. And I

26:27

think if there are

26:29

these mass customization,

26:32

it's maybe a trivial example, but these

26:35

sort of guard rails placed

26:37

on overthinking and rumination,

26:41

that's maybe a healthy thing in the short term. I

26:44

do think it's a band-aid because ultimately

26:47

that's not going

26:49

to solve where we're sort of

26:51

at culturally in terms

26:54

of like, how do we make good

26:56

choices that derive from our values

26:58

rather than this weird algorithmic

27:02

thing modeled after computers, but not

27:04

that's just making us unhappy.

27:06

Yeah, well, I think that maybe is a

27:08

good segue to a couple other individual strategies.

27:10

And I want to come back to some other collective steps

27:13

we might be able to take that could move

27:15

the needle, since you're both a little skeptical of mass

27:17

customization. I'm fascinated

27:19

by the evidence in decision-making research that we're

27:22

often better at giving advice to others than

27:24

we are at making choices for ourselves. And

27:27

my read of the evidence on that is that basically

27:29

when you choose for yourself, you're more likely to

27:31

consider all the different criteria that matter

27:34

and all the different possible options. Whereas

27:37

when you advise other people, you zoom out, you

27:39

focus on just the couple

27:41

of most promising options and the few

27:43

most important criteria. And that

27:45

brings wisdom. Curious

27:47

to hear both of your takes on the idea of saying,

27:50

instead of trying to make this choice for myself, let me

27:52

find somebody else who's grappling

27:54

with a similar dilemma, or even

27:56

have them play my role and talk them through

27:58

what I think they should do. And maybe that

28:00

helps me see the bigger picture.

28:02

This seems extremely plausible

28:04

to me because, you

28:06

know, you edit the advice

28:08

you give to other people in a way that

28:11

you don't edit the self-talk.

28:14

But the trick, it seems to me, is

28:16

to convince yourself

28:17

that

28:18

you're like this other person. This

28:21

other person is less discerning

28:23

than you are. So this other

28:25

person won't care about all these other

28:28

things, but damn it, you do.

28:31

It's one thing to

28:33

give another person advice, and

28:35

then it's another thing to take the advice that

28:37

you've just given to this

28:39

other person and apply it to yourself. And

28:42

let me just say one other thing about

28:44

the important decisions versus the unimportant

28:47

ones that you made a few minutes ago,

28:50

Adam. We've done some research

28:52

that shows that

28:54

when the set of options is

28:57

large, even trivial

28:59

decisions become important

29:02

because people think that

29:04

these are decisions that are reflections

29:07

of who they are. So

29:09

what Coco was saying about being true to

29:11

your values, when there are two kinds

29:13

of genes, the genes you buy are

29:16

irrelevant to your values. When

29:18

there are 2,000 kinds of genes,

29:20

the genes you buy are a statement to

29:22

the world about your values. And

29:25

if you follow Adam's advice and

29:27

have very high standards for the really

29:30

important things, well, everything

29:32

becomes a really important thing. So

29:35

that turns out to be not

29:37

terribly helpful

29:39

because we care a lot

29:41

about the self that we present to the world.

29:44

And if every decision is information

29:47

about you as a self, as

29:49

an identity, then every decision

29:51

is an important decision.

29:53

And we have good evidence that that happens.

29:56

I disagree that it has to be that way. I believe

29:59

your evidence, but I I think most people

30:01

have the maturity to take

30:03

a step back and say, all right, the

30:06

consequences of the identity signal I

30:08

send by the genes I buy may be

30:11

less important than the choices

30:13

I make about how I treat other people. And

30:15

so I'm going to focus on the higher stakes,

30:18

more consequential self-expression

30:20

opportunities. Maybe.

30:22

How interesting, right? That a

30:24

sign of our decadence that these

30:27

things even, I mean, you both use the word identity,

30:30

right? What a recent phenomenon

30:33

that any material

30:35

thing is intrinsically

30:37

tied to

30:39

who we are.

30:40

That's something that didn't exist 50 or 100

30:43

years ago, even.

30:45

No, no. Who you were was essentially

30:47

something you inherited.

30:49

You know, you were a particular nationality,

30:51

a particular ethnicity, a particular

30:54

race, a particular religion.

30:56

And you might spend the rest of your

30:58

life trying to free yourself

31:00

from all of that. But it was an inherited

31:03

set of characteristics. Now it

31:05

is an acquired set of characteristics.

31:08

And what's good about that is you're free to invent

31:10

yourself. And what's bad about that is

31:12

that you're free to invent yourself. I love

31:15

that.

31:17

Okay. One other strategy that I want

31:19

to get to is the idea of making

31:21

your decisions irreversible. And

31:23

Barry, I learned about this one from you. And then

31:26

not too long ago, I read a Rebecca Shiner paper

31:28

showing that maximizers pick

31:31

reversible decisions because

31:33

they're always worried that they might have made the wrong

31:35

choice and they want to get the redo if they can.

31:38

Satisficers opt for irreversible

31:41

choices, knowing that they don't want to spend their

31:43

whole lives second guessing. That

31:45

I have ordered soup instead of the salad,

31:48

and then everything could have been different. But

31:50

there were some extreme maximizers in the sample

31:53

who opted for the irreversible decisions

31:55

as a forcing mechanism.

31:58

Is that what more of us should be doing? Imagine

32:00

there are two boutiques side by side

32:03

and they carry very similar merchandise

32:06

and one of them has a very liberal

32:08

return policy and one of them

32:11

has a draconian one. What

32:13

human being would shop in the store

32:16

that won't let you return stuff.

32:18

So

32:19

again i think this is extremely good advice

32:22

and advice that is almost impossible

32:25

to follow. And maybe with this

32:27

extreme maximize your thing people have

32:29

learned enough about how tortured they are

32:31

by decisions that you're right they're binding

32:34

themselves to the mass. More

32:36

power to them that they have developed

32:38

the insight to know that this is actually a helpful

32:41

thing for them to do i don't see

32:43

mass producing this for general

32:46

consumption. Well

32:47

this is i mean this is so interesting

32:50

to me cocoa because there's

32:52

a theme that's bubbling up here which is a

32:54

lot of the individual solutions that make

32:56

sense in principle are hard for people to practice.

33:00

And i

33:01

think you are a clear exception to

33:03

this trend i know you you move to

33:05

a remote island and you

33:07

live in a cabin.

33:09

Yeah i mean it sounds more exotic

33:12

than it maybe is earlier i said

33:14

i was a recovering optimizer and i didn't

33:16

really have a great example but what comes

33:18

to mind now is very talked about

33:20

the small decisions and the big ones

33:23

i've always been good at the

33:25

big one i had this internal drive in

33:27

the sense. The small ones Oh,

33:29

my goodness, you ask anybody who knew me back

33:31

in the day I would just get hung up on these things

33:34

until I learned. That

33:36

in our decadent rich world these

33:38

small choices, they are reversible it's an extreme

33:41

privilege and one you know my

33:43

parents may not have had and I don't know if our

33:45

children will all have but given

33:47

we're living in that world or. Maybe

33:50

we shouldn't sweat the small decisions

33:52

and it's okay to have fun trying to

33:54

maximize those or use the return policy

33:56

liberally I think one thing you learn

33:58

as you start making larger. decisions

34:00

in life and irreversible decisions

34:04

is that there is a growth and a joy

34:06

in making those

34:08

decisions that are irreversible. And

34:11

it's not something that was apparent

34:13

to me when I was young. But the more

34:16

I make them, the more happy

34:18

I am with their irreversibility. It's just sort

34:20

of the way things are. And that's

34:22

wonderful. That's the beauty of life. We only have this

34:25

one shot.

34:26

And it forces you to try to

34:28

cultivate that one shot that

34:31

you've taken to turn it

34:33

into the best version of itself

34:35

that you can. So this goes back

34:37

to the distinction I was making before between

34:40

the problem is the search versus

34:43

the problem is what you do with after

34:45

having conducted the search. The

34:47

thing about non-reversible decisions

34:50

is you're stuck. And the question you ask

34:52

is, how can I make the best of the life situation

34:55

that I'm currently in? What kind of work

34:57

can I do to make this a good

35:00

state of affairs rather than a disappointing

35:02

state of affairs? And with a lot of things

35:05

like the work we do and

35:07

the romantic partnerships we

35:09

make, it really is in the

35:11

work that you put in

35:14

rather than in the selection that

35:16

you make.

35:17

I do think there's

35:19

a feeling that the consequences

35:22

of making a quote unquote wrong decision

35:24

in maybe my

35:27

and Adam's generation or

35:29

even the next generation are

35:33

far more significant than, for example, in

35:35

yours, Barry. And I'm curious

35:37

what you both

35:39

think about that. I think you're right.

35:41

I think that, again, to some degree

35:43

as a result of social media, to some degree

35:46

a point you made earlier, Coco, because

35:48

it's so easy to compare what you're doing

35:50

to what everyone else on the planet is doing.

35:54

The stakes of all these decisions we make

35:56

seem higher and bad

35:59

decisions seem much

35:59

more consequential.

36:01

When there was less freedom

36:03

of choice and when there was

36:06

less affluence, making

36:08

the best of a bad situation was sort

36:10

of standard operating procedure. That's

36:12

how people live their lives. And

36:15

no one wants to live their life

36:17

that way now in rich countries.

36:19

So I think it is worse. I

36:22

had an easier time than

36:25

you do. My children

36:28

had an easier time than their

36:31

children

36:32

and whether there's some way to steer

36:36

the ocean liner in a different direction,

36:38

I don't know, but certainly the direction

36:41

it has been going in is

36:43

one that sort of makes it a bigger problem

36:46

for each generation than it was for the generation

36:49

before.

36:54

We were poor. I was raised

36:56

by my mom as a single parent with my sister

36:58

and my grandparents were very very very close. So

37:01

there was a lot of love in the home. Meet

37:04

Brian Reeves. His family dreamed

37:06

of giving him a chance at a better life.

37:08

Eventually they saved up enough money for

37:11

private school. So in seventh grade

37:13

they sent him to a school across town in the Hollywood

37:15

Hills. Brian was the only

37:17

black student in his class and he had

37:19

to take a two-hour bus ride to get there.

37:22

It was surreal words

37:24

I would use now because number one, you know,

37:26

as you're riding the bus, Adam, through

37:28

the the various neighborhoods of Los Angeles

37:31

you just saw the world much differently. The regular

37:33

people jump on and off of buses every

37:35

day and then as you got a lot closer

37:38

to Hollywood the people that were jumping on and off the

37:40

bus looked a lot different.

37:42

Brian relied on wisdom from his grandmother

37:45

who

37:45

is affectionately known as Big Mama.

37:47

Big Mama was small in stature but she was

37:49

huge in wisdom. One of her

37:52

famous sayings, which I didn't understand at

37:54

the time but I became to understand it,

37:56

is color is one sense

37:58

away from being not a person. essential,

38:01

basically meaning if we all

38:03

were blind and we didn't have the sense of sight, you

38:05

know, you wouldn't be able to tell if somebody was black

38:08

or white or brown. Brian

38:11

studied computer science and built a successful

38:13

career as a software engineer. A

38:15

few years ago, as a senior product and

38:17

innovation executive, he made a pivot.

38:20

I had the great privilege to be

38:22

UKG's first belonging diversity and

38:24

equity officer. I still think of

38:26

myself as an engineer. I'm just now focused on

38:28

a much more complex business problem.

38:31

Psychologists find that belonging is a fundamental

38:33

human motive.

38:35

So I love that it's in Brian's title. We

38:37

start with belonging. You know, quite honestly, I don't

38:39

think you can have inclusion without belonging. And

38:42

it's so important. I mean, you know, there are ways to measure

38:44

diversity, ways to measure equity,

38:46

but in the end, if someone feels as though they belong,

38:49

that is the most important thing.

38:51

Brian believes a major goal of his work is

38:53

to help others move from awareness to advocacy.

38:57

But as he points out, this

38:58

requires us to expand our circles

39:00

of concern. The only way you can move to advocacy

39:03

is by having empathy for different

39:05

sets of people, for folks that aren't like you.

39:07

So out of every bad thing that's

39:09

happened in life and in society,

39:12

there's always some good things that happen. And I'm hoping

39:14

that our belief and you know

39:16

that we're all in the same boat about this one, we

39:19

have greater empathy and the will to have

39:21

everyone thrive.

39:23

Brian understands that our professional lives

39:25

and personal beliefs don't have to be

39:27

separate pursuits. For him,

39:30

this work will be his legacy.

39:33

This is the business problem of a lifetime

39:36

for us. It's been long enough folks, let's

39:38

get it done. And for me, this is my

39:40

contribution to the dreams

39:42

of people like Martin Luther King and many others,

39:44

which is a society where you will

39:47

have equity of representation, you're going to have

39:49

equity of opportunity, you're going to have equity

39:51

of compensation, equity of well being. These

39:54

things are important and that will be

39:56

my legacy.

39:57

It's a legacy that would make Big Mama

39:59

proud.

39:59

She'd be about bringing people together

40:02

and leaning into difference as a strength. Just

40:04

because someone doesn't look like you doesn't mean that

40:07

they won't be nice to you and they can't be your friend

40:09

and vice versa. Just because someone does look

40:11

like you doesn't mean they're automatically your friend.

40:14

For all the investments that my family has made

40:16

into me, I feel as though this is how

40:18

I give back to them. So I

40:21

hope I'm making them proud.

40:23

No matter who they are or what job they do,

40:25

your employees deserve to feel supported.

40:28

That's why UKG gives you all the necessary

40:30

tools to help them thrive. Learn

40:33

more by visiting UKG.com.

40:39

I want to ask a few lightning round questions. You ready?

40:42

What's the worst piece of advice you've ever gotten? I was

40:44

advised that I was too young to

40:46

make a lifelong commitment to a romantic

40:49

partner. I did not take that advice.

40:51

I've now been married for 56 years.

40:54

I was advised that moving to a small community

40:56

would mean isolation, the end

40:59

of an intellectual life

41:02

and doom and gloom. And

41:04

none of those things have actually

41:06

found just the opposite.

41:08

Next question. What's a book you would recommend?

41:11

I loved a book I read about

41:14

a year ago called

41:16

When We Cease to Understand the World. It's

41:19

by Ben-Hamin Lababut and

41:22

it won all kinds of awards. The

41:25

reason I liked it is that it's this miraculous

41:29

blend of fiction and nonfiction delving

41:32

into some of the early 20th

41:34

century's mathematicians and philosophers

41:37

and exploring kind of how an idea comes

41:39

about.

41:40

The Great Transformation by

41:43

Karl Polanyi changed the way I think

41:46

about the world.

41:47

An excellent segue to my next question. What's

41:50

something you've recently rethought?

41:52

Efficiency. The pandemic

41:54

taught me that the price we

41:56

pay for an excessive focus on efficiency

41:58

is Resilience and robustness.

42:02

I examples far more trivial,

42:04

but it's goat cheese I've

42:07

never really gate gave goat cheese a chance Few

42:12

years ago, I decided I was uncivilized

42:15

to not like it. So I've been Slowly

42:17

bringing it into my life.

42:20

All right, and then finally what's the question you

42:22

have for me?

42:23

How the hell do you manage to do all the

42:25

things you do? I?

42:27

Don't have a real job

42:30

I

42:31

Didn't think I had a real job

42:33

either, but I can't get as much done as

42:36

you do. I

42:37

Constantly feel unproductive.

42:39

This question is very hard for me to answer I think

42:42

maybe I set unreasonable goals for how

42:44

much I'll accomplish

42:46

if you weren't doing What you're doing

42:48

or? anything Adjacent

42:52

What would you be doing? I

42:54

really can't imagine Doing

42:56

something else but there are days

42:58

when I miss being a diving coach. I

43:00

think that would be a lot of fun All right

43:03

back to a couple other things. I wanted to make sure we talked about so

43:06

We've talked about some sensible but difficult to

43:08

implement strategies for individuals to

43:11

avoid excessive maximizing and optimized

43:14

Let's talk about what larger society

43:16

can do schools workplaces communities

43:20

Where would you land? What are the big changes we should make?

43:22

I always get really shy when it comes to

43:25

prescriptive Recommendations

43:27

because I don't feel remotely qualified

43:30

to begin to suggest them so

43:33

instead of recommendations, they'll

43:37

List some observations that I think are interesting

43:40

I think it's interesting that

43:43

we see Increasingly

43:46

these trends towards

43:48

the more local towards Community

43:51

and a certain Turning

43:55

inward in various ways basically

43:58

I'd say since very became most notable at

44:00

the beginning of the pandemic. And I think

44:02

to the extent that communities can

44:08

work with that trend, it

44:10

will be exciting, right? Here, just

44:13

in this little community, I see just this

44:16

amazing involvement in like local institutions,

44:19

right? Like local agriculture,

44:21

the library, the centers

44:24

that help distribute food to people

44:26

who need it, emergency preparedness, people

44:29

volunteering for EMS and

44:32

fire services. So kind

44:34

of leaning into that, whether it's in a rural

44:36

place like this or in a big city, to me,

44:38

that's exciting.

44:40

We all need to figure out

44:42

what kind of a fishbowl

44:45

people can live in effectively

44:49

so that there are constraints on

44:52

what people have available and what

44:54

they can do. But the constraints

44:56

are not so limiting and so imposing

44:59

that people feel like they can't possibly

45:01

carve a meaningful and satisfying

45:04

life out within those constraints.

45:07

The mistake we've made collectively

45:09

is to think that the fishbowl is the enemy

45:12

of freedom and possibility. Some

45:15

fishbowl is needed and the challenge

45:17

is to figure out what it has to contain.

45:20

Bear, you proposed that as

45:22

a radical way to solve some of these

45:24

problems in college admissions that

45:27

we should just set a standard for

45:29

what it takes to be considered for acceptance to the

45:31

school. Each school can have their own criteria

45:34

and then we should just run a lottery

45:37

and accept whatever students win the lottery. Whenever

45:40

people hear this idea, they think you're mad.

45:42

I don't think you're crazy.

45:44

Explain it. Not only do I think

45:46

I'm crazy, I think that is the alternative,

45:48

the current practice is what's crazy. Here's

45:51

the point. Stanford rejects 96%

45:56

of the people who apply.

45:58

Now, what percentage?

45:59

of the people who apply to Stanford,

46:02

do you think would be a successful

46:05

Stanford students? A

46:07

third? Fifty percent? Oh, certainly

46:09

more than a third, because everyone

46:11

knows how damn hard it is to get into Stanford.

46:14

So chances are pretty good at least half,

46:17

and I would bet even higher than that.

46:20

How much difference do you think

46:22

there is among the various people who

46:24

apply to Stanford? They're all outstanding

46:26

students. So

46:29

if you just made a binary

46:31

decision,

46:32

this person will be successful at

46:34

Stanford, that one won't.

46:37

And put all the people you think will be successful

46:40

into a hat and then pick them at random,

46:42

you'll end up with just as

46:44

good a class as you end

46:47

up with current practices.

46:50

And this is the most important part,

46:52

kids will not completely distort

46:55

their lives in high school so that

46:57

they can get into Stanford, because

47:00

it won't help. You just need

47:02

to be good enough and lucky.

47:05

So you can actually cultivate the things

47:07

you're interested in, like diving, instead

47:10

of always looking to your left and to your

47:12

right and asking how can I be an

47:15

IOTA better than my best friends. So

47:18

I don't understand why this isn't

47:21

obviously the right way to do it.

47:23

It sounds un-American

47:24

to me. It

47:27

is completely un-American and people

47:29

hate the idea that

47:31

important things in life happen by

47:33

chance. But

47:35

they do anyway. You

47:38

think? If you understand how

47:40

much of our path in life

47:43

is the result of happenstance,

47:46

you may be a little bit more sympathetic

47:50

to the life paths of other people

47:52

who are less successful than you. They're

47:54

not less deserving than

47:57

you. They're not less talented

47:59

than you. They're just less

48:01

lucky than you. I think

48:03

there's an enormous benefit that

48:05

accrues to Acknowledging the role

48:08

of luck in our lives and

48:10

that is also completely un-american

48:13

Okay, what do you think of this idea?

48:15

Oh, I think it's fantastic in theory. It'll never

48:17

happen No

48:19

offense very

48:20

well, I think the Supreme Court decision

48:23

may push for a radical

48:26

rethinking of admissions So,

48:28

you know now that affirmative action is not

48:31

implementable Except

48:33

in devious ways it may open

48:35

up the way people think about admissions

48:38

more broadly than otherwise They

48:40

it would have and so I agree

48:42

with you It's extremely unlikely that anyone

48:45

will do this, but I no longer think

48:47

it's impossible

48:48

I do think there are some more modest experiments

48:50

that we could try. So one would be I would

48:53

ask colleges Just just

48:55

only take two extracurriculars Don't

48:57

allow students to submit more and that will

49:00

at least Scale back

49:02

the arms race a little bit that's happening currently another

49:05

thought is what if colleges ran

49:08

admissions like medical residency

49:10

matching where I ranked my schools

49:12

and Then I only get into

49:15

the highest one on my list that will take

49:17

me

49:18

and then I never have to wonder about all the

49:20

others Well, I I mean, I think

49:22

those are half measures, but half measures

49:24

are better than no measures

49:26

My secret hope is the bottom will fall

49:29

out on the whole the whole College

49:32

I won't call it a scam. I'm

49:34

certainly a beneficiary of inflated

49:37

external view of what these credentials

49:41

signify, but I think the whole

49:43

thing is due for a restructuring

49:46

in terms of how we're educating

49:49

people and You know what?

49:52

skills, they're actually learning that That

49:54

are

49:55

good for society rather than simply good for

49:58

reaching

49:59

the next rung on the ladder. I

50:02

want

50:03

the American college system to be

50:05

totally thrown in the trash and recycled

50:08

and reinvented. I mean,

50:11

why are so many kids going to college and getting

50:13

into enormous debt in the first place? Where

50:16

are trade schools when we need people

50:18

in the trades and there are huge shortages there? Where

50:21

is the encouragement to strike out

50:24

and figure out a path from scratch rather than

50:26

following this formula of like, I'm going to fill

50:28

out these admission bubbles simply

50:31

because that's what my high

50:33

school guidance counselor told me to do.

50:36

So that would be my radical proposal.

50:41

Well, we've clearly solved no

50:43

problems in the world, but hopefully we've left

50:45

everybody confused with

50:48

a greater degree of complexity than

50:50

they had before. And I

50:52

just want to thank you both for joining.

50:57

I think my biggest takeaway here is that

50:59

the more you struggle with a choice, the

51:01

more likely it is that there is not

51:04

a right choice. So

51:06

instead of agonizing over whether you've

51:08

made the best decision, it's probably

51:11

worth taking an option and

51:13

then trying to turn it into a good decision.

51:21

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant,

51:23

and produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our

51:25

team includes Colin Helm, Eliza Smith, Jacob

51:28

Winnick, Asia Simpson, Tamiah Adams,

51:30

Michelle Quinn, Ben Van Teng, Hannah

51:32

Kingsley Moss, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney

51:34

Pennington-Rodgers. This episode was produced

51:36

and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our fact checker

51:39

is Paul Durbin, original music by Hans

51:41

Delsoo and Allison Leighton-Brown.

51:48

This has been great fun and not at

51:50

all optimal.

51:53

Thank

51:53

you, Adam. Felt pretty optimal

51:55

to me, Adam.

51:58

I just want to emphasize various jokes. because I don't think

52:01

in case we missed it,

52:03

right? I thought that was a joke, right? It's what a satisficer

52:06

would say.

52:07

Of course, just as it should be. It

52:11

was perfect. Right over my head. A

52:15

satisficer's language for optimizing.

52:18

Hilarious. Well done. Thank

52:20

you both.

52:21

Special thanks to our sponsors, UKG

52:24

and Destination Canada. applies

52:27

to during the disaster. We have

52:28

an independent system. We can customize

52:30

the landscape.