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Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalHow To Build Career Success - Behavioural Scientist Dr Grace Lordan
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Behavioural Scientist Grace Lordan on Building Career Success Through Small Steps
- Dr Grace Lordan argues people should define a future 'Me+' by the day-to-day tasks they would enjoy rather than by job titles or lifestyle, and commit to about 90 minutes a week of small actions that compound.
- She says goals work as a direction of travel rather than a contract: reviewing weekly and deliberately changing your mind is healthy, while sunk-cost thinking and emotion-driven reversals are not.
- Lordan explains internal barriers such as locus of control, anticipated failure, loss aversion and gender and ethnic differences in risk aversion, noting that people underestimate their resilience.
- She offers practical tactics for procrastination, to-do lists, weekly reviews, the affect heuristic and environment design, such as lowering the cost of starting, bundling tasks with treats, and removing email from phones.
- Both Lordan and Ali Abdaal stress that behavioural science evidence is context-dependent, so listeners should experiment on themselves, and Lordan notes the money-happiness research ignores hours worked and the life course.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasFocus on tasks, not titles or lifestyles
Lordan says people often attach to a label like doctor or trader, but should ask what they would do day to day and whether they would enjoy it, since enjoying tasks makes people both happier and more successful.
Small consistent actions compound
She asks for a commitment of 90 minutes a week and likens it to compounding in pensions, arguing that trying to reinvent yourself in 30 days is less likely to stick than steady small steps.
Goals give direction, and changing your mind should be deliberate
Lordan says a destination gives certainty while moving and lets you discover what you like, but you should change course only after deliberately reviewing costs and benefits rather than from fear, loss aversion or reflex.
We underestimate our resilience to failure
Anticipating failure can feel worse than experiencing it, and people rebound well. She recommends post-mortems that separate what you controlled from luck, learning from failure without dwelling on it.
Risk aversion differences are shaped by early rejection experiences
Lordan theorises that men's earlier exposure to rejection, such as asking people on dates, and to competitive sport builds resilience. She notes that transparency such as pay gap reporting helps counter the effects.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesThe one thing about human beings is that we're really good actually at rebounding. So when we go through negative experience and, and we allow ourselves to go through negative experiences, we realize actually it's not as bad as I thought.
— Dr. Grace Lordan
You can accomplish an extraordinary amount in 12 months, very little in, you know, 12 minutes or, you know, a, a, a very short period of time.
— Dr. Grace Lordan
I think one of the problems in society today is that we think that good citizens, good leaders, should never change their mind.
— Dr. Grace Lordan
Because when you're navigating through uncertainty, you're gonna get it wrong sometimes, and that's okay. But it's the deliberate part.
— Dr. Grace Lordan
The only person who knows me is me, so I'm gonna experiment with her idea, and if it doesn't work, I'm going to throw it out.
— Dr. Grace Lordan
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SPEAKERS
Dr. Grace Lordan
guestBehavioral scientist and Associate Professor at the London School of Economics focused on applying behavioral science to careers and workplace outcomes.
Ali Abdaal
hostHost of Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, interviewer and productivity-focused creator who speaks with guests about strategies and tools for career and life.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
