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Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

How To Build Career Success - Behavioural Scientist Dr Grace Lordan

In the conversation Ali takes a deep dive into Grace's book covering tonnes of behavioural science concepts including how our emotions influence decision making, the relationship between gender and risk aversion and why we procrastinate…

Dr. Grace LordanguestAli Abdaalhost

Nov 1, 20211h 27mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Government Skills Board and Behavioral Science in Economics
After the intro, Ali asks Grace about her role on the government advisory body for productivity and skills and how she got it. She explains how behavioral science extends economics to understand real decision-making and the intent-to-action gap.
- •The board advises on delivering future skills and lifelong education in the UK
- •The role came through an open competition; the six-person committee includes mostly traditional economists
- •Behavioral science tweaks the economic model to describe how people actually decide
- •The intent-to-action gap is why people say they'll do things but often don't
Finding Your Me+: Focus on Tasks, Not Labels
Grace explains the Me+ concept: picturing where you'd be if it all worked out, but looking at the day-to-day tasks rather than a job title or lifestyle. They discuss values versus microculture and what to ask in interviews.
- •Me+ is the future self you'd aim for if you set aside loss aversion and fear of failure
- •People often get attached to labels or lifestyles instead of the tasks involved
- •Enjoying your tasks makes you both happier and more successful
- •Asking what a typical Monday looks like helps assess a job and a manager
Small Steps, Consistency and Compounding
Ali shares how the Me+ idea changed his approach to exercise, and they discuss process over outcome. Grace argues small actions compound, citing her 90-minutes-a-week ask.
- •Ali reframed his goal as enjoying daily exercise rather than getting six-pack abs
- •Doing too much at once is the worst thing for someone who hasn't invested for a while
- •Small actions today determine where you are in a few years
- •Grace compares career investment to compounding and asks for 90 minutes a week
Setting Goals as Direction, and Moving Before You Know
Ali questions whether big goals are overrated; Grace says goals give direction and define the week's tasks, while staying open to pivoting. They discuss picking a direction when you're unsure and using a grid-search approach.
- •Goals help define this week's tasks and bring your future self forward
- •A weekly Sunday reflection lets you pivot as new opportunities arise
- •Ali's drive-thru analogy: a destination sets the direction of the journey
- •It's easier to change direction when moving, and you learn what you like and dislike
- •Grace likens this to a grid search with openness to changing course
Figuring Out What You Want: Time Audits and Job Crafting
After the sponsor break, Ali asks how to work out what to do when you have no idea. Grace recommends focusing on activities, using cheap or free learning, doing time audits, and job crafting.
- •Start from activities you'd like to do and build skills toward them
- •Avoid committing to an expensive degree if you're unsure what you want
- •Time audits mark whether activities gave purpose or fun
- •Job crafting removes activities that offer neither
- •Grace marks her calendar rather than journaling
Changing Your Mind Deliberately: Sunk Costs and Leadership
Ali describes publicly announcing a move to America and then changing course, and asks about sticking to goals. Grace discusses sunk costs, deliberate decision-making, and why society distrusts leaders who U-turn.
- •Changing your mind is fine if you reviewed your options deliberately
- •Emotions like fear of failure or loss aversion can distort a decision
- •Grace says leaders should be able to say 'I don't know', 'I got it wrong' and 'I've changed my mind'
- •Uncertainty and status quo bias explain why U-turns are seen as weakness
Long-Term Exercises and Enjoying Your Working Day
Ali describes the Odyssey Plan and asks what exercises Grace recommends. She returns to the day-to-day tasks of a career, noting glamorized jobs like law, and aims for most work time to feel enjoyable.
- •Ali's Odyssey Plan imagines five-year futures on different paths
- •Grace says to look at the real tasks of an occupation, not its glamorized image
- •Ask how you'd spend a Monday or Tuesday morning in ten years
- •The goal is for about 70% of work time not to feel painful
How Behavioral Science Research Works
Ali asks how we know self-help-style claims are legit. Grace explains that behavioral science draws on several disciplines, focuses on causality, and that lab findings often fail to replicate in companies, so context matters.
- •Behavioral science describes why people behave as they do and draws on economics, psychology and anthropology
- •Lab experiments with students often don't replicate in real workplaces
- •Two Canary Wharf companies gave very different results from the same experiment
- •Grace encourages people to experiment with ideas and discard what doesn't work for them
- •Ali adds that no one has the guidebook to life
Striving, Satisfaction and Balancing Pleasure with Purpose
Ali asks how to balance satisfaction with striving. Grace says enjoying the process eases impatience, and discusses balancing pleasure and purpose, hedonic adaptation, and focusing on small wins over negatives.
- •Strivers suffer when their Me+ is distorted from reality and their current tasks are unfulfilling
- •Balance time serving yourself now and in the future
- •Hedonic adaptation makes the happiness from a car or pay rise fleeting
- •Noticing small wins counters our focus on negatives and burnout
- •Ali and Grace discuss negative comments and polarized reactions online
Locus of Control and Learning from Failure
Grace explains internal and external locus of control, where it may come from, and how to run postmortems separating control from luck. They then cover how anticipating failure is worse than experiencing it.
- •Most people have internal control in some domains and external in others
- •Environment and early childhood choice likely shape locus of control
- •Post-mortems should separate what you controlled from luck
- •Anticipated losses feel worse than reality, and people underestimate their resilience
- •Successful people often fail a lot
Gender, Race and Risk Aversion, and Pay Transparency
Grace shares her theory on why women tend to be more risk-averse, tied to early experiences of rejection, and discusses ethnicity effects and societal backlash. The talk moves to pay transparency and how Ali's small team could handle raises.
- •Women are on average more risk-averse than men, and Grace theorizes early rejection experiences contribute
- •People of color tend to be more risk-averse than white men, though the gender dimension dominates
- •Societal backlash complicates simply telling people to ask for more
- •Pay gap reporting gives people something concrete to point to
- •In a small team, Grace gives raises to similar people and reviews annually, noting who didn't ask
Why We Procrastinate and Tactics to Beat It
Grace explains that some procrastination can help unconscious thinking but becomes harmful near deadlines. She and Ali swap tactics like starting for two minutes, Pomodoro, the compromise effect, and bundling.
- •Slow and fast thinking: stepping away can let the unconscious work on a problem
- •Ali lowers the cost of starting by doing just two minutes
- •The Pomodoro Technique uses short work bursts and open loops
- •The compromise effect: define low, medium and high output and tick off whichever you hit
- •Bundling work with a treat lowers present costs and raises benefits
To-Do Lists, Weekly Reviews and the Affect Heuristic
Grace describes doing deep work in the mornings and a quick daily and weekly review, kept simple on her phone. She then explains the affect heuristic and why not to decide when emotional or hungry.
- •Grace does her hardest tasks first and reviews each day for what was pleasurable or purposeful
- •Her Sunday review takes 15 to 20 minutes on her phone with two columns
- •Keeping reviews easy helps avoid falling off the habit
- •The affect heuristic: emotions like anger or hunger push people toward rules of thumb
- •Park decisions when emotional; consider others' emotions when being judged
Fear of Judgment and the Spotlight Effect
Ali asks about overcoming fear of what others think. Grace introduces the spotlight effect, reframing nerves, and starting where strangers won't see. Ali relates this to starting a YouTube channel.
- •Nerves can help performance, and can be reframed as excitement
- •The spotlight effect: people notice and remember our mistakes far less than we think
- •People who do remember tend to be sympathetic or neutral
- •Start where unknown people won't see you, then widen your audience
- •Ali says the fear is more in our heads than in reality
Designing Your Environment for Productivity
Grace and Ali discuss environment changes: moving email off her phone, lighting, a dedicated workspace, and separating bedroom from work. Ali shares his experience with a co-working space and a specific coffee shop for writing.
- •Making email harder to access, including moving it to an old iPad in another room, boosted Grace's productivity
- •Lighting, fresh air and a consistent workspace cue the brain
- •Ali's co-working office improved his quality of life
- •Keep the bedroom for sleep and use a designated chair if space is limited
Quick-Fire Questions: Success, Money, Books and Journey
Ali asks rapid-fire questions on advice, influences, defining success and the money-happiness link. Grace also covers her daily routine, book recommendations, and why her final chapter is titled Journey.
- •Grace's top success tip is to embed good habits today that serve your version of success
- •She questions income-happiness studies for ignoring hours worked and the life course
- •She turns down lucrative work she wouldn't enjoy and advises leveraging skills from less enjoyable jobs
- •She recommends Think Again by Adam Grant and the idea of a diverse boardroom
- •Her mantra is to control what you can control; she chooses journey over destination

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