Overconfidence and the Art of Knowing Yourself

1. 0:00 – 3:45

   Introductions

   1. BBBrené Brown0:00

      [upbeat music] Support for this show comes from Canva. What's your next big thing? Whatever it is, you can design it with Canva, from presentations powered by AI to social media posts, from logos all the way to websites. Whatever your idea is, you can make it a thing in Canva. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Learn more at canva.com.

   2. AGAdam Grant0:21

      Support for this show comes from SAS. It's time to have an honest talk about AI, not about whether it will replace us, but about how it's becoming easier and easier to outsource our thinking to systems that people just won't understand. Thankfully, SAS has been in data and AI for 50 years, and they believe in a pretty simple idea: AI should be explainable, well-governed, and worthy of trust. Visit sas.com to see how AI should be built for high-stakes decisions, where the cost of getting it wrong is real and human accountability isn't optional. Learn more at sas.com. That's S-A-S.com [upbeat music]

   3. BBBrené Brown0:59

      [door opening] [glass breaking] Hi, everyone. I'm Brené. Welcome to the Curiosity Shop.

   4. AGAdam Grant1:03

      And I'm Adam. Brené, episode four.

   5. BBBrené Brown1:07

      I have 75 papers in front of me and a laptop. Um, okay. So in this episode, we are going to talk about one of our favorite Olympic moments, um, from Milan from this year. We'll spend the first half of the episode talking about Eileen Gu. We'll talk about her incredible display of metacognition during a press conference, and we'll also talk about in the first half how that level of thinking about your thinking really helps you defend against one of our least and most favorite biases, which is Dunning-Kruger. And second half, we're gonna take some questions. Um, my social media has gone off the rails with questions for us, so w- I know yours has, too, so we'll take a couple of those. Before we get started, I wanna share something really funny with you. You ready?

   6. AGAdam Grant2:10

      Uh-oh. I'm ready.

   7. BBBrené Brown2:11

      Okay. So you know how... What episode were we talking about the fact that you're a minimalist and I'm a maximalist?

   8. AGAdam Grant2:19

      Two.

   9. BBBrené Brown2:19

      Episode two. So I think when we were talking, I said something like, "Hey, you know that meme on Instagram with like, 'I hate ma- minimalism'?" I get a note from Hank Green, who's, like, one of my favorite people.

   10. AGAdam Grant2:33

       I love Hank Green.

   11. BBBrené Brown2:33

       I do, too. And he said, "Hey, by the way, that meme is me talking."

   12. AGAdam Grant2:38

       [laughs]

   13. BBBrené Brown2:38

       I did not know that. Did you know that?

   14. AGAdam Grant2:41

       Had no idea.

   15. BBBrené Brown2:42

       Okay, let me just play it. It's so funny, especially when you think about it being Hank. Okay.

   16. SPSpeaker2:48

       Say, "I hate minimalism. That's not my vibe. I wanna feel like a wizard who is surrounded by the, uh, uh, collections of his many adventures."

   17. BBBrené Brown3:00

       [laughs]

   18. AGAdam Grant3:03

       [laughs]

   19. BBBrené Brown3:04

       I am Hank.

   20. AGAdam Grant3:05

       Well, when you say it like that, I don't wanna be a minimalist either.

   21. BBBrené Brown3:08

       I wanna be surrounded... Like, I'm a wizard surrounded by the collections from my many adventures. I, I just... And, and I do see your Go Blue Michigan thing right behind you, so you have... You are a wizard, um, and you have collected something from your adventures.

   22. AGAdam Grant3:24

       [laughs] It's true, but only a few things.

   23. BBBrené Brown3:27

       Okay, before we start, do you wanna ask me about my sweatshirt?

   24. AGAdam Grant3:31

       I do now.

   25. BBBrené Brown3:32

       Okay. I need you to, I need you to feign-

   26. AGAdam Grant3:34

       I'll be about your sweatshirt

   27. BBBrené Brown3:35

       ... I need you to feign interest. Uh, take-

   28. AGAdam Grant3:37

       Uh, Brené, I, I'm supposed to ask you a question [laughs] about your sweatshirt.

   29. BBBrené Brown3:41

       Okay. This is my University of Texas Longhorn

2. 3:45 – 12:22

   Eileen Gu’s Metacognition

   1. BBBrené Brown3:45

      sweatshirt. Let's go. Texas walks off Oklahoma in the 10th. Women's and men's basketball killing it in March Madness. Men's swimming, per usual, we win the whole thing. Natty Tower goes bright orange. I just wanna start there. And if you can see behind the camera, we've got Hook 'Em signs going up all over the place 'cause I've got two Longhorns in the room with me.

   2. AGAdam Grant4:09

      Yeah, I, I, I cannot compete with that, but we are in the Final Four.

   3. BBBrené Brown4:13

      We are.

   4. AGAdam Grant4:13

      Although, by the time this plays, I think we're gonna have a winner on the men's side, so...

   5. BBBrené Brown4:18

      We will.

   6. AGAdam Grant4:19

      I hope.

   7. BBBrené Brown4:19

      And the women's side, right? Mm, I'm not sure about the dates, but... Okay, Adam, did you catch the clip of Eileen Gu's Olympic press conference where the reporter from The Athletic, Charlotte Harpur, asked her, um, the big question. She said, "This isn't, this isn't meant to be rude, but do you think before you speak because your answers are so quick and so comprehensive?"

   8. AGAdam Grant4:42

      Yeah, I, I loved this, this moment, and it... My favorite part of it actually was it didn't, it didn't happen on a slope. [laughs] It was just... It was a seemingly innocuous interview.

   9. BBBrené Brown4:52

      Yes, and just to let you know that Eileen Gu, if you don't know, um, specializes in freestyle skiing, competing across all three of those disciplines, half pipe, big air, and slope style. She's the only freestyle skier ever to medal in all three at the Olympics, and she holds the Olympic record.

   10. AGAdam Grant5:11

       Oh, yeah. I mean, sh- she's a superstar. She's also extremely smart, and this question from a reporter... Well, I, I didn't know who the reporter was when I first saw this clip. It sounded a little obnoxious, but it's not.

   11. BBBrené Brown5:26

       No. Uh, the, the... And, and I just wanna give props to Charlotte Harpur, the reporter from The Athletic, because it is... At first when I heard it, I was, like, kinda pissed off, and then you listen to the warmth and loveliness through which she asked the question. I wanna break it down. So we both immediately go... And I've seen a lot of kind of analyses of this moment where people are missing the mark, um, about what it is. I think it's metacognition. Do you think it's metacognition?

   12. AGAdam Grant6:00

       I do, but I've, I, I need to spend more time thinking about that thought [laughs] and figuring out if that's an accurate analysis or not.

   13. BBBrené Brown6:08

       So let's go back. Let's define it for everybody. It's the metacognition. I think, again, I'm going back to the chapter in Strong Ground where I tried to grab all the kind of the skillsets and mindsets to ready ourselves for the future that's already upon us. Um, metacognition is in the top five. It is the ability to notice what your mind is doing, evaluate it, and deliberately change it. Two pieces to metacognition, awareness and regulation. Awareness is what am I thinking, assuming. Regulation, given that, how do I want to respond or adjust? I mean, this has to be metacognition that we're seeing from her.

   14. AGAdam Grant6:55

       I think so. I mean, I've, I've always thought about metacognition as the ability to think about your own thinking, and then it, and then evolve it accordingly. And she's not only doing that, she's describing how she does it-

   15. BBBrené Brown7:07

       It's wild

   16. AGAdam Grant7:07

       ... which might be meta-metacognition.

   17. BBBrené Brown7:09

       So one of the things that I think is interesting when we think about metacognition, let me tell... I'm gonna tell you a story that was also interesting. A month ago, I was with the CEO of a hospital here in Houston. I'm actually not in Houston, I'm Austin, but in Houston. Um, and she said, "I was listening to Strong Ground on my phone while I was walking, and when you got to metacognition, I was like, 'I don't c- I don't think I get it. I'm gonna have to read that, not listen to it.' So then I got home and I read it and I'm like, 'Okay, I need to reread it,' and I made some notes and I highlighted the parts that made sense to me, and then I finally got it." Can you explain to us what it is? [laughs] I was like, "You just did." And she said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "You came across something that you didn't quite understand and you knew what it would take to get there." Would you agree that that's how it works?

   18. AGAdam Grant8:12

       Yeah, I think the... I mean, the first part is she had the intellectual humility-

   19. BBBrené Brown8:17

       Yes

   20. AGAdam Grant8:17

       ... to know that she didn't understand it.

   21. BBBrené Brown8:18

       Yes. Huge.

   22. AGAdam Grant8:20

       As opposed to just assuming, "Okay, I, I get it." And then to your point, she went and actually was like, "Okay." I, I don't know if she'd read the, the whole body of research on how we d- we're better at critical thinking when we read than listen, but clearly understood that intuitively and said, "Okay, I've gotta, I've gotta really scrutinize this material to process it."

   23. BBBrené Brown8:45

       How clear and persuasive in your opinion is the evidence reading versus listening?

   24. AGAdam Grant8:55

       It's pretty consistent for critical thinking and depth of processing.

   25. BBBrené Brown8:59

       Okay.

   26. AGAdam Grant9:00

       And I, I think that's in part because when we're listening, we don't pause and replay nearly as much as we pause and reread. We don't highlight as much. We don't summarize as much. We don't synthesize as much. We're, we're more absorbed in the experience as opposed to stepping out of it to, to analyze.

   27. BBBrené Brown9:22

       God, that is really interesting because one of the things I w- some of the feedback that I get when I read my audiobooks, um, because I, I listen to... I read, I only read nonfiction and I listen to fiction, and which is interesting, and I'm very clear about how I learn because if you survive a PhD program, um, you, you have... You either don't make it through... I mean, I think we started with 14 in my cohort and we ended with three. Um, you either don't make it through or, or you don't make it through. Um, so you have to understand how you learn because it's, they assign to you more than what you c- is humanly possible, so you have to learn how to do that. I think that when I'm reading my audiobooks I will actually say, "You know what? That was a big definition. I'm gonna reread it for you in case you're doing the laundry or walking or driving because I would have to go back and reread that if I was reading the actual book. So I'm gonna reread this to you right now." And I get a lot of good feedback about that, but I never... I just thought it was, I thought it was just me.

   28. AGAdam Grant10:29

       It's not and I love, I love that you actually pause to do that, which never occurred to me.

   29. BBBrené Brown10:34

       You know I'm a pauser.

   30. AGAdam Grant10:35

       I, yes. [laughs] So I've heard.
3. 12:22 – 25:10

   What is Metacognition?

   1. BBBrené Brown12:22

      you can make it a thing in Canva. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Learn more at canva.com.

   2. AGAdam Grant12:29

      Support for this show comes from SAS. SAS has been in data and AI for 50 years, and they believe in a pretty simple idea: AI should be explainable, transparent, and well-governed, because that's the only way it can earn your trust. From banks and boardrooms to hospitals and the halls of government, AI systems now inform decisions that affect millions of people every day. That's why SAS's core commitment to responsible innovation is more important than ever, so that every could we is followed by a should we, and leads to a here's how it works. If that kind of clarity appeals to you, visit sas.com to see how SAS applies their simple guiding principles to a complex AI landscape where hard questions require reliable answers. Learn more at sas.com. That's S-A-S.com.

   3. BBBrené Brown13:12

      Okay, I've learned a lot about ... L- l- ... 'Cause I wanna get into this because, so metacognition, thinking about our thinking, um, let's, before we go into the kind of a dive on Dunning-Kruger, can ... I wanna walk through kind of a breakdown of what Eileen Gu said and, and tie it to specific tools that I think we can be deploying in our own lives. Okay, so she said, "I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking, and I kind of modify it." So I apply an analytical, an analytical lens to my own thinking, and then I modify my thinking. So I think this is an example of metacognitive monitoring and regulation.

   4. AGAdam Grant13:57

      Yeah.

   5. BBBrené Brown13:57

      Which would be kind of the core ... Is it Flavell or Flavelle? The, the, the ... Do you know the, the main researcher that put kind of this construct on the map? I think it's Flavell. Um, he kinda, his core definition, actively observing and adjusting one's own thought processes. So you hear that she does this. The second thing that I think is so interesting, I've got 542 questions for you about this. I jour- She says, "I journal a lot. I break down all of my thought processes." So I think this might be metacognitive knowledge development, which is like building an awareness of how your own mind works. What do you think about journaling as a way to getting explicit about how your mind works?

   6. AGAdam Grant14:43

      Well, I think ... Oh, there's so many things that are interesting about this.

   7. BBBrené Brown14:46

      I know, right?

   8. AGAdam Grant14:47

      The, the first thing that ... I mean, I, I hardly know where to take this. I think the, the first thing that I'm really struck by is we, we actually, we all intuitively know that metacognition is an important skill. Um, anybody who's ever gone to therapy, right, is, is trying to use metacognition.

   9. BBBrené Brown15:05

      Wait, so stop.

   10. AGAdam Grant15:06

       And-

   11. BBBrené Brown15:06

       No, no, I, I can't let that go. What does that mean? What do you mean everyone that ... I mean, as someone who's, like, therapy consumer par excellence.

   12. AGAdam Grant15:14

       [laughs]

   13. BBBrené Brown15:15

       Is that what we're doing in there?

   14. AGAdam Grant15:17

       Well, I mean, some, some of it is also emotion understanding and regulation.

   15. BBBrené Brown15:21

       Right.

   16. AGAdam Grant15:21

       Right.

   17. BBBrené Brown15:22

       But what's the meta-

   18. AGAdam Grant15:23

       And behavior, you know, I, I guess there's a cognitive, and emotional, and a behavioral component. But I, I think about cognitive behavioral therapy, for example.

   19. BBBrené Brown15:30

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AGAdam Grant15:31

       And that entire approach to trying to improve your life starts with the idea that you have some dysfunctional thought patterns, and you need to monitor them, notice them, and then adjust them.

   21. BBBrené Brown15:45

       Hmm.

   22. AGAdam Grant15:45

       And if that's not metacognition, what is?

   23. BBBrené Brown15:47

       That's true. Yeah, and, you know, this is the first time ever I've thought about addressing faulty thinking under a metacognition lens. Okay, so, and then-

   24. AGAdam Grant16:01

       But, and that's-

   25. BBBrené Brown16:02

       Tie it to journaling

   26. AGAdam Grant16:02

       ... and that's for me ... Well, so that, that's for me why, why journaling is such a powerful tool for metacognition is, you know, journaling, according to some psychologists, is essentially self-guided therapy, right? It's a way of, of reflecting on your thoughts and forming a story, and then self-distancing so that your thoughts are, are staring at you from a page as opposed to inside your head. And then you can see them more neutrally. I don't quite wanna say more objectively, but because you're separated from your thoughts, it's easier for you to evaluate them and, and figure out where are they accurate, where are they leading you astray. What do you think?

   27. BBBrené Brown16:38

       Uh, this is where I need help, 'cause then I write down in my journal what I'm thinking, and then I bring my journal to therapy, and I'm like, "What do you make of this shit?"

   28. AGAdam Grant16:46

       [laughs]

   29. BBBrené Brown16:47

       That's my, that's my approach. [laughs] And, and you know, and then I get some great feedback about, uh, "Great that you captured it," and then of course the dreaded, "What do you think about this shit?" You know? And then I'm like, "Oh, my God. Okay." Um, yeah, it's for me priceless. Um, okay, let's go to the next one.

   30. AGAdam Grant17:06

       Do you ever-
4. 25:10 – 38:14

   What is Dunning-Kruger?

   1. BBBrené Brown25:10

      your books. So why don't you ex- walk us through what it is and what it isn't?

   2. AGAdam Grant25:16

      Okay, so the original finding is that the people who are least knowledgeable or least skilled at a task are the most likely to overestimate their knowledge and skill.

   3. BBBrené Brown25:28

      [laughs]

   4. AGAdam Grant25:29

      So the people with the worst senses of humor are the most likely to overestimate how funny they are. The people who struggle the most in emotional intelligence are the most likely to exaggerate how great they are at reading and managing emotions. Uh, the people who do poorly on a trivia test are the most overconfident about their expertise, and the list goes on and on and on, and this has been documented in so many different domains. But I think it's really important to, to caveat that this actually doesn't happen to complete novices. If you're a total beginner, you know you don't know anything. It's when you gain a little knowledge or a little skill that you start to get dangerous because your confidence rises faster than your competence. And then you can start to get trapped on what is sometimes called Mount Stupid, where you're at this point of very high confidence, uh, that is not matched by your own capability level, and then you're, you're basically ignorant, um, but arrogant. And I think the... W- what scares me about that a lot is at that point, you've lost metacognition, right? You, you, you believe you know things you don't, and you cannot see the errors in your thinking. Um, I think flat Earthers are sort of classic Dunning-Kruger victims. How'd I do? What'd I miss?

   5. BBBrené Brown26:51

      I think it's really interesting. Um, one of the things that I remember when I first came across the research and kind of did a deep dive on it is this idea of dual burden in Dunning-Kruger. Like, you don't know, and you don't even know that you don't know. I gotta tell you, from like... So I get... So this is one of the hardest things, I think, to lead in s- if you're leading or managing someone who's got some Dunning-Kruger bias around their own ability, it's a very hard thing because they don't know that they don't know, literally. Um, and so I find it to be very frustrating for people, but I am gonna tell a quick story about how I had Dunning-Kruger, like how... So when I first started pickleball, I, I ha- I played tennis for 40 years. And so the first time I went to go play, you know, it's everything's ranked by beginning, intermediate, advanced. And so I, you know, schlepped over to the beginner thing [clears throat] and was kicked out of the beginner group almost immediately bec- not because I could play pickleball, but because, uh, this was not my first racket sport. You know, I, I understand how a ball hits the face of the paddle. I understand, I un- you know, I can hit, I can hit balls. You know, I've done that for many decades. So then I was like, "Oh, God, I'm really good at this. I'm actually gonna be excellent at this." So I went over to advanced and signed up for open play in advanced and lost every game. And then someone actually told me... I thought I was just having a bad day, but someone actually said... And, and listen, if you're playing pickleball, I'm not saying that 95% of white men over 50 are gonna coach you without being asked, but I'm gonna say if someone's coaching you when you haven't been asked, 95% of the time it's gonna be a white dude over 50. And one of these came up to me and said, "Listen, it's not fun for us when you're playing up like this. You don't, you shouldn't be in an advanced group." And I... Well, first of all, I was really embarrassed, um, a little, with a, with a little bit of shame rising 'cause I hated that I overestimated my ability. But what was interesting is I went to the inter- inter- the intermediate group, and I, I kinda... That's where I should have been. But I immediately paid for an hour for a coach to watch me play. And there was a... This was kind of when Duper scores, like your score ranking, like UTSA if you're from tennis or whatever, like your score ranking, but you know what games you can be in into your tournament stuff. And so I said, "I really want to be, and I think of myself right now in this beginning phase, as a 3.75." And he said, "You're a 3.2 on your best day if I compiled all of your best moves into one game."

   6. AGAdam Grant30:01

      Are we on a one to five scale?

   7. BBBrené Brown30:02

      We're on a... Well, we're, it goes up, but, like, for someone like me, you know, I'm gonna probably max out at 4.5, you know? And so I thought, "Oh, my God, why?" And he said... It was interesting 'cause he gave me some information and he said, "You're gonna do this to the ball if you wanna be a 4.0. They're gonna do this to the ball. You're hitting baseline drives and staying back at the baseline because you're a baseline tennis player. The game Pickleball's won and lost at the kitchen. You're not coming up."You are slamming the ball into your opponents from mid-court, and they're slamming it back on your tennis shoe string because you don't know how to reset and drop a ball. And at that moment, the Dunning-Kruger was gone because I had the skill to predict accurately what my level was. Does that m- does this make this s- make this story make sense?

   8. AGAdam Grant30:56

      Oh, it, I, this is, this is so good. David Dunning says that [laughs] when you lack the skills to produce excellence, you usually also lack the skills to judge excellence.

   9. BBBrené Brown31:07

      Ah.

   10. AGAdam Grant31:08

       And so what you were doing was you were building that second set of skills so that you could figure out where you stood on the first.

   11. BBBrené Brown31:14

       Okay, you got, you have to slow down. This is gonna be really important for people. So say it again and get explicit about the story.

   12. AGAdam Grant31:23

       Okay. So David Dunning says, "When you lack the skills to produce excellence, you often also lack the skills to judge excellence." So your pickleball skill level was not at excellent.

   13. BBBrené Brown31:37

       No.

   14. AGAdam Grant31:37

       But also your knowledge was really low.

   15. BBBrené Brown31:40

       Yes.

   16. AGAdam Grant31:40

       And you couldn't even gauge what excellent looked like. You didn't know enough about the game to figure out where on that spectrum you were. And what you were asking the coach for is a bunch of information. You were gathering data points about what excellence looks like so you could then put yourself on the map. And I'm assuming after you put yourself on the map, you then had a, a n- a navigation plan for how you were gonna move forward.

   17. BBBrené Brown32:01

       Oh my God, I did. There were, like, eight skills I had to improve, so I took two every six months. Um, and it's interesting because... And I'm just gonna make this aside, I m- I love pickleball. It is not going to ever have the viewership of tennis for this reason. You have to be a very good player to understand and appreciate what you're seeing on a pickleball court if you're watching professionals. You can just walk out of the womb and go to Wimbledon and watch Center Court and understand, "Jesus, these are athletes," like, bo- beyond belief. You don't understand what it takes to do what people, the professionals are doing on a court in pickleball unless you play pickleball. So everyone who watches it thinks, "Oh, I can do that. It's like ping pong. It's like giant ping pong," you know? Um, so this is really interesting.

   18. AGAdam Grant32:55

       Well, I, I think part of what's interesting about this is it makes me think about the fact that it's harder to gauge your own knowledge or skill level in tasks that are more complex or more subjective.

   19. BBBrené Brown33:09

       Say that one more time.

   20. AGAdam Grant33:10

       So I-

   21. BBBrené Brown33:10

       Say that sentence one more time.

   22. AGAdam Grant33:12

       I- if you're do- doing something complex or if there's not an objective way to score it, it's easier to fall victim to Dunning-Kruger. It's easier to be overconfident, uh, when you don't really know anything or you're not very good. So let me, let me give an example that, that stands out as we talk about this. I think, [laughs] no- nobody thinks that they could win... No- nobody thinks they could outrun Usain Bolt or Allyson Felix as a sprinter.

   23. BBBrené Brown33:38

       No.

   24. AGAdam Grant33:39

       Nobody thinks they could do a sub-two-hour marathon without being a world-class runner because the times are really objective. And I can sit there just going all out on my treadmill and realize I can't even sustain for a mile what the winners do for 26.2 in a marathon.

   25. BBBrené Brown33:57

       Super clear.

   26. AGAdam Grant33:58

       Done, right? [laughs] You might-

   27. BBBrené Brown33:59

       Yeah

   28. AGAdam Grant33:59

       ... calibrate it.

   29. BBBrené Brown34:00

       You're calibrated.

   30. AGAdam Grant34:01

       Mission accomplished.
5. 38:14 – 44:36

   Time Estimation and The Planning Fallacy

   1. BBBrené Brown38:15

      My prediction is always wrong on time estimation. My performance sucks, and the debrief, I'm not interested in even journaling.

   2. AGAdam Grant38:22

      [laughs] Which... Are you d- are you wrong in the standard planning fallacy direction, though, that you, you think you can do things faster than you really can?

   3. BBBrené Brown38:30

      Yes. Like, yes, and I get frustrated with o- I mostly think other people should be doing things faster. [laughs] Like, for example-

   4. AGAdam Grant38:40

      Oh, okay

   5. BBBrené Brown38:40

      ... like, for example-

   6. AGAdam Grant38:40

      All right, so that's a different conversation.

   7. BBBrené Brown38:42

      No, but for example, like, we were gonna have some... when s- Charlie was in high school, some of the water polo team parents over for something informal 'cause, again, my ping pong table's in the formal dining room. But we were gonna have them over, and about an hour before they got there, I told Steve, "I don't think there's enough color in the yard. I need you to run to Home Depot and get some flowers and plant them before people come over."

   8. AGAdam Grant39:05

      [laughs]

   9. BBBrené Brown39:06

      And listen to this. List- Wait, no, think this through with me for a second. And-

   10. AGAdam Grant39:10

       Flowers, why aren't you growing faster?

   11. BBBrené Brown39:12

       No, listen. And he said-

   12. AGAdam Grant39:13

       I'm on the clock.

   13. BBBrené Brown39:14

       He said, "Listen, I'm not doing that. They're gonna be here in an hour." And I said, "It'll take you 10 minutes to get to Home Depot, 15 minutes to pick out the flowers, 10 minutes to go back. That's, like, 35 minutes, and you can plant them in 20 minutes." I don't get the problem.

   14. AGAdam Grant39:35

       [laughs]

   15. BBBrené Brown39:38

       Go ahead.

   16. AGAdam Grant39:39

       Yeah, I can't, I can't help you there.

   17. BBBrené Brown39:42

       Yeah. And we didn't get the flowers, I'm just gonna say. And he-

   18. AGAdam Grant39:45

       I- obviously.

   19. BBBrené Brown39:46

       And he said, "I'm so happy to add color to the yard. I'll need one or two days in advance." Are you gonna grow them?

   20. AGAdam Grant39:56

       [laughs]

   21. BBBrené Brown39:59

       I, I... What do you think this is, impatience?

   22. AGAdam Grant40:03

       Yeah, I was, I was gonna say, uh, I don't, I don't think either of us is patient at all. But what's, what's interesting to me is that this is a, a repeated challenge in the same direction, right? [laughs] So you, you know that you underestimate how long something's gonna take. It happens. You've held yourself accountable by scoring yourself. And then what? Does it, doesn't it bother you to repeat the same error over and over?

   23. BBBrené Brown40:27

       No, I'm just trying to find faster people.

   24. AGAdam Grant40:29

       [laughs]

   25. BBBrené Brown40:31

       [laughs] Okay. You know what?

   26. AGAdam Grant40:35

       You sound, you sound like half the managers I've ever worked with.

   27. BBBrené Brown40:38

       Okay, let me tell you what I do do. Let me just... And then we'll, we'll, we'll have to come back 'cause we do wanna do the questions. Here's what we have done. This is a Scrum... This is a tool from Scrum, our agile processes that I love. I'm obsessed with a lot of Scrum tools. We call it at BBRG, Brené Brown Education Research Group, that's our organization, we call it the turn and learn. So in a meeting, we will say, "Okay, here's the project. Everyone understands the parameters and what we're doing. Everybody write down on a Post-it how many months we think this is going to take, or weeks, or whatever." And we'll do it in weeks 'cause I already get anxious if we use months as the time increment. Um, I like to use hours, but they've got me down to weeks, so weeks. And on the count of three, we'll turn them over, and we do that to avoid, like, you know, halo effect 'cause people will see mine first and be like, "Oh, my God, she's the boss and she thinks we can do it." So when we turn it over really quick, everybody's got the number of weeks, including, like, the engineers and the operations people, and mine will say two weeks, and theirs will say eight months. So... But, but I lose. So, so-

   28. AGAdam Grant41:49

       Well, do you?

   29. BBBrené Brown41:50

       I don't... I do. Oh, yeah, I do, of course. Yeah, I do. I, I respect the process, and I respect the fact that, that I'm not good at it. But I'm not able to change it because if I wrote eight months down on my Post-it, I would just be bullshitting to show how much I've grown.

   30. AGAdam Grant42:06

       [laughs] So why... Th- so the underlying belief hasn't changed? The way that you form your expectations is flawed in the same way [laughs] that it was before?
6. 44:36 – 58:17

   Metacognition and Dunning-Kruger Final Thoughts

   1. BBBrené Brown44:36

      left maybe. Let's go some questions.

   2. AGAdam Grant44:38

      I do too.

   3. BBBrené Brown44:39

      Okay. Um-

   4. AGAdam Grant44:41

      I had, I had one, one other thing I wanted to just-

   5. BBBrené Brown44:43

      Oh, yeah

   6. AGAdam Grant44:44

      ... bring up here before we leave this.

   7. BBBrené Brown44:45

      Yeah, that's great. Okay, let me give you a little-

   8. AGAdam Grant44:47

      Actually-

   9. BBBrené Brown44:48

      Let, let me give you a little-

   10. AGAdam Grant44:49

       Yeah

   11. BBBrené Brown44:49

       ... intro to.

   12. AGAdam Grant44:50

       Go ahead. Give me a setup.

   13. BBBrené Brown44:51

       Okay. Before we leave our friends Dunning-Kruger and the idea of metacognition and thinking about our own thinking, any final thoughts on that before we go to questions from our first episodes?

   14. AGAdam Grant45:04

       Okay, two quick things on this. The, the first one is when we were talking about Dunning-Kruger earlier, I kept thinking about Elon Musk and how the people who love him and the people who hate him are both missing part of the story. Like when I see Elon, I see Dunning-Kruger. I see somebody who is brilliant at hardware, which makes him really effective at electric cars and rockets, but does not know that he is ignorant when it comes to software, which is one of the reasons why Twitter or X or [chuckles] whatever it's called now, um, has run into so many problems. And I, I see his detractors saying, "Elon's a moron." No, this is domain specific. I hear his supporters saying, "Elon's a genius," and I say, "No, that too is domain specific." And if, if I were, if I were in his orbit, the thing I would try to help him do is calibrate. How would you, how would you tackle that, Brené? And I, I would love to just hear how do you think about getting someone in a position like that who's not calibrated to look in the mirror?

   15. BBBrené Brown46:18

       I ... It, it's interesting. Um, I'm torn between like unleashing right now or being more thoughtful and saying, "I don't know him. I've never met him. I couldn't assess." But if we took someone like that, um, I, I actually think the problem that we're talking about now is maybe a first cousin of metacognition, especially when it comes to Elon, which is self-awareness and emotional regulation and a- emotional awareness. So I don't think this is a ... I, I, I don't know. I don't know him, so I don't know if this is a cognitive battle where, boy, how do we get someone to understand that their expertise is domain specific? And if we could get them to understand that, they might be able to apply some of the same things that are maybe more intuitive about their domain expertise to things where they wanna learn and be better. But I think I would have to say that your lack of self-awareness and your lack of emotional awareness is so great that not only are you not able to engage in smart metacognition, you're making decisions that hurt other people. And unless that's intentional, um, we got bigger fish to fry. What's your second one?

   16. AGAdam Grant47:58

       Okay, second one is I think there's a, [chuckles] there's a just a bit of a cautionary note as people work on metacognition, which is on the one hand there are real upsides of analyzing your knowledge and explaining what you know. We, we know from a h- a long history of research on the, the teacher effect or the tutor effect that when you explain things you know to someone else, you actually understand them better.

   17. BBBrené Brown48:23

       Yes.

   18. AGAdam Grant48:24

       And you also get m- better at remembering them, which is great.

   19. BBBrené Brown48:28

       Yes.

   20. AGAdam Grant48:28

       We also know from research on the illusion of explanatory depth that when you try to explain something that you think you know, you [chuckles] will find out really quickly when you don't. Uh, and the, the studies on this are, are hilarious. You ask people ... You can do it right after you ride a bike or flush a toilet.Like, how do the gears on the bike work? How does that toilet flush? And you will hear people start to stumble and stammer and realize they don't have a clue how [laughs] the basic machinery they've been operating their whole lives actually works, uh, unless they've really carefully studied it. And that, that task, right, of saying, "Well, let me actually try to explain what I know," is, to me, the ultimate way to calibrate.

   21. BBBrené Brown49:08

       Wow.

   22. AGAdam Grant49:11

       So maybe, wait, we should just pause there for a second and say, if you don't have that wisdom of crowds, if you don't have that wise crowd available to you, like you do, Brené, um, or like you've put together, or you're not sure who to ask, right, just the, the, the practice of explaining will help you figure out what you understand and what you don't. And I, I think that's probably something we can all do regularly.

   23. BBBrené Brown49:32

       I love this. Okay, I'm gonna add a third cautionary tale before we move on.

   24. AGAdam Grant49:37

       Oh, wait, sorry. I, I have one other cautionary note on this part.

   25. BBBrené Brown49:40

       Perfect.

   26. AGAdam Grant49:41

       But you go first.

   27. BBBrené Brown49:42

       Okay. Mine would be to say that you cannot metacognition your way out of a Dunning-Kruger bias alone. There's no, there's no amount of studying your own mind around a topic that will increase your competence in that topic. It has to go hand-in-hand, metacognition plus actual skills building. So in pickleball, I couldn't just understand, "Oh, this is why I'm overestimating myself," and then all of a sudden, oh, I'm better at pickleball. No. I have to do the metacognition work of, "Oh, this is why I'm overestimating myself. Now, I need to learn how to reset from mid-court. I need to learn how to get up to the kitchen faster from the baseline. I need to learn how to do a better drop." So it's... So overcoming overestimation is not just about understanding your thinking, but unders- but building skill in that domain. And I think that's very important. I think that's really important because there's been some interesting research out of the University of Edinburgh where they had people that had real kind of measurable Dunning-Kruger around a topic. They really thought they were much better at it than they were. They skilled them up in metacognition, but did not give them any skills in what they thought they were really good at, and the metacognition alone didn't pull them up and out. You gotta do the skills building, too, in that area. Agree or disagree?

   28. AGAdam Grant51:32

       Ag- hard agree.

   29. BBBrené Brown51:33

       Okay.

   30. AGAdam Grant51:33

       I, I think that is, that is spot on, and it actually sets up the one other thing that I think needs to be just put on the table as a caveat, which is, in the short run, getting better at metacognition can make you worse at the skill you're trying to build.
7. 58:17 – 1:02:22

   Wrap up

   1. AGAdam Grant58:17

      and ruminating about everything that was going wrong. And it was, it, it was, it was really frustrating, but it was, it was a necessary backward step in order to unlearn a set of habits that were, were holding me back from being able to deliver my message effectively. And I, I didn't think about this as a metacognition problem at the time of, "Oh, I'm taking something off of autopilot that was automated incorrectly, and I need to now rewire it in order to, to put it back on autopilot." Yikes. That would've been helpful. Where, where were you ten years ago?

   2. BBBrené Brown58:51

      Where were you when I was, like, slamming every ball from the baseline? Like, um, yeah. Like, I could knock the paddle out of your hand, um, but it's a different sport. And so yeah, this is, this is such a good conversation. Um, let's save the questions for next time because they're, they're really good, and they're complex, um, and I think we can learn a lot from them. But I... We've covered a lot today. So any key takeaway for you today from our conversation, starting with Eileen, metacognition, Dunning-Kruger?

   3. AGAdam Grant59:30

      I think, I think we've covered most of my key takeaways, but o- one thing we didn't maybe make explicit that we should-

   4. BBBrené Brown59:37

      Mm-hmm

   5. AGAdam Grant59:37

      ... is as I listen to you talk about Eileen Gu, I, I'm struck by how rare it is for people to even admit out loud that they think about their own thinking, and they work on improving their thinking. And I think the idea of normalizing, "Hey, my brain didn't come with an operating manual. It didn't come with an owner's guide. I need to spend a lot of time observing how it works, figuring out what it does well, what it doesn't do well, so that I can achieve mastery over it or at least, you know, not constantly interfere with it and have it interfering with me and my goals," I think that's, that's something we should, we should all aspire to do more of.

   6. BBBrené Brown1:00:23

      I mean, I really... I love that for your takeaway, and I'm gonna... I plus that one. And I would say for me, as we normalize the discomfort and the building of this, I think my takeaway is better skills plus better metacognition equals better calibration. Metacognition without skill or skill without metacogna- co- metacognition is... There's a fragility to it that we need to be cautious about. Yeah.

   7. AGAdam Grant1:01:05

      Yeah, I think that's, uh, that's, that's a wonderful way to wrap.

   8. BBBrené Brown1:01:09

      Yeah, I love it. See you next time. [upbeat music] The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education & Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

   9. AGAdam Grant1:01:23

      We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

   10. BBBrené Brown1:01:28

       Thanks to Canva for their support. With incredible tools to boost your design and productivity, Canva can help turn that idea into an actual thing. From presentations powered by AI to social media posts, from logos to websites, it's time to turn that idea into something real. Canva, it's the thing that makes anything a thing. Learn more at canva.com.

   11. AGAdam Grant1:01:49

       Thanks to SAS for their support. It's an important question to ask of any corporation: Are the company's values aspirational, or are they actually showing up in what people do? Data and AI leader SAS lands in the second category. SAS has fifty years of experience helping people and organizations make better decisions with data, and they brought that same rigor to AI, building accountability and human oversight into the technology itself. Visit sas.com to learn more about SAS's commitment to responsible, trustworthy AI. That's S-A-S.com. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:02:23