Huberman LabHow to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities | Dr. Adam Grant
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,006 words- 0:00 – 1:37
Dr. Adam Grant
- AHAndrew Huberman
(instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science, and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Adam Grant. Adam Grant is a professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. He has authored five best-selling books, and most recently has authored a new book entitled Hidden Potential. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University, and his doctorate from the University of Michigan. Today we discuss peer-reviewed studies and tools based on the data from those studies that can enable people to meet their goals and overcome significant challenges. Including how to overcome procrastination, as well as how to see around or through blind spots, as well as how to overcome sticking points in motivation and creativity. We also discuss the research on, and practical tools related to the underpinnings of performance in any endeavor, including how to increase one's confidence, and how to have a persistent growth mindset. By the end of today's episode, it will be clear to you that Dr. Adam Grant has an absolutely spectacular depth and breadth of knowledge, and that knowledge is both practical, it is based on peer-reviewed research, and he conveys those tools with the utmost clarity and generosity. Indeed, by the end of today's episode, you will have more than a dozen new tools, never discussed before on the Huberman Lab Podcast, that you can apply in your academic endeavors, in athletic endeavors, in creative endeavors. In fact, in any area of life.
- 1:37 – 5:56
Sponsors: Eight Sleep, Levels & Waking Up
- AHAndrew Huberman
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that getting a great night's sleep really is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And, in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. With Eight Sleep, you can program the temperature of your sleeping environment in the beginning, middle, and end of your night. It has a number of other features like tracking the amount of rapid eye movement and slow wave sleep that you get. Things that are essential to really dialing in the perfect night's sleep for you. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for well over two years now, and it has greatly improved my sleep. I fall asleep far more quickly, I wake up far less often in the middle of the night, and I wake up feeling far more refreshed than I ever did prior to using an Eight Sleep mattress cover. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com/huberman. Now through November 30th, as a special holiday discount, Eight Sleep is offering $500 off their bundles with a pod cover. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in your immediate and long-term health is your blood sugar or blood glucose regulation. With Levels, you can see how different foods and food combinations, exercise, and sleep patterns impact your blood glucose levels. It's very easy to use. You just put the monitor on the back of your arm, and then you take your phone and you scan it over that monitor now and again, and it downloads the data about your blood sugar levels in the preceding hours. Using Levels has allowed me to learn a tremendous amount about what works best for me in terms of nutrition, exercise, work schedules, and sleep. So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a continuous glucose monitor, you can go to levels.link/huberman. Levels has launched a new CGM sensor that is smaller and has even better tracking than the previous version. Right now, they're also offering an additional two free months of membership. Again, that's levels.link/huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and NSDR, or non-sleep deep rest protocols. I started using the Waking Up app a few years ago, because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens, and I started doing yoga nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the Waking Up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states. And that he liked it very much. So I gave the Waking Up app a try, and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate. Other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the Waking Up app has lots of different types of yoga nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations, and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga nidra and something similar to it called non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short 10-minute session. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Adam Grant.
- 5:56 – 14:06
Procrastination & Emotion; Curiosity
- AHAndrew Huberman
Adam, welcome.
- AGAdam Grant
Excited to be here (laughs) .
- AHAndrew Huberman
Very excited to have you here. Uh, your career-Both public facing and academic career have covered an enormous range of topics. So we have a lot to cover.
- AGAdam Grant
Look who's talking.
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs) Um, and anytime, uh, two professors sit down, or even one professor, um, says, "We have a lot to cover," I think everyone listening braces themselves like, "Oh, no." But these topics-
- AGAdam Grant
No.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, I assure everyone are of the utmost interest, and you cover them in such both fabulous detail and you make it very clear. So I'm really looking forward to this. I'd like to start off by talking about something that I'm obsessed by and I know a lot of people are obsessed with and struggle with, and I know you also have a recent publication on this topic, which is procrastination. I am a bit of a procrastinator, but a different way of stating that is that I love deadlines. I learned in college that I love, love, love deadlines, because it seems to harness my focus and my attention, like just enough, I guess you call it anxiety or autonomic arousal for the, you know, neuroscience or physiology oriented folks. For me, just brings about a total elimination of all of the distractors, and it seems to both slow and accelerate my perception of time, and it seems to bring out my best to have deadlines. But I would prefer to not have to procrastinate in order to self-impose deadlines. I prefer that other people impose those deadlines, in fact. So what do we know about procrastination? Why do some people complete things well in advance? Why do other people procrastinate? Is it that they're seeking deadlines, as I believe I am? And interestingly, and sort of alluding to this recent paper of yours, what is the relationship between procrastination and creativity?
- AGAdam Grant
I feel like we should just deal with all that later. Let's put it off.
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs)
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) No.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Good one.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
By the way, there's extra credit for science puns on here, so-
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) But, but one of the-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... nicely done.
- AGAdam Grant
One of the best articles on procrastination ever written was titled At Last, My Article on Procrastination.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Fantastic. I love it.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, yeah, it just made me smile. Um, so I think the, the basic question I think to start with is, why do we procrastinate? And I, I thought I was immune actually when I came into this topic. Uh, I was the, the person who annoyed my college roommates by finishing my thesis a couple months early. Uh, I found out there was a term for me. I'm a precrastinator. Uh, so the, you know, the focus and the pressure that you get from a deadline, I get that the moment the project starts, um, and sometimes months or years in advance. And so I was really proud of finishing everything early. And then I discovered there are things that I procrastinate on too, uh, which was a little bit disappointing.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Are you willing to share what some of those were?
- AGAdam Grant
I am. Uh, so I, um, I procrastinate on anything that's administrative.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, so-
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'm right there with you. (laughs)
- AGAdam Grant
... you want to get time on my calendar, it could take me weeks to respond. You ask me a question about social science, I will be back to you in a minute.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Um, I procrastinate on grading. Takes me forever. Uh, I basically put off a whole bunch of tasks that I thought had nothing in common. It turns out that I procrastinate when I'm bored. Uh, boredom is... I, I guess, it's probably my most hated emotion. And so I will do anything to avoid a boring task. And I think this goes to why people procrastinate, which is a lot of people think it's laziness or you're not disciplined enough, but actually the, the research on this is really clear that you're not avoiding work when you procrastinate. In fact, a lot of our procrastination is, is focused on doing things that involve a lot of energy. You've seen people probably clean their entire houses when they're putting off a task. Um, so it's, it's not that you're being lazy, it's that you're avoiding negative emotions that a task stirs up. So for me, it's boredom. Uh, for a lot of people, it's fear or anxiety. "I don't know if I can pull this off. Uh, I have an extreme case of imposter syndrome in this role. Um, the, the challenge in front of me is too daunting." For some people, it's confusion. "I haven't figured it out yet, and so I can't work on this because I, I feel like I'm stuck." Um, so what's... I guess the big question for you then, Andrew, is what's, what's the emotion that causes you to procrastinate?
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know, it's hard for me to identify the stick here. I think of it more as the carrot that comes with deadlines. And again, I, I don't consider myself a procrastinator per se, I just really love deadlines, and procrastination is a terrific way to simulate the deadline. Uh, so for me-
- AGAdam Grant
So you... Wait, so you delay starting or finishing a task in order to have a, a sense of time pressure?
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's right. It builds a certain amount of internal arousal in me to know, okay, I've got 72 hours to complete something-
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- 14:06 – 20:48
Creativity & Procrastination; Motivation
- AHAndrew Huberman
my life, you know? I'm, I'm, I'm constantly thinking about these things. I mean, walking to take out the recycle, I'll have ideas and then I'll write them down. I constantly am writing things down, voice memos into my phone. I have a method of capture where I basically try and just grab everything and then filter out what's useful. Do you have a process like that for, for gleaning ideas?
- AGAdam Grant
A little bit. I do now. So, um, when, (laughs) when Jia-Shen and I started this research on procrastination, she had, she had come to me... she was a very creative doctoral student, and she said, "I have my best ideas when I'm procrastinating."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And it was, it was one of those moments where I didn't believe her, but I thought it was an interesting enough idea that it was worth exploring, and I said, "Sh- show me. Like, get... let's get some data. Let's see if we can, we can test this." And she ended up, um, gathering data in a Korean company where she surveyed people on how often they procrastinate and then got their supervisors to rate their creativity, and sure enough found that people who procrastinate sometimes were rated as more creative than people who rarely do like me, the precrastinators. And I remember asking her, "What about the chronic procrastinators?" And she's like, "I don't know. They never filled out my survey." (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. As I recall from that paper, there's kind of inverted U-shaped function with procrastination on the vertical axis and, and, um, uh, and creativity on the horizontal axis. Is that-
- AGAdam Grant
Flipped.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Flipped, sorry. Okay. So, um, explain to me then the relationship between procrastination and creativity.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. So basically the, the peak of creativity is in the middle of procrastination.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Ah, okay. Got it.
- AGAdam Grant
And yeah, there's a... there's an upside down U curve there. And so then I thought this was fascinating. So then, you know, we go into the lab to say, "Can we replicate this? Can we control it in an experiment?" And the hardest part of that was, how do you randomly assign people to procrastinate? Like, to my knowledge, never been done before. And we eventually figured out that we could give people a, a bunch of tasks to do and then tempt them with highly entertaining YouTube videos, uh, that were sort of placed on their screen, and we put different numbers of YouTube videos there so that, uh, you know, if there's only one, you're not tempted to procrastinate much. If there are four, you're probably gonna get sucked into a little bit of a YouTube spiral. If there are eight, uh, you might be putting off the task that's much less exciting than, uh, than, you know, watching Jimmy Kimmel's mean tweets, for example.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And this was done in a fairly naturalistic environment for these folks?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, people are... people are on a, a computer. They're, they're asked to... you know, to solve some creative problems that look pretty similar to what you might do in your job, and then we're gonna score your creativity later. And, um, it turned out that the people who were tempted to procrastinate moderately, um, ended up generating the most creative ideas. So why is that? Um, there are a couple things that happen, and you have to look at both sides of the curve. So what's wrong with the precrastinators and also what happens to the, the extreme procrastinators? Um, and in both cases, what happens is, um, you end up with a little bit of tunnel vision. So, um, when I dive right into a task, I'm stuck with my first ideas, and I don't wait long enough to incubate and get my best ideas. Um, I'm less likely to reframe the problem. I'm less likely to access remote knowledge 'cause I'm just... I'm just diving right in. And meanwhile, the chronic procrastinators, um, end up in the same boat because they don't get started until the last minute, and so they have to rush ahead with the easiest idea to implement as opposed to really developing the most novel idea. And meanwhile, the, the people in the middle who, you know, are starting to feel that pressure of like, "Wow, I... you know, I kind of spun my wheels for 10 minutes watching a bunch of YouTube videos, I'm running out of time for this task," they still have enough time to work on the ideas that were active in the back of their minds, and, and that gives them a, a shot at more novel ideas. So I've tried to adopt this... to answer your question, I've tried to adopt this as my process now, to say, "I will still dive into a project ahead of schedule, but I will not commit to an idea until I've let it incubate for a few weeks and I'm working on other things." Whereas an earlier version of me, like when I'd sit down to write a book, um, as soon as I had the book idea, I would start writing on day one. Now I have the idea, I file it away, and I give myself at least a month before I begin drafting. Um, and I think it feels less productive, but it's far more creative.
- AHAndrew Huberman
What are your thoughts about some of what you described being an unconscious way of seeding the mind and the unconscious with an idea? So for instance, uh, let's take a, a school academic scenario where, um, students get an assignment and the assignment is contained within a folder and it just says "assignment," okay? And it's, uh, due on a particular date, and it says due on that particular date. And they're given the folder, but they have no sense of what the assignment is. You can imagine one category of procrastinator that will take that thing and put it down and avoid looking at it entirely, versus another category of procrastinator that will flip, flip it open and take a look at, "Okay, this is going to be an essay on, you know, um," I don't know, "something about, uh, economic theory in the late 1700s," close it, and then procrastinate. Uh, there is an idea, which I, frankly, I subscribe to a little bit, um, because we recently did this series on mental health, not mental illness, but mental health, with Dr. Paul Conti, where he talked extensively about the unconscious and how the unconscious mind is always working with ideas, things that we are concerned about, performance, these sorts of things, even if we're not aware of them. Um, what, what are your thoughts about the creativity that's seeded by slight procrastination being related to actually knowing what you're procrastinating on specifically?
- AGAdam Grant
I, I think it turns out to be, I don't want to say essential, but critical.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
So one of the things we found is in order for moderate procrastination to fuel creativity, you have to be intrinsically motivated by the thing you're procrastinating on.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Interesting.
- AGAdam Grant
And so what, what happens is if y- if you, if you're bored, for example, by the topic, you're not gonna open the folder. You're not gonna start thinking about it at all. It's not gonna begin, you're not gonna do any subconscious processing. You're not gonna have any unexpected connections, um, between this topic and something else you've learned, uh, learned about or, or been curious about. If you're interested in the problem, then when you put it off, you're much more likely to still keep it active in the back of your mind.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And that's when, when you begin to, to see, you know, I, I imagine you could explain the biology of this. Um, I, I imagine, for example, there's, um, there's probably, um, there are probably more neural networks, um, that are connecting. Um, you probably get, you get access to ideas that previously would've been, um, sort of separate nodes. And so I think that you, you want to know what the topic is, right? You don't want to just see the blank assignment, but you also have to find a reason that this is exciting to you. Um, otherwise you're gonna avoid it as opposed to letting it percolate.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- 20:48 – 27:59
Intrinsic Motivation & Curiosity
- AHAndrew Huberman
That brings us to the topic of intrinsic motivation, um, and I'd like to link that up with the topic of performance. So when I was in university, uh, there were many topics that I was excited to learn about, some more than others of course. Um, but occasionally I'd be in a class or I'd get an assignment that frankly I had minimal interest in. Never zero, but minimal interest. And as a way of dealing with that, I embarked on a process of literally lying to myself and just telling myself, "Okay, I'm super interested in reading this and I'm gonna force myself to be interested in reading it." And lo and behold, I would start falling in love with certain things. Maybe it was, it was even the, um, you know, the arrival of a word that I didn't recognize, and then I would go look it up, and I knew I was studying for the GRE at that time, so I'd file that away. I still have my notebooks of all the vocabulary words that I learned in the course of my university courses that frankly made the verbal portion of the GRE l- pretty easy. You know, wh- which if you ever try and study for that at the end, it's pretty tough to commit all those new words to le- uh, to memory and context. So I could find little hooks and, and through those hooks I could kind of ratchet my way into a larger interest. And then lo and behold, I'm really interested in Greek mythology, you know, or that, actually liked that one at first, but, um, I didn't have to trick myself, but, you know, maybe we could spend a little bit of time talking about what is true intrinsic motivation. Is it always reflexive? Uh, can we make ourselves intrinsically motivated about a given topic or scenario or group of people? Uh, and then let's talk about how intrinsic motivation links to performance, because there's a rich literature on this, as I recall, and I remember, you know, the Stanford study of rewarding kids for things they were already-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, that's right. Sure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
...intrinsically motivated to do. Maybe we could touch on that a little bit and remind people who haven't heard about it. But I'm fascinated by this topic because I feel like so much of life is about doing things that initially we don't feel that excited to do.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And yet succeeding in life, you know, until you can afford to offload your, uh, administrative work to somebody else, (laughs) which hopefully by, by now you have. Um-
- AGAdam Grant
Find a way to get it done.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. Uh, this is fundamental to being a functional human being, frankly.
- AGAdam Grant
It is.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Not just "successful," in air quotes, but functional. We gotta do stuff that we don't enjoy doing.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. So I think we, we can talk about a couple different ways to nurture intrinsic motivation. We can think about how the task itself is designed. We could think about reward systems and then we could think about also the things we say to ourselves and others, which I hope are not lies- (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
... but rather, uh, persuasive attempts.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, let's, let's start on that one actually. I, I don't know a lot of people who are that good at deliberate self-deception.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, i- well, I like to think it was only around a particular set of, uh, goal-motivated pursuits. Um, but at that time for me also, it was survival. As I mentioned, I didn't do well in high school. I really wanted to perform well in university, but I knew that working just for the grade wasn't going to carry me.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It was, it, it felt catabolic.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and I don't know, maybe I, at that age, I was still in the window of heightened neuroplasticity. We know it never closes, but, um, but I think I also fell in love with the process of learning how to do what I just described.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. So I think for most people the best method of self-persuasion is actually to convince somebody else. Uh, so I'm thinking of Elliot Aronson's classic research on cognitive dissonance where he would, he would ask you to go and tell somebody else a task you hated-... is really interesting. And if he paid you a lot to do it, you still hated the task, because you had a justification. Like, "I got 20 bucks to, you know, to kind of fib a little bit about this task. Um, you know, the task is bad, but I did it for the, for the payment." When he paid you $1 to go and tell somebody that you loved a task that you didn't, you ended up liking it more.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Wow. And maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but maybe you should tell me why I shouldn't be surprised.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) Well...
- AHAndrew Huberman
Because I, I hope people got what you just said very clearly, and if they didn't, if you don't like doing something, going and reporting to somebody else how great that thing is, so lying about it to somebody else, um, is one way to increase the degree to which you like or enjoy that behavior or topic. And if you're paid $20 to go lie to somebody in the positive direction, so against your true belief, it's less effective in shifting your-
- AGAdam Grant
Your attitude.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... underlying affect about that thing, your emotions, than if you're paid less. Correct?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, exactly.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay.
- AGAdam Grant
Now, I think obviously in the experiment, lying was a, an easy way to, to show the effect. But in real life, I think the way that you want to apply this is to say, "All right, I've got to find something about this task that's interesting to me, and then in the process of explaining it to somebody else, I'm going to convince myself, because I'm hearing the argument from somebody I already like and trust."
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs)
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) And I've also chosen-
- 27:59 – 30:52
Tool: Tasks & Sense of Purpose
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay, let me back up. So, if your child or an adult is dreading working, exploring a topic or going about an assignment of any kind, um, you will give them a question that they then need to resolve. What if the as- the assignment is like, "Rake the leaves off the front lawn?" Do you, uh, do you say, you know, um, "Count the leaves?"
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Or, I mean, uh, how, how does one get, um, past the sort of, um, procrastination and, uh, generate some intrinsic motivation for things that one dreads, where it's unlikely that they're going to discover some knowledge that's exceedingly useful for the, for future?
- AGAdam Grant
You always start with, with, "Okay, what's the, what's the first experiment I can run? Find the most interesting looking leaf," or your favorite leaf. And then that, that lasts for about two minutes, and (laughs) you're like, "Okay, now what? We still have a lot of leaves there."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
I think not all tasks can be made intrinsically motivating to everyone. And so, when, when intrinsic motivation is difficult to find, what you want to substitute with is, um, is a sense of purpose. Um, maybe a better way to say that is, um, when the process is not interesting to you, um, you need to find a meaningful outcome. So, there's, uh, there's some research on, um, on the boring but im- important effect, where kids who have a purpose for learning, um, this goes through high school, and think, you know, "This is not just interesting to me, but I'm going to be able to use this knowledge to, um, to help other people one day," um, they, they're more persistent in their studying. They end up getting better grades. And so, I think, you know, intrinsic motivation is often driven by curiosity about the how. Um, a sense of purpose comes from really thinking hard about the why. Why does this matter? And so, I, I'd say with the, you know, the raking leaves, let's try to connect that task to something else that you care about. Um, are you going to, um, you know, pleasantly surprise your parents when they get home? Um, are you going to, um, you know, have a place to play soccer that you didn't before? Um, and I think then the, you know, the, the process of, of getting to that... I guess what I'd say is, like, if you're trying to motivate yourself, um, it's a little bit harder than if you were trying to motivate somebody else on this. Um, if I was going to motivate somebody else, I would take a, a page out of the motivational interviewing playbook, where I would say, "Okay, Andrew..." Actually, let's play this out for a second. "So you're gonna rake s- a pile of leaves. It's a two-hour task. Zero to 10, how excited are you about that?"
- AHAndrew Huberman
A three.
- AGAdam Grant
Three? Really?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
I'm surprised. I, I thought you were gonna say zero or one.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Why is it not lower?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, I like any sort of physical activity, because it allows me to move, and I just like moving my body.
- AGAdam Grant
There we go. Okay, so you just identified a potential source of purpose for that activity.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Um, and I'm- I don't have a, I don't have a vested interest in convincing you to do this task. I am genuinely curious about what would motivate you to want to do it. And as you start to articulate it, boom, self-persuasion kicks in.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Love it. Um, I'm gonna start using these, uh, these approaches. Um-
- AGAdam Grant
Try it at your own risk.
- 30:52 – 32:34
Sponsor: AG1
- AGAdam Grant
- AHAndrew Huberman
As we all know, quality nutrition influences of course our physical health, but also our mental health and our cognitive functioning, our memory, our ability to learn new things, and to focus. And we know that one of the most important features of high-quality nutrition is making sure that we get enough vitamins and minerals from high-quality, unprocessed or minimally processed sources, as well as enough probiotics and prebiotics and fiber to support basically all the cellular functions in our body, including the gut microbiome. Now, I, like most everybody, try to get optimal nutrition from Whole Foods, ideally mostly from minimally-processed or non-processed foods. However, one of the challenges that I and so many other people face is getting enough servings of high-quality fruits and vegetables per day, as well as fiber and probiotics that often accompany those fruits and vegetables. That's why way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, I started drinking AG1. And so I'm delighted that AG1 is sponsoring the Huberman Lab Podcast. The reason I started taking AG1, and the reason I still drink AG1 once or twice a day, is that it provides all of my foundational nutritional needs. That is, it provides insurance that I get the proper amounts of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber to ensure optimal mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They're giving away five free travel packs, plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to claim that special offer. I have a question about extrinsic motivation. So, if we grow up being incentivized by
- 32:34 – 42:24
Extrinsic Rewards, Choice; Social Media
- AHAndrew Huberman
extrinsic things, you know, um, you'll get your allowance if you blank. Um, you can spend the money that you make in, you know, on your paper route doing the things you really want to do. Is there any value in those kinds of learning-based incentives, um, for kids and for adults, because, I mean, that's the real world as well. I know, I know plenty of people, I have family members that only work for a paycheck, and they're pretty okay because they like spending their paycheck-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... probably more than I ... You know, I'm not intrinsically attached to money. I mean, I certainly have needs in, in life, but, but I don't enjoy spending money for the sake of spending it or for gaining more possessions. But I know people that do, and I certainly don't judge. Um, are they somehow existing in a, um, in a diminished landscape of happiness, or, or ... Th- 'cause they seem pretty happy to me. Uh, but they seem to have also worked out this relationship. They do certain things to get the extrinsic rewards, and they really enjoy what they can do with those extrinsic rewards.
- AGAdam Grant
There's a ... So there's a huge body of evidence on what are the effects of en- extrinsic rewards on motivation and performance. And I think the latest conclusions, if you look at the, the latest meta-analyses, so, you know, huge study of studies trying to accumulate, like, what's the average effect of adding a financial incentive to a task that wasn't incentivized before, or to a job where, you know, you were paid salary and now we're gonna give you incentive compensation. Um, there is a boost. So, in general, um, people are, uh, are more productive when they're incentivized for their output. But, um, these incentives are better for p- uh, for motivating quantity than quality. So, you see people get more done, but they're not necessarily more careful or more thorough. Um-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Are they less careful and less th- thorough?
- AGAdam Grant
No. Um, actually, there, there's still positive effects on average. They're just weaker. Um, and of course, you could then start to say, "Well, how do I incentivize, you know, being fast and careful?"
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Um, but I think where, where we do have to be really cautious is, um, there's an undermining effect of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. And you were, you were alluding to this earlier, dating back to the early '70s, where we know that if we take an interesting task and then we pay you for it, you might conclude that you're only doing it for the outcome and you lose interest in the task. So the, the classic demonstration, Mark Lepper and colleagues, is kids playing video games, and th- they're, um, they're playing them because they're fun, and then you start to add in a- an incentive, and then when the incentive's taken away, they don't wanna play anymore, because the meaning of the task has changed. And now I'm doing it 'cause I wanna get something out of it, as opposed to, "I love the process." I think that that, um, that phenomenon, um, does not have to exist. So we know, for example, at work, um, if managers, uh, as long as they give people autonomy, um, they don't present the rewards in a controlling way. Um, so instead of saying, you know, "Andrew, in order to earn this, you need to do the following work," uh, if they say, "Hey, look, you know, I'd really love it if you, you know, if you would deliver the following, um, and in order to make that worth your while, I'm offering this incentive," people react very differently when they have a sense of choice and control. Um, so I think that- that's, I guess, the starting point. In the presence of autonomy, I don't, I don't think there's a major downside of, of extrinsic rewards. I think you also have to be careful that, um ... yeah, I guess, that you're not over-justifying the task. In other words, you're not, um, you're not swamping people's intrinsic reason for doing it, but you're adding a reason to try it. So actually, um, if we, if we go to a different domain for a second, so, um, look at kids who don't wanna eat their vegetables. Extrinsic incentives are very effective to get kids to try vegetables for the first time. But then the hope is that they discover a vegetable or two that they don't mind, and then they find reasons to keep doing it. Um, and I think that- that's how I want a lot of rewards to work. I don't think that rewards should be carrots that we dangle to try to control people's behavior. I think they should be symbols of how much we appreciate and value a particular behavior. And if you frame them that way, it's a lot easier for people to say, "Yeah, you know what? I'm, uh, that, that reward is something that I really want, but I'm, I'm not only doing the task for that reward."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that, that ... You basically answered the question I was going to ask, which is, and, you know, at risk of sounding new agey, um, but we are sitting in California.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
I could imagine that when one is focused on the extrinsic rewards, so a physical task or a cognitive task for an extrinsic reward, if I'm focusing on the extrinsic reward, I'm also, air quotes again, uh, "not present," right? I'm, I'm thinking about the outcome. I'm not thinking about process, and I think there's, and you, perhaps you can, uh, flesh out some of what this is exactly, but I think there's, uh, fairly extensive, um, data to support the idea that when we are physically and mentally present to the task, that we're going to perform better, and presumably, our, our, um, intrinsic liking of that task or performing that task increases as well. Is that true?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, I think so. I think, uh, so if we wanna break down the mechanisms for why intrinsic motivation is useful for, for performance, um, one, you touched on it earlier, it's focus of attention. Um, you're... It's much easier to find flow when you're intrinsically motivated. You get into that state of deep absorption where, uh, time melts away. So you mentioned, you know, sort of either speeding up or slowing down your, your sense of time. You forget where you are. Sometimes you even lose track of your identity, and you're just e- you're just merged into the task. Uh, and so that, that, that concentration is helpful. There's also a, a greater persistence effect, that when you enjoy what you're doing, you're less likely to give up in the face of obstacles. Uh, you're more likely to think about it when you're not doing the task and come up with great ideas. And so, um, you know, I think there's, there's a working harder, there's a working longer, there's a working smarter, and there's also a thinking more clearly effect.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This is a, uh, brief but related tangent. One of the things that I've found incredibly difficult in recent years is that, um, you know, most of my life, really since I was a small kid, I was forging for things and then, you know, I used to give lectures on Monday in class if they let me until they eventually stopped me, about the stuff I was reading about all weekend.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
So got an early start in the, in the professorial, um, front. But now, if I'm reading something and I discover a r- what I think is a really valuable piece of information or a tool or a protocol, I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool. These findings are oh so cool," there's a problem, which is that now, I have an opportunity to cast that out to the world through social media. We all do. This could be, uh-
- AGAdam Grant
Wait, I'm sorry. You're on social media?
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs) Um, from time to time. I do much-
- AGAdam Grant
You're all, you're all over my feeds.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, you and, and I both do our own social media, by the way, which I really appreciate. Uh, I think you, one can always detect if s- if someone else is handling someone's social media. So yes, I'm on social media, and, and I love that I have the opportunity to both, um, send out ideas and information and also receive feedback. I really love the comments section, um, and always encourage comments. I, I learn from it, uh, frankly.
- AGAdam Grant
Love is a strong word. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
I learn from it, you know? And, and you and I were weaned in the academic culture where frankly, the, the kind of hazing that, that y- one receives in academic culture is very different than the kind of hazing that one receives on social media, but, um, let's just say that if you come up through academia, you develop a pretty thick skin. Um, so-
- AGAdam Grant
I agree with that. I d- I do have to say, though, that there, there was a part of me that was really surprised when I started posting on social, that I l- I love cr- I love constructive criticism. I was unprepared for the number of people who will knee-jerk criticize a study without even looking at whether the methods are rigorous.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right, right.
- AGAdam Grant
I'm like, "Come on."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
"If I posted this, surely it's at least worth considering the possibility that there's strong evidence behind it."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. Well, that's where a, uh, a, um, a brief, uh, I won't call it a retort, but a response of, you know, um, you know, uh, uh, "Clearly you should read the study further, because I think you'll be satisfied with the answer," or something. I don't know. Um, but I agree. It, it can be a little bit harsh in there sometimes. But you know, the social media, uh, channels are... I think have... You know, they have... It's a double-edged blade. Um, they obviously have their issues, but, um, can be a wonderful opportunity to share information and share it quickly. The problem is that it takes me out of what I was doing initially, which was learning, searching for those gems with w- which to share later. And I think there's a broader landscape to consider this, where people, for instance, are... Uh, I was at the beach yesterday. It was just absolutely spectacular day at the beach, uh, especially for this time of year, and everyone was taking pictures of that experience on their phone and probably sharing that experience either social media or with friends. Um, this is very different than taking a photograph and not seeing that photograph until later or not sending it out. And so there are now near infinite number of circumstances where we are taken out of the rewarding experience. I should rephrase that. We are taking ourselves out of the rewarding experience and focusing on a different rewarding experience that I think by definition is an extrinsic reward. So we are taking ourselves out of our intrinsically rewarding experiences and activating these extrinsic rewards, and do you think in any way that's undermining our experience of things that we really enjoy? Um, again, not to demonize social media or these channels, but-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... um, I've personally found it difficult to refrain from sharing this knowledge that I'm so excited to share, but I deliberately delay, and there's lot... I have a deep list of f- folders full of things that I want to post, but I'm just doing it, you know, systematically over time because I really fight the temptation to, to do this, mostly because I want to continue to enjoy this learning process and this, uh, seeking process so much.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. I, I feel the same, the same. Um, I feel torn. I think...
- 42:24 – 49:20
Tool: “Quiet Time” Protocol, Chronotypes
- AGAdam Grant
I think it was E.B. White who said, uh, "I, I arise in the morning torn between the desire to enjoy the world and the desire to improve the world, and this makes it difficult to plan the day." And I, I, I feel that every day. I think... I mean, I, I even... I felt it this morning. I was like, "Okay, it's time to, it's time to leave to, to come to the, the Huberman podcast." I'm like, "Wait, but I, I, I didn't hit my minimum sunlight viewing, so (laughs) wh- what do I do? Do I show up on time for you or do I meet your criteria?"
- AHAndrew Huberman
The, the, um, the explanation, "I was getting my morning sunlight and therefore I'm X number of minutes or even hours late," would have been completely fine with me.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) I figured as much.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yes, absolutely.
- AGAdam Grant
That's a, that's a built-in acceptable excuse with you.I think, I mean, I, I think everybody experiences a version of this, and, um, it's definitely gotten worse with, uh, with social media and with smartphones. Um, I think ... So, one of the, the most startling data points for me was, um ... Gloria Mark first put this on my radar. Uh, before COVID, the average person was checking email 72 times a day. (exhales) How do you ever concentrate for more than a couple minutes if you're self-interrupting that often? You can't. Um, Brigid Schulte has a great term for this. She, she calls it time confetti and she says we're taking these meaningful blocks of time and we're slicing them up into these, like, tiny little dots of confetti. And, uh, not only can we not accomplish anything, uh, we're also eroding our own sense of joy. Um, because it's really hard to enjoy the, you know, the 30-second blip of time that you get on a task. Um, and I think we know a lot more about the existence of these (laughs) problems than, than how to solve them. But one thing we do know is, uh, blocking out uni- interrupted time is meaningful. Uh, there's a great Leslie Perlow experiment where she takes engineers and she has them, uh, she sets a quiet time policy, no interruptions Tuesday, Thursday, Friday before noon. 65% above average productivity.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Could you repeat the, um, the protocol, uh, again?
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, yeah. So quiet time, there are a couple iterations of it, but I think the most effective one was Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, no meetings, no interruptions, no Slack, no emails before noon.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And during those periods of no interruptions, one could tend to whatever their primary purpose is at work?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, you have it-
- AHAndrew Huberman
So for me, it might be podcasting. Obviously, I don't have my phone in here and never do. Um, but it doesn't mean no interaction with anyone else. It just means focusing on the major tasks.
- AGAdam Grant
The task, exactly. And you come in with a clear sense of priority and purpose. And I don't think there's anything magical about Tuesday, Thursday, Friday before noon. (laughs) Uh, it's just the idea of setting a boundary and collectively committing to it that, that seems to be important. And I think, you know, I ... when I think about this, uh, I'd be, I'd be really curious about your take on, um, on chronotypes here. Because I think one thing I've learned in the last couple years is that if you're a, if you're a morning person, um, you do your best analytical and creative thinking in the morning. And so, the quiet time block would work very well for, for me as a morning person. If you're a night owl, um, you probably want that block in the late afternoon. And I was encouraged, there's, there was some evidence during COVID that, uh, people have their best meetings right after lunch, uh, that they're something like 30% less likely to multitask in an after-lunch meeting. Uh, and I guess, you know, you, you could probably unpack the, like, the food coma, uh, you know, getting re-energized by other people. But it's led me to wonder if we should all be protecting the first few hours and the last few hours of the day for deep work and then doing our core meetings and interactions and kind of off-task activities in the middle. What do you think about that as a sequence?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Well, I have a, a lot of questions about this for you, but, um, I love that sequence. It certainly fits with my natural rhythms. I, I think there's ample evidence to support the fact that provided one is sleeping well at night and is on a more or less a standard schedule ... When I say standard, I mean going to bed somewhere between, let's say, 9:30 PM and 11:30 PM, waking up some time between, let's say, um, 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM, maybe 5:30 AM or 7:30 AM. Um, something like that. So not highly unusual, uh, night owl or super early bird. Um, for people that are following that sort of schedule, the first, let's just say from zero to eight hours after waking, there tends to be a, a fairly robust increase in all the catecholamines, so dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, which generally, okay, generally speaking, uh, lead to increases in alertness, attention, and focus that are great for analytic work. Uh, great for implementation of strategies that you already understand and you need to churn through a lot of stuff. Um, and of course there's a big increase in the morning, especially if you view morning sunlight, a healthy increase, I should say, in cortisol. Cortisol is not bad, folks. You n- ... You want cortisol, but you want that peak early in the day. We know that. Okay. So, um, for most people, it seems, at least my understanding is that, um, that period of time, zero to eight or, uh, eight hours after waking or so, um, is best devoted to the, quote-unquote, "most critical tasks." But one of the common problems is that people take that, um, ability to implement a known strategy and they start battering back all the emails or talking to all ... Uh, by the way, talking to coworkers is great and it's often required, but it's whe- ... The question is whether or not it's productive conversation or whether or not it's just conversation. And we tend to have a lot of energy e- early in the day, and I'm, I'm obsessed with the idea of neural energy as opposed to just caloric energy. Um, so there we're talking about neural energy. And then post-lunch, so really, uh, as we get to the sort of, you know, uh, nine to 17 hours after waking, there is a dip in autonomic arousal that during the middle of the day, the postprandial dip, there's a post-lunch sleepiness, um, that can be partially offset by delaying your morning caffeine a bit if you have the afternoon crash.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But it's interesting that you noted that, uh, more productive meetings and less, um, task switching and distraction occurred, um, in meetings set after lunch, because that makes me think that perhaps being a little bit less alert is going to lend itself to more focus. And indeed, that's the, the sort of optimal state, relaxed, but focused.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know, you're not sleepy, um, but you also don't have so much intrinsic energy that you're, you know-
- AGAdam Grant
Bouncing off the walls.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... tending to a bunch of things because-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... I think a lot of people do feel that way. You know? And I'm drinking, you know, double espresso right now, um, late mid-morning, um, late morning. Uh, and, you know, I can sit still, but I think, uh, certain Zoom meetings, how do I say this? I don't want to offend any of my colleagues. I mean, th- they are boring enough. Like, they are not content-rich enough to, uh, to grab all my attention. And nowadays, of course, there are multiple screens. Typically, I've got two phones and a computer, and you have to really, uh, spend some work to flip over those phones while I'm on a Zoom and things like that. Um, so maybe it-
- AGAdam Grant
I'm sorry. What were you saying? I was listening.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So it's, uh, so it's maybe the reduction in autonomic arousal that, that supports what you just described, but I don't know. Um, my, my thinking, uh,
- 49:20 – 57:05
Tool: Creativity: Mornings, Movement, Stillness
- AHAndrew Huberman
or my understanding rather was that g-Creative work and kind of, um, brainstorming was best accomplished in the late afternoon. Um, I've noticed when lecturing, I'd be curious what your experience is with, um, in university lectures, when I held courses in the evening, I used to like to hold my courses 5:00 to 7:00 PM or even 7:00 to 9:30 PM when I was teaching undergraduates, that people were much looser and more relaxed. And I always, um, uh, thought that that might have something to do with an increase in GABA transmission that's known to happen late, in late evening, that people were just kind of more relaxed, more, and less social anxiety. They'd been around people for much of the day and were-
- AGAdam Grant
Anyway, I-
- AHAndrew Huberman
I send back more reflections than answers. I, I don't have any firm neuroscience explanations for what you described, but, but there are some emerging theories about how that might work. And it has this zero to nine hours, phase one, nine to 17 hours, phase two, and then of course, from 17 to 24 hours, I'll call it phase three, you should be asleep.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Ideally.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, that, I, I think there's, there's a, there's a confound in your, your teaching experience, which is (laughs) undergrads often sleep in until, what, noon or-
- AHAndrew Huberman
True.
- AGAdam Grant
... they might be up until 4:00 AM.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Or at least 10:00 AM seems to be a typical rise time-
- AGAdam Grant
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... for the undergraduate.
- AGAdam Grant
So a morning class might be too early for them to be fully awake, but there is, um, there's some brand new evidence that on, at least on creativity at work, um, I read a, a series of, I think it was three studies recently showing that early birds actually did do more creative work in the morning. Um, and in part, uh, I think again, the, I don't, I don't think any neuroscientist has, has touched the mechanisms on this yet, but in terms of the psychological processes, um, early on, there's just, there seems to be a benefit of, um, of the energy level. Um, and some of that energy leads to more divergent thinking. Uh, and later, if you're a morning person, you might lose the ability to, to diverge quite as much. And so you end up in a more conventional space of thought. Does that, does that track at all with your understanding of how it might play out in the brain?
- AHAndrew Huberman
My understanding is it'd be a little bit in, it would be individual, but you know, there is something to these liminal states between sleep and waking. So maybe we can-
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... um, wrap a convenient bow around what, uh, I said and what you, what you just said, which is, um, that we know that in the transition states into and out of sleep, and it doesn't necessarily have to be within the first half hour in and out of sleep, that, um, there seems to be more divergent thinking or at least activation of neural networks that, um, are not as constrained as one observes when they're in a, in a sheer task and strategy implementation mode. Right? I mean, I think, you know-
- AGAdam Grant
Is that similar to the shower effect? Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The shower effect. So people have ideas in the shower or wa-, or while running or, um, while falling asleep or my best ideas always come within the first hour after waking. That's why I carry a notebook around. And, uh, much to the dismay of people in my life, oftentimes I, I don't want to hear or (...laughing...) talk to anyone first thing in the morning. Uh, this is problematic and I had to make adjustments and we'll talk about adjustments between, um, uh, productivity and, uh, uh, control and, and, um, f- f- family interactions. This is something I know you've, you've worked on and, and written about. Um, but those liminal states are, are interesting. And, and I'd love your thoughts on this. Um, I've had several guests on this podcast talk about their creative process. Um, namely Rick Rubin, um, who's famous for his work in music, uh, producing, also has a great podcast, Tetragrammaton, um, as well as Karl Deisseroth, a colleague of mine who's r- really in the 0.0001% of, um, super talented bioengineers, neuroscientists, who also happens to be a full-time, um, clinical psychiatrist and has five children. Okay.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) .
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and I asked them about their creative process, 'cause both of them are very creative. Um, Karl's process involves the following. Late at night for him, but it could really be any time of day, deliberately making his body as still as possible and forcing himself to think in complete sentences. Rick's creative process, although it includes a lot of different things, has a lot to do with also getting very still, lying down. Okay. Other folks that I've spoken to, academics and, and artists have referred to getting their body into motion, but quieting their mind. So these are two opposite processes. One case, the body is still, but the mind is deliberately very active. In the other scenario, the body is very active, but they're making their mind sort of in free association, not still, but they're not deliberately thinking about any one thing.
- AGAdam Grant
Fascinating.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And I'm obsessed with this. Maybe we, you and I could work on this, you know, I'm due for a sabbatical. Maybe we could figure this out, because I think-
- AGAdam Grant
I've never seen anyone study this before.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. Because the, the, uh, the nervous sys- no, the nervous system, uh, I'm not aware of anyone ha- has done it formally either. The nervous system, of course, is a m-, is a brain body phenomenon. And so what happens when we sort of cut off the deliberate operations of brain or body and it, it doesn't seem to matter whether or not it's brain or body, as long as one is deliberately shut off. And so anyway, I'd love your thoughts on this. Um, I don't consider myself a, like a ultra creative or creative type, um, to any great degree, but-
- AGAdam Grant
Me neither. That's why I, uh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
But, but I'm fascinated-
- AGAdam Grant
... that's why I've been studying it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. But I'm-
- AGAdam Grant
Instead of doing it. (laughs) .
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. But that's what, but I'm fascinated by these deliberate tactics that highly creative people have, have t-, uh, undertaken, um, in order to bring about ideas. I certainly have some of my best ideas when I'm running and I'll just be running along, I'm like, "My goodness, I wasn't even thinking, but now I need to write this down." Okay. And then continue. Uh, I tried the Deisseroth approach and the, the Rubin approach, actually just spent a week with Rick, um, overseas, and indeed he spends a lot of time just still thinking, and it's a very hard practice to, to get, um, to get consistent with.
- AGAdam Grant
I wonder, I wonder if there are individual differences here on, on which needs to be stable or steady. Um, I'm think-, you know, I'm thinking about a huge part of creativity is, um, is overriding your default instincts. And if you're somebody whose default is to have your mind constantly going, then quieting would probably shift your, your train of thought to something more original or unconventional. Um, the opposite might be true, if you have a naturally quiet mind, I would imagine you need to, you need to sort of jolt yourself out of that with lots of access to, you know, to free ranging thoughts. And so, um, it'd be interesting actually to study whether we can predict what you should still based on your personality.
- 57:05 – 58:14
Sponsor: InsideTracker
- AGAdam Grant
- AHAndrew Huberman
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- 58:14 – 1:07:15
Tools: Ideas & Filtering, Feedback & Opinions, Advice
- AHAndrew Huberman
those lines, when one is trying to gauge the quality of their ideas, um, how do you cope with, uh, or how does one cope with not placing a judge on that that, um, causes some, you know, false negatives where you're, where you're wiping out great ideas? Because, um, you know, Rick Rubin talks a lot about, you know, don't give the audience what they want. They don't know what they want. They haven't seen it yet. If it's a truly creative idea, they haven't seen it. And, um, but of course we all have to develop our own sense of taste, so well, how does this process work for you? I mean, you've written about and worked on a tremendous range of topics, um, and always, uh, you know, I must say with, with such rigor and such clarity of communication about those topics.
- AGAdam Grant
Thank you.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, it's absolutely true. I mean, like 100%. So we say around here, no weak sauce, you know?
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs) .
- AHAndrew Huberman
And, uh-
- AGAdam Grant
That's a great phrase.
- AHAndrew Huberman
There's no weak sauce in your game. It's incredible. So, um, when do you get your ideas and how do you filter those ideas?
- AGAdam Grant
I, I feel like the when could be any time. Uh, I think the, I mean, you've, you've clearly experienced this too. For me, the best thing about hosting a podcast is I have an excuse to learn about anything I want from almost anyone I want, and I get to call that part of my job. And so I feel like, you know, that having that built in mechanism for learning means ideas could, could come at any moment. Uh, the, the filtering process for me is, um, it's evolved over the last few years. What I, what I do now is if I'm, let's say I'm, I'm starting a new book, I'll write a draft of the first chapter and I send it to five to eight people whose judgment I trust. And by design, some of those people are in my field. They're, you know, deep seeded in organizational psychology. Others are, you know, very far outside, but curious about the topics I'm interested in, and I ask them for a zero to 10 score. Uh, this is something I learned to do as a, as a springboard diver, uh, where, you know, I would, I would take off, um, and, you know, I'm doing a, a few flips or twists and I think my dive is good, but I can't see it (laughs) 'cause I'm hurling in midair and it's a, everything's a blur. And so I have to rely on my coach to tell me if it was any good. I feel like creative work is the same way. You're too close to it to know how the audience is gonna react to it. And yes, you don't wanna create it just for the audience, but at the end of the day, you want it to be, you know, interesting or useful to them. So I ask for the zero to 10, and no one ever says 10, and then I use that as a calibration mechanism. So if everybody is in the seven or eight range, I know that I'm onto something promising and now I need to refine it. If I get a bunch of twos, threes, three and a halfs, (laughs) I either need to rethink the idea or dramatically rewrite how I'm positioning it. And I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make is they know they need feedback on their ideas. They go to one or two people and they start to feel a little bit defensive or threatened, and their ego gets involved, and then they don't ask for any more. What they don't realize is it's actually less painful if you get more feedback, because when eight different people critique your work, you start to realize that a few of the comments that sort of bruise you a little bit were just idiosyncratic and no one else cared about those issues. But then five people had the same problem, like, that is not taste. That is a quality issue, and I've gotta focus on that. And so it really helps to filter what are the, what are the revisions I need to make? What are the problems and complaints I need to pay attention to versus what can I ignore 'cause maybe this product was not for that person.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'm recalling when I was a postdoc, I had a manuscript fully prepared.... and I worked in a laboratory where I didn't work on the same thing as my postdoc advisor. He was very gracious in letting me be the outlier. Um, and he said, "Well, I don't know anything about this topic, so before you submit it to this fairly prestigious jor- very, frankly, very prestigious journal, I'll be honest, um, you should probably go down the hall and hand it to so-and-so." I don't wanna mention (laughs) who it was 'cause I'm still in the same department. Um, and I gave it to him, this individual, and he looked at it and he said, "Yeah, uh, you know, it looks interesting, but I, I don't think there's gonna be a whole lot of interest in this. It's just, like, not..." And I was like, "No way, like, this... I think this is really cool." But I was pretty dismayed, so I was like, "Oh gosh, so what do I do?" So I went back to my advisor, and thankfully, he's a bit of an iconoclast and he said, "That's the best feedback you could've gotten. Definitely submit it to that particular journal." And I must say, that paper got accepted faster than any other paper. I've never had an experience like that. I mean, it required some revisions. But I remember thinking, like, "Wow, what an unusual response to, after having instructed me to go ask a c- a co- a more senior colleague," or he was a, at that time, assistant professor. And then to get the neg- essentially negative response, and then to take that as, like, "You should definitely send it out," really taught me a lesson that sometimes one needs to invert their, um, their action according, uh, to the negative feedback they get. Not always, but, um, that was an n-of-one, okay? So it's n- not, uh, shouldn't be extrapolated to too many circumstances. But, um, basically led me to, um, not seek out, uh, feedback prior to submission of things terribly often. I mean, uh, I check information, obviously, prior to podcasts. I check the validity of the information in podcasts and papers. But, um, it made me realize that people's opinions can be, uh, like, highly idiosyncratic and, and, uh, in some cases, outright wrong, and really, the, the opinion of the journal is what wo- what mattered most in, in terms of getting it accepted or not. So, um, how do you... uh, you said give it to the greatest number of people, but if it's anything like comments on social media, there's a salience to negative comments. So how should we filter positive versus negative feedback?
- AGAdam Grant
Well, (sighs) there's a, there's a meta-analysis here. This is Kluger and DeNisi, um, looking at 100 years of feedback research, and they found that what drives the utility of feedback is not whether it's positive or negative. It's whether it focuses on the task or on the self. So (laughs) if I tell you that your work is terrible, you're gonna get defensive. If I tell you that your work is great, you're gonna get complacent. If I tell you, "Here's the specific thing that I liked about your work," you're gonna try to learn to repeat that. And if I tell you, "Here's the thing I didn't like," you're gonna try to see if you can fix it. So, I actually think we should worry less about whether the feedback is encouraging or discouraging and more about, "How do I make sure that I get input that's gonna allow me to learn from my strengths and also (laughs) overcome my weaknesses?" Um, and actually, I, uh, one of the things I've, I've learned recently is there's some, uh, I would say a growing body of evidence at this point that asking for feedback is not the best way to get people to help you. Um, because when you ask for feedback, you end up getting two groups of people. You get cheerleaders and you get critics. And cheerleaders are basically applauding your best self. Critics are attacking your worst self. What you want is a coach, which is somebody who helps you become a better version of yourself. And the way you get people to coach you is not to say, "Gimme feedback," because they will then look at the past and tell you what you screwed up or what you did right. What you want is to say, "Can you give me advice for next time?" And then they look at the future and they'll give you either a note on something to repeat or something to correct. And this is such a subtle shift, but it can make a big difference. Um, Andrew, one of the things I've, I guess I found myself applying this to a lot is, um, uh, after giving speeches, uh, I used to get offstage and say, "I would love some feedback." And you get back a bunch of, "Oh, you know, I really enjoyed that." Thanks. (laughs) What do I do with that information? I'm trying to learn how to get better. And when I shift the question to say, "What's the one thing I could do better next time," it's like, "Oh, don't open with a joke. The audience couldn't tell you were joking." Um, uh, frequently, it's, "Gimme a little bit more of a through line. Uh, you focused a lot on, you know, a bunch of interesting points, but I lost the connective tissue." And, you know, those, those actionable suggestions are much more likely to come when you just ask for a tip, as opposed to an evaluation.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, that's so good. I'm g- I'm gonna just pause for a second. Uh, I've never taken a pause on... uh, I've taken o- occasional pause for e- uh, to be honest, but, uh, they're very rare, um, as the audience knows. Oh, that, that's just gazillion-dollar advice.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Because I think that, um, everyone has an ego. We all want to perform well. We'd like to perform better over time, and negative feedback hurts. And it can hurt a little or a lot depending on how defensive we are. But a tool like you just described to, uh, remove some of that defensive sh- armor that we all have and, and actually let the information in in a way that's constructive, uh, is really great. What you described, I think, is a way to create constructive criticism, but the constructive part is really coming from within-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... as opposed to saying, "I'd like some constructive criticism," and then hoping that the criticism is actually constructive. So you're taking control over the process in, in a healthy way, in a benevolent way.
- 1:07:15 – 1:14:40
Tool: Constructive Criticism, “Second Score”; Verbs
- AGAdam Grant
That, that's the goal, and I think the, the big question that comes up for a lot of people at this point (laughs) is, "Okay, so I get somebody to give me advice, but it might still sting. How do I get better at taking it constructively?" And I think probably my favorite technique on this, I learned from Sheila Keen. She calls it the, the second score. And the idea is that when somebody (laughs) gives you a piece of criticism, uh, that's your first score. So let's say, you know, they... like, I, th- in my, in my world, they gave me a three and a half and I wanna know how I can do better next time. How do I get myself to focus on that? What I do is say, "I wanna get a 10 for how well I took the three and a half."... and that's the second score. I want to evaluate myself on how well I took the first score. I, I think about this almost every day. There was, um... Actually, I, can I tell you a quick story?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Please.
- AGAdam Grant
So, when I was, uh, right out of my doctorate, I got asked to teach a, uh, motivation class for Air Force generals and colonels. I was 25, I think? 25, 26. Um, you know, they're, they're all twice my age. Uh, they've got thousands of flying hours. They've got billion-dollar budgets. Uh, they've got... Well, you know this community well. Their nicknames are (laughs) Striker and Sand Dune. And I was extremely intimidated, so I, I walked in there, and I, I thought I had to impress them, and s- I started talking about my credentials and, you know, all my research experience, and the feedback at the end of the four-hour session was brutal. I remember, uh, reading the feedback forms, and one person had written, "More knowledge in the audience than on the podium." I was like, "True." (laughs) I can't argue with that. And then another wrote, "I gained nothing from this session, but I trust the instructor gained useful insight." And that, that was devastating. I was like, "Can I, like... I, I would really like to transform into an actual bear and hibernate (laughs) for the next four months, and then maybe I'll come out of it whole, ready to hear this." I didn't have that option. I had committed to teach a second session a week later. So, all I could do was figure out, like, w- how am I gonna hear this feedback and really take it seriously? And I guess I applied a version of the second score, and I said, "All right. There, you know, there are some generals that are gonna come back and see me again, and I've gotta prove to them that I was open to feedback." And one of the things I heard loud and clear was that, uh, they valued humility, and I had led with too much confidence, which was just insecurity masked. And so I thought, "Okay, how do I, how do I change the equation?" And walked in, looked at the room, and I said, "I know what you're all thinking right now. What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old?" Dead silence. I'm like, "Oh, no. This is, this is going to go horribly wrong."
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs) .
- AGAdam Grant
And then, uh, one of the guys in the audience, uh, jumps in, and he's like, "Oh, that's ridiculous. You've got to be at least 13." Everybody started laughing. It broke the ice. And I think what I, what I was trying to do was to take myself off the pedestal and say, "Look. I heard your feedback. Uh, you told me that you didn't think I had anything to teach you, and I've got to acknowledge that right up front and be open to the fact that that's true. And so I want to come in here and learn from you, and I want to see if I can curate a conversation where we all end up learning." And the feedback was night and day different. Afterward, I, I... One, one person wrote, "Although junior in experience, the professor dealt with the evidence in an interesting way." I was like, "All right. I'll take it." And, um, there's something really powerful about, about saying, "Look. You know, I, I can't change the fact that they hated my session. What I can do is convince them that I was motivated to learn from their criticism."
- AHAndrew Huberman
I, I love this, this concept of the second score, and thank you for sharing that story. I think, um, you know, very often, um, we hear about people like you who... If people didn't catch the math in there, uh, you were a PhD by age 25, um, and as far as I know, the, the youngest tenured professor at Penn at 28. So these are outrageous, uh, outrageously impressive, um, metrics of accomplishment. But for you share, uh, um, a story about, uh, you know, um, less than optimal performance-
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and how you adjusted to it, and, and, and the incorporation of the, this second score, um, that you're referring to, I think, is, uh, is really appreciated. Because I think that, um, as much as we hear, you know, "Oh, you know, Jordan, you know, took many more, you know, free throws, and everyone just thinks about all the ones he made." You know, people think about all the ones he made. That's the way the game works. That's the way the mind works, I should say. So, it's, um... I appreciate that you've flushed it out with a, with a personal example. I too would want to turn into a bear and disappear.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
But I would, but I think that, um, it's really impressive what you did. And, and I... And it makes me think that the second score of getting a 10 at, at bringing the three and a half up, right, uh, as it were, um, is really about turning a score into a verb process. You know, over and over again, as I do this podcast and I've... and as I've taught in the classroom, what I keep coming back to is this idea that we should be focusing more on verbs and less on nouns. And we love to name things and categorize them, but, but when we start living life through a, a lot of verb processes. So instead of getting, being fit, uh, and we think about the... You know, or running as a thing. We really think about, like, just running, right? It becomes less daunting, and, and we accomplish far more. But the idea that, um... You know, and this has to... This, there are mathematical models of this, I'm sure, but where you're basically talking about, you know, like an integral, right? As opposed to just some value, right? You're talking about the slope of the line.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? So, you're a three and a half. How are you gonna get to a 10? Gosh, that's a huge gap. And you're dealing with being back on your heels psychologically from getting all this, you know, battering feedback from these, uh, you know, these, uh, highly accomplished individuals. All these accoutrements (laughs) and, uh, you know, literally wearing them, presumably, on their body, uh, so you're... for you to see. And, and it's really about creating. It's about taking control of the slope of that line from the three onward. And it's really a forward-looking perspective. So, I don't think we're being un- un- unduly, uh, s- psychological here or analytic. I mean, I think it's really about taking, uh, a moment state and a noun and turning it into a verb.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. I think that's right. I (laughs) am reminded of the great philosopher, Homer Simpson, who said that verbing weirds language. Uh, so it's harder to talk about this stuff-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Love it.
- AGAdam Grant
... in verbs.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I swear I didn't steal it from The Simpsons.
- AGAdam Grant
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
But if it came from Homer Simpson, like, I'm all for it.
- AGAdam Grant
You're, you're having to... I mean, that's, uh, completely credible.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Small brain, small brain, but, you know-
Episode duration: 3:12:22
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