The 5 Most Effective Techniques To Hack Your Habits - Spencer Greenburg

1. 0:00 – 7:18

   How Useful Are Personality Tests?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How useful are personality tests, in your opinion?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg0:04

      Ah, that is a great question. So we've just run a really big study on this that I'm super excited about. In fact, you're, this is the first time ever talking about it, so v- hot off the presses. Um, so the most popular personality test in the world seems to be the Myers-Briggs test, but the Myers-Briggs test, also called the MBTI, is a commercial test, right? So it's hard to study because it's, you know, it's owned by a company and so on. So what we did is we took the public information about the constructs that have been, you know, known, about what it's trying to measure, and we've designed our own test designed to measure those same constructs. I'll just call it a Jungian test 'cause it's, you know, it's not exactly precisely the same as the commercial one, but it's designed to measure similar ideas. And then, we actually put it to the test. And so way, the way that we did this is we also developed, uh, what's called a Big Five test. Are you familiar with the Big Five Personality Model?

   3. CWChris Williamson0:51

      Yes.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg0:52

      So the, so these are, so th- it's interesting because the Big Five Personality Model is the one used by academics. It's the one they call the gold standard, whereas the Myers-Briggs is the one that's, like, super popular for the laypeople, and often, you know, academics kinda poo-poo it and say, "Oh, that's not so great," right? And so it's, so we wanted to put them against each other, and so the way we did this is we took a whole bunch of facts about a person's life. It was about 42 different facts, so everything from how satisfied they are with their life to how many friends they have, you know, to things like, you know, have they been arrested and so on. And then, we had them take both of these tests, our Big Five test, gold standard academic one, and, uh, and this, uh, Jungian test designed after the Myers-Briggs and said, "Well, how well can each test predict what's true about people's lives as a measure of how good they are?" So do you wanna guess what happened when we did this? And I'll just, before I have you guess, I'll just throw in one third thing. We also used astrological sun signs as a control group. So we took people, you know, zodiac sign, are you a Pisces or an Aries or whatever, and that was our, our kind of control. So we tried to predict-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:53

      (laughs)

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:53

      ... things about your life using that, uh, using this Jungian idea, and then using the Big Five.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:59

      Why did you need the astrology thing?

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg2:04

      Oh, it's a good way to calibrate, uh, the statistics of our system to see if we... (laughs) Uh, if, uh, if, uh, eh, whether we can, uh, predict with astrology, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson2:12

      Right. Okay. Uh, I would guess that Myers-Briggs performed probably quite poorly. I'd guess that the Big Five was more accurate, probably moderately accurate. I'd guess maybe it captures, like, let's say maybe between 30 and 50% of the outcomes that someone gets, and then Myers-Briggs is, is less, but I don't know how much less.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg2:37

       Okay. That, that is a great guess. So I'll start with our control group, uh, the zodiac signs, astrology. So it had a 0% predictive accuracy across all 42 outcomes.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:46

       (laughs)

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg2:47

       So you literally are able to predict nothing about people. Now, okay, I, that's sort of what I expected, but I wanted to be fair and really give it a test, so we ran exactly the same procedure. Okay. Um, then we look at the Jungian test, and that predicted... So the way we measure this, it's a measure called R, it was about .14, so basically, you can think about that as it's a bit correlated with these outcomes, so a .14 correlation to the outcomes when you, when you use that. Um, uh, sorry, so slightly worse than that. Sorry, it's .11, so it's about .11, so a little bit correlated to the outcomes. The Big Five was twice as good, so it was .22. And this leads to a really funny thing, which is that Myers-Briggs' ideas in our test was exactly halfway between astrology and the Big Five-

   13. CWChris Williamson3:31

       (laughs)

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg3:31

       ... so it's kind of a fun takeaway.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:33

       (laughs) Why do you think it's the case that Myers-Briggs is so much less accurate than the Big Five?

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg3:43

       Well, we studied this, uh, quite extensively. So the first thought we had is maybe it's because the Myers-Briggs has four factors that it's measuring, right? So there's the E versus the I, the N versus the S, and so on. Whereas the Big Five has five factors, so maybe that's giving the Big Five an advantage. Now, to be fair, we designed both tests at the same number of questions, so it wasn't the number of questions that was making a difference. So then, we could say, "Well, what if we get rid of the fifth factor of the Big Five?" The fifth factor being neuroticism, which is, uh, which is the Big Five factor and personality that's least related to Myers-Briggs. And when we did that, um, it did hurt the accuracy of the Big Five. It fell from about .22 correlation to about .14, but it still beat the Myers-Briggs, which is pretty wild. So E, so that wasn't the full explanation. Um, even the four, the four factors of the Myers-Briggs, um, just seemed to just not be doing as good j- a job as those four other factors of the Big Five. There's also another thing that really hurts the Myers-Briggs. So I said that it had about, um, a .11 correlation predicting these 42 outcomes, right? Well, that's actually being a little generous to the Mey- Myers-Briggs kind of test, because very often when they're presented, they're done as dichotomies, right? They don't give you a score on every trait. They say, "You're an I or an E or an N versus S." This is typically how people use the test. You know, they say, "I'm an ENTJ," right? That actually hurts the accuracy even more. And the reason is because most personality traits fall in a bell curve, right? If you, you know, you imagine the shape of a bell, there are lots and lots of people near the middle of a trait, and there are fewer as you get further away from the center. The problem is if you dichotomize these traits, you're essentially cutting them down the middle. Imagine cutting a bell down the middle and anyone who just happens to be on the left side, you, you call an I, and anyone who happens to be on the right side, you call an E. But that i-

   17. CWChris Williamson5:25

       Mm. You're lumping, you're lumping-

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg5:26

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:26

       ... an awful lot of people, some that are moderate, some that are m- quite extreme, and some that are very extreme all in together.

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg5:33

       Precisely, precisely. And there's a whole bunch of people right near the margin, so if they, maybe if they, you know, if they had their coffee 10 minutes earlier today, they might have answered one question differently and flipped from an I to an E. Um, so they, for that reason, these kinds of tests tend to be unstable, and so that actually... Um, when you take it, that into account, it actually hurt the accuracy even more. It falls from .11 correlation to a .08. Um, so yeah, a lot of ƒ-

   21. CWChris Williamson5:54

       Wow, so my, people, all of the people who've got their Myers-Briggs personality type in their bios on Instagram and Twitter are halfway between a legitimate personality test and just saying Pisces.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg6:08

       I would say in a way, but I do wanna, I do wanna steel man the, the point of view that says that M- that the Myers-Briggs style tests are actually good tests. And the, the thing that I think is actually really useful about them is that they help provide a language that a lot of people use to communicate things about themselves and communicate things about each other, right? Um, so I'm an ENTJ, according to Myers-Briggs, and if you tell someone that, it could communicate a lot of information very quickly. And so it provides a kind of shorthand language. It's also not totally useless. Like, it's not, it doesn't have zero predictive accuracy, right? It has some.

   23. CWChris Williamson6:39

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg6:39

       So I, you know, I don't wanna discredit it. I think it does actually help people understand themselves and each other, I just think we could do even better if we used more (laughs) , more accurate tests. Um, so you know, if you think in terms of the Big Five, which has five factors, it's got, uh, ............................ The acronym OCEAN is used, so you've got O for openness-

   25. CWChris Williamson6:54

       Yeah.

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg6:54

       ... which is like openness to experience, openness to ideas, being ima- imaginative, things like that. You've got C, conscientiousness, which is being, like, organized and disciplined, things like that. Um, you've got the E for extraversion, which is actually very similar to the Myers-Briggs extraversion. Uh, you got A for agreeableness, which is being compassionate and polite, and then N for neuroticism, which is experiencing intense emotions, anxiety, depression, things like that.

2. 7:18 – 12:40

   The HEXACO Model For Testing Personality

   1. CWChris Williamson7:18

      Would you ever consider doing HEXACO?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg7:21

      That's a great question. So some people have argued in favor of the HEXACO model, which basically adds a sixth factor to the Big Five. And the, the basic argument goes that if... So actually let me just step back and say how was the Big Five invented at all? Like, why are we, what, where did the Big Five come from? So the basic idea is they took all the different ways you could describe someone in the English language, so all these different adjectives, and they, they said to people, "For each of these adjectives, say which apply to yourself and say which don't." And then once they collected all this data, they did a statistical analysis, and what they were looking for is certain adjectives, if you say it applies to you, there are other adjectives that also probably implies will apply to you too. So if you say that you're organized, you also probably will say that you're, you know, rule-abiding or something like that, right? If you say that you're social, you also probably say that you're talkative. And so what they found just purely statistically, this was not theory-driven, it was actually empirically driven, they found these five clusters of traits, right? That's where the OCEAN model comes from, O-C-E-A-N. Each is a cluster of traits that, that cluster together. And then people also replicated this work by instead of having people describe themselves, they had people describe each other, and so they, they seemed to get similar results. Now some psychologists have argued that you need add a sixth factor, um, that if you do the factor analysis in some settings, you get the sixth one and they call it the H factor, and it stands for honesty-humility. And so it's things like, you know, are you, do you lie? Do you manipulate people? Do you brag? Are you arrogant? Things like that. It's sort of like the evilness factor to some extent. Um, this is a debate that's raged back and forth in the psychology community about, like, to what extent is it really there? Why is it not always found reliable? I mean, we did one test, this was a very preliminary test where we just tried to see if we could get better predictive accuracy using HEXACO than the Big Five and we didn't see much advantage...

   3. CWChris Williamson9:02

      Hmm.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg9:03

      ... so we generally just don't use it in our models because we just didn't see enough, enough reason to add it. You know, if you're gonna add an, a sixth factor, you want it to really be driving outcomes.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:10

      Yeah. I like HEXACO. I learned about honesty-humility on an episode maybe six months ago about bullying, actually. Really awesome episode about bullying. And, um, it was the first time that anybody had ever folded in the honesty-humility element of it, uh, and it really does make sense. It, it certainly feels like a, a, a dynamic, uh, like an area of territory that, um, isn't fully covered that would also be important. But then, I mean, you know, I can just, somebody else that has a different value set to me might say that, "Oh, well, I think that this, your opinion on ice cream is really important," or something else, right? Like, it's just me feeling out some idea about what I think matters. Uh, but yeah, the, the other explanation that I've heard for, or the justification for HEXACO is that it aligns with evolutionary explanations more accurately, that it is able to be, you can use adaptive explanations for behavior more effectively when you're using HEXACO than when you're using the Big Five. Um, but yeah, I, I think that you're really right, it, it certainly feels like a, a, a dynamic, like an area of territory that, um, isn't fully covered that would also be important. But then, I mean, you know, I can just, somebody else that has a different value set to me might say that, "Oh, well, I think that this, your opinion on ice cream is really important," or something else, right? Like, it's just me feeling out some idea about what I think matters. Uh, but yeah, the, the other explanation that I've heard for, or the justification for HEXACO is that it aligns with evolutionary explanations more accurately, that it is able to be, you can use adaptive explanations for behavior more effectively when you're using HEXACO than when you're using the Big Five. Um, but yeah, I, I think that you're really right, it, it certainly feels like a, a, a dynamic, like an area of territory that, um, isn't fully covered, that would also be important, but then, I mean, you know, I can just, somebody else that has a different value set to me might say that, "Oh, well, I think that this, your opinion on ice cream is really important," or something else, right? Like, it's just me feeling out some idea about what I think matters. Uh, but yeah, the, the other explanation that I've heard for, or the justification for HEXACO is that it aligns with evolutionary explanations more accurately, that it is able to be, you can use adaptive explanations for behavior more effectively when you're using HEXACO than when you're using the Big Five. Um, but yeah, I, I think that you're really right, the Myers-Briggs, I'm an INTJ. I don't even remember what any of those stand for or what that really means. But by making discrete buckets of this, um, it does cause people who are only, uh, am I a moderate INTJ? Am I an extreme IN... Am I a capital I lowercase N? Like, what's the proportion of this? But as you said, it allows you very, very quickly to communicate an awful lot of information about your personality. And even if it's only, you know, a little bit correlated, that's more than saying, "Okay, so what percentile politeness are you? And what percentile agreeableness? And what percentile da-da-da-da are you?" 'Cause that's like, you know, how am I supposed to put all of this together? So I suppose, yeah, there's, there's trade-offs. Accuracy for brevity, uh, is a trade-off really that you're making between Big Five and Myers-Briggs.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg10:59

      Exactly. And so we actually also looked at why people like the Myers-Briggs, so we included this in one of the studies we ran, and we found this fascinating thing. We showed people their Jungian report at the end of taking our study and we also showed them their Big Five report, and they felt that they were about equally accurate. So that, that was fascinating to us because we know that we actually have more predictive power with the Big Five results, but people didn't perceive it- it as, uh, more accurate. We also found a real- a really fascinating thing which is that we asked people, "How good did it make you feel?" And people found that the, the Jungian report made them feel better than the Big Five report. And this makes sense if you start thinking about what the Big Five says. It says, "Hey, buddy, you're disagreeable and neurotic and closed," right?

   7. CWChris Williamson11:41

      (laughs)

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg11:42

      And it's like, oh yeah, that sounded kind of, makes you sound like shit. And whereas if you look at, you know, Myers-Briggs test, what are they telling you? They're, they're not telling you're, you're bad. They're never telling you you're bad. You're saying you're either thinking or feeling. Those both sound like great things, right? Um, but if, if you think about the thinking, feeling trade-off, well, in Big Five, the closest thing is actually agreeableness and it's telling you you're agreeable or disagreeable, right? So what is-

   9. CWChris Williamson12:03

      Neither of those things sound good. (laughs)

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg12:06

       Yeah, neither of them sound good. And if you think about the, the sort of my- the kind of Meyerbriggs approach with thinking, feeling-What it's saying is that, oh, no, it's not that you're either, like, a compassionate person in feeling or you're a jerk, right? It's that you're either a compassionate person or you're logic-based. Right? That sounds way better. Right? You're not a jerk. You're just using logic. (laughs) So-

   11. CWChris Williamson12:24

       Much better branding from Myers-Briggs for all of the different types, yeah.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg12:29

       And it gives you a nice language that the Big Five has struggled to give you that language that really concisely to say, "I'm a blank, blank, blank." And people are like, "Oh, yeah, I get it."

   13. CWChris Williamson12:38

       You also did some big studies

3. 12:40 – 23:49

   The 5 Best Techniques For Creating Habits

   1. CWChris Williamson12:40

      on habit setting recently. Obviously, something that a lot of people are very obsessive over. Atomic Habits by James Clear, one of the best-selling nonfiction books, maybe ever, but certainly of the last five years. Probably the best-selling nonfiction book over the last five years, except for maybe some autobiographies. What did you learn from this big study?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg12:59

      Yeah. So this was really exciting. We actually ran two really big studies. The first was a- was actually kind of a bonkers study. We said, "We don't know what actually really works in the real world to help people form habits, so we're gonna test 22 things simultaneously." And so (laughs) the design of the study is we recruited a large number of people. It was, like, something like 500 people. And we randomized them. So each person got five habit techniques picked from a set of 22 that we implemented. And then that, what that meant is at the end of the study we could then analyze the relationship between which of these 22 techniques someone was randomized to get and how they formed their habit, if they succeeded ultimately. And there were some really interesting findings. So this was our first study, and then later we went to confirm it, but so the first study, some interesting findings. First of all, many of these techniques did not work at all, which was really fascinating to see. In fact, the vast majority of them completely bombed, right? So that's the first takeaway. Human behavior change is hard. It's fundamentally difficult. Lots of people wanna go tell you that they have the- the one, you know, quick life hack to change your behavior. Uh, no, not really. Sorry. Unfortunately, that doesn't work that way. Um, the second thing that we found that was really interesting is that motivation was- mattered a great deal. There- there was- there was... One of the strongest predictive factors of whether someone succeeded at their habit was just how motivated they were at the beginning. This is kind of an obvious thing, but it actually really speaks to this idea that if you're going to try to form a new habit, try to pick one you feel really motivated to do. Like, don't pick the one that you just, like, are force feeding yourself. Pick the one that you're really excited about, um, because you actually probably will have a better chance of success. So obvious, but- but useful insight. Um, okay. So then what actually worked in this pilot study, right? Um, we found five things that actually seemed to be promising. Um, I'll tell you about... I'll- I'll just tell you about a couple of them just so that, you know, so I don't give you a long list. But the first that I thought was really interesting is this technique we call habit reflection. Um, and the way that it works is you look back at a previous habit you've succeeded at and you write down, and it's important to write this down, what did you do that helped you succeed with that previous habit? You know, did you try to do it at the same time every day? Did you tell your friends that you wanted to do this habit? Or whatever. Whatever it is that you did that you think helped you succeed. Then, uh, you do the second step, which is you write down how you can apply those lessons to this new habit. And so what's really cool about this habit reflection technique, it only takes a few minutes, but it's sort of self-customizing. It's really a- an introspection exercise to figure out what works for you based on your own past results.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:21

      Yes.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg15:21

      So in a way, it's sort of dumb and obvious, but it's like, who would have ever thought to do this-

   5. CWChris Williamson15:25

      Yeah.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg15:25

      ... until it popped out in our study, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson15:26

      Yeah, it's like the, uh, it's like the machine extrapolated volition for the e- for the alignment problem in, uh, like, AGI that you're using you to split test all of the different ideas. And then once you've come up with a winner, you refer back to you to sort the current problem.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg15:46

      Absolutely. And, uh, you know, it reminds me also of, like, some of the work of Daniel Kahneman and how do you, um, how do you get around things like the planning fallacy where, you know, people will say, "Oh, yeah, I'll get this project done in two months," and then it takes six months, right? And he's like, "Okay, go think back to past cases. Like, how long did it actually take you in real situations that you were in that were similar?" It's like, go back to your past habit, analyze it. What actually worked? What didn't work, right? So simple but- but, uh, potentially very useful. Um, another one I wanna mention, and this one takes a little bit of a preamble. So one of the ideas I think is really powerful in habit formation is this idea of triggers. Um, and so on my podcast, uh, which is called the Clearer Thinking podcast, I had on an expert about habits. And he had this really nice acronym. When you think about habits, you can think about the different triggers for those habits. Um, so his name is Jim Davies, and, uh, he calls it the HABIT acronym, H-A-B-I-T. Very convenient. So the first is that your- your habits can be triggered by the humans around you. That's the H. They can be triggered by the activity you're doing. That's the A. They can be triggered by your bearing, which is where you are, like, are you at your home or your office? Uh, then there's the I, that you can be triggered by your internal state, like how... if you're hungry or not, for example. And finally, T, the time of day. Right? And so for our study, we were thinking about, well, is there some way to bring triggers into your habit that's super simple, dead easy, anyone can do it? And so we came up with this just ridiculously stupid method we call home reminders. You just write notes to yourself and you place them around your home of, like, "When this happens, do this," or, "Here's the habit I'm gonna do every day." And yeah, that was another one. Out of the 22, that was one of the best-performing. Strange... As stupid as it is. So I mean, I love incredibly stupid simple things that actually seem to work, so.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:20

      I had laser eye surgery about, mm, three weeks ago now, and there is a protocol of eye drops that you need to keep, uh, doing to keep the eye health good and whatever. Uh, and these eye drops come in little droppers. Maybe sort of 2 ml, 3 ml droppers. Uh, and it's such a good idea because I've got them fucking everywhere. They are-

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg17:43

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson17:43

       ... all over my house, which means I'm sat at my desk. It's like, "Ah, it's probably been about two hours since I put eyedrops. Oh, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. Like, I'll- I'll take one of the- the droppers with me and, oh, I'll- I'll make sure that I do that." Or, they're next to my bathroom upstairs in my bedroom or the, you know, wherever. Like, they're in my gym bag. They're everywhere.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg17:58

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson17:59

       And, um, that's kind of like a- a physical version of the Post-it note, I suppose. What are the other three? Run us- run us through all five.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg18:05

       Oh, sure, sure, sure.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:05

       People will wanna know the- the big winners.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg18:07

       Yeah, yeah, sure. Um, okay, so we've got habit reflection and home reminders. Those are the ones we talked about. The next one is mini habits, and this will be familiar to people that have read, um, James Clear's book. Uh, the idea is you take the habit that you wanna form. Let's say you wanna, like... you're like, "Okay, I wanna do my, like, full workout routine every morning." You design a tiny version of this that is so-... fast and simple that you never have an excuse not to do it. And then basically you set a rule that if you do not have time or effort or motivation or whatever to do the full version, you at least have to do the mini version, right? (laughs) Um, so, so your mini version might be, okay, do 10 push-ups. You never have an excuse not to do 10 push-ups. You know, if you could... well, assuming you can do 10 push-ups. Um, but, uh, but you may have a... you know, maybe you have a legitimate excuse not to go to the gym for 40 minutes, right?

   17. CWChris Williamson18:51

       Right. W- And then what's the reason? Wh- why, why is that so effective at keeping the habit going? Th- wh- why don't people just tumble into only doing 10 push-ups and never going to the gym?

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg19:04

       Yeah. Uh, uh, it's a good question, 'cause you could worry, "Okay, maybe I'm just gonna every day do 10 push-ups instead." Um, but I think, uh, my, my theory is that the bigger problem is not that you start the habit and you don't, you know, you don't do the full thing. It's that you actually just don't do the habit, right? So it's like, it's just establishing the habit is more important than doing the full habit, um, because it's a bigger failure mode. So the key is never miss a day, even if it means you just did 10 push-ups, because at least the 10 push-ups, then, is an opportunity to remind yourself, "Oh, my goal is to actually go to the gym." Right? Whereas the bigger problem is four weeks from now you're just like not even thinking about going to the gym at all.

   19. CWChris Williamson19:37

       Uh, how much of this do you think is the story that we tell ourselves about momentum and consistency, and like shame and guilt and, and self-doubt around whether or not we can achieve things?

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg19:49

       Yeah. It's, it's a good question. Um, I think there's this powerful idea that success is motivating for further success. And so let's say that every day you only do 10 push-ups when you meant to go do, you know, 40 minutes in the gym. You might actually feel bad about that. You might actually feel like you failed. And, um... But that's just a framing thing, right? It's just like, well, that you decided that's a failure. Uh, what I would actually encourage is the opposite. Say until you've established... Yes, if every single day you're doing 10 push-ups, now it's time to set the by heart- b- bar, you know, higher and say, "Okay, can I go to the gym for 40 minutes?" But until you are doing 10 push-ups every single day without fail-

   21. CWChris Williamson20:27

       Hmm.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg20:27

       ... if you do it, you should feel good about that. You're like, "Yes, I have-"

   23. CWChris Williamson20:29

       Yeah. Oh, no. I, I, I was saying that the reason I think this does work is that if you don't have even anything that is the microcosm version of the proper habit, then you are generally a piece of shit, right? Like-

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg20:42

       (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson20:42

       ... I didn't go to the gym at all. I didn't even do one push-up. I just laid in bed. Uh, I think that it helps to avoid the downward spiral of that pattern recognition. "Oh, I'm the sort of person that doesn't go to the gym. I'm exactly the sort of person that wouldn't do the, this thing." And before you know it... Uh, uh, James talks so much about like identity-based habit change, which I guess may be one of the remaining two, or maybe not. Um, but this works with identity-based habit change. Like if you are the sort of person who goes to the gym for 40 minutes on average two or three times a week, and on the days that you don't, you're the sort of person that makes sure that they do 10 push-ups at home, I think you can probably say that, "Yeah, I'm like a physically disciplined person. You know, I do... when I say I'm going to do a thing, I do a thing." And kind of like the Myers-Briggs being quite binary, this also reduces down the binary nature. It also almost gives you, uh, a spectrum of, of habits to go on, right? You're not just, "I either did the habit going to the gym-"

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg21:45

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson21:45

       "... which was a one, or zero, I didn't go." There's like, ooh, there's like a... there's like a 50th percentile here which is, "I did 10 push-ups."

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg21:53

       Absolutely. Yeah. It gives you a finer grained reward system. You don't have to... It doesn't have to be a complete success or a complete failure, right? Um, and I think, I think that this kind of idea is especially important for people that are really struggling, like if you're struggling with really severe depression or really severe anxiety. Maybe just a little thing is all you can manage right now, and that could be a huge success for you. So you don't need to set your goal really high and then feel like you're failing. Like set your goal at something achievable. You should be able to do it with high rate of success and then go do it, and now you're like, "Okay, well maybe I'm not working out 40 minutes a day, but I'm doing 10 push-ups today," and that's something to feel good about, and then like now you can bootstrap on top of that. So-

   29. CWChris Williamson22:29

       Mm. Good. All right, number four.

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg22:31

       ... success Okay. Number four, again, we love super simple, stupid things, but the key is do they work? 'Cause most of them don't. (laughs) So the, the next one is, um, we used to call it support of a friend. And so here the idea is think of someone in your life who would actually be helpful at supporting your habit and go tell them about it, and ideally suggest a way that they can support your habit. So this is gonna vary from person to person. You know, sometimes it might be a partner who can help motivate you, or maybe they have a habit and they can remind you to do it with them every day. Uh, maybe it'll be a friend who can check in periodically. Maybe, yeah, maybe it'll be a buddy you're gonna go to the gym with, right? So there's a lot of different ways this can operate, but basically involving another person who's gonna play support for you. And of course, it's up to you who is supportive and who's gonna demotivate you, right? Um, and that brings us to the final one, which is again su- s- super simple, which is, uh, we call it listing habit benefits. You simply... We... This is right at the beginning when you're forming your habit. You just make a list of all the reasons that this is a thing you wanna do and all the benefits it's going to give you, and it's just trying to give you... You know, going back to motivation and how key that was to people succeeding and how predictive it was, you're, you're trying to do is bootstrap that motivation. Once you've decided this is the thing I'm gonna try to do, you wanna get your motivation level as high as you can. And you can also review that benefit list from time to time to help like, you know, respawn that motivation if it's flagging.

4. 23:49 – 27:13

   Techniques From the Survey Which Failed

   1. SGSpencer Greenberg23:49

   2. CWChris Williamson23:49

      Out of the original 22 techniques, which were the ones that worked the absolute worst? Were there any that had a negative impact on habit setting, or were there any that were just like, "This is completely pointless?"

   3. SGSpencer Greenberg24:02

      Oh, that's a, that's a great question. Um, well, I'll tell you the most shocking one that didn't work, (laughs) which is in the, uh, academic literature, there's this technique, um, called WOOP. Um, it's like wish, uh, outcome, obstacle, plan, I think it stands for. And the idea, it's, it's this idea that has been long established in academic literature that, um, basically what you do is you think about this goal that you're going to, um, try to achieve, and then you think about, uh, the outcomes if you do successfully achieve it, but then you think about the obstacles.... in the way to achieving it? And then finally you come up with a plan, like, "When this obstacle comes up, I'm gonna do this. Um, when that obstacle comes up, I'm gonna do that." It's very, it makes sense intuitively that it would work. We thought it was gonna work. Um, we've even powered our studies specifically to test it 'cause we just thought, "Okay, this is a nice, like, standard intervention that we can compare us against." (laughs) And we didn't get any results for it. (laughs) So I don't necessarily wanna blame it on that technique. Like, you know, it's always possible that it was a fluke or we didn't implement it right in some way, but I was, like, shocked that this did not do anything.

   4. CWChris Williamson25:06

      Wow. That is interesting. I think I'm pretty sure I've written down in previous journals when I've been wanting to do... oh, here's a contingency and this is what I will overcome and so on and so forth. Uh, yeah. I- I suppose-

   5. SGSpencer Greenberg25:19

      Yeah. Now, don't- don't stop using it if it works for you, but, you know, look at the academic literature, see wh- you know, come to your conclusion, the consensus on it. Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson25:25

      Yeah. I think most people will, uh, y- you know, combine a bunch of these together for habits.

   7. SGSpencer Greenberg25:32

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson25:32

      Right? And this is the problem, that you're not doing a univariate analysis on exactly what contributed to your habit sticking or not sticking. Maybe you had a fruit bowl that you bought that's now out. Oh, well, that's kind of like one of your visual triggers. It's like a Post-It note that's kind of lying around. And then maybe there was some other thing. So there's just a lot of different elements that always contribute to this, and they're very rarely going to be done in- in isolation, which is exactly why we needed you to do your study.

   9. SGSpencer Greenberg26:00

      Yeah. So we- we were trying to figure this out. And then... but here's the problem with our original study design. We tested so many things that you could very reasonably say, "Well, but maybe they were false positives, maybe it was flukes," et cetera. And so we wanted to really try to confirm this. So what we did is we took these five best interventions, um, that I mentioned already. We packaged them into one tool, and it's completely free. You can use it right now if you want. It's called Daily Ritual and it's on our website, clearerthinking.org. So you can go use it help you form a new habit. And we tested that in a randomized control trial. So this was a new study designed to test that tool. And very happily, it actually succeeded in helping people stick to their habit more compared to the control group. And so we tracked their habits over eight weeks, and those who used the daily ritual tool, um, stuck to them at a more reliable rate. So that was really satisfying to see.

   10. CWChris Williamson26:43

       Hell yeah. And so that's a stack of these on top-

   11. SGSpencer Greenberg26:46

       It's a stack.

   12. CWChris Williamson26:46

       ... of each other?

   13. SGSpencer Greenberg26:47

       Yeah. Because, you know, it's interesting. I- in real life, any one thing is probably not gonna have, like, an absolutely profound impact. You know, occasionally it does, but usually it's more additive. And so our goal, once we had this initial study, we're like, "We've got five promising things. Let's just make the stack that is (laughs) most promising." And it's even possible that one or two of those doesn't do anything, but we're like, "But the stack, the stack works." You know (laughs) we're not-

   14. CWChris Williamson27:08

       Yup.

   15. SGSpencer Greenberg27:08

       ... we can't be 100% sure every ingredient is helpful.

   16. CWChris Williamson27:10

       Yeah. I love it. What about valuousm? This is your

5. 27:13 – 34:27

   Clarifying Your Personal Values

   1. CWChris Williamson27:13

      personal philosophy that I have never heard of before, but I think you've had some personal success with. What is valuousm?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg27:22

      Yeah. So you haven't heard of it 'cause I invented it (laughs) . And so... but I invented it, but on the other hand, like, you know, there are many elements of it that have been inspired by lots of other things, so I'll just say that. But, um, so let me start by talking about values, because I think that's sort of the core layer of this. And I will say valuousm is my personal life philosophy. I've written a series of essays about it, if you wanna read those. Um, it- I have found it to be a very fruitful life philosophy, and it's my attempt to really answer the question, what should you do with your life? Especially if you don't have some big belief system that you belong to. Like, okay, maybe if you are a Catholic and you believe all of the Catholic ideas, then, like, maybe that gives you a structure of, like, how to live your life. I'm not a Catholic. (laughs) You know, I don't have- I don't have that overarching guiding structure. So I'm like, "What should I do with my life? How should I spend my time?" You know? So this is my time to answer that question. So starting with values, I like to think of values as being differentiated into two types. There's intrinsic values and instrumental values. So intrinsic values are the things we value for their own sake. We value them not just as a means to an end, but we value them fundamentally, right? So an example of this is being happy. Like, if you're like, "Oh, I did this thing and it made me really happy," and someone's like, "Well, why do you care? Why would you care about being happy?" You'd be like, "Uh, uh, just, I just value it," right? Like, there's nothing really deeper than that. You just wanna be happy, right? Um, whereas instrumental values are things that we value merely because they get us other things. The classic example is money. Imagine you were on a- a deserted island. You had tons (laughs) of money, but it didn't burn. Uh, so you couldn't make fires with it. You can't spend it on anything. It's not even warm enough to y- you know, make a blanket out of it, right? It would be totally useless, right? So money i- you know, cash, literally dollars, um, have no intrinsic value. They have lots of instrumental value. You can use them to buy lots of things. You can give them away to help the world, et cetera. But they're not intrinsically valuable. And the reason that I draw this distinction is because a lot of people waste a lot of time going after things they instrumentally value, and they forget (laughs) that they don't actually intrinsically value these things. So they forget that they're a means to an end. They, you know, and they treat them like the end in itself. And I think, you know, many of us have seen this happen with money, for example, where someone seems to be mindlessly pursuing money way past the point where it's even causing any positive benefit for them. It's just sort of like they attach to the idea of just making the number go up. Um, so okay, so that's the, you know, the fr- first base is we think about instrumental values and intrinsic values. I'll stop there and see (laughs) if you have any questions about that, and then I'll-

   3. CWChris Williamson29:38

      No, not at all. Keep going.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg29:39

      ... I'll align the philosophy. Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson29:39

      Make sense.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg29:40

      Okay, cool. Cool. Okay. So then what is valuousm? It's a very simple life philosophy. It says basically two steps. One, first work to figure out what you intrinsically value. Separate that out from what you instrumentally value. And then once you've done that, step two, try to use effective methods to create what you intrinsically value. That's it. That's the whole life philosophy. And you might say, "Well, why? What's the point? Why would you go work out your intrinsic values and then try to use effective methods to- to create the things you intrinsically value?" Well, it's like, because that is the things you deeply value. That's actually what your brain, like, psychologically finds valuable. So, like, go do that thing. And when I say it that way, it sounds incredibly stupid and obvious. It's like, "Well, duh." But here's the really crazy thing. As stupid and obvious as it seems, very few people live by this life philosophy. And often when I've told people about that, they're like, "Oh, that makes so much sense. That's like crystallizing this thing that I had in the back of my mind that I, like, didn't have a precise way of stating," right? So that's what I'm trying to do, is like crystallize this idea and turn it into like a specific life philosophy, even though lots of people might be like hovering around this idea but just not have ever, like-... thought about it in that precise way.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:46

      What are some of the potential pitfalls when someone is taking inventory of their intrinsic values?

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg30:56

      Yeah, good question. Um, so the, the first pitfall is that people often confuse them with their instrumental values. And, um, we actually, we spent a lot of time researching this for... so again, for our website, clearerthinking.org, we developed this thing called the intrinsic values test. You can go on there, it's free. It will help you figure out what your intrinsic values are. And when we first designed this test, we ran a study and we put people through a little, uh, a little thing asking them about their intrinsic values, is this intrinsic value, is that intrinsic value? And we found that tons of people, even though we like had like defined intrinsic value for them, they put instrumental values instead, right? They put things that are like, oh, getting a car or like getting money or, uh, you know, having, you know, healthy food. And it's like, no, no, no, those are not... And so what we realized is like, oh, no, we actually have to teach people in the tool how to separate these out, and it's like a pretty complex process. So we have to... ended up, as part of the tool, the first thing you go through is a little mini training module that teaches you how to separate them and actually gives you examples and like quizzes you, and then gives you the test. So it helps you really kind of clarify. So that's like the number one first challenge. Um, uh, so th- uh, in addition to that, I think, um, another challenge with i- with intrinsic values is that they often come in conflict with each other. So, um, example that has come up with me before is, I could be honest with a friend, but I know that it would hurt their feelings, right? And one of my deep intrinsic values is being honest. It's, um, it's telling the truth. But another deep intrinsic value of mine is not causing suffering, and especially not causing s- suffering for people I care about. And so I think when we actually try to use this in practice, we very quickly will realize there are these situations arise where our intrinsic values are in conflict, and that we have to start navigating them. And so, so in my, my kind of sequence of essays about valueism, that's like the second essay is like, what do you do when your intrinsic values conflict with each other?

   9. CWChris Williamson32:41

      Yeah, what do you do?

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg32:43

       Ah. So what I find really helpful is restating the trade-off in terms of your intrinsic values. So you start with this complicated... and I, I like... this is something I actually have done with friends many times and found it really useful. Like a friend will come with a problem they're struggling with. I'll t- I'll listen to their problem and I'll say, "Hey, it sounds to me like you've got these values, X and Y, and that if you do the first option, you get a bunch of X, but you sacrifice Y, and if you do the second option, you get a bunch of Y, but you sacrifice..." and they're like, "Oh my God, yes, this is exactly what's happening." So that's my first step, is really try to rewrite the problem in terms of like the intrinsic values on either e- side of the, the choices. And then once you've done that, sometimes you're lucky and you'll realize, oh, like one side's a clear winner in terms of my values. It was maybe a difficult, it maybe it felt like a difficult decision because maybe one of the sides of the choice was painful or stressful or whatever. But when you put it in terms of values, it's just really clear one's the winner. And if you don't do that one, it's because you're not acting like your ideal self, right? So that's the first thing that can happen. And I think like that, um, is sort of the easier case. The more difficult case is when there's a fundamental trade-off in your values and now you're like, oh wait, it turns out there's some people that the first choice would be better for based on their values. And there's some people that the second choice would be better for based on their values. And actually, which one is better is fully dependent on how much I value those different things, right? How much do I value this much honesty versus this much suffering caused to a friend? There is no objective answer. It now is just on me to think about how much I care about those two things. And that takes some of the pressure off because it's like, oh no, this is now about how much I value those things. I'm not like failing to live up to some objective standard.

   11. CWChris Williamson34:20

       Mm. That's intere- do we, do we choose our values? Where do you think values come from?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg34:26

       That is a great

6. 34:27 – 45:57

   Can We Actually Choose Our Values?

   1. SGSpencer Greenberg34:27

      question. (laughs) Do we choose our values? So, um, I think part- partly our values are ingrained in us evolutionarily, or at least the capacity to have those values. For example, even like a baby doesn't like pain, right? So that's, you know, so some of them are, are ingrained and our capacity for the other ones are also, you know, built into us. We have the capacity due to our genes. Um, but that's not the only thing. After that, we have all these life experiences and I think those impact our values. And then I think our culture and what we're taught impact our values. I think our values tend to be pretty stable when you're in your like mid-20s to 30s. Um, they can still change a bit, but they tend to not change very much. Um, an example of them changing, let's say someone, um, well, to go back a, you know, a religious example, let's say someone is a devout Catholic and then they have a crisis of faith. That could actually change some of their values. Um, or if someone's an atheist and then they suddenly have a experience of God, that could change some of their values. But more or less, they tend to be stable. And some people will ask, "Well, should I try to change my values?" And I think there the answer is no. Like your values are the things you fundamentally care about. Why would you change that? Unless in some special cases you might have a value that says you should change your values. (laughs) But that's kind of an unusual edge case.

   2. CWChris Williamson35:33

      Okay. Yeah, it's an interesting one, man. I- I've had a lot of conversations over the last few years about values and I think what I originally had as values were... they weren't fully instrumental, but they weren't fully intrinsic either. So it's stuff like, uh, curiosity, adventure, self-development, excellence. They, they feel, they don't feel sufficiently firm to me. So I'm gonna have to go and do your, uh, your tool and, and see how I get up with that strategy.

   3. SGSpencer Greenberg36:02

      Yeah, I'd love to, love to hear what you think of our intrinsic values test. But, you know, it's interesting the things you mentioned, um, because there's another class of things that's also important, which are virtues, which I would differentiate from values. So it might be that... it could be that you're thinking of like virtues that you wanna live by or you want to reflect.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:20

      Mm.

   5. SGSpencer Greenberg36:20

      Um, but, but also it could cross over into, um, intrinsic values as well. So for example, I have a, I have a intrinsic value of telling the truth and that's highly connected to a virtue of like being an honest person. So there's, you know, definitely a connection there.

   6. CWChris Williamson36:33

      Ah, yeah, interesting. There's, so there's another layer. Taylor Pearson, um, taught me about this a while ago. He has a list of operating principles that his-

   7. SGSpencer Greenberg36:44

      Ah, principles.

   8. CWChris Williamson36:44

      ... that his life follows. And I think that if I was-... if I was to go complete monk mode and work, uh, values, virtues or ethics, uh, and, and operating principles, I think that's a really nice sort of stack that takes you from the philosophical wishy-washy to the strategic tactical spitting sawdust type stuff. Because what you're gonna say is, um, "I am faced with this particular problem regularly where my values come into conflict with other values, and my values just come into conflict with general discomfort in the world. I need to tell somebody something that they don't want to hear, but one of my values is truth. Therefore, what is the strategic way that I go about things? Um, when I know that I need to tell somebody something within the space of 24 hours from when I have that first thought, I'm going to speak to them. I'm gonna do it in a, as calm of a way as possible." Something like that, right? Um, like, "I want to be..." Um, I don't know where this would class as value, but, uh, certainly one of the best life hacks I've ever heard is pay invoices immediately. Like pay bills-

   9. SGSpencer Greenberg37:49

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson37:49

       ... immediately, pay invoices immediately. Because if you get known as the sort of person that pays immediately, your suppliers or whoever it is, your landlord's gonna like you more, your friends are gonna like you more. You've been out for dinner and someone asks you to PayPal them a hundred bucks because they paid on their Amex card because they hadn't hit their spending limit for the month. And, uh, uh, y- it takes you three weeks. Like, just, you get known as the guy that takes three weeks to pay somebody back for dinner. Just do it straight away. And it's such a great, uh, operating principle for life, I think. Pay people that you owe them immediately, if you can.

   11. SGSpencer Greenberg38:22

       It's so funny you mention principles, because actually, um, last year we released a module on figuring out your life principles. You can also, again, check out our website, clearthing.org. There's a free module, figure out your principles. And, um, the reason that we developed it is because we realized, just like you're saying, that there's sort of this stack of layers to the person, to you. And in that stack, the way I think about it, at the bottom there's values, right? There's like, uh, I think of intrinsic values at the very bottom, like the things that you most fundamentally value. And then you build things on top of that. You build your plans, right? And, uh, you build your goals. And so what is a good goal? A good goal, from my point of view, is some- it's a, it's something that's challenging in the future that helps you create the things that you value. And your plans, what's a good plan? A g- a plan, a good plan is something that helps you achieve your goals reliably. And what is a good decision? It's something that, that, uh, you know, moves you directionally towards achieving your goals, and so on. And then, so where does principle slot in? And so I've thought about this a lot, and I think that principles are decision-making heuristics. So if we think about a good decision as something that moves you towards achieving your goals, a principle is a decision-making heuristic or rule of thumb that helps you, in practice, make your decisions more efficiently and avoiding issues of self-control or self-doubt. Um, so for example, I have a life principle that when I make a mistake, I should acknowledge it and I should try to learn from it. And so if it i- and that's really clarifying for me because I know it's a life principle, I have it written down, I review my life principles periodically. And so let's say I make a mistake and then, like, my brain's like, "Well, what should I do now?" I don't even have to think about it. It's like, "Oh, I need to acknowledge it and I need to try to learn from it," right? So, um, so I find principles to be really powerful, and they're, like, just another layer in this stack of what it, what it is to be you.

   12. CWChris Williamson40:06

       What about insights in other domains of your life or the world? Have you learned any of those since becoming a fully-fledged paid-up valuest? Have you realized other things about the way that the world works or other people operate?

   13. SGSpencer Greenberg40:21

       Oh, man. I mean, uh, (laughs) so, so many things. So, um, one thing that I've observed as I think- thought more about valueism is that there are a lot of people that are confused about what their values are versus other people's values. And I think this is especially common for people that either were raised with parents that, like, put a lot of pressure on them or people that maybe tend to be less assertive and maybe tend to, like, dic- get dictated, um... Their g- their actions get dictated by the people. Um, but, uh, I'll have- I have an anecdote about this, which is that, um, a friend of mine was feeling really depressed, and she knew it had something to do with her boyfriend. And she was really confused, and so I sat down with her and she's like, "I don't get it. He's such a great guy, and yet something about the relationship is deeply unfulfilling to me." And I said, "Okay, uh, let's talk about it. Like, tell me about how he's a great guy." And so she wrote down a list of all his great qualities. And I said, "Okay, cool. Now let's write down your, what your values are." And so she wrote down another list. And I compared them side by side, and I was like, "You know what's fascinating? He is a great guy, but none of the things that are great about him (laughs) are in line with what you care about." And then I was like, "Okay, I have an idea here. Write down your parent's values." So she wrote that down and it, like, almost perfectly matched her boyfriend. And I was like, "Okay, I think it's pretty clear what's happened here. You're dating the, your, the person your parents wants you to, parent want you to date." And so I think this is a really common phenomenon. We actually live for other people's values.

   14. CWChris Williamson41:37

       Wow. That is very, very interesting. Yeah, it feels like, um, it feels like there's a relationship here or a correlation w- with the relationship we have with our future self and the relationship that we have with our past self, right? You're existing in the now, you're making goals and plans and even thinking about your values because there will be a future you which is going to benefit from it. That person is going to be more well-rounded. And then you also have w- uh, this continuity bias. What does it mean that I used to do that in the past? How... What does it mean that I am the same person that I was in the past even though I feel like a different person? Like, you know, it's been seven years since I had that memory. All of my cells have been replaced. I've S- Ship of Theseused my way into, like, not even existing as the same person anymore. I've got this continuity of consciousness. And what's gonna happen in future and where am I gonna be? Like, it feels like this relationship that we have across time with ourself and then the projection of what we could become or would want ourselves to become. And then sometimes we can make deals today that our future self has to pay or cash or, uh, you know, checks that they have to cash in future. Yeah, there's definitely something going on there.

   15. SGSpencer Greenberg42:51

       Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think- I think that's a really powerful, um, idea that you just mentioned of, like, making deals with your future self. It's something that- that I do. Uh, you know, like for example, the really simple way to pull that off is to say, "Okay, you really don't want to do these tax forms. These tax forms are a huge pain in the ass, but if you do them, you get to go do this special thing afterwards (laughs) that you don't normally let yourself do and you get to splurge." And so like, you know, that's- what is that? It's just like kind of a deal with your future self and you're like, your present self is like, "All right, fine. I'll do the tax forms" (laughs) . You know? Um, my, uh... I'm actually feeling a values conflict right now because my cat really wants to get out of this room.

   16. CWChris Williamson43:25

       Get out.

   17. SGSpencer Greenberg43:26

       And, uh-

   18. CWChris Williamson43:26

       Go and get it.

   19. SGSpencer Greenberg43:27

       Yeah. So give me one second.

   20. CWChris Williamson43:27

       Go and get the cat. Where is she?

   21. SGSpencer Greenberg43:30

       There we go. Say hi, Merlin.

   22. CWChris Williamson43:32

       (laughs) Cats, man. You just can't... They- they- they're only good for half an hour on a podcast.

   23. SGSpencer Greenberg43:42

       Uh, no. Speaker with audio only

   24. NANarrator43:43

       Not happening.

   25. SGSpencer Greenberg43:43

       But if not, the cat will be just sitting peacefully in the background and- and, uh, no. (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson43:47

       Not happening. I'm a big fan of- big fan of dogs and- dogs and cats in the background of podcasts though. It's so... I don't know why, um, there's this dude, Kevin Samuels, he's passed away now, but he used to do, um, YouTube a lot. And he had this, uh, you know, one of those, uh, gyroscopic perpetual motion-y type things and you'd spin it on your desk and it would go in kind of a chaotic pattern and-

   27. SGSpencer Greenberg44:07

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson44:07

       ... he used to have this thing on his desk and he must just give it a kick before he started every video. And I promise you, I couldn't stop looking at this-

   29. SGSpencer Greenberg44:16

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson44:16

       ... pe- perpetual motion thing. Got this guy and he's, you know, being expressive and talking and explaining stuff and sometimes even, like, holding things up. Uh, uh, meanwhile, I'm watching this- this perpetual motion machine in the background. So yeah, dogs- dogs and cats have the- have the same thing. Uh, when it comes to being a card-carrying value-ist, what are the hardest things about following this philosophy? Where are the hair shirts, uh, hiding in your- in your ideals?
7. 45:57 – 57:04

   How Useful is Intuition in Decision-Making?

   1. CWChris Williamson45:57

      usefulness and the role of intuition when it comes to decision-making?

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg46:02

      Uh, good question. Well, yeah, this is- this is something that- that I've thought about a great deal. And, you know, I always find it interesting when you have two sides that yell at each other and yet both sides have good points, but they never seem to resolve their argument. And so the two sides that I see yelling at each other on this are you have a lot of people who deeply intelli- uh, trust their intuitions and- and they really stand behind that. They're like, they're like, "I didn't use to trust my intuition, but I learned to trust it and things are so much better for me now." Right? Um, and they advocate that other people trust it. Um, and then if someone says, "Well, how do I decide?" They're like, "Just go with what your gut is telling you." Right? And then there's the other side that are like... that tend to be more, like, rationalistic or- or academic and they say, "No, our intuitions are just riddled with biases." And it's like, you know, people are, like, constantly telling you to trust your intuition, your intuition's dumb, you need to use rational analysis and be analytic. And I'm like... I look at those two sides and I'm like, "Man, they both have some great points." (laughs) So- so then I spent a bunch of time thinking about this, like, what is really true on this subject? And so I developed this thing I call the FIRE framework. So it's an acronym, F-I-R-E, fire. And it's about when should you trust your gut? When do you trust your intuition and when should you second guess your intuition and use a more rational, analytical analysis? And so the- the acronym kind of tells you when you can trust your gut. Um, and so the first, uh, letter, F for fire, um, that stands for fast decisions. And so, you know, imagine you're driving down the highway and you're going 50 miles an hour and then a car suddenly, going the opposite direction, swerves into your lane, right? You don't have time to use rational analysis. You will die if you use rational analysis. So the first time when you have to trust your gut is with fast decisions, for obvious reasons, because our intuition is just so much faster. And you can see this with things like sports or martial arts where at first when they're learning it they might be doing a lot of thinking, but when they're actually really in the game, um, almost all of it is automated and- and going with their- going with their gut. Okay, the second, I, is irrelevant decisions. So let's say you're like, "Oh man, I... you know, I'm- I'm trying to order a salad, but I just don't know, should I get carrots in it or not?" Like, it is not worth 10 minutes of your life figuring out whether to get carrots in your salad, right? You just go with your gut. Um, or this is a really common one. You're trying to figure out what TV show or movie to watch and like... You ever do this with friends and you spend like an hour trying to pick and you're like, "Oh my God." (laughs) It's like, "What a waste of time. It'd be better if we flipped a coin," right? So no, just- just, uh, go with your gut when- when it's an irrelevant decision, right? Okay, so that's the first two times when you should go with your gut. The third one is really interesting and important. Um, that's the R for repetitious decisions. So the idea here is that your intuition is not magic. It is very much not magic, but it is very smart. So when is it smart? It's smart when it gets to do a thing again and again and it gets feedback. So to think about this, imagine that you're learning archery. So you've got your bow and arrow, you're firing at the target. The only problem is you're blindfolded and you also have earplugs, so you can never find out if you hit the target or not. How long would it take you to learn to be a good archer? I- I think the answer is...... infinite time?

   3. CWChris Williamson48:55

      Forever, yeah.

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg48:56

      Yeah, forever. You would never, right? Okay. Um, now let's suppose, okay, let's suppose you get to take the blindfold off, the earplugs off, but because you have a vision problem and a hearing problem, you only have 50% reliability of knowing whether you hit the bullseye or not, right? Well, now maybe you could learn a bit, you could learn a little bit, but it would take so long to learn, right? You might need thousands or thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of repetitions. Whereas if you get to see exactly where you hit on the target each time after each arrow shot, you're gonna learn so much faster. And in fact, eventually your intuition will get so good, you don't even need to think about it. You can just pull back the bow and fire, you know, a perfect shot once you've done enough. And so I think this is a good metaphor for how our intuition works. Our intuition is, or essentially our, you know, different parts of our mind constantly monitor the world and constantly see what happens and constantly see whether the action we took got to the result we wanted. And so if you take someone like Magnus Carlsen who's played, you know, insanely large number of games of chess, you can drop him into a game of chess and he instantly knows what to do. He does not need to do rational analysis, and he will still absolutely beat you. In fact, there's a wonderful, uh, game he plays against three, like, pretty good chess players where he beats the crap outta all of them, and he makes his moves like essentially instantaneously, like within seconds. But the craziest part is he doesn't get to see the board. It's all, like, memorized in his head during the games, and he beats them all, right? It's so crazy. And it's because it actually requires no rational thought for him to play chess. However, let's say he played a new game he's never seen in his life. Totally different rules. Maybe it's on a chess board but totally different rules. He might be a bit better than the average, but he's not gonna be very good, and his intuitions are actually gonna sometimes lead him to do exactly the wrong move, right?

   5. CWChris Williamson50:32

      Hmm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg50:33

      And so-

   7. CWChris Williamson50:33

      He's gonna, he's gonna, uh, incorrectly pattern match this is like that situation in chess. No, it's not, Magnus.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg50:39

      Exactly.

   9. CWChris Williamson50:39

      It's got nothing to do with chess.

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg50:41

       He's gonna have to keep overriding his intuitions because his c- his chess m- mind is gonna be-

   11. CWChris Williamson50:44

       Very interesting.

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg50:45

       ... it's like, well, it's a chess board. It's got chess pieces, right? And so I think that a lot of the magic of our intuition, the seeming magic, is because our brain is always watching and always learning, and it gets really good at things. It gets shockingly good. In fact, it gets so good that sometimes you're like, "I don't even know how I know that thing, but I just know it." And it's because, yeah, it's been watching your entire life and learning. A, a good example of this is sometimes we just get a bad vibe about a person. And like, and sometimes those are wrong, you know, first impression can be wrong, but I think they're right a lot of times, surprisingly often. I think when you get a bad vibe of meeting someone the first 10 minutes, it's like a pretty good chance you picked up on something real.

   13. CWChris Williamson51:18

       Very interesting. Is that the... That's R, that's repetitive.

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg51:20

       So that's R.

   15. CWChris Williamson51:21

       Yeah.

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg51:21

       So we do the last one, evolutionary decisions. And so this, E, the E for evolutionary decisions, the idea here is that, well, we were created by evolution, right? That's, that's where we came from. And if you look at an animal, like a cat or a snake, you notice they have a bunch of reactions that they seem to know how to do, and they didn't seem to learn it from their parents, right? Well, we too are animals of a sort, right? Um, and so there's some things we know how to do, our gut knows how to do them, that, uh, we never had to learn. Um, and so an example of this, if someone puts a steak in front of you and it smells rotten, don't eat it, right? Like, that is an evolutionary intuition that you have. Um, if you hear suddenly an extremely loud noise, you will probably jump away before you even realized it, and that is probably a really good decision because the chance that a bunch of, like, you know, gold is about to land in your hands is much lower than the chance that you're, something really bad is about to happen to you, right? So that intuition that a really loud noise means something dangerous is occurring is a pretty good intuition. It's not always right, but it's a good intuition. So, so there are a whole bunch of these evolutionary ones. But, so, so that's the idea of the F.I.R.E. framework. There are these four situations, fast decisions, uh, relevant decisions, repetitious decisions, and evolutionary decisions, when you can trust your gut, and outside of that is when rational analysis tends to lead to better outcomes.

   17. CWChris Williamson52:39

       Got you. Uh, have you got any strategies for how people can integrate intuition and subconscious into their more reflective, rational decision-making? I think that's probably a lot of what people want. You know, I, I, I understand I probably need to think about this a little bit, but I feel like I'm maybe applying more cerebral horsepower to this than I need to, and it's causing me to ha- it's causing me discomfort. Uh, I'm, I'm sort of weighed down with all of the different thought structures about this thing. I kind of just wanna think about it a bit then feel it and then go.

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg53:16

       Yeah, it's a great question because, okay, we say, all right, well, there are certain times when you wanna do reflective decision-making, analytical decision-making, but, like, how do you do that right? And I think a common failure mode there is ignoring your intuition. And so where... There's a, there's a really big distinction between letting your analysis run the show and ignoring your intuition. Those are not the same thing. So let's think of an example. Um, imagine that you meet someone and you have a bad reaction to them, like in a few minutes of meeting them, right? And then you're thinking about it later. And, um, now your, your intuition there has some real information, important information. And some people, they'll think rationally and they'll be like, "Well, but they didn't really do anything wrong. And if I, like, replay the conversation in my head, there wasn't any specific thing they said that, like, indicated they were a bad person or whatever." But to ignore your intuition there is a dumb idea. At the same time, to let it completely determine your view of this person, if you go around badmouthing this person now, that's probably not warranted either. And so it's like, the, the right way to do reflection is to incorporate the intuition and learn from it what you can, use it as a source of information, but not let, let it necessarily completely run the show, right? Um, and so, so how do you do that? Well, part of it is that you can try to hone in on what your intuition is picking up on, right? And I find thought experiments can be really useful with this. Um, so you could say, for example, let's say this person rubbed you the wrong way. You could think to yourself, hmm, well, was it the first part of the conversation? Like, if I just had the first part of the conversation, would I have had a negative vibe? You're like, no, no, no, actually that would've been okay. Um, you know, was it something about, like, their facial expression? You know, like, let's say that they had been smiling. Do you think I would've processed it differently? And so you can kind of t- try to, like, you know, zoom in on, like, what your intuition's picking up on. It's a little bit like if you're studying, like, what a neural net is doing. It's like how did... Your intuition is kind of like a neural net. It's just this giant network that's doing these incredibly complex-... operations, but they're kinda hidden. And then later, you know, AI researchers are like, "Well, what on earth was this neural net picking up on? How did it decide what's a dog and what's a cat?" And they'll try to, like, back that out, and they'll try to say, "Well, it seemed to be honing in on these parts of the image, and so maybe it's picking up on whiskers or..." You know?

   19. CWChris Williamson55:25

       Yeah. It's interesting to think about how our intuition and our sort of cognition battle against each other. And after a while, I've certainly found this with myself, I can end up talking myself out of or into pretty much any sensation or emotion, and then after a while, you don't even have a relationship with your intuition anymore. You have a relationship with the story that you told yourself about what your intuition meant, which has now taken it from the realm of intuition into the realm of cognition, and now you're trying to think, "What does it mean that I'm the sort of person that thinks that I'm the sort of person that takes their intuition-"

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg56:00

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson56:00

       "... into the realm of cognition?" Uh, yeah. Uh, the, the, the spiral is, uh, useless.

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg56:08

       Yeah. It, it's really tricky, and I think a lot of people struggle with this. I, um, I have a friend who, um, had some really traumatic things happen to her, and she found that it became increasingly difficult to hone in on her intuition and to trust it. And I think what happens sometimes is your tiss- your intuition can kinda get noisy. Like, let's say you have a traumatic event and you're feeling fear a lot of the time. Maybe you're feeling fear all the time. And then suddenly, it's like, "Well, okay, I'm afraid. Does that mean something bad's about to happen, or is it just, like, my, you know, hyperactive system is all fired up?" Right? And then you can learn... And then, it, with that, you can start to learn to not trust your intuition, right? Which is a v- which is also really bad. It's like, you have these two incredibly powerful tools. You've got your, your power of analysis and reasoning and you've got your intuition, and some people are saying, "No, just leave one tool in the toolbox." You're like, "Are you crazy? Why would you ever do that?" (laughs) You've got these two really powerful tools. Learn to be a master of both of them, right?

   23. CWChris Williamson57:00

       Yeah. You say, uh, we've, we've spoke offline about the importance

8. 57:04 – 1:04:27

   The Importance of Becoming Wise

   1. CWChris Williamson57:04

      of becoming wise-

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg57:05

      Hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson57:05

      ... something that you, that you care about a lot as well. Why do you think it's so important, and what's your definition of wisdom?

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg57:13

      Ah, yes. Well, I thought this was really relevant just 'cause of, you know, the name of your podcast. I actually wanted to ask you, like, so you've got a podcast-

   5. CWChris Williamson57:19

      Yeah.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg57:19

      ... it's called Modern Wisdom. What is-

   7. CWChris Williamson57:21

      Yeah.

   8. SGSpencer Greenberg57:21

      ... what is wisdom to you? Like, why, why did you call it that?

   9. CWChris Williamson57:24

      Uh, the reason I called it that was I wanted to try and have something that felt sufficiently connected to the accumulated human knowledge bank that I was-

   10. SGSpencer Greenberg57:36

       Hmm. Hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson57:37

       ... I, I wanted to be dipping into, but N- it was purposefully built for the mismatched contemporary environment that we find ourselves in, right? That I got to the end of my 20s and I didn't really understand myself or how the world worked or how I was supposed to behave and, and what my values should be and, and what ethics were, and I, I, I felt like I should know these things, that it wasn't unknown knowledge. I wasn't asking questions for which there were no answers that were known. It was just that I needed to be shown the way. And then importantly, the tactical/applied element of it, uh, is, okay, and what does this mean to take some, you know, Aristotelian ethic and then try and apply it to a world for which it wasn't originally written?

   12. SGSpencer Greenberg58:24

       Hmm. Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson58:25

       Um, you know, I think a lot of people know things, but when it comes to understanding their application, it's, it's rough. Like, people get stuck. You know, they've got the quote written on their whiteboard or, or they've, it's their background-

   14. SGSpencer Greenberg58:37

       Hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson58:37

       ... of their phone screensaver, but ultimately, like, eh, the spit and sawdust of whether or not this thing happens is its applicability. It's strategically, tactically, can I actually apply this thing? Uh, when it comes to wisdom, I think your actions having the consequences that you intended them to have is probably-

   16. SGSpencer Greenberg58:56

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson58:56

       ... not far off for me. Um, y- like, intention, action, and outcome being aligned feels like something that's right. But there's one bit that's missing there, which is, what did you intend to intend? There's, like, one step above.

   18. SGSpencer Greenberg59:12

       Hmm. A higher level. Hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson59:12

       Yeah, there's one more step that I've missed out of that. Uh, you would have thought after 700 episodes of a show called Modern Wisdom-

   20. SGSpencer Greenberg59:18

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson59:18

       ... that I would have some beautiful, succinct definition of it. Uh, and I did for a while, but I actually found that having some cookie cutter... Maybe it was written by me, probably some Frankenstein's monster bastardized from, like, a bunch of different people. I actually found that that was a bit constricting, uh, because I was... I, I had a ready-made answer when people asked me this question. I had a ready-made answer that I churned out that didn't require me to assess, "Do I still believe that this is true?" And-

   22. SGSpencer Greenberg59:48

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:48

       ... uh, I had a conversation with Sam Ovens, this dude who spent a lot of time creating internet content, and he actually stopped doing all of his content for the same reason. He found that he was making proclamations on his YouTube videos and on his podcasts that his real-world self felt the obligation to live up to. So he was-

   24. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:08

       Hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:00:08

       ... saying things in the virtual world that him in the real world then felt the need to actually go out and do, and then he was, like, being held hostage by statements that he'd made. And he had this very sort of strange persona, personality relationship going on, and, and he felt the tension with that. So just generally-

   26. SGSpencer Greenberg1:00:31

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:00:31

       ... as a rule, I think, um, it's nice to have... It's kind of like the, the M- to bring it full circle, it's kind of like the Myers-Briggs of, of personal development. Like, it's nice to have a succinct, simple way. Somebody asks you in a, in an elevator, uh, "Are you like, m- an INTJ?" Or whatever. But the actual deeper version of this is to have the sliding scale, which is more like Big Five. It's like, "Okay, I, what do I actually think about this?" Used to have this idea, it was about action and intention and, and outcome kind of being the same, but, you know, then I've got this other bit that I've added in that doesn't feel like it's a part of it. So I think that's, I think just as a meta-meta-meta rule, I think that's really important to continually assess the, um, like, commonplace book answers that you have...... for questions that you regularly end up talking about, um, and, and, and assess those pretty frequently, uh, and periodize it. Like give yourself an answer, re- and sit back-

   28. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:23

       Hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:23

       ... rely on that for a little while, then fight with some other definitions or some other terms that you're looking at and then, and then come back in. But yeah, that's my, that's my idea around wisdom and the name and, and the definition.

   30. SGSpencer Greenberg1:01:35

       Hmm. And I, I, I really like that. I think you captured a lot of the critical elements. And what I find really fascinating about wisdom is it seems like one of the most important things to, to become wise, and yet it's very hard to come up with a definition that people will agree with, and there's so many different definitions floating around. And so that intrigued me, and so I started doing analysis of different definitions, and I ended up coming with a bu- up with a bunch of different definitions, each inspired sort of by different thinkers or different ways of looking at the problem. Um, so I'll just mention three of them that, uh, the first, the first is this idea of wisdom as self-consistency, and this one was inspired by the work of Justin Chublin and, um, uh, Elliot McKernan. And so the idea here is that to be wise is to have a consistency between the key elements of yourself, so consistency between your values, your beliefs, and your actions. And so an example would be, imagine that you value being honest, but you're being dishonest, right? Well, well, immediately, that's a, that's a... Your, your values are not aligned with your actions, right? So you're not being consistent. You're not being wise. Um, or imagine that you believe you should b- you'd be best if you became a doctor, but you're actually pursuing being a lawyer, right? So there, that is actually a conflict, again, between your beliefs this time and your actions. And so that, those three pieces all being in alignment is wisdom. So that- that's kinda the first idea.
9. 1:04:27 – 1:13:25

   Is Goodness a Vital Part of Wisdom?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04:27

   2. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:27

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:04:27

      Wisdom is knowledge multiplied by goodness. What's that?

   4. SGSpencer Greenberg1:04:31

      Ah, yeah. So this is sort of... Sometimes you'll hear people say things like, "Wisdom is, you know, uh, knowledge times altruism or knowledge times goodness," right? And so I thought about that a bunch, and I was like, "Okay, there maybe is something to that." And so first of all, I think we can say that, like, knowledge is an element of wisdom, right? Like, I think most people would say, "If you d- y- you know, well, if you don't have any knowledge, like, it's hard to be wise," right? At the same time, being good seems to be an element of wisdom, right? If you are totally evil or you're totally self-serving, it's- it seems to be strange to call you wise.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:05:01

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SGSpencer Greenberg1:05:01

      And so we could say, "Okay, wisdom seems to be related to these two things, knowledge and goodness, right?" But how is it related to those two things? Is it more like a sum of those two things? Well, if it were a sum of those two things, then you could still get a high wisdom score by being really knowledgeable if you, even if you were super evil, and that doesn't seem right. You're using all your knowledge just to, you know, serve yourself or something. Uh, or you could get a really good wisdom score, score by being really a good person but knowing nothing, being completely ignorant. That doesn't seem right either. So it seems like it's more like a product, like multiplying knowledge and goodness together, and the reason is because zero times anything is zero, right? So if you have zero knowledge, no matter how good you are, you still get a zero wisdom. If you-

Episode duration: 1:22:03