#1 Habit Expert: Why Your To Do List Is Making You Less Productive

1. 0:00 – 5:26

   the habit loop

   1. SPSam Parr0:00

      All right, Charles, I wanna show you something. So in 2014, I wrote about how I lost weight, but previously, I used your book a year before because I had a little bit of a drinking issue, and it was, frankly, it was kinda ruining my life. And I read your book, and the idea of the habit loop changed my life, and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you. [upbeat music] Your book changed my life probably more than any book I've ever read, and I have read probably thousands of books. So I'll tell you the story. So basically, uh, yeah, I had, like, an issue with, with alcohol, and I read your book, and y- you, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way that I distinctly remember it is that a habit doesn't go away; you just have to change part of the routine and replace it.

   2. CDCharles Duhigg0:47

      That's exactly right.

   3. SPSam Parr0:49

      One of the ways that people continue being stuck on this treadmill, and this sounds very oversimplified, but it's true in my case, like, you start, like, craving carbohydrates the day after you drink. Like, you still crave... 'Cause I was drinking, like, 20 beers a day, and I still craved, like, the sugar, and so I actually just made a small habit. Every time I wanted to, uh, drink alcohol, a beer, I ate a pack of M&M's, and that, like, sugar replacement actually helped me, like, kick booze. Then I replaced that with non-alcoholic beer, and I got fat along the way, but I was like, "I'll get fat, and then I'll-

   4. CDCharles Duhigg1:21

      Right

   5. SPSam Parr1:21

      ... I'll, I'll kick that habit later."

   6. CDCharles Duhigg1:23

      I love this. I, uh, look, because you're exactly right. So, so for folks who aren't familiar with it, the, the habit loop is, what research tells us is that every habit in our life, and about 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit, every habit has these three components. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for the automatic behavior, and then the routine, right? Picking up the beer and drinking it, or y- going for a run if you're, if you have an exercise habit. And when we do that, it delivers a reward to us. Every habit in your life delivers a reward, whether you're aware of it or not. And over time, our brain begins to associate this cue, this routine, and this reward into a little package that happens almost automatically inside our brain. And at the core of it, you're exactly right, is this craving. And w- there's a woman named Dr. Ann Graybiel at U- at MIT who's done research on habits, and what she's found is that if you create a habit in, say, a rat's brain for running a maze, and then you remove it from the maze for literally years and then bring it back and drop it in the maze again, it, that habit re-emerges instantaneously, and it's because this cue, routine, and reward, the neural pathways associated with those three things are, have gotten thicker and thicker and thicker. And so when you st- try and extinguish a habit, when you just say, "I'm gonna stop drinking," just, you know, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna white-knuckle it and give up cigarettes," because that neural pathway still exists, you still have that craving. You still have that urge. So you're exactly right. The key is don't try and extinguish the habit, rather try and change it. Find a new behavior, like eating M&M's, that corresponds to the old cue and that delivers something similar to the old reward. And in doing so, you're kind of overriding that neural pathway-

   7. SPSam Parr3:07

      Yeah

   8. CDCharles Duhigg3:07

      ... inside your brain.

   9. SPSam Parr3:08

      And I did this with, uh, the help of a doctor, and I was like, "Look," the doctor was like, "Just get fat for a little while. We'll, we'll figure that out later." So I got fat [laughs] and then, uh, that's when I wrote this blog post of how I lost weight. And the way that I lost weight, it was very simple. You had this idea called a keystone habit, which I don't know if you invented that term, but that's crazy because, like, it's, like, a term that everyone uses now. But basically, my keystone habit was that I would put my running shoes next to my bed, and then I would sleep in my workout gear that morning. So when I woke up, I was in my running gear or in my, you know, what, uh, workout gear, and that I ha- I, when I s- when my feet touched the floor, they went into the shoes.

   10. CDCharles Duhigg3:49

       Yeah. That's a really smart, uh, a really smart cue. And, and yeah, I actually did come up with the phrase keystone habit. It's, um-

   11. SPSam Parr3:54

       Did you really? That's awesome, man.

   12. CDCharles Duhigg3:56

       Well, my, my wife is a biologist, and there's this concept of keeso- keystone species. And so I was talking through this idea which exists in the scientific literature but had never been kinda called this, and, and we were like, "It's kinda like a keystone habit." But what I love about what you just said is that, so there's a, there's a writer named David Epstein who, um-

   13. SPSam Parr4:12

       Yeah

   14. CDCharles Duhigg4:12

       ... he's written a bunch of books. He will also sleep in his workout clothes, and it's because that cue, when you wake up and you throw your f- feet out of bed and you're already in your clothes, that cue, it just makes it so easy to, like, take the next step and, like, go out the door, right? Like, you probably at this point when you were running, you're not even thinking about running in- as you start. You're just kind of on autopilot. You're doing what feels natural.

   15. SPSam Parr4:35

       Yeah.

   16. CDCharles Duhigg4:35

       And this is the power of habits, is that we can choose these behaviors that we want to encourage, and we can make them not a product of willpower or of, you know, sort of white-knuckling it, but rather something that happens automatically because there's this part of our brain, the basal ganglia, that exists just to make habits, and that's what ultimately makes us successful, is choosing the habits that we want, figuring out how to design them by paying attention to the cues and rewards around them, and then making those behaviors so automatic that you don't have to decide to go for a run in the morning. You don't have to decide to skip that, that beer. You don't have to decide to sit down and, you know, pound out all those emails you've been thinking about. It just happens automatically, and as a result, it feels much easier.

   17. SPSam Parr5:19

       I, uh... My, my last company, I think we had 30-ish employees when I sold, and then my current company now, we are at

2. 5:26 – 11:06

   you fall to the levels of your systems

   1. SPSam Parr5:26

      around that, and both of those s- stages are when systems and processes start to really matter.

   2. CDCharles Duhigg5:32

      Yeah.

   3. SPSam Parr5:32

      And there's this, like, phrase in the CEO world, something like, "You don't rise to, like, your willpower; you fall to your systems," or something like that-

   4. CDCharles Duhigg5:40

      Yeah

   5. SPSam Parr5:40

      ... where it's like the system is what, like, dictates whether you're gonna be successful or not, not, like, you know, willpower or not, like, how you feel. And the point being at a company, you have to have systems because that's what you fall, that's, that's what you default to.

   6. CDCharles Duhigg5:53

      That's, and that's what you rely on. Yeah. And, and can I ask you? Okay, so when you've thought about the systems you've created, now that you guys are at 30 people and the systems really matter, what's a system that you've developed that you're really proud of? Like, an institutional, organizational habit

   7. SPSam Parr6:07

      I'll give you one really simple example, but I will say, like, people like me, entrepre- like, entrepreneurial people, we are... The, the skill set that re- that is required to start stuff is the exact opposite, typically, of a process creating skill set.

   8. CDCharles Duhigg6:22

      Oh, interesting.

   9. SPSam Parr6:23

      I work my ass off at creating and sticking to processes, but it does not come natural. But I'll tell you one that has made a huge difference. Every day at 3:00 PM, the company stops for 10 minutes and we clean. We clean the office, because I cannot stand clutter at our office. And the r- the... What I'm trying to convince my staff, and it's actually working. They're doing this at their homes and everything, which is we're just trying to, like, uh, sweat the small stuff and do the small things really nicely, and it starts with, like, cleaning your bed or making your bed.

   10. CDCharles Duhigg6:53

       Yeah.

   11. SPSam Parr6:54

       Uh, and so I'm really proud of that.

   12. CDCharles Duhigg6:56

       It's... A- and I'm sure you're giving everyone this sense of accomplishment, right? Like, like, cleaning up the clutter is not that big an accomplishment, but to come together and have someone say, like, "This is who we are. This is how we prove to ourselves what, what we stand for," that's enormously rewarding.

   13. SPSam Parr7:11

       Yeah.

   14. CDCharles Duhigg7:11

       And it, and it actually gets to this other thing that... Really interesting about psychology, which is, which is what's known as revealed versus stated preferences. That oftentimes when you ask people, "Do, do you wanna exercise every day?" They'll say, "Yes, I wanna exercise every day. It's really important to me." But when we look at their behavior, they exercise, like, twice a week, right? So the revealed preference is actually different from the stated preference, and our brain pays attention to that. Our brain actually is kind of skeptical of our stated preferences, but it pays attention to how we behave to figure out who we really are. And so this act of cleaning up every day at 3:00, and I'm sure... Look, you could go a day without cleaning at 3:00 and it... The company's not gonna fall apart, right? But it's not about organizing the clutter, it's about revealing to ourselves, proving to ourselves that we are the kinds of people who do this. We are the kinds of people who we, we say we are. That's really powerful. [upbeat music]

   15. SPSam Parr8:06

       All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have took me 10 years to figure out, and shows how exactly I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you wanna build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show. [upbeat music] How many copies did The Power of Habit sell?

   16. CDCharles Duhigg8:37

       Gosh, uh, worldwide it's sold over 10 million now, so it's-

   17. SPSam Parr8:40

       That's crazy

   18. CDCharles Duhigg8:41

       ... it's been great, yeah. And the best part is just getting emails from folks like, like, with stories like yours that say, you know, "I struggled with drinking for years and then I finally figured out how to, how to think about the cues and rewards to make this easier to overcome." That's what's really meaningful.

   19. SPSam Parr8:58

       That's crazy, man. That's a lot of copies. Did you, uh... A- and what were you before? You were a reporter?

   20. CDCharles Duhigg9:03

       Yeah, so I, I was a reporter at The New York Times. I was... A- and in fact, I, I continued being a reporter for The New York Times for a number of years after the book came out. It... Weirdly, I actually... The same year that The Power of Habit came out, I won a Pulitzer Prize for, um, for a series I had done at The New York Times. And so 2013 was, like, kind of a crazy year.

   21. SPSam Parr9:22

       Was that the Apple, the Apple series?

   22. CDCharles Duhigg9:24

       That was the Apple series. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

   23. SPSam Parr9:25

       Okay.

   24. CDCharles Duhigg9:25

       The Apple series. And one of the things that I learned, I, I was talking to Jim Collins, the guy who wrote Gi- Good to Great last night, um, on stage, 'cause he has a new book out, and he talked about the, the bewildering fog of success, and that year, 2013, was exactly that for me. It... Like, on paper, it was the best year of my life. I had a bestselling book, I won a Pulitzer Prize. In reality, it was, like, the hardest year of my life because, and, and you know this, when, when success comes, it can kind of catch you off guard with all of its demands and, and emotions. And so that was, that was, like, a big year, but also in retrospect, a tough year. And, and since then I've written a couple more books, including Supercommunicators, which, which you'd mentioned, and now I write for the, for The New Yorker magazine.

   25. SPSam Parr10:09

       I remember I felt, uh, defensive of you when Atomic Habits came out-

   26. CDCharles Duhigg10:13

       [laughs]

   27. SPSam Parr10:13

       ... because you were my guy, and I'm friends with James, um, and I, I'm sure you are, too. But when I saw Atomic Habits come out, I was like, "But I already read the original. This is-"

   28. CDCharles Duhigg10:23

       [laughs]

   29. SPSam Parr10:25

       "... like, I already read it."

   30. CDCharles Duhigg10:26

       That's very nice of you. The, the truth is, as... Whatever it takes to get it into people's hands. Like, it feels so good to be able to be the master of your own habits. It feels so good to be the person you wanna be, and so whatever it takes to, like, to get that, to get that empowerment into people's lives, I am all for that.
3. 11:06 – 14:44

   replying to emails in your inbox

   1. SPSam Parr11:06

      or in their career to be more productive?

   2. CDCharles Duhigg11:10

      Yeah, abs... Y- you know, what I hear a lot from, from executives is, is, is them saying, "Look, I was in this bad pattern that I didn't even recognize was a pattern, which is I knew I had to write an email," right? "It was a tough email. I didn't, I didn't wanna, like, I didn't wanna deal with the question that the email was asking. I knew I might disappoint someone, and, and so I would put it off. I would basically s- you know, it'd be in my inbox, I would say, 'I'm gonna deal with this later,' and hours would go by, days would go by." And what's happening during that period is that there is a cognitive load, a cognitive burden associated with that email going unanswered, right? There's some part of your brain that says, like, "Look, you've got this task you need to get done," and it's an unpleasant task. You don't like thinking about it. You like shying away from it. But the more you shy away from it, the more it becomes like this monster in your head.

   3. SPSam Parr11:59

      And sometimes it's the smallest stuff.

   4. CDCharles Duhigg12:01

      Totally. And what we know is that if you build this habit that your immediate response is to hit reply and just deal with it right away- The benefits of that are huge. Right. Now, you might not write the most polished e- email on the face of the planet, right? You might not have all the time to think it through, so you have to, you have to question, "Is this something I can respond to right away?" But when we get it off our plate, what we're doing is we're freeing up our brain to think about other things. Our brain is constantly keeping track of the thousands of things that might be threats or might be opportunities or might be crises, and the more that we clear our brain and give it space to think about the good stuff, the opportunities, the ways to move forward, the new ideas, the more we're empowering ourselves to actually get things done.

   5. SPSam Parr12:48

      So I have, as we speak, I have 349 unread text messages.

   6. CDCharles Duhigg12:53

      Okay.

   7. SPSam Parr12:54

      And I have a shitload of voicemails, tons of Twitter and Instagram DMs. The amount of inbound and notifications, and partially because I'm on a podcast that has a l- lot of listeners, but even if you're n- not that, the amount of inbound notifications that people get, it's unsustainable.

   8. CDCharles Duhigg13:11

      So, a, so just because you get an email, like, like, that we have this instinct to hit reply, does not mean you have to reply, right? 'Cause another habit that's equally important is just to ignore. Like, the fact that somebody sends me an email, that does not create an obligation on my to-do list to respond to them. What it does is it gives me the option to kinda choose, do I wanna respond? And so one of the things that I do, 'cause very similarly, there's just an overwhelming amount of stuff that comes in, I try and be really disciplined, and my, my first habit, my first instinct, is just to hit delete. Like, when something... And oftentimes someone will send me a really interesting article, or there'll be something and I'm like, "Oh, man, I should really go back and read that. That's really r- I wanna save that for later." And instead what I do is I hit delete, 'cause I know I'm never gonna go back and read it, right? And I don't think that we have to get to inbox zero. I don't think we have to interact with every single thing that's sent to us. I think what we should have is a habit to graze over it and to forgive ourselves for hitting delete. Because ultimately, the most important choice that we make is where to spend our attention. And if we're making that choice based on the whims of other people because they send us an email or a DM, then we're not actually making a choice. We're abdicating that responsibility.

   9. SPSam Parr14:25

      It's sort of like, um, I think we had, uh, Tim Ferriss on, and people make fun of Tim Ferriss because h- they're like, "Dude, you're working more than four hours a week."

   10. CDCharles Duhigg14:33

       [laughs]

   11. SPSam Parr14:34

       Y- you know what I mean? And so he sort of, like, kinda created his own little trap. When you have bad habits in your life, I have to imagine that people like your buddies mess with you. They're like-

4. 14:44 – 16:20

   chosen bad habits

   1. CDCharles Duhigg14:44

      Oh, no, my wife is, is merciless. [laughs]

   2. SPSam Parr14:48

      What bad habits do you have still that you have been unable to break?

   3. CDCharles Duhigg14:54

      So h- here's the thing about habits, is in our brain, there's no such thing as a bad habit or a good habit, right? The basal ganglia is this part of a- our brain that creates habits, and it actually evolved just to do that, and every animal on Earth actually has a basal ganglia. If we couldn't form habits, we would not evolve because it, we would have to spend too much time thinking about whether we pick up the rock or the apple and take a bite out of it. So habits are really, really important. But to our brain, our brain just says, "Look, if there's a pattern of a cue, a routine, and a reward, I'm gonna make that easier and easier to do." It doesn't say, "This is a good habit," or, "This is a bad habit." It's up to us to decide which habits are good and which are bad, which ones we wanna encourage and discourage. And so I would say I have lots of bad habits, right? Things that... But they're bad habits that I choose. Like, I like to have, once or twice a week, I like to have a cocktail when I come home from work, right? And that, in some people's eyes, could be a bad habit. But for me, it's just a nice way of signaling to myself that I can relax. Some people might see that as a bad habit, but for me, it speaks to, like, how I like, what I like about life. So I would say the thing that's happened to me, uh, as a, uh, as a product of my research, is that I've recognized that you get to choose your habits. And just because other people think they're good or bad, that does not mean that they have to be good or bad for you. The key is to have agency, to have control over your life. And the way we do that is by not just focusing on the behavior,

5. 16:20 – 19:30

   1-line journaling

   1. CDCharles Duhigg16:20

      but by looking for these cues and these rewards, looking for these leverage points that we can use to change and become the person we want to be.

   2. SPSam Parr16:30

      And frankly, it's challenging. It's challenging to decide which is the thing.

   3. CDCharles Duhigg16:35

      Yeah.

   4. SPSam Parr16:36

      I think that I, I c- I call myself, like, a high-functioning person. Like, I, I think I have a, a lot of horsepower, and the strength of that is that I can run through a wall, and the weakness of that is that I can run through a wall because-

   5. CDCharles Duhigg16:48

      Yeah

   6. SPSam Parr16:49

      ... I have this thing called a five-year diary, where every year on the same day, or e- every day on a, on a page, I write how I feel that day, and then-

   7. CDCharles Duhigg16:57

      Yeah

   8. SPSam Parr16:57

      ... the, the next year I see the same page, so I can, like, see how I'm feeling a year prior. I, I was joking with Shaan, but I w- my, uh, co-host on this podcast, I was like, "Dude, I've been com- I wrote about this thing in my journal this day last year, and I complained about the same problem."

   9. CDCharles Duhigg17:12

      [laughs]

   10. SPSam Parr17:13

       I'm like, "If I'm supposed to be this high-functioning person that, like, changes or adapts and grows, I'm sure not doing it. What the hell? Why can't I change?" And so it is sort of interesting that you become, like, a prisoner of habits, and what you said was cool because you do wanna become this person who can change their life. But the fact is, my opinion is most people don't change, and I think it's really, because I think it's, like, almost impossible to change.

   11. CDCharles Duhigg17:37

       Well, and what, what I hear in that, that diary that you, you mentioned is what's known as a cognitive routine. So what's, what are you really doing when you write that one line? Because writing one line is not like, it's not, like, life-changing, right? To, like, sit down and write, like, a one-liner about how you feel about your day. But what you are doing is you're creating a mental habit for yourself, and the most important habits tend to be mental habits. In psychology, they're known as cognitive routines, and their job is to allow us to think more deeply when thinking deeply is hardest, right? When we're feeling stressed out or when we're feeling overwhelmed or when we don't have that much time, we only have time to write one line in a little diary. What that cognitive routine does, that mental habit, is it causes you to pause and look at the previous year. And the fact that you say to yourself, "Okay, look, I'm stuck in the same rut that I was a year ago, and actually, I didn't even really recognize that. Or if I did recognize it, it just, I wasn't paying attention to it. But this is something that's forcing me to think about this rut, to ask myself, like, 'Why am I in this rut? How do I get out of this rut? Do I really care about this rut that much?'" Those cognitive routines, these mental habits that we build for ourselves are really, really powerful because they allow us to do the thing that you just mentioned, which is make decisions without being exhausted. And one of the most powerful is when I come home from work, I describe my day in, like, excruciating detail to my wife, and she does not really care about my day. Like, she doesn't wanna know, like, all the specifics of the meeting I was sitting through. But I'm not really doing it for her, I'm doing it for me. This is my cognitive routine to help me review my day and figure out what I did well and what I did poorly. And building those cognitive routines, those mental habits, that is how we end up becoming successful because it's, it's those small little habits that determine if we're using our attention wisely or not.

   12. SPSam Parr19:24

       You have this book called Supercommunicators. I haven't read it yet, but I read a, a great article on it, and

6. 19:30 – 28:12

   supercommunication

   1. SPSam Parr19:30

      when I was younger, I read this book called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

   2. CDCharles Duhigg19:33

      Yeah, Dale Carnegie.

   3. SPSam Parr19:35

      Yeah. It, it changed my life. I'm not naturally, like, a very good conversationalist or a good people person. I- my, my family calls me a little neurospicy. You know, I had a-

   4. CDCharles Duhigg19:43

      [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr19:45

      I ha- I, I kinda had to learn a little bit. Like, I had to, like, read a few playbooks on how to, like, have, like, normal interactions. And so Dale Carnegie kinda changed my life, and there was a handful of takeaways from that book, and one of the books was basically, if you have a conversation with someone, if you let them do most all of the talking and you ask them all about their lives and their, themselves, uh, they're gonna think that it's the greatest conversation they've ever had.

   6. CDCharles Duhigg20:08

      Yeah.

   7. SPSam Parr20:08

      And your job, uh, your book, Supercommunicators, it did a good ... I, I believe the premise of the book is, like, if you ask, not only if you ... But you, you took it a step further. If you ask more questions, but also ask these, I don't know, you give some questions, but you give, like, a framework. If you ask different types of questions that fall under a bucket that I w- I want you to tell me, you will get people to open up more. Is that right?

   8. CDCharles Duhigg20:30

      Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, so one of the things that we know i- is, first of all, we are all supercommunicators at one time or another, right? We, we all know, like, the right thing to say to our friend to make them feel better, or, or sometimes you walk into a meeting and you just, like, you know exactly what to say to get everyone on your side. But there are some people who are consistent supercommunicators, people who can seem to connect with anyone anytime, and the difference between them and everyone else is not this inborn, like, capacity. Th- it's not that they, like, are born with the gift of gab. It's that they think about communication a little bit more and they recognize that communication is just a set of very simple skills, that if you practice them, they become habits. And when, when you start practicing them and using them, you can kind of treat everyone like your best friend, and they all, they'll all respond the same way. And one of those skills is asking questions. Consistent supercommunicators ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are, like, just invitations, like, "Oh, what'd you think about that?" Or, "Did you see that movie?" Like, it's invitations into the c- conversation. But some of them are what are known w- within psychology as deep questions, and a deep question is something that asks me about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as, like, if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, "Oh, what hospital do you work at?" Asking them, "Oh, what made you decide to go to medical school?" Right? That second question, that second question is something that invites them to tell you who they really are. They're gonna tell you about, like, their dad getting sick and seeing, seeing the doctors help him, or that they, they wanna be a healer. They wanna help their community. Deep questions are the things that allow us to really connect with other people because they invite others to tell us who they are, and then the best part is it's very natural to answer our own deep question ourself. To say, "Oh, y- oh, you became a doctor because you saw your uncle get sick. That's really interesting. I became a lawyer because I had a brother-in-law who got, who got arrested when I was a kid, and I thought that that was really, like, really wrong." Now we're having a conversation about who we are. We're connecting with each other, and that means that we're gonna trust each other more, we're gonna like each other more, and more importantly, we're gonna be able to hear each other much more accurately.

   9. SPSam Parr22:42

      This sounds like such a dumb question, but why do I care? Like, why do I want someone to think that I'm a superconnector? Like, why do I want them to open up to me?

   10. CDCharles Duhigg22:52

       Yeah, absolutely. So okay, so there's a couple of ways. And first of all, you don't have to communicate with everyone, right? Sometimes you're gonna get in the Uber and you just wanna check your phone in the back of the Uber. You don't wanna have a conversation with the driver. That's okay. You don't, you don't have to have any conversation you don't wanna have. But there are times that we do wanna connect with other people, and the reasons why is because we are a pro-social species. The way that our brains have evolved is to push us to connect with other people because connecting with other people over time has been the most successful strategy in building things, building communities, building families, building products. And when we connect with someone else, when we communicate with them, even if we disagree with them about some pretty fundamental things, there is this almost p- this almost subconscious thing that happens within our brain that we're powerless against, which is if I feel connected to you, if I feel like you're listening to me and I'm listening to you, and that we're actually connected somehow, and, and within neuroscience this is known as neural entrainment, in that moment we trust each other more. And if you think about it, trust is at the core of pro-sociality. I can't, I can't police you all the time to see if you're, if you're a threat or if you're being genuine. All I can do is try and figure out whether I can trust you enough to let you live in the, in the hut next to me without, without fear that you're gonna come in and kill me. And the way I figure out whether I should trust you or not, and like you and want to work with you, is by connecting with you. 'Cause if that connection feels genuine, then it doesn't mean I'm gonna give you my life savings, but it means that for the time being I've said, "This person is at least trustworthy enough. That I know who they are, they know who I am. I have a hard time seeing them betraying me. And so as a result, we can live side by side peacefully." And if you think about it, in business, trust is everything, right?

   11. SPSam Parr24:45

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CDCharles Duhigg24:45

       The reason you're successful in business, the reason you're successful in life, the reason you're successful in romantic relationships is because you figure out ways to connect with other people that are not just transactional, but are real.

   13. SPSam Parr24:57

       That's, that's fascinating. So I can ask questions that get, like, v- I think you said value-based. What else can I do?

   14. CDCharles Duhigg25:06

       Okay, so, so the first thing is ask more questions, right? Ask these deep questions. The second thing is that you need to be having the same kind of conversation as the person you're talking to. And to explain this, I'll sort of give you an example. So when I started writing Supercommunicators, one of the reasons why was because I had fallen into this bad pattern where I'd come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day and tell my wife, you know, like, "My coworkers don't appreciate me, and my boss doesn't realize what a genius I am." And she would give me some good advice. She would say something like, "Why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better?" But instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset, and I would start, like, saying, you know, "You should be outraged on my behalf. You should be, like, you should be on my side." And I couldn't figure out why there was this tension between us. And so I went to these researchers and they said, "Well, the, the main thing that's happening here is when you're having a discussion, you think you know what that discussion is about, right? You're talking about your day or next year's budget. But actually, if we look inside your brain, what we see is there's a bunch of different kinds of conversations all happening at the same time. And in general, these conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're making plans together or we're solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to other people, the identities that are important to us." And they said, "What we've discovered is all three of these conversations are equally important, and all three of them will probably happen during a discussion. But if you and the person you are talking to are not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you cannot fully hear each other. You definitely won't feel connected to each other. Your trust in each other will not go up." So the key is, this is the second big skill in addition to asking more questions that supercommunicators, consistent su- supercommunicators have, is pay attention to what kind of conversation's happening. Does this feel practical? Does it feel emotional? Does it feel social? What kind of words is the other person using? And then match them. What's known within psychology is the matching principle. If you're talking about next year's budget and you say something like, "Look, I'm really anxious that we get this right, 'cause I don't wanna lay people off," as a supercommunicator, in my head I should be hearing, "Oh, you're actually having an emotional conversation right now. We're not talking about the budget. We're talking about how you feel, and I need to empathize with that before we can start talking about practical things." I need to say to you, "I understand exactly what you're feeling. I feel exactly the same way. I want you to know my number one goal here is that we don't have any layoffs, that we get to protect our people. So with that in mind, can we talk about the budget, like, how to, how to, how to actually get that done? In other words, with your permission, could we move from an emotional to a practical conversation together?" When I do that, what I'm doing is I'm signaling to you that I'm listening to you, I understand your mindset, and we are getting aligned. We are getting neurally entrained. We are getting in sync, which means that we're gonna hear each other much, much better and we're gonna trust each other more.

   15. SPSam Parr28:05

       I'm obsessed with, like, I, I love, uh, history, and I've read, um, biographies on a huge, a, a lot of the presidents.

7. 28:12 – 33:15

   Trump's supercommunication skill

   1. SPSam Parr28:12

      And three presidents that are very, very different and are very effective communicators are George Washington-

   2. CDCharles Duhigg28:20

      Mm-hmm

   3. SPSam Parr28:20

      ... Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.

   4. CDCharles Duhigg28:23

      Yeah.

   5. SPSam Parr28:23

      They, they communicate drastically differently, but I would argue they're all very effective.

   6. CDCharles Duhigg28:29

      I, I absolutely agree.

   7. SPSam Parr28:30

      George Washington was significantly more stoic and mysterious and spoke seldom, and when he did spoke, you listened no matter what, and he had this, like, regal status. Bill Clinton was very charming. And then Donald Trump, his shtick is more like, uh, way more crude, like riffing with you, like we're, we're boys.

   8. CDCharles Duhigg28:51

      Oh, absolutely. I- in fact, a- as a reporter, I've been to a lot of Trump rallies and, and whether you, you like Donald Trump or whether you intensely dislike Donald Trump, going to a rally is well worth the time, because what you see is he is a supercommunicator. And he uses th- this exact same thing, thing that I just talked about. He leans, he proves he's listening to the crowd by leaning into the type of conversation they wanna have. So on a stage, Donald Trump will say something and, and if the crowd starts applauding and over, and, and reacting to it, he'll say it again, and then he'll just start riffing on that. That's why, that's why from a stage he often says, like, things that in retrospect look a little crazy, is because he's kind of feeding off the crowd. The crowd is telling him if he gets up on stage and he says, you know, something emotional like, "I worry about the future of the nation because we're being overrun by immigrants," and the crowd just kind of goes nuts, he'll lean into that and he recognizes this is an emotional conversation, right? This is, this is not about the practicalities of immigration reform. This is people feeling like they're lost at home, like they're losing ground, and he'll lean into that. Now, I've also met with D- Donald Trump one-on-one in, in, like, you know, settings where he's meeting with reporters. The dude asks questions constantly, right? And a lot of the questions are, like, about him. He's like, "What do you think? Why do you think these people hate me so much?" Or, "What do you think about this thing that I did?" But the fact i- the fact of the matter is instead of giving little speeches, he's asking questions. He's drawing you into the conversation. I- the truth of the matter is that- We are all really good at communication, right? Our-- Because we're a pro-social species, our brain has evolved to be really good at communication. And the people who are best at communication, it is not because they were born that way, it's because they think about communication, right? Bill Clinton's a great example. If you ask Bill Clinton, "Were you always a good communicator?" He says no. He says that when he was a kid, he actually had trouble making friends with other kids. He didn't know how to talk to them. But he said that in high school, he really studied how kids talked to each other, like he felt like this is something... And that because his parents got divorced, he had to be the peacemaker between them. He trained himself to think just a little bit more about communication, and that's what makes him a great communicator, and all of us can do that.

   9. SPSam Parr31:01

      I'm not a Donald Trump supporter, um, but I am intoxicated. Like, I think he's hilarious. Like, if I, I have to remove the fact that, like, I don't agree with what he just said, but I can also acknowledge, I'm like, "That's so funny." Like, were you intoxicated when you met him?

   10. CDCharles Duhigg31:15

       No. I was not, I was not intoxicated when, when I met him. And I, I would also say I'm not a Donald Trump fan. I, I, like, I, I, as a, particularly as a reporter, I try and not be a fan of anyone, um, that, that's running for office 'cause you have to be skeptical. But I, I will say this about Trump, is that he comes off as being very authentic, and this is another thing that super communicators do really well, right? You believe that you're seeing the real version of them. And the way that we actually create a sense of authenticity, this has been studied a lot, is that we'll often do something that's a little bit vulnerable.

   11. SPSam Parr31:48

       Yeah.

   12. CDCharles Duhigg31:48

       And we tend to misunderstand what this word vulnerability means. We think it's like crying on each other's shoulders or something like that. Actually, vulnerability is a very specific thing that happens inside our brain. Vulnerability is a neural cascade that occurs when I say something to you that you could judge. And if in that moment you withhold judgment, and more importantly, if you share something about yourself that I could judge in return, then we will feel closer to each other. So think about when Donald Trump's on that stage, you know that, like, weird dance he does, right?

   13. SPSam Parr32:19

       Yeah. [laughs]

   14. CDCharles Duhigg32:20

       That, like... It's not, it's not an attractive dance, right? He's not a-

   15. SPSam Parr32:23

       Yeah

   16. CDCharles Duhigg32:23

       ... he's not a graceful man on, on, on his two feet. And yet it's incredibly endearing because it's vulnerable. Now, it's not vulnerable in a way that, like, makes him open to attack. It's vulnerable in that he's sharing something that you could judge. You could say, "That's the dumbest dance I've ever seen in my entire life." But when you withhold that judgment, you actually feel closer to him. And so one of the things that he does that all great leaders do is that they reveal things about themselves. They, they allow these moments of vulnerability when I'm gonna say something that I know you could judge. I'm gonna make it available to you for your judgment, because in that moment you will believe I am authentic. You will believe you are seeing the real me, and that's really, really powerful.

   17. SPSam Parr33:08

       I think that word... I hate, I hate the word authenticity. I hate-

   18. CDCharles Duhigg33:12

       Yeah

   19. SPSam Parr33:12

       ... that word. Yes. Um, and I'll

8. 33:15 – 37:44

   a case against authenticity

   1. SPSam Parr33:15

      explain why. I, um, I think it's bullshit. I actually don't think you should be authentic because the fact is, is that we're all performing, and I wanna convince this girl to go on a date with me, I wanna convince this employee to work at my company, I wanna convince someone to do everything. Saying to be authentic, that's like saying to someone, "Just be yourself and they'll like you." No, don't be yourself. Change yourself so you are a better person and that people then will like you.

   2. CDCharles Duhigg33:39

      So I'm gonna push back a little bit because I actually think, I think what you just said is authenticity. I don't think authenticity means-

   3. SPSam Parr33:46

      It's all an act

   4. CDCharles Duhigg33:46

      ... being... [laughs] Well, I, I think, but I think authenticity is choosing, not necessarily which act, choosing which part of myself I want to expose right now.

   5. SPSam Parr33:55

      Yeah.

   6. CDCharles Duhigg33:55

      Right? Like, the truth of the matter is I could, l- in this conversation, you could have spent this conversation just telling me how impressive you are, like all of your successes. But instead, you, the, the act that you choose, the aspect of yourself you choose to, to share with me is, like, a really curious guy who, like, doesn't have all the answers and, and recognizes that luck is part of it and hard work is part of it and wants to understand how to get better. I don't think that's an inauthentic display of who you are. I think it's you authentically choosing which part of yourself to share with the world. And I think that I, I, I understand the skepticism towards authenticity. The word has become, like, such a bugaboo of meaning, like, meaning so many different things. But what I think for me it means is genuinely wanting to connect with another person and wanting to connect with them on both their terms and my terms and saying like, "Look, like, this is who I am. I, I want you to know who I am, the real me, at least to some degree." And I might-- That doesn't mean I'm gonna necessarily tell you all about my childhood trauma or my drinking problems, but I want you to be able to know who I am on some level, the real me, and I want to know the real you. And it's that act of actually saying, "I want to be authentic," or, "I want to be vulnerable," that creates the connection. It's not the authenticity itself, it's the act of saying, "I'm willing to be vulnerable with you because I want, I wanna connect with you." That is the first and most important step for us actually feeling connected to each other.

   7. SPSam Parr35:30

      Who's a super communicator that's a famous person that I should go and study?

   8. CDCharles Duhigg35:35

      Ooh, gosh, that's a really good question. I mean, there's so many of them. I mean, honestly, one of them is Steve Jobs, and we don't think of Steve Jobs as a super communicator, right? Everything about St- Steve Jobs is like, he was such a jerk to his employees, and he would create this reality distortion field. But if you go and you watch interviews with Steve Jobs, what you see is you see him constantly authentically sharing who he is and then asking questions and proving to the other person that he's listening to them. Right? So there's, there's a number of speeches he gave at, like, grad-- at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where the clips that get put on social media are the clips of Steve Jobs talking about, like, doing LSD or, like, his vision. But if you watch the entire time that he was in that classroom, what you see is that he, Steve Jobs, one of the most famous guys on Earth, he spends, like, about a third of the time asking the students questions. Like, what do you think about that? Why did you make that decision? What was your experience when you picked up this device? He is a guy who genuinely not only wants you to understand him, he wants to understand you, and you get that feeling, right? That's the Bill Clinton thing. Like I've, I've met Bill Clinton also, and like the truth of the matter is Bill Clinton genuinely wants to charm and know the people he is talking to.

   9. SPSam Parr36:48

      What did he say to you that, uh, was an example of charming?

   10. CDCharles Duhigg36:52

       Uh, yeah. [laughs] I had written this article and, and it's clear that like s- one of his aides had briefed him that I'd written the article. But he comes up and he goes, "Man, that article you wrote, it was just great. It was just great. And I'm wondering, what was the thing you carried away from it? 'Cause you must know so much about this. It must have been so powerful for you. What did you carry away?" And of course, the former president of the United States is asking me about my work. I'm like, I'm like, "Oh, Mr. President, let me tell you. Like, I'm so glad you read that," right? "I was bowled over by it." But like what he did is he asked me a question, and he seemed genuinely curious i- in the response. And to be honest, and maybe I'm just a sucker, I believed him. I believed that he actually wanted to know because he's a curious guy. He wanted to know what I had learned, and I felt wonderful as a result.

   11. SPSam Parr37:37

       What's a good famous example of a speech or a moment in time that you point to or y- or multiple examples

9. 37:44 – 45:58

   famous speeches

   1. SPSam Parr37:44

      r- that you point to where you're like, "That's a textbook example of supercommunicating"?

   2. CDCharles Duhigg37:49

      Oh, so, um, so one of the, my favorites is Ronald Reagan. So if you'll remember, it, it was a long time ago, so y- you might have been too young, and I was actually too young myself, but when Ronald Reagan was running for the, his second term, there were all these questions about his mental acuity, right? Like people, there were all these articles about the fact that his memory was failing.

   3. SPSam Parr38:08

      Yeah.

   4. CDCharles Duhigg38:08

      And, and he gets up on this, on the stage, on the stage to, to debate Walter Mondale. This is the second debate. And Mondale-

   5. SPSam Parr38:14

      And Walter was, uh, was younger than him, yeah?

   6. CDCharles Duhigg38:16

      Wa- uh, Mondale was younger than him, and Mondale was like seen as like, like h- his reputation, he had never lost an election before, and he was seen as this like wunderkind, right? Like the, the, like his brain was so smart. And Ronald Reagan gets up on the stage, and one of the first things he says is he makes a joke. He says, "I want you to know that during this debate, I will at no time make fun of my opponent's youth and inexperience."

   7. SPSam Parr38:42

      Yeah.

   8. CDCharles Duhigg38:42

      Right? And everyone kinda laughs 'cause they all realize what he's talking about. There's, he's saying like, "Look, like I, I'm not gonna, I, I'm not gonna make fun of the fact that like he's younger than me 'cause h- he's gonna say I'm too old and that my memory's going." And what it did is it first of all was kind of vulnerable, right? Like it's him admitting that there's this criticism of him that he's aware of. It's exposing something that other people could judge. But then by making a joke of it, he completely disarms the issue. Like in that moment-

   9. SPSam Parr39:10

      Yeah

   10. CDCharles Duhigg39:10

       ... it stopped, his mental acuity stopped being an issue. Now, if you'll remember, actually later in his second administration, this becomes an issue because it turns out that he's suffering from, from what people think are early, early signs of, uh, of Alzheimer or dementia. So it was totally a legitimate issue to bring up during the election, but he just did this jujitsu by being a little bit vulnerable about it, about it and making a joke of it, that all of a sudden it became an attack that didn't have any teeth. That's an example of supercommunication, and he just connected with people in that moment in a way that, that surprised everyone.

   11. SPSam Parr39:45

       So asking, um, value-based questions.

   12. CDCharles Duhigg39:48

       Yep.

   13. SPSam Parr39:48

       Getting tactical vulnerability.

   14. CDCharles Duhigg39:51

       Yep.

   15. SPSam Parr39:52

       Um, what, what else?

   16. CDCharles Duhigg39:54

       So figuring out what kind of mindset, what kind of conversation is happening. Are you in an emotional mindset?

   17. SPSam Parr39:59

       Yeah.

   18. CDCharles Duhigg39:59

       Are you in a practical mindset? And then the last one is supercommunicators succeed because they not only listen, but they prove that they're listening. So there's this kind of like myth that like the key to listening is like close your mouth and open your ears, and that's the first step to listening. But it turns out study after study shows that is not enough on its own. The key to listening is to make listening an active process. It's to prove to you that I am paying attention to what you're saying. And you actually just did this really well. You repeated what I said, right? You were like, "Okay, here's the three things I've heard from you." You're proving that you're paying attention to it. So if I'm in a conversation with someone, particularly if I'm in a conflict conversation where we're disagreeing about something, what I should do is I should use this technique called looping for understanding, which is step one is I'm gonna ask you a question, preferably a deep question. Tell me why this issue is important to, to you. Tell me what you really think about this question, like why it's, why, why this matters. I'm gonna listen to your answer, and then step two is I'm gonna repeat back in my own words what I heard you say. And the key here is not mimicry. If I just mimic you, it doesn't work. The key here is to prove to you that I've actually been thinking about what you've been saying. I've been paying attention. "So what I heard you say is I heard you say that like, you know, you wake, you wear your, your workout clothes, and I think that what I'm really hearing you say is w- working out is a keystone habit for you. It's a way that you tell yourself who you are. You prove your discipline in the morning." That's step two, is I'm repeating back what I'm hearing. I'm adding something to it. And most people kind of do this intuitively, step one and step two, as they get older. Step three is the one that I always forget, is that when I say that, I ask you if I got it right.

   19. SPSam Parr41:39

       Mm.

   20. CDCharles Duhigg41:39

       "Did, did I hear you... Am, am I, am I understanding the role that exercise plays in your, your life correctly? Did, did I get it?" Because what I'm doing in that moment is I'm asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening, and if you acknowledge that I'm listening to you, you become something like 10 times more likely to listen to me in response.

   21. SPSam Parr42:00

       Mm.

   22. CDCharles Duhigg42:00

       It's this inborn instinct known as social reciprocity-

   23. SPSam Parr42:03

       Yeah

   24. CDCharles Duhigg42:03

       ... that, that when we think someone's listening to us, we want to listen to them. And so supercommunicators prove they are listening. They don't just sit there. You know, th- they don't do the Dale Carnegie thing. They don't just ask question after question after question. They layer on top of that, proving that they're paying attention by saying things like, "Oh, it's so interesting you mention that 'cause something similar happened to me," or, "I wanna ask you about this thing that you said before 'cause it reminds me of this question I've been thinking about." They prove that they're paying attention, and in doing so We believe that they are listening to us because, in fact, they are listening to us

   25. SPSam Parr42:38

       Dude, this is so interesting, and it becomes, like, meta because as you're, like, telling me things, I'm like, "All right. I have to make sure that I do a loop when he s- [laughs] Like"

   26. CDCharles Duhigg42:45

       [laughs] No, but then the nice thing is, first of all, you do a lot of this stuff intuitively because you are a good communicator.

   27. SPSam Parr42:51

       Well, it, it, but it's not intuitive. I'm telling you, I had to learn all this.

   28. CDCharles Duhigg42:54

       Yes.

   29. SPSam Parr42:54

       I was a really uncomfortable 14-year-old, and do you know what changed my life? And-

   30. CDCharles Duhigg42:59

       What's that?
10. 45:58 – 47:43

    coldcalling 900 people

    1. SPSam Parr45:58

       for a book. Is that, is that right?

    2. CDCharles Duhigg45:59

       Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it, it was actually, so it was the Apple series. So the series is about, like, looking at the global economy through the lens of Apple, and getting people inside Apple is, to talk is really, really hard. It's a very secretive company. And so what I did is I was like, the only way I can do this is through, like, mass pitches. And so I'd go on LinkedIn and look for people who were former Apple employees, and I would email them and say, "Look, my name is Charles Duhigg. I'm a reporter. This is what I'm working on. Can you please talk to me?" And the yield was really low. The yield was, like, 3 or 4% of people even bothering to respond. But all you need is two or three great sources to introduce you to other sources. And so this has always been my reporting technique, is if you want to write something great, if you wanna create anything that's great, you just have to waste a lot of time because you don't know what's gonna pay off. You don't know which person you're gonna email, and they're gonna say, "Yeah, I have all these files. I can share them with you." And so I think a big part of making important big things is being okay with spending an entire week and saying, "Nothing productive happened during this week. I tried again and again and again, and none of it paid off," because that is the process of finding something amazing.

    3. SPSam Parr47:17

       And so it's interesting to say that, like, a lot of your productive time feels unproductive.

    4. CDCharles Duhigg47:23

       Well, and I think that that's a key. So, so the idea, that, that book is called Smarter Faster Better, and the idea behind it is sort of what I mentioned before, that throughout history, the killer productivity app has been thinking more deeply, particularly when thinking deeply is hardest.

    5. SPSam Parr47:36

       So tell me about your routine then. So let's say you had a deadline for an article or you had a deadline for a book. What is your daily

11. 47:43 – 49:51

    60-second productivity masterclass

    1. SPSam Parr47:43

       routine in order to think deeply?

    2. CDCharles Duhigg47:46

       So oftentimes, of- oftentimes I won't have a deadline. Like, I'll try and basically not have a deadline so I have all the time I need. But my, my, my process for thinking deeply is that I do to-do lists in a very specific way. My to-do list at no time has more than three things on it, and hopefully it only has one.

    3. SPSam Parr48:02

       For the day?

    4. CDCharles Duhigg48:03

       For the day, right. So, so I have a memory list. All the things I wanna get done go on my memory list, and that's very long. But the night before, every night, I g- look at the memory list and I choose what is the number one thing on my to-do list for the next day, and I'll write that down. And this is a- actually a routine, a cognitive routine, that forces me to think about priorities, right? And what I, what I'll do is periodically during the day I force myself to take a break and to just take a step back and ask myself, like, "The way I spent the last hour, is it getting me closer to that one thing on my to-do list, or is it actually me distracting myself?"

    5. SPSam Parr48:42

       So you only do one-- Like, you would consider a successful day just doing one thing?

    6. CDCharles Duhigg48:46

       Yeah. I mean, it, it's gonna be a big thing, right? Like, like, th- my, my to-do list, for instance, for tomorrow, 'cause it's Saturday, but I'm gonna be-- I'm gonna... I, I have a to-do list for tomorrow. My to-do list for tomorrow is to come up with the outline of my next book. Now, I'm not gonna be able to do that in a day, right? And that's a huge task. But I intend to sit down at nine o'clock in the morning with a pad of paper, and I'm just gonna start outlining, and those outlines are gonna be terrible. And then I'm gonna get up at ten thirty or eleven and go get a snack, and I'm gonna ask myself, "Am I writing stuff down just to write stuff down? Or is this actually getting me closer and closer and closer to understanding what the outline is?" There is so much in life that can distract us from what's important, and the people who are most successful are the ones who empower themselves to be masters of their time and their attention.

    7. SPSam Parr49:34

       I think you, if I had to guess, you read a lot and you've written, like, f- three or four different books on, like, m- drastically different topics.

    8. CDCharles Duhigg49:41

       Yeah.

    9. SPSam Parr49:41

       And so you're like an onion. You got layers of, like, interesting knowledge.

    10. CDCharles Duhigg49:44

        [laughs]

    11. SPSam Parr49:45

        What have you read in the last year, whether it's a book or an article or a podcast or a YouTube video, that you would suggest that I consume?

12. 49:51 – 53:13

    The best stuff Charles has read lately

    1. CDCharles Duhigg49:51

       So okay, so there's a couple of them. Um, there's this book named Void Star. It's actually a novel. And it w- it came out, like, seven or eight years ago, and it's written by a computer scientist. It's about AI. And first of all, it's just a great novel. Like, it's just fun to read. Particularly 'cause we're living through this age of AI, AI, he is the first writer I've encountered who tries to actually get inside an AI's head, right, and sort of say, like, if, if people actually were interacting with AI, what would that look like? 'Cause an AI isn't gonna be like a human. It's gonna be some- something significantly different. So I found that book to be really, really profound. And then in addition, let me think what else. So David Epstein, as I mentioned, he has a new book coming out called Inside the Box, which is about how constraints actually make us better. That, like, when we have constraints around us, when we have fewer resources than we need, when we create artificial limits for ourselves, it actually pushes us to be more creative, to be more productive. And I think that's been really, really important because we live in an age of surplus and excess, right? If you're starting an AI company, the first thing you do is you raise billions and billions of dollars. But what David's saying is, actually avail yourself of those surplus of resources if you can get them. But when you're thinking about how to make decisions, give yourself constraints because it's the constraints that show you the right path forward.

    2. SPSam Parr51:16

       Dude, you're really fascinating to talk to. Did you, um-- You make me wanna become an author, um.

    3. CDCharles Duhigg51:21

       Right. You should be an author. You're fascinating to talk to you too. You, you have, you have the natural disposition for it, the curiosity.

    4. SPSam Parr51:27

       I don't know if I've got the grit for it. It seems really hard. Did you for any of the, your best works, so like The Power of Habit, as well as some of your articles, did you at, at any point were you like, "Something's here. Something's here. This is gonna hit"?

    5. CDCharles Duhigg51:39

       Yeah. So I think what happens is, uh, very similarly. Uh, I'll, I'll say that oftentimes the chapters that get the most attention are the chapters where I was like, "Oh, that wasn't my best chapter." Like I, I could've, I should've done better and I cannot reread my stuff. If I reread my stuff, it's like, "Oh, this is so painful." Like it's, it's so bad. There's so-- I could have done so much better. But I will say that there is usually a point where I'm like, "You know, I would actually read this."

    6. SPSam Parr52:04

       Yeah.

    7. CDCharles Duhigg52:04

       Like there's something going on in this that if I encountered it in the wild, I would read it. And that doesn't mean it's poetic. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but there's just something there that I find personally captivating. The trust I'm having, the bet I'm making is that if I find it captivating, there's gonna be at least some other people like me who also find it captivating. So I wrote this, um, this article for The New Yorker about a guy named Chamath Palihapitiya.

    8. SPSam Parr52:29

       Yeah, the SPAC thing. Yeah. I, it was... I like that stuff.

    9. CDCharles Duhigg52:32

       Yeah, like I... It was about Chamath and about, and about, um, SPACs, and it was kind of like, uh, Chamath is kind of like a, a con artist. That's not fair, but Chamath is an operator, right? He's a guy who like sells a dream pretty actively. And so I wrote an article about him selling the dream and why actually sometimes in, in economic cycles, like the salesman, the, the, the, the bullshit artist is actually the most important figure 'cause he helps everyone else believe in what the economy can be. And it was an article, it didn't do that well, like not that many people read it, but I, I loved it because I would've read the hell out of that thing. If I had come across that article in the magazine, I would've just read

13. 53:13 – 56:17

    financial freedom

    1. CDCharles Duhigg53:13

       it like two or three times. That's ultimately what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to write something that like so amuses and delights me that I, I would read it, and so hopefully other people will too.

    2. SPSam Parr53:26

       What, um... Yeah, man, I, I'm leaving this conversation v- invigorated. What city are you-

    3. CDCharles Duhigg53:30

       Oh, good. Me too.

    4. SPSam Parr53:33

       What age did you become successful financially?

    5. CDCharles Duhigg53:36

       Ooh, actually after Power of Habit. So I would s- let's see. So I was probably late thirties.

    6. SPSam Parr53:44

       Were you like broke?

    7. CDCharles Duhigg53:45

       No, I wasn't broke. I wasn't broke. I was write-- working at The New York Times, but one of the reasons I wrote The Power of Habit was because I was really happy being a reporter, and my wife was pregnant with our first kid, and I, I... and we were living in New York, and I was like, "I don't know that we can afford to live in New York with kids on my salary," right? I'm a reporter. I, I don't earn that much money. The only way that I can make this work is to go write books. Like I, I need a secondary line of income to be able to continue living in New York, to continue our, the lifestyle that we have. And so, and, and, and I will say, I'm curious if this is true of you as well, like once I started making money, the, the scarcity mindset was with me for a long time and actually-

    8. SPSam Parr54:23

       It's still there

    9. CDCharles Duhigg54:24

       ... is still kind-- It's still there. It's still there.

    10. SPSam Parr54:25

        It's still there.

    11. CDCharles Duhigg54:25

        The-- If you grow up with scarcity-

    12. SPSam Parr54:28

        Uh, it doesn't go away. It's traumatic.

    13. CDCharles Duhigg54:30

        And, and it also teaches you that like money does not solve your problems.

    14. SPSam Parr54:34

        I think it, I think it removes so many problems.

    15. CDCharles Duhigg54:37

        Yeah.

    16. SPSam Parr54:37

        It removes so many problems. And like I've talked about this on the podcast, and this is a very douchey thing to say, but I say it all the time. The people who say it doesn't make you happier I think are doing it wrong. It definitely makes you happier because it roos- removes so much uncertainty. But we have quite similar tendencies. I've noticed this about you, is that you're quite paranoid. Uh, like we've agreed that you're one of the best-selling authors of all time, and yet you say you're a horrible author. And like, there's this like, I think there's this commonality, not with all successful people. I know a lot of successful people that were like, "I felt like I was great, and I knew I was gonna be great, and, and I was confident the whole time." But then there's this whole other subset of people, which I think I fall into and it sounds like you fall into, which is, "I'm shit. I have to prove myself. I suck. I suck so much, I have to do this. It's all gonna go away." And frankly, it's exhausting, but I do find it very useful.

    17. CDCharles Duhigg55:23

        I totally agree. And, and I think of it as a cultivated anxiety, and I think you're right. I think it's actually a blend of those. 'Cause if you asked me objectively, am I a good writer, I'd, I'd say, "Look, I've been writing for 20 years, man. Like, I spend all my time thinking about how to, how to write in ways that make people desperate to finish the chapter they're writing." So like ob- objectively, I am a good writer, but it's also this cultivated anxiety of like, well, my previous books were okay, but I wanna try something new for my next book, and that could fall on its face. I need to work really hard [laughs] to make sure it doesn't. I think both of us probably do that, right? Like, success is a combination of feeding the insecurities that push you to be better, and then also taking comfort in the securities that you, you can be better, you know what you're doing if you push yourself hard enough.

    18. SPSam Parr56:11

        The thing that I love about capitalism and business, and it's like I'm not even into business that much, I just think that capitalism, there-

14. 56:17 – 57:38

    bending the earth to your will

    1. SPSam Parr56:17

       there's some of the more practical ways to kind of bend the earth to your will.

    2. CDCharles Duhigg56:20

       Yeah.

    3. SPSam Parr56:20

       And so, like, w- what I loved about my journey of going from fat to skinny is like, check this out, I manipulated myself. Like, isn't that awesome? I, I changed my tiny world, that just being my body. I set a goal and I [beep] did it.

    4. CDCharles Duhigg56:34

       Yeah.

    5. SPSam Parr56:34

       Uh, and I, I, that's what I like about entrepreneurship, is, um, even if it's just a small business, it doesn't matter if it's, what it is, it's just a really cool, it's a very practical way to, to, to kick a dent in the world and say, "This is my world that I've created," even if it's just my, my bedroom.

    6. CDCharles Duhigg56:49

       Absolutely. And that is that mastery, right? Mastery is envisioning something in the world and then making it real, and it is so satisfying.

    7. SPSam Parr56:56

       Well, thanks for doing this. I, uh-

    8. CDCharles Duhigg56:57

       Thank you. Thanks for having me on. This was super fun.

    9. SPSam Parr57:00

       I hope you realize how much of an impact you've had on me.

    10. CDCharles Duhigg57:02

        Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that, and I love the show. I, like, I, I love listening to the show. And by the way, when you come out to California, let me know. We'll, we'll go... I, do you surf?

    11. SPSam Parr57:11

        Poorly.

    12. CDCharles Duhigg57:12

        Okay.

    13. SPSam Parr57:12

        Poorly.

    14. CDCharles Duhigg57:12

        I, I surf poorly every single day, [laughs] so-

    15. SPSam Parr57:15

        Good

    16. CDCharles Duhigg57:15

        ... so we, we, we'll go surfing together in Santa Cruz. It'll be fun.

    17. SPSam Parr57:18

        All right, let's do it. All right, that's it. That's the pod. [outro music]

Episode duration: 57:38