Re:Thinking with Adam GrantThe science of personality and the art of well-being with Brian Little | ReThinking with Adam Grant
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25 min read · 5,457 words- 0:00 – 0:02
Intro
- AGAdam Grant
[upbeat music]
- 0:02 – 2:29
Adam Grant’s origin story: How Brian Little shaped his path
- AGAdam Grant
Hey, everyone. It's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. My guest today is Brian Little. In 2001, when I was a junior in college, I signed up for his personality psychology class, and it changed the course of my life. I was mesmerized by his deep insight, his boundless curiosity, and his care for his students. Brian is the reason I became a professor and a psychologist. I couldn't think of a more meaningful career than trying to pay forward what I'd learned from him. 15 years later, I got to open for him on the TED stage. Brian's TED Talk on the puzzle of personality has been viewed more than 17 million times. If you haven't watched it, you're in for a treat. He has a unique ability to make you think as hard as he makes you laugh. Brian is the bestselling author of the books Me, Myself, and Us and Who Are You, Really? He's won numerous awards for his excellence in teaching at Harvard, McGill, Carleton, and Cambridge, and for his distinguished contributions to personality science. He's best known for his pioneering research on personal projects. Personal projects are the answer to the question: What do you think you're doing? They're your priorities in life, from walking the dog to raising an independent child. Today, we're gonna do a deep dive into how your projects shape your happiness. So I love this unscripted podcast format 'cause it gives me an excuse to talk to a fascinating person every week.
- BLBrian Little
[chuckles]
- AGAdam Grant
However, what I really miss is having a cohost who I can banter with, and I don't think there's been an episode yet where I haven't thought to myself, "Ooh, I would love to talk to Brian about this."
- BLBrian Little
Oh, isn't that a cool thing? [chuckles]
- AGAdam Grant
I figured if you're not my cohost, you can at least be my guest.
- BLBrian Little
Oh, I thought you were gonna segue now into showing who your real guest is, [laughs] and, and then we would interview her or him.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I wonder if we could do an episode where, uh, we pick a person who we think is interesting, and we each have a, a goal of talking to them about the same topic, and then compare what the questions looked like and how we learned different things from the way we engaged.
- BLBrian Little
That, that's actually a fascinating idea.
- AGAdam Grant
Are you in?
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- 2:29 – 4:41
Mentorship, timing, and chance meetings that change lives
- AGAdam Grant
I have such a vivid memory of having my arm twisted to take your class-
- BLBrian Little
[chuckles]
- AGAdam Grant
... when I didn't think [laughs] personality was an important part of psychology, which is embarrassing in hindsight.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
And being riveted by your ability to captivate an audience, by your wisdom and wit and encyclopedic knowledge, and then being blown away again when I scheduled a short meeting with you and you spent hours-
- BLBrian Little
[chuckles]
- AGAdam Grant
... asking about my life story. Can I just ask you why? [laughs] Like, what did you think you were doing?
- BLBrian Little
I had taken early retirement and had won a fellowship to go to the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, and when I had the opportunity to teach a, a course, I was overjoyed, and I thought, "Oh, I have the chance to actually meet some students who have, um, a glorious past behind them and see if we can [laughs] keep that going." And it was sort of [chuckles] fortuitous that one of the first who said, "Can I talk to you?" was a guy called Adam Grant. Now, talk about [laughs] luck, there's nobody I could have thought of who had more potential. So I was ripe for mentoring students that would explode into productive careers, and you just happened to stumble into that open door.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, I couldn't be more thankful that I did, and if I heard you right, are you saying that if we had met 10 years earlier, you wouldn't have changed my life?
- BLBrian Little
I don't think I would have. I would have been so busy with n- with cumulative students, and with my own research, and with putting everything into my lecturing, that I may not have had the opportunity in my project space to sit down at the faculty club with you [laughs] and talk about Adam's journey.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I don't know whether to be extra grateful because of that or to be really annoyed- [laughs]
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... at the fact that something so important could depend so heavily on chance.
- 4:41 – 5:37
Serendipity as a missing ingredient in scientific views of personality
- BLBrian Little
Oh, the contingencies of life. I mean, they're stunning, aren't they? Contingency in our lives is absolutely central to my mature view of where personality psychology is right now, that we are looking so hard for causal mechanisms that we often fail to appreciate how we create the situations that we find ourselves in. But sheer chance comes booming out of the left visual field, and all of a sudden you've got a new research idea, or you've fallen in love, or all of a sudden you've got clarity on something you'd never thought of before, and that seems to me to be part of the magic of what it is to be a human being. And if we have no room for it in a scientific psychology, then we're the more impoverished by that, I think.
- 5:37 – 8:47
Falling in love with psychology: arts, sciences, and a mis-shelved book
- AGAdam Grant
I think that's well put. So you mentioned falling in love. Let's talk about how you fell in love with psychology.
- BLBrian Little
I was a strange undergraduate. I, at one point I majored in English and, and bacteriology. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
It's, It's true. And I was absolutely torn between the arts and the sciences, and I- Took in my third year, I guess, a couple of psychology courses that totally hooked me, neurons in the morning and narratives in the afternoon. And I could draw on Shakespeare to evoke the language of personality challenges. I can draw on some of the biological science that I was interested in to explain the propensities that drive us to act the way we are. And to me, it was just intoxicating. It was also, again, just sheer luck. I had been going into the neuropsych side of things when I discovered this book that had been mis-shelved that was supposed to be the anatomy book on the brain, and in fact, it was George Kelly's Psychology of Personal Constructs. And I sat down on the floor in the library and read it and couldn't put it down and changed my views right there, that I wanted to go into psychology, but not neuroscience so much as the study of personality. So again, fortuity, luck, a mis-shelved book. I see it as absolutely marvelous how fortuity can just plunk itself down on us, change our life trajectory. It can add a kind of gratitude to life that you say, "Isn't it fabulous that I met Adam that day at the, at the faculty club?" And these are the things that I think we shouldn't be annoyed with, but we should take in as part of what it is to be a human being.
- AGAdam Grant
That's a perspective that I need to internalize. You're much better at accepting a lack of control in life than I am.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah, probably.
- AGAdam Grant
And-
- BLBrian Little
Yes. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
A lot better.
- BLBrian Little
It's partly due to age.
- AGAdam Grant
In fact.
- BLBrian Little
I'm twice your age. You give up the sense that I can control things. And remember Aaron Antonovsky, the sociologist?
- AGAdam Grant
I was just gonna say, sense of coherence, Antonovsky.
- BLBrian Little
The sense of coherence. So it's not that I am in control, but things are under control. And so if, as we are lucky enough to have loving, supportive people in our lives, I may not be able to control everything, but I think there is a predictable, relatable sense of surety in my environment, even when I no longer have the control to do it myself.
- AGAdam Grant
There's a part of me that when I hear about the importance of serendipity in life, I think, "Well, that's unfair," because many people miss out on those chance connections.
- BLBrian Little
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
And it's also frustrating because I can't plan to create more of them, and what you're saying is there will be enough of them.
- BLBrian Little
Yes, that's a good way of putting it, Adam. Yeah, yeah. Sufficient unto the day.
- 8:47 – 9:15
Projects over traits: personality as what you’re trying to do
- AGAdam Grant
I loved how when you introduced personal projects, you opened my eyes to the possibility that personality was not just the traits we have, but it's the choices we make and the things we do.
- BLBrian Little
We need to look at what in John's life, in Joanna's life, is the meeting point of her propensities and her predicament of the time, her situation at the time. And that has occupied me for the last, what, 123 years now.
- 9:15 – 10:57
How many projects we juggle—and why “trivial” can be consequential
- AGAdam Grant
The phrase that always sticks with me that you coined was that they capture both our trivial pursuits and our magnificent obsessions. How many projects does a typical person have, and what are they like?
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. People generate about 15 different projects if w- if we give them 20 minutes to sit down, and, and the range of content is quite stunning. I use the term trivial pursuits because some of them clearly seem to be trivial, you know, like pick up my shoes from the shoe repair place. But it didn't take long for us to realize that those trivial pursuits may, from the perspective of the pursuer, be pretty consequential. The best example I, I can use is, uh, you know, the project of, of put out the dog, uh, into the backyard. If you're in a wheelchair and the building code is such that you're not able to get out easily, there are the barriers l- literally to your easily completing that project than to say, "Oh, it's a trivial pursuit," is really unfortunate. And it goes to the whole business of people are pursuing projects that matter to them. What are the barriers, both internal and external, that will facilitate or frustrate that pursuit? And once we think of projects that way, then we start to get, I think, a more humane conception of what people are about in their daily lives. And so I always feel a little guilty about coining the terms trivial pursuits. Now, there's a whole literature, mainly out of philosophy, that argues that it's important
- 10:57 – 11:59
Avoiding the ‘single life purpose’ trap: buffers and flexibility
- BLBrian Little
that we have a life project that brings meaning in our life. And I think there's some danger in that if you just have one overriding project, because if these affordances dry up or your internal resolve lessens, then you may find that you've got nothing left. And so having several core projects or interchangeable projects or buffer projects seems to be a, a better way of dealing with the complexities of life than being driven only to have that one overriding goal. I think psychologically, if you have vested everything in one project and you're rigidly unable to dissociate from that project when things are going wrong, then problems may be ahead. We know that depression can arise out of that, as Eric Klinger taught us and, and so on.
- 11:59 – 13:06
Memorable projects people report—and what they reveal
- AGAdam Grant
I remember when I did my undergrad thesis using projects. It was so exciting to see the data come in because following your methods, I was able to ask people, "What are the projects that you're working on?"
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And then see the texture of them. I have to ask you, what are some of your favorite personal projects-
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... that people have shared over the years?
- BLBrian Little
[laughs] Be a better druid.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
I thought this was a delightful project. Be a druid may be one, but be a better druid always intrigued me as to does it mean you, you hug the tree even harder or what? But th- that's a flippant view of druidism, so my apologies to any druids who are listening. The first three projects that I got from a university sample was, so these are the v- very first three that I looked at, were clarify my philosophy of life, develop a more philosophical understanding. The third was get laid, and I th- [laughs] I thought-
- AGAdam Grant
Wow
- BLBrian Little
... well, that sort of captures the ecosystem of, of college life in the days [laughs] when I was carrying that out.
- 13:06 – 14:01
The five project features that predict well-being (and the biggest surprise)
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, so we all have a range of projects. Understanding what our projects are tells you a lot about how our lives are going, and I think one of the most powerful points you've made from your research on projects is that, uh, well-being depends on the sustainable pursuit of core projects.
- BLBrian Little
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
What are the features of projects that are most relevant to well-being?
- BLBrian Little
There are f- five that I've over the years settled on. One is how meaningful are your projects? And by this, we mean are they enjoyable? Are they consistent with your values? Are they self-expressive? That is, do you see yourself in these projects? Does they express who you are instead of being alien or alienating? Interestingly, meaning is not the best predictor
- 14:01 – 17:10
Purpose without progress: when meaningful goals make people unhappy
- BLBrian Little
of well-being. I- in order to see how meaning plays out in our lives, you need to take a second of the five, which is the manageability of your project. So you can have deeply meaningful projects, but if they're low in likelihood of successful completion, what we call efficacy, m- control to an extent or a sense of coherence over them, adequate time, these are the manageability functions. So core projects that are meaningful but are also high on manageability are conducive to well-being. If they are not manageable, meaningful projects do not add to p- predicting your global subjective well-being.
- AGAdam Grant
So we should beware of purpose without the potential for progress.
- BLBrian Little
Absolutely. The single most important dimension out of personal projects [clears throat] in predicting various outcome measures like health and well-being and happiness, is the sense of efficacy, the likelihood that you will... that you perceive successful completion of these projects. If you're engaged in projects that are drenched with meaning but you see as hopeless, find the perfect person in my life, likelihood of successful completion, two.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
Those people tend not to be as globally happy as those who have, uh, concordance between manageability and meaning. And then there-
- AGAdam Grant
Oh, that's funny.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I thought, I thought you were gonna say, "Find the perfect person, those people tend not to exist."
- BLBrian Little
Oh, yeah, they do. There are 12.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
There are 12 of them. Oh, you haven't learned that yet.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
That's my next year's seminar, Adam. You must sign up for it.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
The 12 perfect people in the world. Oh, where were we?
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, so we have meaning and manageability.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Needing to go hand-in-hand in some ways.
- BLBrian Little
Right. And the third of the five I used to call, like, community, but we now call it connection, uh, with others, not connection between projects, but connection with other individuals. And there are two components of that, one of which has become based largely on your work. Originally, we thought connection in your projects was how much support you get from them. So you could have meaningful and manageable projects, but nobody g- gives you credit for them. Nobody likes them. They find them boring and uninteresting. They don't want you to incorporate them into your life with them, and so that's likely not to be a sustainable project unless you're going to be off on your own completely in l- in a hermitage somewhere.
- AGAdam Grant
So interesting. I would've put the contribution part of that more under meaning than connection.
- BLBrian Little
Oh, how interesting.
- AGAdam Grant
But it may be both. All right, we'll have to follow up on that one.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah, for sure.
- AGAdam Grant
Um.
- BLBrian Little
Next Thursday at 4:00.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, so-
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] It's not in my calendar.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I think a lot of people would stop here and say, "If I have projects that are meaningful and manageable and that connect me to other people, I'm good."
- 17:10 – 18:42
Stress, burnout, and the hidden cost of beloved projects
- BLBrian Little
There are two dimensions that remain. One is positive affect, and the other is negative affect. If we put it simply, the relative preponderance of positive emotions in your projects is going to make them more sustainable. Clearly, you can have meaningful, manageable, supported projects that matter to other people, but if they're unrelentingly stressful for you, they're not gonna be sustainable. You're gonna burn out.
- AGAdam Grant
This was a big a-ha moment for me back when I was in college.
- BLBrian Little
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
I remember at the time, you know, reading your work on projects and saying, "Okay, I would love to study this, but also this is really relevant to my life." So I made a list of my projects. I started rating them on meaning, manageability, connection, and I, I felt like things were going well. And then I discovered that some of my most meaningful projects were among my most stressful ones too.
- BLBrian Little
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Which I think is a, is a common experience for a lot of people.
- BLBrian Little
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I was puzzled at first. Why is that? Like, I chose this project. I love this project. I, I, I remember doing this with the decision of should I give up my diving career?
- BLBrian Little
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
The manageability was there.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And the meaning in it came from challenging myself and trying to pursue personal growth.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
But also from a team and a coach who were depending on me. And it was my strongest source of belonging on campus.
- BLBrian Little
Ah.
- AGAdam Grant
And yet-
- BLBrian Little
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... it was extremely stressful.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- 18:42 – 22:02
The cross-impact matrix: when one project undermines all the others
- AGAdam Grant
The more stressful part was when I got to the cross-impact matrix, where you'd created this module for, for asking how do these projects affect each other?
- BLBrian Little
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
And I realized that the diving project in and of itself was a core project for me, but it was having a negative impact on every other project that I had. It was interfering with my ability to do the deep dive into psychology I wanted.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
Because it was so time-consuming. It was preventing me from working enough hours to be able to pay for school. It was constraining the friendships and relationships that I was trying to build. And I think it was an epiphany moment that even a project that you love and care about-
- BLBrian Little
Mm-hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... can become a tremendous burden if it has a negative impact on your other core projects.
- BLBrian Little
Wow. You've never told me that.
- AGAdam Grant
I haven't. I've ne- I don't think I've crystallized it-
- BLBrian Little
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... until now [laughs] actually.
- BLBrian Little
Adam-
- AGAdam Grant
And thinking back to that.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. That-
- AGAdam Grant
It was, it was a big light bulb moment for me.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And it's a big part of why I ended up walking away from diving, because I realized that the project was a net negative in my life, even though it had been one of the most positive forces.
- BLBrian Little
I also used to tease you by saying it's just dropping. How's your dropping going, Adam?
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
And I realize now, geez, that's pretty cheeky for a guy for whom it has been a core project in his life. I will never, ever say that again.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I, I think it, it was a, it was a good reminder that there's more to life than diving.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I mean, I think there are a lot of coaches who would describe diving as a controlled fall.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
The cross-impact of one project on others is extremely consequential and often invisible to us. We choose projects on the basis of thinking this is gonna be meaningful and manageable, and it's gonna connect me to others, and I'm going to enjoy it. And all those things might be true.
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
But it still might be a problematic project if it interferes with the rest of my priorities.
- BLBrian Little
You alluded to this kind of issue earlier. There's the joint cross-impact matrix, which is how does your project impact upon the projects of others? And you said one of the stress-inducing aspects of giving up diving was that you'd be giving up mentoring others, and you would be, in a sense, letting them down. We have a matrix that allows you to plot your projects against those of your loved ones, say, or in marital counseling, or against your coach, or against your boss in an organizational setting. I didn't even realize, somebody might say, that my jogging project is keep fit by jogging when, you know, when I get home from work, that it interferes with, with your partner's project, spend quality time with my partner. And so there a revelation, n- not in the burning bush sense, but in the micro sense, a revelation that with a slight change in the scheduling of my projects, I'll spend half an hour and have a cup of coffee and how's your day with my partner, and then she can go out and jog after that. These kind of insights come from doing this.
- 22:02 – 25:09
Lightning round: genetics, loneliness, and the myth of fixed introversion
- AGAdam Grant
So Brian, can we do a lightning round?
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
Tell me in a sentence what you think is the most interesting recent finding in personality psychology.
- BLBrian Little
No.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BLBrian Little
[laughs] I can't, I can't put in a sentence, so I won't. I think the fact that there are some genetic determinants of personality, which in interaction with social features like loneliness that a person experiences, opens up some fascinating research possibilities. The, the interaction between genetics and genomic analysis and social ecology, that's a really rich vein I'd love to see people exploring.
- AGAdam Grant
You've spent a lot of your career studying introversion and extraversion. What do you think is the biggest misconception about introverts?
- BLBrian Little
That it's fixed, that label is sufficient to account for everything that's important in your life. There's a tendency for people to glom onto these labels, and, um, it, w- we're not like that. I mean, all the evidence is that people in the quotidian, in the daily life, um, act both introvertedly and extrovertedly. And under the view of traits that I buy, which is a kind of act frequency or what I call an act saliency approach, some individuals more frequently act in a way that we would see as extroverted than others who act in a way that we would see as more introverted. The question is, what are the occasions that demand me, for example, to act in an extroverted way? We're in one right now. If I were to be a more typical introverted me, I... First of all, I would say, "Adam, I'm sorry. I can't really do this, but thanks so much for asking me. I hope everything's going well in your life. I can't do it." Well, ah, I don't know. As a core value for me is being there and rising to occasions. And so, and if I just am boringly introverted the way I truly am, then I don't think that would be, end up being a particularly interesting interview.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, that's exactly where we're going-
- BLBrian Little
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... next, to acting out of character. Before we go there, how many personal projects do you have right now?
- BLBrian Little
The last time I did one, it was 116.
- AGAdam Grant
[whistles]
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. No, I'm not kidding. I mean, genuinely.
- AGAdam Grant
That's, that might be a few too many.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's, that's not even chunking. Uh, so one of those is an 800-page compendium on personal projects analysis. That's just one project.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh, dear.
- BLBrian Little
However, I have taken my health projects and broken them down into many, many subcategories.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. That is definitely a lot.
- BLBrian Little
It's ridiculous. I am so easily enthused by and attracted to things that I c- I just can't get enough of life, and it's a disease.
- 25:09 – 31:48
Free traits and restorative niches: the art of acting out of character
- AGAdam Grant
Let's continue the discussion of acting out of character.
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
So y- you talk about our fates beyond traits.
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
I think this is such a liberating way to look at personality.
- BLBrian Little
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Because when we first studied personality in your class, my instinct was to say I am an agreeable, conscientious introvert.
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
And what you taught me was-
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... no, I didn't choose those traits. I have introversion.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I feel pulled toward agreeableness and conscientiousness, but what's much more important than my personality is my principles.
- BLBrian Little
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And the projects I've often found the most meaning in are the ones in which I transcend my traits to try to be true to my values.
- BLBrian Little
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
And for both of us, I think that's teaching, which requires us to act somewhat extroverted despite being introverts.
- BLBrian Little
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
As an agreeable person, I really like to get along with people, and one of the ways in which I've found myself acting out of character a lot over the, the past decade in particular is being a good mentor requires me to constantly challenge people, and it requires me to play a more disagreeable role than I might choose for myself.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
But I care a lot about developing my students-
- BLBrian Little
Yep
- AGAdam Grant
... just like you do. Also, I think doing whatever this is called, thought leadership-
- BLBrian Little
Yep
- AGAdam Grant
... requires me to engage in debates with people who I think are getting the science wrong.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And that involves a level of disagreeableness that if [laughs] I were choosing how I spend every hour of every day, I would not necessarily opt into.
- BLBrian Little
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And yet, I think it's extremely important. What do we know about the consequences of these kinds of decisions to act out of character?
- BLBrian Little
Mm-hmm. I have to say I, I'm very much the same as you. I'm not as good at acting disagreeably as, as you are. I, I find it-
- 31:48 – 33:44
Closing reflections: Evaluate projects as a system, not in isolation
- AGAdam Grant
Well, Brian, this is, as always, been so much fun.
- BLBrian Little
So good to see you.
- AGAdam Grant
Same. We don't get to do it often enough.
- BLBrian Little
That's true.
- AGAdam Grant
I'm gonna start more podcasts.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs] Sounds great.
- AGAdam Grant
[upbeat music] What really hit home for me in that conversation was that many of us look at the projects in our lives in isolation. Add ones we're excited about, drop anything that no longer brings joy or meaning. But when we consider our projects as a whole system, we often realize that even some of our favorite projects can interfere with our broader priorities. That's what diving ended up doing for me. The most important question about a project is not whether you love it or hate it, it's how it affects your ability to pursue the other projects that matter deeply to you. ReThinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant, and produced by TED with Cosmic Standard. Our team includes Colin Helms, Eliza Smith, Jacob Winick, Aja Simpson, Samaya Adams, Michelle Quint, Ben-Ben Chang, Hannah Kingsley-Ma, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington Rodgers. This episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our fact-checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Allison Leyton Brown. For more from Brian, listen to our Work Life episode, Your Hidden Personality.
- BLBrian Little
You have been subject to my habit of this ludicrous precision in, in estimates of quantitative things. So-
- AGAdam Grant
It's true. I will never forget you calling someone, a professor I didn't particularly like, the third most boring person on Earth.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] Which was so absurdly and delightfully specific.
- BLBrian Little
It's fu- I don't know why I do that, but I, I'm gonna, I'm trying to stop some of these verbal tics, but-
- AGAdam Grant
I don't think you should. It's my fourth favorite thing you do.
- BLBrian Little
[laughs] Oh, I taught you well, my friend. [laughs]
Episode duration: 33:46
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