No Stupid Questions

Or an amazing book called Grit.

Did you read Grit for that?

We did read Grit for that, of course, if we're coming to visit you.

Angela Duckworth's book Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance became an instant success.

The book perched atop the bestseller list and became a global clarion call.

Angela's book Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance was published in 2016.

I'm writing this book as you know Mike and I will regularly let chat GPT give me feedback on entire chapters

My TED Talk used to be called the key to success and some very unhappy person pointed out that's overselling and unlikely to be true.

I've been thinking about how the human mind likes for there to be THE key to weight loss, romantic satisfaction, a happy life, fill in the blank.

Like Grit, it's the secret to success. Oh, I got it.

And then I guess you're going to get that as opposed to what I would say, which is like Grit is one thing among many.

I am still known as the Grit lady.

And it's this idea that if you focus on your own goals, your own Grit and work habits and your interpersonal relationships, you are inevitably having a good effect on the larger world as well.

Is it mostly high status people, for instance, who read a book like Grit in order to help themselves become a little higher status?

it reminds me of something you taught me long, long ago. I think this came from your work on Grit which is the notion of substituting nuance for novelty.

I remember when I sold Grit the book proposal, I had this sequence of these group interviews.

When you were writing Grit you were interacting with a lot of high achievers right? Pete Carroll and Jamie Dimon come to mind.

When you were writing "Grit" you were interacting with a lot of high achievers right? Pete Carroll and Jamie Dimon come to mind.

Professor Duckworth, you are known to advocate the power of Grit as the subtitle of your book puts it, the power of passion and perseverance.

In that regard, the subtitle of your book, The Power of Passion and Perseverance, I think is relevant because if the passion isn't there, and if you're doing it for a different set of goals, then you can see how the payoff, even if you get it, isn't as meaningful.

When you were writing Grit, you were interacting with a lot of high achievers, right?

My objects of study.

When you were writing Grit, you were interacting with a lot of high achievers, right?

Maybe he hadn't read Grit.

Professor Duckworth, you are known to advocate the power of Grit, as the subtitle of your book puts it, the power of passion and perseverance.

When you were writing Grit, you were interacting with a lot of high achievers, right? Pete Carroll and Jamie Dimon come to mind.

You also wrote the book Grit.

You also wrote the book Grit.

You also wrote the book Grit.

it was very clear to me when I wrote Grit that what made the idea interesting is that we had a view that what makes somebody great at what they do is talent. That is the accepted wisdom.

But in fact, it's not. It's sustained effort and interest in what you're doing. That's Grit. So I had this idea that for Grit to be interesting, it had to have a foil.

I wrote a lot about my own daughters in Grit before they were old enough to really give me permission to do that.

We actually wrote about cheating a good bit in Freakonomics, our first book, and a variety of settings.

She writes that her dad, whose name is Neil Bonner, is who quote, got me into your podcast.

She writes, he inspired me to read all the Freakonomics books and he was the reason I wanted to major in economics.

She says, I have gotten him Freakonomics books the last three years, poor fella.

And that is about the only thing he has actually enjoyed.

It reminds me a little bit of the argument that we made in the first Freakonomics book about names.

That was partly driven by the fact that there was a film made called Freakonomics that we didn't make. We kind of participated in it and they sort of got it backwards.

She's supposed to be like the nerdy one. Gosh, I can't remember. I think they were at a swimming pool and everybody's jumping around having fun and she's sitting by the pool reading Freakonomics.

You know why I watched it is because Freakonomics was on it. It was in the first season.

One example that we highlighted in Freakonomics in our first book was about how in America, especially in the last 50 to 100 years, new names tend to be adopted by higher income families who see them as kind of interesting and maybe classy.

Back in our first Freakonomics book we did write a bit about how most people are pretty terrible at assessing risk and one example we used is let's say that you have a child and the neighbor has a child and you send your child to play at your neighbor's house which should you be more scared of if your neighbor has a swimming pool or a gun in their home.

Our first book Freakonomics came out and then as we were working on the second book, there was a movie being made.

I did take these 40 or 50 crates of work product and I did start to triage and I did get rid of one or two categories entirely that I felt like I could let go of.

They were the contracts for all the foreign additions of Freakonomics that we signed when Freakonomics first came out.

Like the Bulgaria contract.

We had contracts from I don't know 60, 80 countries and first of all, when they came in, I thought it was like an awesome document just to have.

But at a certain point, I decided that I didn't need the Bulgarian contract.

but it is funny when you ask it in the context of like a life story whether it's a memoir or biography the first book that I wrote I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past on this show is about my parents

a lot of the stuff that we've written in Freakonomics deals with this directly

Our first book, Freakonomics, came out. And then as we were working on the second book, there was a movie being made.

So we wrote a bit in our first and second Freakonomics books about different kinds of cheating.

The cheating school teacher data that we wrote about in Freakonomics, the way that the teachers cheated was they would give an exam, they would collect the score sheets from the kids, and then they would literally erase wrong answers and fill in correct ones.

Let's take Freakonomics, for example. You have a skill, skill, and then you have to apply that skill. So that's the time.

I can't pull the trigger. I can't get rid of them. I did take these 40 or 50 crates of work product and I did start to triage and I did get rid of one or two categories entirely that I felt like I could let go of.

They were the contracts for all the foreign editions of Freakonomics that we signed when Freakonomics first came out. Like the Bulgaria contract. Exactly. We had contracts from, I don't know, 60, 80 countries.

And you wrote the book Freakonomics among quite a few others.

That's why Danny called his bestselling book, thinking fast and slow because thinking fast is using system one and thinking slow is using system two.

Josiah says, Greetings from England. I recently came upon the No Stupid Questions podcast and would love to hear your thoughts on the importance of semantics, especially in relation to the idea of priming as written about in the great Danny Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow.

He's so great, Danny Kahneman. He is.

And so is Josiah from England exactly.

And Danny Kahneman did write a great book too, you know, Thinking Fast and Slow.

One of the things that some readers took from Thinking Fast and Slow was the idea that priming was really important. But what then happened after Danny Kahneman published Thinking Fast and Slow was that there was a huge controversy about whether it was true.

It's one of Danny Kahneman's Inventions but has gotten less attention than like thinking fast and slow and cognitive biases and so forth

So think about system one and system two, a distinction in judgment and reasoning that our good friend, wait for it. Danny Kahneman has made.

Not only are we blind to the obvious, but we are blind to our blindness.

I know that Danny Kahneman wrote about what Nassim Talab calls the narrative fallacy and Danny wrote about that in Thinking, Fast and Slow

I know that Danny Kahneman wrote about what Nassim Talab calls the narrative fallacy and Danny wrote about that in "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

Not only are we blind to the obvious, but we are blind to our blindness.

I know that Danny Kahneman wrote about what Nassim Taleb calls the narrative fallacy and Danny wrote about that in Thinking, Fast and Slow.

and Danny wrote about that in Thinking, Fast and Slow

And she was like, well, of course you do that because one of the features of the human brain, and it's actually something that Danny Condomin wrote about, and I think it's like widely misunderstood.

The most beautiful sound in the world is the sound of your own name

Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language

You know that I'm a secret superfan of Dale Carnegie, right?

I am a superfan in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I'd like just the title, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

And to tell someone they're wrong, first tell them they're right.

I mean, the whole Dale Carnegie shtick is a little distasteful.

So Dale Carnegie 7 habits of highly effective people we've talked about this self-help book.

How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Can't remember the title of the book but I remember how it made me feel sorry but do you remember the chapter or the recommendation?

to be liberal with your compliments to be liberal with your praise.

How to make friends and influence people.

Later, Angela refers to Dale Carnegie's 1936 book How to Win Friends and Influence People, but mistakenly refers to it as how to make friends and influence people.

Dale Carnegie, seven habits of highly effective people...How to get people, How to Win Friends and Influence People...I can't remember the title of the book, but I remember how it made me feel.

I wonder if like, you know, it's in that book, How to Win Friends and Influence People Laughing at someone's jokes.

How to make friends and influence people. There's the classic. I know you like that one a lot.

And one of them was to be liberal with your compliments, to be liberal with your praise.

We wrote about this a little bit in SuperFreakonomics

We've written about it in a couple of our books...

We wrote about this I believe it was in Super Freakonomics...

But we went back and in our second book, Super Freakonomics, we actually retold the story as well as we could, including the incentives for the reporters involved and the police involved.

We wrote about this, I believe it was in Super Freakonomics, but we looked at the birth date bulges.

And then we also wrote in Super Freakonomics about something that might not strike many people as cheating, but I would argue that it was.

And we went back and in our second book, Super Freakonomics, we actually retold the story as well as we could, including the incentives for the reporters involved and the police involved.

no, I'm going to reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Stephen, I've been thinking about a conversation that we had about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

You said you loved that book, loved it, but you couldn't remember a single thing about it.

I remember that it made me feel not alone.

it was on a shelf somewhere...and it was on a shelf somewhere.

I think what I'll remember about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not any of the details of the plot, but I remember how it made me feel and I'll remember how I felt when I learned that Amanda had taken that book off the shelf.

And there are other people who are like, no, I'm going to reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Stephen, I've been thinking about a conversation that we had about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

You said you loved that book, loved it, but you couldn't remember a single thing about it.

So I thought you might have even forgotten the conversation about how I had forgotten.

I'm a girl, she's a girl, she's confused, I'm confused. I remember that it made me feel not alone.

it was on a shelf somewhere and then she read it.

one of my favorite books when I was a kid was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

it's about a family, the Nolan family in Brooklyn and basically how they struggle to get by the very poor.

Every day or maybe multiple times a day, mama would give the kids a cup of coffee and neither of them really liked coffee.

They'd put their hands on it to keep warm. And then they would dump it down the drain.

When you have so little in the world, just to get the feeling once a day of having more than you need and being able to get rid of it is a taste of what luxury must feel like.

Stephen, I've been thinking about a conversation that we had about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Do you recall this conversation?

You said you loved that book, loved, loved, loved it, but you couldn't remember a single thing about it.

I remember that I was a young girl when I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I felt some communality with the protagonist.

Green cover, by the way, cloth, hardback. And it was on a shelf somewhere. And then she read it.

So what this phenomenon reminds me of a little bit, maybe even a lot, is one of my favorite books when I was a kid was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Did you ever read it?

I loved it. Can't tell you anything about it, but I remember reading it, which is another interesting question. Why can't we remember anything about the books we love?

And what the mother explained was that, you know what? When you have so little in the world, just to get the feeling once a day of having more than you need and being able to get rid of it is a taste of what luxury must feel like.

He's like you know if you go back and read The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith goes on and on about just like strength of will overpowering our weaknesses and Schelling thought that was silly.

Well, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Yeah, but in The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith wrote about this, you know, all of China was the example he gave.

How selfish so ever man may be supposed there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep tonight; but provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of 100 millions of his brethren. And the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him than this paltry misfortune of his own.

I think it was in a theory of moral sentiments he wasn't saying we want to be praised we want to be praise worthy I want to get a candle.

Adam Smith, you know, we consider him the founder of classical economics, but let's not forget he was a moral philosopher and he saw self-interest as a key and useful component of human nature, but it's not the same as selfishness.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments was his big moral philosophy book.

Well, I don't know. I guess it depends what the point of the compliment is. Like if I'm trying to compliment someone to make them feel good about themselves or to make them happy for the day or to repay them a kindness even, right?

No, because when Adam Smith said that we all want to be praised and we all want to be praiseworthy, I think it was in a theory of moral sentiments.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments was his big moral philosophy book.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

I remember reading in French class, I think it was junior year, and Dr. Rowland had assigned Candide by Voltaire, and I hated it by the way.

You have to cultivate your garden.

There's what you can't do, and there's what you can do, and the things that you can do, just do and don't be paralyzed.

You know, when I was in high school, I read Candide. Did you read Candide by Voltaire? Let us go cultivate our garden.

And even as a junior in high school, I was like, oh you have to cultivate your own garden. Don't try to do things that you can't change even though you know that they should be changed.

I also remember when I was 16, I had to read, I think for a French class, Candide, which I hated by Voltaire.

Cultivate our garden.

I had to read, I think for a French class, Candide, which I hated by Voltaire.

I despised it, but I'll never forget the last line. Cultivate our garden. We must cultivate our garden.

I also remember when I was 16, I had to read, I think for a French class, Candide, which I hated by Voltaire. I despised it, but I'll never forget the last line. Cultivate our garden.

It was the old Stephen Covey, 'Do first things first, and second things not at all'.

Finally Mike attributes the quotation 'Do first things first, and second things not at all' to Stephen Covey, author of the 1989 book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'. The line actually comes from the 1966 book 'The Effective Executive' by Peter Drucker whose work was a significant influence on Covey.

Then I felt silly about being surprised actually came from an extraordinarily popular book called the seven habits of highly effective people By Steven Covey who was an interesting guy who I didn't really know.

Covey says that a scarcity mentality refers to people who see life as a finite pie in other words, it becomes a zero-sum game, right? If you have something I can't have it.

He writes that people with a scarcity mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit power or profit whereas someone with an abundance mentality has the idea that there's plenty out there for everyone.

So I think these are really two different things we're talking about and I think what Matthew is writing is to ask what psychology has to say about this sort of Getting ahead framework that's posed by Steven Covey of setting off scarcity versus abundance.

This is a book that Steven Covey first published in 1989. It was kind of a self-helpy business book.

I actually know about this matrix because I have read Stephen Covey's book more times than anyone would believe. This is the seven habits of highly effective people.

Angela appropriately enough confuses the work with another best-selling self-help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which was written by author and businessman Stephen Covey.

I think of a book from maybe 30 years ago by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death which wasn't about binge watching because it didn't exist but it was about an engagement with media or entertainment but the point is if watching TV is not the most intellectually and physiologically and socially stimulating thing that one can do which we could probably agree on and if it becomes easier and easier and easier to do more of this thing then that's probably not so good but it may also be that we're in the early days and people kind of feel a reaction to it or against it and start to adapt

I think of a book from maybe 30 years ago by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death, which wasn't about binge watching because it didn't exist, but it was about an engagement with media or entertainment.

In the mid 1980s, there was a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

In the mid-1980s, there was a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

And it basically was an extension of the Orwellian fear that we were being distracted by bread and circuses, that the individual was getting weaker and weaker and less likely to think for him or herself.

If I gave Raymond, who sent us this question, why do people get scammed? What's your advice? If I gave Raymond the best advice, I think it would be Go Read Influence by Bob Chaldini.

And the reason I suggest that is that what Bob Chaldini as a psychologist did was to document the half dozen basic principles by which human beings persuade other people to do and believe things.

And I wanna recommend this to Raymond, not only because like, wow, how do I not fall prey to these techniques? Well, learn them from the master.

But when I got to know Bob in the last several years, I came to discover something that I didn't realize from reading Influence the first time which is that he is like the most morally upright person.

And I think what truly has motivated him is just the idea that his moral duty is to kind of inoculate all of us against scams and against being had and against being fooled and taken advantage of by writing as clearly as possible about how it is that that happens.

If you've read his book which I know you have and I know I have and I'm guessing many other people have It's called Influence, he's written few But this was the big one

Yeah, and it's a recent revision of it, right? Exactly And he tells a story about going undercover In these different industries to do his research

To learn how firms manipulate people essentially

When Bob revised influence this classic book That every CEO has because it's the science of persuasion

The second book really actually explains more How his whole life purpose is to illuminate The principles of human persuasion for good Not for ill

The original version of influence is why I became a psychologist in the first place.

I don't think Bob Chaldini would want anyone to have the absolute superpower of persuasion.

he says that he wrote the book Influence so that we, all of us civilians, could be hip to the tricks that professional persuaders use but he will freely admit that his book became a sort of Bible for professional persuaders including salespeople, marketing people, political persuaders and so on.

You know, I was just talking to our common friend, Bob Chaudini. Well, he's uncommon as a human being, but we are both friends with him. I was reading his soon to be published new version of influence and how we persuade each other.

It reminds me of something that Steve Levitt and I wrote about in one of our Freakonomics books, Think Like a Freak.

So, yeah, we did sort of write a self-help book.

The reason that we wrote that book was because we would just get so many requests for help that we couldn't give.

So the idea of a moral compass, I think, again, is extremely appealing. We all like to think that we have learned through our parents and our communities and the people that we admire and so on to have a moral compass, a way of navigating our way through the world.

And the reason is that what a moral compass does is basically you align yourself to what's the right or wrong way to think about a given issue, whether it's fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food. Climate change.

a version of the idea originated with second century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who in Meditations wrote, 'you should consider that imitation is the most acceptable part of worship and that the gods had much rather mankind should resemble than flatter them.'

Yeah, Marcus Aurelius, right?

Maybe the snob in you would feel better reading Meditations or reading the essays of Michel de Montaigne than reading Dale Carnegie.

And maybe the snob in you would feel better reading Meditations or reading the essays of Michel de Montaigne than reading Dale Carnegie.

The Big Short the blind side money ball. Yes amazing nonfiction books every single one of them brilliant and he was backstage and I was backstage and he was going to go on and I remember asking him something.

Yeah he was something like you know I do what I want to do and I don't waste my life doing things that I don't want to do but he's been incredibly prolific it must be that he wants to write.

Michael Lewis writes about this in The Big Short.

You have all of these individuals who think that they are the king or the queen of their castle who are just crushing it. And I am the greatest, I, I, I, I.

And so he basically talked about how he starts his morning with three minutes of a breathing exercise, three minutes of gratitude, three minutes of prayer, and then three minutes of what he, I think, calls prioritization.

And he says, here are the three things that I need to accomplish today, regardless of whatever else comes into my life or time, etc.

And I love that idea of a morning routine.

And Katie Milkman, aforementioned friend, collaborator, behavioral scientist, and I were hosting Cass Sunstein, who was the co-author of Nudge, the famous book that kind of launched behavioral economics into the popular consciousness.

one of the most famous examples from the book Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein was about Putting an image of a fly a house fly on a urinal in the airport

Richard Thaler and so on, who wrote a book called Nudge, talking about the way to Nudge people towards pro-social behavior, as opposed to mandates.

She said, none of you are Steve Jobs. And I'm really sorry if I'm the first one telling you that.

She came to Qualtrics in our early days and was doing a Q&A with the employees.

And I love that she said that.

And the point was, if you were Steve Jobs, you would not be in this room. You'd be creating your own company.

look at kind of this mediocre life versus the I don't know what you call it the excelling life so Kim Scott, friend of both of ours author of Radical Candor and Jess Work an amazing human being Kim has this construct that she calls rock stars and superstars

Kim Scott wrote a book called Radical Candor. And I think the basic idea is when you have a culture of truth telling, like at all times, I mean, you know, Stephen, your breath smells. That joke there was both unfunny and inappropriate. I'm out of here.

Kim Scott, the author of the book Radical Candor, refers to that type of language as, quote, obnoxious aggression. And she says that when practicing Radical Candor, feedback should be delivered in a kind and helpful manner.

Have you ever heard of Bob Nozick?

I was reading about this thought experiment that he came up with.

It was such an interesting hypothetical.

It was called the experience machine.

So Nozick asked, and I think this was 1974, and I remember noting the date around when he said this because he didn't say this in 2024, right?

So in 1974, Nozick says, imagine there's an experience machine.

And when you plug yourself into the experience machine, it's like you're kind of just like a brain liquid and basically you experience pleasure, but not just like some blunt force pleasure.

It's like you can have these like vivid experiences of having written the great American novel, having the perfect family.

One could fill in the blank being a triathlete, but also a unicorn billionaire or whatever.

So that's the experience machine.

You plug in and it gives you this vicarious sensation that you are living your best life.

And the puzzle or the question, the dilemma, whatever you want to call it is, do you choose to plug in or not?

And Nozick is like, that's pretty simple.

Who would choose to plug into the experience machine?

And then he goes on to say, it's like, because what is carriage if not like actually taking, you know, charge of your life and like taking real risks?

It's like, what is love and what are relationships unless they're real and difficult and so forth.

And I think in 2024, we have a kind of stunning answer to his question, which is, oh yeah, we choose to plug into the experience machine all the time.

And I wish Bob Nozick were alive today to ask it again, because I think he would have to reckon with the reality that like, well, like for example, Bob, people are on their screens like about as many hours as they're sleeping today.

Angela was likely thinking of the thought experiment described by American philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia.

in the book humans have the choice to experience reality as it exists or to live forever in a pleasant simulation Nozick posited that most people would choose not to plug into the pleasure machine he died in 2002

Angela was likely thinking of the thought experiment described by American philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book, Anarchy, State and Utopia.

In the book, humans have the choice to experience reality as it exists or to live forever in a pleasant simulation.

Nozick posited that most people would choose not to plug into the pleasure machine.

And in the book Give and Take, Adam has this typology. There are three kinds of people. One kind of person is a giver. They're primarily motivated to help other people solve their problems. One kind of person is a taker. They're primarily motivated to get ahead and to relate to other people with the question, what can you do to solve my problems? Also, there's the possibility that you're a matcher and the matcher is actually the thing that we were just describing. Like I'll do this for you if you do something for me.

And then he gave me this counter proposal. He's like, look, here's the way to be a giver who doesn't get taken advantage of. When you give, always ask yourself, what's the problem that I'm solving for this other person? And at the same time, how does this benefit me?

I was like, that's not the way my mother raised me.

Adam has ascended to another plane of existence because he just does it all and he does it so well.

But for me, it's Adam Grant. We do the same thing. I co-direct an institute with him. We're at the same school. We both have podcasts. We write books.

I love David Epstein go on

I just need to say it's a great book he's a great guy.

Incredible book and he talked about this experience of this electrical engineer

The idea of Range that David Epstein was so correct I think in putting his finger on is that you never want to lose some amount of sampling you never want to have a day in your life where you're only exploiting and not exploring because then you can't cross-fertilize with anything

You're going to talk about Range now, right?

Correct. And I think in a way you could argue that Range is a counterpoint to grit because he talks a lot about the benefits of doing lots of things and having multiple interests and not committing or specializing too early to any one thing.

This question arose when I was reading Maria Kanakova's new book, The Biggest Bluff.

And this book is about her quest to become a professional poker player starting from scratch.

This question arose when I was reading Maria Kanakova's new book, The Biggest Bluff.

So Maria, like you, has a PhD in psychology but she's not an academic. She's a writer and this book is about her quest to become a professional poker player starting from scratch.

And really what Maria is wrestling with throughout that book is the relationship between luck and skill.

This question arose when I was reading Maria Konnikova's new book, The Biggest Bluff. So Maria, like you, has a PhD in psychology, but she's not an academic. She's a writer. And this book is about her quest to become a professional poker player, starting from scratch.

And really what Maria is wrestling with throughout that book is the relationship between luck and skill.

So here's the passage that made me think of you: There's an idea in psychology, she writes, first introduced by Julian Roeder in 1966 called the locus of control.