E6 the Science Behind Career Success | Grace Lordan

Metadata

• Author: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
• Full Title: E6 the Science Behind Career Success | Grace Lordan
• URL: https://www.airr.io/episode/617f7959906dc8000f63c118

Highlights

Speaker 0: it’s really getting down to the nitty gritty of how can we alter decision making in a way that’s not paternalistic but is giving people information to help them go in the right direction. Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, the intent to action gap, I think we’ve all felt that in our lives like multiple times a day as I was reading this, I started listening to a book about four or five days ago and the very first chapter talks about this idea of me plus I wonder if you can elaborate like what does, what does me plus mean? Speaker 0: So if you, if you go back to the economics were really good, I think making helping ourselves in the present day. So we know what makes us happy in the moment, but very often the things that we have to invest in to give our future selves a better future, we don’t often do. So what I like people to do is to think (Time 0:05:18)review

Speaker 0: what will that mean plus actually do. Because I’ve noticed a lot of times when I talk to people about careers, they’re attached to a label. So they want to be a trade or an investment banker or they want to be a doctor or they’re attached to a lifestyle. So they want to be able to go on a particular vacation or by a particular car and the kind of thing big journey is really thinking about. If I were to be a doctor, if I were to be a trader, what would be the tasks that I would be doing on a day to day basis and would ultimately end up enjoying those tasks? So the activities that I’m going to spend the time in, and there’s two reasons for that, so one, it makes you happier to actually do tasks that you like, which feels like a no brainer, but secondly, if you’re engaged in tasks that you like, you tend to be more successful and it’s the second that I’m really interested in and kind of getting people into jobs where they feel that they’ve (Time 0:06:15)review

Speaker 0: I’m working for a company that’s saving the environment, but I’ve been treated really badly in a micro culture in order to save that environment. There’s a couple of companies come to mind when I think about that um then I’m not going to be productive and I’m not going to be happy and I’m actually likely to leave that that that job. So it’s more about going beyond thinking what is the company’s mission? What is my personality and what is the micro culture of the team that I’m going to be working in? And will that make me happy? Will I be connected to the mission? Because my team is connected to the mission. Speaker 1: It’s very hard to assess in advance when you’re applying for a job. Speaker 0: It’s really hard. It’s really, really hard. And I think that if you bring it down to the tasks and asking in an interview what will I be doing on a day to day basis? Um So when I come to work for you, Ollie, what would I be doing on a day (Time 0:07:51)review

Speaker 0: the company’s mission? What is my personality and what is the micro culture of the team that I’m going to be working in? And will that make me happy? Will I be connected to the mission? Because my team is connected to the mission. Speaker 1: It’s very hard to assess in advance when you’re applying for a job. Speaker 0: It’s really hard. It’s really, really hard. And I think that if you bring it down to the tasks and asking in an interview what will I be doing on a day to day basis? Um So when I come to work for you, Ollie, what would I be doing on a day to day basis? As part of your team? If you can imagine me on a monday, how will I spend my time, the fact that you as a manager have talked about that first, they will tell me that you’re a good manager because you know actually what you want the person to do. Um And you’re not just hiring blindly? But the second is having that information allows me make my mind up because if the if I like the (Time 0:08:09)review

Speaker 1: I was excited that the end goal was not 66 pack abs. I was excited that the end goal was that in a way there wasn’t an end goal and it was a case of just I want to be able to enjoy this. Um, is that the sort of thing that you get a lot when you’re doing this sort of research that process rather than outcome kind of thing. Speaker 0: So I kind of write a lot for kind of people who might have made it yet or people who have plateau. So if you, if you take the exercising analogy from somebody who’s contemplating doing the kind of five K run rather than somebody who is contemplating doing the London marathon and it’s really well placed for that. And I think for the person who hasn’t done exercise for a while or the person who has really invested in their career for a while, the worst thing they can do is do too much. So if you haven’t invested for a while, the worst thing you could do is go to the gym for three hours, you might get through it today. But the chances of (Time 0:09:34)review

Speaker 0: kind of write a lot for kind of people who might have made it yet or people who have plateau. So if you, if you take the exercising analogy from somebody who’s contemplating doing the kind of five K run rather than somebody who is contemplating doing the London marathon and it’s really well placed for that. And I think for the person who hasn’t done exercise for a while or the person who has really invested in their career for a while, the worst thing they can do is do too much. So if you haven’t invested for a while, the worst thing you could do is go to the gym for three hours, you might get through it today. But the chances of repeating that are really, really small. And I think kind of the, one of the big powerful messages underlining thing, big is whether you’re focused on your health or whether you’re focused on your career, it’s those small actions that you take today will determine yourself in two years time, three years time in four years time and actually by throwing (Time 0:09:49)review

Speaker 1: and the vibe I got from the chapter around goals is that you’re keen on people setting or uh, perhaps not, but like one camp of people in this sphere is encouraging people to set these big, hairy, audacious goals and then figuring out the small steps taken you can, you can take to get there. But then there’s another camp and this is sort of where I think I am whereby I think in a way, I feel maybe setting goals is a bit overrated because if you’re setting a goal, then Speaker 0: you’re Speaker 1: essentially, to me that feels like a contract to be unhappy until you hit the goal and then you hit the goal and then you have this like, fleeting sense of like, oh, I hit a million subscribers, cool, you know, my day to day hasn’t really changed, etcetera etcetera. So the way I kind of think (Time 0:12:20)review

Speaker 0: of think with the future of work, we have this disruption where people who are able to kind of pivot, know what their skills are job craft, which you, which you’ve mentioned already. It will really stand to them. Speaker 1: Mm Yeah. So it’s like you’re moving away from being and more towards doing being a doctor. But versus like what does the day to day of practicing medicine actually look like? And does this sound like the sort of thing that is my idea of fun right now? And I guess, I guess like it’s it’s kind of, you know, there’s that thing in in in the research about it’s it’s hard for us to predict what will make us happy in the future. Speaker 0: But it’s a Speaker 1: reasonable first approximation that the sort of stuff I enjoy doing now, like talking to people like you or like making videos is likely to also probably make me happy in the future. And if it doesn’t, then, well, I can just change course, this Speaker 0: is like a grid search. So (Time 0:16:58)review

Speaker 1: which one to pick, but like yeah, Speaker 0: so I think for somebody who has no idea what they want to do and who doesn’t necessarily have options. It really is about bringing it back to one of the activities that I would like to do and how can I get the skills to actually do those activities and then going about spending time engaged in those activities, So maybe you want to do some more public speaking, you know, trying to get on panels, um trying to spend some time with people who might be actually able to get you into the room where you can do some public speaking in the future, going to talks and studying what Mexico speaker and what doesn’t make a good speaker, if you really, really have really have no experience and then maybe there are some skills that you have to pay for and I do say and think big for people who do not know what they want to do, I would avoid committing to a four year degree or an expensive master’s program and really use the resources that (Time 0:20:06)review

Speaker 0: about spending time engaged in those activities, So maybe you want to do some more public speaking, you know, trying to get on panels, um trying to spend some time with people who might be actually able to get you into the room where you can do some public speaking in the future, going to talks and studying what Mexico speaker and what doesn’t make a good speaker, if you really, really have really have no experience and then maybe there are some skills that you have to pay for and I do say and think big for people who do not know what they want to do, I would avoid committing to a four year degree or an expensive master’s program and really use the resources that are out there that are either cheap or free because there’s so many things that we can actually learn now without having set foot into a traditional classroom, even though I work in a university and we have wonderful degrees, I think you need to be certain to spend, spend that amount of money and then I think for someone like (Time 0:20:21)review

Speaker 0: then maybe there are some skills that you have to pay for and I do say and think big for people who do not know what they want to do, I would avoid committing to a four year degree or an expensive master’s program and really use the resources that are out there that are either cheap or free because there’s so many things that we can actually learn now without having set foot into a traditional classroom, even though I work in a university and we have wonderful degrees, I think you need to be certain to spend, spend that amount of money and then I think for someone like you, I think doing time orders can really help. So during the week writing down what you’re actually doing, which you probably do already, but writing down whether or not you actually enjoy doing them, Did you feel firstly a sense of purpose that it was kind of leading you to a better place in five years time or did you feel fun in the moment and then if there were activities that (Time 0:20:40)review

Speaker 0: are either cheap or free because there’s so many things that we can actually learn now without having set foot into a traditional classroom, even though I work in a university and we have wonderful degrees, I think you need to be certain to spend, spend that amount of money and then I think for someone like you, I think doing time orders can really help. So during the week writing down what you’re actually doing, which you probably do already, but writing down whether or not you actually enjoy doing them, Did you feel firstly a sense of purpose that it was kind of leading you to a better place in five years time or did you feel fun in the moment and then if there were activities that aren’t kind of investing in you in five years time and they’re not giving you fun in the moment, consider job crafting, which I think you’re in a good position to do where you remove those activities and do more of the things that are giving you purpose and more of the things that are giving you (Time 0:20:52)review

Speaker 0: So Psychologists will do lab experiments with students. So if you look at the behavioral science literature, a lot of the kind of early ideas will be from bringing students into the lab. It’s not scary, like in the 70s, I promise. So, you know, really easy stuff and looking to see whether or not we can change their behavior with a particular insight and then somebody like me brings those insights into companies Into policy and asks is the stuff that’s coming out of the students in the lab actually replicating in companies and a lot of times it does. And I would be very honest with you because obviously when we have students in the lab, we have them for a very short period of time when I’m working with workers, I want to know, do the change I make work in the moment one week later, one month later, 12 months later. And because of that methods are really (Time 0:30:35)review

Speaker 0: of purpose to in order to make myself feel better now um and again, once you’re moving forward and once you’re walking, I think that that’s that’s good, that’s good enough for most people. Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like there’s there’s a lot of evidence as you know about how experiencing progress and I think you talk about how to like make your progress more salient, experiencing that sense of progress really is like extremely fundamentally satisfying. Uh And so I guess sometimes if, I think, you know, I guess the standard straw man would be like, oh well you know, if you just play video games all day then it’s fun, but it’s not like meaningful and I think it’s not meaningful because it’s not really progressing you forward in a way that adds value to the world, Is that fair to say Speaker 0: or to (Time 0:36:47)review

Speaker 1: that adds value to the world, Is that fair to say Speaker 0: or to yourself? So you know, some people who I meet their values are really about making making money, which is which doesn’t bother me. Um but I think that they need to be clear on what the task that they’re going to do, that add value to the world. I think I think that I think that’s really true and I think finding the kind of right balance of pleasure and purpose is really important, you should play video games if that’s something that actually really helps you relax. I think for some people it’s been shown that it can be like mindfulness. So again, really thinking about individual differences if playing Mario Kart is what gets you kind of out of the day and into the moment you should spend time on that, but it’s balancing that time, so balance the time between serving yourself in the present day and also serving yourself in the future. Speaker 1: And I guess most people’s dream job would be one (Time 0:37:28)review

Speaker 0: it can be like mindfulness. So again, really thinking about individual differences if playing Mario Kart is what gets you kind of out of the day and into the moment you should spend time on that, but it’s balancing that time, so balance the time between serving yourself in the present day and also serving yourself in the future. Speaker 1: And I guess most people’s dream job would be one where they’ve got pleasure plus purpose in the same thing and that would be great. Um but if not then something pleasurable and some things are purposeful and just balancing those is that is that fair to say? Speaker 0: Absolutely, Absolutely. And I think as well the kind of adaptation that we feel as humans, it’s called hedonic adaptation, Everything that you get you adapt to it really quickly. So whether you get the nicest car, whether you get a pay rise, you know the happiness moments are really fleeting, so if you really are kind of in a place and you feel that things aren’t going (Time 0:37:54)review

Speaker 0: in the future. Speaker 1: And I guess most people’s dream job would be one where they’ve got pleasure plus purpose in the same thing and that would be great. Um but if not then something pleasurable and some things are purposeful and just balancing those is that is that fair to say? Speaker 0: Absolutely, Absolutely. And I think as well the kind of adaptation that we feel as humans, it’s called hedonic adaptation, Everything that you get you adapt to it really quickly. So whether you get the nicest car, whether you get a pay rise, you know the happiness moments are really fleeting, so if you really are kind of in a place and you feel that things aren’t going your way trying to draw attention to things that are going right kind of the small winds so that you can kind of elongate the happiness that you will actually get from the car from the pay rise. But also look at those kind of small moments, you know, if you have an interaction today with (Time 0:38:09)review

Speaker 1: is that is that fair to say? Speaker 0: Absolutely, Absolutely. And I think as well the kind of adaptation that we feel as humans, it’s called hedonic adaptation, Everything that you get you adapt to it really quickly. So whether you get the nicest car, whether you get a pay rise, you know the happiness moments are really fleeting, so if you really are kind of in a place and you feel that things aren’t going your way trying to draw attention to things that are going right kind of the small winds so that you can kind of elongate the happiness that you will actually get from the car from the pay rise. But also look at those kind of small moments, you know, if you have an interaction today with somebody and they insult you, it would probably weigh really heavy on you, whereas if somebody gives you a huge compliment, how long do you hold on to that? Which is a really interesting thing for us as humans right? That we were focused on the negative we’re (Time 0:38:21)review

Speaker 0: and they try to move forward in a way, so try to find a side or try to find another entrance and then these people with an external locus of control who believe that everything happens to them. So it’s at the hands of other people, um it’s at the hands of the universe in the extreme, most of us will have both. Internal, external looks control depending on our domain. So maybe in family life, some people will have internal locus of control. They believe that they can control everything, they feel quite safe in their family life, in the work life, they think their career is happening to them. And I think again, it isn’t all or nothing. So getting people to think about what is it that I can actually control in this particular moment and taking the choice to take that control. So, I think even for people who are having a really terrible time in toxic (Time 0:41:07)review

Speaker 0: seeing the bad things that are happening to them with the idea that they can get out of that situation. Speaker 1: Mm How do people end up with internal slash external local? Okay, Speaker 0: we don’t know. So this this will come down in the same way like genetics. So, you would have people who believe in nature and people who believe in nurture and I think the reality is that it’s probably a combination of both. So our genetics probably give us some proportion of our locus of control when we’re born, depending on the kind of experiences that our ancestors have had. But I think the biggest thing is going to be the environment that you actually grew up in. So I think if you put in an environment where you’re encouraged to make decisions when you’re really young, you’re encouraged to kind of choose your own path, choose your own toys in the play box, for example, that’s going to allow you think (Time 0:42:03)review

Speaker 0: in that particular situation? What could I have done differently? What was my input and what was down to luck? And in luck, I would put anything that’s determined outside yourself by other by other people. And then it’s really about identifying those things that you can control and taking hold of them and not over obsessing on the stuff that is outside you’re outside your control. So in some ways it’s kind of taking the best of the internal locus of control, recognizing that luck does play a role in determining these outcomes of success and failure. And people who do these postmortems really juicy learning and failure, but they don’t dwell on failure. Um so if they have a face, if they fail on a particular moment, they’re sitting down saying what could I have done differently and then for the future they’re taking those lessons on board. Yeah. Speaking Speaker 1: of failure. So (Time 0:44:40)review

Speaker 0: a role in determining these outcomes of success and failure. And people who do these postmortems really juicy learning and failure, but they don’t dwell on failure. Um so if they have a face, if they fail on a particular moment, they’re sitting down saying what could I have done differently and then for the future they’re taking those lessons on board. Yeah. Speaking Speaker 1: of failure. So you’re talking that chapter about anticipating failure and how often that hold hold people back. I wonder if you can talk like, what does that mean to anticipate failure? Speaker 0: Yes. I mean, the anticipation of an event brings on anxieties that can be worse than actually experiencing an event itself. So very often if you talk to people who report having anxieties or who report having worries, They’re talking about something that might actually happen in the future one than something that they’re going through in a particular (Time 0:45:06)review

Speaker 1: on this? Speaker 0: Well, that’s a great one. So lowering the cost of actually doing things, you could liken it when you’re, you’re somebody who doesn’t like running, putting your running shoes and your gear out in the, in the nights that you actually slip them on. What you describe, the really reminds me of the Pomodoro technique that has been shown to work really well from across the nature is so the idea that you don’t plan to work for the day, you just show up for 20 minutes. Um and there’s something about our brain not wanting to have something that hasn’t closed the loop that will keep us working. The Pomodoro technique says you work for 20 minutes and regardless of if you’re in flow, you take a five minute break and when you take that five minute break, you will start worrying and giggling and really wanting to actually go back to the task. So the sheer act of showing up for those 1st 20 minutes will get you on the path that you Speaker 1: described. (Time 0:56:45)review