hi everyone I'm Nikolai tangan the COO of the Norwegian Sovereign wealth fund and today I'm thrilled to welcome Dan Pink who is written seven New York Times bestsellers

he's done groundbreaking work on the power of regret work creativity behaviors and so on and so today we'll talk mainly about regret drive and timing like when so welcome Dan

thank you thank you great to be here

you're great so your latest book um the power regret explores that we should kind of learn from our regrets now My Philosophy has always been to kind of try to learn from it and move on but you think a bit differently no

I think that's I think we're we're actually we're actually fairly close what I'm really pushing back against is this idea especially here in America where people say I don't have any regrets everything happens for a reason that the path to a life well-lived is to be positive all the time never be negative to always look forward never look back and that is profoundly bad advice

what what would you want to kind of uh write about this

I had regrets of my own such as um well I mean the catalyzing moment was when my our elder daughter graduated from University and I was sitting in this very large Auditorium and I was having this kind of the outof body experience that many parents have where you see a kid and you think like just yesterday this 22y old woman was two years old how did this happen

and then internally I thought how is it possible for me to have a 22-year-old kid when I'm like only 25 myself and it just didn't compute and I started thinking about that I real I started thinking about my own college experience and I had some regrets about my own college experience

um I wish I had taken more risks wish I had been Kinder wish I had worked harder and when I came back to to Washington where I live after this graduation I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regrets

I was really conscious of my regrets at that time because of this marker in my life but I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regrets and and why is that

you know it's it's one of the most popular tattoo I'm not very into tattoos but supposedly it's one of the most popular tattoos no regrets but because the tattoo the tattoo is BS the tattoo is the tattoo is performance art

uh when I came back thinking that nobody wanted to talk about regrets and I talked about my own regrets I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about their regrets that everybody had these regrets they were just looking for the opportunity

so what we had what basically what's happened Nikolai is that we've been sold especially here in America and I think that there is something this no regrets philosophy is distinctly American because I think Americans are over indexed on positivity

Scandinavians they understand negativity

well we are dark yes

precisely you understand negativity and so what I'm saying what we know empirically this is not a philosophy what we know from science is that the path to a good life is to be positive most of the time but not all the time to look forward a lot of the time but not all the time

and so what I'm trying to do is recalibrate our understanding of this emotion because if we interrogate if we understand it if we scrutinize it if we listen to our regrets it leads us to a better life

but it's Universal you say it's particularly in America but it's Universal right it's all over the place

regret itself is universal absolutely the response to regret there's no regrets all positive all the time is uniquely American but regret is one of the most common emotions that human beings have regardless of your nationality

in particular investors I think right we regret all kind of things we did and the things we didn't do and yeah so so so that's interesting

you have something called counteract ual thinking what is that

yeah well counterfactual thinking is the is one of the great superpowers of our brains and it underlies our ability to experience regret it so when we go look backward in time and imagine a scenario that runs counter to the actual facts um and it is an incredible cognitive capacity

it's one reason why 5-year-olds don't have regrets because they can't do counterfactual thinking and so it's part of what makes us so

how does that work for an investor then how can an investor use that

well it depends I so I Think It's Tricky with an investor because you can so you can go back and look at a you can go back and look at a decision that you made right and you can evaluate it in two different ways for an investor and other kinds of things as well you can you can evaluate it based on the actual outcome and I think that's dangerous

I think what you should need should do is evaluate it based on what you knew at the time what what you knew at the time and was this a good decision at the time

you can say you know I'm going to um I I I put uh $2 million in in in um in a crypto fund because it seemed like the thing to do and maybe it worked out but it might not that might not have been a good decision at the time

it could have been that you you put $2 million into some other kind of fund and it was a smart decision at the time and it hasn't worked out or hasn't worked out yet so you have to scrutinize the decision itself rather than the outcome

so Howard Marx is talking a lot about that that we should be careful judging a decision on the on the outcome um Annie Duke who's been on your show has talked about this inde she talks about people being outcom ISS uh and and how that's the dangerous way to to to make to evaluate decisions yeah

okay you mentioned that there are uh several types of regrets I think you divide them into four and one is the foundation regret right the fact that you didn't work harder uh yeah well you work hard you you did a law degree at Yale so you must have very hard but but the

yeah so so so just to give it just to give some context to this what I did is I I did a uh I gathered regrets from people all over the world I put an online survey uh qualitative piece of research and we now have a database of regrets from about 26,000 people in 134 countries so it's it's pretty remarkable

and around the world it seemed people had the same four core regrets one of them was this regret that I call a foundational regret which is actually it's interesting because I think there's a financial component to it it's small decisions people make early in life no single one of which is cataclysmic but that leads to terrible consequences later on

and so the classic one is I spent too much and saved too little and now I'm broke so this is like the like like like the marshmallow test right that a little bit

yeah okay so people are good at deferring you know you rather party than doing your homework a little bit

a little bit I mean in the book The the example I use is the famous Fable of the the grasshopper and the Ant yeah uh yeah and so and so but it doesn't reallyand I think one of the interesting things about regret is what's going on underneath the surface

so it's not about financial regrets it's about not doing the work in in in the short term that pays off in the long term so it could be things like health I ate too much I didn't eat right and I didn't exercise and now I'm profoundly healthy

uh I didn't treat my kids well and now I'm aange for them so it could be thing it could be things like basically small decisions that accumulate early it's like that old the Hemingway line where these two characters are talking and one guy says the American guy says um I went bankrupt

and the guy says how'd you go bankrupt and he says two ways gradually then suddenly and that's how that's how people experience these regrets

absolutely well we can talk about budget deficits perhaps another time but okay boldness regrets

well I mean budget deficits are the ant in the grasshopper right there it's just that it's just that the the the the the Reckoning the winter seems to be endlessly deferred in that case yeah boldness boldness um very common regret and I think a really interesting one about the Human Condition

you're at a juncture in your life you can play it safe or you can take the chance and overwhelmingly people regret not taking the chance U much more than even people who took a chance and it doesn't work out for them um it's not taking the chance

and again it's not domain specific uh I stayed in this deadend job instead of starting a business because I was too scared I didn't ask somebody out on a date I didn't travel

I'm at a juncture in my life play it safe take the chance and when people don't take the chance not all the time but overwhelmingly they regret not taking

when should you have been more bold

when should I have been more bold oh I should not I should have been more bold about my My overall education choices uh I uh going to law school was an quintessential Act of timidity not boldness

uh what I should have done is followed what I was really interested in and and today I would be I would I don't know what I would be but I would not be I would not have taken that detour uh into law school that's that's one that's one example

I think about it even now in my professional life like literally is a gender difference when it comes to bold

interesting um it's unclear that's an interesting question it's it's unclear

did another piece of quantitative research where in of an American sample looking for gender differences and um um there weren't that many

uh there is some research on it's a it's my most popular footnote I've ever written it in this in this book it's it's on sexual regrets and essentially what it comes down to to your point is that is that men tend to regret the people they didn't sleep with and women tend to regret the people they did sleep with

so this seems like there might be a difference in boldness regrets based on gender but I don't think I don't have enough data to say that with any certainty

no what about um leadership so it's interesting you know we've had a lot of CEOs on this uh podcast and several of them say they have no boldness they have they have no feir Gene what do you mean

well they never they never oh fear oh no no no fear Gene um you know what fear is a valuable motion to have

you know um again you don't want to over index on fear but you want to have a little bit it's like it's like all these emotions you want to have here you go like like there's a portfolio theory of emotions you realize it's like you want to have more positive emotions than negative emotions but you don't want to have a portfolio that's only positive emotions

you actually you're come on you want investors to have a little fear no totally you know what I mean so so if if you have a no fear Gene you're probably uh my hunch is that in general the no fear Gene has been not completely edited out of the population but has been diminished because people with no fear aren't around to pass on their dream

you want a little fear you don't want you want a little fear just as you want a little regret you want a little sadness you want a little grief you want in your portfolio of emotions you want some of this stuff that is unpleasant

yeah what about moral kind of the goodness side of things

um you're at a juncture in your life you can do the right thing you can do the wrong thing and I have found in just in my 26,000 people overwhelmingly when people do the wrong thing most of us most of the time regret it

um we still do it but a lot of of us regret it because I think I think generally most of us are good and want to be good and feel crappy when we're not good

connection about relationships not only romantic relationships just relationships that were intact should have been intact they come apart you want to reach out you don't and then you regret it

m uh and and what's interesting about a lot of these relationships is the way that a lot of relationships come apart and this full spectrum of relationships not only romantic relationships but relationships with friends with siblings with parents is that it's undramatic they drift apart

they don't sometimes they do that but many cases they drift apart this person wants to reach out they say oh man I haven't talked to Nikolai for like five years it's going to be really awkward if I reach out and he's not going to care

but there's often a reason why you drift apart right you come back to your reunion your 30 year reunion or whatever and you think it's going to be great fun and then pretty quickly you understand why why you don't meet up every day

in some cases yes and some so the thing is like you don't have regrets about that you don't you don't have a regret about relationships that that that drifted apart and you don't care about if you drift apart from someone you say oh I haven't talked to Fred for 30 years I don't I don't I don't care one bit that's not a regret that might be a wise decision

but there are many instances in our lives particularly with friendships where we do regret drifting apart and I have several people in the book who you know based on even my interviews with them started changing the story by like reaching out to people who they had hadn't reached out to before

now you say you should tell people about your regrets right

yeah um why a couple of reasons number one it's an unburdening of of sorts uh that there is there's some evidence that when we uh it's sort of a lifting of the weight of your shoulders

but I think there's a more important one with more important reason than simply the unburdening and it's this it's a there's a sensemaking function we have a lot of evidence about this

um when people uh write about their regrets or talk about their regrets there's a transformation that occurs regret like all negative emotions is Blobby it's amorphous it's vaporous

when we write about them or talk about them we convert that vapor into words which are concrete and those are less menacing and we can scrutinize them we can analyze them we can interrogate them

so I think there's a there's a there's a very strong uh uh argument for doing that what's more you mentioned leadership before we we make a forcasting error sometimes when we say if we talk about our mistakes or our vulnerabilities people will think less of us

and in many cases not all but in many cases they actually think more of us they admire our cander they admire our courage

well nobody likes perfect people

that's true too I mean that's a more parsimonious explanation why do we try to be perfect but nobody likes us if we perfect

uh because we're making a we're making a forecasting error I mean truly it's like I mean human beings are a washing in all kinds of predictive errors about first of all they they make they they make the the biggest error is that they think people are watching them and care about them much more than is than is

nobody's nobody's watching you nobody and people only care about themselves I give you I'll that is one of my most profound forget about writing a research as a as a lived experience that is one of the most transformative things that ever happened to me is when probably in my late 20s early 30s I basically stopped caring about what other people thought of me because I discovered that they weren't thinking about me they were thinking about themselves

what are the implications of of that finding the fact that nobody really thinks about us

we should do what we think is the right thing to do what moves us what we care about um and not not uh uh construct our lives around what other people how how other people are going to evaluate us

and so I think that it leads to I think it leads to Greater boldness I think it can lead to Greater authenticity I think it can lead at the at the individual level to Greater to Greater happiness there are a lot of people who are there is some sort of latent evidence in some of the regret research that what PE a regret that people have is leading someone else's life rather than leading their own life

okay I love it so to the listeners just don't think about what people think just do what the heck you want

again a little bit again I'm not the world is not binary nickel the like you want to think about I mean you know you want to care at some level about what people think but you don't want to you don't want to you don't want to over index on that

but um but I I think it's important to figure you know it's it's a lifelong Quest it's not like I figured it out at age 60 uh who am I what am I about who do I care about who do I love what contribution do I want to make the world um that's not an that's it's not like like God or or Darwin delivers that answer to you in a little box it's something that you spend your life moving toward

that's not an that's it's not like like God or or Darwin delivers that answer to you in a little box it's something that you spend your life moving toward

yeah one um kind of last fun thing from the book I thought was that you uh photograph uh the Olympic uh kind of Champions right the gold medal winners are really happy and the bronze people really happy the silver people not happy what's that about

well it's interesting this is a really interesting piece of so I mean you know you have a background in social psychology this is one of those very provocative findings in social psychology that has been replicated multiple times

so uh it's it's it it goes back to counterfactual thinking there are two kinds of counterfactual thinking we can do we can do a downward counterfactual and an upward counterfactual right

an upward counterfactual is when we imagine how things could have been better upward counterfactuals that's regret they make us feel worse but they can help us do better

downward counterfactuals are when you imagine how things could have been worse so I see a lot in the database particularly when it comes to romantic regrets mostly women saying I regret marrying that idiot but at least I have these two great kids so I can imagine how things could have turned out worse

in the in the Olympic medal example the the silver medalist was like ah if only I write about a bike race if only I had pedal a little bit faster I could have been a gold medalist

the the bronze medalist is like H at least I finished third rather than thato who finished fourth who doesn't have any medals at all

exactly I think it's so funny because I did this very difficult uh study in the intelligence service where we studied Russian and we were uh 16 people and I was second to last I was just going of hang on with my nails I'm so happy I'm like super happy can you imagine being last nearly failed you know and I and I managed to scrape through

that's uh uh that's a downward kind of fact ual

totally

yeah so so downward counter upward counterfactual is if only downward counterfactual is at least yeah so at least I didn't finish last at least I passed

moving on next book drive the surprising truth about what motivate us and you talk about uh the importance of autonomy Mastery and and purpose um tell me about it should we start with Mastery uh Master

masteries are well the the reason these things are are valuable is that we have once again uh overstated the efficacy of a certain kind of reward what I call an if then reward if you do this then you get that what what psychologists call a controlling contingent reward

what the research shows pretty clearly is that not in all cases but in many cases if then rewards are good for simple tasks with shorttime Horizons they're less good for Creative conceptual tasks with longer time Horizons

um and so what you're better off doing is is uh creating a reward system that's focused Less on the narrow reward and more on these other elements of your work life so one is Mastery Master is our desire to get better at things to to improve to grow

there's some fascinating research from Teresa M at Harvard Business School showing that the single biggest data-day motivator on the job is making progress making progress and meaningful work

this is why people this is why people play musical instruments on the weekend is why they do Sports on the weekend it's why they have hobbies it's why even people who are seasoned professionals um and have every kind of extrinsic reward they could possibly imagine they still want to do a little bit better they still want to try something else

why does uh micromanagers kill pleasure

well that has to do more with autonomy than with Mastery but micromanagement can be a can be a barrier to Mastery but um you know here's the thing you you part of this goes to what you believe about human beings

do you believe that human that most human beings are autonomous and self-directed and want to do decent work or do you believe that most human beings are shiftless lazy and don't care

now in many cases people believe the first thing about themselves always but they believe the second thing about other people which doesn't actually compute um and so micromanagement is is is thwarts autonomy what a basic need that we have is to be self-directed have some amount of sovereignty some amount of control over what we do how we do it when we do it where we do it

and micromanagement kills that uh and you know what we want are people I'm surprised this word hasn't taken off because somebody used it in an interview with me um that you know when I was interviewing somebody like we need macrom managers who essentially set the direction hold people accountable and give people the tools they need to get better and do the best work they possibly can

I think it's interesting Sam wman he said that when you ask people to do something don't be too descriptive about what you want to achieve uh about what you want to achieve

yeah yeah uh that's possible I think you certainly don't want to be too descriptive about precisely how to do it in many cases um and what you want so because what you could be doing it's an interesting Insight because sometimes when you say here's what I want to achieve the people doing it might actually have a higher level of achievement in mind

when you don't when you don't when you're less directive so the way to understand autonomy is to understand is to understand it's opposite this is actually to me a thinking tool that I use all the time

so you take something like autonomy autonomy is not something like you know a glass or a pen or anything like that it's not concrete it's not something that you can picture and we sometimes have a harder time putting getting our minds around that

so a tool that I use to think about those kinds of things is to imagine what's the opposite and the opposite of autonomy is control and I'm convinc that human beings have only two reactions to control they comply or they defy

and and um and I think if you're running an organization if you're teaching kids in school if you're coaching a team you don't want people perfectly compliant and you certainly want people who are Divine you want them engaged

and the way that people engage is through self-direction the way that you engage is yourself Direction the way that I engage yourself Direction the way that everybody watching or listening to this engages is by having some sovereignty over themselves by having some direction over their own lives

well if you control after five years you got the wrong people left in The Firm right

that's a great point because everybody else exits so what you have is you have a you have an army of compliant people yeah terrible

now you talk about task time technique and team yeah what is that

four T's uh those are the dimensions of work that people seem to want some autonomy over so time is you know I want to be able to come in when I want more or less

um this is one reason why in Professional Services the billable hour is absolutely destructive of autonomy and we have some interesting research that it's destructive of well-being

um uh task is I want some control over what I do uh team is I want some control over who I get who I work with and um and technique is I want some control over how I do what I do

and those are going to vary based on the task so for instance you don't want a brain surgeon to have like you know a surgery team doing brain surgery to have you know 100% autonomy over technique hey today we're going to try something new in our brain surgery that's probably not a good idea

but what are the implications for bonuses for instance in the financial sector right we we go some bonuses

yeah yeah yeah it depends it it's it's actually trick it's actually trickier than people on either side of it there there's there some ideology on both sides

there's ideology among some people saying bonuses are dehumanizing they're overly controlling there other side that says bonuses are the only way people will do things

um it depends I think that the optimal compensation structure is first of all hire great people pay them a sign pay them a healthy base salary and then offer bonuses based on simple straightforward criteria that are hard to gain

one of the things you see about bonuses is one of the things you see about bonuses particularly in less in financial services but in other kinds of areas is that the the compensation schemes are so incredibly complex about what you're rewarding and how much that you basically need an entire administrative apparatus to run the bonus scheme and then basically a Judicial arm to to litigate the disputes within that

in financial services or just like investing yeah I mean if the if your portfolio goes up you deserve a piece of the action if if if you're working at a company and you're a big contributor and the company makes a greater profit you deserve some of that profit there's no question about that

so um so uh simple um not high simple not high stakes and connected to measures that matter

you argue that the school system is a bit screwed um

yeah I mean I don't know if I I don't know if I use those that precise no no

but you've talked about kind of performance goals versus learning goals

heck yeah yeah of course um yeah I mean the it depends on where in the world you are I don't think it's true everywhere um uh in the United States it's particularly in certain Elite corners of the United States it's basically all performance goals

performance goals is getting a an a on a test uh learning goals is mastering the material and believe me you can get an A on a test without mastering the material I'm a case in point I mean when I was in school I was you know I was very compliant I was very good at performance goals

it's why I got an A on basically on every single test in six years of French in school and can't speak French

B sa how do you screen for these things when you interview people when you hire them

interesting question um I don't know um because in general we're pretty bad at hiring across the board forget about these criteria in general we H we don't hire we're still doing for instance unstructured job interviews when there's no evidence those have any predictive value

and so I'm not sure how I'm not sure how you screen for it uh I think that the way you I I think that the way you screen for it would be to to uh look at past performance and give people sample uh assignments on on how on how good they are

I mean I think that's one of the what we see in some of the research on interviewing is that structured interiew interviews which are boring for the interviewers and giving people uh test assignments that match what they're actually going to do on the job have some predictive value

and I would probably just go with those and and chances are the people who do well on those are people who have a propensity for a sense of autonomy for a sense of Mastery and for um some sense of purpose

do cosos have stronger drives than others

I don't know I mean it probably depends on the it probably depends on the CEO if you pressed me to the wall and said you had and I had to offer a yes no answer to that I would say no

um I just think you know CEOs could be CEOs not because they have a songer drive because they're they're Wier they're better at politics

um they're they're you know they're they're they're tall uh they're male uh they're more conformist so that could be why they're CEOs too rather than where they have some kind of innate drive that separates them from the great unwashed who aren't CEOs

so when you look at the the cohort of C what do you what do you think it depends

I mean it's it's it's varied I think there's a big difference between a CEO who comes up through the ranks and a CEO who is a Founder first of all I think those are two they're both have the same name CEO but I think that they're different species

in what ways

uh just in the terms of the skills they had to use to get to where they are um and their and at some level their approach to their their just a skill I guess to over to to simplify that on

I just think the skills that you need to become a CEO of a publicly held company that you worked at for 35 years and to become the CEO of a venture funded startup that has a new idea or new technology those are fundament those are those are different skills there's some overlap but those are different skills and I think that different people are attracted to those kinds of things

absolutely now how does uh personal energy levels come into play here

interesting um I'm not sure um what is energy I don't know um you know can it can be you know it can it can neither be created nor destroyed I guess is what the physicist would tell us

I'm I'm skeptical I don't know again just to be clear on that I'm skeptical that it's a thing in itself that's I'm skeptical that it it that energy at sense that we're talking about is a thing in itself I I'm convinced it is a metaphor for something important though

and it could be um ambition it could be uh intellectual capacity it could be um some other some some other kind of personality trait extroverts are probably perceived as more energetic than other people

perceived

yes you think they are I don't know um uh it could be it it could be that they are I they're certainly they're certainly they're certainly perceived that way

um you know here's the thing people who are manic have very high energy levels so the idea that energy that a high energy level is inherently a good thing and produces good results is something that we have to question

oh and I guess ADHD is uh just trying to medicate them uh

absolutely and that there could be there could be there could be downsides to that I do think it's an interesting question though and I don't think it's I don't think uh Jim lore and Barry and um what's his name um Tony Schwarz wrote a book about this maybe 20 years ago about how we should not manage our time but we should manage our energy as a as a personal matter

but I don't think that there is either I don't think there there is much in the way of good quality research on what you and I are you and I know what we're talking about I think that's what's so interesting you and I know what we're talking about we can have a conversation about energy and we we understand what we mean but if I press how would you define energy

uh I mean it's uh it's something you radiate it's something that keeps you going when you're tired it's something that makes you wake up early it's something some kind of inferiority complex that makes you work very hard I mean this bu of things uh

right exactly so I think it's like a proxy it's a metaphor for something else and it could be it could be a mix it could be a mix of things

yeah yeah do you think that you have a high energy level

well I wake up early for sure

do you but that but that's that's bi part of that is biological

no I know I don't yeah yeah

and we are moving on

well how about that for a segue segue into your next book when uh why is uh timing important what is it with timing which is important

why is uh timing important what is it with timing which is important

well there's so so many aspects of timing that are important I think the the error that we make in in navigating Our Lives is thinking that timing is an art when when it's actually closer to a science

there's incredible this is one of my FV I mean I I love all my my my children like all the books I found are fascinating this book when I wrote largely because I wanted to read it

like I like I realized I was making all these when decisions and I didn't know how to do it and when I started looking at the research there is a massive amount of research out there on when to do things but it's splattered across all different domains

so there's some in economics and biology there's as we hinted at there's a whole field called chronobiology U

and so um I think the lesson of that is that we should make t our timing decisions based on science rather than on intuition

and what are the and how do how that work uh so what you what do you do

so there different so there there different dimensions of that one of them is what do you do at a on a at a given day and I think what's I think to me one of the most powerful stats that I came across in that research is that time of day explains 20% of the variance in performance that's Inc

when you think about that that's incredible

and that's based on like scientific data that you have from lots of tests for instance in Denmark

exactly all all not just not just in in in one particular place but but throughout uh many many studies showing that that time of day explains 20% of the variant now if you think about that let's just unpack that for a second because it's even saying it it's like wow God that's kind of incredible

when we think about what explains variance in performance some of it is is is is energy perhaps some of it is ambition some of it is social Advantage some of it is innate intelligence

um innate intelligence social Advantage those are hard if there's deficit that's that's hard to remedy time of day that's really easy to remedy so I think there's a lot of power in all of that

so what it suggests is that there are in general guidelines for what sorts of tasks to do at different times of day based in part on the task and based in part on the chronotype

chronotype is do you wake up early and go to sleep early naturally do you wake up late and go to sleep late um or are you somewhere in between

now do you go to you say you wake up early do you go to sleep early

yeah yeah I'm like 9 9:30

yeah great so you're until 5 perfect so you're kind of a lark you're you're someone who's who has a much more of a morning uh a a morning typee

there a lot of ADV and you were in between I'm in between yeah there are a lot of I'm not a night all I'm not an early morning person and that's that's what most people are most people are kind of in the middle um there's a lot of advantages to that

so what do you so how do you stret today so you should do walham morning okay so um for the 80% of us who are not night owls now night we have an outlier here the people who are the opposite of you who naturally wake up late and go to sleep late who we think are lazy and the nightclubbers

exactly

we think that those people are diletant and not serious they just have a different chronotype many of them just have a different chronotype

um let's take the 80% of us who are either like you or like me here's what you should do early in the day that's when we should do our analytic work

and analytic work is work that requires heads down focus and attention writing is a good example of that analyzing data figuring out a strategy something that requires heads down Focus

the reason for that is that is that during this peak period that we have mostly early in the day for most of us we're most we're more Vigilant we're able to battle away distractions so do your analytic work early in the day

the middle of the day early afternoon midafternoon it's generally a terrible time of day and we see Inc there's incredible research on like healthcare like errors in health care in the afternoon lack of handwashing in the the health care data

you don't want to have an operation in the timate

you absolutely do not nobody in my family is permitted I mean if you get hit by a bus and there's no other choice yeah but a discretionary there is nobody in my family who is permitted to have a medical procedure in the afternoon I'm not I'm not joking around

how much worse is it

it depends um but you you have anesthesia errors four times more likely oh wow um you have uh doctors and nurses and other he uh big drop off in handwashing

uh if you look at there's some fascinating research on both the prescri even just regular doctor's appointments the prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics and even uh opioids much greater in the afternoon than in the morning

wow

um yeah and so that that trough period of the day um if you can where you can you want to do some of your administrative work

and then the evening what do you do well later in the day it's kind of interesting so what you have is you have you move through the day basically your mood moves through the day sort of a peak a trough and a recovery

um your vigilance is highest here so if you look at later in the day late afternoon early evening what you see from for most of us we'll talk about the night ows in a moment what you see for most of us is rising mood but lower vigilance

that makes it good for creativity for things that don't require you know inhibition so brainstorming is a great example of that brainstorm in the afternoon not in the morning

people too Vigilant in the morning most of us so they're going to knock down the good ideas they're going to knock down the outlandish ideas here so so do your more creative iterative work and so where you can push your analytic work early your administrative work in the middle and your iterative creative work later in the day

now if you're night the world is UN to you your L case

yeah

you know what it's I don't put it on the night ow I put it on the people who employ night owls let your night owls do their thing if they want to work in the middle of the night let them work in the middle of the night don't make them go to an 8:00 staff meeting and when they can barely open their eyes think that they're somehow lazy

what we see with night ows though is interesting night owls okay more likely to have addiction problems more likely to go to jail but we also see night Al testing higher on both creativity and and uh general intelligence

well they're probably more likely to be musicians and artists and Painters

it could be that people who and I think there is some interesting I don't think we know it very well that there is some interesting ways that our chronotype can steer us to certain kinds of profession

so for instance there are people who at least anecdotally who say I want to be a school teacher but they don't have an early they don't they have like a night out chronotype and they got to you got to be with the with 287 year olds at at 7:30 in the morning that's miserable for a night owl and so they don't last as they don't last as that

Dan what's the key to good breaks

the the conceptual key to breaks and this is important um is um thinking of breaks as part of your work rather than a deviation from your work not thinking of breaks as a concession as a weakness but thinking them as integral to your to your work

number one something is better than nothing so even a short break is better than no break at all second uh social is better than solo so that breaks with other people are more restorative than breaks on your own even with uh even for introverts we know not a surprise

moving is better than stationary so a break my having a break here sitting staring into space not as good as just going out and for a walk

very interesting for um

I I think around the world is outside is better than inside and this to me is one of those insights in science that is underappreciated the advantage of being outside the advantage of being and I don't mean in National Park I mean you and I are talking here in Washington DC taking a walk outside in Washington DC and seeing the trees

um and then finally uh the the importance of brakes being fully detached people what does that mean it means that hey I'm going to take a break now and go off for a walk and you spend your whole walk looking at your phone that's not fully detached

does it mean that taking a break at your desk and looking at the at the screen is a good thing it's probably not a good thing because it violates the outside and the in motion uh the social side of it so uh it's probably that's probably a bad that's that's a suboptimal kind of break

yeah the optimal kind of break is in the afternoon go out for a walk 15 20 minutes with someone you like leaving your phone behind talking about something other than work that's a good break

good naps

naps I've I I this is this is one of those cases where the science changed my position my political position I was politically opposed to naps CU I thought they were s of lazy and I always felt terrible if I ever I didn't take naps very often if I took a nap I always felt terrible I would wake up really groggy sort of ashamed of myself

um what what it shows is that problem I had was that every time I took a break my boss came in and thought I was so bad but now this and the reason why I want to talk about it now is so that everybody understands that I'm taking that I'm taking it up for a reason a good reason

it's a sign it's a you're if you walk into nikolai's office and he's taking a break it's just another marker that he's an extremely high performer that's how you should interpret that

thank you uh yeah uh naps are naps are okay they're not for everybody but there's some pretty good evidence that they they can smooth things out particularly short naps which really surprised me

so naps under under 20 minutes are incredibly restorative you nap longer than that you begin to develop what uh biologists call Sleep inertia which is essentially like the kind of groggy boggy feeling you get

but uh a very short nap is powerful

M what is a napino

ha uh that is the scientifically optimal nap where you I've done this on bad days I'm not a huge Napper but I will and I this is what I do is I sit in a chair in my office I drink a cup of coffee okay I I don't even enjoy it I I actually just put ice cubes and hot coffee guzzle it

okay 25 minutes so and I set my timer on my phone for 25 minutes I close my eyes I put in noise cancelling headphones I close my eyes I put my feet on an ottoman and I can usually fall asleep in it it depends you know s eight minutes

okay so so 7 eight minutes let's say it's 8 minutes that means I have and then my I set my alarm and it goes off 25 minutes later so let's say that means I have a 17 minute if I sleep if I takes me eight minutes to fall asleep that's a 17-minute nap Perfect

all right right in that 10 to 20 minute window but here's the key so I've already won right there but it takes about 25 minutes for caffeine to enter your bloodstream

and and so when I wake up not only do I have the restorative smoke power of the nap but I have the added caffeine

then two things at the end here first thing how do you get a pay Rise

um I mean it there are all kinds of ways I mean one of them what we know from economics is switch jobs quit your job and get a new job and you and on average you get a you get a you get a a hike in salary

um I think if you're going to go ask for it uh the key is to especi and I think this is true from some of the persuasion research is that if you're going to ask for a higher salary um always put it in your boss's interests not in your own interest but always in in the boss's interest

and how do you do that why is it in his interest that you should get a pay rise

uh because um you're going to be less likely to look for another job you're going to be happier where you are uh you're going to have a the boss is going to have a reputation for the boss is going to have a reputation for fairness

and lastly we got tens of thousands of young people listening to this what is your advice to young people

all kinds of advice but I think the first one is is is that we there's this notion among many young people particularly kind of high teaming young people that they need to have a very distinct plan that the way to navigate a career the way to get navigate a life is almost to move from this move this piece here which will lead to this thing here which will lead to this thing here which will lead to this thing here this sort of this very meticulous kind of planning

and I think that's a big mistake I always tell people find somebody you you admire and ask them how they got to where they are

invariably 95 times out of 100 100 the answer to that question will be it's a long story because the path was not linear it was not it was chaotic it was backward and forward and up and down and so forth it wasn't this carefully created set of moves

and so that's the thing that I would that's the thing that I would tell them is is is make your make your make your decisions for fundamental reasons more than for instrumental reasons

make your decisions like I I I I see so many young people particularly High achieving young people who take a job and the reason they take the job is they think it's going to lead to another job and when in fact you have no idea what it's going to lead to

and like do you enjoy the job are you contributing in the job is it a good use of your skills and your talents that's the thing are you and are you working with great people and you do that you're better off with the uncertainty of knowing not knowing what's next than you are with the false certainty of saying this job will lead to that job and this job will lead to that job it doesn't work that way

well now this has been tremendous uh love your books and very interested in where you will take us next um you don't have to tell us now but we cannot wait to see it

oh I'll I you'll be the first I tell

fantastic thank you so much