Art Markman on How to Unlock Unstoppable Success | EP 522
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Coming up next on PassionStruck. People have asked me, in this age of generative AI and all of these tools, is a college education going to become less important? My argument is it actually becomes more important in a dynamic environment. And that's because what a college education, a four-year degree program really does is to give people a discipline

for thinking. And we often throw around this word discipline. We say, well, what are the disciplines? History or English or chemistry or biology. These are disciplines. And we don't often take that word seriously. But a discipline is a way of

of giving yourself a mode for understanding the complexity of the world, turning it into something that is ultimately manageable by having a way of analyzing what's going on around you, asking questions of the world to provide you with more information and giving you a framework in which to learn new things.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the

power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey, passion struck fam. Welcome back.

to episode 521 of the Passion Struck Podcast. You, yes you, are the heartbeat of this community and I am so grateful for your continued energy, passion, and commitment to living a more intentional life. Week after week, you show up ready to elevate yourself and that's what makes this movement so powerful. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome to the Passion Struck family.

You've just joined a community that's all about igniting purpose and living boldly with intention. We're excited to have you with us on this journey. Before diving in to today's episode, I want to take a moment to highlight my conversation earlier this week with the incredible Terri Cole. We discussed high-functioning codependency in her new book, Too Much. If you haven't had a chance to listen yet, I highly recommend checking it out. It's packed with powerful insights on how to set boundaries and reclaim your energy.

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and determine where you sit on your path to becoming passion struck. It only takes about 10 minutes of your time and you can find it at passionstruck.com. And if you're looking for a place to start with the podcast, we've made it super easy with our episode starter packs. With over 500 episodes, I know it can be overwhelming. So we've curated playlists based on themes like leadership, mental health, and personal growth. Check them out on Spotify or visit passionstruck.com slash starter packs to dive in. Now on to today's episode.

I am thrilled to be joined by Dr. Art Markman, one of the world's foremost cognitive scientists and vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Art has spent over three decades shaping the fields of psychology, decision-making,

and organizational behavior, while also bringing his knowledge to a broader audience through his books, articles, and podcasts. In today's conversation, we'll tap into Art's deep expertise to explore how cognitive science can help us improve decision-making, shift behaviors, and align our brains with our personal and professional goals. Whether you're navigating your career change

seeking more productivity, or simply trying to understand your mind's potential. This episode is packed with actionable insights. We'll uncover topics like how to develop habits that support better thinking, how to shift your mindset when facing change, and how to make decisions that align with your goals. This is going to be an enlightening, thought-provoking conversation. And we so appreciate it

When you give us feedback on these episodes, you can do so by giving us a five-star rating and review. And I know our guests love it when you do that. So let's dive right into this exploration of the human mind with Dr. Eric Markman. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let this journey begin. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water?

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Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get in the way of life. At Capella University, our FlexPath learning format lets you learn on your own schedule. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

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I am thrilled today to have Dr. Art Markman on PassionStruck. Welcome, Art. Great to be here. Thanks so much, John. Well, I am so honored to have you on, and I always like to start these episodes out by allowing our audience to get to know the guest. And I was hoping, Art, that you might be able to discuss your upbringing. What were you passionate about growing up, and what initially sparked your interest in cognitive science?

I, as a kid, I was interested in all kinds of things. I had a great love of reading. My mom was actually a reading specialist. We spent a lot of time just reading as a family, and that was a big thing. I think as I got older, I got involved in lots of things. I loved sports, but wasn't particularly good at any of them. I really enjoyed math.

I had a great time in school, but honestly, I didn't develop a love of the work that I do now, cognitive science, until really I was in college. I went to college thinking I might be an economics major or maybe a physics major. And as I like to say, I took an economics class and I didn't really like it. And I took a physics class and it absolutely didn't like me.

and took a few years to really figure out what I wanted to do. But I went to an advisor in the middle of my sophomore year of college, and I needed to choose a concentration, a major. And I said, well, look, I've taken some psychology classes, but I'm not so sure I want to be a psychologist. And I've taken some computer science classes, but I'm not so sure I want to go into computer science. Taking some neuroscience classes, those are cool, but I'm not sure I want to be a neuroscientist. I took a

philosophy class I was need I don't know if I necessarily want to be a philosopher I went through this whole list and the advisor said you realize all of the classes that you've just mentioned count towards the major in cognitive science is it possible you're a cognitive scientist

And I realized, yeah, that might just be it. And I really discovered that issues relating to how minds work were just absolutely fascinating to me. And I really dove into that. And it has been just a central part of what I spend my time thinking about ever since. We're going to spend the majority of our episode today talking to you about that background. But in addition to your impressive background in cognitive science and psychology, I also hear you have a bit of a creative outlet.

as a saxophonist in the Austin band Phineas Gage. And I want to ask, how does playing music influence your thinking and your approach to cognitive science? And do you find any connections between the two?

Thanks for asking. It's interesting. I actually took up the saxophone in my mid-30s. I was a piano player as a kid, and then as happens to so many people who have hobbies when they're younger, that those hobbies fall by the wayside as you start your career, perhaps start your family. And so when I was in my mid-30s, I really wanted to get back into playing some music, and I started taking lessons from a local saxophone player and

Took lessons for 10 years, actually, with him and ultimately have played in several bands, including Phineas Gage. And what I love about music is I originally did it as a way of getting away from the stuff that I do at work. And ultimately, it actually became something that feeds back on what I do at work. And in particular, that I have found that I love playing jazz. I love playing music.

I love playing blues. And all of those forms have lessons for the way that we think about leadership and the way that we think about psychology. I mean, some of it is just

I believe everyone should take up some new thing every several years as a reminder that even if you're good at something, that is not a reflection that you're good at everything. Actually, you have to put in a lot of work to become good at something. And I think it was really useful for me in my mid-30s to play terribly. I tell the story all the time that my first night with my new saxophone, I took a lesson

And my teacher got me to get a sound out of the sax. And I came home and started playing. And the next morning, my son, my oldest son, who was seven years old at the time, came walking out of his room in the morning. He said, were you playing your new saxophone last night, Daddy? And I said, yes, I was. He said, I thought so. It sounded like you were moving chairs in the kitchen. So yeah, I had to learn quickly that just because you have a few things that you might be good at, it takes a while to develop skill in something else.

I love that background and I play percussion and when I'm actively doing it, it is such a great outlet for stress and other things and creativity. I also raised both my kids so that we introduced them to playing piano at three to five years old, depending on the child. And it has created a

so much more creativity for them and I think opened their minds to so many things. So I'm a huge advocate of any instrument, but I think piano is such a great gateway because once you learn how to play it, my son plays percussion and my daughter plays bass and other instruments. It's just such an easier pathway to learning new instruments.

Absolutely. I think the piano is a great basis and saxophone is a wonderful instrument. I've got some guitars at home that I'm not particularly good at, but enjoy picking up every now and again. And I just think I think having music in your life is really valuable. Actually, my saxophone teacher always used to say any music is good music.

And I also believe, and my fiance also believes, that bands who have horns in them, there's just something about it that brings a different dimension to the music. So love that you do that as well. Art, I wanted to ask you, being a lifelong educator,

Is there a teacher who changed your life for the better? I've been fortunate to have a number of different teachers over the course of my life in different ways who taught me different things that have stuck with me. I'll tell a couple of quick stories, though, about this. I talk a lot about, I've talked often about a professor I had in college who taught, this guy by the name of Frank Stewart. He taught a linear algebra class.

And what I really loved about his class was two things. The first was that he really dove into using technology. So I took this class in the mid 80s. And he linear algebra is a discipline that requires a lot of low level computation in order to do some of the mathematical elements around mathematics.

matrix, matrices and vectors. And he took a lot of that computation out of the equation by actually having computer programs that he made up for the Macintosh to help people do the basic work in the class.

And so he really found a way, a clever way of getting you focused on the core concepts in the class. He focused a lot on making sure you understood the material. So I, for example, did really terribly on the first exam and he was very supportive of really continuing my journey in that class.

Then he developed this absolutely brilliant final exam in which you had to discover the core concepts from the class through the course of doing the final exam. It was a take-home exam that took place over the last few weeks of class.

And I remember finally having the core insight from the class that had to do with the geometry underlying all of these matrices and literally running across campus to tell the professor that I got it. And he was just he gave me this smile and he was like, good.

And what struck me, I think what was most important about that class was, even though I did poorly on the first exam, because I really got the material by the end, he gave me a good grade demonstrating that the journey is in service of learning the material. The grade really needs to be a reflection of did you actually learn and not just how did you do along the way.

but also that really supportive environment of building a structure that helped me to learn and not just to transmit information, but to give me those opportunities to work

was absolutely crucial. And I think the other teachers that I've had over the years who've had that same impact on me have built experiences to help me learn, whether it was my graduate advisor, Dedry Gentner, who just was, again, incredibly supportive in creating environments to build experiments and learn new things or

or my undergraduate honors thesis advisor, Jim Anderson, who again created environments in this case to do computational work, a lot of neural network programming. And it was people who were very intentional about building environments to help you learn that I think just had a profound impact on me and has continued to influence the way that I think about what it means to be a good educator.

All right. I love that you use the word intentional because that's what this whole podcast is about. How do you create an intentional life? From your perspective in psychology, behavior science, et cetera, how do you define intention? A lot of our life is really built on habit, on doing things that the particular environment you're in promotes.

And building good habits is important because the last thing you want to do is to have to think about what you want to do in every moment of your life. You'd like to be able to get through a lot of the routine elements of your life without having to think too deeply about it.

But it is also important to put yourself in a position where the things that you do in life will amount to something that you believe is important, that you believe fits with your values, that you believe contributes something that you will be proud of. And the decisions you make

that enable you to live a life that adds up to something that lives out those values. That is where intention comes in. It is taking the opportunity both to choose to do things that you feel will allow you to pursue those values and also create opportunities to develop habits that support that

the values that you want to live, the ultimate contributions that you want to make. So you'd like to set up your world intentionally so that the things you do habitually also drive you towards the goals that you want to achieve. And I think to me, that's really where intention comes in, is creating that alignment between your goals, your values, and the actions that you're going to end up taking day to day.

I love that answer. And a few months ago, I was interviewing Angela Duckworth and I love her work on grit. And I actually told her that

I thought that she got her research at West Point a little bit wrong. I went to the Naval Academy, so I said, although I agree with you that passion and perseverance, the two ingredients of grit were extremely important to me. You're missing a third dimension, which is intentionality, because I can have all the grit I want, but if I'm not intentional about how I'm applying it, I'm not going to get the end result that I want. And it really dove us into a whole conversation about self control.

And the parallels between intentionality and self-control, which he studies.

as you pretty deeply. Do you see that connection as well? I absolutely do. And I think, you know, the thing about the concept of grit is I talk about this with a lot of folks, you know, it's important to be gritty in situations where you feel like you are both in a position to make progress and in a position to actually achieve those desirable outcomes you want. And

Part of the problem is you have to make mid-course corrections sometimes to recognize, you know what, I'm actually doing something that doesn't fit my values, or I'm doing something that really is not going to have the outcome that I want. And that's where that intentionality comes in. I think that really successful people find ways to be persistent in activities that enable them to make progress.

but they're also good at giving up on things that are getting in the way of their ability to make progress. And as the classic serenity prayer says, success ultimately lies in the wisdom of knowing the difference. I love that answer. And you're absolutely correct because to me, being intentional is about recognizing that you're on the right path, but it's also recognizing when you're not and doing the course corrections to get you back on the path that you want to be. Well, yeah.

I wanted to use this as an introduction. You moved out of your core role as being a professor and now you're the vice provost at University of Texas at Austin, where you're deeply involved in developing new education offerings.

And I thought I would approach this question in this way. We are witnessing one of the most dynamic changes in history with the digital transformation that's going on around us. And I remember as I was in my 20s thinking that the world at that point was changing very rapidly. And in my mid-20s, we had the introduction of the Internet.

As I talk to my kids, one of them is 26, the other is 20. She's a junior at the University of Florida. Both of them say to me all the time, how do we approach our education so that it best prepares us for the future that we're walking into? My son is going back right now to school, etc.,

So with that as a backdrop, what are the most exciting innovations that you're seeing happening in education today? And how do these address the needs of future learners like my kids? So it's such a great question and something that, as you point out, I spend a lot of my time thinking about these days. And I think that people have asked me, well, in this age of generative AI and all of these tools, is a college education going to become less important?

My argument is it actually becomes more important in a dynamic environment like this. And that's because what a college education, a four-year degree program really does is to give people a discipline for thinking. And we often throw around this word discipline. We say, well, what are the disciplines? History or English or chemistry or biology. These are disciplines. And we don't often take that word seriously.

But a discipline is a way of giving yourself a mode for understanding the complexity of the world, turning it into something that is ultimately manageable by having a way of analyzing what's going on around you, asking questions of the world to provide you with more information, and giving you a framework in which to learn new things.

And those skills become all the more important in a dynamic environment because the particular day-to-day skills that you employ to do your work are going to change as technology changes. What is not going to change is that the world is going to continue to be complicated. It's going to continue to have nuance. It's going to continue to require people who can take

difficult, ugly problems and turn them into things that are manageable. And I think that a lot of what a college education about is learning how to do that. But one of the places where university educators don't always succeed is

is in really helping students in degree programs to understand that is fundamentally what they're learning to do as a part of their education. And so a big part of what we're working on here at the University of Texas is how do we infuse more of an understanding of those attitudes

that you develop intellectually as a result of going through a degree program? How do we help you to understand that you have internalized the discipline and are going to use that to determine how to move forward with your life, even in the face of all of these difficult technologies that are going to create changes in the world?

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I always tell my kids, and I think I've heard this pretty repeatedly on the show, that no matter how much technology changes, you're still going to need leaders. You're still going to need people who understand human behavior because there's always going to be a human involved in the process. And those human conditions that we find ourselves in are the most challenging aspect that I found at work. And one of the biggest problems

problems that causes those human battles is that cognitive biases are everywhere. What biases do you think are the most persistent in today's world and how do we mitigate their effects?

- It's such an important question and it's interesting as an aside, one of the programs that I helped to develop here at the University of Texas is a program called the Human Dimensions of Organizations. And we actually take the humanities, the social, the behavioral sciences, and use that to build both undergraduate and graduate degree programs

precisely to help people to address the people problems that lie at the heart of so much of what goes on in the world. And I think that the biases that we have definitely play a big role in that.

I think one of the biases that we have is that we are often unaware of some of the assumptions that underlie our understanding of the world. So a favorite concept of mine emerged from some research that Frank Kyle and Leonid Rosenblatt did on the illusion of explanatory depth.

which is this belief that we understand the world better than we actually understand the world. We often have persistent gaps in our knowledge. And as a result of those gaps, we are often unable to manipulate the world as effectively as we think we can because we don't really understand what's going on.

I think we have a bias towards simple explanations for things and it's useful to have fairly simple explanations because it makes it easier to communicate those explanations to other people. But we have to recognize that the world is actually a complex place with many forces that are interacting and that almost everything that we do is going to have unintended consequences to it. And those unintended consequences

end up being the thing that can cause the best laid plans to fail. And I think the third bias that we have is that we tend to treat the plans that we create a little bit more like hardware than software. And what I mean by that is that in general, if you buy a piece of hardware, a computer, a television, whatever it is,

That device is about as good as it's ever going to get on the day that you take it out of the box. And then it's going to deteriorate over time.

But a lot of the things that we do in life are actually like software. And if you buy a piece of software, you actually expect that the creator of that software is going to fix bugs over time, add features, think of new ways to do things. So that if you buy a piece of software and there's an update the day afterwards, you don't think to yourself, well, that's terrible. These people didn't know what they were doing. You think to yourself, that's great. I'm so glad that they're improving this.

And so much of what we do in life is actually the success of that lies in our ability to fix bugs and add features rather than in having something that is perfect when we roll it out on day one. And so we have to expect that we are going to monitor what we're doing and change and adapt rather than necessarily get it right on day one.

Thank you so much for sharing that, Art. And I wanted to ask you a couple questions about human dimensions of organization. I'll just refer to it as HDO. I was reading your 2022 commencement speech you gave to HDO. And in this keynote, you emphasize the importance of bringing a human-centered perspective to the challenges that the world faces today. Next week, I actually have tickets to see the band live play.

And I've known the gentleman in live since I was in kindergarten because we're all from York, Pennsylvania. And they've got this great song that came off their first album called The Beauty of Gray. And this is one of the things that you talked about in this commencement speech is the gray that exists in the world today, which is really the nuance and complexity of human relationships.

can you share some strategies for the listeners and how they can effectively navigate these gray areas in their life thanks for that question i really love that and gray is such an important concept i think that we all like to have a certain amount of confidence that we understand the world and leaders often want to point in a particular direction and say this is the way that we have to go this is the way we have to do things and i think that that

We have to navigate the complexity of how do we communicate effectively that we believe we can make progress on something while at the same time recognizing that any situation we engage with, particularly when it involves people, is going to have complexity. It's going to have differences in goals that people have. It's going to have potential disputes among people.

And so part of what we need to do is to remain open to hearing new information, open to recognizing when something that we're doing isn't going quite as we planned, and to really allow ourselves to adapt. I think that's one.

Another thing that I think is absolutely crucial is to recognize that you do not have to pursue getting credit for the work that you do. Harry S. Truman is the one who was quoted as saying, "It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." And I think there's something deep about that that's very important.

When you want to get credit for things, you will fight tooth and nail for your idea to be the one that ultimately wins out. Whereas if you recognize that it doesn't really matter who gets the credit as long as the right things happen, then you remain open to hearing things that may contradict what it is that you'd like to see happen, open to that adaptation.

And the paradox is if you don't pursue the credit, but just do the work, then ultimately often you are in a position to get credit for the things that have gone well. So you don't necessarily need to pursue it. What you need to pursue is the attempt to get things right, to recognize that complexity and to listen to the things that the world is trying to tell you.

I love that answer and there is the beauty of the gray, but you need to know how to approach it. Another thing that you mentioned in this commencement speech was the value of empathy. And I was recently interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk about a new children's book that he had coming out where one of the core things he was trying to teach children about was empathy as a superpower.

However, you also warned that empathy also has potential misuse. How can leaders ensure that their empathetic actions are grounded in ethical principles, which kind of ties into this gray area that you were just talking about? And what steps can they take to avoid the pitfalls of empathy being used for ill?

Thanks for that. It's such an interesting thing. I mean, the willingness to understand other people, where they're coming from, what they're struggling with is incredibly important for trying to develop a community that can work together to solve a problem.

And I think that's where the power of empathy comes in, is that recognition that you may be in a different place than I am at this moment, and that I can acknowledge that and acknowledge difficulties that you are facing or goals that you're trying to achieve, or even sometimes successes that you've had that I may not have had. All of those, I think, are powerful. But

There's also a danger in trying to follow what other people want rather than really trying to ultimately bring about what you believe is a desirable outcome based on your understanding of the world, the values that you hold, and really that you need to create desirable long-term outcomes. I think if you look at where some of the most significant

problems that humanity faces arise from, they tend to come from pursuing things that are expedient in the short term and not necessarily things that are desirable in the long term. And I think that willingness to take a step back and ask yourself, what is the most desirable long-term outcome that I have that will allow me to achieve things that fit with my values? That gives you an ethical bedrock for moving forward.

And then from there, understanding how the people around you will react to that, where they come from, how the desirable outcome you're hoping to achieve relates to where people are right now. Empathy can be really powerful there, but it shouldn't necessarily be something that drives your decision about the goal you're trying to achieve.

I think that's a great way to look at it because when it gets into those types of decisions, it can really lead you from not looking at the black and white aspects of it and prejudice you in a certain way. Yeah.

Well, Art, I'm going to steer the conversation in a different direction. So one of the things you are best known for is being the co-host with Bob Duke of Two Guys on Your Head, which is a radio show and podcast where you tackle psychological insights. What are some of the most surprising things you've learned since doing the show?

So Two Guys in Your Head is just a blast. There's three of us really involved in this. My co-host, Bob Duke, who's a psychologist, who's also a musician, a music professor here at the University of Texas. And then our wonderful producer, Rebecca McEnroy, who is just endlessly curious about things. And she's also the one who takes a rambling 45-minute conversation that Bob and I have and turns it into a seven-and-a-half-minute conversation that sounds like we knew what we were talking about.

I would say there are several things that have emerged from doing this show. And one of them is just the power of being around people that you like. So our show's been on for 11 years now, 11 years this month here, as we're taping this now in August of 2024. Our show's been on for 11 years.

And people do seem to like it. And I think it has as much to do with the fact that Bob and Rebecca and I like each other so much and just enjoy each other's company. And it gives people a chance to hang around in an enjoyable conversation. And I'm not sure that I appreciated that as much when we first started doing this as I do now. But the other thing that I find really fascinating about doing something like this is that

I've always known that psychology was everywhere, that we're guaranteed to bump into other people. But it really has been interesting to look at the variety of aspects of people's lives in which we can begin to get insights from thinking about human psychology. And so this ranges from very complicated things like parenting and grief to

and dealing with the loss of a job or an injury, things that can be very big issues, all the way down to the very mundane things like why is it that people enjoy kitten videos? And what is it about humor that makes life a little bit more worth living? And the opportunity to explore on a weekly basis, both the profound at times and the mundane, I think it's just been fascinating.

Well, I wanted to explore it a little bit deeper. So earlier in the month, you did an episode on second chances. And I think this is a really important topic. Can you explain what you guys discussed during that episode?

Thanks. I think that we tend to focus on people who get it right the first time. And certainly, as we were taping that, the Summer Olympics were going on. And of course, the Olympics are fundamentally about people rising to a particular occasion in the moment. When you watch the gymnastics competition, for example, these gymnasts have one chance

to really get it right, to do their floor routine or the balance beam. You've got that one chance. And of course, that's part of what makes competitions like that so enthralling. But in almost every other facet of our life,

we are going to make mistakes. We're going to get stuff wrong. We're going to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, do things that lower people's trust in us. And in the end, I think we have to do two things. On the one hand, we who make mistakes have to be willing to own those mistakes, to correct those mistakes, to do better in the future than we did in the past. But we also have to create

an aura of forgiveness, an opportunity for people to have that second chance, to acknowledge that people do make mistakes, do the wrong thing, and that those are growth opportunities and that we have to give people that opportunity to grow. What we want to do is not necessarily to force people to get everything right at the start, but really to ensure that we give people that opportunity to get it right in the end.

I've recently had a great guest on my podcast. That episode will have aired before this one comes on, but the gentleman I'm talking about is Dan Knosson. And Dan went to the Naval Academy, became a Navy SEAL, and then he had just gotten to Afghanistan and was on one of his first excursions where he was learning to do a takeover from another platoon commander when he stepped on an IED. And unfortunately, he lost both his legs.

but he would he tells me in this episode how it actually gave him a second chance in life to do things he never would have done he is now a multi-time gold medalist in the paralympics was actually the male athlete of the year in the 2018 paralympics and he's also gone back to harvard and gotten two master's degrees and is living a life that he never would have lived

had it not been for this unfortunate incident that happened to him. So I love that you covered that. And I'm going to ask you about an episode that you did a while ago. And I have been really pondering as a speaker about,

whether to take the plunge and do a TED Talk or not. And you had this really interesting episode that has been one of the most popular or unpopular, depending on what side of the camp you sit on,

for your listeners. Can you share what inspired that episode and why it sparked such a strong reaction? Yeah, I mean, there was TED Talks. I think people have a love-hate relationship with those. And I think we came down, I think maybe a little bit more on the hate side of things. I think that there are several intersecting things that led us to be a little maybe snarky about TED Talks. But I think part of it is

that we do live in an era of soundbites. And I think that to believe that you can say something deeply profound that is going to be true in large swaths of human experience in the span of 15 minutes, there's a lot of hubris there. And I think you can actually come to believe your own press a little bit when you do that. So I think part of this is, you know, recognizing that we have to begin to put brackets

on the kinds of pronouncements we make. I tell people all the time that the answer to every difficult question in psychology is it depends. And the wisdom in life comes from understanding what it depends on and under what circumstances something is true. So we were talking a little bit about Angela Duckworth's wonderful work

on grit and the people say, well, is it good to have grit? And the answer is it depends, right? If the situation is one that will ultimately succumb to that passionate persistence, then be gritty. And if not, then give up. And I think that it's that nuance takes more than 15 minutes to convey.

The other thing, though, is that it goes back to this issue that I was talking about earlier about the illusion of explanatory depth. And I think that the people who give TED Talks, I think, are generally speaking, very bright and have deep understandings of their topic.

They speak very fluently and consequently you can leave a TED talk not only inspired but believing you understand something really complicated when in fact you have simply witnessed someone else who understands something really complicated speak for 15 minutes.

And so I think we also have to hold ourselves accountable for the details of things that we learn about and not just have that illusion of explanatory depth. So when we hear somebody say something interesting, actually make sure we can repeat it back for ourselves and make sure that we understand it. And if we have to do a little bit of additional reading or speaking to someone else in order to make sure we understand it, then that turns out to be something that we have to be willing to do. And I'm not sure that the TED format always promotes that.

I have to agree with you. And it's such a nuanced thing because there's such a big difference between big TED stages and smaller community stages on how much focus you get. And as I've been researching it, it's also can be very expensive to do these. Bob Waldinger, who you probably are familiar with, put out a great book last year called The Good Life. He's been the head of the Harvard

study on adult aging now, the latest caretaker for that great study that they've been doing. But he did a TED talk that went viral. What people don't understand in the background is he hired a coach to help him prepare for that and worked on this for over a year where they tested these concepts again and again.

to figure out what was going to play, what was the core messaging, how was the audience going to work with it, and what story should he bring into it, a whole bunch of other things. But in order to do that, a lot of these people who help people land these speeches are charging like 25, 35, 40 grand, which the vast majority of people can't afford to do. So I understand why this is such an emotional topic.

Absolutely. I mean, it takes a lot of work to be able to do anything pithily. It's, I think we often don't appreciate it. I mean, we were talking about music earlier. You go watch a great band perform and you don't see all of the effort that went into being able to create that performance in that moment. You just see them play. And so you think, wow, that person's really talented, but you

Yeah, they are, but they're also hardworking. They've also put in a lot of work on that. And I think being able to say something that's deep, but also accessible in a short period of time, also difficult. And you're right. One of the ways to do that, because this has become literally a cottage industry, is that there are people who will help you to do that and they'll charge for it. And I'm not sure that...

I'm not sure that being glib is ultimately the goal that we're looking for. I would much rather engage with people who can ultimately articulate what they're trying to say, may not be able to do it in a memorable way in 15 minutes, but can help to push a conversation forward in ways that would ultimately be productive. Absolutely. And one of my favorite TED Talks ever was the one Susan Cain did on

quiet, the power of introverts. And I was talking to her about it and she prepared herself, but she told me she rehearsed that thing about 150 times before she gave it. I mean, you just never know how your content is going to play, but I think watching her and some of the others who've gone viral, you can get some good pointers on how to differentiate yourself.

Oh, absolutely. I wrote a piece for Harvard Business Review a long time ago on the lessons that public speakers can learn from stand-up comedians.

And one of those is that if you have to work it out on the road a little bit as well, I mean, not only do you have to practice a ton, but you need to practice pieces of what you're saying in front of audiences to know, is this phrasing successful? Does it land? Does it actually help people to better understand what I'm doing? And you can't be afraid to make mistakes. You have to actually try some things out that won't land.

and really work that out. So I do think that in any sphere of public communication, you've got to be willing to try stuff out and ultimately to hold on to those elements of the way that you communicate something that have been successful in the past and use those as a way of communicating those difficult concepts to people.

Absolutely. And one of the ways I get myself back into speaking conditioning is to do improv. So I agree with what you're saying. Yeah, I was a drama geek in high school and that opportunity to be up on stage doing things I think was incredibly inspiring.

I think a lot of people, and it's actually something else we talked about on Two Guys on Your Head, a lot of people are afraid of public speaking. And I think one of the most important things to do if you have a fear of public speaking is to recognize that your fear is misplaced because a lot of people feel like, well, the worst case scenario is I'm going to give this terrible talk and then everyone's going to remember it forever and laugh at me. And really, if you give a bad talk, the truth is no one's going to remember it.

And so you've got nothing to worry about. I do Toastmasters too, and that's exactly one of the things you learn. Speaking of you and Bob, I wanted to jump to a book that the two of you wrote in 2016 called Brain Briefs. And in it, you explore this wide range of fascinating questions about human behavior. I mean, quirky things like why we love kitten videos or whether brain games actually work. As you guys were writing this book,

You came across some really quirky aspects of our behavior. Are there some surprising or counter-intuitive findings that you got when you were writing the book? That's an interesting question. I actually enjoyed the discussion of cat videos, kitten videos, because really we did a deep dive into it. It's a weird topic. The beauty of a kitten video is it's this incredibly concentrated dosage of joy.

Where kittens themselves, which are these juvenile forms of animals, generally speaking, are cute, then kittens have all of it. They've got the big eyes and the really symmetric face combined with just the right amount of awkwardness that teeters on the edge of being dangerous but isn't because cats are really good at holding their balance and falling and things like that. And so you get 100%

of the joy associated with something without any thing that is, that they will drag you down. And it's just, what I found fascinating about that is recognizing the degree to which this art form, the kitten video, is like the Doritos of video.

in the sense that it just fires on every cylinder that is designed to bring you joy in the moment, though it has no lasting nutritional value from a long-term learning standpoint. I love it. And thank you so much for sharing that, Art. And I'm going to ask you just about one more of your books. And I know we're going back in time because this book came out in 2012. But in your book, Smart Thinking, you make an important distinction that

really was something I wanted to learn more about between smart thinking and raw intelligence. How does this understanding of this difference empower people to be more effective thinkers, even if they don't feel like they have innate intelligence?

So psychologists over the years have defined intelligence in multiple ways, but one of the ones we're most familiar with is the concept of IQ, which essentially attempts to measure what you could think of as cognitive fitness, meaning how fast, how coordinated is that brain activity that ultimately supports your thinking?

And having a fit, coordinated brain is great. I highly recommend it. But that alone does not determine your effectiveness in particular situations. In fact, psychologists have long distinguished between what they call fluid intelligence, which is essentially these kinds of measures of brain fitness.

and crystallized intelligence. It's not a term I love, but it is the term that they use, which is really a measure of how much ultimately these are related in the sense that the better your brain works, the easier you find it to learn things.

but all of us can choose to learn and can choose to create areas of expertise and to eliminate that illusion of explanatory depth. We can all choose to do that regardless of exactly how fit and coordinated our brains are. And ultimately, the more you know,

And the more that you find ways to bring that knowledge to bear on new situations, the more successful you tend to be in thinking situations. It is the ability to find something that you know about that will give you leverage and purchase for

for addressing a complex situation that ultimately enables people to be successful in lots of different kinds of situations. And so you don't necessarily have to have the fittest, fastest brain

you can make up for a tremendous amount by knowing a lot and being willing to frame the problems that you're studying or addressing in as many different ways as possible. And the reason that framing matters is because once you have information in memory, the way you get it out is by asking your brain a question.

So if I were to say to you, remember a birthday party you attended, you're now able to think about a birthday party that might involve little hats and cake and pinatas. You're able to do that because your brain serves up information just by being asked a question. Now, the fascinating thing is if I were to say to you, no, don't think about a birthday party for a kid. Think about a birthday party you attended for an adult.

which might then involve a different set of beverages and people dressed in a different way, you're able to immediately switch what you remember just because we changed the questions.

And what that tells us is if I get stuck solving a problem, it means I haven't yet been reminded of anything that's going to help me to solve that problem. And the lever I have at my disposal is to change the description of the problem so that I bring something else to mind. And that's something that we can do regardless of how fast and fit our brains are. Along those same lines, when we change the question that we're asking, like you were just talking about,

I think that's an important thing to do when it comes to uncertainty. And in today's world, uncertainty seems to be the norm. What does cognitive science tell us about how we make decisions under uncertainty? And what's your advice to listeners on how they can improve that process?

So I should say that upfront, it's really important to recognize that there are different things that lead to uncertainty. So sometimes uncertainty exists because there's information that might possibly be knowable by somebody.

But we don't know it at the moment and maybe don't have the time to find it out. And then there are times where we know as much as possible about the situation. We just don't know how things are going to come out. So, for example, if I roll a die, I know everything I know about the situation. If it's a fair die, I know there's a one sixth probability of each of the outcomes. I just don't know which one's going to happen.

And so part of what we want to do in uncertain situations is to make sure that we are aware of the source of the uncertainty. What is it? Is there information I don't know? And can I delay the decision a little bit to find out more about that? Or do I know as much as I can possibly know, but I have to now await the outcome of things?

And part of the reason that matters is, of course, we don't like uncertainty very much. So we often try to ignore some of those sources of uncertainty or believe that things are going to come out more favorably than perhaps they will.

And I think that we have to be willing to put contingency plans in place when there's uncertainty, when there are outcomes that could occur that may be somewhat unlikely but still possible that may not go the way we planned. I think, again, this gets back to this idea of being adaptable. I think that in the face of uncertainty, it is the most adaptable people who ultimately are also the most successful people.

And then Art, finally, I wanted to ask about the future of cognitive science. Where do you see the field heading in the next five to 10 years and what advancements are you most excited about? I think there's two places where the field is really going to advance. I think on the one hand, we continue to deepen our understanding of the way that brains work. And I think that a lot of machine learning techniques, not necessarily generative AI techniques, but broader kinds of machine learning techniques,

are going to give us increasing understanding about brain circuitry. If you've looked at studies from the areas like cognitive neuroscience, often the initial work was really focused on, hey, this brain area seems to be associated with this particular cognitive process.

But ultimately, what we need to understand is the patterns of activity in circuits that are driving what's going on in cognitive processing. And I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of confluence between a lot of work in machine learning, much of which is related to cognitive science, and this work on brain imaging and different ways of assessing brain activity. That's going to be a really fruitful area of research moving forward.

And then I think the other thing is that there's going to be some tremendous advances in artificial intelligence on the generative side over the next decade that are going to reflect

strands of research that have been going on for the last 20 or 30 years. So a lot of the advances in generative AI we're seeing right now are really coming out of these large language models that involve a particular set of techniques that emerged out of what is called programming that whose roots go back 40 years.

But there are also a lot of systems that are more symbolic in nature, things like Watson that IBM had developed. And at the point where we are better able to merge those kinds of symbolic systems with some of these generative systems, and again, that's research that emerges out of AI and cognitive science.

That those that merger of approaches, I think, is going to add an additional layer of of complexity and the kind of reasoning that machines can do that will ultimately push that field forward. And a lot of that is squarely in the area of cognitive science. It's interesting. I have a friend who's a neurologist who tells me that.

as he has started to use fMRIs, he's almost saying it's like looking into someone's soul. It just gives him such a different perspective on what's ticking inside a person's brain. Yeah. Well, Art, it was such an honor to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for the listeners. Please check out his great podcast.

his great books. I brought up a couple of the books that Art has written, but he also has 150 other research papers plus that you can also go to and check out. And he's a Google scholar. So Art, it was such a wonderful pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much.

Well, John, it was absolutely my pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate the chance to talk with you and engage with your audience. Wow. What an incredible conversation with Dr. Art Markman, his insights into cognitive science and how we can harness the power of our minds to make better decisions, shift behaviors and improve

our overall thinking are truly transformational. One of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is the importance of aligning our habits and mindset with our long-term goals. By being intentional with the way we approach decisions and changes in our lives, we can tap into the full potential of our minds and create lasting positive impact. So I want to leave you with this. What's one area of your life where you could improve your decision-making? How can you start aligning your daily habits with your long-term vision?

Remember, small, consistent changes can lead to big results over time. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review. It helps us continue bringing these powerful conversations to you. And if you know someone who could benefit from this episode, share it with them. You never know how much one conversation can change someone's life. You can find links to everything we discussed today in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

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We'll be diving into the art of persuasion, decision-making, and how to harness influence for good. It's going to be an episode you don't want to miss. When you can reach somebody who wants to do a DIY home improvement project and you make it easy, you give them the information that they need, the tools, maybe you give them discounts. It's the opposite of

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