How To Build The Career You Want - Professor Of Behavioural Science Dr Grace Lordan
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Hello and welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfilment at work and in life.

My name is Ali, and in each episode I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. In this week's episode of Deep Dive, I sit down with Dr Grace Laudan. Grace is an associate professor in behavioural science at the London School of Economics, an expert advisor to the UK government as a member of the Skills and Productivity Board, and her academic writings have been published in international academic journals. Earlier this year, Grace published her book Think Big, Take

take small steps and build the future you want. If I were to be a doctor, if I were to be a trader, what would be the tasks that I would be doing on a day-to-day basis? And would I ultimately end up enjoying those tasks? In the conversation, we deep dive into Grace's book and tons of behavioral science concepts, including how our emotions influence decision-making, the relationship between gender and risk aversion, why we procrastinate and our fear of failure. The one thing about human beings is that we're really good actually at rebounding.

So when we go through negative experience and we allow ourselves to go through negative experiences, we realize, actually, it's not as bad as I thought. There are other options later. And we tend to be very, very resilient. And when we're anticipating failure or anticipating losses, we underestimate that resilience. So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Dr. Lorden, thank you very much for coming on the show. You have written this book.

Think big, which is extremely good. I finished it on Audible this morning and we were talking about your kind of woes with recording the audiobook, which is very good. Like I thought the way you were narrating it, it was very like expressive.

A lot of the audiobooks that I listen to are usually fantasy fiction. It's a very non-expressive narrator, but so I could really hear the passion that was coming through in your voice as you were narrating it. I did some drama classes as a kid, so I think that they came into good use for the first time ever since I've left school. That's very handy. Yeah, so lots of stuff I want to talk about in the book. Before we get started, you are apparently on the government advisory body for productivity and skills. Right.

which is very cool. What does that mean and how does one get into the government advisory body for productivity?

It's a great question, actually. So it sits under the Secretary of State reporting into Boris, and it's part of the levelling up strategy. And the idea is really to think about skills of the future and how they will be delivered in the UK. So Boris has come out and basically said that he doesn't think education should just be about secondary school and should just be about young people going to university anymore. It should be that you get to go to university when you're 25, 35, 45.

And I guess part of our job is really thinking about how those skills can actually be delivered and looking to see actually, given what we have already, whether or not there's some people who are doing better than others in delivering skills.

Okay. So how did you get this job? Does the government email you? Does someone knock on your door? How does that work? This was an open competition. So they basically advertise, they ask for things like, you know, backgrounds in economics, backgrounds in labour. And I think from their perspective, my background in economics coupled with

the behavioural science stuff and actually having written the book on kind of thinking about careers from an individual perspective was quite appealing. So we've ended up being, we're six people, six experts in the committee. One person's an education specialist, four traditional economists. And then there's kind of me who fits between the kind of behavioural economics moulds.

Yeah. So you're an associate professor of behavioral sciences at LSE. Is that right? One thing that intrigued me as I was reading about in reading about your background, like I wouldn't have thought that behavioral sciences in terms of like, you know, time management and productivity and procrastination, some of the stuff you talk about in the book that feels to me as like a lay person that knows nothing to not quite fit within economics. So like how, how does, how does behavioral science fit into economics as a field?

So, I mean, if you think about the simple lesson that you might learn if you take an economics class, we learn that when people are making decisions, they weigh up the cost, the benefits and the risks. And I know you have a medical background, so you can appreciate that if someone is choosing to have a Big Mac today, that you might necessarily believe that they're weighing up the costs in 10 years time and the second Big Mac the next day and the third Big Mac.

And that's really where I kind of come from is thinking, how do people actually make decisions? But how can we tweak that model to really understand human decision making in a much better way than economists do and in a way that's actually useful for policymakers, which I think that a lot of psychologists fail. So I kind of put myself in the center where

We want to be able to advise government. I want to be able to advise firms on what they should actually do to make people happier, more productive, whatever is their goal in a particular moment. And to do that, we fundamentally need to understand decision making. And the second thing that's really important to understand is the intent action gap.

So why is it that I, as Grace would say, I will do things today, but very often don't end up doing them. And, you know, whether we take about education, you know, people who enter education often don't study as much as they should. People often choose courses that are particularly bad for them, even though they say that they might actually go another path. So again, it's really getting down to the nitty gritty of how can we alter decision making in a way that's not paternalistic, but is giving people information to help them go in the right direction. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, the intent-action gap. I think we've all felt that in our lives multiple times a day. As I was reading this, I started listening to your book about four or five days ago, and the very first chapter talks about this idea of me plus. I wonder if you can elaborate. What does me plus mean?

So if you, I mean, if you go back to the economics, we're really good, I think, at making, at helping ourselves in the present day. So we know what makes us happy in the moment, but very often the things that we have to invest in to give our future selves a better future, we don't often do. So what I like people to do is to think about where would they like to be if it all worked out? So if they threw out, you know, loss aversion, if they threw out fear of failure, where will they actually end up being? And have that be their me plus.

But before they commit to that being their me plus, really think about what will that me plus actually do? Because I've noticed a lot of times when I talk to people about careers, they're attached to a label. So they want to be a trader or an investment banker or they want to be a doctor or they're attached to a lifestyle. So they want to be able to go on a particular vacation or buy a particular car.

And the kind of Think Big journey is really thinking about if I were to be a doctor, if I were to be a trader, what would be the tasks that I would be doing on a day-to-day basis? And would I ultimately end up enjoying those tasks? So the activities that I'm going to spend the time in.

And there's two reasons for that. So one, it makes you happier to actually do tasks that you like, which feels like a no brainer. But secondly, if you're engaged in tasks that you like, you tend to be more successful. And it's the second that I'm really interested in and kind of getting people into jobs where they feel that they've reached the success that they want. Okay, interesting. And do you think,

When it comes to being engaged in tasks that you like, some people say it's a case of find the thing that fits within your values, your personality. And once you find that thing, then you'll find it fun. And then there's another school of thought that says, well, you know, the whole finding something that you're passionate about is actually kind of hard to do. So think about the stuff that you're actually doing and find ways to make it more interesting for yourself.

How do you feel about those two different camps? I don't really feel that they're different. So, you know, so people are claiming now that they choose companies based on the values the companies might have. And I think that's true in the same way that we choose a company based on a salary. But when you're actually in the job, what tends to matter with respect to productivity and happiness is how you feel in those tasks in that moment.

And if I'm working for a company that's saving the environment, but I've been treated really badly in a microculture in order to save that environment, there's a couple of companies come to mind when I think about that, then I'm not going to be productive and I'm not going to be happy. And I'm actually likely to leave that job. So it's more about going beyond thinking, what is the company's mission? What is my personality? And what is the microculture of the team that I'm going to be working in and

will that make me happy? Will I be connected to the mission because my team is connected to the mission? It's very hard to assess in advance when you're applying for a job. It's really hard. It is. It's really, really hard. And I think then if you bring it down to the tasks and asking at an interview, what will I be doing on a day-to-day basis? So when I come to work for you, Ali, what would I be doing on a day-to-day basis as part of your team? So if you could imagine me on a Monday, how will I spend my time?

The fact that you as a manager have thought about that, firstly, will tell me that you're a good manager because you'll know actually what you want the person to do. And you're not just hiring blindly. But the second is having that information allows me to make my mind up. Because if I like the tasks, I'm probably going to like the team. Okay. Yeah, that's very interesting. So that was a big...

part of the message that I took away from the Me Plus stuff. And the way it manifested in my life when I read it, I was thinking, okay, you know, let's engage with this. Like, what's kind of, what does Me Plus look like? And initially I was thinking, oh, you know, I'd really like to have six pack abs. And then I came across the bit where you were like, no, no, forget about that. Focus on like, what do the tasks look like? And I was like, okay, you know what? What I want Me Plus to do is to be able to exercise every day and to have fun doing it.

Yeah.

Is that the sort of thing that you get a lot when you're doing this sort of research, that process rather than outcome kind of thing? So I kind of write a lot for kind of people who mightn't have made it yet or people who have plateaued. So if you take the exercising analogy from somebody who's contemplating doing the kind of a 5K run rather than somebody who is contemplating doing the London Marathon and is really well placed for that. And I think for the person who hasn't done exercise for a while or the person who has really invested in their career for a while, the worst thing they can do is do too much. Yeah.

So if you hadn't invested for a while, the worst thing you could do is go to the gym for three hours. You might get through it today, but the chances of repeating that are really, really small. And I think kind of the one of the big powerful messages underlying Think Big is whether you're focused on your health or whether you're focused on your career. It's those small actions that you take today will determine yourself in two years time, three years time and four years time. And actually by throwing out the idea.

that you're going to reinvent yourself in 30 days is really, really powerful because you're much more likely to stick to it. You can accomplish an extraordinary amount in 12 months, very little in 12 minutes or a very short period of time. I've been making videos semi-themed around productivity for the last four years and a big chunk of the advice boils down to consistency and just showing up and taking small actions repeatedly and in a way not really worrying so much about the ultimate goal of

um and these days i teach i uh teach courses helping people become like youtubers and stuff and and the way you become a successful youtuber is you just make one or two videos every week for the next like five years um but no one sticks to it for that long because they have like the oh i must hit a certain subscriber count i must hit a certain like view count and my view on this is that having like in a way those outcome metrics the ones that are outside of our control are kind of unhelpful especially at the start of a journey do you have any thoughts on on that point

Well, when you were talking, it actually reminds me, I watched a video of yours on compounding. So when people are choosing to invest, we accept compounding very, very easily, right? So we accept the idea actually that, you know, if we leave money in for a very long period of time, it's going to compound. So we're probably going to be okay in our pensions.

And it's exactly the same here when it comes to your career, like those very small things that you're going to do today. And I ask for a commitment of 90 minutes a week, which for most people, regardless of how pressurized you feel, is very, very possible. That should compound once you've chosen tasks that align with your me plus relatively quickly. Okay, nice.

90 minutes a week. That's like 13 minutes a day-ish. Yes. Very doable. It is. For most things, yeah. One bit that I was going to ask you about that I thought maybe I disagreed with was you talk, like the title of the book is Think Big. Yeah. And the vibe I got from the chapter around goals is that you're keen on people setting, or perhaps not, but like one camp of people in this sphere is encouraging people to set these big, hairy, audacious goals and,

And then figuring out the small steps you can take to get there. But then there's another camp, and this is sort of where I think I am, whereby I think, in a way, I feel maybe setting goals is a bit overrated. Because if you're setting a goal, then...

Essentially, to me, that feels like a contract to be unhappy until you hit the goal. And then you hit the goal and then you have this fleeting sense of like, oh, I hit a million subscribers. Cool. You know, my day-to-day hasn't really changed, et cetera, et cetera. So the way I kind of think about goals is I try and throw goals out the window and instead just focus on those, like, what do I actually want to do? But I don't know if I'm just, like, BSing myself. Well.

Well, you're doing okay. So that seems to be working for you. I mean, I think so. So for people who read the book, the goal is really there to serve two purposes. So one, so that you start investing in your career. So it helps to find the tasks this week. And two, so that you actually bring your future self forward. So you're not always investing in activities that just serve you in the present day.

But in the book, I do talk about the idea that every Sunday, so every kind of, well, I pick Sunday because it's the start of my week, that you reflect on how the week previous went and you look to see whether or not there are new opportunities that you should be pivoting your goal for.

So I see the think big part of the book as really giving people a direction so they can set off on a journey and they start walking and more interesting things might actually come along, but they make a conscious decision to follow those interesting things. So then they go off on a slightly different journey. So yeah.

If you take your own career, for example, it was probably a great idea that you studied medicine in Cambridge, right? And now you have an entirely different career, but you are using some of the skills that you actually learned in the university. So in that particular case, you would have sat back and said, actually, do I really want to pivot and do a large pivot? And the answer would have been yes.

But had you never gone into medical school, maybe you would never have started walking in this direction and come to the destination. So it's really about movement. Oh, okay. That's very interesting. I was having these thoughts. It was a few weeks ago and I was on a date and we were kind of driving around afterwards, just like chatting.

And I was kind of thinking that like driving around without a destination, it's just like, if it felt a bit wrong. And so I just put the destination of the, like the McDonald's drive-thru in the sat nav and it wasn't really about the destination. It was about the, okay, I've got a destination now. Now I know what the, what the journey is. And when we got to the McDonald's drive-thru, it was like, whatever, it's a McDonald's drive-thru. Like the, the destination is actually not that important, but the point is I was thinking, huh, maybe having the destination is,

lets you kind of set the direction for your journey. And then you can always change your mind as you go further down the line. And as humans, we love certainty. So even if we've created for ourselves, this is the goal that we're moving towards, then we change our mind. For the period of time that we're moving, there is certainty. One of the biggest things that hampers people's growth and stops them kind of getting to the place where they probably deserve to be is that they feel that the journey is actually uncertain. So by kind of having that destination allows you to kind of move towards it.

Oh, okay. Yeah. This reminds me of advice I got when I was in med school where like once you've done your, once you start your clinical years, the question everyone asks is, oh, what specialty do you want to do? And the honest answer for the vast majority of people is I don't freaking know. I have no idea. Like, you know, there are those odd like weirdos that I've decided on the age, at the age of three, they want to be a neurosurgeon. But for most of us, it's like, honestly, I don't know. I just want to kind of get a feel of different specialties and kind of

And the advice that one of the consultants who I really respected gave me was that, like, honestly, just pick something and start moving towards it. Because then you will start doing things that will build up your CV and you'll start actually finding opportunities your way. And then if you want to change your mind, it's much easier to change direction when you're moving forward rather than when you're stationary. Yeah.

And you learn about yourself as well. What do I like and what do I dislike? Which you won't do if you're just kind of standing still. So kind of, you know, I write about what should you do if you have no idea what you want to do in the future, where a lot of young people are and actually people who are later in life. And again, it's really about thinking, what do I kind of like doing now? So let's do some more of that and move towards the goal.

And then on the way being really reflective, am I enjoying these tasks or am I just doing it because I like the idea of becoming a surgeon or becoming a lawyer or becoming another job title? And I really want people to move away from the second. You know, I kind of think with the future of work, we have this disruption where people who are able to kind of pivot, know what their skills are, job craft, which you've mentioned already, it will really stand to them.

Yeah, so it's like you're moving away from being and more towards doing. Yes. Being a doctor, but versus like, what does the day-to-day of practicing medicine actually look like? And does this sound like the sort of thing that is my idea of fun right now? And I guess...

I guess like it's kind of, you know, there's that thing in the research about it's hard for us to predict what will make us happy in the future. But it's a reasonable first approximation that the sort of stuff I enjoy doing now, like talking to people like you or like making videos is likely to also probably make me happy in the future. And if it doesn't, then, well, I can just change course. Yeah, this is like a grid search. So what, you know, what the government should have done in COVID and some governments did incredibly well was what we call this grid search strategy where they get new data.

they update their decision-making based on the data and they're willing to go backwards or they're willing to go left and they're willing to go right. And always having that openness to a change of direction. And I think if we kind of bring that into careers that, you know, really we don't know our preferences very well. We've watched some TV when we're young. So depending on what you watch, that might actually ultimately determine your career. Maybe you move towards that if you have no idea, but always paying attention to, am I enjoying the tasks?

do I feel purpose? If I was doing this in five years time, would I be really, really happy? You know, my director in the LSE, Manoush Safik, she spoke to me kind of about careers and kind of really thinking five years ahead of time, what's your next challenge going to be? Because by the time five years comes, you're not going to be able to do that challenge unless you've spent a decent amount of time doing activities that makes you credible to be that person standing in that room and really taking that approach, I think, can help people.

Okay. Yeah, interesting. We're going to take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode. And that is Brilliant. I've been using Brilliant for the last two plus years. They're a fantastic platform for learning maths, science and computer science with engaging and interactive online courses. And the great thing about Brilliant is that they really teach stuff from a very first principles based approach. It's almost like the way that we were taught in

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You mentioned that you often

you've written about and you speak to people that have no idea at all what they want to do. How should someone in that position go about figuring this out? And I kind of ask because I feel like I'm kind of in that position right now where it's like, I have all these options in front of me and I don't really know which one to pick, but like, yeah. So I think for somebody who has no idea what they want to do and who doesn't necessarily have options, it really is about bringing it back to what are the activities that I would like to do and how can I get the skills to actually do those activities?

And then going about spending time engaged in those activities. So maybe you want to do some more public speaking, you know, trying to get on panels, trying to spend some time with people who might be actually able to get you into the room where you can do some public speaking in the future, going to talks and studying what makes a good speaker and what doesn't make a good speaker if you really, really have really have no experience.

And then maybe there are some skills that you have to pay for. And I do say in Think Big, for people who do not know what they want to do, I would avoid committing to a four-year degree or an expensive master's program and really use the resources that are out there that are either cheap or free. Because there's so many things that we can actually learn now without having to set foot into a traditional classroom. Even though I work in a university and we have wonderful degrees, I think you need to be certain to spend that amount of money. And then I think for someone like you, I think doing time audits can really help.

So during the week, writing down what you're actually doing, which you probably do already, but writing down whether or not you actually enjoy doing them. Did you feel firstly a sense of purpose that it was kind of leading you to a better place in five years time? Or did you feel fun in the moment?

And then if there are activities that aren't kind of investing in you in five years time and they're not giving you fun in the moment, consider job crafting, which I think you're in a good position to do, where you remove those activities and do more of the things that are giving you purpose and more of the things that are giving you fun today. Okay, interesting.

So time audit and thinking about was this thing fun? And if not, was it at least purposeful? Yes. And if not, why the hell am I doing it? Yes. And I don't journal at all. And I really just put these marks next to my diary. So after the event, I'll edit the calendar and I'll say, yeah, I enjoyed that. That was good. That's going to pay me forward in the future as well. Or actually, that was really a drain of my energy. And let's avoid things like that in the future. One thing that I often...

kind of clash with my mum about is the idea of changing one's mind and making plans and then changing them a few weeks to months later. So for example, last year I had decided that, you know what, at the stage my career is currently at, I'm considering moving to America to continue to practice medicine and started gearing myself up to take those exams and, you know,

made the mistake, maybe not, it had a good clickbait title of making a video called I'm Moving to America, where I announced my plans for like moving to America. And then as I started preparing for this exam and realized how much work it was gonna be, and then as the YouTube channel started to explode, and I thought, hang on, maybe this, you know, moving to America, you know, it will be four years of residency,

there's a reasonable amount of hard work. Maybe it'll be fun. And at the end of it, you've become a doctor who makes 400K a year or something like that. But I saw, I could see the trajectory of the YouTube channel being more interesting than that point. And so I kind of pivoted and thought, screw this America thing. But now anytime, almost anytime I speak to someone, they will have seen that video and they're like, hey, I thought you were moving to America. Especially my mom. She often says that, hey, you know, you said you were moving to America and then you changed your mind. Yeah. Do you think there's,

Or to what extent is there value in picking a goal and then sticking to it rather than just like willy-nilly changing one's mind?

I know you want to change your mind willy-nilly. So I come in between, kind of in between you and your mum in some way. So I think the first thing is, you know, maybe you should do a YouTube video on song cost fallacy, right? And talk to people about the fact that, you know, you have put yourself out there, you had this commitment to vice, but actually that's the cost that you'd have to sink, the embarrassment of actually changing your mind. Because when you reviewed your options and you reviewed them deliberately, it looked like sticking to YouTube was right for you.

And I think that second part is really important to ask yourself, did you review your options and review them deliberately kind of thinking about what are the costs and benefits or was it something else? Was it kind of the length of the residency? Was it a fear of failure? Was it loss aversion that drove you to that decision? And I think if it's deliberate, you absolutely should change your mind. And, you know, I think one of the big powerful kind of influences on our decision making is our emotions, right?

And when we think about the future, so if you think about doing a residency in America, it does actually sound quite scary to be honest, kind of going now, you know, doing four years when you clearly have a really good career at the moment.

were you anticipating kind of a loss that might not necessarily be realized and not seeing gains that that trip would actually give you? And I think if you sit down and say, actually, I was deliberate, then you should change your mind. And I think one of the problems in society today is that we think that good citizens, good leaders should never change their mind. And I think in COVID-19,

that was to the detriment of many countries because it took a lot for some leaders to come out and say, look, actually, this isn't the right strategy. I'm going to now change. I'm going to change my mind. So if I was to think about leaders of the future, actually, their ability to stand up and say, I don't know, I got it wrong or I've changed my mind. Those three things are really in the forefront of my mind, because when you're navigating through uncertainty, you're going to get it wrong sometimes. And that's OK. But it's the deliberate part. Have you sat down and deliberately now changed your mind?

Or is it something you used to wear willy-nilly? Is it a willy-nilly kind of reflex action? And then it might be revisiting. Oh, interesting. Yeah, like when I was following the news with all the COVID stuff and occasionally there'd be the phrase, oh, the government has made another U-turn. And I would kind of think that like,

Isn't that a good thing? Like surely sticking to a plan that's shown not to be like herd immunity or something like you would surely you want the government to make a U-turn. Why do we have such a weird reaction to leaders changing their mind about stuff? Do you think? I think things were predictable for a long time. So, you know, I think as well, kind of maybe the difference in attitudes between yourself and your mom do come from generational gaps. She would have been in the UK when there was a big period of growth. So we had some dips.

But we haven't seen the disruption like we've seen kind of in the last, you know, kind of five, six years. So people who are early 20s now, they are facing much more uncertainty than people would have done 20 years ago, 40 years ago, coming out of university. And I think when we're in periods of certainty, we expect people to get it right. You know, good decision making is possible, right? So...

If I could give you, if I could talk to you through your options in decision making under uncertainty, I could tell you what your life will look like in four years time when you step outside of the US. Or if you turn that option down and stay doing the YouTube, I could show you what your life would be.

But now, because the economy is changing, the growth cycles are changing, we don't have that certainty. And I think we need new types of leaders. But people, you know, status quo bias prevails. And it's nice to have somebody standing there, you know, looking very serious, telling us that things are going to be OK because they have it in control. And for human beings, U-turning and change of minds aren't signals that someone has it in control.

That's interesting. There was an exercise I came across a couple of years ago called the Odyssey Plan, which is the idea that, you know, it's sort of a way of helping you figure out what to do with your life, where the idea is that you write down five years from now, what does my life look like down this current path? And then you put that aside and then you say, okay, five years from now, what does my life look like if I take a completely different path? And you

you put that aside and then you say okay five years from now what does my life look like if money and societal obligations are no object and i could just literally do what i want what does my what does my life look like then and i did this because this sort of thing about two years ago and it really helped me realize oh i just never spend spend the time thinking long term well medium to long term at all and even just spending half an hour thinking huh if i

if I go down this current path, I'll end up, I don't know, in an anesthetics training program in Cambridge, being a supervisor. It'll be kind of fun. That's what my day-to-day would look like. Hmm. That doesn't seem particularly exciting. Oh, okay. Maybe I should try something else. And just spending the time to think about that, like really made me change direction in a way. Do you have any sort of similar practices or exercises that you recommend for people trying to figure out this question of like, what the hell do I do with my life?

I mean, it's a really good question. I think it again comes back to the task, which sounds really boring. So there's lists in the book of activities that people do in their occupation and skills that you might want to hone. And I think it comes back to that. I'm thinking about, are you happy to spend your day engaged in activities like those? So a lot of the jobs that look exciting

They look exciting because on TV they're glamorized. I mean, law always is one that comes into my mind. And I think I would be a terrible lawyer because the commitment to a day-to-day that's like six in the morning to eight in the evening is absolutely something that you still need today, sadly. But people don't know about that before they go in. They think about themselves standing in court and litigating the cases. So it's bringing it back to those kind of boring humdrum tasks.

And I think when it comes to your Think Big journey, it's about what would the tasks that I would be doing in 10 years time? How would I spend my Monday morning? How would I spend my Tuesday morning? And how can I get myself in a place where that's really realistic? And, you know, for most of us, we won't be able to be in a place where we don't have to worry about money. So we have to be doing something that adds value to society. But this is an opportunity to kind of put yourself on a path

where you get to do tasks that are as fun as possible and you're actually enjoying them so you don't feel like working. And I think for most of us, that's our goal, right? That 70% of our time at work, it doesn't feel like a painful process. We're really enjoying those activities. Within the field of behavioural sciences,

I get the, like a lot of the stuff you talk about in the book, you talk like at the end of each chapter, there's the sort of different insights from behavioral science, which are translated into things that we can do right now. One thing that I was curious about is what does research in this field look like? Like, how do we, how do we know that the stuff that we talk about in the book or the stuff that you read in a, I don't know, a self-help book, how do we know that that's actually legit? Like what, what does the primary material look like?

It's a great question. So, I mean, behavioural science isn't a discipline. So the research can come from economics, psychology, anthropology. And I think the big banner that I would put on it is that it's describing why people behave the way that they actually do. So why do people procrastinate? What's the reason that people work more productively together as teams? These are questions that behavioural scientists

will look at. I think the big fascination with behavioural scientists is causality. So if you were to think about the COVID vaccine, a lot of the debates about it are, do we really have enough time to put a truth field trials in the same way that other medicines have actually gone through these RCTs?

And that's what behavioral science tries to mimic in the real world. So psychologists will do lab experiments with students. So if you look at the behavioral science literature, a lot of the kind of early ideas will be from bringing students into the lab. It's not scary like in the 70s, I promise. So, you know, really easy stuff and looking to see whether or not we can change their behavior with a particular insight. And then somebody like me brings those insights into companies.

into policy and asks, is the stuff that's coming out of the students in the lab actually replicating in companies? And a lot of times it doesn't, I would be very honest with you. Because obviously when we have students in the lab, we have them for a very short period of time. When I'm working with workers, I want to know, did the change I make work in the moment? One week later, one month later, 12 months later. And because of that, methods are really important. So if someone is listening and wants to pivot towards a career in behavioral science, data science is absolutely your friend in this regard. And

And then I think at the top level, we look at macro trends. So at the moment, I'm building an index with Citibank that's going to look to see whether or not we can actually predict the profit and loss based on the culture that organizations actually have. And again, what we're really going to have an eye on is, is that useful for institutional investors so we can change their behavior? And can we change customer behavior? So it

there's kind of two things that I want the listeners to kind of take away. One, it's about explaining behavior, whether it's at the lab level, individual level, out in the real world, or the macro level. And secondly, it's really, can we talk about causal effects? Are we sure that the change that we made, or are we sure that the analysis that we've run is really talking about a direct effect? Okay. Yeah, I thought the way that you handled some of these in the book was really like, like often you see a, I don't know,

lifehacker.com article about there's a study that shows that if you wear red that then you'll perform better in this thing oh amazing you should start wearing red and the way you describe this in the book it's like well actually it's fairly correlation-y and not very causation-y but hey maybe there's something there who knows the evidence isn't quite there but

maybe consider wearing red. And I thought, I kind of chuckled when I was listening to that because I was like, that's a very nice way of describing the uncertainty that we often have in this sort of research. I am the worst person to actually get to write a magazine article because I tend to kind of go, well, yes, the evidence says this, but maybe it mightn't work for you. But I think that's honest because the populations that are studied by behavioural scientists, including me, might be different from you. So...

There's two companies I'm working with at the moment down in Canary Wharf. They're right across the road from each other. And one experiment worked incredibly well in one company and it did not necessarily, it didn't work at all actually in the other company. We got zero, like a flat line zero effect. And that's because context matters. And both of those companies have very different contexts, very different populations. They have their own subcultures and they have their own pressures.

And it's the same for anything that you read in a magazine. So I encourage people to be experimental. So they might hear me say something, but they should say, actually, you know, maybe Grace knows something about what she's talking about, but she doesn't know me. The only person who knows me is me. So I'm going to experiment with her idea. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to throw it out.

And that for me is a practice that I think we should do as individuals for our health and careers, as managers when we're leading teams and also in the government. You know, a leadership tactic that might work for Boris Johnson might not necessarily work for another leader. And unless you're mindful of that, you're going to be taking on practices that somebody has given you

that's actually based on evidence that can't be universal. We were brainstorming what we were going to have as like the kind of intro music spiel for this podcast. What did you pick? We haven't quite figured it out yet, but like one thing that I was, I wanted to say at the end of the intro is, you know, introduce the guest, explain what their credentials are and what we talk about in the episode and something to the effect of, so sit back, grab a cup of tea and remember to take everything you hear with a sprinkle of salt.

Because I think like in these sorts of podcasts that you've been on, I've been on where people are really giving life advice, however you dress it up, giving life advice. We can only really speak to either our own personal experiences or in your case, evidence from fairly like not...

soft skill type stuff that is very hard to like, you know, directly measure like a blood test increasing. It's like more hard science and this is more soft science. Context matters so much. And I think one thing I want everyone to try and be mindful of is that like, no one has the guidebook for how to live life. You just got to sort of try stuff. And if it works for you, then great, it works for you. But if it doesn't work for you, then try something else. And it sounds like that's generally how you approach it as well. Absolutely. So be experimental. And I think context matters are kind of, you know, two words, two words.

to really emphasize if something is working for me in my environment, it might not necessarily work for other people. And it's also a way of actually to get to know yourself. So if you're trying something and it's not working, you can think about, okay, why did it work for somebody else and not necessarily for me? And you can have confidence then in kind of trying other tools without getting stuck in the same cycle. Nice.

Coming back to the question of goals, another thing that I've been mulling over for several years now is this balance between being satisfied with where we're at in life versus striving for more, having like a think big kind of goal. How do you think about that balance? I think strivers don't like the process.

So I think if you found the activities that you enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis and they're filling you up and they're pointing you in a direction towards a particular goal, then you're happy doing the process. So the type of striving and the type of impatience melts away, perhaps not fully because maybe you're more impatient and you want to get there quicker than you're going at the moment. But I think people who really suffer from striving are people who have a vision of a me plus and

that actually is a bit distorted from the reality. And they're doing lots of activities now that they don't particularly enjoy, that they're not particularly finding useful. So again, I think it's kind of taking a step back and saying, you know, why am I feeling so frustrated with my day to day? Do I need to rebalance and start doing some activities that I actually enjoy, that I can really see the clear line of purpose to in order to make myself feel better now? And again, once you're moving forward and once you're walking, I think that that's good enough for most people. Okay.

Yeah, I think like there's a lot of evidence, as you know, about how experiencing progress, and I think you talk about how to like make your progress more salient. Experiencing that sense of progress really is like extremely, fundamentally satisfying. And so I guess sometimes if I think...

I guess the standard straw man would be like, oh, well, if you just play video games all day, then it's fun, but it's not meaningful. I think it's not meaningful because it's not really progressing you forward in a way that adds value to the world. Is that fair to say?

Or to yourself. So, you know, some people who I meet, their values are really about making money, which doesn't bother me. But I think that they need to be clear on what are the tasks that they're going to do that add value to the world. I think that's really true. And I think finding the kind of right balance of pleasure and purpose is really important.

You should play video games if that's something that actually really helps you relax. I think for some people it's been shown that it can be like mindfulness. So again, really thinking about individual differences. If playing Mario Kart is what gets you kind of out of the day and into the moment, you should spend time on that. But it's balancing that time. So balance the time between serving yourself in the present day and also serving yourself in the future. Okay. And I guess most people's dream job would be one where they've got pleasure plus purpose in the same thing. And that would be great. But

But if not, then some things are pleasurable and some things are purposeful and just balancing those. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think as well, the kind of adaptation that we feel as humans, it's called hedonic adaptation. Everything that you get, you'll adapt to it really quickly. So whether you get the nicest car, whether you get a pay rise, you know, the happiness moments are really fleeting. So if you really are kind of in a place and you feel that things aren't going your way, trying to draw attention to things that are going right, kind of the small wins,

so that you can kind of elongate the happiness that you'll actually get from the car, from the pay rise. But also those kind of small moments, you know,

If you have an interaction today with somebody and they insult you, it would probably weigh really heavy on you. Whereas if somebody gives you a huge compliment, how long do you hold on to that? Which is a really interesting thing for us as humans, right? That we really are focused on the negative. We're focused on the losses. We're focused on our slice of ego. But we go through our day and most of us actually have some like, you know, really wonderful exchanges with people. We have some nice things happening to us. So drawing attention to those if you're feeling that you're striving and you're starting to burn out. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like with YouTube comments, like 99.99% of them are really nice and you don't think about them. And then when there's one mean one that hits a bit too close to the bone, you think about that for the rest of the day. Do you read them? I do, yeah. You read all the comments? Probably not all the comments, but certainly most of them. Wow, that is good. Yeah, you don't seem to have much of a social media presence, but you've done a lot of like writing and publications and things. Do you get like haters? Is that a thing?

So recently I wrote something for the FT and it polarised people and they usually turn off the comment box for kind of articles like the one that I wrote. So it was about managers and about mediocre managers kind of holding back people's careers. But it was really interesting to read those comments because people either really loved it

in a five-star way, or they really hated it. And that polarization, I think, comes through a lot on social media, but I think it's imprinted in our society around kind of political values, around even what people would like to watch on TV, that we're much more yes or no or all or nothing than we were in the past. And I think Think Big is really about kind of getting people to kind of come into the center a little bit and kind of say, actually, you know, you can have...

kind of more balanced than you can actually think both in your opinions if you think about polarization but also in the choices that you make on a day-to-day basis. So in chapter two or chapter three rather you talk about internal the internal things that are like either holding us back or help can help us move forward to achieve our Think Big goals. One of the concepts which is interesting is the idea of locus of control. What is that?

So locus of the control is the idea that there are two types of people in a way of kind of binarizing it. There are people who believe that everything is within their own control. So when negative events happen to them, they take control of the situation and they try to move forward in a way. So try to find a side door, try to find another entrance.

And then there's people with an external locus of control who believe that everything happens to them. So it's at the hands of other people. It's at the hands of the universe in the extreme. Most of us will have both internal and external locus of control depending on our domain. So maybe in family life, some people will have internal locus of control. They believe that they can control everything. They feel quite safe in their family life. In the work life, they think their career is happening to them. And I think, again, it's

it isn't all or nothing. So getting people to think about what is it that I can actually control in this particular moment and taking the choice to take that control. So I think even for people who are having a really terrible time in toxic workplaces who are being bullied,

There is something that they can actually control in that moment and really encouraging them to take that control to allow them to move forward rather than just seeing the negative and just seeing the bad things that are happening to them with the idea that they can get out of that situation. How do people end up with internal slash external problems?

loci we don't know so this and this would come down in the same way like genetics so you would have people who believe in nature and people who believe in nurture and i think the reality is that it's probably a combination of both so our genetics probably give us some proportion of our locus of control and when we're born um depending on the kind of experiences that our ancestors have had but i think the biggest thing is going to be the environment that you actually grow up in

So I think if you're put in an environment where you're encouraged to make decisions when you're really young, you're encouraged to kind of choose your own path, choose your own toys in the play box, for example, that's going to allow you to think that you are then more in control of your own destiny as somebody who has these kind of really, really structured lives and thinks that everything is coming for them. And I saw a researcher, and I can't think of his name, but he's working on the changes of the generation from generations where

kids were just left to play. So they were kind of pushed out on the road towards this kind of structured education where people go to different sessions at particular times, but their whole day is stacked by their parents. It does seem to have some influence on whether or not you think you can actually control your own destiny. Those kind of early moments. That's interesting. I guess, so I feel like I'm quite an internal locus of control-y type person, but I wonder if that can also go too far. Like if...

For example, I don't know, I get rejected by a girl and I, you know, there's an extent to which it is useful for me to internalize that as, okay, I could have controlled that situation. I did badly. Therefore, what can I learn from this, et cetera. But there's also a part of it that's like, well, actually there are a lot

a thousand reasons why I've been rejected by this girl that have nothing to do with me in the slightest. And I guess it is about balancing the two that sometimes it is actually external factors that have led to something that are completely outside of your control. But let's think about what are the things we can control and what can we do differently next time, potentially. And I think this is a really good attitude in decision making. So if you think about

how most people determine whether or not an outcome is successful, they will look to see, did they succeed or fail? So do they get a checkbox or do they get an X? And in that case, for people with the internalism of local control, as you pointed out, being rejected by a girl could be this really negative experience that's hard to rebound from.

if you take the behavioral science perspective where you take kind of good decision-making, kind of one-on-one, if you come to one of my classes, you should be focusing on if you have an outcome that other people would label success and fail, sitting down and thinking, what did I control in that particular situation? What could I have done differently? What was my input and what was down to luck?

And in luck, I would put anything that's determined outside yourself by other people. And then it's really about identifying those things that you can't control and taking hold of them and not over obsessing on the stuff that is outside your control. So in some ways, it's kind of taking the best of the internal locus of control, recognizing that luck does play a role in determining these outcomes of success and failure. And people who do these postmortems really do see learning in failure, but they don't dwell on failure.

So if they fail on a particular moment, they're sitting down saying, what could I have done differently? And then for the future, they're taking those lessons on board. Yeah. Speaking of failure, so you're talking in that chapter about anticipating failure and how often that holds people back. I wonder if you can talk, like, what does that mean to anticipate failure? Yeah. So, I mean, so anticipation of an event brings on anxieties that can be worse than actually experiencing an event itself.

So very often, if you talk to people who report having anxieties or who report having worries, they're talking about something that might actually happen in the future, rather than something that they're going through in a particular moment. And anticipated loss aversion is exactly that. You know, it's been shown that when I think about what it's like to not get a promotion, to fluff up if I'm doing some public speaking, to do something badly,

that the kind of how I imagine myself feeling that sadness is felt in my body in the way this manifests, but it's much worse than actually going through it. And I think the one thing about human beings is that we're really good actually at rebounding. So when we go through negative experience and we allow ourselves to go through negative experiences, we realize actually it's not as bad as I thought. There are other options later and we tend to be very, very resilient. And when we're anticipating failure or anticipating losses, we underestimate that resilience.

So some of the kind of most successful people in our society are people who have failed a lot because firstly, they're learning from their failure. But secondly, you're probably not going to get very far in life without experiencing failure. You're going to have to get rejected. So, you know, on the dating market, it's exactly the same. You're not going to meet probably the exact person few with all the people out in the world.

if you don't go and meet some people who are wrong for you in the beginning. It's the same with jobs. So really kind of taking that on board that actually you're going to do some things people aren't going to like you. You're going to get negative feedback. It's going to be unfair. You're going to have bad luck. But there's learning in that and you're still on that journey. Nice. One...

One bit of the book that I liked was when you referenced the dating market in terms of, I think it was around differences in genders between like risk-taking and risk aversion. I wonder if you can kind of talk about that. I would love to test it. So one thing that we know for sure at the average level is that women do tend to be, um,

more risk averse as compared to men. So men are risk averse, which is less so than women. And I have this theory that men were able to be rejected much more in early years, kind of when they were learning about whether failure is acceptable or not, because they have to ask, you know, women on dates in most cultures. So when you're asking a girl, you know, at 12, 13 years of age, and they say no to you, if you're at a disco, that's going to be terrible. But actually,

actually you're learning that it's not that bad. So the second time you ask, the third time you ask, the fourth time that you ask, you know, there will be people who are actually so resilient to this that by the time they're 15, 16, 17, they're not feeling that failure. And we carry that into other domains in our lives. There are these positive spillovers. So I think by...

having women not necessarily represented in competitive sports to the same degree as men, so they're not feeling that they can lose in the same way from early life, and also not being the ones to ask. I'm hoping that's changing, though. I'm hearing that it is, but not being the ones to ask as often as men. That does set the parameter for risk aversion that economists care a lot about. Yeah. And I guess when it comes to even things like asking for a promotion or asking for a raise,

If at the average level there's even a 1% difference in risk aversion between men and women, that at the extremes is going to translate to a significant disparity between people who get promoted and people who don't. And obviously it's all multifactorial, but...

Yeah, it's interesting how that, you know, yeah, theoretically could be down to that. I have a bunch of female friends who are currently on the dating market. And, you know, they're always like, oh, you know, I don't like these out. I could never ask a guy out because I'll get rejected. And I'm like, come on, like...

Are they on dating, like on technology or are they out there like asking people out on the street in the way in the US? Oh no, everyone's on the apps. No one ever asks people out on the street. Well, other than a subset of guys that are into that sort of thing. Yeah.

It still happens in the US though, which always amazed me. People go up to each other in real life. In real life. No way. Have always done it. So the technology is just as big as it is here. But that part of the culture hasn't gone away, which I find fascinating. Have you noticed any other, like, in terms of like risk aversion, does...

Does the data say anything on like kind of ethnic minorities versus like white people around like risk-taking risk aversion, that kind of stuff? Yes. So, um, for countries like the U S and the UK, um, people of color do tend to be less risk averse than white men. Um, and there we see less risk of us, um, less, sorry, more risk of race. Thank you for the question. More risk of us as compared to white men. Um,

but the male female divides still stands there. So for example, if you were to compare white women to black men, black men will take more risks as compared to white women. So the gender dimension trumps, but we do see this kind of interaction effect

with race and ethnicity. And again, it comes down to, I think two things. Firstly, early childhood experiences, but secondly, rejections. So white men are much less likely to be told no as compared to all other people. So other genders, other races, other ethnicities. And then if you're told no, it becomes rational not to ask again, right? Because you're kind of getting that feedback loop.

But actually, the reverse is probably true. So in some ways, women and people of colour should probably be asking more because the chances of them then getting a yes is actually going up. But I think that's easier said than done. So, you know, there's a huge literature on societal backlash, particularly for women, that talks about what happens if a woman actually speaks up and asks for what she wants in work.

and steps outside the stereotype. And there tends to be these negative repercussions. So simply asking for more doesn't necessarily mean that you'll actually get more. So it is really, really complicated. And that's why

in today's society, having transparency is really helpful on both sides. It's really helpful for companies because they can pay attention to are they allowing really talented individuals fall short for reasons that have to do with kind of these embedded stereotypes that they're not seeing. But at the individual level, when we have transparency, a lot of the problems go away.

So both for women and people of colour, they feel much better saying, actually, my salary is in the bottom 20%, but I'm knocking it out of the park if I compare it to the rest of the distribution. And why is that? So the certainty of having something to actually point to is really, really powerful. So I really support, you know, the gender pay gap reporting. And I now support the kind of the idea that we're going to move to having race and ethnicity pay gaps as well.

Oh, interesting. So I've been looking a lot into this stuff. Now that I have a team of like 11 people expanding to 20. Fantastic. With, you know, I've had a few conversations with the team members around like raises, but not as many as I thought I would have. And I think there is, I think because at least in our team, it's a, we're just making stuff up as we go along. So we don't have like a salary policy or a race policy. Like how do you even benchmark when someone is like writing content for a YouTube video or like a YouTube video?

I don't know. But I want to add in a level of like transparency where it's more clear that, okay, this is this level of role. This is a salary for this level of role. And you can ask for a raise every, I don't know, at the end of every quarter if you want. And here's how, like, how, how should, how should, how should a small business go about being more transparent about this stuff?

I mean, in some ways, I think with a small business, because I'm in this situation at the LCA at the moment where I have a team about the same size as yours. And if somebody asks for a raise and they're successful, I think about who are the people who are very like them in the group who deserve a raise as well. And I just give it to them.

So instead of, you know, yeah, because I, and I also review, so, and I'm only doing it annually. And I think annually is probably enough to kind of really think about performance. So doing it quarterly is even better, I guess. Um, but I think by doing it annually, you give everybody the same door to come to you. Um,

They can ask for what they want, but then just being mindful who didn't ask. Because again, you know, there's kind of two things that it's not about necessarily you being kind of fair or being seen to be open. People might have had bad experiences in previous jobs where they don't necessarily feel willing to speak up.

And just by saying, I'm doing this every year and then I'm going to review what I've decided to give and I might come to people and give them raises. I think builds trust in a team at the smaller level, which will pay dividends, which when you scale, which I, and I use the word when, because I'm sure you will now that you're not going to America.

So chapter four of the book is all about time. And you mentioned something earlier in the conversation that I wanted to ask you about. You said behavioral science looks at things like why do we procrastinate? Yeah. Which is a question that I get like from every direction. Why do we procrastinate?

It's a really good question and I think in some ways by writing about procrastination I make a lot of my own back because I am a terrible terrible terrible procrastinator. I think there's evidence that procrastination is good up to a certain point. So Adam Grant has written about this, he's an excellent TED talk for anyone who's interested, and kind of the idea of pre-crastination. So if we think about our thinking styles we have two thinking styles: very very fast impulsive is where your habits are built, where you're trying to get your small steps embedded,

and then very, very slow and very, very deliberate. And those classifications are owed to a man called Danny Kahneman. And everyone really then came to believe that actually when you're in the slow mode of thinking,

that you are at your best. So you get to be in flow, you get to concentrate on something. But there's an emerging evidence that when you're in your fast mode of thinking, you have this unconscious that could be worming away at a problem that you're trying to solve. So let's imagine that you're trying to think about what you want to do in five years time. Maybe one of the best things that you can do is to take your focus off it

and kind of put it to the back of your mind and some thoughts will actually come out. And I think procrastination is good in that respect. If you're saying, actually, I have a really big challenge at the moment. I'm not feeling creative. I'm going to go for a walk. That feels like a procrastination activity, but you take the challenge with you or some of our best ideas are in the shower. Why is that? Well, we're procrastinating in the shower. We're thinking about what we think about the idea.

but at the extreme it starts to get negative when you're putting off tasks and the deadlines are looming and the deadlines are looming and you have nothing to show for it and I think then the book offers some really good tips about how to rein that behavior in so how can you make sure that you're not you know booking drinks for friends that you're not putting on Netflix that you're not going for unnecessary walks that aren't helpful to you when you need to sit down and actually do the task

Yeah. One thing I find for myself with kind of getting over procrastination is that I think often procrastination is more of a problem with getting started than it is with continuing. So kind of like, you know, the law of inertia, Newton's first law, that if something is at rest, it takes a big push of energy to move it forward. But once it's moving forward, it's like it just continues to go. And so when I think if I find myself procrastinating, I'm

I often just think like, how do I make it as easy as possible for me to just start doing the thing for just two minutes? Because chances are, once I started doing it for two minutes, it will then, you know, I will then continue. Like, you know, if I have a YouTube video to film for a day, I'm just like, oh, I can't be bothered to set up the cameras. I'll just like get up. I'm just going to do it for two minutes. Just stop.

Just set up a single microphone. And it's like, okay, well, I've set the microphone. I'm here. I've got the music on. I might as well just set up the whole thing. And now it's all set up. I might as well just sit down and record the video. But I find that like targeting it to words, just making it as easy as possible is how I personally do it. Do you have any hacks or tips on this?

Well, that's a great one. So lowering the cost of actually doing things. So you could liken it when you're somebody who doesn't like running to putting your running shoes and your gear out in the night so that you actually slip them on. What you described though really reminds me of the Pomodoro technique that has been shown to work really well for procrastinators.

So the idea that you don't plan to work for the day, you just show up for 20 minutes. And there's something about our brain not wanting to have something that hasn't closed a loop that will keep us working. So Pomodoro technique says you work for 20 minutes and regardless of if you're in flow, you take a five minute break.

And when you take that five minute break, you will start worrying and jiggling and really wanting to actually go back to the task. So the sheer act of showing up for those first 20 minutes will get you on the path that you described. - Nice. Any other tactics that you use to, I mean, especially when writing a book, I imagine that's like a real exercise in procrastination. - Yeah, I know loads.

I mean, I use a thing called, I use a thing called the compromise effect, which has been really shown in marketing. So, you know, you know that your marketers are really lazy when they show you three options for things, safe in the knowledge that you'll actually pick the middle option. So as human beings, we don't like to take the extremes when it comes to kind of making choices.

So I use this for my workload. So kind of in the morning, if I'm planning on doing something like writing where there's a particular output, I'll define what a low output looks like, define what a medium output looks like and define what a high output looks like. And regardless of which one I'll hit, I'll mark it off on my to-do list. So I give myself that kind of satisfaction. And

most of the time, and I always say this, maybe I'm just an average person. Most of the time I hit medium and I've tried it on some friends now and they hit this medium output as well. So I think if you're somebody who has this mama task and this really aligns with chunking, right? Think about what the outputs would look like beyond I need to do X. Do

dividing x down and giving yourself a treat at the end of it so whatever it is for you whether it's it's you know Netflix having a massage going for a walk going out for dinner with friends bundling it with something that's really attractive is another way to actually get you to get you to the desk again so really what our decision making is determined by costs and benefits in the present moment

You want to lower the costs in the present moment and you want to make the benefits as nice as possible. And bundling with good activities helps as well. Nice. How do you manage your to-do list? Like,

It's a great question. I mean, again, I make it off my own back by talking about this, but it's my struggles that has made me write about actually writing to-do lists. So every day I have a period of time in the morning where I do deep work, where I do writing, where I do kind of tasks that really, really need to be done. So this morning I was actually preparing something for the skills committee that you mentioned in the beginning. And then I go about my day

having engagements with people like you, you know, kind of having kind of enjoyable engagements. So I really do the horrible part first. And then I have the nicer part of my day that actually comes later. So it's hard for me, it's hard to get an appointment with me before 10. And that's because my mornings is for my, it's for my deep work. At the end of the evening, I do, I look back on how I spent my day. I think about what went right, because I'm really bad for seeing kind of small wins during the day.

And I'll reflect on each activity and think about actually did this activity, did I enjoy it in the moment? And was it something that would pay off in the future? And if it's something that's neither, I try to avoid it or call it all together. And I write about meetings in my institution that I don't go to a lot of them now for that exact reason. So I just find myself showing up. People would talk in circles about issues

nothing would be resolved. We would waste maybe two hours that could be used on something that's giving me purpose or someone else purpose, um, or giving me fun in the day. That's interesting. Do you do any sort of weekly review type stuff? Yes. Um, every Sunday evening I look back at how I actually spent my time during the week. Um,

And days where things went well and days where things did not necessarily go well. And then I think about the week ahead and how I can make it better for myself. So if I've had a particularly draining week and the activities are things that I need to show up for, that can include scheduling more free time in the week going forward. So it doesn't actually always mean about getting more work done the next week. If I felt quite exhausted and I didn't feel that I was able to show up.

It also can mean that I think about what are the activities that I might want to pull out of my calendar, given my experiences in the last week that might not actually be adding value for anybody. And it also allows me to think about what are the big things that I want to check off my list in the week going forward. Okay.

So I first came across weekly review stuff like five years ago when I first read Getting Things Done by David Allen. And in that time, I've done about four weekly reviews. Any tips for sticking to this practice? You need to make it easy. So I'm not a journaler. So I do all of this on my phone.

So I basically have my diary is set up and I have kind of two columns that say this was pleasurable, this was purposeful, that I just fill in. So my entire journaling on a Sunday evening is 15 to 20 minutes. And I think that the reason that we fall off the wagon with journaling is if we're carrying around notebooks, we're carrying around pens, it's not really how we kind of are set up as a society anymore.

And we're thinking that it's going to take one hour and two hours. So it's really about making it simple and doing it at a time. So I do a Sunday night. People who have read Think Big, who've reported back, are using it on commutes and using it on times that otherwise would not necessarily be used for anything useful. Oh, okay. That's interesting. I spend a lot of time on the toilet scrolling Twitter. So maybe like a Sunday toilet time equals weekly review on my phone. Keep it simple. That will go viral. Yeah.

Something like that. What is the affect heuristic? So the affect heuristic is all about emotions. So it basically talks about when we're in a hot state, we're feeling emotional. So it could be happiness. It could be sadness. It might even be feeling hungry.

we're likely to make decisions that are based on rules of thumb rather than good decision making and we're much more likely to be biased. So, you know, there's really great research on this that looks at if you are up in front of a judge, all else equal, how does your sentence look before and after lunch?

If you are pitching for venture capital, what's your likelihood of being successful? All else equal, looking at whether you turned up at the start of the day, you turned up in the middle of the day, you turned up at the end of the day. And it really has to do with the emotions of the people who are actually judging you. So if you think about yourself and the effect you're stick, the kind of the outcome is you should never make a decision when you're feeling emotional.

So if somebody expresses anger towards you, if you're feeling angry towards them, if they're asking you for a decision, park it. Unless you're a surgeon, a firefighter or somebody else who really needs to spring into action, there is always time for you to take a break. It could be a minute, it could be 10 minutes, it could be an hour, but taking that time out. And then on the other side, if you're facing people who are judging you,

What can you think about their emotions on a particular day that will tip the odds to your advantage? So making them laugh is a really good thing. Using narrative that actually, that they're likely to remember. So making them feel sad and empathetic towards what you're trying to sell them is really, really helpful. And again, avoiding being before lunch. So hunger is absolutely the worst thing that you want in somebody who's making a decision on your future. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm doing an interview with someone who's applied for a job with our team straight after this.

And I'm feeling kind of hungry now, so I should probably just take us out to lunch and then we'll do the interview over a snack or something. That's a good shout. So in chapter five, I think you talk about outside, well, in chapter four, inside chapter five is, I think it's outside, like getting feedback and judgment and stuff from other people. Yeah.

One area in particular that I know a lot of people struggle with, like, is the fear of being judged by others when doing things like putting themselves out there or writing a book or starting a YouTube channel. What does behavioral science say about this thing of getting over this fear of what other people think about us? It's a good that we worry about what other people think about us.

I think, you know, it's good until it's not, which isn't a very helpful expression, but I think it's good in the beginning because I think the kind of anxieties and the nerves that we feel set us up to do a great job, right? So I think it was Mick Jagger before he was going on concerts, he would actually label his nerves, or this is the excitement about me seeing the crowd, rather than actually feeling that the butterflies in his stomach were anything negative. And reframing it that way can be really, really helpful.

I'm actually forgetting your question. Fear of getting over what other people think about us. Oh, yes. So as individuals, we tend to think people are looking at us much more often than they actually are.

And there's a Thomas Gilovich was the first to write about this idea of the spotlight effect. And the spotlight effect basically says that if I fluff up, if I fall down in the street, if I do a bad public speaking, even if I do a negative YouTube and I have lots and lots of followers, the chances of people remembering are actually really, really low because we're information overloaded all the time. And we're also much more caught up in ourselves than we are with other people. But even

But even the people who do remember tend to be much more sympathetic or neutral than we'll actually give them credit for. So embracing the spotlight effect, actually taking action, kind of safe in the knowledge that, you know, if you do mess up, people probably aren't watching. And if they do, they're likely to be sympathetic.

is a really, really good way forward. And I think next to that for people who are really hampered by, you know, kind of the saving face effects that I would call it from an Irish perspective, that, you know, the idea that it's much worse for me to mess up when other people are looking. I think start doing things where people who you don't know won't see you in the beginning and then you'll get some confidence and be able to go a bit more global. So taking those small steps rather than staying stuck is really, really important. Yeah, both of these like tie in really nicely with like,

you know when it comes to starting a youtube channel which is quite a terrifying thing for a lot of people i think like when i when i did it i made like 20 videos before i posted it on facebook because that was the audience people that knew me and before that like no one was going to see it because i had like three subscribers and like no one's ever going to find the videos um but then you know the advice i often give to people when they're really worried that oh what what what will my friends and family think is that a they probably won't care they'll they'll

look at it for 30 seconds and move on with their day because they've got things to do but be like you know if your friends and family are like nice people they'd be like oh this is kind of cool they'll love you anyway yeah like the fear is so much more in our heads in our imagination than it is in reality

One of your final chapters is all about environment and things that we can do in our environment to nudge ourselves towards kind of making progress on our Think Big goals. I wonder what tips have you found personally useful in terms of the way you set up your environment to help do things like write a book or like do

your research and things like that. Well, I see you have the green, which is really good. So one of the kind of, you know, if you're in a place where you don't have, you know, easy access to kind of green spaces, bringing green indoors is really, really helpful. It's really good for oxygen. So yes, there's a big tick in the environment today. But, you know, for me, I think the biggest thing is digital and really thinking about what's your relationship like

with technology and is that the biggest time sinker that you have and then setting up your environment to make it much easier for you to switch off from technology when you need it. So, you know, my job, it would be much harder to do my job if I didn't have access to technology. So I'm a big proponent of it. I can get information really, really quickly. It's very easy for me to digest lots of academic papers now as well as a lot of kind of thought leaders,

But that said, if that's all I do, then I never put any output into the world. And my worst habit is checking email for other people who will be Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever it is. But thinking about is there a way that you can change your environment to make it harder for you? Because it's all about cost benefits. It can make it harder for you to check your email, to check Twitter, to check Snapchat. And for me, it was actually removing it from my phone and from moving it from my laptop.

and putting it on an old iPad, allowing myself to check my emails on an old iPad that was in a different part of the house. So every time I wanted to check my emails, I had to physically go to that part of the house. And I also set up pledges that I would only check my emails twice a day and then move to once a day. And I will tell you, I failed a lot. So, you know, there would be lunchtime where I would be itching to see, oh, is anyone emailing me? What's exciting in my inbox? And I would go and check, but it was much less. And I've never been more productive in the periods of my life when I've managed to switch off my email entirely.

that's a good shout. I should, I'll just pull my email out from my phone. I'm just thinking about how much time I would save. Because often like the stuff, like it doesn't really need a response here and now. And one thing you often say in the book is, you know, unless you're a heart surgeon or the president of some country, you really don't need to respond instantly to people. So...

And then I think other stuff is easier. So, you know, thinking about the colors on the walls that inspire you, thinking about lighting. I mean, there's really good evidence on lighting to suggest if you're creative, you want to have kind of more dim light. If you want to really focus on something, you want to have this bright light. Um,

making sure that you have fresh air in in your room making sure as well that you have a place where you go to work so even if you're somebody who's in a flat share that feels overcrowded maybe the place for you is going to be a seat in a coffee shop but trying to get that same seat every day there's something about our mind when we're in particular environments that it switches to this is the activity that I'm supposed to be doing in this environment um you know people have

find that when they go to pubs, for example, they find it when they go to theatre, there's a particular habit that they'll follow without knowing why. And you can actually bring that to your work where you actually going to sit down on a day to day basis that when you do, you're digitally detoxed. So you're not on email, you're not plugged into anywhere else but the work that you're doing.

and also that you're not moving around. - Yeah, I found during the pandemic, once I'd taken a break from medicine, then I was spending just loads of time just at home on my desk and it was a nightmare. And then it was a few months later that I discovered the WeWork coworking space in Cambridge. And then I started kind of commuting there like 10 minute cycle or 10 minute drive each day. And there was something so nice about having an office to commute to where in the past I would have thought, oh, hey, I'm a digital nomad. I work from anywhere, I work from home.

But actually, I really like going to an office and then just staying there all day and getting a takeaway for lunch. And then when I come home, it's like I literally only come home to sleep. And that just massively increased my quality of life. So now I'm trying to find those similar things.

especially when it comes to, so I'm trying to write a book as well. I've been procrastinating the hell out of it. But one thing I'm trying to do is like, you know, certain mornings each week will be blocked out. No one's allowed to book anything. And I go to a specific coffee shop, same one every day, where that is the only place I will write book stuff. Yeah.

And we've just signed a lease on an office where we go, okay, now I can focus on YouTube stuff when I'm at that space. I guess there's evidence that this sort of stuff is helpful. - Absolutely. And it's like a switch. So when you sit down in the coffee shop, it would be all about the book. When you go into the office, it's just about the YouTube video.

I'm really making sure that you stick to that. It's very important. So I don't know how many of your listeners are going to be checking their emails in bed, for example, or even playing games in bed on their phone. It's so, it's really, really bad for us. So thinking about where is the areas in your house, in your space that you're going to do particular activities and sticking to that will absolutely make you more productive. And you've mentioned quality of life. I would be surprised if people didn't follow what you described and didn't see happiness increases. Yeah.

Yeah. I think with the bedroom thing as well, I think in Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker talks about this, that when your bedroom is just for sleeping, it is easier to sleep and you get better sleep. Whereas if your bedroom is also where you chill on your laptop and where you work, it might be nice to take a Zoom call from your bedroom, but like you're kind

kind of shuffling yourself in terms of sleep. And again, it's really hard. You can imagine there might be people who are listening who are, their bedroom is their space. So they're living in a city where their bedroom is just their space. But again, in the corner of that, there can be a chair where you physically go to sit, you open your laptop and that's the trigger for your brain. Actually, now I check emails, but when you're in your bed, that's just for sleeping. So even that small separation is enough to build really good habits to make you more productive and happier. Amazing. I have a bunch of random...

quick fire questions well quick in that in that the questions are quick but the answers don't don't have to be um so I wonder if we can just kind of blitz through those I guess question one is what what advice would you give for your younger self I think it would be to to think big um to take small steps I like that I'll leave it at that that's good

Who's had the biggest influence on your career? My mum, actually. So when I think back, I wasn't particularly good at school and I wasn't a student that was actually meant to go to university. And she was really adamant that I go to education. And I studied computer science and I've pivoted a lot from there, but I still use some of the skills. So I still work in data science. But without her, I wouldn't have gone anywhere. What's your top tip for someone looking for success?

really embed good habits today that will serve your version of success in the future? So the small actions that you're taking today, what are you doing today? So how are you spending your time and does that point you in the direction of success? And if the answer is no, change how you spend your time.

Just on that note, your own definition of success. I think often when we think of like, I don't really like the word success because it's so tied up in societal expectations where like, you know, if I really enjoy gardening and I'm gardening in my backyard, society doesn't consider that successful unless I enter a gardening competition and win it. Like for some reason. So like how...

How do you feel about success by extension? How do we figure out what our own definitions of success are? Because it'll vary for different people, I imagine. It will vary for different people. And I think if you're somebody who's in your garden and, you know, you can afford to eat and put a roof over your head, you should keep gardening. That is a successful life to me. You know, it's describing somebody who their needs are fulfilled and they're also incredibly happy in the activities that they're doing on a day-to-day basis.

And I think that's really what I would love people to kind of sit back and think about is sometimes we're trading off earning, you know, a small amount of extra money, relatively speaking, in order to get very small increases in where we're actually going in our lives. So you want to be in a place where you're enjoying the activities. You really do. You want to be in a place where you can feel yourself moving forward because purpose has been shown in life.

to really make life worth living, quite frankly. So people, you know, once you actually find a direction to point in, but it doesn't need to be about money and it doesn't need to be about material things. - Speaking of money, there's all that evidence that a lot of listeners will be familiar with that beyond a certain amount, let's say 75,000 or whatever the different studies show, further increases in money don't lead to further increases in happiness.

But then there's another school of thought and there's an interestingly titled paper that I think was called something like, if money doesn't bring happiness, then you're not spending it well enough. Yeah. Where the theory is that like, well, actually, even beyond that point, you can use money to buy back your time by outsourcing things that you don't enjoy doing. Like, I don't know.

cleaning the house for example which I guess you don't really need 75k to do but there is an element of the more money you can spend on doing on removing the things that you don't like doing theoretically that could increase to a quality of life increase as someone who's presumably done reading into this sort of research what's what's what does the data say about about the money happiness correlation so

So if you read the correlations, it suggests that anything over a basic income of about £35,000 sterling in the UK doesn't bring additional happiness. But what it doesn't do, because this is relating essentially income to happiness, is think about firstly,

how many hours is something, so it controls for hours, but I've never seen a paper interact hours with income. So thinking about how many hours am I actually working to get that extra, you know, that extra pound, which obviously if I'm working 80 hours a week, it's gonna be very happy for me to be happy in the moment.

But the second thing that it doesn't do, which is a big mistake, is it doesn't talk about happiness over the life course. So people who are retired get very happy. But again, it's dependent on how much income that they actually have in the opposite direction. So I think you need to think about what does happiness look for you over the life course? There's going to be times in your life where you'll need to do some...

difficult things in order to secure particular life course destinations so if you're somebody who wanted to be a surgeon I would imagine it's really hard for those training for the for the years and actually even the job itself is going to have particular pinch points where there's going to be very very very high demand but for some people where that's their passion is going to be absolutely worth it and I think that's the trade-off that doesn't come true in the literature so the snazzy headlines that say money doesn't buy happiness don't take into account hours worked

And they don't take into account kind of smoothing things over the life course. How do you think about money personally? Like you've written a book, presumably you get royalties from it. You've got other things going on. You do speaking at corporate events where I've heard they pay like stupid prices to get someone to give a talk. What does that look like for you? So I think, I mean, if I was thinking about one of my values, I'm definitely somebody who wants to earn a decent living. But I wouldn't...

will only do that if I'm engaged in tasks that I actually really like doing so I turn down things that are quite lucrative relatively regularly because I know and I've got caught up in a project before that that that is like this when I'm doing it it's I'm just miserable and I can't wait to hand it over um so again what I'm trying to do at the moment is think about how could I shift my tasks so that I'm I'm really enjoying doing them I'm giving them I'm giving back

to society but at the same time it affords me to actually you know kind of increase my income as I get older and I guess you know for for for listeners who are beyond the point of having their basic needs met yeah then it's easy enough to be like okay cool I'm gonna turn down things that I don't like doing yes but for someone who's not at that point yet they're like

I guess we often do have to do things that we don't necessarily like to make money, to make ends meet, to get to that point. Yes. If for someone who's in that position, any advice on kind of keeping that going in order to get to the point where then you've got the freedom to kind of do what you want?

Yeah, so I think for every activity, I mean, I did some really crummy jobs when I was in university and I did some other kind of crummy projects after that. But I think focusing on the skills that they're bringing you in the moment is really important. And focusing on how you can actually turn it into another opportunity after the event, I think is important as well. And again, knowing what you're aiming for. So I think if it's somebody who's, you know, working to pay bills to go to university, it's a really linear path.

I think if it's somebody who is doing a particular job today and it doesn't quite fit with their future self, they will need to kind of take a step back and say, what are the skills that I'm learning from this? What are the activities that I'm getting practice of that I can actually write a CV for the person that I want to be in five years time?

and really focusing in on leveraging what you're doing now, now for the future. But there will always be, I think if you want to have particularly kind of a professional career where there's going to be kind of credentials that are barriers to entry, there will be some pain on the journey.

And I guess you just have to either learn to enjoy the pain or just kind of get over it. You do. But I think as well, it's always, I mean, try and think about what's the combination that you can, it doesn't need to be all or nothing. So if you're doing a particular course to get a credential, hopefully 40% of it

is all that's miserable and there's 60% of it that you can actually enjoy and focusing on that part as well. So when you do turn up for the parts that are painful, think about actually I'm going to be doing something that's quite nice later. Yeah. And I think even for the bits that are painful, like, you know, a big chunk of medical school, people don't particularly enjoy studying for exams, but, you know, setting up the environment, right. Doing it with friends, having music in the background, even if theoretically studying with music slightly

like slightly decreases your memory. Who cares? It makes it more fun. So I think there are lots of sort of fun levers that we can pull even for things that are miserable. That in some way help make things less painful and a little bit more fun. Absolutely. And again, there's lots of skills that people can learn for free on the internet, kind of getting out there. If the job doesn't lend themselves in the direction that they want to go,

taking those steps to acquire new skills I think is really worth doing you know I've hired people who haven't fit the box of what somebody would particularly look like in the role and it's worked out incredibly well for me and I think more and more employers are starting to do that so just because you haven't gone you know to university that you haven't taken traditional paths doesn't mean that you can't succeed in the career that you actually want. Nice moving on to our quick questions what does the first and last hour of your day look like?

So my first hour is having a cup of tea and standing in my garden now that I actually have green space, which I really enjoy. As early as I can actually make it up. And my second is unwinding from everything and potentially reading fiction, but usually nonfiction. What kind of fiction slash nonfiction do you enjoy?

So the nonfiction is exactly what you might expect. So it's kind of organizational psychology, behavioral science. I do like a good kind of crime novel, like White Collar Crime. So thinking about who brought down X bank at a particular moment in time.

But again, kind of really written from a kind of rigorous fact point of view. Fiction, it can be anything. So I tend to read popular fiction. I have Richard Ostman's book someone sent to me that I'm going to try reading, which is number one at the moment, which is meant to be quite nice. Very light fiction when I do read fiction. Anything in particular you'd recommend? No.

um so his first book was very good the thursday morning club which people might have might have heard heard of um and the second one is meant to be really good so i'm looking forward to starting it amazing there we go i'm big on uh fantasy fantasy fiction when i was younger i love fantasy i haven't read it in a while oh i would recommend have you come across brandon sanderson no oh he's my he's he's overtaking jk rowling to become my favorite author of all time wow like i for sort of

Anytime I've recommended Brandon Sanderson to a friend, they have gone down the rabbit hole of his books and have like... It's a series with the same characters. Yeah. So he's got a bunch of different series which have the same characters, but then all of the series are set in this wider like Marvel Cinematic Universe type thing where they kind of interact with each other and he's got this like

20, 30 year plan for all the books that are going to come out over the next like 30 years where they'll all, where stuff is being foreshadowed in a book that was released this year that's going to become relevant 25 years from now. Fantastic. So it's like a whole lifetime of like incredible fiction. Oh, I like that. Would recommend. Anyway, what material item of like,

of like reasonable cost do you think is that has added a lot of value to your life oh and my apple products okay yeah they have i mean value in the sense of speeding up my work and make me much more efficient absolutely nice

My garden furniture though for relaxing if I was to pick something just for pleasure. Are we talking hammock? Are we talking like chairs? It's a couch with a table and then some stools around so it can fit like maybe 10 people but in the morning it's just really nice to be out to kind of just get out in the air actually. Yeah play. What book would you recommend to everyone?

I can't recommend my own book. Other than your own, which we're going to be recommending extensively anyway. That's a really, that's a good question. So I would recommend Think Again by Adam Grant. So it's all about unlearning. Yeah.

So thinking about what are the habits or the preconceptions that you might actually have that aren't serving you well and really spending time to kind of unlearn them. So most of us kind of go through our lives with a particular viewpoint and it's trying to get you to take a step back and think about what might it be about my viewpoint that isn't serving me well and how can I actually enhance that?

my life and it really ties the idea actually of having what I would call a diverse boardroom so thinking about who you get advice from on a particular um on on things that actually crop up in your life and are they very like you so are they the same age do they go to the same university do they vote in the same political way um and broadening that boardroom to have more people who are different to you in it and and there's two reasons for that

So firstly, you're less likely to succumb to confirmation bias, to be told that you're right all the time, which is good for us. But diverse boardrooms will see opportunities that you don't see. Nice. So, yeah. So if you don't have a Trump supporter in your in your boardroom, you go get a Trump supporter. And if you don't have a Biden supporter, you go get a Biden supporter for all the US listeners. Excellent.

This is a question we usually ask, like, entrepreneur type people, which is that if you lost all your money, if you lost all your business, what, like, what would you be doing? But I guess for you, the equivalent is like, if you got cancelled, and, you know, LSE fired you because, you know, it's unacceptable that you said that thing 10 years ago or whatever. Yeah. But you still had the same skills. What would you be doing now?

I think I'd be writing and putting more stuff out there. So I think we started and, you know, I'm not on social media because I'm somebody who detests social media. I just don't have the time at the moment. But I think it's a really good outlet to kind of reach audiences that I otherwise would not necessarily get to meet. And I think I will be writing much more content for online, already established online mediums, but maybe doing something more myself. Okay, interesting. What quote or mantra do you live by? Oh, that's a really good one. I have so many of them.

So it's really about taking control what you can control and letting the rest go. Very nice. I guess final question, journey or destination? Journey, has to be journey. Amazing. And that's the title of the final chapter of your book, which is like two pages long. Yes. Why did you call it journey?

Because I think you're never done. So I think, you know, these days careers are going to go on probably. I mean, if you're lucky, you'll be 75 and still doing something. So you might have wound down, but you know, you'll still be engaged. You'll still be kind of getting out there and meeting people. And I think the ultimate idea that we find a job and that's the end of it for us is kind of gone. It's gone because of the economy is changing. It's being shaped by technological forces, but I think it's better for us to think of it as a journey. Very nice. Cool. Thank you, Ali.

It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you very much for listening. If you want to connect with Grace, all her links are in the description and in the show notes, including a link to her book. This is also our sixth episode, which marks the halfway point of season one. With this in mind, we're doing a two minute survey to get your thoughts on the season so far and hear what you'd like to see in future episodes. That survey is linked down below. So if you've got a spare two minutes, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts. That's it for me. If you did enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe to be notified when we release a new episode. Have a great day and we'll see you later.