Finding your ‘why’: How to dig deep and define your purpose | Dan Cable

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Purpose is one of the activators of a network in the human brain often called the seeking system. It's what fuels our thirst for new knowledge and pushes us to explore.

The question ""What are you doing right now?"" has a myriad of valid answers, some more involved and layered than others.

Shifting your response to be about the ""why"" recontextualizes the action and speaks to the purpose of the work rather than the behaviors.

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DAN CABLE:

Dan Cable is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. Dan's research and teaching focus on employee engagement, change, organizational culture, leadership mindset, and the linkage between brands and employee behaviors. Dan was selected for the 2018 Thinkers50 Radar List, The Academy of Management has twice honored Dan with Best Article awards, and The Academy of Management Perspectives ranked Dan in the 'Top 25 most influential management scholars'.

Check Dan Cable's latest book Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do at https://amzn.to/3dd32Mj

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TRANSCRIPT:

DAN CABLE: It seems that this concept of purpose is uniquely human. It's a really interesting one. It's this idea of having an answer to the why of what we do.

We know that that is one of the activators of the seeking system. We know that the concept of looking for the outcome or the effect of our behavior is something that our seeking system is urging us to do. But it's also interesting to take a step back from that and just think about how all of us have stories running around in our brains about why we do what we do. For example, if I'm taking to a class I sometimes would say to them, you know, what are you doing right now? And it's possible to think about sitting. A lot of times when I'm teaching a class full of MBAs or a class full of executives they're all sitting and that would be a truthful answer. But they also could say I'm listening. And if they're listening that's a slightly different story because it moves the emphasis off of the bum and into the ear and engages the brain a little bit. But they also could say I'm learning. And the idea of learning is a big different again because that implies that I'm listening to what you're saying but I'm also comparing it to what I used to believe and then I'm deciding if I need to do any updating on what I believe.

You also could say I'm trying to learn how to be a better leader so that I can ignite the people that I lead. Each one of these is just a different purpose. They can all be true. They all have the opportunity to be a true story in our brain. But we as humans have the ability to shift that focus. And sometimes that work, especially menial work that we feel is repetitive we start to think about the behaviors. And so when somebody says what are you doing? They might say what do I do at work? I put these screws on that machine. What do I do at work? I process this film and I clip this out and I upload it. And those are the behaviors of the work. You also can think about the why of that work. What do I do? I delight customers by putting this film online that they can watch and enjoy. What do I do? I build an automobile which is a piece of equipment that moves 80 to 100 miles an hour. Those can all be true stories but what we're finding is is a lot of time this sense of purpose, the higher order of purpose is lost. And it's lost and it's nudged out by the lower level: what do I do with my body all day long. The evidence and the research suggests that when we think about our work as a set of behaviors, scripted behaviors that we do in a repetitive way, we lose stamina, we lose resilience. When we think of it at a high level of construal, the why of the work meaning what is the impact, the final result of this on the world it really makes our stamina higher. It makes us much more resilient to difficulties in accomplishing that effect.

Tyranny comes home: How the 'boomerang effect' impacts civilian life in the U.S.

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Methods used in foreign intervention often resurface domestically, whether that's in the form of skills or technology.

University of Tampa professor Abigail Blanco calls this the boomerang effect. It's a consequence not often thought about when we discuss foreign intervention.

The three channels to consider when examining the boomerang effect include human capital in the form of skills, administrative dynamics, and physical capital in the form of tools and technology.

This video was made possible thanks to Big Think's partnership with the Institute for Humane Studies. https://theihs.org/

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ABIGAIL BLANCO:

Abigail Blanco is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Tampa. She is the co-author of Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism (2018, Stanford University Press). She is also an Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, an Affiliated Scholar with the Foundation for Economic Education and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

Check Abigail Blanco's latest book Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism at https://amzn.to/2QcEEAq

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TRANSCRIPT:

ABIGAIL BLANCO: So what a lot of people don't think about with respect to foreign intervention is the idea that the tools and processes that are developed as a part of foreign intervention can come to be used domestically. So people might not associate, for example, things like the use of drones domestically within the United States or unmanned aerial vehicles, torture in U.S. prisons, or things like the militarization of domestic police as consequences of foreign intervention. But these are the exact types of tools developed as a part of intervention abroad that then wind up being used back home. My coauthor, Chris Coyne, and I term this phenomenon the boomerang effect.

So the big question or what it is that we seek to do is to identify how it is that those tools, which were once exclusively used abroad come to be used back home. So we do this by looking at or identifying what we call the three channels of the boomerang effect. The first of these channels is what we call the human capital channel. You can think about human capital simply as the skill sets that an individual possesses or develops as part of their job. So students, for instance, are hopefully developing human capital as they go through their course of study. People, when they go and they take different jobs, are adding to their human capital. This is no different than when individuals are involved in the preparation for or execution of a foreign intervention. The critical piece is that once that intervention or that person's part of the intervention is concluded those skills that they've developed don't magically disappear. They stay with them.

And so those skills are then brought back with that person and integrated into their future endeavors whether those are in the public sector or in the private sector. The second channel that we identify is what we refer to as the administrative dynamics channel. So perhaps the easiest way to think about this is to think about the different organizational structures in which people have operated throughout their life. So people might be familiar with the administrative dynamics of education for instance. They know that overarching structure and how it works. Or if you go to work at a variety of different companies those have different administrative dynamics. The administrative dynamics that are often associated with foreign intervention so those that are highly bureaucratic, those that are very militaristic again become a part or people get used to operating within those dynamics and then are able to import those types of administrative structures into again a number of domestic institutions.

The last channel that we talk about as part of the boomerang effect is what's referred to as the physical capital channel. So if human capital are the skills that a person develops, physical capital are just those actual physical like tools that people develop as a part of foreign intervention. So these might be things like surveillance techniques. They might also be things like unmanned aerial vehicles or particular types of weapons. So again when individuals are completed or they're finished with their part of the foreign intervention they like to use or continue to use those tools that they've developed. And so we see an integration of the tools of foreign intervention into domestic operations.

The future of space travel is starting right now

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2020 is off to a rocky start, but there are some exciting things happening on the space travel front.

Private companies like SpaceX and Boeing have partnered with NASA to get American spacecrafts into space, back to the moon, and onwards to Mars.

"I think in a hundred years, first of all, we're going to be celebrating 2020, so 2120 get ready for a big party," says Reisman.

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GARRETT REISMAN:

Dr. Reisman was selected by NASA in 1998. His first mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, in 2008, with a 95-day mission aboard the International Space Station. His second mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, in 2010. During these missions, Dr. Reisman performed 3 spacewalks, operated the Space Station Robot Arm and was a flight engineer aboard the Space Shuttle. He served as a technical consultant for the film Ad Astra and is currently a technical advisor for the TV Show For All Mankind. At present he is a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC, Motivational Speaker and Senior Advisor at SpaceX.

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TRANSCRIPT:

GARRETT REISMAN: A hundred years from now I think we'll be celebrating the centennial of 2020 and all the stuff that's going to happen in 2020. Not just this crazy pandemic and all this stuff that's happening but as far as space goes 2020 is going to be a really good year. I know 2020, I'll admit 2020 so far has not been one of my more favorite years. In fact, it's pretty terrible. It's been pretty awful. But I can also tell you that there's going to be something really, really amazing that happens in 2020 which is that we're finally going to see the true launch, no pun intended, of this whole new era of space exploration led by a lot of private companies working in partnership with NASA that are going to take us back to space using American rockets, launching from American soil.

And it's going to happen first by SpaceX and SpaceX we've been working on the Crew Dragon vehicle for a long time now. This is the year it's going to fly. We have a date actually scheduled only two months from now is when we plan to do the first flight with people and it's going to be Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, two former colleagues of mine, two friends of mine are going to be the first test pilots to fly Dragon up to the space station. And so we're finally going to get to the point in SpaceX where we're launching people on our rockets which is what the company was founded for.

But it's not just SpaceX. It's also Boeing is not that far behind on their spacecraft, the Starliner. And then we have two other private companies that are doing suborbital flights purely for space tourism. But they also, both these companies have plans and ambitions to go beyond that. And that is Blue Origin. It has a New Shepard vehicle that's going to go straight up. Like I was saying before it's going to go straight up and straight back down but you'll get high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. You'll experience about five minutes of floating in zero gravity and look, it's going to be an incredible ride. If I hadn't have already gone myself I would totally be buying a ticket right now.

And so Elon, Jeff Bezos they put a lot of their effort had money and resources into jumpstarting this whole, to get us back on that trajectory to where we're headed toward having a colony on Mars or in the case of Jeff Bezos he wants to have massive space stations where millions of people can live in space and do all the manufacturing. He wants to basically turn Earth into a national park kind of thing where you can come and visit but let's get all the factories off of this planet so we stop polluting it. They have these incredibly grand visions, so that's going to change everything. The access to space for humans is going to drastically expand this year in 2020.

I think in a hundred years first of all we're going to be celebrating 2020, so 2120 get ready for a big party. Just like we had all theses great events to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of landing on the moon, Apollo 11 and the Apollo program, we're going to be celebrating 2020 I think in the same way.

Because this is just the start. All those things I just described as wonderful as they are and as big of a step as they are it's just the first step because all these companies and all these projects that we're talking about is just the beginning. The next step and the things that they have on the drawing boards, the things not just...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/future-of-space-travel

Tech hack: These 4 steps will make your phone less distracting

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Smartphones are double-edged swords. They are great tools for connecting people around the world, but they also often get in the way of productivity.

One four-step strategy for taking back control is the Four R's: Remove, Replace, Reorganize, and Reclaim.

By changing a few notifications settings and removing non-essential applications, you can completely transform your relationship with your device.

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NIR EYAL:

A graduate and instructor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Nir Eyal has studied and taught behavioral design to industry-leading experts and scientists. He writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com and his writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Time, Inc., and Psychology Today.

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TRANSCRIPT:

NIR EYAL: So many people complain that their phone is a constant source of distraction but we can actually hack back our devices to make sure that they serve us as opposed to us serving them - very quickly in only just four steps.

The first step is to remove meaning what you have to do is look at your phone and just delete the apps that you find are not very helpful or the ones that you find particularly distracting.

Now the next step is to replace meaning you want to ask yourself are those apps that send you all of these external triggers, is the phone the best place to use those products. For example, I love social media but I don't really find much value in using Facebook on my phone. I like using it on my desktop and I use it during a time that I plan in my calendar according to my time box calendar because we talked about it in the last step around making time for traction. So I turned what was otherwise a distraction into traction by planning time for it in my day. And I do that on my desktop as opposed to my phone.

The third step is to reorganize. So on your home screen you don't want just any old app to be able to attract your attention when you first open your phone. You only want the apps that serve you most. So on my home screen I might have the apps that I use most frequently that do serve me. So I have email, I have my to do list, I have my calendar and I have very little else that might distract me.

And then finally the last step is to reclaim these notifications. So when it comes to reclaiming these notifications we want to make sure that we only allow the notifications from apps that really do serve us, that are the most urgent to have the privilege of interrupting us with sight and sound triggers. So it should only be your phone calls, your text messages, the most urgent notifications. Those are the only ones who should have the privilege to send you a ping or a ding that might interrupt you in the middle of something that you otherwise wanted to do.

So as potentially distracting as we think our devices are it turns out that two-thirds of people who own a smartphone never change their notification settings. It turns out that just in a few minutes of adjusting those notification settings and asking yourself is this external trigger serving me or am I serving it. We can completely change all of these external triggers, these pings, dings and rings that lead us toward distraction.

John Locke vs. John Stuart Mill: Using metaethics to examine claims

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As a branch of analytical philosophy, metaethics explores the status, foundation, and scope of morality. Through this lens we can examine moral claims like those in classical liberalist thought.

Two voices stand out when it comes to liberalism and rights: John Locke's naturalistic point of view, and John Stuart Mill's moralistic/utilitarian stance. Locke believed that right and wrong could be determined rationally, while Mill believed in moral rules and the idea that what's right and wrong should be in service of human happiness.

Philosophy professor Daniel Jacobson argues that to live in a society, everyone must abide by the same rules and not allow for those rules to be circumvented when convenient.

This video was made possible thanks to Big Think's partnership with the Institute for Humane Studies. https://theihs.org/

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DANIEL JACOBSON:

Daniel Jacobson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He works primarily in ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. He founded and directs the Freedom and Flourishing Project, whose mission is to study the theory, history, and empirical support for classical liberalism; and to increase political diversity in philosophy.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DANIEL JACOBSON: In meta-ethics what one tries to do is think about what makes the sorts of claims such as the foundational claims of liberalism true. In the liberal tradition, for instance, there are really two central strands. One is personified by John Locke. That's a natural rights tradition and that finds these rights endowed to us by our creators. So either given to us by god or by some sort of fact about human nature, a slightly different tradition. And then John Stuart Mill on the other hand who thinks that, who defends many of the same sorts of right. But defends them on fundamentally different grounds. Defends them as moral rights because he thinks that they're the sorts of things that need to be protected in order for people to flourish.

So it's a utilitarian argument in the sense that the ultimate value here is happiness or well-being. But it's an indirect utilitarian argument because it says that we shouldn't just evaluate individual actions by trying to estimate their effect in isolation. But rather we should think about the most important moral rules for the governance of society that will be particularly conducive to human happiness. And for Mill he thought that those rules enshrined the kinds of rights that classical liberals focus on. Freedom of conscious, freedom of association, rule of law, autonomy over your mind and body.

Another way of viewing the difference between a Lockean form of liberalism and a Millian form of liberalism is about whether it holds that certain sorts of actions are inherently right or inherently wrong. Locke thought something like that. He thought that somehow or other we could rationally determine the rightness or wrongness, the inherent rightness or wrongness of certain sorts of actions. Kant was another person who thought that. For Mill he thought that what makes actions right or wrong ultimately is there are consequences for human happiness. At the same time though he thought that there was a crucial role for rules, for moral rules and that the rightness and wrongness of actions issues from whether or not they're in accordance with the best set of moral rules where the best set of moral rules are the ones that whose adoption is going to be maximally conducive to happiness.

A central meta ethical question is are certain sorts of actions inherently right or wrong or are they right or wrong in virtue of their consequences. And what I'm suggesting, and Mill was somewhere in between there because he thinks foundationally it's the good, it's happiness. That's the ultimate value. But he also sees moral rules not just as being heuristics, rules of thumb, things that we can apply but then throw away under pressure. To the contrary he thinks that they generate real obligations. Even in extraordinary circumstances where it seems like say violating someone's freedom of speech will be better in terms of its consequences because of political contingencies of the moment. What Mill understood was the stability of having moral rules that we respect in a very stringent way. Maybe not in catastrophe but in ordinary context. We really need to guard against people wanting to make exceptions...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/metaethics

Psychology of feedback: How to give or receive valuable critique

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Feedback is a gift, says business psychologist Dr Melanie Katzman. Giving or receiving feedback can be a formal part of our jobs, but in Dr Katzman's assessment, we often don't go far enough with feedback. 

Katzman suggests creating a psychological contract with a partner who you respect and trust. In that contract, you agree to exchange extremely honest feedback by mutual consent in a safe and trusting way.

In this video, she lays out the rules for such a contract and how you can embark on one. This kind of feedback is not advised without a clear contract as people can feel you are going out of bounds. So be clear, be mutual, and then be extremely candid. 

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MELANIE KATZMAN:

Dr. Melanie Katzman is the author of the #1 WSJ bestseller Connect First: 52 Simple Ways to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work. She is a business psychologist, advisor, and consultant to the world’s top public and private companies, government agencies and nonprofits.

Check Melanie Katzman's latest book Connect First: 52 Simple Ways to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work

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TRANSCRIPT:

MELANIE KATZMAN: I encourage people to provide feedback to one another. It's a gift. It's also often part of your job. But, too often, we don't go far enough. So I suggest that we create psychological contracts. You don't do it with everybody, but it is an opportunity to agree to exchange extremely honest feedback by mutual consent in a safe and trusting way.

There's a number of different ways in which you can do that. One is in the immediate. I say to somebody who I trust, whose opinion matters to me, ""I'm getting up on stage. Let me know afterwards: Was I clear? Did I give too much information, too little information? Did I move too much? Did I engage with the audience? Tell me the truth."" That's an immediate request for honest feedback and we are creating a psychological contract. You're not going out of bounds if you tell me exactly what you think. I also tell people if they're going into a meeting, pick the person who's going to pull on their ear to let you know you're going off topic, whether your data is really not holding up in that room and getting an immediate sense from somebody the unvarnished truth about what's going on.

The other way in which we negotiate psychological contracts is to create a space within the group that you're working to say ""We're going through big changes in our company right now. There's going to be a lot of noise in the hallways. Not everyone's going to like what we're doing but when we come into this room we're going to share what we're hearing, how we're feeling and we're going to work through that together."" So it is creating a safe space; it's agreeing this is where we're going to bring that information and understand that not everything's going to be pretty, but we have mutually consented to having that sharing.

So, when we establish a psychological contract this is not a written agreement. This is an agreement between people, preferably, I look you in the eye or I speak to you directly and I ask permission and you give it to me. It doesn't exist, by the way, forever; you have to renew those contracts. You can negotiate them for the moment. You can negotiate them over a period of time. I say to you, ""I know you're coming up for promotion. I'd really like to help you get to where you need to go. Would you like me to give you feedback on a more ongoing way?"" I've asked you. You've given me permission. We've now contracted that, over a period of time, with a particular goal in mind we're going to have continual exchanges. You're going to expect that feedback from me and I'm going to take on the responsibility of delivering that to you regularly and clearly.

In the absence of negotiating that contract people can feel as if they have been impinged upon, that you are going beyond what is socially accepted or interpersonally comfortable. So be clear, be mutual, and then be extremely candid.

Tracking COVID-19 in Real-Time: How Tech and Innovation Can Fight Disease Outbreaks with Inder Singh

Moderated by Akash Goel, M.D.

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How can we track the spread of COVID-19 where testing is not widely available? How can global health be improved by innovation and cooperation?

Over the last few years, Kinsa has given away or sold millions of internet-connected thermometers to households across the US to collect data that can help predict and prevent flu outbreaks in US communities. Now, that smart tech is being leveraged to create the only real-time map of the coronavirus spread. In this live session with Kinsa founder and CEO Inder Singh, moderated by Dr. Akash Goel, M.D., you’ll learn how innovation can help us map global health threats, the best personal health practices during the COVID-19 outbreak, and why innovation in the health sector is critical to our global future.

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About Kinsa’s Smart Thermometer

Kinsa’s mission is to create the world’s first real-time map of human health to empower society with the information to track and stop the spread of disease. Kinsa gathers the data to map health using smartphone-connected sensors. It produces an ultra-low-cost smartphone-connected thermometer. By combining a thermometer with a smartphone, Kinsa “turns a thermometer into a communication device” with people who have just fallen ill. In addition to providing a temperature readout, this thermometer, marketed as the “world’s smartest thermometer,” tracks symptoms, enables one to get advice directly from a medical professional, and see the “health weather” in the local area to know whether flu or strep throat is circulating. Using the smartphone display and audio, it is also designed to ease taking a child’s temperature by creating an engaging experience for both a child and parent.

Explore Kinsa’s health map: healthweather.us

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INDER SINGH:

Inder Singh is the founder and CEO of Kinsa, a venture-backed startup creating the first real-time health map. He formerly served as the Executive Vice President of the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), a global not-for-profit organization fighting malaria and other diseases. Singh is known for his worldwide presence actions for global health, particularly regarding malaria eradication. He is credited with saving over $1 billion in drug costs for developing nations. More than 2.6 million HIV/AIDS patients have received drugs subsidized through CHAI, and more than 30 million malaria patients have received drugs produced at lower cost thanks to CHAI licensing deals.

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ABOUT BIG THINK:

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Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. Subscribe to learn from top minds like these daily. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. ​We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life.

Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

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Master the skills of negotiating in everyday life

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You're negotiating every day of your life, whether it's a huge business deal or something as small as getting the remote control from your partner, says Shark Tank investor Daymond John. 

Over 65 percent of communication is body language. Only seven percent is what you say. Using body language effectively is a simple way to shift power to your court during negotiations or strategically shift power over to others.

Used-car salespeople have this down to a fine art, says John. They are the best because they listen to clues in the way potential customers talk and then they engage your senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste.

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DAYMOND JOHN:

Daymond John is an original cast member on ABC's four-time Emmy Award winning show "Shark Tank" and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under the Obama Administration. An accomplished two-time New York Times bestselling author, Daymond's latest book is titled Powershift: Transform Any Situation, Close Any Deal, and Achieve Any Outcome.

Check Daymond John's latest book Powershift: Transform Any Situation, Close Any Deal, and Achieve Any Outcome at https://amzn.to/3a5h3cI

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TRANSCRIPT:

DAYMOND JOHN: I want people to take away from Powershift that there's various different ways that they can apply negotiation to their life. And I'm not necessarily talking about always this huge deal; it could be just getting your remote control away from your significant other or trying to talk to your boss about getting more vacation time or whatever it is.

Listen, there are simple things you can learn from. Car salesmen are the best, especially used car salesmen. They know that people like to talk in various different ways. They communicate in sight, sound, feel, taste and smell. So when you walk into a car dealership, when somebody sees you and there's a nice red, beautiful car right there, it's the convertible, if you're talking and they see you picking up things and you're always talking about vision, they go, 'Can you see yourself in this beautiful car driving down a winding road with all the leaves falling?' If you're talking about smell, the way you're communicating, they go, 'Can you see yourself in this car with the rich leather and you can smell the rich leather? And it's fall in New York and the leaves are falling.' If you're talking about feel, they go 'Can you see yourself driving down this road and the engine, you're shifting gears, vroom, vroom, and the power and the rumble in that engine?' If you're talking about sound, think about driving down and the wind blowing through your hair and those Bose speakers with the amazing music.

You can do that just by seeing how people communicate on social media. When they talk and one of those types of ways of communication you can see what relates to them better.

Also, body language. Over 65 percent of communication is body language. Only seven percent is what you say. The other is how you say it. When you're at a table communicating with somebody and you notice them putting a lot of obstacles in front of you to gather space and push you away. Or are they lifting their hair over their ears when they're writing because they're more interested in what you're saying.

People most likely don't think you're lying when you touch them so are you shaking their hand when you're saying 'I can't wait to follow up further and I really hope you and your family all the best'?

These are simple tips that you can learn and shift power over to yourself. And I don't want you to do it in a bad way. I want you to empower others but there are simple ways to communicate and that's what's in Powershift."

The Uncertainty Pandemic: You Have More Control Than You Think with Daniel Burrus

Moderated by Big Think co-founder and President Peter Hopkins

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While our world is in a period of indefinite stasis, people’s needs aren’t. Now is the time to become positive disruptors, creating the transformations that need to happen to make the world a better place by focusing on significance over success and by being of service to others.

In this session with Daniel Burrus, leading tech forecaster and CEO of Burrus Research, you’ll learn to shift your perspective and use the power of certainty as you communicate to teams, employees and customers. When the pandemic is over, and it will be, what will you and your organization be remembered for?

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DANIEL BURRUS:

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts. He is the CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advances in technology-driven trends to help clients profit from technological, social and business forces that are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities.

Over the past 30 years, he has established a worldwide reputation for his exceptional record of accurately predicting the future of technological change and its direct impact on the business world. He is the author of seven books, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Flash Foresight, and his latest book, The Anticipatory Organization, is an Amazon No. 1 bestseller.

To learn more about Daniel or to get in touch, visit burrus.com.

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ABOUT BIG THINK:

Smarter Faster™

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Under what conditions are we most creative?

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Creative individuals produce better work when there's a deadline involved, says media mogul Tina Brown.

To extract great work, you shouldn't have the option to escape it. Deadlines add a level of pressure that makes for better results.

In Brown's opinion, some of the best journalistic work was done in the period after 9/11. The combination of subject matter, content, and passion rallied creatives to put forth incredible coverage.

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TINA BROWN:

Tina Brown is an award-winning journalist, editor, author and founder of the Women in the World summits. Between 1979 and 2017, she was editor-in-chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and authored The Diana Chronicles and The Vanity Fair Diaries. Her podcast “TBD with Tina Brown” is available on Apple podcast.

Check her book The Vanity Fair Diaries: Power, Wealth, Celebrity, and Dreams: My Years at the Magazine That Defined a Decade at https://amzn.to/2WnLozm

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TRANSCRIPT:

TINA BROWN: Well, I think writers and photographers and all creative people do need a deadline to get anything done.

It's remarkable to me, including myself, if someone isn't saying to me, I want this piece, I'm not going to write it. I'm just not. It's too hard. Writing is too difficult. And doing any creative work takes such intellectual sort of tussle that if there's any way you can escape from it, you will.

So deadlines, I think, are a critical point of extracting great work. And interestingly, some of the best work has been done under deadline. For instance, the great photographer, Richard Avedon, he always liked to do both kinds of work - his deadline work, his journalism work, his fashion magazine work, and then his artistic shows. His best art was actually the stuff he did for magazines. I mean, it was better than anything he did on the slow burn of his shows. There was something about the adrenaline. There was something about the discipline of knowing that you had an audience as opposed to simply being a museum show or whatever that actually brought out the best work in his artistry, I think.

And I think that's often true, that sometimes the best work is done under the gun - somebody writing at warp speed. I think that, interestingly, the journalism that was done right after 9/11 was some of the best journalism that we've seen in the last 25 years. It was like writers and photographers and editors, so energized by the need to get this content done, there wasn't any wasting of time or sort of frothing it all up or whatever, they did their best work. They were really inspired to do their best work. And that was done under the gun with a need to get it done. There's nothing like the urgency of subject matter, content, and passion.

I actually think sometimes you can do your best work when you're up against the wall. I mean, sometimes we create some amazing cover when we lost our big star, just by being creative.

And in fact, one of my mottos as an editor was, if you haven't got a budget, get yourself a point of view. It's like you have to be cleverer with no budget. And you have to, perhaps, come up with some angle, some creative idea that will get you over that hump.

I always rather like working with TV producers, actually, in my role at Women in the World because they have to fill that seat on the program. Otherwise, it's just empty screen. So that makes them a bit less procrastinating, frankly, than people working in a situation where they've got another way out. If you have to get somebody there, you've got to figure out, well, I haven't been able to get that big guest. I've got to find this other guest who's going to be as interesting, but perhaps in a completely different way. That takes a bit more creativity.