Curious Minds at Work

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. We love that feeling of a fresh start. But we hate how our commitments seldom make it to Valentine’s Day.

So what if this year we had an expert teach us how to do it right?

Ayelet Fishbach is that expert. She’s a social psychologist at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.

In this interview, we talk about how to choose goals that energize us and how to pair them with incentives that keep us motivated. We also discuss a system for working on multiple goals simultaneously. Finally, we learn about the power of social support and how we can get it.

Episode Links

Immediate Rewards Predict Adherence to Long-term Goals

The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation

You Think Failure is Hard? So Is Learning From It

Slacking in the Middle

Pursuing Goals with Others

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

About Us

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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We go to the dentist, get our eyes checked, and get our cars inspected. These regularly scheduled health and safety audits let us know how we’re doing.

But we rarely audit how we spend our time.

Sure, most of us have a calendar. Yet few of us study how these calendar events impact our happiness. We rarely track the connection between what we spend our time doing and how well we’re flourishing.

As a result, we can find ourselves feeling unhappy, frustrated, and what scientists call “time poor.”

Researchers like Cassie Holmes want to change that. They’ve learned there’s a strong connection between how we spend our time and how happy we feel. In her book, Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most, she shares ways we can optimize our calendars for happiness, including ways to avoid distraction, extend joy, create a meaningful schedule, and avoid regret.

Holmes’ tips on time tracking and time auditing are simple and powerful. As the year draws to a close, this may be just the book you’re looking for as we head into a new year.

Episode Links

Having Too Little or Too Much Time is Linked to Lower Subjective Well-being

Our Flawed Pursuit of Happiness – and How to Get It Right

A Valuable Lesson for a Happier Life (video)

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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How we think about things can have an outsize impact on whether we achieve our goals.

Take, for example, the research we might do to make an important decision. If we’re already committed to a certain way of thinking, it’s likely we’ll only focus on information that confirms what we already believe. It’s what scientists call confirmation bias, and it can cause us to overlook, or even dismiss, information critical to things like our health, our finances, and our careers.

And it’s not the only mental bias we hold.

That’s why, to make better decisions, we need to start by understanding what these biases are. Next, we need to learn when they’re most likely to kick in. Then, we need to know how to circumvent them. These are the reasons Woo-kyoung Ahn wrote her book, Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better. 

Ahn’s book is based on the wildly popular course she teaches at Yale. It includes riveting examples, amazing research findings, and targeted steps we can take to address our biases. She provides a versatile set of tools we can use to improve our mental performance.

Episode Links

Bias on the Brain

Be Mindwise: Perspective Taking vs Perspective Getting

What's Fueling Lonnie Walker IV's Surge with the Los Angeles Lakers by Dave McMenamin

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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Who are you? It’s a question you’ve had to answer if you’ve ever moved, changed jobs, or started a new relationship.

And it’s natural that who you are will change with each new experience you gain and new memories you form. The “story of you” will be different.

At the same time, our brain is an incredible editor. With limited storage space for memories, it’s got to pick and choose. It does that by connecting the dots between them to give us the stories we tell about ourselves.

In other words, who we are is who we say we are. It’s informed by our past, our present, and predictions we make about our future.

That’s both tremendously freeing and just a little bit scary. At any moment, we’re not one self, we’re many selves. And that self is constructed. By us.

Gregory Berns walks us through all of this and more in his latest book, The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent – and Reinvent – Our Identities. He points out that we are, by nature, storytellers, and he shares ways to put that skill to work for us, so we can avoid regret and prioritize our values.

This is a great book to read if you’re feeling stuck or trying to make a major life decision. It’ll help you weigh the options and gain a different perspective on how you see yourself.

Episode Links

Changing the Narrative of Your Self

How Do the Books We Read Change Our Brains?

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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Work relationships matter more than we think. They can be a key reason we stay in a job or the reason we leave. When they don’t go well, they can consume a lot of our time and energy, both in and out of work.

That’s why we need to get better at them. Even the difficult ones, like a boss who takes all the credit or a co-worker who’s perpetually negative.

Amy Gallo is an expert on conflict and a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. In this interview, we discuss her most recent book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). We talk about why work relationships are worth the time we invest, even when they’re challenging. In fact, it’s when they’re challenging that we need to work that much harder to overcome our most primal default settings.

Amy shares a number of tools we can use to gain a different perspective, pressure test our assumptions, and respond so that we spend less time outside of work dealing with difficult people. And so we have more options than to give up or walk away. It’s a book I think you’ll return to again and again over the course of your career. 

Episode Links

4 Tactics That Backfire When Dealing with a Difficult Colleague

How to Navigate Conflict with a Coworker

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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What if becoming a better quitter was something to aspire to?

Annie Duke thinks it is. She’s a national science foundation fellowship winner and bestselling author who’s used her background in psychology to become a successful poker player and business advisor. Lately, she’s spent time studying the power of quitting, a tool she argues is as important as grit, resilience, and sticking it out.

The science shows we’re not great at it. We don’t fire quickly enough. We don’t quit soon enough. We don’t end relationships early enough. Why? Well, identity and goals play a role. Along with many of the messages our culture sends that err more on the side of stick it out than on the side of quit and try something else.

Annie’s compelling book on the topic is titled, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. It’ll help you see how sticking with something that’s not working is just as much a decision as quitting. You’ll begin to view quitting as an important tool to add to your decision-making toolkit, especially when you understand better when to use it.

Episode Links

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

To Change, or Not to Change? Just Flip a Coin

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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What if the skills we need to thrive in uncertainty were ones we already had?

That’s the case Jennifer Garvey Berger makes in her latest book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead.

When life is good, we make time to connect, engage, and create. But when it’s uncertain, stress gets in the way of these healthy behaviors.

While we can’t always change life’s complexity, we can counter its effects by tapping into healthy features of our biology. These include our breath, laughter, and social connections.

This is a book to read with your colleagues, your teams, or all by yourself. It’ll help you take the first steps toward responding to uncertainty in healthier and happier ways.

Episode Links

The Expectation Effect by David Robson

Quit by Annie Duke

Akasha and Vernice Jones and Carolyn Coughlin

Changing on the Job by Jennifer Garvey Berger

Good Arguments by Bo Seo

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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Your manager sees it one way. Your colleague sees it another. Both ways are different from yours. Why is that? Well, our brains may have something to do with it.

Today’s brain researchers are studying what makes our brains different. They’re finding that these differences not only impact how we interpret situations, but also how well we’re able to focus, learn new things, and adapt to change. They’re also discovering what motivates us and how well we connect with teammates.

Chantel Prat is a neuroscientist who studies brain differences, and she’s written a book on the subject, The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours. In it, she explains how differences in brain design play out in work and in life. She helps us appreciate these differences and gain greater empathy for one another.

Episode Links

The Dress

Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Wolcott Sperry and Simon Baron-Cohen

Hebbian Theory

PACE Model of Curiosity

Theory of Mind

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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How we think about toughness needs a reset. Too often, it’s been associated with brute forcing our way through things. Ignoring our feelings. Making an outward show of confidence and dominance.

The problem is it just doesn't work.

Performance coach and bestselling author, Steve Magness, offers another way. He’s done a deep dive on the latest research on toughness and performance. In his book, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness, he discusses the misconceptions of our current model. Then he offers a new one informed by the latest in neuroscience and psychology research. Along the way, he translates research findings into practical steps we can take to make the shift.

If you’re a performance junkie, you’ll gain a lot from this interview. You can also apply his ideas to managing your teams. If you enjoy Steve’s approach, check out my previous interview with him on finding your passion at work and in life, episode 142.

Episode Links

How to be More Resilient, According to an Elite Performance Coach

The Secret to Developing Resilient Teams and Organizations

Changing This 1 Word in Your Thoughts Can Boost Mental Toughness and Resilience, Psychologists Say

Steven Callahan

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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What do you do when a promotion isn't an option? Maybe there aren’t enough positions to go around. It’s not the right moment in your career. Or maybe you don’t want the management responsibilities. In each case, you can feel stuck.

But what if there were other options for career growth and development?

That’s the case Julie Winkle Giulioni makes in her book, Promotions are So Yesterday: Redefine Career Development and Help Employees Thrive. In it, she shares seven areas for growth that leaders can develop in their organizations, teams, and individual employees.

Julie’s insights offer a slate of new options to managers and individual contributors, each of which can have a positive impact on all areas of the organization. If you’re looking to meet employees where they are and modernize your organization in the process, Julie’s book is a terrific resource.

Episode Links

Multidimension Career Framework

Psychological safety and Amy Edmonson

The Inner Game of Career Development

Defeat Disconnection with Development

The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Support the Podcast

If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show.

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