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S4E03 - Barry Schwartz on why we should focus on practical wisdom
When making a decision, we should seek out the "best" option, right? Turns out, seeking to maximize your outcomes is likely to leave you less happy and more stressed. On the show today I bring you one of my mentors, Barry Schwartz, who wrote the game-changing book The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less.
Barry shares why maximizing is a bad goal, talks about the benefits of constraints, and shows how practical wisdom is what will enable us to succeed in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Topics covered
03:01 What prompted him to get into this field
06:48 What makes a decision bad? And people making decisions inconsistent with their
goals.
09:07 Maximizing is a bad goal
11:07 Culture's influence on maximizing and unhappiness
12:14 Why constraints are good
22:37 Support Barry's grandkids' education!
23:13 Practical wisdom
28:02 What is needed is judgment, not rules
31:24 The need to learn how to live with uncertainty and ambiguity
34:56 Why you should learn to be a chefs vs. a cook
37:59 Analytical tools can help…
40:11 Key things to remember
Guest Bio
Barry Schwartz is an emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and a visiting professor at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. He has spent fifty years thinking and writing about the interaction between economics, psychology, and morality. He has written several books that address aspects of this interaction, including The Battle for Human Nature, The Costs of Living, The Paradox of Choice, Practical Wisdom, and most recently, Why We Work. Schwartz has written for sources as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, the Harvard Business Review, and the Guardian. He has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, and has been interviewed on Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), the PBS News Hour, The Colbert Report, and CBS Sunday Morning. Schwartz has spoken four times at the TED conference, and his TED talks have been viewed by more than 20 million people.
Resources
- The Paradox of Choice book
To learn more from Michelle about decision making, check out
- The Ask A Decision Engineer website
- Her Stanford Continuing Studies course
- Her self-paced course Decision Toolkit for Personal Decisions
- Her Decision Toolkit for Coaches and Counselors virtual workshop on Maven
About Michelle Florendo
Michelle Florendo is a Stanford-trained decision engineer and executive coach who is on a mission to teach people how to make decisions with less stress and more clarity. Over the past decade, she has coached and taught hundreds of leaders across tech, healthcare, and financial services, in organizations ranging from pre-IPO startups to major tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.
She's been an adjunct lecturer at Stanford, helps train coaches as a faculty coach for Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, and hosts the podcast, Ask A Decision Engineer. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford and her MBA from UC Berkeley.
For those interested in exploring Michelle's coaching and speaking services further, additional information can be found on her professional website at poweredbydecisions.com.
View all episodes
By Michelle Florendo
5
3535 ratings
When making a decision, we should seek out the "best" option, right? Turns out, seeking to maximize your outcomes is likely to leave you less happy and more stressed. On the show today I bring you one of my mentors, Barry Schwartz, who wrote the game-changing book The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less.
Barry shares why maximizing is a bad goal, talks about the benefits of constraints, and shows how practical wisdom is what will enable us to succeed in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Topics covered
03:01 What prompted him to get into this field
06:48 What makes a decision bad? And people making decisions inconsistent with their
goals.
09:07 Maximizing is a bad goal
11:07 Culture's influence on maximizing and unhappiness
12:14 Why constraints are good
22:37 Support Barry's grandkids' education!
23:13 Practical wisdom
28:02 What is needed is judgment, not rules
31:24 The need to learn how to live with uncertainty and ambiguity
34:56 Why you should learn to be a chefs vs. a cook
37:59 Analytical tools can help…
40:11 Key things to remember
Guest Bio
Barry Schwartz is an emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and a visiting professor at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. He has spent fifty years thinking and writing about the interaction between economics, psychology, and morality. He has written several books that address aspects of this interaction, including The Battle for Human Nature, The Costs of Living, The Paradox of Choice, Practical Wisdom, and most recently, Why We Work. Schwartz has written for sources as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, the Harvard Business Review, and the Guardian. He has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, and has been interviewed on Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), the PBS News Hour, The Colbert Report, and CBS Sunday Morning. Schwartz has spoken four times at the TED conference, and his TED talks have been viewed by more than 20 million people.
Resources
- The Paradox of Choice book
To learn more from Michelle about decision making, check out
- The Ask A Decision Engineer website
- Her Stanford Continuing Studies course
- Her self-paced course Decision Toolkit for Personal Decisions
- Her Decision Toolkit for Coaches and Counselors virtual workshop on Maven
About Michelle Florendo
Michelle Florendo is a Stanford-trained decision engineer and executive coach who is on a mission to teach people how to make decisions with less stress and more clarity. Over the past decade, she has coached and taught hundreds of leaders across tech, healthcare, and financial services, in organizations ranging from pre-IPO startups to major tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.
She's been an adjunct lecturer at Stanford, helps train coaches as a faculty coach for Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, and hosts the podcast, Ask A Decision Engineer. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford and her MBA from UC Berkeley.
For those interested in exploring Michelle's coaching and speaking services further, additional information can be found on her professional website at poweredbydecisions.com.