Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: My good friend Adam Grant, author in psychology professor at
Speaker 2: U Penn, has a new book out, Hidden Potential, The
Speaker 2: Science of Achieving Greater Things. He sent me a draft
Speaker 2: months ago. I told Adam I love it so much
Speaker 2: that when it comes out, I want to sit down
Speaker 2: and interview you about it, and we'll run the interview
Speaker 2: in the Revision's history feed. Sure enough, Hidden Potential has
Speaker 2: now come out, and on Adam's publication day, he came
Speaker 2: to New York and joined me on stage at the
Speaker 2: ninety second Street y for what turned out to be
Speaker 2: a really really fun conversation as we always have whenever
Speaker 2: we get together. So here it is, thank you, Thank
Speaker 2: you all for coming, Adam, thank you for coming to
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 3: You know we have done this many times we have,
Speaker 3: and this is it's usually on my turf, not yours.
Speaker 2: This is what I was about to say. I was
Speaker 2: going to ask you what is different this time around?
Speaker 2: And you that's exactly right. You have finally come to
Speaker 2: my house. And I was reflecting on this, and I
Speaker 2: was wondering, what kind of an idiot am I that
Speaker 2: I have agreed to go to your turf like seven
Speaker 2: times in a row before demanding that we returned to favor.
Speaker 2: This is like a you know in basketball. This is
Speaker 2: like someone seating you know, home territory and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 2: just let's just do it at your arena.
Speaker 3: I will say, though, you once invited me to your
Speaker 3: actual house where we had dinner and you cooked.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 4: Do you remember this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't say that was necessarily to your advantage
Speaker 2: if I was cooking.
Speaker 3: Well, it definitely wasn't, because I've never told you this,
Speaker 3: But do you remember what you cooked?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think it was tilapia really, or it was something
Speaker 3: that swims and I.
Speaker 4: Don't eat seafood. But I didn't want to hurt your feelings,
Speaker 4: so I ate it.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're even oudam that that that's very
Speaker 2: touching you you you took telapia for me, that's I am.
Speaker 1: I wanted to start.
Speaker 2: We're going to be discussing your book Hidden Potential, but
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the blurbs on the back, and i
Speaker 2: just want to not read the blurbs, but just.
Speaker 1: Talk about who has blurbed your book.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the first burb is from Serena Williams, right,
Speaker 2: World's Greatest Tansper. The second blurb is from Mark Cuban,
Speaker 2: the famous owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the guy who
Speaker 2: was on Shark Tank. The third quote is from Malcolm
Speaker 2: Glava me. The fourth quote is from yo Yo Ma,
Speaker 2: world's famous cellist, and the fourth quote is from US
Speaker 2: Navy Admiral William mcgraven. Okay, Now, what's the theory behind
Speaker 2: the order? Why does Serena did she?
Speaker 4: Did?
Speaker 1: She say I'll give you a blurb if you put
Speaker 1: me first?
Speaker 4: Like? What?
Speaker 2: How does who decided she goes first? Do Cubans say,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to go second to Serena? But not if
Speaker 2: I'm If I'm behind Glavel, I'm you're.
Speaker 1: Not getting him? What happened? How did that work?
Speaker 4: I didn't choose the order?
Speaker 1: It's not alphabetical because wait.
Speaker 4: Are you? Are you trying to argue for a higher
Speaker 4: placement than third?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Is that what's happening?
Speaker 1: No? No, I don't. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I belong third. I think I don't
Speaker 2: know why I'm ahead? Why would I be ahead of Yoyoma?
Speaker 2: Yoyoma in every way is.
Speaker 4: More culturally significant than I.
Speaker 2: I will be for I will be dead and forgotten
Speaker 2: that people will be listening to Yoyoma. Okay, William mcgraven
Speaker 2: defends this country and you have a blast like where
Speaker 2: are your priorities?
Speaker 4: By the way, this is how you treat a guest
Speaker 4: in your home.
Speaker 2: But well, I mean, we have a history of me
Speaker 2: feeding U tilapia. So all right, let's talk about your book,
Speaker 2: which I like a lot. By the way, otherwise it
Speaker 2: would not have blurbed it. You're interested in character, which
Speaker 2: is is That's sort of an interesting twist, isn't it.
Speaker 2: You would think an organizational psychologists would be someone who
Speaker 2: would be interested in structures and procedures and those kinds
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 3: I'm a psychologist first, and I happen to do a
Speaker 3: lot of my work on people at work. But what
Speaker 3: I care about is people and the quality of their
Speaker 3: lives and how much they get to grow.
Speaker 4: And so if you happen to do.
Speaker 3: That in an organization, great, But I could care less
Speaker 3: about the org chart, but I care deeply about helping
Speaker 3: people reach their potential.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to make an additional observation about your books
Speaker 2: as a group, and that is that it's they're fundamentally
Speaker 2: about character, as you say, which you're also very interested
Speaker 2: in sort of interrogating our intuitive ideas about character.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm always reminded and you will know this. Didn't Lee
Speaker 2: Ross write a famous paper which was all about how
Speaker 2: our intuitions about psychology are wrong in the in the main,
Speaker 2: and that it seems to me a lot of what
Speaker 2: you're doing in your books, is this a fair summary
Speaker 2: of them? Is you are continuing on that path of
Speaker 2: kind of interrogating our intuitive notions about psychology.
Speaker 4: Some would call that Gladwellian.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I think you're don't. Don't you're
Speaker 2: deflecting now, Adam.
Speaker 4: You're you literally just deflected.
Speaker 1: Ah, I don't.
Speaker 4: No, No, is anyone else watching this happen. His deflection
Speaker 4: is accusing me of deflection. It's not a deflection, it's.
Speaker 2: Not no listen, am, I I'm just a flat up contrarian.
Speaker 2: There's a difference between someone who gently interrogates what we
Speaker 2: get wrong as intuitive psychologists, and someone like me who
Speaker 2: just says provocatively and usually erroneously, that everything we think
Speaker 2: is wrong. I'm a bomb throw You're not a bomb thrower.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's I think that's a parody or
Speaker 3: a caricature of your work. But no, I think I
Speaker 3: think I start with really wanting to understand what makes
Speaker 3: people tick and how we can improve the quality of
Speaker 3: our lives. And then within that I want to focus
Speaker 3: on what's surprising and unexpected. So yes, I think you're right,
Speaker 3: which causes me pain to admit.
Speaker 1: Like we think again.
Speaker 2: For example, the idea of valorizing humility as a kind
Speaker 2: as the kind of cornerstone the key as the cornerstone
Speaker 2: of intellectual growth is really interesting.
Speaker 1: And not one.
Speaker 2: I imagine if you gathered a group of people of
Speaker 2: students and ask them what did they think, what characters
Speaker 2: trait did they think was the key to intellectual growth,
Speaker 2: humility would not be in the top three.
Speaker 4: No, and that's what I wanted to write about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I go to work when we used
Speaker 3: to go to a physical workplace, and still when I
Speaker 3: go to teach, I walk into the classroom and I
Speaker 3: think Donald Trump and Elon Musk both attended this financetitution. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what would I want the next Trump or Musk to learn?
Speaker 3: And strangely, humility is very very high on that list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder how you could so tell me about
Speaker 2: the thought process that led you to think, Okay, the
Speaker 2: next stage in this journey through character, I wanted, I wanted.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be about hidden potential. How did you
Speaker 2: get there?
Speaker 3: I went down this path because I was once told
Speaker 3: that I couldn't write.
Speaker 1: Who told you that?
Speaker 3: The Harvard Writing Office my first week of college when
Speaker 3: they recommended me for remedial writing, which I was then
Speaker 3: told was for jocks and people who spoke English as
Speaker 3: a sixth or seventh language.
Speaker 1: So wait, keep going, this is interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I I failed the required writing test as a
Speaker 3: as a brand new freshmen.
Speaker 4: It was the first piece of feedback I got from Harvard.
Speaker 3: And if you think I had imposter syndrome before, like
Speaker 3: already worrying like I'm the one mistake.
Speaker 4: I don't belong here. Now I show up.
Speaker 3: I take the writing test, They're like, Nope, you must
Speaker 3: take an extra semester of writing and you can't, like
Speaker 3: you can't explain your thoughts coherently, and you don't know
Speaker 3: how to structure an argument.
Speaker 4: And I was like, I think I don't belong here.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the point, right, That's why I
Speaker 3: wanted to write this book. Is we make so many
Speaker 3: judgments of other people's potential, and so often they're driven
Speaker 3: by starting ability. Do you have the raw talent? Are
Speaker 3: you a prodigy? Do you look extremely capable? And if
Speaker 3: the answer is no, you think you should give up? Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you don't have what it takes. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a huge mistake. I think it counts out a
Speaker 3: ton of late bloomers. I think it overlooks many many
Speaker 3: slow learners. And I think it also prevents us from
Speaker 3: stretching beyond our strengths and actually.
Speaker 4: Achieving more than we believe we're capable of.
Speaker 2: But so wait, but this is a interesting because I
Speaker 2: would you know, I associate you your a can you
Speaker 2: can you give us a little more insight into your
Speaker 2: eighteen year old self?
Speaker 1: You said you had imposter syndrome?
Speaker 4: Why I think I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any sense of what it took to
Speaker 3: be a Harvard student. I remember going to my interview
Speaker 3: and the interviewer was the first Harvard graduate I ever met,
Speaker 3: and I just I thought that was a different intellectual league.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if I was smart enough. I didn't
Speaker 3: have any patents yet. I did not get a.
Speaker 4: Perfect SAT score, But you got in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I didn't know exactly why or how, and
Speaker 3: they're just evaluating me from a bunch of pieces of paper, right,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty It's a pretty poor proxy for
Speaker 3: somebody's potential.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those of us who didn't get into Harvard are
Speaker 2: always baffled by those who did get into Harvard and
Speaker 2: profess to have imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: I'm what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: With all these questions about your college heres is to
Speaker 2: what extent this book strikes me? Each one of your
Speaker 2: books is steadily a little more personal. Some of the
Speaker 2: best parts of this book are where you illustrate some
Speaker 2: of your points with personal stories. And I'm wondering whether,
Speaker 2: in some sense this book is a personal is a
Speaker 2: more personal project than your.
Speaker 4: Preah it might be.
Speaker 3: I think I've gotten more comfortable realizing I've gotten so much.
Speaker 3: I guess reader feedback and also listener feedback from podcasts
Speaker 3: like we like hearing your personal stories, Like don't always
Speaker 3: use the data as.
Speaker 4: A crutch, Like they're not a crutch. That's literally what
Speaker 4: I do. It's how I think.
Speaker 3: Like, if you ask me a question about anything, I'll
Speaker 3: be like, well, what is the best randomized.
Speaker 4: Control trial on that? So This is not me avoiding sharing.
Speaker 3: It's that I consider systematic evidence to be a better
Speaker 3: source of knowledge than my idiosyncratic lived experience. But I
Speaker 3: realized that a lot of people's brains don't work that way,
Speaker 3: and I think I've come around to the idea that, yes,
Speaker 3: if I'm sharing my story in service of explaining an
Speaker 3: idea or revealing a lesson, then that's not about me.
Speaker 3: That's actually me trying to offer a gift from.
Speaker 4: My life to theirs. I think this book is a personal.
Speaker 3: Project because I've realized over the course of writing it
Speaker 3: that all my achievements that I'm actually proud of were
Speaker 3: things that I started out bad at. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: thought most of my life the opposite was true. I
Speaker 3: thought what I was supposed to be proud of were
Speaker 3: the things that came naturally to me.
Speaker 2: So this is really interesting, and I want to dig
Speaker 2: into many parts of this, but I want to start
Speaker 2: with we were talking earlier about a lot the kind
Speaker 2: of hidden project in many of your books is interrogating
Speaker 2: our kind of lay notions about psychology that are incorrect.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious about this.
Speaker 2: So the lay notion this book is, to your just
Speaker 2: point you just made the lay notion this book is
Speaker 2: focused on, is we have this kind of veneration of
Speaker 2: inate ability.
Speaker 1: But in fact, what the.
Speaker 2: Evidence suggests is that many of the most important accomplishes,
Speaker 2: accomplishments we have are not about what we start with,
Speaker 2: but what we acquire along the way. And what I
Speaker 2: want to know is what I'm curious about is why
Speaker 2: do we have, in this specific respect, a lay notion
Speaker 2: that's so clearly at odds with the facts.
Speaker 1: Where did it? Why do we Why.
Speaker 2: Would we venerate anateability if a natability is not nearly
Speaker 2: as important as.
Speaker 1: Like, what's the reason for that?
Speaker 3: It's such an interesting question. Off the top of my head,
Speaker 3: I think there are a couple of things going on.
Speaker 3: Number one, how many parents do you know that are
Speaker 3: living vicariously through their kids?
Speaker 4: I mean, your kids are two in less than a.
Speaker 1: Year, so sorry started, sorry started.
Speaker 3: A lot of people, you know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: wanting their kids to be highly intelligent or accomplished in
Speaker 3: their careers, or you know, great athletes or incredible musicians.
Speaker 3: Whatever dreams people have unrealized they often impose on their kids.
Speaker 4: And I think saying I.
Speaker 3: Didn't have the natural ability is a convenient way to say,
Speaker 3: you know what, like maybe I didn't waste my potential.
Speaker 3: I didn't squander an opportunity, which is a lot of
Speaker 3: cognitive dissonance to live with, to say, maybe I could
Speaker 3: have been great, and I just I didn't have the
Speaker 3: right approach to learning, or the right level of discipline
Speaker 3: or the right coach.
Speaker 4: That's that's unsettling to think about.
Speaker 3: And so I think just you know, kind of blaming right,
Speaker 3: a lack of a progress on raw talent. It lets
Speaker 3: us off the hook a little bit, would be one thought.
Speaker 3: I think the second thought is that when we see
Speaker 3: natural talent, we're just blown away by it. You know,
Speaker 3: if you've ever watched a four year old playing Mozart,
Speaker 3: you know, it's mind boggling. And that is that that
Speaker 3: is a human that's cut from a different cloth than me,
Speaker 3: and so it's it's hard to ever see yourself in
Speaker 3: that person. I remember, Actually I'll give you a personal
Speaker 3: example on this, since you invited me to talk more
Speaker 3: about my share. So this is about to become the
Speaker 3: Adam Grant Show.
Speaker 4: Are you ready? Yes?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: I remember when I so you know, I'm an introvert,
Speaker 3: I'm shy, I was extremely afraid of public speaking and
Speaker 3: when I wanted when I decided I wanted to do it,
Speaker 3: I said, okay, I have to go and learn from
Speaker 3: great speakers. So the first thing I did was I
Speaker 3: watched videos of mlks I have a dream speech.
Speaker 4: It was completely demoralizing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I watched this something I will never no
Speaker 3: matter how hard I work at this, I will never
Speaker 3: get that good.
Speaker 4: I might as well quit now. And I think that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it feels unfathomable. Right when you
Speaker 3: see that the innate ability differences between you and someone
Speaker 3: else could be that great, It just seems impo possible
Speaker 3: for you. And so you assume then that that is
Speaker 3: what is required.
Speaker 2: What you're doing with him, okay, is you're assuming that
Speaker 2: what you're observing is in innate.
Speaker 1: In fact, he's practiced.
Speaker 2: He grows up in an oral culture in the He's
Speaker 2: grows up watching his father and others preach sermons. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's surrounded in a world that is you know, is
Speaker 2: speaking in that vein. It's like he's actually not the
Speaker 2: right person to look at and see evidence.
Speaker 3: Of that's exactly right, but we don't know it. You
Speaker 3: watch someone as good as as Martin Luther King junior.
Speaker 3: And you think that's got to be a god given gift.
Speaker 3: There's no way he was ever bad at speaking, right,
Speaker 3: He's too good, It's impossible. What we don't see is
Speaker 3: the history you're describing. We admire people at their peak.
Speaker 3: We don't get to see the distance they've traveled. We
Speaker 3: don't see the fact that he started entering public speaking
Speaker 3: competitions when he was fifteen years old, that he had
Speaker 3: twenty years of deliberate practice under his belt, that the
Speaker 3: year he gave the Dream speech alone, he gave over
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty speech, which is probably as many
Speaker 3: speeches as you've given in your career, I would imagine.
Speaker 3: So I think we have unfortunate access to greatness. We
Speaker 3: see people at their peak, and we assume that they
Speaker 3: started far ahead of us.
Speaker 2: But is this a universal affliction or an American affliction?
Speaker 2: Because I say, I bring it up because one of
Speaker 2: my favorite chapters in this book is you have a
Speaker 2: chapter on talking about the educational system in Finland and
Speaker 2: how much it differs from the American system and in
Speaker 2: its sort of assumptions about learning and doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: the Finns at least, as is expressed in their educational system,
Speaker 2: hold to a notion of innate ability. And you know, so,
Speaker 2: what are we dealing with here? Is there something uniquely
Speaker 2: American about this idea?
Speaker 3: There may be to some extent, I think when yeah,
Speaker 3: when I think about what we do culturally in the
Speaker 3: US the different from other parts of the world. There
Speaker 3: is a tendency to make the fundamental attribution era more
Speaker 3: in the US.
Speaker 1: But you should define that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the tendency to attribute people's actions and station to
Speaker 3: their their innate characteristics as opposed to their situation and
Speaker 3: affordances and opportunity and circumstances. An idea that you thoroughly
Speaker 3: decimated in outliers, I will point out, But we still
Speaker 3: do it a lot in the US, right. We we
Speaker 3: like we're an individualistic society. What we like to do
Speaker 3: is we like to say, okay, you you are where
Speaker 3: you are because of the things that are inside of you.
Speaker 4: And I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I think in Finland, I think in Estonia, I think
Speaker 3: we could probably make a whole list of other countries.
Speaker 4: There's a stronger sense that every.
Speaker 3: Child has hidden potential and it's the job of parents
Speaker 3: and teachers and coaches to realize it in two senses
Speaker 3: of the word, one to recognize it and then to
Speaker 3: develop it.
Speaker 2: It seems to be fundamentally parodoxical, and no one's properly
Speaker 2: explained to me why it would be the case that
Speaker 2: a culture like the United States, which is the highest
Speaker 2: achieving you could argue its flies achieving culture in the
Speaker 2: world on a number of metrics, should have a notion
Speaker 2: about achievement that is fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: In fact, if you said to me that America was
Speaker 2: the one place where people recognize that hard work, that
Speaker 2: everyone has a lot of potential, and that it's revealed
Speaker 2: in hard work practiced over your life, and that trying
Speaker 2: to judge someone on the basis of their performance at
Speaker 2: twelve is a fool's Errand if someone said that is
Speaker 2: a distinctly American view, I would have said, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense at all that we should
Speaker 1: have it backwards of all cultures.
Speaker 3: I think part of the problem is our country feels
Speaker 3: too big to invest in everybody, and so what we
Speaker 3: often do is we say, Okay, well, we're going to
Speaker 3: create gifting and talented programs, and we're going to build
Speaker 3: a winner take all system so that the kids with
Speaker 3: the true promise are going to get to rise to
Speaker 3: the top. And that allows us to believe in the
Speaker 3: notion of meritocracy. It allows us to feel like we've
Speaker 3: earned all the success that we've achieved, as opposed to
Speaker 3: partially lucking into it.
Speaker 4: And so I think there is a function there, right.
Speaker 3: It allows us to think that America, like when we
Speaker 3: talk about the American dream and we say that anybody
Speaker 3: can live the American.
Speaker 4: Dream, this is the land of opportunity.
Speaker 3: We are justifying our system, and I think that serves
Speaker 3: a soothing function for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Another one of my favorite chapters in this book is
Speaker 2: about perfectionism, and it's sort of your critique of where
Speaker 2: perfectionism leads us, what it costs us. And you start
Speaker 2: with a really interesting discussion of your time as a
Speaker 2: diver in high school.
Speaker 1: And how you a perfectionist.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about how your perfectionism
Speaker 2: manifested itself and how you came to believe it was
Speaker 2: self defeating?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually, first I didn't know I was a
Speaker 3: perfectionist when I started diving, and then at some point
Speaker 3: it crystallized, and I thought it was a big advantage
Speaker 3: because in diving, I mean, you've all heard Olympic announcers
Speaker 3: say perfect tens, and I thought, okay, in a sport
Speaker 3: that's judged on perfection, aiming for perfection has got to
Speaker 3: be the way. And it was such a liability for
Speaker 3: me more than an asset. There are a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of things that I did that were counterproductive. One was
Speaker 3: I just wasted a lot of time trying to perfect
Speaker 3: easy dives as opposed to learning harder ones, which limited
Speaker 3: my degree of difficulty. I actually got an award one
Speaker 3: year for my teammates. It was the if only a word,
Speaker 3: and there was a little drawing of me on a
Speaker 3: paper plate with a cartoon that said, if only I
Speaker 3: had pointed my left pinky toe dive, I would have
Speaker 3: gotten an eight and a half instead of an eight.
Speaker 4: And like that's not what mattered.
Speaker 3: Like I should have been stretching so I could actually
Speaker 3: touch my toes without bending my knees. That would have
Speaker 3: made me a better diver. I think not only did
Speaker 3: I focus on the wrong things. I ruminated a lot,
Speaker 3: I beat myself up a lot, and I was constantly
Speaker 3: shaming my past mistakes as opposed to trying to sort
Speaker 3: of educate my future self from those lessons, and that
Speaker 3: was that was not helpful. Probably the worst thing that
Speaker 3: I did, though, was the bocking where you know, and diving,
Speaker 3: when you're gonna take off forward, you walk down the
Speaker 3: board and then jump to the end.
Speaker 4: Well, if my hurdle.
Speaker 3: If my take off, if my approach wasn't perfect, I
Speaker 3: would just stop and start over, and stop and start over,
Speaker 3: and then there's a two bock rule and then I
Speaker 3: have to get off the board and then I'm not
Speaker 3: doing dives all practice, because like, what's the point of Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you balk, you know?
Speaker 2: It was if you stop and start again more than twice,
Speaker 2: you have to dismount from the well.
Speaker 3: That was the rule that my coach, Eric Best had
Speaker 3: to instant because otherwise I would just bock all practice.
Speaker 2: So but what's going on inside your head?
Speaker 1: Are you enjoying? Are you enjoying being a diver?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I loved it.
Speaker 3: I loved it, but I was really frustrated, feeling like
Speaker 3: I couldn't get it right.
Speaker 4: I couldn't get it right. I was really bad.
Speaker 2: And then when did you start reflecting on the experience
Speaker 2: and kind of.
Speaker 1: I think this is the reason I asked this question.
Speaker 2: Is forgive me, Adam, if I could play doctor Freud
Speaker 2: for a moment, and if you'd like to recline.
Speaker 1: I feel there's a lot more. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: of your books are a lot more.
Speaker 2: Of a personal project than you let on, And this
Speaker 2: one in particular, I was reading Soon and you have
Speaker 2: these little moments where you start talking about diving, and
Speaker 2: I think you know, if I was a psychoanalyst, I
Speaker 2: would say, Adam, this book is really about you trying
Speaker 2: to make sense of the mistakes that little Adam made
Speaker 2: and the experiences that little Adam had.
Speaker 1: Is that is that not fair?
Speaker 3: I mean, I wouldn't frame that in Freudian terms because
Speaker 3: I think he set psychology back a century. Of course
Speaker 3: you would say that, but it's like, I mean, his
Speaker 3: approach was so unscientific, and if you disagree with him,
Speaker 3: well you're in denial.
Speaker 4: Like I was that helpful to anyone?
Speaker 1: Exhibit A who's in denial?
Speaker 3: Here? I will say there are some good meta analyses
Speaker 3: of randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic therapy that show that
Speaker 3: it can have efficacy for some people in some situations,
Speaker 3: but I'm still extremely skeptical. Anyway, Uh I will.
Speaker 2: You're in a place called Manhattan and you're dissing psychoanalysis.
Speaker 2: What I don't know, Malcolm an active self. You want
Speaker 2: people to buy your book afterwards, and this is what
Speaker 2: you're telling them.
Speaker 3: First of all, I think most people here have already
Speaker 3: bought the book. And I also think there's a point
Speaker 3: at which you stop blaming your behavior on of your parents, Adam,
Speaker 3: and start taking responsibility for your adult crisis.
Speaker 1: I brought.
Speaker 3: I brought this up because I was wondering whether you
Speaker 3: were doing a version of the same thing, which was
Speaker 3: at the age of how old do you know now
Speaker 3: forty two, at the age of forty two, still working
Speaker 3: out the problems you had as a swimmer as a divery. Oh,
Speaker 3: don't ever call a diver a swimmer. Yeah no, that's
Speaker 3: like me calling you a jogger as a runner. I
Speaker 3: think there's a difference between trying to work out the
Speaker 3: problems of little Adam, which is how Malcolm Freud would
Speaker 3: approach this discussion, and trying to figure out if there
Speaker 3: are lessons from my biggest struggles and also my greatest
Speaker 3: moments of growth that could become teachable moments for me
Speaker 3: and others. I'm trying to reflect on the fact that
Speaker 3: I really was my own worst enemy for a good
Speaker 3: part of my diving career, but then I ended up
Speaker 3: ascending to a much greater height than I ever thought possible.
Speaker 3: I should not have gotten where I got as a diver.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have been a like what was I doing
Speaker 3: in the Junior Olympic Nationals as somebody who literally was
Speaker 3: called Frankenstein because I didn't bend my knees when I walked?
Speaker 3: Like something about this does not add up. And so
Speaker 3: I think that juxtaposing those kinds of moments with what
Speaker 3: does the social science tell us is really powerful.
Speaker 2: But if you had, I guess what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: say is the work that you've done, the extraordinary work
Speaker 2: that you've done as an adult, is in some way
Speaker 2: we're all beneficiaries of some of these struggles you had
Speaker 2: as a If you had been this kind of non
Speaker 2: nerdy golden boy who was a kind of diving prodigy
Speaker 2: and to whom things came easily, we don't get this
Speaker 2: book definitely not. Yeah, to go back to our earlier point,
Speaker 2: This is another kind of crucial flaw in the kind
Speaker 2: of obsession with innate ability and the way in which
Speaker 2: we celebrate We happen to celebrate those who achieve things
Speaker 2: early and without a parent effort, and that is that
Speaker 2: we're not thinking about the downstream consequences. Right, We're not
Speaker 2: thinking that a lot of what looks like struggle at
Speaker 2: an early age is simply kind of raw material in
Speaker 2: preparation for some kind of future better thing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Being a struggling as a diver as a freshman is,
Speaker 2: in the grand scheme of things, a pretty small thing,
Speaker 2: but it's a little kernel that becomes something really interesting.
Speaker 2: When you're forty and you're interested in writing about hidden potential,
Speaker 2: right starts to matter.
Speaker 4: Then I think you're onto something important here.
Speaker 3: And I think I read a book once they called
Speaker 3: it Desirable Difficulty by you.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that, yeah, this is actually something.
Speaker 3: That more used to actually stressed to me that I
Speaker 3: hadn't appreciated. So you know, Mariast from the book is
Speaker 3: a chess grandmaster, and I think an extraordinary coach who
Speaker 3: recognizes and brings out the hidden potential in kids that
Speaker 3: nobody else thought had a chance. And one of the
Speaker 3: things Maurice said is he is watched in chess over
Speaker 3: and over again. The biggest prodigies young are the ones
Speaker 3: who have the biggest struggles when they're older, because it
Speaker 3: came too easily to them at first, and they're just
Speaker 3: they're used to kind of having this this natural success,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden they lose the game.
Speaker 4: And they can't take it, and they haven't.
Speaker 3: I think the fundamental problem there if you look at
Speaker 3: the researches, they have not built the character skills that
Speaker 3: are necessary to face obstacles. They don't know how to
Speaker 3: embrace discomfort. They don't know how to accept the right
Speaker 3: imperfections and say these mistakes are actually part.
Speaker 4: Of my growth.
Speaker 3: And so I think that sometimes early success does a
Speaker 3: major disservice to our future selves.
Speaker 2: I reminded a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting
Speaker 2: in a coffee shop in Orlando, Florida, long story, and
Speaker 2: I emailed me about that, Adam, there's two surgeons sitting
Speaker 2: next to me. Of course he's dropping and one of
Speaker 2: them had a daughter who was at Cornell Medical School,
Speaker 2: and he was boasting about how she was she loved Cornell.
Speaker 1: Cornell's amazing she got into Cornell. Isn't that fantastic? Blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And I emailed at him.
Speaker 2: I was like, how does this guy get it completely backwards?
Speaker 2: Why doesn't he boast about his daughter that my daughter's
Speaker 2: having an amazing time in medical school.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing that she's.
Speaker 2: The kind of person who can go into an institution
Speaker 2: and find what's meaningful to her and flourish.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was.
Speaker 2: Focused on Cornell, and he wasn't interested in the character
Speaker 2: traits his own daughter had that allowed her to flourish
Speaker 2: and be happy and find meaningful And I was just like,
Speaker 2: there's something about parents. What you're describing is why are
Speaker 2: parents so bad at kind of decoding the psychology of
Speaker 2: their own children?
Speaker 1: It just strikes me as like, well, why are we
Speaker 1: making these mistakes? Then?
Speaker 2: Why on earth are we so in love with prodigies?
Speaker 2: Like I don't again, I mean, I'm just baffled by this.
Speaker 3: I Mean, when psychologists study this, they talk about parental
Speaker 3: over involvement and over identification and the notion that as
Speaker 3: a parent, like we were touching on this earlier, you
Speaker 3: start to define your own success by your children's accomplishments.
Speaker 3: And I just want to sit parents now. I see
Speaker 3: this all the time with our students at PEN. I
Speaker 3: want to sit these parents down and say, like, what
Speaker 3: your children achieve is not a reflection of your greatness
Speaker 3: as a parent. You should be much more concerned with
Speaker 3: who your kids become and how they treat other people.
Speaker 4: Being a great parent is.
Speaker 3: Not about how much precedure kids attain in their school
Speaker 3: choices or in their jobs.
Speaker 4: It's not about career success. It's about character.
Speaker 3: I think you might have found someone who had not
Speaker 3: yet internalized that.
Speaker 2: Message you say on this subject of perfectionism, I want
Speaker 2: you to talk a little bit more about what in
Speaker 2: gener what precisely is damaging about and having a perfectionistic attitude,
Speaker 2: and what do you feel we should have instead.
Speaker 3: Okay, so if you look at the current work, which
Speaker 3: I think is the most comprehensive and rigorous to date,
Speaker 3: what we see goes wrong with perfectionists is one, they
Speaker 3: lose the forest in the trees, so they tend to
Speaker 3: focus on small details and overlook the big picture. Two,
Speaker 3: they do a lot of the rumination and sort of
Speaker 3: self shaming as opposed to self compassion that's necessary for
Speaker 3: learning from your mistakes. And three, they actually tend not
Speaker 3: to stretch themselves much. They want to focus on the
Speaker 3: things they know they can master, as opposed to venturing
Speaker 3: into uncharted territory. And by avoiding failure, they actually avoid
Speaker 3: risk taking, and they avoid learning and challenging themselves, and
Speaker 3: that means they end up with a static or even
Speaker 3: ever narrowing comfort zone as opposed to an expanding domain
Speaker 3: of expertise.
Speaker 2: You make the comment of the book that you think
Speaker 2: perfectionism of the sort you've just defined is on the rise.
Speaker 1: Why would it be on the rise?
Speaker 3: So empirically perfectionism has risen in the US, in the UK,
Speaker 3: and the great nation of Canada. I think if you
Speaker 3: look at why it's increasing, what everybody does is they
Speaker 3: say social media.
Speaker 4: It's got to be social media.
Speaker 3: Everybody has a perfect image of themselves on Instagram, and
Speaker 3: that's leading our kids to have unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 4: That may be part of the story. But guess what.
Speaker 3: Perfectionism started rising a generation before social media existed. It
Speaker 3: started rising when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. So there's
Speaker 3: got to be something else going on. And my read
Speaker 3: of the evidence is there are two things that seem
Speaker 3: to be contributing to it, and both of them are
Speaker 3: parental behaviors. One of them is rising parental expectations for kids,
Speaker 3: holding children to increasingly impossible standards, and two is increasingly
Speaker 3: harsh criticism kids who don't meet those standards?
Speaker 2: Did you so, why would Okay, let's let's take one
Speaker 2: step further.
Speaker 1: Why would parents?
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like an obvious question, but I
Speaker 2: don't know that I know the kind of good answer.
Speaker 1: Why would parents?
Speaker 2: Expectations have risen, So we're talking about the nineties, eighties, nineties,
Speaker 2: what's driving parent rental expectations in that era?
Speaker 4: So we don't we don't know.
Speaker 3: I think the probably the consensus hunch right now is
Speaker 3: that the world has gotten more competitive. So, you know,
Speaker 3: however hard it was to get into college in the eighties,
Speaker 3: it got a little bit harder in the nineties, and
Speaker 3: it got increasingly difficult over time. And so in a
Speaker 3: world that feels more and more zero sum, I think
Speaker 3: we've we've probably seen a lot of talk about how
Speaker 3: the current generation of kids is the first in America
Speaker 3: that might not sort of outdo their parents or have
Speaker 3: a better standard of living than their parents, And so
Speaker 3: when you see that world, and you see a world
Speaker 3: of scarcity, you think, I've got to do whatever it
Speaker 3: takes to help my kids succeed, forgetting that the very
Speaker 3: things you're doing to try to help your kids succeed
Speaker 3: are just turning them into achievement robots who one day
Speaker 3: realize like, this is no way to live a life
Speaker 3: and burn out.
Speaker 2: How were you? How did your parents? Would you think
Speaker 2: your parents were guilty of that?
Speaker 3: My mom used to tell me, Adam, no matter what
Speaker 3: grade you get, as long as you do your best,
Speaker 3: I'll be proud of you. And then she would add,
Speaker 3: but if you didn't get an A, I'll know you
Speaker 3: didn't do your best. She said it with a smile.
Speaker 3: I think she was half kidding, but I took it seriously. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess there's a little I didn't. I didn't get
Speaker 3: the harsh criticism though, but I definitely felt like expectations
Speaker 3: were high.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The last chapter of your book, could you talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about interviews and admissions and college admissions and things?
Speaker 2: And I had some big and some small questions about that.
Speaker 2: You have a very interesting part where you talk talk
Speaker 2: about what the evidence social science evidence tells us about
Speaker 2: the success and or failure of affirmative action programs. Can
Speaker 2: you summarize what social science tells us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went in to read the evidence to ask
Speaker 3: what is the impact of these programs. A lot of
Speaker 3: people have strong ideological positions on them. I feel like
Speaker 3: my job as a social scientist is to look at
Speaker 3: the most careful research that's.
Speaker 4: Been done and try to hint the picture of what
Speaker 4: do we know?
Speaker 3: And I think what the evidence suggests is that affirmative
Speaker 3: action programs are a double edged sword, even for the
Speaker 3: very people they're trying to help. So on the one hand,
Speaker 3: they do manage to open doors for people who have
Speaker 3: historically been denied opportunity by virtue of group membership. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, if you enter a university or a
Speaker 3: workplace that is known to have affirmative action, you perform
Speaker 3: worse if you are a beneficiary of that program than
Speaker 3: if the program didn't exist. So we see this with women,
Speaker 3: we see it with racial minority. What happens is and
Speaker 3: I don't think this will shock anyone. People start to
Speaker 3: doubt whether they really deserve that spot.
Speaker 4: Am I qualified? Do I belong here?
Speaker 3: It's a massive version of imposter syndrome, and not the
Speaker 3: healthy kind. And then other people will question it too,
Speaker 3: and they're like, well, I don't think you really got
Speaker 3: in on your own merit, and that self doubt and
Speaker 3: constantly being doubted by others, that takes a toll. It's
Speaker 3: exhausting to deal with. It's distracting to constantly question your
Speaker 3: capabilities day in, day out.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I came away.
Speaker 3: From this evidence thinking I don't I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't know where I stand. I think that we're sort
Speaker 3: of damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.
Speaker 3: But I do think there's an alternative approach that might
Speaker 3: be helpful to think about.
Speaker 2: What two questions about that one is, why isn't that
Speaker 2: same logical for the white beneficiaries of affirmative action. If
Speaker 2: I'm a legacy kid gets into Harvard because daddy went
Speaker 2: to Harvard, why aren't I walking around with a big.
Speaker 1: Burden of imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: I do want to hear, because daddy gave seventeen million
Speaker 2: dollars to does it not work?
Speaker 1: Do it? White people exempt?
Speaker 3: Can we just pause to acknowledge the fact you just
Speaker 3: called legacy admission affirmative action for white people.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 3: I think that's an accurate characterization. I think that not
Speaker 3: only should legacy admission be banned, I think that if
Speaker 3: there used to be used by a lot of Ivy
Speaker 3: League schools as a tiebreaker, and I think it should
Speaker 3: be a reverse tiebreaker. If you're on equal footing with
Speaker 3: somebody whose parents didn't go to an elite institution, then
Speaker 3: you already had an advantage, so the other person should
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think, first of all, a lot of people don't
Speaker 3: know who the legacies are. I think also there's not
Speaker 3: the same stigma. Historically, there hasn't been the same stigma
Speaker 3: associated with legacy admissions, so affirmative action is seen as
Speaker 3: lowering standards. Yeah, and in most cases it's not right.
Speaker 3: It's just saying we're gonna look at people who all
Speaker 3: meet the qualifications and requirements, and then we're going to
Speaker 3: make sure that those whose groups have been historically disadvantaged.
Speaker 4: Get a shot.
Speaker 3: But I think in the case of you know, of legacy,
Speaker 3: there hasn't been that stigma. It's been assumed, oh, you
Speaker 3: come from a genius family, you belong here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the problem is really it's not necessarily The
Speaker 2: problem is inherent in the notion of, in this case,
Speaker 2: treating a group of disadvantage students differently. It's the narrative
Speaker 2: we tell around the policy that we don't have the
Speaker 2: same kind of We have a disparaging narrative around racial
Speaker 2: affirmative action, but not a disparaging narrative around rich people
Speaker 2: affirmative action.
Speaker 3: Look, we had a Supreme Court ruling that happened as
Speaker 3: the book went to press, and I think actually one
Speaker 3: of the ideas that I've flowed in this book is
Speaker 3: maybe an option now that we ought to take seriously,
Speaker 3: which is, maybe we should stop defining people by their
Speaker 3: great membership. Maybe instead of assuming that just because people
Speaker 3: came from a particular background that they had the same
Speaker 3: degree of difficulty and the same adversity, we should actually
Speaker 3: get to know the individual students and find out the
Speaker 3: obstacles they faced, and then adjust our expectations of them
Speaker 3: according to how much poverty did they individually face, according
Speaker 3: to did they did they run into major challenges? And
Speaker 3: I think that that that seems like a much more
Speaker 3: fair way to give people who have been disadvantaged or
Speaker 3: real shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wait, I want to it's a very I mean,
Speaker 2: there's much to be said for that idea, and that's
Speaker 2: a longer conversation, but I want asked. We're running out
Speaker 2: of time, but I won't have one last thing I
Speaker 2: want to say. So this is I'm now I'm asking
Speaker 2: you to give me some advice because I'm working on
Speaker 2: book right now, and this is very I deal with
Speaker 2: this very question we're talking about in this book.
Speaker 4: Are we talking about the revision of the tipping points?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a different book, the revision of the tipping Are
Speaker 3: we allowed to say that publicly that you're reading the tip.
Speaker 1: I'm revising the tipping point?
Speaker 2: And so I was thinking of posing the following question,
Speaker 2: Given what you're saying, what advice would you give to
Speaker 2: a bright, ambitious African American student who's interested in stan
Speaker 2: wants to be a doctor or engineer or scientist some kind,
Speaker 2: who has two admissions offers, one from an iv ATIG
Speaker 2: school and one from an HBCU. So one where he
Speaker 2: goes or she goes with the stigma of affirmative action on
Speaker 2: one where she goes without the stigma, what would you
Speaker 2: tell that student?
Speaker 3: If that's a fascinating question, I'm not sure I'm qualified
Speaker 3: to advise on it, is my first reaction.
Speaker 4: My second is what.
Speaker 1: A book called Hidden Potential.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm trying to look at what works for
Speaker 3: most of the people most of the time, not necessarily
Speaker 3: assume that I know the path that's going to be
Speaker 3: most effective for a complete stranger.
Speaker 4: I'd want to see.
Speaker 3: I'd want to see much better data about what are
Speaker 3: the life trajectories of you know of students with similar
Speaker 3: profiles who both have the same set of opportunities and
Speaker 3: then end up for a variety of reasons, and you
Speaker 3: know in one or the other. I guess the first
Speaker 3: thing I would want to do, though, is I'd want
Speaker 3: to know what are your goals?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Are you trying to maximize your status or objective career success?
Speaker 3: Are you trying to you know, to to lead a
Speaker 3: life you can be proud of. Are you pursuing happiness
Speaker 3: or meaning?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: I think there are lots of different outcomes, and I
Speaker 3: think the big mistake that I see I've I've had
Speaker 3: a lot of students come by office hours with these
Speaker 3: kinds of dilemmas over the years, often their grad school
Speaker 3: dilemmas or their job dilemmas, But sometimes it's high schooler
Speaker 3: is trying to choose a college, and the main advice
Speaker 3: that I find myself giving them is is to say,
Speaker 3: you don't want to just define your your success by
Speaker 3: achieving your goals. You should think about success is living
Speaker 3: your values. If you have a career target that you hit,
Speaker 3: but it requires you to compromise your principles, that's not success,
Speaker 3: that's failure, and it's the worst kind of failure because
Speaker 3: you've abandoned what matters most to you. So why don't
Speaker 3: we talk about what your values are? Is one of
Speaker 3: your core principles to break a bunch of grap excuse me,
Speaker 3: to break glass ceilings? Do you want to prove to
Speaker 3: people that other people can follow in your footsteps? Karen
Speaker 3: Nelton is here. Karen did some brilliant work on being
Speaker 3: a trailblazer? Is one of your core priorities in life?
Speaker 3: To open a door and clear path for other people?
Speaker 3: If so, you can ask, do I want to do
Speaker 3: this by starting out in an IVY League school or
Speaker 3: do I want to go to an environment where I
Speaker 3: might be more supported and maybe it's easier to blaze
Speaker 3: a trail later?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I can't predict the future.
Speaker 3: That's the kind of conversation I'd want to have, and
Speaker 3: it wouldn't end with advice. It would it would end
Speaker 3: with me asking what have you learned through this conversation
Speaker 3: about your values and which path do you think is
Speaker 3: going to help you avoid straying from them?
Speaker 2: Adams, it's a beautiful answer to the question. You started
Speaker 2: by saying you didn't think you could answer the question.
Speaker 2: Then you gave me a beautiful answer to the question.
Speaker 4: That's because I didn't answer the question. No, no, no.
Speaker 2: But it goes to and this is actually, I think
Speaker 2: a lovely moment to kind of sum up we are
Speaker 2: if when I read this book. When I read this book,
Speaker 2: the first and overwhelming thought I had was we really
Speaker 2: are at we really are asking the wrong questions about
Speaker 2: something like potential. We're just like our premises are all wrong, right,
Speaker 2: That's what you're getting at here? In one one chapter
Speaker 2: after another, you're just saying, wait a minute, we're starting
Speaker 2: with this perspective, and it's just like, we're why what
Speaker 2: do we you know?
Speaker 1: It's that that kind of need to.
Speaker 2: Go back to to fundamentals and react ask some really
Speaker 2: basic questions, is what this, what is so?
Speaker 1: What is really wonderful about this book? And please go
Speaker 1: and buy Adam's book.
Speaker 4: Thank you all.
Speaker 2: This bonus episode of Revisionist History was produced by Nina
Speaker 2: Lawrence and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 3: It was mastered by Ben Cheno. Special thanks to Daniella Bellarazo,
Speaker 3: Paul Durban, and Constanza Gallardo.