Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I'm doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and this.
Speaker 3: Is another crossover episode of my podcast The Happiness.
Speaker 1: Lab and my podcast Cautionary Tales. Laurie, last time I
Speaker 1: took the lead, I told you a story about the
Speaker 1: tensions between everyone taking a vacation at the same time
Speaker 1: and an idea from Stalin's Soviet union, where it was
Speaker 1: decreed that workers had to stagger their days off, no
Speaker 1: matter what that meant for missing leisure time with their
Speaker 1: friends and families. So this time it's the return match,
Speaker 1: as it were. So, what cautionary tale of happiness have
Speaker 1: you got in store for me?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a good one.
Speaker 3: It's a story of how we're all biased towards action
Speaker 3: and how we sometimes struggle to do less, especially when
Speaker 3: it involves doing nothing at all. It's a tale that
Speaker 3: will take us to where the blue skies start turning
Speaker 3: to inky black, because today we're going to go to
Speaker 3: the very edge of space. My story today involves one
Speaker 3: of my favorite American heroes, Major Charles E. Jaeger, as
Speaker 3: a young fighter pilot in World War Two, Chuck not
Speaker 3: only shot down a huge number of enemy aircraft but
Speaker 3: also successfully evaded the Nazis when he was shot down
Speaker 3: over occupied France. During his time on the run, Chuck
Speaker 3: helped the French resistance attack German troops and even won
Speaker 3: a medal for helping an American pilot cross the snowy
Speaker 3: Pyrenees to reach safety in Spain. Chuck was just that
Speaker 3: kind of hero, and he didn't chill out during peacetime either.
Speaker 3: He kept flying, securing his place in history by traveling
Speaker 3: faster than the speed of sound in a rocket powered
Speaker 3: aircraft he named Glamorous Glennis in honor of his wife.
Speaker 3: Other pilots had perished in their pursuit of this speed record,
Speaker 3: but Chuck broke the sound barrier with characteristic nonchalance. He
Speaker 3: even failed to tell his team that he'd fallen from
Speaker 3: a horse and broke in several ribs just before his
Speaker 3: test flight. He probably figured that they wouldn't want to
Speaker 3: trust a guy who could barely raise his arms to
Speaker 3: fly their expensive experimental aircraft. But none of these stories
Speaker 3: explained why Chuck Yeager is a hero to happiness experts
Speaker 3: like me. That stems from an incident that took place
Speaker 3: later a couple of weeks before Christmas in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: Chuck was now piloting an upgraded version of the glamorous Glennis,
Speaker 3: the new X one A. The X one A was
Speaker 3: built to travel more than twice the speed of sound.
Speaker 2: Chuck was excited to.
Speaker 3: Try out the new aircraft, especially since a pilot from
Speaker 3: the US Navy had recently beaten his record. Chuck was
Speaker 3: pretty eager to reclaim his crown as the fastest man alive.
Speaker 3: Back then, no one really knew what would happen to
Speaker 3: an airplane or a human body when it reached that
Speaker 3: velocity in height. The forces Chuck was about to face
Speaker 3: were as unprecedented as they were dangerous. So cut to
Speaker 3: December twelfth, nineteen fifty three, Jaeger's tenth flight and the
Speaker 3: X one A began routinely enough. Chuck and the X
Speaker 3: one A got carried high into the sky by a
Speaker 3: big bomber plane. The X and A was then dropped
Speaker 3: from the belly of the bomber and Chuck ignited the
Speaker 3: experimental rocket at The X and A flew upwards fast,
Speaker 3: but soon started kind of freaking out. It was pitching
Speaker 3: and rolling and tumbling. Chuck grappled with the controls inside
Speaker 3: the cockpit but nothing the pilot did seemed to stop
Speaker 3: the plane's violent descent, and so the X one A
Speaker 3: was now plummeting out of the sky while tossing its
Speaker 3: poor test pilot around like a rag doll. At some point,
Speaker 3: Yaeger was thrown violently into the cockpit's canopy.
Speaker 2: He even cracked the.
Speaker 3: Plastic with his flight helmet. All this goes to say
Speaker 3: this was not a good situation. In a matter of seconds,
Speaker 3: the experimental aircraft dropped more than six miles. Even if
Speaker 3: Jeger had known how to stop the X one a's
Speaker 3: rapid descent, he was too dazed to operate the controls.
Speaker 3: Was the plane rolling or spinning? Chuck had no idea.
Speaker 3: There was nothing he could do but surrender to the
Speaker 3: g forces jostling him in his seat as the aircraft
Speaker 3: fell towards the barren Mojave desert below.
Speaker 1: Laurie. This is the kind of cliff hangout opening that
Speaker 1: my cautionary tails listeners will be familiar with. A doomed
Speaker 1: plane and an equally doomed pilot hurtling towards Earth. So
Speaker 1: what did Chuck Yeger do?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 3: Nothing, well, mostly nothing, which is why happiness experts like
Speaker 3: me loved what happened next. Chuck was known for his
Speaker 3: nerves a steel, but this situation had him totally spooked.
Speaker 3: He later said that if the X one A had
Speaker 3: been fitted with an ejection seat, he would have used it,
Speaker 3: but most experts say if he'd done that, there'd be
Speaker 3: no way he would have survived. In the parlance of
Speaker 3: test pilots, he would have been committing suicide to save
Speaker 3: himself from dying. So without any way to escape, Yeager
Speaker 3: had two options. Option one, he could do everything in
Speaker 3: his power to write his tumbling rocket ship to be fair.
Speaker 3: This was what Truck tried to do at the beginning,
Speaker 3: but his attempts to use the controls didn't work. At best,
Speaker 3: they did nothing, and they also may have made a
Speaker 3: bad situation even worse. So once the plane's descent became
Speaker 3: too violent, he was forced into option number two. Just
Speaker 3: do nothing, just write it out, and that is exactly
Speaker 3: what saved him. When the X ONEA hit about twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand feet, it finally steady. The aircraft was still spinning,
Speaker 3: but it was the kind of spin that Yeager was
Speaker 3: familiar with. Once all the nightmarish bucking and tumbling was over,
Speaker 3: the veteran test pilot was finally able to pull up
Speaker 3: the nose of his craft down to twenty five that
Speaker 3: I would want to get back to play. Sure, huh.
Speaker 3: If you listen to Yeager's cockpit recordings, his fear is
Speaker 3: very obvious and his relief is palpable.
Speaker 1: I can't very much.
Speaker 2: Before I got it, he knew he was in trouble,
Speaker 2: but in the end he was going to make it
Speaker 2: home all right.
Speaker 3: I don't know a thing up or not. The wild
Speaker 3: Ride wasn't a total disaster. The X one A had
Speaker 3: topped out at mock two point four to four, and
Speaker 3: that record was finally enough for Chef Boy. He told
Speaker 3: his team, I'm not going to do that anymore. Jaeger
Speaker 3: walked away safely from the X one A and never
Speaker 3: flew a wocketplane again.
Speaker 1: I love the story, Laurie, and it's definitely a cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: But what's the happiness moral of this anecdote?
Speaker 3: Well, I first heard this story from one of my
Speaker 3: favorite meditation teachers, the psychologist Tara Brack. She shares it
Speaker 3: as a cautionary tale. But our usual need to constantly
Speaker 3: be in control of every facet of our lives. When
Speaker 3: Rafe's with a problem, most of us instinctively want to
Speaker 3: take action. We feel the need to do something, even
Speaker 3: in cases when we kind of know our actions will
Speaker 3: be an ineffective or even make stuff worse. Tera says
Speaker 3: that in times like this we need to copy the
Speaker 3: great Chuck Yeger. We need to pause, take our hands
Speaker 3: off the controls, and just let things be. This pause,
Speaker 3: Tera writes, gives us a possibility of a new choice.
Speaker 1: Now, sitting back isn't something that comes naturally to many
Speaker 1: of us, so let's have a think about the ways
Speaker 1: in which it could actually be the key to performing
Speaker 1: better and feeling happier. I mean, I'm struck by some
Speaker 1: of the caution detales that we've had over the years,
Speaker 1: where doing nothing is in fact precisely the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. There's one on the subject of masterly inactivity,
Speaker 1: which features Helena bottom Krter as the formidable Lady Saale.
Speaker 1: In the disastrous British Army operations in Afghanistan in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, this idea of masterly inactivity was raised, and
Speaker 1: it applied not just to maybe the British should never
Speaker 1: have invade in Afghanistan, which I think with hindsight is obvious.
Speaker 1: But also parenting, maybe we should do less parenting or medicine,
Speaker 1: maybe doctors should be doing less, prescribing fewer tests, prescribing
Speaker 1: fewer treatments. Even soccer goalkeepers are too committed to being
Speaker 1: active when faced with a penalty was in fact, they'd
Speaker 1: be better off if they stayed still.
Speaker 3: Wait, wait, Tim, as you know I'm an American on
Speaker 3: behalf of my fellow Americans, can you just explain what
Speaker 3: this penalty kick example is in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, I understand that the joys of soccer
Speaker 1: are finding American shaws these days, but maybe not this
Speaker 1: particular study. So some I think there were economists who
Speaker 1: started that actually looked at what goalkeepers do when faced
Speaker 1: with a penalty kick. And basically, in the penalty kick,
Speaker 1: the striker gets to try and put the ball in
Speaker 1: the net, and they can boot it to the left,
Speaker 1: or they can boot it to the right, or they
Speaker 1: can bout it straight down the middle, and the goalkeeper
Speaker 1: doesn't have much time to react. And so the standard
Speaker 1: procedure for a goalkeeper is just to guess it's fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty, just dive to the right or dive to
Speaker 1: the left, and you got a fifty percent chance of
Speaker 1: going the right way. Even if you do go the
Speaker 1: right way, you might not save it. I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: most penalties turn into goals. Usually the keeper isn't able
Speaker 1: to save it, but there's a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: the keeper to try. So the goalkeeper will usually leap
Speaker 1: off to the left or the right. If they leap
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction, well you know, no one blames
Speaker 1: them for that. But actually quite a lot of penalty
Speaker 1: kicks go fairly close to where the goalkeeper originally was standing.
Speaker 1: They go right down the center or near enough to
Speaker 1: the center, and you can prove that if the goalkeeper
Speaker 1: had not dived either way, they probably would have had
Speaker 1: a better chance of saving the penalty kick. They would
Speaker 1: also have looked ridiculous if the kick had gone far
Speaker 1: to the left or far of the right, because they
Speaker 1: would have looked like they weren't even try. And so
Speaker 1: there's that pressure to act even when just waiting and
Speaker 1: standing still would have been a better thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's something that's really hard for
Speaker 3: our mind. I mean, take the medical case you mentioned.
Speaker 3: I've seen the importance of doing nothing in cases where
Speaker 3: friends of mine who've had cancer have been advised, well,
Speaker 3: rather than do some surgery or rather than do some chemo,
Speaker 3: let's just watch and wait. I think this is what
Speaker 3: doctors often call nonoperative management or active surveillance, which I
Speaker 3: think is a funny term, this idea of active surveillance,
Speaker 3: because it feels like there's nothing active about it. It's
Speaker 3: complete inaction. You're just kind of sitting there waiting, and
Speaker 3: I think people don't like that. I mean, some studies,
Speaker 3: especially for some cancer show that this can be really
Speaker 3: helpful for dealing with a cancer. Right. Sometimes you go
Speaker 3: through chemo and surgery, but there's a tumor that's going
Speaker 3: to grow back anyway, and so it was just like
Speaker 3: silly to take the risk of doing all that surgery
Speaker 3: and chemo. But the idea of just sitting there and
Speaker 3: like seeing what your tumor does, it's just an incredibly
Speaker 3: scary situation for people who are facing it. People just
Speaker 3: want to do something, even if it's futile, to feel
Speaker 3: like they're taking some kind of action rather than doing nothing.
Speaker 1: Which I suppose is why that word active is so important.
Speaker 1: Active surveillance, so the idea that you are doing something
Speaker 1: The challenge, of course, is to know whether active surveillance,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, mastering and activity, to know whether doing
Speaker 1: nothing is the right thing, And for that you would
Speaker 1: need some kind of statistical evidence base, you'd need some
Speaker 1: kind of rigorous experiment. But I know doctors are quite
Speaker 1: convinced that they are over prescribing too many tests, too
Speaker 1: many treatments that are not necessary. And so the question
Speaker 1: there is, well, why do they feel that that's the
Speaker 1: right thing to do, or maybe they don't feel it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, why do they do it?
Speaker 1: And it is often a fear of being sued by
Speaker 1: a patient, or simply just trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: a patient who is pestering them and saying I want
Speaker 1: you to do something, like okay, fine, you want me
Speaker 1: to do something even though I shouldn't do anything. I'll
Speaker 1: give you this drug or I'll prescribe this test and
Speaker 1: that'll help you to go away.
Speaker 3: So it seems like we'd all be much happier, maybe
Speaker 3: even healthier, if we could figure out the importance of
Speaker 3: sometimes doing nothing. But tim sometimes the best decision isn't
Speaker 3: just to pause and do nothing. Sometimes the best thing
Speaker 3: we can do is to actively take something away. But
Speaker 3: it turns out this subtracting stuff seems to be even
Speaker 3: harder for our lying minds to deal with. It's something
Speaker 3: that we're very, very bad at.
Speaker 1: We are, indeed, and we'll learn more about that when
Speaker 1: this Cause Retail's Happiness Lab crossover episode returns after the break.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: And welcome back to Caution Retales.
Speaker 3: Wait, Tim, remind me do you usually introduce a second
Speaker 3: historic story after the break in your episodes, because if
Speaker 3: you do, I have yet another fun tale, one that's
Speaker 3: not about the advantage of doing nothing, but about the
Speaker 3: power of taking stuff away.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stop you, Laurie, go for it. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: how can I resist? Well?
Speaker 3: Story number two doesn't take us as far back as
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, but it does involve a clever strategy
Speaker 3: for operating yet another hard to deal with vehicle.
Speaker 1: Ooh, let me guess. Hard to deal with vehicles combine harvesters,
Speaker 1: no giant robots that you get to sit on or
Speaker 1: I don't know, tell me.
Speaker 3: Actually the story involves a bike, like just a regular
Speaker 3: kids bike.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well, hopefully it's a good story.
Speaker 3: Well, the story begins with a guy by the name
Speaker 3: of Ryan McFarland. Ryan came from a long line of
Speaker 3: motorsports junkies. His grandfather was a race car engineer, and
Speaker 3: Daddy McFarland ran a motorcycle shop. All this meant that
Speaker 3: Ryan spent his childhood having fun with all kinds of
Speaker 3: dangerous wheeled vehicles. He rode dirt bikes and played in
Speaker 3: go karts and race stock cars. Ryan was eventually able
Speaker 3: to translate his love for all things wheels into a
Speaker 3: profitable engineering career. He made a name for himself patenting
Speaker 3: both a better bike seat and a new wheelchair suspension system.
Speaker 3: So you could imagine Ryan's delight when he finally became
Speaker 3: a dad himself. Pretty much as soon as his son
Speaker 3: Body was out of the womb, Ryan was ready to
Speaker 3: pass on the far In family.
Speaker 2: Love of wheels.
Speaker 3: Body was two when he got his first cycle, but
Speaker 3: riding a bike Ryan quickly realized is kind of hard
Speaker 3: for a toddler. Ryan was passionate about getting Body on
Speaker 3: two wheels as soon as possible, so he spent thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars buying Body the usual learner vehicles toddler tricycles,
Speaker 3: trainer bikes, even a training wheel equipped motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, a training wheel equipped motorcycle. You're trying to
Speaker 1: convince me that that is a typical learner vehicle. I'm
Speaker 1: not buying it. That seemed like a terrible idea for
Speaker 1: a two year old.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it was tim Basically, nothing Ryan bought worked,
Speaker 3: Plus none of them were all that good at teaching
Speaker 3: a little kid the most important part of riding a bike,
Speaker 3: which is the art of balancing it. You can't learn
Speaker 3: to equalize your weight on a bike with training wheels
Speaker 3: because the wheels wind up doing all the balancing work.
Speaker 3: And so Ryan decided to engineer a new kind of bike,
Speaker 3: one that even a toddler like body could learn to balance.
Speaker 1: And how did you do that?
Speaker 2: Well, his solution was.
Speaker 3: To start with a typical bike, but rather than adding
Speaker 3: something new to the bike's design, he chose to take
Speaker 3: something away. He got rid of the pedals. Ryan was
Speaker 3: the first to design what's now known as a strider
Speaker 3: or balance bike. Kids can easily get the bike moving
Speaker 3: just by pushing their feet on the ground, kind of
Speaker 3: like Fred Flintstone style, and without pedals to worry about.
Speaker 3: Even a two year old could ride it on the
Speaker 3: strider body was able to learn to steer and balance
Speaker 3: all the stuff he'd need when he graduated to a
Speaker 3: real bike or I guess the motorcycle. Ryan was able
Speaker 3: to turn his idea not just into a tory for body,
Speaker 3: his balance bike turned into a global company which has
Speaker 3: now sold millions of pedalist bikes in less than a decade.
Speaker 1: I love this, Laurie, and as somebody who's written about
Speaker 1: the history of technology, I feel obliged to point out
Speaker 1: that this is what bikes were originally like. They were
Speaker 1: sometimes called hobby horses. Oh, the Germans had, I think
Speaker 1: the Louf machine. I forget exactly what it was. The
Speaker 1: Dandy horse was another thing they were called. The bikes
Speaker 1: originally didn't have pedals because the whole idea of pedaling
Speaker 1: you needed gears. He needed a chain. It was too difficult.
Speaker 1: And so we had bikes like this all along, and
Speaker 1: then somehow we forgot them, and then Ryan reinvented them
Speaker 1: for toddlers, which is brilliant. But I'm curious, why did
Speaker 1: you want to tell me the story what's going to
Speaker 1: do with happiness?
Speaker 3: Well, the real reason I wanted to mention Ryan's story
Speaker 3: is it involves a practice that's super good for our happiness,
Speaker 3: but also one that's really hard for our minds to do.
Speaker 3: To get his design right, Ryan had to take something away.
Speaker 3: He had to subtract the pedals, and the research has
Speaker 3: shown that subtracting stuff is much harder than we think.
Speaker 3: I first learned about Ryan's project in this book by
Speaker 3: Lydie Klotz. He's a professor of engineering at the University
Speaker 3: of Virginia. He's written this awesome book called Subtract The
Speaker 3: Untapped Science of Less. But he does all these experiments
Speaker 3: where he shows just how hard it is for adults
Speaker 3: to figure out how to solve a problem that requires
Speaker 3: taking something away. He does these fun studies with his
Speaker 3: college students where he shows them this kind of lego
Speaker 3: bridge type thing that's sort of uneven.
Speaker 2: It's kind of about to collapse because it's got.
Speaker 3: One leg in the wrong spot, and he asks subjects
Speaker 3: do something to make this structure a little bit more stable.
Speaker 3: And so subjects have two choices. They could add a
Speaker 3: bunch of new blocks so that this structure becomes more stable,
Speaker 3: or they could just take away the one stupid block
Speaker 3: that's extra on one side and so then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden the thing would balance better. And what he
Speaker 3: finds is that even if you suggest to subjects like hey,
Speaker 3: it's also possible to take stuff away, subjects have a
Speaker 3: really hard time with this. They're much more likely to
Speaker 3: add a bunch of stuff, which takes them more time
Speaker 3: than just to take one thing away. Lidy found that
Speaker 3: subjects even still do this when you charge for the
Speaker 3: amount of blocks they're going to use. So subjects now
Speaker 3: have to pay ten cents for every extra block they
Speaker 3: put on, and it's still really hard for them to
Speaker 3: figure out that they have to take some stuff away
Speaker 3: to make this work best.
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of interviewing Lidi for the Financial Times.
Speaker 1: I read his book and I found it really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And when I first saw the work on Legos, originally
Speaker 1: the whole idea was sparked because he noticed that his
Speaker 1: son just naturally pulled away the extra block. So his
Speaker 1: son didn't seem to have a problem subtracting, but it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to him to subtract. When I first thought,
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, well, I mean, you know, I like Lego,
Speaker 1: that's great, but is this really of practical significance. But
Speaker 1: then some of the other experiments that Lady had been
Speaker 1: doing with his coauthors were I think much more obviously
Speaker 1: relevant to day to day life. For example, one of
Speaker 1: the ones he did was he got people to suggest
Speaker 1: improvements to a recipe for soup. Here's a recipe for soup.
Speaker 1: How do you make it better? And people would always suggest, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you could add some cream or garlic or salt or whatever.
Speaker 1: They're suggest adding steps or adding ingredients, and very few
Speaker 1: people said, no, you need to take away this ingredient
Speaker 1: because it's going to swamp everything else. There seems to
Speaker 1: be this inbuilt bias. And even when he suggested cases
Speaker 1: where it was absolutely obvious that you should take something away,
Speaker 1: people didn't. So for example, in one experiment, they showed
Speaker 1: people and itinerary for a day in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: I used to live in DC. It's a lovely city.
Speaker 1: There's loads to do, but this itinery was crazy. I
Speaker 1: think they had twenty four different stops and they would
Speaker 1: basically be going to a Library of Congress, twenty minutes there,
Speaker 1: get back in the coach down the mall to a museum,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes in the museum, get back in the coach,
Speaker 1: take you somewhere else, and you just go all over
Speaker 1: DC and try and see everything. And it was clearly insane.
Speaker 1: And they were given this itinery and told, okay, how
Speaker 1: do you make it better? And the obvious answer is
Speaker 1: take out some of the stops, give everything some room
Speaker 1: to breathe, less time driving from one place to another,
Speaker 1: more time actually enjoying what you're seeing. And people just
Speaker 1: didn't do it. They would rearrange the order of engagements,
Speaker 1: they'd maybe try to make things a bit more efficient
Speaker 1: or more logical, but they did not remove stuff, even
Speaker 1: when it was clear that everything was just too much
Speaker 1: and subtraction was the only answer. So this seems to
Speaker 1: be really quite a deep bias in the way we think.
Speaker 3: And the travel example, I think shows just how much
Speaker 3: it can affect our happy when we have too much stuff,
Speaker 3: when we don't realize the power of taking things away.
Speaker 3: I've been on those vacations where it's like just too
Speaker 3: many things, Just like, wait, if I just took out
Speaker 3: one or two of these and I could just sleep
Speaker 3: in an extra hour, I could just take a moment
Speaker 3: to rest, I'd feel so much better. But it's not
Speaker 3: just like ephemeral things like travel plans where we mess
Speaker 3: this up. We also mess this up with the literal
Speaker 3: stuff that's inside our houses. And Tim, I know this
Speaker 3: is something that you've actually written a book on the
Speaker 3: kind of striking way that our materialism is problematic for us,
Speaker 3: and sometimes we don't subtract enough of our own stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got involved in this by accident. So I
Speaker 1: wrote a book a few years ago called Messy, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a messy book. It's about improvisation and
Speaker 1: jazz and filing cabinets and conversations and all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a messy book, and in many ways
Speaker 1: it's the book I'm most proud of. But when I
Speaker 1: published this book around about the same time, Mary Condo's book,
Speaker 1: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying was also out and
Speaker 1: was a huge bestseller, And so people were always asking
Speaker 1: me to talk about, you know, the contrast between my
Speaker 1: book and Mary Condo's book, because I'm for mess and
Speaker 1: she's for tidy, and you know, and actually I kept saying,
Speaker 1: I don't think I mean, I loved her book. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's as much of a difference as
Speaker 1: you might think, because really the point that she made
Speaker 1: in the Life Changing Magic of Tidying is you can't
Speaker 1: organize your way out of too much. You could only
Speaker 1: subtract your way out of too much. You have to
Speaker 1: get rid of stuff. So, in fact, her book is
Speaker 1: not really about tidying. Her book is about minimalism. Her
Speaker 1: book is about subtraction. And I've got absolutely no problem
Speaker 1: with that. Sometimes you need that space. And I was
Speaker 1: similarly skeptical about organizational systems. I don't think organizational systems
Speaker 1: solve the fundamental problem of too much stuff going on.
Speaker 1: But yet we fool ourselves into thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: if only we did have the right hacks, if only
Speaker 1: we had the file effacts, or if only we had
Speaker 1: the right software, then we could solve all the problems
Speaker 1: in our lives by just getting organized. And sometimes, no,
Speaker 1: there's twenty four hours in a day, there's only so
Speaker 1: many rooms in your house, that there's only so much time,
Speaker 1: there's only so much space. And I think a really
Speaker 1: fundamental insight of economics, and people don't think of economics
Speaker 1: as offering wisdom for day to day life, but I
Speaker 1: think it does really fundamental insight and economics is everything
Speaker 1: has an opportunity cost. And what that means is everything
Speaker 1: you do, everything you buy, every hour you spend is
Speaker 1: getting in the way of something else. It's something else
Speaker 1: you can't do. It's some other way you can't spend
Speaker 1: that hour, it's some other thing that you can't afford
Speaker 1: to buy because you bought that first thing. And when
Speaker 1: you see everything as potentially getting in the way of
Speaker 1: everything else, you start to realize, as Ldi Klott says,
Speaker 1: not only should you be subtracting the bad stuff, sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to subtract the good stuff as well, because
Speaker 1: subtracting the good stuff makes space for more good stuff
Speaker 1: and to enjoy the good stuff that you have.
Speaker 3: I think this is so important for myself in so
Speaker 3: many different way. But this is also something that I've
Speaker 3: seen in my students.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They have these college students today have these such like
Speaker 3: over subscribed schedules, like they just never have time to
Speaker 3: do anything. And I think that's because they grew up
Speaker 3: in generation where parents gave them so much to do
Speaker 3: that they got used to not ever having time to
Speaker 3: do stuff. I know you've talked a little bit about
Speaker 3: helicopter parenting. This is something that we talk a lot
Speaker 3: about on the show. But one way to describe helicopter
Speaker 3: parenting is the problem of not subtracting enough. Right, you
Speaker 3: want your kids to, you know, learn how to play soccer,
Speaker 3: and you want your kids to get piano lessons, and
Speaker 3: you definitely need them to get a math tutor and
Speaker 3: an SAT tutor and all these things, and so you
Speaker 3: pack as kids schedule to the point that they have
Speaker 3: no time for rest, no time for play, no time
Speaker 3: for being social with kids their age. And the right
Speaker 3: solution isn't to give them more tutoring, it's to just
Speaker 3: subtract stuff. I think what happens is that parents have kids'
Speaker 3: schedules that are just really oversubscribed, and then they get
Speaker 3: worried of like, oh, well, he doesn't have time for play,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have time for friends. So I'll just add
Speaker 3: in a play now, squeeze that into all the other
Speaker 3: stuff that kids have to do. But this overscheduling, the
Speaker 3: research shows, makes kids like way more anxious. Anxiety disorders
Speaker 3: are going up. Kids will sometimes report sometimes like you know,
Speaker 3: we very busy adults do, that they have no time,
Speaker 3: that they feel overwhelmed by their schedule, when it also
Speaker 3: feels like everyone would just be much happier and probably
Speaker 3: everybody would perform more successfully if we could just take
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff out of kids' schedules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think an important thing to underline We
Speaker 1: kind of already said it, but let's say it again
Speaker 1: because we're adding, not subtracting as I always do, is
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with having a masthitude. There's nothing wrong with learning
Speaker 1: an instrument, there's nothing wrong with with learning a sport.
Speaker 1: It's all good. It's just there's a limit. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we like to tell ourselves, oh, if we just get
Speaker 1: rid of all the wasted time, we get rid of
Speaker 1: all the bad stuff, then we'll have time to focus
Speaker 1: on what really matters. But actually know, sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to get rid of stuff that you really do want
Speaker 1: to do, the stuff that is worth doing, because you
Speaker 1: can't do everything, and it's painful to face up to that.
Speaker 3: So the question is why don't we follow this idea
Speaker 3: of less is more? Why is it something that's so
Speaker 3: hard for our minds. We'll learn some ways that we
Speaker 3: can all do this better. When the Cautionary Tales Happiness
Speaker 3: Lab crossover gets back from the break, Welcome back to
Speaker 3: the Cautionary Tales Happiness Lab crossover. So, Tim, before we left,
Speaker 3: we were talking about ways that we can make subtraction
Speaker 3: a little bit more obvious for our lying minds. And
Speaker 3: one of the ways that occurs is when sadly there's
Speaker 3: nothing we can do but subtract. I know these are
Speaker 3: cases that you've talked about on Cautionary Tales before, So
Speaker 3: maybe share one of these stories where people can actually subtract,
Speaker 3: but only when they're kind of forced into a corner
Speaker 3: and they have to.
Speaker 1: Yes. The example that has haunted me ever since I
Speaker 1: heard it was Keith Jarrett, the great jazz pianist, and
Speaker 1: his attempt to play a solo piano concert in the
Speaker 1: great German city of Cologne. And that particular concert, it
Speaker 1: was the largest concert that Jarrett had ever played solo.
Speaker 1: He was still quite a young man, I think he
Speaker 1: was still in his twenties. There was a mix up
Speaker 1: at the opera house. The promoter was very young, she
Speaker 1: was a teenage girl called Vera Branders, and she or
Speaker 1: the opera house between them, had not got a good
Speaker 1: piano on stage for Keith. He'd requested a particular piano
Speaker 1: Bozendor for Imperial. He's a real perfectionist. And instead they
Speaker 1: looked around for a bozen Door for piano, and they'd
Speaker 1: found this beaten up rehearsal model, not a proper grand piano.
Speaker 1: It's not big enough, but also in really bad condition,
Speaker 1: out of tune, pedal sticking, all kinds of problems, and
Speaker 1: Jarrett basically said, look, I can't play this. If you
Speaker 1: can't get a new piano, I won't play, and he left.
Speaker 1: But it turned out they couldn't get a new piano.
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough time, and Jarrett eventually realized that if
Speaker 1: he didn't play, then this poor girl who was promoting
Speaker 1: basically her first concert was going to be torn apart
Speaker 1: by this crowd of angry German jazz fans who would
Speaker 1: show up for it was a late night concert at
Speaker 1: eleven thirty, probably had a few beers. They're going to
Speaker 1: show up at this concert and there'll be no concert.
Speaker 1: There'll be no Keith Jarrett. So Jarrett decided, Okay, I
Speaker 1: have to do it. I have to play this thing.
Speaker 1: And so he walks out on stage in front of
Speaker 1: this packed auditorium fourteen hundred people, sits down to play
Speaker 1: this piano that he knows is unplayable, and it is
Speaker 1: the concert of a lifetime. It is his most successful
Speaker 1: ever recording. And because of the manifest limitations of the piano,
Speaker 1: he was forced into playing what was basically a much
Speaker 1: simpler melody, a much simpler approach to improvised jazz than
Speaker 1: he would normally use. He was using a restricted number
Speaker 1: of keys, he was avoiding certain areas of the keyboard,
Speaker 1: he was keeping it quite simple and rhythmic. The point
Speaker 1: is he could have done that on any piano, and
Speaker 1: yet he didn't because it never occurred to him. You know,
Speaker 1: he always wanted to use the full range of what
Speaker 1: was available, and it was only when all of those
Speaker 1: options were cut off and he was absolutely backed into
Speaker 1: this corner that he discovered this simple style, which continues
Speaker 1: to be his most loved work. And I think that's
Speaker 1: just an insight into the way that we don't do
Speaker 1: it unless we're forced to. We often need this disruption,
Speaker 1: we need this problem to occur before we find a
Speaker 1: new solution, a new way of solving our problems. And
Speaker 1: that new solution, in this case and in many cases,
Speaker 1: actually involves doing less than we've done before.
Speaker 3: And I think this is one of the strategies that
Speaker 3: Lighty Klatts mentions in his book right, which is to
Speaker 3: pretend that you're forced into this, like he suggests in
Speaker 3: a business meeting, and when you're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: some problem, to just have somebody on the team say, Okay,
Speaker 3: what if we were forced to take something away? What
Speaker 3: if we were unable to add something and we just
Speaker 3: had to take something out?
Speaker 2: What would we take out?
Speaker 3: Right, that kind of thought exercise winds up putting you
Speaker 3: in the simulated situation where maybe you can't add anything else,
Speaker 3: you've got to take something away.
Speaker 2: What would be the one thing you take away? And
Speaker 2: the experiment sage.
Speaker 3: While it doesn't come to our mind naturally, when you
Speaker 3: kind of strong arm people and say no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you have to pick something to take away, what would
Speaker 3: that be, all of a sudden, the strategies can start
Speaker 3: seeming a little bit more obvious. So that's kind of
Speaker 3: one of my favorite ones, is to ask this question, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I was forced to take one thing away, what
Speaker 3: would that be. It's helped me in my schedule immensely,
Speaker 3: right where I'm looking at the month ahead and I'm like,
Speaker 3: there are just too many trips, like I just can't
Speaker 3: fit all this travel in. Sometimes I ask myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I had to take one away, like if you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, some huge deity came down and was like, no,
Speaker 3: your's this kind of schedule monster, like you have to
Speaker 3: take one thing out of there. What would it be?
Speaker 3: Usually I have an obvious answer. I'm like, well, I
Speaker 3: didn't want to do that trip. That's the one that's
Speaker 3: kind of least interesting to me, or maybe the least valuable.
Speaker 3: And that can kind of force you to realize like,
Speaker 3: oh wait, maybe I can just take that one out.
Speaker 3: You don't need the mean schedule monster to show up
Speaker 3: to kind of force you to take something out.
Speaker 2: You can make that decision for yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it reminds me we often see politicians saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to have a rule that if you introduce
Speaker 1: some new regulation, you're not allowed to do that unless
Speaker 1: you cancel an old regulation, a kind of one in
Speaker 1: one out, or sometimes it's one in two out. You
Speaker 1: have to cancel more regulations than you had, and to
Speaker 1: some extent it's a bit silly. I used to long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long time ago. I used to work in regulatory reform
Speaker 1: at the World Bank, and we used to try to
Speaker 1: measure the burden of different business regulations around the world.
Speaker 1: Fascinating work, and we try to be quite sophisticated and
Speaker 1: try to produce all these comparisons. So one country could say, well,
Speaker 1: this is the regulations for setting up a business in
Speaker 1: this country. But if you're an entrepreneur in the neighboring country,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take you a year to set up a business.
Speaker 1: It takes you seven days. So why is that? What
Speaker 1: are the stages that take so long in one country
Speaker 1: and that don't exist in another country. That's really insightful,
Speaker 1: I think, and informative. But sometimes just that simple rule
Speaker 1: is hey, you've got to remove a regulation, figure out
Speaker 1: what it is. Sometimes that's enough that'll do the job.
Speaker 3: Another thing that does the job is really trying to
Speaker 3: harness your inner economists and to really think about what
Speaker 3: those active opportunity costs are like, to really be mindful
Speaker 3: of the other kinds of things you could be doing
Speaker 3: if you were able to subtract something. And one of
Speaker 3: my favorite strategies for that I first learned about in
Speaker 3: Hal Hirschfeld's great book About Our Time biases. He talks
Speaker 3: about what economists and psychologists have referred to as the
Speaker 3: yes damn effect and how to deal with it. And
Speaker 3: so the yes damn effect is probably something that will
Speaker 3: be familiar to many of our listeners. Somebody says, hey
Speaker 3: do you want to do this presentation? Or Hey do
Speaker 3: you want to go to this kind of not very
Speaker 3: interesting dinner party, or hey do you want to sign
Speaker 3: up something in your schedule? And you feel kind of bad,
Speaker 3: so you're like yes. Then weeks later that project or
Speaker 3: that dinner party comes up, and that's where you say damn.
Speaker 2: And so that's the yes damn effect.
Speaker 3: You say yes to something, time passes and then you
Speaker 3: see it in your calendar and you're like, damn.
Speaker 2: So how do we deal with this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean that's very familiar. I know that experience.
Speaker 2: It's not unique to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My general kind of heuristic is I should just
Speaker 1: say no to more things than I think I should,
Speaker 1: and over experience you learn it, but then you know
Speaker 1: it's never entirely successful. So is there a te that
Speaker 1: you'd recommend to get more out of this yes?
Speaker 3: And the trick is what's known as the no yay effect,
Speaker 3: or you kind of do the same thing, except you
Speaker 3: start by saying no, and then you experience the consequences
Speaker 3: later on of what that feels like. So let's kind
Speaker 3: of play this out. Laurie, do you want to do
Speaker 3: some project? You know, to do this date? I say no,
Speaker 3: definitely don't want to do that. But I don't stop there.
Speaker 3: I record the fact that I was asked to do this,
Speaker 3: and so I go to that date in my calendar
Speaker 3: when that project I just said no to would have
Speaker 3: been due, and I write in, Hey, Laura, you didn't
Speaker 3: have to do the project this day. And then you
Speaker 3: get to that date in the calendar and you realize, oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh, my day would have been so much worse
Speaker 3: if I had that huge.
Speaker 2: Project to do. And then you have the experience of yay.
Speaker 2: And so this is the no yea effect.
Speaker 3: And the reason I love it so much is it
Speaker 3: gives you these kind of periodic reminders of the fact
Speaker 3: that saying no had a reward, right, Like you are
Speaker 3: training your brain to notice that no doesn't just kind
Speaker 3: of feel yucky in the moment, because I hate saying
Speaker 3: no to stuff. I don't like the feeling of like, oh,
Speaker 3: and wanted me to do it. I feel kind of bad.
Speaker 3: I feel kind of guilty. You're kind of giving yourself
Speaker 3: with the opposite emotional reaction when that date of the
Speaker 3: thing finally comes up, where you get the moment to remember,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, I just save myself this time. I'm
Speaker 3: so kind of proud of myself unhappy. And so the
Speaker 3: no yay effect has been really powerful for me because
Speaker 3: it's helped me like, remember how happy I am that
Speaker 3: I didn't sign up for something at the first time.
Speaker 1: I really like that, Laurie. It's very it's very clever.
Speaker 1: I actually have an even simpler hack that I use
Speaker 1: all the time. So this works if there's someone else
Speaker 1: to whom you're accountable, if you have a spouse, for example.
Speaker 1: And this just going back to that original insight about
Speaker 1: opportunity cost, like everything you say yes to is getting
Speaker 1: in the way of something else, and flip that around.
Speaker 1: Everything you say no to every time you're invited to
Speaker 1: some commitment, every time you say no to that, you're
Speaker 1: saying yes to something else. So the way I phrase
Speaker 1: it is if I say no to some trip, some dinner,
Speaker 1: some commitment, if I say no to that, I'm also
Speaker 1: saying yeah, yes to my family. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: at home. I'm going to be spending time with my
Speaker 1: wife and kids. But I don't just tell myself that.
Speaker 1: I tell my wife that, and when I am replying
Speaker 1: to the email, because it's always an email, when I'm
Speaker 1: replying to the email saying this is really kind, but
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I can't do it, I just blind copy
Speaker 1: my wife and it's like a little note to her,
Speaker 1: look at what I just said no to, because I'm
Speaker 1: saying yes to you, And it just makes it much
Speaker 1: more positive to me. Slightly fills my wife's inbox with
Speaker 1: my refused invitations, but I think that overall she appreciates
Speaker 1: that visibility into the decisions I'm having to make every
Speaker 1: day and saying I'm not going to do this, I
Speaker 1: have something more important waiting for me at home.
Speaker 3: I bet that increases marital satisfaction in a bunch of
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 2: I might have to do this.
Speaker 3: My poor husband's inbox is going to implode with all
Speaker 3: the things I'm saying no too.
Speaker 2: But the cool thing is that there are these.
Speaker 3: Ways that we can kind of bring subtraction to the forefront.
Speaker 3: It doesn't come naturally, but like with a little bit
Speaker 3: of extra work, scribbling things in the calendar, an extra
Speaker 3: BCC on the email can kind of bring subtraction to
Speaker 3: light and maybe that will make us a little bit happier.
Speaker 2: Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the
Speaker 2: Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been a pleasure, Laurie, thank you for joining
Speaker 1: me on Cautionary Tales. Dr Lourie Santos, as you know,
Speaker 1: is the host of The Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3: And Tim Harford, as you know, host Cautionary Tales. Both
Speaker 3: podcasts are productions of Pushkin Industries and are available wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Now, this is the last of our planned crossover episodes,
Speaker 1: but it isn't the final time that we're going to
Speaker 1: be collaborating. On March the twentieth, Laurie and I are
Speaker 1: going to be teaming up for a special show dedicated
Speaker 1: to World Happiness Day.
Speaker 3: Yes, Tim will be joining me for a chat alongside
Speaker 3: our fellow Pushkin podcast hosts Maya Shunker and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 3: We we'll all be considering ideas for making the world
Speaker 3: a slightly happier place, and we hope to see you
Speaker 3: back then.