Why Young People Are Struggling | Angela Duckworth

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Traditionally, the younger you are, the happy you are. But since about two thousand ten, the data look very different. The young people are incredibly unhappy. They are at historical levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and despair. Hospital admissions for self-harm are up. Suicide attempts are up. And so I have been thinking about what the heck is going on. Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast.

Where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gerbett. A high performance psychologist named Michael Gervais. Who Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks. Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner. Strados Project. Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent. They have to stay mentally tough. Now the idea behind these conversations is simple. with the extraordinary.

To learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. Today's conversation is with colleague and friend, Dr. Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, best-selling author, and one of the world's leading voices on grit. Self-control and the psychological science to help people thrive. The gist of grit was people become excellent, not through magic, not through natural talent, but through hours and hours of high quality

practice. We tend to look at the highlight reel, which gives us a false impression of what that journey really looks like. We also dig into some powerful and very practical The whole job of parenting is to create situations in which kids can thrive, and I think good parenting is intentional. You have to think what zip code have I decided to live in, and where do I send my kid to school?

Because guess what? Those are the environments that will shape your kid. And maybe they're not listening to you, but they're sure as heck listening to their peers. With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Angela Duckworth. Angela, this is like a highlight for me to be able to carve out an hour for us to just celebrate, you know, what you've been doing, who you are, how you're thinking about helping people be their best. And so thank you again in advance.

for for the conversation. Mike, it has been too long. I don't know how long it's been, but it's been too long. I'm I'm looking forward to it. So it's also been ten years since you wrote the book and Yeah, the w so much has changed in the world and you influence

So many people. Quick question, like just to kind of get us started. What do you see differently right now about your work that you know seminal work on grit? I'm gonna start by saying that I agree with everything I said ten years ago. I have read grit relatively recently because I teach this undergraduate course.

to students really from all different majors. It's one of these classes at a university that has like all different majors, but my class doesn't count, I don't think, for any of them. So you have to really

just really want to develop yourself as a person and I sign parts of my book as required reading and of course I have to do the same homework assignments as my students. So I've read grit recently and I stand by what I said. I mean the gist of grit was that people become excellent, not through magic, not through natural talent.

But through hours and hours of high quality practice, they wake up and they you know, do it again and they do it at the edge of their abilities and and, you know, the the reason I I didn't just say like, Oh, I study perseverance, like why Why have a new word that, you know, you think is special to high performers? Because it's this perseverance and it's also passion. I mean, they wake up every day, they do it again, and they love what they do. I am sure, Mike, that you think about your work.

when you don't have to. I think about my work in the shower, I think about it when I'm brushing my teeth, I think about it when I'm dreaming, I think about it when I'm in line for coffee. So so really, ten years on, I feel like that fundamental principle that going the distance is really a journey and it is one step at a time. And when we see people who are amazing at what they do, I think we

Don't see the hours and hours of effort that got them there. We we we tend to look at the highlight reel, which gives us a false. impression of, you know, what that journey really looks like. You know, I think people resonate. And then there's been like this almost making a verb of the description of grit, like, oh, this person's gritty. And and it's a placeholder for like they work hard, they do hard things.

Which is not exactly passion and perseverance. It's like a thin slice of the way grit looks when somebody is doing something difficult. That's an oversimplification of a simple snapshot to say that this person is gritty. And I wanna I wanna hold that idea for a minute because I want you to first bounce off of the person who

hasn't identified a way to live with passion. And so can you square the idea about grit for work, grit for life, you know, like can you open that up for folks that are like, listen, my nine to five? This is this conversation certainly is not for me. I think that the reason I study excellence. is not because I'm especially interested in professional achievement. I mean ask

Ask my husband Jason or anybody who knows me well. I actually, despite being a professor at a business school, don't have any interest. in money or revenue or profit or hedge funds or market share. I married a guy who does. I mean he's in business. So it's not that I think that capitalism is bad.

But the reason I study excellence and the pursuit thereof is probably the same reason that you, also a psychologist who who studies that we have such a short time on this planet. You know, we're like flowers. We get a very brief moment where we get to bloom on this fair earth and You know, we have one shot, as they say, in Hamilton, and I feel like to glimpse

what you can do, you know, like what can you do? How can you become excellent at something that you care about? That to me is often something that, you know, like for me, it is my professional work. But but for others it is an avocation.

I'm gonna give you a really specific example, a story from the class that I just mentioned, Grit Lab. So when I figured out that many IV League undergraduates, despite having perfect GPAs in high school, and extracurricular activities, like their resume as long as my arm, right? But they're really, in many cases, completely clueless.

about what interests them. They are really, you know, mostly struggling with direction, not with determination. They struggle with passion, not with perseverance. So when I figured this out, I decided that the cornerstone of this class

would be what we call a Discovery Project. That's slightly rebranded. It used to be called the Passion Project, but then like I got terrified undergraduates in my office hours every week because they were like, Oh my gosh, I don't have a passion And I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna rename this the Discovery Project and maybe that will like

take some of the pressure off. But you have this checklist, this kind of like scavenger hunt checklist. And, you know, it starts off with really easy things. Like, you know, something that you want to watch on TED or YouTube, just like watch it. Like, okay, that's easy. Have a conversation with

your favorite AI chat bot about something that might interest you. But then as you get deeper into the checklist, as you have to as part of the assignment, You have to do things like have a curiosity conversation with somebody who works in that domain, shadow somebody, IRL in real life.

um find a passion buddy, a discovery project buddy who will as a fellow classmate like be on this journey with you. And what I have learned after doing this uh class for now eight semesters consecutively, is that every year I would say to my students, like, please do a vocational project. Right.'Cause I know you're gonna struggle with some kind of like career existential crisis.

And I would like to be your mentor and have you struggle within that safe space of this class and give you a little structure to that struggle. And every year students, you know, object and they say, I wanna do something avocational. I wanna learn how to cook. I wanna play the oboe. I want to like

you know, figure out like if being a DJ on the weekends is my thing. And then I always say to them, Yeah, but are you really going to cook for life? Are you going to be a DJ for your job? Are you gonna play in a in a symphony, uh, or I guess an orchestra?

music is not my strength, Mike. And I will tell you that what happened just a few weeks ago is we ended the class, actually just a few days ago, and a student raised their hand when I said, Do you have any advice for me for the next class of students? And the student raised their hand. They said, Doctor Duckworth, with respect, I think you were wrong to encourage us so vigorously to do vocational projects, because some of us went against your advice and we pursued our avocational

uh passions and interests and we're so glad we did. And it's because of what you said, Mike. You know, excellence comes in your profession, I hope, but it also comes in life. I mean, if I think about my real estate developer husband, who is a very good real estate developer, his number one priority in life is being a family man, is being a father to two daughters and a husband to me. So I think the same principles apply. I think you

you can and should pursue excellence in the domain that you choose. And if you're lucky you get it, you know, both professionally and then outside of work. But I really honor those people who say that they have structured their life in a way where, you know, they're not single-mindedly focusing on, you know, their professional identity. Cool. Do you know what you and I like argued.

Like there's something I don't really argue, but like you and I you and I think we had a differing way into this part of the conversation in our last conversation, which was you're pointing to passion as a thing. like passionate about a vocation, avocation. Passionate about playing the guitar, being a parent. or passionate about like where you spend your quote unquote nine to five. There's no nine and five really more. And I think that passion is more of a through line through everything you do.

So I think passion is actually a skill, not a directional aim. It's not not an interest. I'm thinking about Well, I'm just I you know, uh words are words, right? And grant passion, intrinsic motivation, mindset, love, you know, I think they're all words and I'm not saying that words don't have meaning, but I think the meaning is given to it, right? So I think it's just our responsibility to define how we're using the word in this conversation. You're right. I am

using the word passion to refer to a an abiding interest, a commitment, a domain. So, you know, I have a passion for uh cooking, I have a passion for writing, etcetera. But to define it as a skill I think is also defensible. But I don't think there is a right or a wrong. Or total alignment there. I like thinking though that I think this is you. I think this is me too. But I like thinking that

I'll speak for me, not for you here. I feel like when I enter any environment that I have the ability, call it the skill to tap into a way of being with passion. as opposed to like needing to pick up a guitar or pick up a surfboard and like, oh, finally I'm with passion. Like So like for example, if you were in and now I'll speak for myself, but I'll try to channel my inner mic survey. Like if you were in a boring faculty meeting

or like at the DMV, you know, like waiting to get your real ID um to personal recent examples. Um you you might actually have the skill of approaching those circumstances passion, like to be able to like learn something, you know, have an engagement that's positive. Like are you are you describing it as a skill that you could apply and maybe would want to apply To every domain of your life. Yeah. So think about like, I don't know, the French lover, or like there's just like this.

kind of like passionate way that they use words, that they engage in conversation. That that is like a you know, that like Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of um way of living as opposed to and I'll tell you the first principle I'm I'm working from, which is I don't want and I've observed in extraordinary people this kind of Positioning I don't want the external world to dictate my internal experience. So I don't want to be at the whip's end of what's ever happening around me.

I want to kinda reverse that order which is no, I determine. It's based on the way that I'm f it information goes through my filter. say objective circumstance, right? Like you want to be able to have, like, for example, a good day, you know, even if You know, objectively speaking, you know, things on the thing. Yeah.

I yeah, I mean I I I'm curious about that. Like I I I of course agree the circumstances of your life, the situations of your life are objective, but your experience and it's hard to remember this, I think. I think this is where you're coming from. Like your experiences are entirely subjective, right? They are mental representations. And the thing where we probably violently agree is that When you are experiencing, you know, that it's cold outside or you feel hungry or like that person who just

went through a red light as a total jerk. Like you can only experience it the feeling is like it's just real. It's just ra but but you don't experience the facts. I mean, you know. like the parable of the, you know, shadows on the cave wall in Plato. Like we can only experience our subjective reality. I mean, that's where I I agree with you. You know there's a butt coming.

Um, I mean, when people have to make choices about their first job, I think we would agree that flipping a coin is probably not what you would wanna do. You're not gonna be like I'll just take the next job that, you know, gets sent to me or like, you know, cover my eyes and like throw a dart, right? I think what I believe to be true is that not that passion or interest is fixed.

I actually think on the contrary, and there's good scientific evidence that they're developed. Also, like what would that even mean? That like you somehow got born with like the tattooed interest that you were gonna be a commodities trader or something like that. What what would that mean to have interests like at birth? So obviously they're developed, but I think, you know, recently, again, I guess my students are on my mind,

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I had the author David Epstein join our class. And he has written about a lot of the same topics that I have. And in his remarks to my students, I mean he was really kind, like t take the train up from Washington DC. My students had been assigned his TED talk. um on range and then I was like, I'll just text David and see if he wants to actually come and like talk about it. And so he did. And he said, you know, a lot of times what looks like grit is really fit.

In other words, if you were doing something where you feel really interested in it. you can look like somebody who has a lot of grit because you're voluntarily wondering about it, like when nobody asks you to, you're showing up early, you're staying late, your eyes are like saucers.

And I I agree with you, Mike. I know what you mean. There are people for whom, for example, like the when you were describing your idea of passion as a skill, I was thinking about, you know those people who like whatever they're eating

like it looks like the most delicious thing because like the way they approach their food is like, you know, they really are savoring it, right? Like I've I I have a few vivid examples of people where, oh right, like you could give them a whole range of things and it's all delicious because it's what they bring to that experience.

You can tell by the way they chew and swallow. You know, you're like the way they cut their food. I'm like, wow, I wish I could eat like that because then basically it'd be like being roommates with Julia Child. So I understand what you're saying, but I also think people have to make choices. And I think about my mom, for example, who She grew up in China and she really did uh you know fall in love with painting and she immigrated to this country. She was the first in her family.

to immigrate here. She didn't speak English. She was very poor. And she just had this dream of becoming a painter. And she heard stories of these museums in in the United States and classes where even women could become painters. And so she, you know, was studying here and she did coursework at, you know, Ivy League schools and was very encouraged. And then what happened is that she married my dad, who was a great man, but not a lover of art.

And not a feminist, I'll say. Um, and instead of becoming a painter, my dad had the idea that my mom should uh open a needlepoint. like, you know, I don't even know if people know what needlepoint is, but these canvases and like you stitch them and you make pillows and things like that. So my dad had this idea that my mom, instead of painting her true passion, should operate a wholesale needle point.

I would say company, but it was quite small. So anyway, like a whole all wholesale needlepoint concern. and that's what she did for like forty years. And, you know, I guess you could say that she brought passion to that. I mean, she did as good a job as she could as a little CEO of a little Company in Pensalkin, New Jersey that made needlepoint canvases and shipped them across the country to retailers.

But it was only when my dad got sick. He's now passed. He had Parkinson's and he had a few falls. And there was a time toward the end of his life where my mom, because my dad was like immobile and he slept a lot, like my mom had her freedom again. I mean it was like fifty years since she had come to this country to pursue her dream. And she was finally able to paint again. And on the very last day of class, my mom was the guest speaker.

And the very end of our interview where she told her life story, the last question was, What advice do you have for these young people who are at the beginning, not the end of their lives? My mom's now ninety. And, you know, first she hemmed and she said, Like, you know, I don't have any advice. Like, you know, don't listen to me and she sort of made a self deprecating joke. But then we we pushed her and we were like, No, really, what would you say to somebody who's twenty years old?

70 years younger than you. And she said, follow your passion. Do something that you want to do. When I paint, the hours fly by. All I want to do is paint. So I think we mostly agree, Mike. These are two different ways of using the word. They're both true. But I personally think that. If you can develop a passion that is what you really want to do, then so much of life becomes easier for you. And I think also the path to excellence almost invariably includes

Thank you for sharing your mom's story because it actually hits a really personal note. I am Really afraid that my way of living, like your dad. my framework, my thinking, my w way that I've organized my life would be something that could potentially pull my loved ones away from what they want to do. And so I do think about that all the time. Like what do you mean? I I get to do a lot in my life. And that means that I'm making s choices.

And some of those trade-offs, I don't consider them sacrifices. I do consider them trade-offs, is some of those trade-offs maybe are not. the best thing for my family. For the other for the people that you care about in your life. Yeah. So I yeah. This is the this is like the part that haunts me. Yeah. When I'm done here and let's say that I you know, my hopefully my son or my wife survives and me and like they're like, Yeah, he was a good man.

And then it kinda stops. You know, like I mean, i if if you ask my mom if she could rewind time, if she would make different choices, well I've asked her that. She wouldn't make different choices. I think she does mourn the Decades of her life when she was doing what she didn't want to do. But she would not go back and make different choices.

In other words, those trade offs also confronted her and we could say, like, oh it's too bad that she you know she was a woman, that she had a, you know, a certain place in a family. Okay, that may be true, but there were trade offs for her too. If she pursued her art and had huge fights with my father and took time away from

the children in order to pursue her passion, traveled, you know, regardless of our school schedules and so forth. I mean, I think those choices that you're talking about are real and just, you know, in a spirit of confession. So when my daughters were young, so now they are out of the house. They're twenty four and twenty two. And I remember getting a Christmas card and they would like, you know, their like their grandmother, actually both grandmothers, they like to draw.

And so I get this, you know, card and it's like a picture of like all the different people. It's like a comic strip. And, you know, like all the different people in the family and there's, you know, dad and he's like raking the leaves or doing something family manlike. And then, you know, whatever the girls are doing, you know, dancing or reading books.

And then there's me and you can't even see me because my laptop is in front of my face and you could just see like the top inch of my head and then it says like, you know, comic book style like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And I remember looking at this portrait of me thinking like, Okay, like, you know, trade offs, right? Because it's true when my kids were

young, I was working all the time. I mean, I guess that's probably true now and was true when they were older too. And, you know, I just wanna acknowledge, like, you're right, Mike, there are these costs on the other side of the ledger. And I think that's a very important perspective. But if you then consider that if you know, assuming that you're going to have a paid job, which many people want to have and many people need to have.

I I just want to say that when you make these choices, if you have freedom to make choices. you know, to to choose something where you're like, I think it's interesting. I think people's interests are not evenly distributed. Like Can you imagine how many people have tried to explain private equity to me? I'm like at Wharton. It's like, okay, Angela, I'm gonna explain private equity to you one more time and how it's different from hedge funds. And I'm like,

Okay, I have a coffee and a pen and a notepad and I can understand this. And like mid-sentence. Like their first sentence, I have just wandered off and my brain is not thinking. And that's because I have negative five interests. in private equity and hedge funds. I can't even believe that I remembered those phrases to utter them.

So so if you ask me about like psychology, I mean there are articles, Mike, that I read and I'm like, Oh yeah, I think that was like on page seventy eight. There was like a paragraph on the top right hand and there was this graph and you know why? Because I'm interested. I'm goddamn interested. in psychology. And so I just want to encourage everyone, I guess I think about young people a lot too.

to sort of, you know, gravitate to rec have some awareness of where they're where their attention goes and to honor that, because I think there's so much external pressure and, you know, so much social influence about like what you should do. I don't know. I I don't know what I would be if I weren't doing something that interested me.

Well I think that that's where I'm going to be able to do One hook back to the the passion intersection that we're talking about is like passionate about what you do and then passionate about who you are. I think the more bedrock of the approach is something to do with like, what about being passionate about becoming your best?

What about being passionate about being a great support and challenge mechanism for other people? To really be a great teammate or to be a great partner or to a friend or coworker. You got you gotta have your stuff together. You know, you have to be able to be buoyant in the topsy turvy world that we're in. And

It doesn't mean that you don't get kinda pulled down by, again, sometimes external circumstances or internal framing. But that idea about being a little bit more than a little bit of a What does that look like then? Like what I know you wanna ask me, but I wanna ask you, so I'm just gonna ask you like, so so what would that look like? So if I were a young undergraduate in your class, right? So so what would you be advising me to to think, to do? to to say where does that take me?

this idea of, you know, buoyancy and like in this topsy turvy world, which I could not agree more with you about. Okay. So what would that look like? I think um the kind of the first framing I would have is that we don't know how long you're gonna be in this world, back to your point. This flower is a good analogy and there's a a moment under the sun that we're gonna have together. More concretely, how do you want to do like

And most people say, Well, I want to I want to do guitar or I want to do teaching or something. No, no, no, no. How do you want to engage in all the things that you do? How do you want to be versus what do you want to do? I think is a how do you want to be versus what you want to do? Yeah. Okay. That I think that's a very meaningful distinction.

And I would say, you know, that my my undergraduate course and a lot of my work is more about like what you do than how you you know, how you are, right?'Cause we are human beings, not human doings. And I think that's actually very important. But you know, one of the things like being in the business that we are, right, which is like

we study the nature of human nature. We advise on how to like carry out your next day and, you know, how to have a relationship and so forth. I think it's always incomplete. I feel like there's always some thing that we're trying to draw people's attention to. And necessarily that means we're just like drawing attention away from other really important things. So I wanna agree with you. There is a kind of like

Life philosophy, to borrow some terminology from our good friend Pete Carroll, like there is a kind of philosophy and approach to how you want to be. And I think that is important. But it's not that I don't think it's important, but I wanna acknowledge that like, you know, it's not something I teach a lot about or have studied as a researcher. Yeah. No, no, no, that's right. Yeah. And then I think the the next part of that when you ask the question is like To do that, once you get clear on that

Way of being, and that that's a wide open idea. Like you're gonna need a whole handful of mental and psychological skills. to yeah be that buoyant person. And I completely agree that like using the term skill, like that is the right word for it, right? Because it's not like you have it or you don't, or it's a disposition or it's a choice sort of like it's like no, it's like, you know, it's a learnable set of Techniques.

that you that you get better at. I I think that's not obvious. Like, cause sometimes people are just sort of like, oh, I love that person. Like I love the way they move through life. I love the way they show up. But you're like, I can't be like that or, you know, that's the way they are. But you know, it is a skill, you know, a set of skills, like you said. Yeah. Let's take this as the think about the skill building and then st stitch it to your idea of or our idea of being parents.

W what have you come to understand about how to raise kids and to do it in this world? And if you could speak to the parents in this community about the things you hope they would

really understand or start doing or stop doing. I would love to tap into that part of you. I am, you know, by no means an oracle, but I have lately been thinking about the mental health of young people, partly because I have a wonderful new Graduate student named Abby, and she said to me, You know, Gen Z, my generation, is

really struggling. And I said, Oh yeah, I think I, you know, read an article here or there. She was like, no, like really struggling. So I've been thinking about young adults. I've been thinking about teenagers. Just the bare facts are startling, Mike. So if you look at historical data on, for example, things like how lonely do you feel, how anxious do you feel, how depressed are you? Do you feel like you experience, you know, a lot of despair? So these are measures of

ill being or you know, could say the opposite is, you know, the absence of them is well being. You could also ask people how happy they are, how connected, et cetera. Well, social scientists have been asking people of all different ages those same questions. for decades. And that means we have a movie. We have a movie of how people feel at different ages, 18, 28, 58, 78. But we also have a movie of like how that has changed, for example, since like

nineteen ninety five to like two thousand five and then two thousand fifteen and so forth. And here's what the movie tells you. Traditionally, the happiest time in life, at least in adulthood, because these surveys usually start at age 18, is in your younger years. So like the younger you are, the happier you are. And there's this kind of famous U shape. where as you approach middle age, like my age, you know, I'm fifty five.

So like I should be the unhappiest on average, right? So so, you know, w why would that be? Uh you know, people have said, Well, you know, their parents are dying, true, uh or parents are getting sick, yes. For a lot of people they're having professional crises.

Um, you know, they're kind of reckoning with some of the limitations of what they've been able to accomplish. Many people are going through divorce or other relationship problems. For some, you know, little kids, little problems, bigger kids, bigger problems. So there was a lot of ink spilled on the midlife. crisis and, you know, why it is that in our fifties we're less happy than when we're like, you know, in our early twenties. But I mean, it makes sense to people, right?

Then by the way, as you progress through the sixties and even to like for example like early seventies or so like people do generally get happier and maybe that's'cause they have perspective and maybe because some of these problems go away. But that's not what the movie tells you about what's been happening in recent years. So since about 2010, the data look very different.

And the middle aged people look the same and the old people look the same. But what's different is that the young people are incredibly unhappy. They are at historical levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and despair. And so I have been thinking about what the heck is going on and

I don't think it's, you know, it's for Angela Duckworth to give you a complete answer. I don't think honestly anybody really has a complete answer. But I do first of all wanna just acknowledge that. You know, sometimes CEOs ask me, they're like, Well you know, I've heard about this mental health crisis and the young and I'm like, oh, it's real. Like hospital admissions for self-harm are up. Suicide attempts are up. All the survey data around the world actually, it's not just the United States.

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you know, a conversation that I would love to ask you, Mike, what you think. I do think that technology, which has been the primary suspect, you know, if you ask like the social scientists like John Haidt or David Blanchflower, like what's going on, they will point to screens.

because they will say, you know, look what what happened in like around two thousand ten is like the advent of real social media like really taking off. I'm sure that is a huge part of it. But what I wonder about is whether screens have contributed to a general erosion in social connection that isn't just about like going on Facebook, seeing how pretty everybody is and feeling terrible about yourself. I I wonder about the displacement of genuine conversation

hanging out. It's very slow. It happens in one X, not in two X. It's not edited. There's no soundtrack. Sometimes it's boring. It can be awkward. People smell. Like there are all these things about like actual human interaction. which, you know, is also on a striking decline. So so these trends are not just that happiness is is down, but also the percentage of time that people spend in real life with another person. looking at them, talking with them is on a downward ski slope.

So I I worry a lot about, you know, these as a parent. And I don't have, you know, great answers, but I do think bucking the trend, like knowing that the trends are not in the favor of the young people you care about and and just at least recognizing that if you just go with the default settings of the modern world. You know, things are not great and so something has to be done that's counterculture. It's not terrible by the way, like

These are things that I had my vague periphery vision. I'm like, oh yeah, people aren't happy. But then I always like saw these graphs. I was like, I mean, just Google David Blanchflower. Like Google david blanchflower.dartmouth and you'll be like, Oh my god. Yeah. No, we'll put that resource uh in the show notes as well. What do you think, by the way? Like you think about um these topics at least as much as I do. Yeah. I mean I

I think there's a couple of things that call out. I'm nodding my head to everything you're saying. And there's a couple of things that I think about which is So you and I are the same age and you know, generation Z that we're talking about are, you know, I don't know, they're like thirteen to twenty-five year olds somewhere in that range. And thirteen to twenty-eight. Yeah. Twenty-eight. Those are kids that our generation raised.

Yeah. I don't know. I I barely knew it was up at age eighteen and twenty one. And so I think about if I would if my parents were doing the things that we did to the Gen Z kids, I feel like there's a custodian issue here of thriving. And so I

Okay, that's one that I just want to introduce. Like we raise them. That's interesting. I had not had not thought about that, right? Yeah, we raise them. You know, my my parents left me to drink water from the hose if I got thirsty. And we would never do that now. You know, like it's gotta be like ultra triple filtered water. Okay. I I yeah, yeah. You know, but like there's something about like Just a little bit of that roughness that allows for some scrappiness, call it grid.

But like there's something here that we have done. And then the second order. And I do want to get to like some practical things that you're thinking are important for parents. But the the other thing is like you and I, and I think everybody, it's a big word, uh, that's listening, would not want our kids to eat junk food. But we feed them junk light.

You know, so we're not feeding junk food anymore. We're feeding junk light and tolerating junk light and allowing that junk food to be part of it. Yeah, well like just elaborate on what what you mean by that. So I think the new the new kind of health is gonna be sunlight. And

Not that we need to see people having a tan, I'm not saying that, but like the effervescent aliveness that comes when we're with nature is nearly irrefutable for most people. It doesn't mean you need to be kind of deep in the wild and like have done all over you, but just like Yeah, there's something about that that tickles the ancient part of our brains that says, Oh right.

Yeah, good. This horizon gazing is a parasympathetic nervous system activator, meaning that it helps the rest and digest system turn on. And you can't have that peripheral kind of gaze when you're zoomed in on a handheld device or a computer or in a room even. So Okay, so junk food to healthy food, that's an art. that has been taking place over the last number of years, let's say, as an emphasis, and junk light.

to healthy light. So I'm just thinking about it more primarily. Yeah. You really literally mean L I D and D. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I want my son, I've got a seventeen year old son. I want him to have more sunlight. Yeah. You know, there've been, as you know, like lots of research on

you know, the effect of parks on well being and green space and walkability and, you know, there's some random sign of experiments on nature. But I just think that the profound shift, I mean, I looked this up once. I mean, let's assume that there was a time where people spent spent quite literally a hundred percent of their time outdoors.

It's not that far in our evolutionary history, right? Because it's like there were no buildings to be in, so you were outside, you know, again, most of the time, maybe there was like you built a shelter or something, right? And so when you were sleeping, you know, you slept in this makeshift shelter. But now, I think by some estimates, you know, people will only spend like minutes like outside, like really outside.

you know, like under the great blue canopy. And and what the heck is the effect of that profound shift from our evolutionary origins? To this like bizarre artificial illumination. Like, you don't know what time it is. Like, I wouldn't even be able to tell you what time it is except for looking at some clock. because I have none of the cues and I remember actually having a conversation with a pediatrician who I will not identify only because I asked her, I was like, You're a pediatrician

So I don't have a permission, so I'll just say I was like, what do you think's going on with this like general ennui and malaise of this younger generation? Because you know, some social scientists point out that it is, at least statistically, the safest.

historical era in history, you know, you don't walk down the street and get murdered in general, you know, you're not gonna get pickpocketed. Why is everybody so unhappy? And she said, you know, I wonder if it's lack of nature, not the presence of something bad, but the absence of something good. and William James and Henry David Thoreau and you know, many great thinkers have wondered about the curative effects of being in nature. So so I think like like when we when we think about this

phenomenon of declining mental health in the young. I mean, I again don't have all the answers, but I I do think that, you know, spending hours and hours staring into a blue rectangle on the palm of your hand with like Like not real life. It's all curated. it's all, you know, designed to make you like look at it again and and then not just experiencing actual life, nature, everything else that we've been talking about. I I have to believe that's got a lot to do with what's going on. Okay.

Super alignment. And I think a best practice, and by the way, you bring up William James, we have so much to learn still. from let's call like one of the first like applied psychologist for what could be, you know, like Yeah, energies of N. I mean, there's a joke in my tribe of, you know, academic psychologists, which is like, there's nothing anybody could study that William James didn't already figure out.

just takes you like a hundred and some years to like collect all the data and, you know, pre-register hypotheses and do all the statistics. But like basically leave Jinsproted all down. You know, habit, interest. boredom, self control, you know, relations, spirituality. I mean, yeah, he pretty much Yeah. I mean he uh he was a great first mover to this like he was what psychology Yeah, the ab Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

Okay, so we're saying get outside. Uh g give a handful of other things we can do as parents. Okay. So so yeah, I definitely think getting outside, right? Um I you know, you mentioned food. I absolutely you know, you are what you eat, it's true. And the fact that over fifty percent of calories in the typical Americans diet is coming from ultra processed food, meaning like

It's manufactured, it's fractionated in tiny components, it's resurrected in ratios that don't exist in nature. Nature does not have high carb, high fat food. There are no foods in nature. that are simultaneously high carbon, high fat. And when you get that your brain is just like Oh my God. Like it doesn't know what to do. It's just like so rewarding. So

I would call these supernormal stimuli. That's what Nico Tinbergen, the Nobel laureate ethologist, called these stimuli that were exaggerations of naturally occurring stimuli that elicit exaggerated responses. And I think we're living in a world of ultra processed food and ultra processed stimuli that are super normal. They are outside the range of experience. And so like, yeah, like of course your kid wants to keep eating chicken fingers with ketchup because like

It's so delicious. And that's not even the most ultra processed, right? Let's take Doritos. So I think rule number one you said is like more nature. Number two is like real food. I mean, I think being like completely crazy and being like we

pretty much only allow real food into our kitchen and yes, there'll be like the occasional party where but like we're gonna be that family that like is crazy about like eating healthy. Uh sign me up. If I had grandchildren today, that's exactly how I would Raise them. So so no no like before just to interrupt on that, like I don't know, no Trader Joe's pizza. No

kinda organic. I think the the definitions of ultra processed food are um various, but one of the definitions that I find to be useful is like you literally couldn't make it at home. And why is that important? Because in the processing there has been like a kind of a combination, like a recombining of things that is like so outside of human experience that like

you know, the range of poly no I would allow Trader Joe I also I love tra if you are what you eat, then I am Trader Joe's. But like I I think that it's not like you shouldn't have tomato sauce because it's like, oh that was m It's like but you can make tomato sauce and guess what, Mike, I could make a pizza. I like it. I I that framing is actually super simple. Like impossible to make, impossibly delicious, impossible in terms of the ratios of

uh, fat and sugar, coloring, flavoring, um, and marketing, right? Just like I would s I would say like, you know, what was it Mark Bittman? Like, eat food not a lot, mostly leaves. I mean the advice on nutrition is um really boring at this point. But right, like I would avoid

highly processed, impossible, and impossibly delicious food, um, or impossibly addictive food or whatever. On screens, I will say I'm doing the largest cell phone policy study that's ever been done with a chorus of like top economists.

So we are surveying every school in the country about what their school cell phone policy is. It's called Phones in Focus. And it's bipartisan by the way, Mike. It might be the last bipartisan issue there there is. So that you know, there are red states, there are blue states. It's endorsed by the National Governors Association. And what we're finding is first of all that educators who answer this survey At Phones in Focus, they are like screaming through the survey that kids need our help.

In limiting their screen time. They're saying that, like, the schools need to take collective action. And one of the things that you should know about screens is that. It is what economists call a collective action problem. If you are the only kid who is not on Instagram, That's actually very hard for you for all the obvious reasons. But if all of the kids were not on Instagram, for example, if in a school,

the policy was that like you cannot be on your phone from the first bell to the last bell. You have solved a problem collectively because nobody's on their phone. You don't have to worry about what you're missing out at one in the afternoon because nobody else In your entire ecosystem is on their phone. So I think that one of the things I would say as a parent is not only should you do common sense things like limit.

your kids' screen time, like don't let them charge their phone in their room, you know. Make up a set of rules that you maybe discuss together so that there's an understanding of why those rules exist. But honestly, I would choose my daughter's school. based in part on their cell phone policy. I think if the school principal said, you know what, I really believe that every teacher needs to figure this out on their own and like

kid I would be like, Oh, I'm not sending my daughter to this school. So I would say that choosing your school in general is one of the big decisions that parents make. As a psychologist, you know, we said, okay, nature, that goes across the board. If you're two or twelve or twenty two Get out in nature. What about ultra processed food? If you're two twelve or twenty-two, eat less ultra processed food, eat more real food.

Um, three, you know, solve the screens problem in collective ways, like put yourself in situations where, you know, everyone has decided not to be on their screens. But I will also just add this about adolescence. When children enter puberty, the influence that parents have on their behavior, on their attitudes, on how they talk.

how they dress. It goes down by a lot, and you don't need scientific research, although there's a lot to back that up. But you know, any parent who's like had a teenager is like, Oh yeah that's when they stop listening to you and that's developmentally normal. But when you enter that phase of parenting, you have to think

What zip code have I decided to live in? And where do I send my kid to school? Because guess what? Those are the environments that will shape your kid. And maybe they're not listening to you, but they're sure as heck listening to their classmates. and their peers, and by choosing the school or the zip code, You know, or the sports team.

or the music teacher, right? Like you are still exerting some benevolent influence. You know, I I shouldn't ramble on, but I do think the whole job of parenting is to create situations in which kids can can thrive. And I think there is a difference of opinion here. Some people have a more of a sort of laissez faire attitude towards parenting. I'm not saying that kids need to be coddled or that we have to hang out with them all the time, but I do believe that good parenting is intentional.

And if you just sort of sort of like, yeah, well they'll figure it out and like, you know, they'll be who they are and like, you know, when we raised our daughters we'd be like, Yeah, I know they do it that that way, but you are Duckworth. And in the Duckworth family, we write thank you no.

You know, like in the Duckworth family, we sit down to dinner together and we don't have our friends. In the Duckworth family, like you we don't eat at different times. Like you're Duckworth, we're gonna do it the Duckworth way. Okay. So

This is awesome. I want to tell you a quick story, which is this is my I'll work backwards. My son's school does not for the last two years has not allowed cell phones. So there were early adopters to that. And what a gift. That's a great word for it. Like when my son came home and it was j amazing. I said, So what do you think? And he says, Dad, I think we all know it's good. He goes, it'll be harder for some people, you know, but it's cool. It's fine.

And I was like, great, you know. I love that. We all know. I think we all know that. Yeah. And so if we work back though, he was like nine. And so he went through a he he goes to a small school. So there's a group of friends and parents. Uh I think he was like Nine or ten years old.

And all the parents got together and like, Hey, listen, let's let's do something really special. Let's like do no cell phones in their hands until they're fifteen. Like what do you Wait, really? So you were part of this? Yeah. And so this is this was I guess like ten years ago or something and or less. And all the parents are like, Yeah.

Yep, for sure. Let's do it. Okay. Cool. You know, and everybody was pretty sport minded, outdoor you know, influenced and it was awesome. And then uh my son got to be like thirteen. And he says, hey guys, I just want to let you know that um such and such, you know, not only did he get he did a cell phone, but I saw him like, he was on Instagram.

And so my son was kinda hinting like, you know, maybe the maybe the seal is broken a little bit. We're like, Oh, that's too bad that they didn't kind of adhere. That's a bummer. And then like the following year.

Almost everybody except him and one other friend out of a group of like say seven had cell phones and social media. And so we talked to the parents like what are you doing? Yeah, we we did a all for one, one for all. Like what are you doing? They're like, oh well the pressure and this and that. I was like, that is whack. You know, like are they saying that like all the pressure on these kids that we need to get to the phone? All the social pressure. Oh, okay. That's exactly right. Yeah, I yeah.

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But also like you you hear them and you know they're not making it up, right? The pressure is enormous. And by the way, I am not holding myself out as a model parent. I gave my daughter's phones and I say I because I really take the blame for this. When we moved to the to the city, so we used to live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, now we live in downtown and

My daughters were in fifth and sixth grade respectively, right? And it was just that the very beginning of that school year that they said, and you know, fifth and sixth grade, that's what, like ten and eleven, right? They were like, Mom, you know, we need a phone so that we can like

I don't know, call if there's an emergency and I was like, okay, right to the Apple store. And so that was not a great parishing decision. But but at the same time the the pressure is enormous. I mean, here's an example that is, you know, hard to generalize, I get it, but and over. Okay. Andover's not every school. Andover's also, you know, largely a boarding school. There are some day school students, but mostly these are boarders and it's it's an elite private school.

But um recently somebody forwarded me the letter that the headmaster of Andover sent out and it was on their cell phone policy and it was very thoughtful and it's Andover, so it was extremely well written. And they basically have a heads up policy. meaning that the head would like watch these kids walk around like this, with their head down, like we all do, right? Practically walk into a tree if you, you know, don't like look up at the right time.

And so the the policy this year is it's heads up. It's like you you can't just like have a phone that that's out and like, you know, that you're staring into while you're supposed to be interacting. And there are times that you're allowed to go on your phone, but there are also

you know, many times during the day that you're not. And I only bring that up because it is a collective action problem. I think it's very hard for even a small group of parents within a school. Because when I say like, you know, being countercultural, it is like swimming against the ocean current. So, you know, anybody like you who spent a lot of time in the ocean knows that like, guess what? The mighty ocean.

usually wins, right? So you gotta like maybe find a place where the tide is going in the direction that you want. And and that might mean, you know, the school that you send your kid or if you have a sports team that your kid joins and the coach says, like, we have rules and everybody's gonna eat a certain way and everybody's gonna like

gather here and when we gather we're gonna be looking at each other because phones are in our lockers. Like that is I think your only prayer once your kids come of a certain age. Ugh, I I love all of this as like be connected to the ground swell as opposed to like always pushing against the current. And and then I'll add one more piece to it, which is You said like in the Duckworth family, this is, you know, we do this.

And I go, Oh yeah, because I s use that all the time. As a Gervais, I say. And so I look for those moments to be counter culture. I look for the moments we call it being authentic. Oh, I love this. It's like almost like it's a teachable moment. It's a great thing, right? To like

Yeah, it's like lean into those moments. Yeah. And so I really like it. Like and so you just call it what it is. Like, look, everyone's going over there, we're gonna zag on this one. And as Gervaise, we look for those moments, you know. And so And I really like that.

Framing. He's 17. He has a phone. He does not have Instagram. We have an Instagram account for him. It's on my wife's phone. This sounds uber controlling, but it's like this really nice little moment where he's like, Hey, hey, mom, can I get on Instagram real quick and just kind of check in? And it's probably like, I don't know, he's really

pretty got a full schedule. It's like I don't know two, three days a week. You know, he checks in for like, I don't know, fifteen minutes. Yeah. And kinda I think he's like cool with it. He's like, that's fine. I don't that is awesome. Yeah. He's like he's totally cool with it. Yeah. So I'll admit Ed Sheeran doesn't have a Oh, I'm on it. Okay. Right? Like Heroes Amongst Us.

Thank you, Lord. I like I didn't think I could like Ed Sheeran anymore, but like I do. He's a true master of craft. So I have these undergraduates who are just a couple years older than your son. And the ones that um, you know, like well they come down and talk to me about like their own cell phone histories and you know, the ones who w had the parents who were like, you know what?

We do it this way and like no social media. Like, you know, we're sending you to this school. They are so grateful and the some of the most impassioned advocates of, you know, a focused phone free life. Are these Gen Zers like my daughters? They are like evangelists. They're like, you know, young people, like, mom, you have to work on this.

Because like these kids really like they're not gonna grow up right if they and then when you ask them this was like my final discussion question in my class. I said, Should you choose to have a family? what will your tech policy be? And oh my gosh, like the din in that room listening to these kids like talk about what they were gonna do differently with their own children, having learned the hard way about how, you know, these devices which are

magical are really eroding life. So I, you know, we talked we covered a lot of ground. I will just say that like the modern world, something is not right. I mean it's just like You know, some so if you just sort of like go with the flow with most trends, like, you know, I love that you're having this podcast and you continue to have these conversations because I think some intentionality about the way you really wanna be. is required because the default settings are not great.

Uh I just it adds some urgency to the whole thing, you know? Uh yes. Okay. Right now, it's like first quarter in 2026 and I feel bad for the people that set resolutions because we know that they're falling apart right now. But you know, the idea that there's a new year, new leaf, new approach.

to kind of some things you want to get better at. Like how do you think about do you want to stay to parents? Do you want to stay to like maybe just open it up in general? I think my one piece of advice, right, for like you know, you're at the beginning of you know, maybe you're a little disappointed with like, you know, how you didn't follow through on a resolution or a goal. I think that what's helped me is to not ask, as I have for so much of my life, what's wrong with me?

When I fail, I immediately think like, Oh, what's wrong with me? And then, you know, usually in a sort of despairing self recriminatory tone. And and I I instead think like just like what's wrong with my situation? And I know that may sound to some people like cowardly and you're like, Oh, you know, you said you don't want to be a victim of your circumstances, you wanna be able to

live in your circumstances, you know, regardless of what they are. But I I think like, you know what? Like what can I change in this situation, I think, is an agentic positive statement. Like, you know what, I don't like how I'm like not getting enough sleep. All right. Well, maybe I'll stop charging my phone in my

bedroom, you know, I don't like how I'm eating. You know what? I'm gonna like open up my refrigerator and literally throw out everything in this refrigerator that I don't want in my body. Right. Like I'm gonna go to Trader Joe's and buy some pre washed spinach. Like maybe instead of using willpower to create this life that you want and always blame yourself, like what's wrong with me? And I can't do it. It's like

Well how can I how can I change the situation around me to help me make the hard things that I wanna do easier? And that to me has been a huge change in my life, Mike. Like You know, when I ask like, you know what, this problem's too hard. Like, who could I ask for help? Like this thing I can't find? Like, I'll ask my husband to look for it for me. I mean just

Not always what's wrong with me, but sometimes like what's missing in my situation that I can change. It's a small shift, but I think it has huge benefits. Angela, you are a bright light. And the way that you're just framing really hard problems for people, you create an aperture opening experience where it's like, Oh, I can kind of settle into this and see possibility and I feel like, oh yeah, there's some real choices and you don't make it like

reductionist that it loses its texture of the the tension between, you know, Route A or Route B and Thank you for the way that you show up and the way that you continually inspire me, both in writing and in the way you just think about stuff. So I appreciate you. Mike, it's too high praise. And you know I respect you as a psychologist, as a writer and as a teacher. So from you, I will take that as

Um, you know, my highlight for the day. And um yeah, I look forward to our next conversation. Let's do it. Okay. I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks, Angela. Awesome, awesome. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Morgan Hausel, best-selling author and one of today's most thoughtful voices on money and human behaviour. In this conversation, Morgan and Mike explore why financial decisions are rarely about math and almost

Always about psychology. How comparison quietly shapes our spending. Why defining enough matters more than chasing more, and what it really means to use money as a Rather than a scorecard. Join us Wednesday, february twenty fifth at nine AM Pacific. Only on finding mastery. All right, thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

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