We all know how important learning is for our career, for our identity, for our sense of personal satisfaction, and we spend a lot of time thinking about what we should learn. Should I focus on softer heart skills, Should I know my master's degree? Should I find a mentor? But what most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about is how we learn. And if you're listening to how I work in a way, you're also listening to how I learn, because it's such an important
part of your working life. Someone who does spend a lot of time thinking about how we learn is doctor Ruth Gotian. Ruth is the author of The Success Factor, which is the culmination of her obsession with high achievers and how they became so good at what they do. She's also the Chief Learning Officer in Anisiology at while Cornell Medicine and the former Assistant Dean of Mentoring and executive director at the Mentoring Academy. If anyone can teach
you a thing or two about learning, it's Ruth. So why does Ruth believe that assigned mentor relationships rarely work out?
And how has she.
Found the most impactful mentors in her life? And why does Ruth recommend that you should never ever ask someone to be your mentor. My name is doctor Amantha imb I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show
about how to help you do your best work. Ruth told me that one of the most important mentoring relationships she has had in her career was with doctor Bert Shapiro, and I wanted to know how such a pivotal relationship came about. Ruth, I want to start with mentoring because that's played a really big part in your work and mentioned doctor Bert Shapiro quite a few times in your book, and I'd love to know how did that mentoring relationship start.
So it's really interesting. I used to run what's called an MDPHD program. My students would get the dual degrees, the dual MD degree and the PhD degree. And in the United States it's the government, the National Institutes of Health that pays for it because there's a real dearth of physician scientists, and physician scientists are physicians who also do research and they approach problems differently. Doctor Bert Shapiro was the person at the national Institutes of Health that
essentially controlled our purse strings. He decided the how well each program was doing at its mission. He was the one who helped decide who was getting how much money.
He was really.
A powerful, powerful person. But he is also one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. And at all of our national conferences when he was there, I would find myself always talking to him less about work and more about life, And very quickly he started just giving me this sage advice which was timeless, and over the years, over the decades, he just really was my sounding board for so many things, and he was my
biggest supporter. And when I was doing something right, he would congratulate me, and when I was going down a slippery slope he would tell me. So I found that just so enlightening and rewarding, And over the years he's just really been one of the dear people that I go to for guidance.
So it sounds like there was never this formal start to the mentoring real lifeationship per se. It just kind of evolved into that. Is that right?
I'm so glad you said that, because the assigned mentors rarely work out. Why is that well, because they're so random. I mean, what are they based on our hometown, our favorite color, or where we went to school. I mean, is everyone from Australia the same? I don't think so. So why would we just match to Australians together. It just doesn't make any sense. You really need to develop a relationship with the person. And it's you know, I say, it's just like dating. When you first meet someone, you
don't ask them to marry you. You develop a relationship. See if this is someone who you know, like and trust. And that's what I did with doctor Burt Shapiro. That's what I have done with every single one of my mentors, because I have many, And it's really this relationship that's developed over time. You don't ask for anything. You just see if you know like and trust each other, it it happens organically. Those are the best mentoring relationships.
Oh, I can so relate. Like there have been a couple of occasions in my career where I have been matched with a mentor and you're absolutely right, the relationship did not work. And I think about the people that I go to now for super wise counsel and they are absolutely what you described their relationships that have evolved. So then when you're going into a chat or a coffee or a meeting with one of your mentors, how are you preparing for that?
I really have a goal, and this is really what I try to tell people. You can have plenty of coffee chats, but they have to there has to be a goal of the conversation. Is there something that you want to learn? If it's someone who you're meeting with them not as a catcher, but you're meeting with them for a mentoring discussion. And I always tell people you never call the person a mentor. You never ask somebody to be your mentor, because that is asking them to
take on another job or another obligation. Instead, you want to ask them for their perspective on something. Can I get your thoughts on something? Can I hear what you have to say about something? I really want to tap into your experience, because I'm kind of stuck and I was wondering what you think I should consider as my next step. That's a whole lot better than help me with the next stage in my career. Who do I even begin with that? So you have to come ready to that conversation.
How do you approach a cold reach out, And I'm not sure if I'm assuming that you do cold reach outs, and you must have for the process of writing your book, So what's your strategy there, perhaps when you're looking to get some advice from someone that you don't know, and particularly like when let's say, when you're you know, punching above your weight, if that makes sense, which is.
Every day for me. I mean, I study extreme high achievers, so every day I'm reaching out to people who are way above my intellect and my achievement. Most of the people in the book the success Factor, and they are very much household names from every industry from science to sports to business. And usually I have a connection with somebody who knows them, and I would ask them for those introductions because those are people who know, like and
trust me and they can vouch for me. But for those cold, those cold outreaches that I have, I never ask them for anything. Ever. I try to offer something before I ever ask for anything, because why should they give me anything, even their time, which is their most precious resource. They don't even know me. I have to really prove my worth. That is the most important. And when you prove your worth to somebody. They want to help you. That's why half of the Nobel Prize winners
were actually mentored by other Nobel Prize winners. Somebody saw their worth.
Can you give some examples of what you have given to initially build that trust.
One Nobel Prize winner who launched his own book, Brilliant Scientist, I mean brilliant, he won the Nobel. He doesn't know the first thing about marketing a book, not the first thing. He was only reaching out within his network. He didn't even consider doing anything on social media, didn't even know about doing podcasts. And we started talking about that quite a bit, and I said, you know, if you really want to expand your reach, you should consider social media,
on podcasts and so on. And say He's like, well, how do I even get to those people? And that's when I was able to offer those introductions little old me to a Nobel Prize winner. Now we're in regular communication about it, because now I can make that introduction. Afterwards, I could say how did it go, what did you think, what was the toughest question, what were you prepared for? What were you not? Now we have a whole discussion going.
Wow.
So there's so many ways that you can offer something.
I love that example. I'd love to know a couple of other examples. I even, just for my eye selfish raisins to steal.
So I have reached out to different people who wrote articles on topics that I was fascinated about and I really wanted to learn more and get inside their head. And I would really reach out to them and I would say, I love the article that you wrote about such and such. It reminded me about the article I read by so and so. Here's the link. I do quite a bit of work on this. Hope you enjoy the article. And now we start to engage a few more times, not enough that I'm stalking them, but enough
that I am now on their radar. And now all of a sudden we can have these regular communications. I mean, look at the two of us. Yeah, what was our conversation. We looked for a common thread, and you always want to find that common thread with people, whatever it is. I once spoke to someone, I had a zoom meeting with someone, and I saw in the back of the room there that he was zooming in from all of
these trophies. Now I recognize what these trophies were because I sat for endless hours on cold metal chairs in a karate dojo as my kids were earning their black belts, and I knew that these three foot troph fees could only be for martial arts. So I said to him, I said, what kind of martial arts do you do? Because I knew I knew that's what they were. And
he said, how did you know? So I said, I sat on those cold, hard metal chairs for hours and hours, and then we started getting into what style of karate do you do? And we got into this whole discussion. You want to find that common thread. The two of us actually met in the green room of the Thinkers fifty Awards gala. Right, we have yet to meet in person. It would have been so much fun if we could actually meet in London, but we met on a zoom green room and that's when we were able to connect.
That was our common thread. So I think everyone needs to be able to find that common thread, and it could be anything I talked to somebody. To an olympian, our common thread was her blue glasses, which happened to be my favorite color. And she was actually this as an Olympian. She was actually facing a challenge with a difficult conversation that she needed to have with her boss, and we actually talked through how to be able to
have that conversation. This was something that as an outsider, it seemed very obvious to me, but she was so deep in it she couldn't see it. She could get to the Olympics, but she couldn't have this difficult conversation. But yet we bonded over the color blue. So you always look for that common thread. It's not so difficult. You just have to try.
Now, I know that goal setting is very important to you, and you look quite far out, I believe five years out. I'd love to know what is your process for even just imagining what you want to be doing and aiming for in five years.
Well, I definitely, you know, I do have my daily goals, my weekly goals, but I definitely have things that I want to accomplish within five years. My goals fit on a post it note, literally on a post it note, and it's bullets, it's not paragraphs. And that post it note, that three x three post it note is right over my desk and I look at it every single day, and every time I'm asked to take on another task. I want to know is it going to help me
achieve those goals? Now, what I do is I look at those goals and I reverse engineer the process that it's going to take to get there. And if I have a goal to do this particular thing this year or within five years, I need to ask myself what are the milestones that I need to hit in order to achieve that goal? And then I take actionable steps to actually achieve those milestones. Block that time off on my calendar, and every time I hit a milestone, I
reward myself. That's actually how I wrote a book during a pandemic while morning the loss of my dad.
Oh my goodness. Wow. Can I ask for and I'm sorry to hear about your dad?
Thank you?
Can I ask for an example of one of those things that is written on your post it note?
Yes, within five years, I want to write two books, and I already finished the first one and I already have proposals for two more. Wow, so well on my way. When you look at it, you can't ignore it.
Yeah, that's very concrete. How do you decide on your goals? How do you decide on what goes on this little post it note?
Well, things get written and things get taken off. It's not just because it's written on the post note that I must do it. It's just this is what I think I really want as a goal, and after a while you might decide that it doesn't work for you. I have to see where my passions lie because I think finding your passionate purpose is very important and being able to do that and figure out what to do with
your passion is very important. So I know that I love to bring theory and practice and teach people how to actually do it. And what are the ways that I can do it. I can do it through writing, I can do it through speaking. So being able to do that goes on my goal list. There are other ways that I can do it that used to be on my goal list that aren't there anymore because I realized that's not right for me, that's not the right
platform for me. So it's figuring out what it is as it relates to your passion and what do I need to do there and if it doesn't feel right anymore, take it off, replace it with something else.
How do you break down one of your five year goals into like what you're working on today?
Yeah. So I really my calendar is so critical because I have things that I need to do, and then when do I need to do it. So I have a book coming out and I'm writing. I do a lot of writing of articles, and I literally had five articles that I needed to finish in a seven day period. That's insane, that's absolutely insane. But I started. I know that I'm a morning person, so I woke up on the weekend super early before anybody else in the house woke up. By the time they woke up, I finished
two of them. The first draft, I finished two of them because I learned to leverage my pea cognitive hours. The next day, I was a little slower and a little sloppy. It took me all day to finish one all day. And then the next day I knew that I was sort of losing steam because you need these breaks. So I started just putting in breaks. Do this section, then do this section, then do this section. I've already finished four out of five and I still have three days to go.
Wow, that's amazing. Oh my gosh. Now your goals, the ones that you've talked about are centered around I guess thought leadership and I'd love to know. I feel like in the last decade there's been this explosion of maybe self titled thought leaders, and i'd love to know what does being a thought leader mean to you? Like, how do you define it?
It's so interesting that you say that, because the first time I heard that freeze. Let me back up. I was forty three when I went back to school to get my doctorate, and I was at Columbia University Teachers College in New York, and I was walking the halls and I bumped into a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while, and we started talking, and we started talking about what we want to do after we get our degrees. And he said to me, well, what do you want to be a thought leader in?
And I said, I don't even think I know what a thought leader is. And he said to me, well, it's what you're uniquely qualified to do, what someone would approach you as being an expert in. And I said, well, I think I've done many things. I don't know that I'm a thought leader in any of those things. And that's when I realized that just doing something doesn't make you a thought leader. It's pushing what we know to be true and creating a paradigm shift in the way
we look at things, think about things, process things. That's what makes you a thought leader. Never really sure I became one, but I decided to shift what I was doing. Not just regurgitate what other people were doing, but how can I look at it in a new way. One of my mentors, doctor Marivolp, she said to me, there is nothing new under the sun. What's new is how you look at it. So I had to look at things in the new way. And going back to that. My other mentor, who you said at the top of
the program, doctor Burt Shapiro. He said to me, do something important, not just interesting, because if it's interesting, it's interesting to you. If it's important, it'll have a ripple effect and it'll have impact. You're going at something in a way and you're attacking it in a way that no one else has. This has the potential to be big because it's a brand new terrain. So make it important,
not just interesting. And I think doing that, going on that new terrain, looking at things in a different way, but also teaching people how to apply it. That is how you can be a thought leader. I don't know that I ever got there, but I'm still trying.
I love that distinction between important and interesting. I'm definitely I'm definitely going to remember that one. How do you work on your goal around thought leadership every day? Like there routines that you have, for example, that kind of keep you, keep you going and keep you honest to that goal.
Oh yes, I am very very strict with routines. It just if I don't have my routines every day, I sort of get flustered. So it really helps me not waste time. And I really have my days where I need to binge Netflix. We all do, But on my days that are my productive days, I actually make sure I have systems in place to keep them productive. So, for example, I am a morning person, so I told you I leverage that time to do deep cognitive work, which for me is writing, editing, budget work. I don't
do my passive tasks during my peak cognitive hours. I'm not paying bills in the morning, I'm not doing zoom or emails or phone calls in the morning. Those are saved for the afternoon when I'm a little slower, a little more sluggish, a little bit more tired. I don't want to waste a single minute of my p cognitive hours. The other thing that I did about a year and a half ago, which for me changed everything, I shut off all notifications on my phone. My phone is always
on silent. I really don't need to know if somebody likes or engages with my social media post. It's really not life altering. Nothing is critical or that time sensitive. I look at my social media during those passive hours the afternoon, in the evening, when I'm more tired. My phone, I told you, is always on silent. It only rings, and this is a feature on Apple. It only rings for people who are designated with the emergency override button, which in my case is my husband and my children.
That's it. Nobody else gets that override because it can't be life and death. Unless it's life and death, my phone shouldn't be ringing. And then you have to just be consistent. So if you want to be known as a thought leader, you really have to produce content because people need to hear and understand and process with what you're saying. So I made it part of my routine where every Monday night, I have a guest on my
show called Optimizing your success. People know it's going to be a high achiever that's coming on every Tuesday at eight fifteen in the morning, New York time. I have an article published in Forbes once a month. I have an article published in Psychology Today, and that's an addition to all of the other sporadic articles that I have in both academic journals and lay journals, because when those get published, that's less in my control. So being able
to have control over certain things certainly helps. And then I always surround myself with people who are better than I am, who I can learn from, and in my case that's not so hard because I work with the most tremendous, incredible people ever. I also regularly get to interview extreme high achievers, the astronauts and Nobel Prize winners, the Olympic champions, and trust me, every day I learned
something from them. I'm also surrounded by these management thingers, these authors, these coaches, these mentors, and I listen to them every day, every single day that I get a chance to. And I have a well, I don't have a to do list. I have time on my calendar blocked for things that I need to do, so it's not just listed on a to do list. I actually block the time on my calendar to do it. And that's anything from responding to an email to reviewing a
manuscript or the TASSA in the calendar. It's very, very methodical.
We will be back with Ruth shortly and we'll get to hear about how, despite sounding quite superhuman, she does actually procrastinate, and I ask her about what she does to overcome it. Now I feel looking for more tips to improve the way that you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I work
dot co. Now, procrastination, what do you do when you find yourself procrastinating?
So I do procrastinate, and we procrastinate on things that we don't enjoy doing. So I actually carry about time to do those things. And I said, this is the alloted time I carved it out on my calendar. You know that I live by my calendar, and it's only for a finite period of time and then I'm done and I don't go back to it. It doesn't have to be better it doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be done. The things I enjoy doing, well, probably I will work until it's as close to perfect
as I can get it. The things I don't enjoy doing, it's got to be good and it's got to be done, and learning that sometimes doing B plus A minus work for things you don't enjoy doing is just fine.
Now, if I want to look at the board on the wall that is beside you, I would see a huge patchwork of post it notes. Can you tell me about your system for organizing what you're doing.
Yes, So I'm an academic. I'm a faculty member, so I am often working on multiple articles at the same time. I think now I have about twelve or seventeen articles. Each one is in a different level of completion, So there's actually nine different columns of all the steps that I have to go through, everything from the idea to getting internal review board approval, data collection, data analysis, the writing, the submission, awaiting review revision, and then finally publishing. Every
article gets its own post it note. It has the name of the person and who the authors are, what journal I'm submitting it to, and some of them have a red star on it. The red star actually means that I'm the first author, which in academia is a very big deal. And as we move through the different stages, I take the post it note and I move it a column to the right, and there is a real visceral response when you physically move that post it note
a column to the right. I've tried the electronic versions of it. I didn't get that visceral response, which is what I needed so so badly. So I use that. And when you get to the final end where something's accepted and it's going to be published, that is you put that post it note, put on that last column to the right, and it's sort of you pump your hands up in the air because you did it. You got through all of the stages, you got to that last point.
What do you do to celebrate or reward yourself.
It's so interesting because this is really funny. So my doctoral dissertations, a qualitative dissertation, which is hundreds of pages long. You can't do that in one sitting. You write it over several months. But when you're working full time and raising a family and also writing a dissertation, you write things by section and every time I finish a section,
I rewarded myself. Now, I would be broke if I rewarded myself with something expensive or a new outfit or a new pair of shoes, and I would be three hundred pounds if I always reward myself with ice cream. So every time I finished a section, I would reward myself with a manicure. Didn't cost a lot of money, made me feel like a queen, made me feel pampered. I had the best looking hands of any graduate student.
And that's something that I still do now, is I look for these little ways to just pamper myself a little bit so that I can keep going, because sometimes you can get stuck. Sometimes you get the steam just you know, blown right out of you. And this really helps. I'm not going to stop now because if I write just three more paragraphs, I get to cavin manicure. So that's how you keep pushing through it.
Oh yeah, I can relate to that. I know. Yeah, I know, not with manicures actually, but with massages. Like whenever I go get a massage, like a remedial massage, you know, like a spar kind of place, I'm always like I should do this more often, and so when I was writing the book that I have now finished, it will come out in a few months. I set myself these kind of chunky goals and I'm like, I get to have a massage when I, you know, write the next ten thousand words or whatever it would be.
And and I'm not someone that rewards myself very often for doing things or hitting goals in work. But yeah, changing my process I found incredibly motivating us.
Yes, and ten thousand words, Yes, that's definitely that. You definitely had an assigned.
With massage worthy. Now, learning is a big part of what you do, and I would love to know how do you decide what books to read?
Hm, I am actually always reading three at the same time. Yeah, so, and I read them in different platforms. So leadership books my background's and adult learning and leadership. So I always want to read what the next big thing is, the next big idea. The leadership books I want in print because I highlight, I write in the margins, I actually take notes on each chapter. So those are the leadership books and I read those. I have a long commute
to work, so I'm also reading on audible. I listen to books and that's a lot of autobiographies and things that I don't really need to take notes on. It's big ideas but don't always have application. And then on my kindle is stuff for pure pleasure. What I use just to quiet my mind. There's no note taking, there's no thinking. It's just to transport myself to this alternate reality so that I can quiet my mind. And that's
on my kindle. So I'm always reading three at the same time, print, Audible, and Kindle.
So it sounds like the print book is the book where I guess the learning or the application of what you're reading is greatest for your work?
What for sure?
Yeah, what's your process for capturing what you learn from a book?
So I actually, as I say, I take a lot of notes, I highlight. I literally have papers for each chapter and I'm writing notes. And then what I do, because I write for Forbes and other such periodicals, I will actually use some of what I have learned from that if I like it, and use it in some of the articles that I write. I write a lot about success and leadership development and start to live what
is written. Now very often I will reach out to the authors because I want to know what is this based on is this based on your idea in the shower or was this some research that was done. So I will actually reach out to the authors and really talk to them about it, about how did this come about, how did you get this idea, how did you figure this out? How did you test it? So I do have those conversations because I actually learn as much as I read, and I read seventy to one hundred books
a year. As much as I read, I still learn best by talking. I need to talk and listen, talk and listen, talk and listen. So having that conversation with the author is fascinating. Sally, I don't have the time or the bandwidth for book clubs, but I find that talking with the authors and listening to the authors for me is the best learning opportunity.
Now, you obviously talked to you a range of amazing, highly successful, accomplished people through what you do, and you know we've covered a lot of your different strategies. I'd love to know what are some of the more unique, quirky novel strategies that you've picked up over your time speaking to some of these amazing people.
So something that really resonated with me was taught to me by doctor Peggy Whitson, who was the She's an astronaut, former chief astronaut for NASA and spent more decent space than any American astronaut of any gender. And she was also the commander of the International Space Station. And we were talking about mundane tasks, and she said to me,
with mundane tasks, just make it a competition. Whatever time you have allotted for it, see if you can beat that time, whatever it is, see if you can beat it. Because now all of a sudden, it's challenge. It's not something you have to do. It becomes a challenge. And I've been trying that and I have to tell you it makes a difference. It really really makes a difference.
And then from Apollo anton Ono, who is the most decorated Winter Olympian, he taught me that you need to learn things not just from your sport, but from other industries as well, which I've known, but hearing how a top olympian does it, I thought was fascinating. He read every book he could get in his hands on improving his performance, improving his sleep, improving his flow state, improving his nutrition. He would surround himself and talk to people
who would actually help him with all of that. So I think there's something that we can learn from all of these people. The other thing that I really learned from them is that they fear not trying more than they fear failing. And that, to me was the biggest shift in my thinking because very often you hear people who are free to fail, and you hear people who are a free to succeed, But how often do we hear of people who fear not trying? And that is
what I wanted to start doing. I wanted to fear not trying more than I feared failing.
Ruth, what is the best way for people who've listened to this conversation and want to consume more of what you are putting out into the world.
Well, my book, The Success Factor is out now. It is out everywhere wherever you love buying books. If you want to know where you can find it anywhere in the world, just go to Ruthgotian dot com, slash book and social media is just my name, Ruth Gotian.
I just love the advice that doctor Shapiro gave to Ruth to do something important, not just interesting, and as someone who tries to be the thought leader myself is really resonated with me almost just criteria about whether an idea or a project is worth pursuing, or even at a micro level, whether an article of blog post is
worth writing. Now, if you are not a subscriber or follower of How I Work, now might be the time to hit the followers subscribe button, because next week I'm very excited to have Zoe Chance on the show, who we'll be talking about how to use influence as a superpower, and she gave me some very very practical and novel ways to be more influential and persuasive in how I communicate. And I'm sure you will love my chat with Zoe. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan, and thank you to Martin Nimba, who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.