Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is part of the best of series, where we highlight some of the most exciting and enthralling and enlightening episodes from the archives of the Psychology Podcast. Enjoy, Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome David Epstein to the show. David is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and he also wrote the bestseller of the
Sports Gene. Both of these books have been translated into more than twenty languages. His TED talks on performance science have been viewed more than eleven million times. David has a master's degree in environmental science and journalism and has worked as an investigative reporter for Pro Publica and As. He's also a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. In this episode, I talked to David about greatness. This is a topic
of mutual interest of ours. You know, if there's one thing we know for shore about greatness that there's no linear path to it. David and I discussed the complex relationship of talent and hard work in specific domeans. Although there is no formula for greatness. We can all agree that persistent effort and fierce determination are necessary ingredients, but so is talent. In this episode, we have a nuanced discussion of that dance between nature and nurture on the
path of talent. It's a very delicate dance. We also touch on the topics of self actualization, creativity, fulfillment, and moral greatness. This was a really rich and great chat with a good friend and someone who I've talked to personally about this topic for a long time, and it's great to get a lot of this on the record on the podcast as we explore this fascinating topic, which I know you will find fascinating as well. So without
further ado, I bring you David Epstein. Man. It's so good to see you, and we have so much to catch up on, obviously as at a friend level, which we won't do today, but hopefully we can do that
some other time. But we have so much in common in terms of our interest in the determinants of greatness is something that I've been a topic I've been obsessed with my whole life, and you as well, probably so, and you've read a lot about it, and there's there's multiple ways to inward in this topic, let's start off with the great nature nurtured debate. Let's start off there kind of understanding greatness from a developmental perspective, biologically, genetically, culturally,
how do these things all interact? And you know, I suppose the answer to that in one big way is it depends on the field, right, I mean, we can't come up with a general theory or do you think we can come up with a general theory that applies to all different demeans?
You know, in fact, not only do I not think we can come up with a general theory that applies to all domains, I don't think we can even really come up with a general theory, you know, within a single domain across people, Like I think there are definitely principles though so maybe that's the wrong thing to say, because we know we're never explaining all of anything that were explaining, right, But but I think human development is so incredibly complex, like I sort of think of it.
This might be a bad analogy. You can tell me, though. I hope this is Scott like, because we're friends and like I admire your work and brain, I think I'm unfortunately like feeling that I'm like free to be a little more informal and digress with you, so you should tell me if that's not. Of course, of course, so I was using this analogy where I was talking to
someone about nutritional epidemiology. You know, all this research on how what you eat impacts all these different things in your life, and we know this is important and you should eat real food and everything like that, but the science of nutritional epidemiology is like a complete mess, and it turns out, you know, it's like eggs cause cancer
one day, eggs prevent cancer the next day. There's actually one study that I refer to, I don't care remember what the official name is, but as the everything in your fridge Causes and Prevents cancer study, where it's like plotting all the studies of different foods showing that they've all been found to cause and prevent cancer in various studies, except for bacon, which unfortunately was only on the causing
cancer side. But you know, mental health is important too, But it's like, I think one of the reasons is people underestimated the complexity when you're studying nutrition, Like people eat different foods for all sorts of reasons that have to do with their culture, with other behaviors that they have. There are all sorts of other things they do that impact their health. Right, And so basically that whole body of work, not all of it, but a lot of it has to be thrown out because I think the
complexity was underestimated. And I would say that's even less complex than human development in general, which has just all these factors going into it. And I think we often underestimate all the factors that go in, so we underestimate that complexity. So yeah, I think it's I think it's hard to have a general rule, even for a given domain. And yet I still think we can take out sort of principles and useful frames that are there are sort
of generals thinking. I mean something you did, like you wrote a post, So man, interrupt me if I'm like going too much on tangents. I know myself, so I don't get upset when people interrupt me because I know how digressive my like, my books are digressed with that's me organizing my brain. Okay, So so interrupt me when needed.
I'll feel free to interrupt you.
Okay, good, Remember you wrote I think it was a poster or an article where when Andres Ericson's Peak came out, which he was he was writing about, you know, the so called kind of father of the ten thousand hour rule, even though he did not like that Moniker. And he wrote the book because he wanted to sort of clarify so much had been written about his work that he wanted to kind of clarify what he thought about his own work and the so called ten thousand hour rule.
And there was a part in the book where he has sort of an aside and he says, like, by the way, this framework that I propose applies best really in places where we know the tenets of success and someone can tell you what they are and watch you while you're practicing and then tell you how to do it right. And I think you wrote and he said, so, you know, like and then he listed places where he didn't think it applied as much, and it was like
most of the places where most of us work. And I think you wrote a post saying something like that's that's not just a small offhand re mark he made. That's like, for example, the entire domain of creativity that he's he's setting aside there.
And so it was the big, the big clash between me and him and in our lifetimes because he's but he rest in peace.
I had an incredibly wonderful and generative relationship with him, largely based on disagreements, and I and I miss him, even though we were constantly disagreeing.
Too, and he welcomed them. He welcomed them absolutely.
But there's a case where he put forward a strong argument that I think was important to have a strong argument so that we could test it. And then even he at a certain point started saying, but it's different in different domains, And so even though we don't know everything that works, I think we can learn some things, you know, that are that are important even if we don't have a perfect general model.
Yeah. And in that article that you're referencing, called that creativity is more than ten thousand hours of deliberate practice, I just talked about all the sort of complexities. Things that may look like nature actually nurture, some things that look like nurture or actually nature. And you start adding up all these complexities and it's sort of like, well, what do we know? You know, what can we say? Because I edited an academic volume called The Complexity of
Greatness Beyond Talent and practice. I believe it was the subtitle and had experts way in, but I was hoping to write a concluding chapter summarizing some main principles. I never was able to do that because there really weren't. There really weren't. And I'm like, well, then what is the point of scientifically studying this if we can't say,
you know, have more general principles. There are plenty of people out there, by the way, and I won't start mentioning names, but there are plenty of people out there that are perfectly confident that they know the general principles. They'll write books, you know, and they'll have blog, very popular blogs with the hundreds and thousands of people where they're they're like, let me tell you the secret of greatness, you know. And it's like, well, would you mind telling
the scientists because we even figured it out. I'm glad you haven't figured out. I'm glad you have the secret figured out. If there was a secret or a blueprint, don't you think like everyone would become geniuses all of a sudden, you know. That's it's not like people read those books and become geniuses, right, It's not Has anyone ever become a genius because they read a book that said this is the secret to genius.
Well, I mean, like any questions, does it make them improve in anything, right, as opposed to making them become a genius? Right cause like if I read about you know, Picasso's or something like literally, I just got a new book about like all these like quirky habits that like a lot of great writers have called odd typewriters, you know. And it's not because like I think, if I write in crayons like James Joyce did that, I'm going to
become James Joyce. But sometimes there's still stuff that you can pick out that's useful or just interesting, and like for you your responsible thinker, So of course you're not going to be you know, because you see that you lean into the complexity, right, so you're not going to be saying that having an easy time summarizing some of this work. At the same time, I'm pretty confident that you could tell a whole lot of people a few
things that would likely improve their creativity a bit. And so even if that's not a general model or a quick fix, I'm very confident you could do that for a lot of people that there are things that we know that you could tell people that would likely make many of them, you know, more creative. But to get to your point about sort of the gurus that are
very popular. That always reminds me of Phil Tetlock's work, you know on forecasters, where there was basically an inverse relationship between fame and accuracy over the like twenty years of forecasting research. In part, I think because the forecasters, who are not very like open minded, not very flexible minded,
could speak very authoritatively all the time. So it's like the people on TV making prognostications are like scientifically proven to be the worst forecasters in the world, but they sound so authoritative, right, And so when you lean into the complexity, it can be harder, I think, to sound super authoritative all the time, you know what I mean.
Not to be necessarily more creative, but to I mean, I want to focus. I really do want to focus on greatness. See. I think that's where I think there's things that maybe different, you know, like you to be a little bit better, to be a little more creative, but the greatness is such a fascinating thing on its own. It's a beast on its own right, And I think like when it comes to the nature of nurture to be in greatness. I think the research does suggest that
talent matters a lot. And then the question is what is talent? Well, talent is not something that's fully formed or fully you're not born with all the skills that can only talent. But I do think there are certain potentialities that are influenced by genes. Then you can agree or disagree with this. That aid in rapid knowledge acquisition within a specific domain. And there are people that from a very young age to clearly show once they make
contact with that. I mean actually sometimes it may take much later in life to make contact with that. You see that huge rate of growth that is undeniable. So I want to start there and see what your thoughts are on that.
I think that's well said, you know, and of course we both know, like the work for example of Ellen Winner, right, who looks at of course prodigies basically and they will have you know, And she's she's studied some who have a great ability to progress in a domain very quickly, much more so than their peers, but don't have what she calls the rage to master right, that like drive to keep doing the thing and others that have a rage to master but don't have that ability to progress
faster than their peers. And so I think she's She's documents some interesting cases of both of those separately, and when you see like the really sort of stunning prodigy,
it's when those things come together at the same time. Basically, I think we can be a little narrow minded about some of that because I think they're like the more and more I've learned about human development, the zig zagger and mess here, I think it is, and so even stuff just to take like a sports perspective, right, there's this very well known phenomenon where coaches of young people, you know, kids are very frequently mistaking biological maturation for talent,
right Like some kids are maybe there are a few, maybe there's some months older, or maybe they've just biologically matured faster, and a coach sees them as better and says they are more talented, they have more potential, but really they're just seeing someone who's further along their developmental trajectory.
And so I think those things are real, but I also think we need to you know, I think I think talent is very real, but I also think we need to work hard to keep our talent funnel wide so that we're not we're working hard not to be de selecting people in a way that that doesn't even
allow them to kind of develop, you know, more slowly. Basically, they called this in there was this like brilliant assigned as Chelsea Warr who was like working with me in Australia when they had Olympics in the UK and the Olympics, and she would refer to this as you need the pipelines for slow bakers and fast risers, you know, the
people who developed really quickly. But then they realized that many of their top performers were these slow bakers who came, you know, in a much more kind of gradual development process, and that they could have a competitive advantage by not kind of pushing those people out essentially just like allowing them to hang on.
That's a fascinating topic to double quick on there for
a second, because I love that distinction. You can clearly see there they're like, uh, was it flashed in the pan sort of people they sort of just come out of the gate and you can just see greatness or see the great potential for greatness that they rarely do become great, and I can give examples, like I love watching the YouTube videos of like some of my favorite comedians in their first David Letterman appearance, you know, and they're essentially fully the fully formed adult that we all
know now. It's recognizable even when they're like in nineteen or twenty, like Jim Carrey his first appearance, I'm like, there, no, Jim Carrey was Jim Carrey, you know from a very you know, like that set is obvious. When I even watched I watched Dioyoma's performance at age two for JFK. It's on YouTube. I I was so excited to realize that was archived and I was like, wow, that's your nimal So that's interesting. So I think there is that, but I don't think we need to generalize that to everyone.
I do think there are those who can apply principles of expertise and with much more modest talents over the long run who eventually appeared us to be great, and maybe even we put the label on them talent, but that really doesn't explain them as much as the harder work that they put in. Not the people that I just mentioned didn't work extremely hard as well, but they were more flash in the pan, you know what I'm saying.
I mean, you know, in some of those mentioning Yoyoma, we actually did. He cycled through he like quit two instruments early in life, while he went through his so called sampling period much faster than most musicians do. But
he still had it. But I think there's a reason why a lot a lot of times those like most astounding prodigies show up in a very small number of domains like classical music and chess, where they're doing things that are really based on pattern repetition, and that that kind of that speed of growth is not as realistic
in other domains that are sort of more open ended. Basically, you know what what Robin Hogarth calls the wicked learning environments where it's not just static rules and repetitive patterns and you know, quick and accurate feedback and all that stuff.
Well, I mentioned comedy, which is pretty open you know.
Would I would say that like Jim Carrey's unique brand of comedy emanated from his being early you know, I also looked at like Robin Williams, you know, and his first appearance in Letterman, it was Robin Williams, like that's fascinating to me, you know that, Like, as someone who studies self acts, who studies self actualization, I believe so much of self actualization is like getting in touch with who you really truly are as much as you can in your life, as opposed to all the ways society
tries to move us in this direction, in that direction, and all the ways in which we have self doubts, and all the ways and we want to conform and we don't want to stand out. But you know, there are these amazing examples of people that got really deeply in touch with the pattern recognition that was unique with them within them at a very very early aid.
Just sort of their self knowledge. Yeah, I mean obviously once the comedians on Letterman, they're like, we're basically talking about like an Olympic gold medalist already, right, like looking at them as at yeah, that level of performance. But I can definitely believe that a way to accelerate that
is to know a lot about yourself. Right. I actually think comedy in some ways too, can be a little bit of a more kind learning environment in the sense that my sense and tell me if I'm wrong, is that a lot of the really good comedians spend a lot of time like tossing out material to small audiences and then just and then like waiting. They're like scientists of their material. They like throw something out at smaller club, you know, and they practice it and get it back,
that's for sure. Yeah, and so right, so they're i think trying to make take this more sort of wicked learning environment and turned it into something sort of more sports like, where like you take a shot and you look like where did it go? And then you adjust and adjust and adjust. As open ended as comedy is, I still think it's it's rare to be able to get that quick like feedback that quick and accurate in
the things that that most people do. I think domains that allow that, you know, sometimes people can progress a lot faster.
It's a great point. And I look at my own sort of draw to social media, and I'm trying to be honest with myself why I really am drawn? Why am I on Instagram so much? I'm on Twitter? You know, like I could get so much more work done perhaps in that intervening period if I wasn't on social media and you know, writing a book, you know, if I'm working on a year long project or two year long
project with no immediate feedback. There's something really soul sucking about that, and wolle wasting and social media in a way like gets my craving for just some sort of immediate feedback in some way, even if it's just taking an idea for my book and putting it on Twitter and see how many likes it gets. It makes me feel like I'm engaging in the world without having to wait two years before engaging in the world.
That's interesting. That gives me a bunch of thoughts, one of which is, so I took like Twitter off my phone months ago, and so I haven't been on very much cause like, for whatever reason, the barrier of having to go to the URL has been like a very high one for me. It just doesn't happen much and
whenever I'm off for that time. But whenever I'm off, I used to always go like on detox for like a few months at a time, and it would feel like such a smaller part of my life when I went back, a smaller part of the world when you haven't been it for a while. But but I would say for you, when I haven't, I've been on there as much lately, so I haven't been seeing what you're doing, but I thought you were like a really good force
on Twitter. Like you, I think you're a very you know, it seemed to me like pro social optimistic, you know, person who feels deeply and empathizes and yet do hard work to sometimes share ideas that people may not like, you know, sometimes about talent online and to be fair about them and to be civil about them. And so I think, you know, you raise the like sort of the goodness quotion of that space that you're in on Twitter, and so I think it's you know, you're you're being
productive on Twitter for other people. Also in terms of the feedback to you, like that did you need that feedback when you're away writing a book for two years? I'm like the total opposite of that. Like when I'm when I'm like, great, I have an excuse to go off all this other stuff and just like be in my head in the book, I'm like, this is the best. Why do I? And then I like go back when they, you know, try to promote the book and then and then I get sort of stuck into the cycle of
being there. But when I'm off, I yeah, I guess I feel differently in that.
Well, I should say, to be fair to myself, when I get really towards the finishing line, when I'm in the last six months or so, I do like to go in a cave. That is true, That is true, But a two year that's daunting. That's daunting. In a cave. I like to really have a good spurt at the end of complete silence. That much I love so I'm I'm like a quarter there with you. So in terms of general principles, I want to circle back to the idea of the ten thousand hour rule. Who called it
the ten thousand hour rule? Malcolm godwill do you ever say that?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, okay.
So Andrews Erickson, as much as he's tried to, you know, disavowt himself from the ten thousand hour rule thing, he wasn't completely innocent in really making the claim that a certain amount of hard work or that hard work into sort of the way he describes it, deliberate practice is linear with progress, Yeah, is how it framed it. He really does believe that, or did believe that, And that's the thing that I don't think can be defended fully.
Yeah, I agree I think, to be honest with you, that you know, I know sort of not that he and Gladwell were in touch, but but he pushed back against Gladwell's characterization of the ten thousand hour rule. But what I think a lot of people missed is that my feeling was that Andres is more extreme, not less extreme than Gladwell. I think that's right, and I think people right sort of intuitively felt they pushed back because like, oh,
Gladwell is saying in this extreme way. I'm like, no, No, Andres just thinks he's not saying extreme enough.
And that's right, that's right.
And Anders. You know, if you go deep into that ten thousand hours again, he wouldn't call it that deliberate practice framework literature, whatever you want to call it, there's underlying it is always this so called monotonic benefits assumption, which is that two people get the exact same two people the same level get the same amount of improvement from the same unit practice. And that just doesn't hold up anywhere in skill building literature, like literally anywhere.
It doesn't hold up. I mean I would literally send him prodigy are articles about prodigies? And he said, no, that we don't have all the I bet if we got their diaries we would find it's all about deliberate practice. And I'm like, I'm trying. I said, like the most extreme examples that are like obviously not they're not deliberately practicing, you know, they're making leaps that are far beyond are what are practiced.
And there are studies that take people that are at the same level as something, put them on tightly controlled training for something in a lab and they progress at different rates, you know. So that was my when I would share with him some of that work, he would say, but these aren't elite performers in a lot of cases because you know, these lab like large lab studies aren't going on with like there are only so many elite
performers anyway. And my my feeling for that was, well, if you're posing a comprehensive framework skill development, if you can't account for s where one like if you can only account for someone who's already standing atop the Olympic medal stand and look backward, then you don't have a development model because you can't you can't even account for
the starting. At the same time, I do think that he did really important work in emphasizing that type of practice matters, probably in convincing, you know, in compelling other people to start researching practice in important ways, and also in like making strong arguments in some cases that give people like you and I something to hold so that we can say, well, let's test this against the world,
you know, let's let's see how this holds up. Sometimes I'm frustrated by work and skill development because I can't even figure out exactly what they're saying, and so it's hard to use it as a way to learn. And so I appreciated that he made these strong arguments and then engaged with you. You wanted to engage with him, Yeah, So I appreciated that that about him.
You know, he engaged, but he never changes his mind even a little bit.
That's right. You don't think that. You don't think the loophole that we talked about that he put in his book was a bit of a mind change, a little bit of a mind change.
Ooh, interesting, admitting that different kinds of fields may be more applicable to the principles in his book than others. Maybe maybe you're right, maybe that was a that took a sort of a career of engaging with scholars and others to add that caveat. It was a one paragraph caveat.
It's one character, but it's like a huge deal.
Yeah. Yeah, it might even have been a footnote. I had this, I have to. I remember I wrote something cheeky in my review for Scientific America, was like in this throwaway footnote or whatever. Well, it's tricky because I send him that scientif American article. I had a whole correspond with him, and he said, you know what creativity can be, we applied by my deliberate practice framework as well. I'm going to write an article about that someday. So
that's what he said, okay to me. So that's it's interesting. I do think you're right, and I thank you for pointing out that he I mean, he initiated the whole expert performance approach in psychology, pioneered a whole field of investigation. I mean that's no small thing, huge, huge props right to that.
And appreciation.
Yeah, oh my gosh. I mean there's a Cambridge Handbook of expert performance when lots of scientists are studying this topic. I guess what it's difficult about pop writers who want to make a lot of money and write the next big book on how to be great. I think the problem for them You'll hear all the time, the thing they'll say is a, well, look, there's nothing we can do about the genes. I'm just focused on what we can do to help people change.
Yeah.
Okay, so you hear that. All that's like, there get out of jail card. But what if I was like, you know what, that doesn't really get you out of jail. I think a really truly honest book on the topic as I try, I try to do an unngifted If we're going to be really honest, we have to admit that that maybe there are some things in our lives that we will never have, and there are some things that we can work on and focus on that that are right for that are right for us, not that
there's general things that we can all work on. I'm not sure if I'm articulating my point well at all, but I sort of feel like this is why I'm interested in self actualization versus everyone can be great and everything. Yeah, I really do believe that that self actorisation is where it's at in this regard. Okay, what do you think of what I just said, is it controversial.
It's it's totally uncontroversial among some people and very controversial among others. You know, there are these like it depends what set you're talking to, but the yeah, it's true.
I think there are sort of two things there. You mentioned like the integrity of pop writers and actually think a lot of there's quite a number of scientists that play that same card that's like, well, why would I study g Nobody should say genetics because there's nothing you can do about them, which I think is a serious misunderstanding, because one of the reasons you study genes is so that you can understand what is environmental influence and how
to work with it. The reason to so like this huge amount of research is confounded because people have said, I'm not interested in genes, so I want to study them, like and that's why you're not sure what you're actually seeing in your study. So one reason again is you study gene so that you understand what environmental interventions help.
I think what you said about self actualization to turn a little bit is really important whether we're thinking about that from you know, I think one thing that came out for my first book was about genetics was The one reason that ten thousand hours Thinking may have some may backfire in some ways is because you actually don't want to be randomly selected into the thing you start practicing in. You want to learn some stuff about yourself and match into something that's a good fit for you
in a lot of ways. And I think that requires these sort of habits of mind, of like self regulatory learning of everything you try, becoming a scientist of yourself, saying you know, what am I trying to do here? And why who do I need to help me? Like what fit my expectations? What did I learn about my strengths and weaknesses and the things that I enjoy and
the things that I hate? And so to me, that was sort of the I think there were there were positive aspects of of the ten thousand hours Thinking, but I think one negative aspect was this was it implicitly downplays the need for self knowledge and sort of makes it seem like you should just like pick something as
early as possible and stick with it. And of course that is like picking something to stick with at the point of your life when you have like the least self knowledge is actually not the way to go.
I think sticking with something when you have the least self knowledge, can you can you double click on that a little bit more for me?
Yeah, I mean think of like you know, of course, like the psychology find the end of history illusion, you know that catchy name that people will always say if you ask something, have you changed a lot based on your experiences in the past? Say oh, yeah, of course you know. Well are you going to change a lot in the future? No, Like now, I'm pretty much now,
I'm pretty much know who I am. And so people whether it's like values, how they want to spend their time, you know, their favorite music, like whatever, their personality, they
underestimate future personality change. It does slow down over life, but so we're always like works in progress, constantly claiming to be finished basically, And the fastest time of personality change I think is about eighteen to like your late twenties, which is I think the kind of exactly when we're usually telling people like, now's the time to figure it out.
And I think that's you're asking, like someone to choose a long term future for a person that doesn't exist yet, in a world that they can't possibly guess at yet. And so I think a less high probability for good outcome kind of proposition than if you say, like, do dive into something and treat it as an experiment, like what you don't have to just like pinball around or not know what to do, Like pick something and dive into it, but take to it as what am I
going to learn about myself from this? And let that inform your next pivot? Don't your ten year plan Like, fine, have it if you want. But if that means you're not going to pivot based on things you're learning about yourself in that period, then I think you're not going to to be you know, working toward optimizing your so called match quality that's fit between who you are and what you do.
That's a great point and the idea of not giving up too soon. I think you do find a lot of examples throughout the history of greatness of people who did end up becoming great, but they were they weren't the best when they started, yeah, out of all their peers. You know. Again, it's hard to just disentangle sometimes talent and that rate of development, the advantage they had versus the tenacity they had. But I will say that is
quite a fierce interaction when you have. You know, I think case of Michael Jordan, for instance, made that you look at the interaction between the talent and the ferociousness of wanting to learn. That interplay is is so ferocious in a way where those people they refuse to quit, they refuse to give up. There's almost a ferociousness to not give up.
People often cite him as saying though too right, like, is that did that make him the world's best baseball player? No, it's like he still had to fit where he fits.
You know, I don't think that said. I'm always hesitant to trot that out though, because in my opinion, although he was a bad minor league baseball player, he was a much much better baseball player than most people dropped into the minor leagues would have been in my opinion, like most people dropped into the minor leagues after not having played for a long time would probably hit zero. So like, he didn't have a good batting average, but
he didn't hit zero. But you know, I think it's it was important for him also to find a spot where he fits, even with that that ferociousness of that tenacious.
Yeah, and of course you don't know what it would have been like, if all that time spent playing basketball he honed his craft of baseball. Yeah, yeah, how good you'd be. You know, I'm just thinking, like, you know Abraham Maslow, who raised about self actuation. I mean, he talks a lot about fit finding. Self actuation is finding the thing that is the best fit for you in the whole world. He's very dramatic, and the way that
he talks about this is actually cool. I wish, I wish I could look up real quick, but I don't think I'll be able to warn the spot I send to you later. But it's like, yeah, it's pretty dramatic that he puts it, But I'm like, no, that's kind of cool. I kind of I kind of dig it and viewing life in that way I think puts a lot of pressure, takes a lot of pressure off of us.
He also has this writing he ponders, He said, what what does the person do who has aspired to greatness their whole lives and and then realizes that they really don't have what it takes to be great? He asked this question once, and I think he's a little and maybe it was an unpublished essay I read of his about this and I and now I found that very interesting as well. What do you do when you face
the reality of a situation? Do you do you feel like your life has failed because you didn't become great? I mean, is greatness all there is to life? What is what is a life worth living? A lot of people are great or miserable right about their lives as well. It's all these kinds of questions. I've been pondering them my whole life. I don't I don't have the answers.
And my friend, this goes way beyond I mean, people have been pondering those questions for millennia in different forms and haven't come up with all the answers, right, Like, these are questions you can find like pretty readily in like the Greeks, and.
Every generation recreates these.
Yeah, so if you could answer those ones, you wouldn't have to have any more podcast episodes like ever again you nor anyone else. And when I think like achievements of mine professionally that have been the most sort of objectively successful certainly haven't coincided necessarily with the times I've felt most fulfilled in my life. And I have to say that has been a little bit of of a
rude awakening in the past for me. And you know, so sometimes now occasionally now, when I look at someone who has just achieved something great, you feel good for them. But sometimes I also wonder if I should feel a little bad for them, because I think in some of those cases that people are that's like the moment when they are understanding that, oh, this this doesn't do what I what I thought it was gonna do. You know, it doesn't fill the hole that I thought it was
gonna fill. Whatever, And does that mean that they then say, well, well, I guess I just got to go even bigger, or is it. Oh, maybe I have to kind of diversify how I think about this and my identity, and so I think that's a challenge too. But I'm curious. I want to ask you a question cause you mentioned that you feel that that Maslow is saying that very dramatic of find like the best fit for yourself in the entire world takes pressure off of us. And I could
see that from either way. So I'm curious to hear you dissect that a little bit.
You're right, You're right, You're right. One could definitely see that in a way of like, oh, well, a lot of things in the world, what do I do?
It's like a constant fomo, right, Like that's like he's saying, like you got to go through all of Instagram and find like the house.
No, no, no, In a way, it's not fomo, it's the opposite. I think that's why it takes the pressure off us to recognize there's really only one thing in the world that's the best fit for us. Is the point, you know, and Okay, maybe we'll never find it. Yeah, maybe that puts on a lot of pressure on us to find it. Okay, So yeah, that puts a lot of pressure and to
find that one thing. But it also makes us the idea of fit being the criteria as opposed to greatness being the criteria, I think is what takes the pressure off of us. Maybe that was the point I'm making because we put oh my gosh, like people who are high achievers are constantly comparing themselves upward. Everyone's comparing themselves upward. You think, you know the person you're hugely, hugely jealous of,
and everyone can think of someone that that person. I guarantee you that person is constantly on Instagram looking at someone else hugely jealous of that person of a someone else upward. Everyone looks upward, and that game is not fulfilling, that game is well, that game never never will fulfill one soul. But the idea of like, wow, I'm doing the thing in my life that I feel like I
am a pretty damn good fit for that. That seems like a successful life to me, you know, Like I feel like, you know, discovering and being able to have the time and and and and finagle my life in a certain way where I can focus just on those things or focus on those things deeply. I'm like, that's a life will lived. Doesn't have to be greatness doesn't have to be the criteria for a life will lived.
Or you know, I think we could, you know, maybe we need other definitions of greatness, like what is what does a life greatly live for? That for someone you know, which always sort of makes me think of like a lot of people know that their friends and their family are their priority, but like they don't they don't schedule those things like they do the things that advance them
in work, even if they're as are more important. So maybe we need to think about our sort of end invariables of greatness a little differently, and I think also I guess why I why I sort of jump to like, whoa, that sounds like a lot of pressure is where as you put it something it's a pretty damn good fit, which I think is is better than the best in the world, because there is of course, like this, you know, research on maximizers and satisficers, whereas like the people who
like all you have to like really are hung up on always that there might be something better, can have tons of opportunities, tons of achievement and be like quite miserable because there is always something. So you have to find like a level for yourself a little bit in some ways.
Absolutely, so I'm glad that I did it. I came up with a satisficing definition of it. Yeah, sorry, go on.
I just wanted to mention something when we were talking about creativity early, because like you that the satisficing dovetails a little with something where like some of your writing influenced me. You know, I know we're not supposed to be talking about creativity, but I think that's you know.
Oh right, creative creative creative greatness is a form of greatness in my.
View, So like One of the things that made an impression on me in whir to create was that you got to have a lot of ideas, Like you got to throw a lot of stuff out there, and some of it's going to be crap. And so I after writing a first book and it becoming like thinking it was like just my own oddball interests, and then it sort of taking on a life of its own, and I got a little bit of paralysis of like everything has to be that level or better, you know, and
it made it hard for me to do anything. So I like left that whole field and wrote about other stuff, which was fine, and then when I left like a next job, I didn't I wasn't putting out enough ideas because I had the sort of like perfectionism, not perfectionism, but you know, like things had to be like more finished. And so I sort of thought back to that that the good creators put out lots of ideas, like they
just generate more. They generate more bad ideas and good ideas, and so that was like partly what prompted me to start a newsletter, to be like I need a place where I can feel like I can just put some
ideas out there. Without them having to be too perfect, like where I can think out loud, where I can just like generate, And I found that tremendously, you know, liberating from this sort of paralysis I was having, uh and and you know allowed me to to generate a lot more ideas that that led into other interesting places. So sort of combination I feel like of being a little bit influenced by something you wrote in that work and trying to get off the maximizer train a little bit.
That's good. That's good. The equal ods rule, although I think Dan Simonson has recently called it something renamed it to the equal ods something else not rule. But anyway, yeah, no, that's exactly right. And uh and even in those models, talent matters. But but of course that's that's there's there's certain like basic restriction of range, uh, criteria for things
that are that are obviously true. Like Erickson, he's he the only thing he's ever admitted to, he says, well, in the case of sports or a case of basketball height, he'll admit that, which.
Is just because just because it's easily measurable with your eyeball, that's why.
Yeah. Yeah, but come on, everything has their own thing like I don't want to start coming up with ideas. I don't want to be able list. I don't want to be But there are all sorts of domains and things where there are some like basic ingredients to be in that you know sort of situation.
I mean, basketball is a really good analogy to explain like restriction of range a little by the way, so like in it is actually did this for my first book. If you look at height among the American men and points scored in the NBA, there's like a very high positive correlation, as you might imagine. But if you do a study of only NBA players, you restrict your range to only NBA players, then the correlation becomes negative because
guards score more points. And so if you didn't know what you were looking at, you could do that study and tell parents to have shorter children for them to score more points in the NBA, right, because you don't
realize the impact. And I would say, like the overwhelming majority of expertise literature suffers from this restriction of range problem where you've selected people who are you know, have already been before that highly highly highly pre selected for the activity they're doing, and so you've you've removed a lot of the variation in in things that got them where they are, so you're not going to learn anything about it from your from your study.
Basically, very important to recognize that. I've seen that firsthand in like a carnegiemail. In the computer science program, they weed out people quickly that first year. M like that first year they are like that, look, we're going to make you jump in the deep end and see who can swim and who can't. You also see that in the Beast Barracks or of the uh you know a west point west point, yeah, west Point, various things that. Yeah, absolutely,
they weed you out quickly. And then if you only do the study and those who made it and look at correlations, you're missing out on lots of potential variables that were important there. Yeah. So I think the restriction arrange idea is a really important one. But at the same time same time, the unngifted in me is saying we shouldn't count people out too soon. In a in it K through twelve, I don't think we're in any
business before. There are a lot of things were non business before the age of eighteen, you know, like know what was smoking? Right? Smoking is not allowed drinking. I also feel like we should also ban teachers from limiting student potential. Can we add that to the list of things that should be illegal? I mean below the age of eighteen. Do you know what I'm saying? Though?
Yeah, I mean I think I'm a very strong believer that, like the most of the most of the high performers, never mind, most people are going to follow more sort of zig zaggy trajectory, especially the way that the work
world is now today, like it's in range. I wrote a little bit about the so called the Dark Horse Project at Harvard, which was like looking at I love that how people found fulfilling work, Like some of them were, you know, very financially successful in everything, but they were really looking for fulfillment and that the reason wasn't called the Dark Course project initially, but they like brought people in for informational interviews, and people would say, like, not everyone.
There were some people who had followed a linear you know, the fast riser track, but the majority had said like, well, I tried this one thing didn't really fit me, so then I went this other way and learned I was good at this other thing, then this, you know, that way, and I liked part of that, but not all of it.
So that and they like zigzag and use each stop as a lesson, and so they would tell the researchers like, so, you know, don't tell people to do what I do, because like I came out of nowhere, it was a one off, and like the majority of people were saying that. That's why they called it the dark Horse project. The norm presently, not not the exception, not the only path, but but I think it is the norm, and so doesn't really behoove us to try to enforce, you know,
to overlay on that like a much narrower path. I was reading an OECD report recently and said, kids tend to start are narrowing their like what they think are possible career choices by age seven in a lot of countries. Now, like there's like a lot of the jobs they might be considering aren't going to exist. They're going to look very different by the time they get there.
Anyway, Yeah, I don't like that. I guess I'm agreeing in a lot of ways with your The main thesis of your book range why generalist triumph in a specialized world, especially when younger and you do in your book, you talk about specific age range as I moved was eight to sixteen, if I remember correctly, something like that, where you're saying, well, there's this age range, we really should allow people to cross to study things from as wide fields as possible, right.
I mean, I think a lot of that age range was sort of you know, looking at things like sports and using it as analogy and stuff. I think in the wider world, I think it's hard to put an age range on it, like the for example, like you know, some of the research I looked at three M, which is the reason I got interested in the company three M, was because I was reading these like world Innovation indices that come out all the time, and I recognized all
the time. It would be like Apple, Google, you know these names that I really recognized. And then to be like three AM and I'm like the post it guys, like what that? Why are they up there? Turns out they have to make like a quarter of their revenue every year from products that didn't exist five years ago. They have like seven thousand inventors. They're in all these different fields, and they did an internal study looking at
Brett well Inter. I mean I published it, but they were studying their own organization where they operationalized how broad or specialized someone was based on the number of tech classes they had worked in as characterized by the Patent Office. And they had these generalists who had worked in a lot of different areas who made contributions. They had specialists who had dove deep into areas that had made contributions. And there were dilettants who weren't that broad or that deep,
who didn't do so much. And then the biggest contributors were these what they called the polymaths who would like go to a certain level of depth and then sort of come up and go to that level of depth in another place, and come up and go to that level of depth in another place, and then like connect these different areas. And so you could make contributions as
a generalist, as a specialist. And then the big the most power was these these sort of polymath who sometimes came in with an area of depth and then at a certain point sacrificed more depth for Brett and other times came in sort of broad and then homed in on a certain area. And so there wasn't necessarily a particular like a like a singular trajectory that they had to follow.
So really cool, really cool stuff. I think we would be really remiss to not have a really open, honest discussion about the link between creativity and mental illness. I feel like there's some prominent examples in the news right now, although that might be giving some people cert too much credit, calling them geniuses. But I think that this is a topic I've studied, and you are very interesting as well, and you looked into it as well, so we can compare notes.
Well, I mostly was benefiting from your handiwork research, so.
Well, I appreciate your modesty. You write, you know, no, I mean stuff and yeah yeah.
But like you like basically laid down a blueprint of the available research, and then I just read it and wrote a newsletter post.
Thank you, thank you. So let's talk about this, David Uh. It does seem like there is a connection, and it's a very interesting connection because it seems to be like up until recently, I would say the research is full ball and mentalness is not conducive to creativity. It's not well, it's not conducive to the kind of creativity that is both useful and and novel. It may just be novel but not useful. And and look, I want to just bring up Kanye West because it's so in the news
right now. I think we're kind of seeing an example where a lot of the you know, keeping mentalness in vague, kind of being moderate. Lee Hyman, you know, has led to some great, great music. But I think that he's perhaps at a level that's that's kind of maybe it's
explaining our the research as well. It's he's he's at a level of extremity that I don't think the ideas he's saying right now are very practical, useful, have utility value for making the world a better place, even though they may be very very novel although they're not that novel. I guess so when you look at the arc of human history.
But yeah, they're not novelty. Yeah, yeah, I would say the opposite of novel.
Yeah. Maybe it's it's novel to bring to say such things in mainstream media, but yeah, so I'm just under trying. I want to get some of your thoughts on that and on the on on that link.
Yeah, I mean, like you said, I think the you know, the weight of literature has has in many ways debunked that sort of folklore that that mental illness and creativity are like inextricably linked by showing in fact that when you look at a lot of creative professionals they are at lower risk. In general, we're having a whole host of mental illnesses, there are some nuances in there, and I think the study that I found the most interesting on millions of sweet like authors were like the one
exception I think in the creative professions. So I think as a general principle, we can just dispense with that idea that you know, and I don't think accounts like if someone's eccentric and has like is unusual, that's not mental illness, right, That's that's like being creative shouldn't define someone as being mentally ill. Right. So but I think by and large we can put to rest that idea.
But what I think is fascinating about that study that you highlighted was they found that creative professionals, while they themselves were at reduced risk of being diagnosed with the mental illness, they're family members were at increase. They were more likely they were at sort of increased chances of having family members who'd been diagnosed with men's illness. Which I think is a kind of fascinating finding that has a genetic hypothesis behind it.
Absolutely, you know, being full on schizophrenic and having full delusions that you're one hundred percent notck grounded in reality, that's not going to be something that really resonates with most people who are not in a similar state. But you could see a case where the more water down genetic versions which we dispose someone child to not have skiz it, maybe have schizotippy, which is a personality trait
proneness towards often magical thinking. But you see that often a lot in the spirituality world, by the way, I think a lot of the people in the spiritual order are high in schizotippy. So these these sorts of what are down traits, you could absolutely see how that would be conducive to creative thinking and having people see things in new ways.
And I think what you're saying like water down to I know the the hypothesis from that, and there is some work to support it. And I think a LinkedIn in the newsletter is that let's say you know, most most traits other than like a you know a small number of rare diseases are caused not caused, are influenced by a large number of genes, also influenced by environment, but influenced by a large number of genes, each of
which has a very small effect. And so if you say some family you know has a certain set of genes, and some members of the family have schizophrenia, and let's just say, like, just for argument's sake, there's like ten thousand different gene variants that could predispose them to schizophrenia some members of the family. You know, if a member of the family has more than a thousand, then they're
going to have schizophrenia. Then, so you have some family members who have a serious mental illness and are incapacitated from that and can't do that kind of work that is both novel and useful. But you might have other family members who will get some of those variants that might redispose them to kind of, like you said, divergent thinking, but not so many that they are you know, not functional or not able to connect their work with things
that resonate with people. So that's sort of the hypothesis of where a genetic link again not to the exclusion of environment, but that might might help account for that reason why do you see an increase increased incidents of family members with diagnosed mental illness in the families of creative professionals.
Yes, And I think great points. And I think we're talking a lot about the arts, because it's very interesting when you start looking at the science as you see higher preponderance in a lot of ways of autistic like traits, and that's not a mental illness autism. I don't classify that as a mental illness. Some people classify as a
developmental disorder. I don't even love classifying it as that, but it is a certain it's a different way of processing information that causes people to perhaps become a specialist. I mean, I just I want to make a link here to like your framework, and I think, like I would predict that people in the auto spectrum tend to be more specialized as people on the schizo TPY spectrum tend to be more generalizers. And there are differences between like the sciences and the arts and that. But I
think that's probably two way too broad a generalization. But have you have you thought about that at all?
I don't know. I mean, it kind of reminds me of Simon Baron Cohen's systematizer empathizer brain more where goshut up with that in a nutshell, but where where like a systematizer brain is more into like sort of categorizing and focusing on things and would be more like that that autism brain basically and more likely to sort of get really into you know, like a technical niche for example, and focus on it really in kind of an obsessive way. So yeah, I mean I think that I think that
makes some sense to me. I think if we're talking about the level of like Nobel laureate type scientists, then I wonder because those like in one of the you know, recent Hambric and McNamara down studies where they showed it there was it was mostly on sports where they were showing there was an inverse relationship between like performance at the high junior level and the high senior level where basically the people who are the best juniors and never
became the best seniors. And they mentioned they cite some German study I think it was that I haven't read because I think it's in German, but it was saying that Nobel laureate scientists tended to progress more slowly earlier in their careers because they were more interdisciplinary and so they didn't get tenure as quickly as some of their peers.
So at that level, it seems like some of those people are so good at making I guess it really depends like what they're getting it for, but in some cases making these sort of fascinating connections between things and are you know, and are are known to be much more likely to have like aesthetic hobbies outside of their
work and that kind of stuff. But I think in anyway, I think there's I think there's definitely something to what you're saying, But at the very very highest level, I'm just sort of thinking out loud and wondering about it.
I like that Nuance Well Gregory Feiist has shown different personality trade supply to good scientists versus great s scientists. There actually is a bifurcation.
They're interesting.
I think what's what is problematic, shall I say about the situation is that the reward structures and science for getting grants and things is actually not being too out there, is actually it actually rewards good scientists. I don't think the basic mechanism of science rewards great scientists, and great scientists usually become great scientists despite this scientific system, not because of it.
You just reminded me of this like awesome technical reports of the government, which sounds super boring. But vany Var Bush, who was a head of US science during World War Two, which involved like you know, obviously the Manhattan Project and like mass production of penicillin and all this impressive stuff, wrote a report for the president called Science the Endless Frontier that you can find all over the internet, and
basically he's describing successful innovation culture. And this report led to the creation of the National Science Foundation, which funded like a half century of like mind blowing you know, from the Internet to like X rays and everything. And in it he's basically saying, like, you know, we can't perfectly predict where breakthrough is going to come from. We need to put a bunch of money into into people that are curious and interested and like let them follow
their their things. And that requires some inefficiency, but that's the way it is. That's successful research culture. And so it's sort of you know, to the government's credit, they established National Science Foundation and funded a lot of stuff that was kind of open ended, I mean, but then already by the time, like when I was a science
grad student. I mean I didn't go on to my PhD like you did, but already by that time I remember having to fill out grand applications and basically having to say what I was going to find before I started the study, which I think is is counterproductive to that. Not that you shouldn't have a hypothesis, right, but I thought it was basically asking for like an application before I even knew, you know, knew what I was doing.
And I think that situation precipitated sort of a new there's a there was like a second group I think during the Obama administration was asked to do like an updated version of the report, and they didn't have as much literary license, but you know, and basically what they said was that, like organizations are increasingly stifling that in the in the exploration exploitation trade off, like exploitation, you know, making use of knowledge you already have and and for applications,
exploration is creating new knowledge or you know, looking looking around, and that that like organizations were increasingly not funding that exploration part of of innovation, and so the government needs to really step up. It's like sometimes when I you know, I really admire like a lot of Silicon Valley innovators, and they're like pioneering spirit and all that stuff, and
then they're just interested in a lot of stuff. But sometimes it bugs me when I'll hear someone who's big in tech or VC say like every good thing comes out of the private sector, Like when has the public sector it only stifles innovation. I'm like, everything you are building comes out of National Science Foundation, stuff from the second half of the twentieth century, literally everything from public funding.
And so I think the venture capital community is fantastic to have it so that they can see some of those moonshot ideas and things that the and and and more immediate applications that aren't right for the government. But I think it's it can be damaging when we downplay the role that public funding has had for allowing people to do the kind of meandering exploration that's led to like tremendous breakthroughs.
I agree, I agree, very much agree. When we talk about greatness, how much should we talk about being a good person? How much? How much does morality or or manner of being matter in this case to have greatness? To what extent does that sort of manner of being or the way you treat others and all that should should that matter?
Think it should matter. I'm sort of on the strong end of that of feeling like it should matter. I don't think that means we should exxile people from society or anything like that. But even when like the you know, the Michael Jordan story is told and it's always yelling at his teammates and getting the bam, like, tell the Tim Duncan story, tell the Steph Curry story, like there's all these that's he succeeded in spite of that, not because of it. I think I think it's tolerated because
of how good he was. And I've been in the workplace where bad behavior has been tolerated because someone was viewed, as you know, having certain special skills which turned out to be totally replaceable once they were gone. But I think that, you know, like you mentioned Kanye West, and I think he's made some amazing music. I think he has very interesting taste and you know, in design and
stuff like that. But I think the first time I probably read an interview with him was I don't know, fifteen years ago, a long time ago, and from the first time I read it, I wasn't sure if it was like a satire about his own opinion of himself or serious, because I didn't know anything about him at the time. And it doesn't so much surprise me that that road ended in Man, I think Hitler's cool or whatever it was that he said. I don't think that's
super unpredictable. And I think we, you know, I don't think we. I absolutely don't think that we should demand like intellectual or moral purity from people who have contributions to make, Like I think that can be a really
damaging thing. At the same time, I don't think we, you know, I think if we say, well, we're going to tolerate people's behavior that goes against our values because they can make this other contribution, then then you're gonna get more of that, right, So I think I think it depends on how do you want your society to look, and then you react. You try to shape it with incentives.
And if the incentive you give people they can do anything they want, if they're you know, they have certain other country, if they get famous enough or whatever, they get certain contributions that are interesting, then you're making sure that you'll get more of that. And I don't think that's you know, I don't want to live in an ends justifies the means kind of world personally, No, me neither.
And I'm very interested in moral example ours people who are great because of their goodness and pro social agency. I don't want us to forget examples of moral greatness as well.
You know I can. I bring one up is someone that I became, that became a role model to me when I was reporting range as Francis Hesselbein, who was the former CEO of the Girl Scouts. She well, she took her first professional job at the age of fifty four, became the later became the CEO of the Girl Scouts,
which she basically saved. She tripled minority membership. She had one hundred and thirty thousand volunteers right those are people she was paying a sense of mission, transforming the organization from one that was like preparing girls for life in the home to one that was preparing them for careers
in math and science. Like she gave me a binary code badge for girls learning about computers and Peter Drucker, the management guru, called her the best CEO on Americans, said she should take over like GM and all this stuff. She turned one hundred and seven a few weeks ago, so still working running Leadership in stud of Manhattan one hundred and seven and teaching at West Point occasionally. So it was her. But the thing about that went beyond what I wrote about in the book was being around her.
As she would say, leadership is a matter of how to be, not what to do, and being around her like you could see she was living with that. Like the first time I ever did an interview with her, I go to her office and we do this sort of interview and it's sort of a little formal. But then she invites me to lunch with her after and I go to lunch and and it's a lot less formal, and someone at the place we went to lunch, at the counter was being kind of rude, you know, it
was like Manhattan lunch rush hour kind of thing. Was being rude to the server, and she didn't say anything, but she went next and just like started talking to the server like this is look at all these people, this is this is really a tough thing to do,
Like this is amazing. You must have to deal with so much stuff here, Like you're really doing a you know, a great job, and like saying it loud enough and you can see everyone else in line was like super nice after that, right, Like just being around her made you want to be a better person. At one point, I was in a conversation with multiple people where she was.
She was in the hospital on a phone, and you could hear someone like yelling at a nurse and then her telling the nurse like how great of a job she's doing. So she's not going aggressive at the other person. She's just like being the example that you would want people to be. And so whenever I was around her, I feel like I was a better person because you kind of have to be, you know, like otherwise you
feel embarrassed about yourself. So that that made a big impression on me that leadership is a matter of how to be now what to do?
Love it. My friend actually told me a story recently about the time he met Maya Angelou. He had his baseball cap down and he was just an all watching her being and he was very shy, feeling shy where she was walking past him, and she came right up to him and she took his hat off and and said, baby, you should smile more. The world needs your light. Oh wow, pretty wow?
You know, because like because like sometimes you think of the thing as like when when people tell women like smile smile, and it's like really really like annoying. But when May Angelou says it and it's like Angela and it's like poetic gold, I think that's in a different category.
Yeah, yeah, it gets an exemption. It is the last topic today? Were you interested in talking about constraints on creativity? And why you so obsessed with Ulysses?
Oh, is the fact that it's like one of the gems of English literature. Not enough, No, I mean it's it's I think I'm obsessed with it. Well, I've been reading it recently and I first got interested in a year nineteen twenty two is just like this epical year for modernist literature where T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland came out in nineteen twenty two, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Virginia Wolf's Jacob's Room, which is not one of her more
famous ones, but it was her break into modernism. And it was interesting because these things are such incredible works of creativity and unique works. The idea that these people were sort of alighting on something kind of similar at the same time, means it's kind of like in the in the ether in a way. And I mean, Ulysses is such a challenging book, but it is so incredible.
I mean, it's one of those things if you're willing to put in the work, you know, so I probably read a page outside of Ulysses for every page I read inside Ulysses in terms of, you know, to understand what was going on and the meaning and the wordplay and all these things. But like it's such an amazing adventure.
I mean, it's it's a domestication of the epic. You know, it's structured after the Odyssey, and so every chapter has something that you know, it can sometimes be hard to tell what it is, but but once you know it's not that represents an episode in the Odyssey. But whereas the Odyssey is this like incredibly grandiose thing, you know, where Odysseus comes home and kills all the suitors that are like occupying his home and takes his wife back
and shoots an arrow through twelve axe handles. Like Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses is just trying to get through a day with his dignity intact and holding mostly to his values while also you know, sometimes acting in his self interest. And so he told this epic, but he domesticated it down to like the scale of normal life.
And there's if there's a character in literature who, like, I've never even come close to having as much access to the thoughts of a character as Leopold Bloom, the main character in Ulysses. So it's like I might know his thoughts better than I know my own, and that doesn't make him more simple, it actually makes it more complex. And so it made me feel a little better sometimes about like having lots of different thoughts and not totally understanding what's going on with my head. But it's also
just it's a it's funny. It's tremendous word play. Like there's a chapter that takes place in a maternity hospital and maybe I don't know, maybe like a few minutes or something passing the whole chapter, but I think there's forty paragraphs to represent each of the weeks of pregnancy in a maternity hospital, and it goes it's like the medium mimics gestation, So it starts with a prose style that's like an early prose style and moves through styles
up to modernity, like just naturally as you're going through the writing, there's all this amazing stuff, and there's it's just as a writer, I think reading fiction gives me more ideas for how to structure writing and think about storytelling. And it's it's a creative explosion, an interesting book in
terms of constraints. What I found fascinating about it was that I think in order to pull off something that unusual and creative, he sort of had to ground it in certain ways in the structure of very familiar things the Odyssey, you know, the Odyssey, it's clearly influenced by Hamlet, right like, so maybe the two like most well known narratives in all of Western literature and in a single day.
And in some ways I think the more the more creative a certain aspect of a work is, the more familiar, some other aspect has to be so that we don't feel like totally out at sea, you know, so it isn't just purely avant garde, so we have somewhere to ground ourselves. So sorry, that was like a they went off on a long masterclass.
And do you think that's a work of Do you think it's a work of genius? Absolutely, and no one's going to deliberately practice to that.
Alone, didn't. I didn't see that one coming. But yeah, no, I.
Mean you can't. One can't. Yeah, merely merely deliberately practiced to writing the next to.
Lussi's yeah it's amazing.
Yeah, yeah, it is amazing. And Patricia Stokes should get some shout out or her seminal work on the importance of constraints and creativity. You know, what was the first review I ever wrote? Was it really book review? I think that was the first book review I ever wrote, two thousand and six.
One of the reasons I've been thinking about it, I mean, I've been interested in it for a long time, like why do you know, why does like a haiku liberate rather than stiful creativity you know, suddenly makes everyone able to write a poem. But also I thought that I
wanted like total work autonomy in my own life. So after you know, range came out, I don't have a day job anymore, like buying totally on my own, full freedom, And I think I realized after not too long that I had too much freedom and I was getting like too picky about picking a project, becoming too much of a maximizer, and I'm like, you need to stop like just exploring and like explore something and that informs like
the next thing you do? You know. I think it was like me Hi Chicks and me Hi who who wrote something like Who's work? I'm sure you know way better than I do. Some like you know when you commit to a relationship or a life course. Maybe he was even saying a marriage. I can't remember exactly what it was, but his point was that you commit to it so that you can stop wondering how that you
can start living and stop wondering how to live. Yeah, And I sort of felt like that with a project, Like I'm like, I just need to pick something and do it. It may not be the perfect thing, but that's how I'll stop spending time what to explore and start exploring, and that'll and form the next thing.
I freaking all that? What did I tweet the other day of my life? In tweets here, I tweeted, don't wait for the motivation to commit, commit and it will motivate you.
I like that. I want to talk to you more about constraints. I don't think I should use up too much of your podcast time because my thoughts are so like nebulous at the moment that.
Let's get something on the cound or even talk about that some other time. You know how people say that let's get something on the cound or uh no, that sounds great, man, Well, we obviously have so much we could continue talking about. I think this was a good a good sampling of some of the main issues in the field. And yeah, I worry that a lot of the science applied to a long gone era, you know,
Dean Simonton's study of genius. I just wondered what extent it applies to this new era we're living in of social media, TikTok things where anyone can be hailed a genius within all takes a certain number of followers to hail you a genius now to be a genius, and I think that we see that in a very different way than than than ever before in human history.
And so when you say you wonder if Simonson's work applies, you mean like how he would in terms of how a genius is classified.
Yeah, I mean his analyzes were based on length and history books, you know, length and like encyclopedias and trying to come up with objective metrics and things within certain well classified fields that have operated over long time courses. But I just think we're seeing a new era of thing.
And yeah, I'm really I'm obviously not articularly my point quite well, because I don't know exactly what this looks like or what it's going to look like in the next one hundred two of years, but it feels different.
Do you think like the label of genius is helpful or not helpful? Because when you ask me, do I think do I think Ulysses is a work of genius? I was very quick to say, oh, yeah, for sure, and then to think, like, how would I define a work of genius? Like know it when you see it? You know, I don't know. Do you think it's Do you think it's a helpful label?
Well, the focus here is on greatness today, and I do think greatness can be defined as top one percent, top one percent maybe of a field on a certain set of metrics. But I think that that was easier to easier to arrive at objectively in the past.
Unless the metric is followers or something like that, in which case.
Yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, Okay, Well that's a very good point. Maybe it's easier than ever for us to know who's great to But it just seems like the kind of standards were holding each other to of greatness right now seem much more soulless.
I mean, if you wanted to get, if you wanted to like multiply, you know, move your followers tomorrow by in order of magnitude, what you would do is start flamethrowing on stuff that's ridiculously.
Right, right, so be divisive as humanly possible. Yeah, right, that doesn't divisive things. Yeah, so I.
Don't think that would be a good metric of genius. I think I think a lot of people could increase their follower accounts a lot in ways that they see other people doing it, you know, if they don't mind like doing things that are bad for everyone.
In that way, maybe there's more of a template for greatness than ever before in that in that sense as well. Yeah, yeah, Oh, anyway, there's so much to talk about.
Yeah, that was like a very like on heessimistic conclusion, like wrapped in optimistic sounding language.
Yeah, because well, you know, just coming around full circle at the beginning when we're talking about well, if there was a template, if there were general principles, and everyone would do it. But I think now maybe the incentive structures are bad. I mean, I think it is negative in the incentive structures for people getting popularity these days. I think what we're solving for as a society is worries me. It concerns me for sure.
I mean I think I think even by my own short like you know, when I was a journalist, wasn't I'm still a journalist, but when I was like sort of a daily employeed journalism journalist, if I think about how I thought about like becoming good and building a reputation and getting a following. At that point, it was
like write some interesting articles. And now if someone came to me and were like, how do I how do I build a following as a writer, I mean I wouldn't if they just wanted to build a following, you'd say, like, uh, pick some people more famous than you and just start antagonizing them, you know, like in like incredibly horrible ways like and they and you can build a following that way.
But I mean, I guess we're lucky that I think that that kind of thing just like does not feel even even if there's like fame and money on the line, simply not palatable to most people, and I feel lucky for that.
Yeah, Aristotle, if he was alive, may rest in peace would be like shaking shaking my damn head. This is not youn Aemonia. Do you know what I'm saying. That's not what I meant by you Daemonia.
Be doing the shaking my head mooji.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey man, thank you so much for coming on today and chatting with me and jamming with me about this topic. There's more to come, lots more to come.
That's a pleasure always generally talking to you.
Likewise, thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.