The Dangers of Trivial Pursuits

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People generate about 15 different projects. I used to turn trivial pursuits because some of them clearly seem to be trivial. But it didn't take long for us to realize that those trivial pursuits may, from the perspective of the pursuer, be pretty consequential. If you have vested everything in one project and you're rigidly unable to dissociate from that project when things are going wrong then problems may be ahead.

Award-winning researcher and pioneering psychologist Brian Little has plenty of accomplishments under his belt. He’s the author of the bestselling books “Me, Myself, and Us” and “Who Are You, Really?” His TED Talk on the science of personality has tens of millions of views and he’s been elected a Favorite Professor multiple times at Harvard. And he’s also Adam’s favorite psychologist – and personal mentor. Brian and Adam talk about how our personal projects shape our well-being, the nuances of introversion and extraversion, when it makes sense to act out of character, and what our daily pursuits reveal about us. Transcripts for ReThinking are available at go.ted.com/RWAGscripts