Curious Minds at Work

From time to time, I’ll run across creative ways people are using apps I like. It often prompts me to learn more. I’ll watch some videos, read a few articles and, inevitably, what I discover is that I’ve been accessing just a fraction of what the software can do.  I got that same feeling while reading award-winning science writer, David Robson’s latest book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World. It made me realize that I’m leveraging far fewer of my brain’s features than I could be. That means I’m missing out on a lot. For example, quicker recovery from illness and injury. Better performance from more effective stress management. And adding years to my life with more thoughtful approaches to fitness and aging. What scientists are learning about the connections between the human brain and performance is incredible. And David Robson manages to take this research and organize it into a compelling playbook for a better life. Episode Links Can You Think Yourself Young? How Thinking about ‘Future You’ Can Help You Build a Happier Life The Brain is a Prediction Machine: It Knows How Well We Are Doing Something before We Even Try Believing is Seeing: Using Mindlessness (Mindfully) to Improve Visual Acuity Ellen Langer A Placebo Can Work Even When You Know It’s a Placebo Nocebo Effect Improving Acute Stress Responses: The Power of Reappraisal Jeremy P. Jamieson Veronika Job Can You Ever Get Over a Lingering Grudge? Dr. Michael Greger and nutritionfacts.org  The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Confidence seems elusive. We do something that comes easily and we don’t think twice about it. Or we try something new that’s challenging and we can't stop thinking about our mistakes. It can leave us thinking that confidence is something other people just seem to have. All the time. Performance psychologist Nate Zinsser knows that’s just not true. For decades he’s been working with Olympians, professional athletes, military leaders, and other high performers in his role as Director of West Point's Performance Psychology Program. What he’s learned is that confidence is something we need to build, protect, and practice. In his book, The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance, he shares the methods he’s developed to help us do just that. Reading Nate’s book made me realize how many misconceptions we have about confidence, and they’re the kind of misconceptions that can really hold us back. I think you’ll enjoy the interview and I know you’ll learn a lot from the book. Episode Links How I Avoid Burnout: A West Point Performance Psychologist A Psychologist Who Helps West Point Cadets Develop Mental Strength Shares 3 of His Best Tips Plateaus, Dips, and Leaps: Where to Look for Inventions and Discoveries During Skilled Performance Gender Gap in Orthopedics Remains Relatively Unchanged After-action Review When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

For women who want a career and a family, we might expect things would be easier today. After all, women have greater access to education and job opportunities. We’ve seen advances in reproductive health. And we’ve made inroads in anti-discrimination laws and policies. Yet gaps in pay and promotions remain a problem. Today’s guest, Claudia Goldin, is a Harvard University economist who’s spent her career studying women in the workplace. She believes there’s an important factor we’ve overlooked, namely, greedy work. These are jobs with lots of financial upside and promotion potential for employees who can log long hours and take on big assignments at a moment’s notice. And it’s the work that women with children often take less advantage of compared to their partners. As a result, ambitious career women can find themselves stalled out and earning less. In her book, Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, Claudia traces how women got here. Drawing on extensive data sets, she reveals five patterns in women’s career and family behaviors: for women graduating from 1900-1910s, it was either career or family; for 1920-1930s graduates, jobs then families; with 1950s graduates, families then jobs; women graduating in the 1970s had careers then families; and, for women graduating in the 1980s-1990s it’s been careers and family. Yet, for today’s ambitious career women juggling career and family, it can mean increasing dissatisfaction with both. And in analyzing the way many careers today are structured, Claudia helps us understand why. It’s an insightful way to understand a problem we’ve been living with for a long time. Episode Links The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Other Side of the Mountain: Women's Employment and Earnings over the Family Cycle Assessing Five Statements about the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Women Marriage Bar The Group by Mary McCarthy The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family  The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. We love that feeling of a fresh start. But we hate how our commitments seldom make it to Valentine’s Day. So what if this year we had an expert teach us how to do it right?  Ayelet Fishbach is that expert. She’s a social psychologist at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. In this interview, we talk about how to choose goals that energize us and how to pair them with incentives that keep us motivated. We also discuss a system for simultaneously working on multiple goals. Finally, we learn about the power of social support and how we can get it. Episode Links Immediate Rewards Predict Adherence to Long-term Goals The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation You Think Failure is Hard? So Is Learning From It Slacking in the Middle Pursuing Goals with Others Marie Curie and Pierre Curie Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner  The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Azeem Azhar, an expert on the impact of technology on society and the economy, discusses the rapid pace of technological change. He contrasts the slow evolution of 20th-century innovations with today's exponential advancements, revealing the growing gap in policies to manage these changes. Azhar highlights the transformation in business models of tech giants and the need for updated regulations. He also emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary thinking to tackle complex societal challenges and encourages active participation in navigating this evolving landscape.

Just a few years ago, the possibility of working from anywhere made us wistful. With family and friends, we’d play the “what if” game: What if we could work from home? What if we could live somewhere warmer? What if we could move to another country? When the pandemic hit and remote work made “what if” possible, some responded, “why not?” And that’s when things got complicated. Now we’re faced with a different set of questions; Why should we ever return to the office? When we’re not in the office, how do we make friends? How do we create an equitable work experience for remote employees? These are the kinds of questions Anne Helen Petersen and I talk about in this interview. Anne came on the show once before to discuss her book, Can’t Even, about burnout and the millennial generation. I invited her back on to discuss her latest book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. Anne and her co-author, Charlie Warzel argue that, when it comes to what work can look like, we’re living in a time where the answers we arrive at have never been more important. We have an opportunity to make work better. Episode Links Culture Study on Substack by Anne Helen Petersen Galaxy Brain on Substack by Charlie Warzel The Remote Work Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet How to Care Less about Work The Surprising Science of Meetings by Steven Rogelberg Beginner's Mind by Yo-Yo Ma Beyond Collaboration Overload by Rob Cross The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

There are countless benefits to collaboration. We get new ideas. Solve problems more quickly. Produce higher quality work. But too much of anything can turn toxic. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College, has spent time with hundreds of leaders who’ve figured out how to collaborate more effectively. What he learned led to him develop a framework to help others do the same. It’s a combination of guardrails and behaviors, all of which lead to more strategic and satisfying collaborations. And Rob shares these insights in his book, Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-Being. Episode Links When Collaboration Fails and How to Fix It Collaboration Overload is Sinking Productivity The Secret to Building Resilience Invisible Network Drivers of Women's Success Impact and Effort Matrix Do You Have a Life Outside of Work? The People Who Make Organizations Go - Or Stop Don't Let Micro-Stresses Burn You Out Multipliers and Impact Players by Liz Wiseman The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

We like to think of our identities as singular and stable: I’m an early riser (and will always be), or I’m a foodie (and can’t imagine otherwise). But if we take a step back, we see how we not only hold multiple identities, but how many of these identities change over the course of our lives.  Remember when you were a student? Or a time when you were single? While there are some identities we can’t change, like our race or birthplace, there are many that we can. It’s the difference between fixating on “who I am now” and, instead, focusing on “who I want to be.” And that simple shift in mindset can make all the difference when it comes to living a happier, more meaningful life. That’s what makes The Power of Us such an important book, and it’s why I wanted to talk to one of the book’s authors, NYU Professor, Jay Van Bavel. He and his co-author, Lehigh University Professor, Dominic Packer, share helpful ways to navigate the tremendous upsides and challenging downsides of our shared identities. Episode Links Dassler Brothers Feud Social Identity Theory Henri Tajfel 1951 Princeton-Dartmouth Football Game and Group Perception Yael Granot Leon Festinger Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron Jay Van Bavel NYU Social Identity Lab https://www.powerofus.online/ Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams by Amy Edmondson Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

How to change someone’s mind. It’s a topic that’s come up a few times before on the podcast. For example, I talked to Jonah Berger about how to make inroads by asking for less. I also spoke with Tali Sharot about how to get further by focusing first on what you have in common. Yet there’s one tip that’s never made the list. And it’s one that’s proven to have an incredible impact. In fact, we’ve seen some of our most compelling entertainers regularly use it to their advantage, performers like comedians, magicians, and script writers. It’s the element of surprise. Michael Rousell writes about it in his book, The Power of Surprise: How Your Brain Secretly Changes Your Beliefs. Teacher, psychologist, and professor emeritus at Southern Oregon University, Michael has studied the topic of surprise for over three decades, and he’s tested it with his students. He makes a compelling case for why we should use it more than we do and provides clear instructions on how we can. Episode Links Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett Sam Harris and Making Belief Confirmation bias Wolfram Schultz and dopamine Elaboration Likelihood Model The Catalyst by Jonah Berger Michael Rousell TEDxSalem Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

We like to think we’re in complete control of the decisions we make. From the sandwich we ordered for lunch to the Netflix show we watched last night. Yet, in each case, we’ve got a hidden partner, one that influences nearly every decision we make. That partner is the designer. Whether we’re reading a restaurant menu or scrolling a website, we’re taking in information that’s been presented to us in a certain way. These conscious – or unconscious – choices that designers make can influence what we decide. In many cases, though, it’s an aspect of decision making we don’t think too much about. It’s this element of decision science that Eric Johnson, Professor at Columbia Business School, has spent his life studying. It’s the focus of his book, The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters, and it is truly fascinating. In fact, I bet you’ll walk away from this interview with at least one insight that gets you thinking about design and decision making. Episode Links The Decision Lab Sleights of Mind Choice Architecture Coffee Meets Bagel Derren Brown Naomi Mandel Query Theory Curse of Choice Experimentation Works by Stefan Thomke Medicine. Do Defaults Save Lives? Endowment Effect Replication Crisis Meta-analysis The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.