Blowing Up Your Life  🔗 **Source:** [Blowing Up Your Life](https://share.snipd.com/episode/20982193-8fc3-4882-91a2-b277a9435fb3) ## Highlights - **A Flour Shortage Changed Klotz’s Career** - Anthony Klotz’s flour shortage shut down a cereal plant and exposed that logistics was not his calling. - He switched into operations, redirecting both his career and planned move to Minneapolis. Transcript: Anthony Klotz Yeah, so I had gotten my degree in logistics. And so this was a logistics planning job. And I even grew up in a family business in the field of logistics. And so I thought myself a pretty good planner. But when it turned out I was actually in this role, I tried to run inventories at a very tight level. And it turns out if you run inventories tight and you run short on one, you have to get a replacement for it pretty quickly. But one ingredient that's hard to replace quickly is flour because it comes by a slow rail car. And so while I was running inventories tight, there was a rail car delay and the plant had to shut down because I ran it out of flour. Shankar Vedantam Wait, the whole plant had to shut down? Yes. Anthony Klotz So we're talking tens of thousands of dollars in cost because of my inventory management practices. I mean, the main feeling that I had was embarrassment and shame over, you know, there were a lot of people counting on this plant for livelihood and a lot of people counting on it for their Breakfast. And so it was a pretty big early career failure. And of course, I worried that it was going to have a permanent impact on my career success. But then once I moved past those emotions, what really took over was this period of questioning, is logistics what I want to do with my career? Am I actually good at this? I ended up switching. And by switching over from logistics to operations in that early career stage, it really changed what my next few jobs were going to be. And so instead of going to Minneapolis, where, by the way, my wife had been accepted into grad school and we sort of planned to move and live there for a long time, I ended up taking a transfer To Lodi, California to another manufacturing plant. And then after that, another manufacturing plant. ([Time 0:09:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3fcbae48-7afc-4bfe-a948-7d2c10224168)) - **Klopp Recognized When His Energy Was Draining** - Jurgen Klopp realized during a future-planning meeting that his energy was no longer replenishing fast enough. - He privately planned a graceful departure, then explained it honestly and gratefully to Liverpool supporters. Transcript: Anthony Klotz So what nobody on the outside could see was that Jurgen had attended a team meeting of all the leaders of the team a few weeks prior. And in that meeting, they were discussing plans for the upcoming summer, what players to acquire, what players to let go. And as they were having this conversation about the future of the team, he had this thought pop into his head. I'm not sure if I'm going to be here then anymore. And that thought that seemed to come out of nowhere in his head surprised him. Why would I have that thought? So instead of just tossing that thought aside because he's in the midst of a very high pressure season in a very high power visible position, he sat with that thought for a while and said, Why did I have that? And as a result of that reflection, he came to two conclusions. The first conclusion was that his energy was not being replenished as quickly as it was being drained. And so while he had plenty of energy in the moment, he could foresee a time in the future when that wasn't the case anymore. And the second thing that he realized was that he wanted to spend some time being, quote, a normal person for a while instead of one of the most visible figures in the world of football. Shankar Vedantam How did he act on these thoughts, Anthony? Anthony Klotz He acted on these thoughts in what I feel is a very thoughtful manner. So he kept them to himself and to his inner circle. And then from what I understand, he shared it with the club. And they strategized the best way for him to depart in a way that causes minimal disruption to the club. How can we best do that? And so the way that the announcement of his resignation happened was through a video that the club put out. So it was the organization and him working together to communicate, here's what's happening, here's why it's happening. ([Time 0:13:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a1fd6beb-c679-4a93-91b6-463652916d5d)) - **Why People Quit After A Single Jolt** - Career quitting often follows a single jolting event rather than a slow, rational decision process. - Klotz found that roughly half of quitting decisions arise from one-off events that make people rethink work. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam So in time, Anthony, you decided to study these moments when we reach a realization or have an epiphany. What was it that drew you to these turning points? Anthony Klotz It was actually when I was in graduate school and I spent a week studying what we know about why employees quit their jobs. And I was thinking back to the times that I had quit my job or that I had seen others quit their jobs or when employees had quit when I was managing. And what an emotional experience it was. And I was intrigued by two things, really. First was this set of literature that surprised me and said, often quitting doesn't result from this slow, rational decision-making process. About half the time, it results from these one-off events that make a stop and rethink work. The other thing that struck me about this literature was most of it was focused on the decision to quit, not what people do after they decide to quit or stay. And because, you know, I had had some interesting resignation experiences, what I really wanted to study was not just why people quit, but how they do once they actually decide to do So. Shankar Vedantam You call these moments jolts, as in these experiences jolt us out of our regular lives? Anthony Klotz Yeah, they go by a couple of names in the literature. One of them is jolts. One of them is shocks or career shocks. But they mean the same thing. ([Time 0:16:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68f9fb16-7925-4fd9-bb66-8e0552ff1950)) - **Hemsworth’s Health Jolt Rebalanced His Life** - Chris Hemsworth’s genetic Alzheimer’s risk made him reassess his work-family balance while he could still change it. - The jolt prompted tweaks rather than a complete career overhaul. Transcript: Anthony Klotz So Hemsworth hosts a show called Limitless. And in this show, he puts himself through all of these physical and psychological tests to learn about human health and longevity and well-being. And in one episode, he took a DNA test and he found out that in his DNA were a few genes that are linked with an increased potential for him to have Alzheimer's disease. And that really caught his attention, obviously. And he described it as this is my greatest fear because he knew it ran in his family. But at the same time, he described it as a blessing because he said, I'm learning this information while I'm still young enough that I can make changes. Shankar Vedantam How did the discovery affect the way he thought about his work and his life? Anthony Klotz One of the reflections that he had as a result of this discovery was that he was spending more time on work and less time with his family than he wanted to. It was out of balance. And so that was one of the main takeaways was like, if I have these genes that could cause changes to my mind earlier than I would like them to, I need to spend more time with my family now And perhaps a little bit less time working and perhaps a little more time on work that I actually care about. ([Time 0:22:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e7df6382-da99-497a-84f9-c434ee9ed942)) - **Pat Tillman Left Football For Service** - After September 11, Pat Tillman concluded that football felt insignificant compared with serving his country. - He finished his contract, left the NFL, and joined the Army. Transcript: Anthony Klotz So when 9-11 happened, he talked about how even though he didn't know anyone directly impacted by what happened in New York and elsewhere that day, it made him rethink what he was doing. And it made him realize how insignificant playing football was. And he said he thought about how good we have it in this country and that he hasn't really done anything to earn that. And so it really caused him to rethink what he was doing in his work life. I've always had a great deal of feeling for the flag, but even someone who considers themselves that way, you just don't think about it all the time. You don't realize what it gives. You don't realize how great a life we have over here. Even as athletes, we'd moan every now and again about this or that. And if we ever just, you know, times like this, you stop and think about just how, not only how good we have it, but what kind of a system we live under, what freedoms were allowed. And that wasn't built overnight, and it's kind of, the flag is a symbol of all that, a symbol of, you know, my great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, and a lot of my family has given up, You know, has gone and fought in wars, and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that. And so I have a great deal of respect for those that have and what the flag stands for. Tell me the rest of that story, Anthony. Shankar Vedantam How did Pat Tillman take this jolt and change his life? Anthony Klotz So he finished out his contractual obligation to play that year. But after that year, he left the NFL and he joined the Army. ([Time 0:26:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a63c8980-bc99-4db5-b131-c2b840c08fce)) - **Pause Before Quitting On Emotion** - Treat strong emotions from a jolt as signals, not automatic instructions. - Impulsive quitting often creates regret because people rush into another job without planning what comes next. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam When unexpected moments shake up our lives, they often stir up strong emotions. We might feel angry, afraid, or excited. These reactions can be powerful. They can push us to take action we've been avoiding. But psychologist Anthony Klotz says that if we respond to these moments purely on emotion, we can sometimes make choices that backfire. Anthony is the author of the book, Jolted, Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters. Anthony, you've talked about how jolts can stir up strong emotions. Sometimes those emotions are so intense that people act on them instantly. When your boss at the lumberyard expressed distrust in you, both you and your friend quit on the spot. So researchers call this impulsive quitting. Do most people feel good about their decision to quit when they do it impulsively, Anthony? Anthony Klotz So we don't have a lot of research on exactly how people feel, but most of the time, unless you're in a situation where something really egregious happens, people end up experiencing Some regret after impulsive quitting. ([Time 0:33:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b1965ef1-0883-4800-9e42-a92da8e4522b)) - **Zoom In And Out On Your Job** - After a work jolt, zoom in on daily tasks and relationships, then zoom out to your long-term purpose. - Ask whether the job moves you toward your life goals or pulls you away. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam Not everyone is able to do it. But you also point out that if it's a mistake to react impulsively to a jolt, you know, the other mistake you can make is to ignore it altogether. That doesn't make sense either. Anthony Klotz Yeah, there's this middle ground that I encourage people to move into. We're going to experience these different types of jolts many times over the course of our career. And most of the time, quitting will not be an option for most of us. And so it's tempting just to take that jolt and set it aside or put it out of mind, completely ignore it. But in doing so, we're missing an opportunity to potentially improve our relationship with work and fix a problem with it. Shankar Vedantam So you have a number of suggestions on how people should think about their intentions to quit and whether it's the right thing to do. When someone experiences a jolt, you advise them, for example, to both zoom in and zoom out. What do you mean by those terms? Anthony Klotz I encourage people, you know, to really think through their job from a few different angles. So in terms of zooming in and zooming out, we can think of our job in two different ways, or as researchers say, at two different levels of construal. So we can think about it from the very low level of construal, a very concrete way of thinking about our jobs. What do we do in our day-to work lives? And so I encourage people to zoom in and say, do I enjoy this job on a day-to basis? And when you're thinking about that, there's really two big buckets that you can think about. Do I enjoy my work tasks? And do I enjoy the people with whom I'm working on a day-to basis? And then we can zoom out to this high level of construal and think more abstractly about our jobs over the long term. So over the arc of my career, my life, in terms of what I want to accomplish, is this job moving me more towards those goals or is it pulling me further away from them? ([Time 0:38:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/48cf63a5-87b1-4316-9bc8-b430fc1bb8a4)) - **Iger Stayed And Eventually Led Disney** - Bob Iger nearly left ABC after a frugal takeover and several colleagues’ departures. - Staying led eventually to the Disney CEO role, showing that remaining put can outperform bolting. Transcript: Anthony Klotz Yeah, so fairly early in his career, Bob Iger was an executive at ABC Sports. And this was back in the heyday of network sports programs. And so you can imagine, you know, he talks about flights on the Concord and champagne and designer suits and unlimited expense budgets, these sorts of things. And he really enjoyed it. But then ABC as a company was bought up by this Warren Buffett backed radio conglomerate. And this radio conglomerate, Cap Cities, was known for running a very frugal operation. And so you can imagine this was quite the jolt, realizing that your work lifestyle and the way you were working was going to come to an abrupt change because your flashy network company Has been bought up by a company with a bunch of radio stations. So Bob was tempted to leave. And he was tempted to leave also by what's called a collateral jolt. A number of his close co-workers were leaving. They were leaving to go join this flashy sports agency so they could essentially continue the work that they were doing, you know, getting paid a lot, working with athletes and so forth Rather than stick around. And Bob decided, yeah, I want to do the same thing. I'm going to join him. So he went to HR and informed HR, I'm going to leave. And HR said, why don't you take some time to think about that? First, there's some contractual things to work through. But more importantly than that, you might have a pretty bright future with this company, even though it's quite different from the place that you came from. And so Bob slowed down. He went home and talked it over with his partner and came to the conclusion, I've made a pretty good career here at this company. And just because it's changing hands doesn't mean I need to stop that. And so he stayed with what became Cap Cities, which was later bought by Disney. And over the course of his career, became CEO and chairman at Disney and actually ended up doing two spells at that role of CEO and chairman. ([Time 0:41:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/388ce943-34dc-48af-9d65-56a35413d8e4)) - **Solve Workplace Problems Before Leaving** - When a toxic coworker harmed Jenny’s well-being, she requested a different office and redesigned task division. - She solved the problem without quitting or publicly attacking her colleague. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam You tell the story of your friend Jenny and what happened to her in her workplace. Tell me that story, Anthony. Anthony Klotz So Jenny works in a hospital and she worked in an area of the hospital where there were several desks in the same room where they were all completing the same tasks. And she worked with a toxic co-worker and she found her well-being and her work satisfaction continually decreasing as she worked with this co-worker. But she felt like she could put up with it even though her mental well-being was suffering as a result of this. But one day she walked into that office and before she even said anything, her coworker started not necessarily insulting her, but causing some problems. And Jenny thought, what am I doing here? Where the second I walk in the office, this toxic person is already creating negativity for me. And so she knew as a result, after that one moment, I had to do something about it. And so she looked around the hospital to see if there was an empty office anywhere. And she found one. And so then she went to her boss and said, look, here's an interpersonal situation that we're having. She didn't throw the other person under the bus. She said, there's just this incompatibility here. I found this other office. Can I move to it? And her boss said, sure. And so she got her stuff and she moved to the other office. And then after a couple of weeks of working in that office, she realized like, I can actually divide our work tasks such that I don't even have to interact with my old coworker very much At all. And so it's kind of a win really for both of those coworkers that Jenny is now in an office on the other side of the hospital doing her work tasks and her job satisfaction is through the roof. She loves it. And it was all a result of her boss just saying yes to a couple of creative suggestions she had about, you know, moving across the hospital and divvying up tasks. Shankar Vedantam So this is an example of someone who didn't just stay the course and say, you know, I'm going to keep my head down and keep doing what I'm doing. But someone who said there's a problem. I'm not going to quit, but I'm going to speak up about it. Anthony Klotz That's exactly right. This, you know, Jenny realized that simply doing nothing wasn't sustainable. ([Time 0:44:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/71b95744-8b88-4ab9-9f83-325cec95923c)) - **Speak Up With A Solution** - Bring a proposed solution, explain how it benefits others, and avoid sandwiching criticism between compliments. - With domineering bosses, frame the request as a question rather than a demand. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam You offer suggestions to people on how they can speak up at work. You have ideas on what could make that more effective or less effective. What ideas would you have if someone decides they're not going to quit, they're going to stay in the job, they're going to speak up and maybe have a conversation with their boss, how should They go about doing that? Anthony Klotz Yeah, so this is not easy to do. Speaking up to power can be quite challenging. And this isn't a situation where you say to your boss, I'm thinking about quitting or anything like that. Essentially, a jolt has revealed some problem in your relationship with your job, and you think that it might be fixable. And so you're going to bring up a problem with your boss. But there are some tips here. When it comes to speaking up to power, there's a few ways you can increase the odds of it being successful like it was in Jenny's case. So the first one is make sure you don't just have a problem, you have a solution to the problem. Many managers like this somewhat tired phrase of don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. In this case, that phrase holds up. You should have a solution. And here's the deal. In terms of the solution you have to the problem, it can't only benefit you. Like you need to be a bit of a salesperson here and say, this solution not only benefits me, but it also benefits you or the customers or other coworkers or the company's bottom line somehow. So try to come up with a solution in a case that doesn't only benefit you. And then, you know, the last one is, especially as Americans, but others as well, sometimes like to deliver tough messages sandwiched in between two positive messages. The research shows that this is really ineffective when it comes to voice and challenging. So you may be tempted to say some nice things about your boss and then slip in the like, here's the real problem with my work. That's not effective at all. And then finally, I mean, if you're in the unfortunate situation of having a fairly domineering boss, research shows that this is especially tough to bring up problems. And so it's often better to phrase it in the form of a question than any sort of demand or suggestion. Like, maybe this is a thought that we could have me work in this different side of the hospital. ([Time 0:46:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15e591e1-a1af-4ccc-a836-20b35990352c)) - **Why Breakthroughs Need Mental Distance** - Pressing harder can narrow attention around an unproductive approach and reduce flexibility. - Stepping away lets unconscious thought explore different associations and produce a breakthrough. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam Well, there's various reasons. Ap Dijksterhuis Perhaps the most important reason is that you tend to get stuck in one direction and you lose your flexibility. And the one direction you get stuck in is not always the one that will help you to solve the problem. And if you put it aside for a while, then your unconscious will start to work on it in a completely different, much more creative way. And that often leads to a solution. You know, if you think about something too hard, it's like a very bright but narrow light shining on something. And what you often need is not so much a bright light, but a light that, you know, that meanders, that goes in all kinds of directions, that also puts light on things that you normally don't Shed light on. ([Time 1:00:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df82af5a-ed47-4042-8b61-a80ffaf87eab)) - **Sleep Makes Creative Connections** - Protect sleep because REM supports memory, new associations, and creativity. - Studying overnight performs worse than learning in the evening and sleeping before the test. Transcript: Ap Dijksterhuis This is truly a wonderful example of some of the phenomena I describe in my book. Well, the role of sleep is getting more and more important the more research we do. And we aren't there yet. But what we know now is that especially during REM sleep, the sleep that produces the dreams, there's all kinds of cognitive processes playing in our brain that have to do with memory, With making new associations, fostering creativity. So yeah, we know quite specifically that during REM sleep, would you engage in about five or six times a night, sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes a little longer, half an hour? These are the most important periods. Shankar Vedantam You know, educators have told us for a very long time that students who pull all-nighters, they stay up all night to study, they're not doing themselves any favors when there is an important Test the next morning. Because, of course, sleep plays an important role in consolidating learning. And based on what you're saying, you know, students might end up being less creative on the morning of the test if they spend the previous night staying up to cram. Ap Dijksterhuis Yeah, memory consolidation is one of the first things that people discovered as it comes to what sleep is actually doing for us. So learning in the evening and then have a good night's sleep is way more productive than learning during the night. There's also experiments showing that if you have people learn something and then one group goes to sleep for six or eight hours and the other group has to stay awake the first group is Performing much better in all kinds of memory tests and the second thing of course is that if you don't sleep you're tired it's as simple as that and and creativity also needs a needs a Well-rested mind so you're actually you're not doing yourself a favor in two different ways first you're too tired and second, ([Time 1:02:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d8de46c4-f844-4895-bd90-0ae6df495b07)) - **Adults Brake Their Creativity Too Early** - Children excel at divergent thinking, while adults increasingly activate convergent thinking that rejects ideas too early. - Creativity improves when adults delay the mental brake and recover playful exploration. Transcript: Ap Dijksterhuis There's this old classic psychology study where people devised a test battery to measure creativity. And it turned out that the question, what can you do with a paper clip? Very simple question. Was very central in that test battery. And then the researchers doing that experiment, they looked at the answers people gave, and they made a distinction between people that were very, very good, and they called them highly Creative. And it turns out, among young children, almost everybody scored very highly on creativity. They did way, way better than the adults. And that led to the development of a theory that there's really two kinds of thinking. One is divergent thinking, that is the wild, associative, creative thinking. And the other is convergent thinking. That's the sort of the voice in your head saying things like, oh, but is this really necessary? Oh, is this possible? Isn't this too expensive? You know, this is that you could say the divergent thinking is the gas pedal in the car and convergent thinking is the brake. Now, it turns out that divergent thinking is something you're basically born with. It's in you as a child. It's very active as a child. And convergent thinking is something you learn over life. And that makes you less creative when you grow older, or at least it feels like you're less creative or not as often inspired. It's because the convergent thinking kicks in more and more often and usually also way too early in the process. And being creative and being inspired, one way to put it is trying to find that child in yourself. Go for that divergent thinking and forget about convergent thinking. Shankar Vedantam In some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that, of course, both are important, to use your analogy of the car. A car with just a gas pedal is a dangerous car. A car with just a brake doesn't go anywhere. The question is how to find a balance between those two things. And what I hear you saying is that many older people have come to use the brake so often that they've forgotten to use the gas pedal. Ap Dijksterhuis Exactly. They may use the gas pedal, but it's immediately inhibited. Yeah. We have to learn to not use the brake too often and to tell ourselves, you know, maybe next week, but this week, you know, I want to do something else and forget about the brakes. ([Time 1:07:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8d472f4c-0061-4e39-acd7-be913f65e45c)) - **Use Art To Challenge Your Brain** - Challenge your brain’s predictions with art, travel, unfamiliar cultures, and inspiring people. - Unexpected experiences create new associations and make creative thinking more flexible. Transcript: Ap Dijksterhuis Yes, the art begets art. The overarching sort of theory, philosophical theory in psychology and neuroscience these days is that your brain is basically a prediction machine. What we are doing with our brains is we continuously update a prediction of what is going to happen in the near future and also in a somewhat more distant future. We try to predict things. You know, if you want to be creative, you have to almost like challenge that prediction machine. You have to show it things that it doesn't predict. It makes your brain more flexible. It leads to new associations. And how do you do that? Well, there's various things to do. One is indeed art. You know, art is challenging your prediction machine. It's confronting yourself with something that you don't expect. Another good way is, you know, to go and travel to very distinct cultures or to talk to very, very inspiring people, you know. But yes, art begets art. ([Time 1:10:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/25fb13b7-8150-4453-85aa-7222c623416c)) - **Walk And Meditate For Better Ideas** - Create relaxed states through meditation, walking, commuting, bathing, or the half-hour before waking. - These “three Bs” and long walks can improve communication between conscious and unconscious thought. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam It seems that inspiration comes to us most often when we're in a rather relaxed or even meditative state. You've actually conducted a study with Zen meditators looking at how the practice of meditation affects the transfer of insight from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Tell me about the study and what you found out. Ap Dijksterhuis What we did in that study was actually, it's quite straightforward. We asked people questions that could be answered with two, three, or four different answers, like name one of the beetles or name one of the colors of the American flag. And before these questions, we subliminally presented on a computer screen, we presented one of the possible answers. And then you ask the question and you see whether they actually use that unconsciously activated answer. And it turns out after 20 minutes of Zen meditation, people actually do use these answers much more often than on the basis of chance. And under normal conditions, so without meditation beforehand, they don't use the answers. So it was one way in which we could show that active information in the unconscious is transferred to consciousness easier or better after a brief period of Zen meditation. Shankar Vedantam And why do you think this is, Zap? Ap Dijksterhuis If you look at classic meditation technique, most of them are really about concentration. What you are doing is trying to look deeper into your own mind. So almost in a literal sense, what you are doing is you increase the traffic between consciousness and the deeper unconscious regions of your mind. And that's indeed what we showed. Shankar Vedantam So besides formal meditation, you say that the meditative state of mind that facilitates insight can come about in the course of daily life. In this regard, scientists sometimes talk about the three Bs. What are these three Bs? Ap Dijksterhuis The classic three Bs are the bed, the bus, and the bath. And yeah, scientists jokingly said that these were the moments where the possibilities on having a really good idea, an insightful idea, inspiration. And also the last hour, half hour before you really wake up and you're sort of in this half sleep is also for many people a very productive moment. And in the car or public transport or train or plane is also known to be a moment where people do get good ideas. Shankar Vedantam I want to play you a message from a listener we received about the power of walking. This is listener Polly. Speaker 4 I was ordained as an interfaith minister in New York and had taken a class on pilgrimages in seminary and decided to set forth from Saint-Jean France, over the border into Spain and walk The 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago French route on my way to Santiago, Spain, which took me almost 41 days. And I decided to hike this route in silence and by myself for those 40 days as kind of an homage to my own creative process, what I wanted to do next in my life, and just wanted that time. But when I started walking and was about 20 days in, with an average walking distance of 15 miles a day, I started to notice my subconscious and my conscious mind became very cohesive. And I started to have visualizations and really was in a place that I had never experienced before. Shankar Vedantam Polly goes on to say that it was during a sunrise walk on this journey that she had an epiphany, and it led her to create a non-profit organization. So, Ab, talk about why walking seems to wake up something in the unconscious minds of so many people. Ap Dijksterhuis Again, this is really a wonderful story. And when I studied the working habits of all kinds of geniuses in the past, of scientists, but also all kinds of artists, there are quite a number of commonalities between all these people. One of them is that they are passionate and they work hard. But these things you would expect. But one other commonality is they're all walkers. They make their daily walks, sometimes two, three hours, sometimes shorter, but they all make their daily walks. This goes one step further than merely taking a one or two hour walk. But even if you just walk for one or two hours, what you experience is like the boundaries between consciousness and your unconscious are slowly fading and they become, as she said, More cohesive. ([Time 1:16:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1bf8d5b3-3931-4afc-af9d-b91eadf6a72d)) - **Strong Goals Prime Intuition** - Inspiration usually requires deep background knowledge plus strong motivation to solve a meaningful problem. - A powerful goal concentrates attention and strengthens confidence in relevant intuitions. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam So up, I find Ruan's story so wonderful, but it makes me wonder the extent to which deep background knowledge is a prerequisite for inspiration? Ap Dijksterhuis Yes, most of the time it is. If you want to solve a scientific problem, of course, you need the background knowledge. And what she was talking about is highly specific and perhaps only a few people could have solved it in the first place. This is true not for all things, but definitely for most things. A good idea for a new novel will probably only come to somebody who writes novels. You know, it's not some random process whereby people on the street will also get these huge ideas. And the second reason is that motivation is incredibly important. You have to really want it for it to happen. Shankar Vedantam Let's talk a moment about the relationship between goals and inspiration. It might not be intuitive, but you say that to create the conditions that generate insight, we can begin by setting the right kind of goal, one that's big and highly motivating. What do you mean by that, Aap? Ap Dijksterhuis Inspiration favors the people who really want to solve something or make something or create something. And the stronger the goal is, the more brain capacity you're actually using for pursuing that goal. That's also the reason why some of the more extreme geniuses in our past were highly monomaniac. Newton died when he was 84 years old, but he died a virgin. He never made room in his life for something like love. Now, I wouldn't recommend that, but that's what he did. And there are a lot of examples of people who achieved way more than, let's say, normal people, but at the same time, were very monomaniac simply because their brains were hijacked by Their incredibly big, strong goal. Shankar Vedantam You also suggest that when our brains are hijacked in this way, we are more likely to have faith in our intuitions. Ap Dijksterhuis Yeah, that turns out to be true. There's various ways to test it. Yeah. People who really know what they want have a stronger intuition and also more faith in their own intuition. ([Time 1:25:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ce699e7a-0ca3-4148-aca0-fd62dd0d1318)) - **Combine Data With Informed Intuition** - Match decision methods to the problem: use data for technical choices, but include intuition for complex personal decisions. - Gather information, sleep on it, then make a quick informed intuitive judgment. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam So while we're living in a very data-driven time in a variety of professional and academic fields, quantitative analysis is often seen as more reliable and insightful. We received a message about this from listener Nikki. Speaker 4 My biggest frustration is that when I come up with the insights and share them with other people at work, the people I speak with are quite skeptical about anything that doesn't come From methodical, analytical work where I have facts and figures and data and metrics. And so any insights that I have that I know are true aren't trusted or believed. And they say things like, oh, yeah, you say that's your intuition, but we need facts and figures. Shankar Vedantam So I would be interested to hear what you think of that. Thank you very much for everything you do. What do you think is the right balance between data and intuition? And do you think we're living in a time that in some ways undervalues intuition? Ap Dijksterhuis Yes, I think we're living in a time that undervalues intuition. Although I would also say that maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, it was actually worse. I think I give a lot of, you know, talks to companies and government organizations. And I, my feeling is that there's actually a little more room for intuition than in the past. But the right balance purely depends on the kind of problem and the kind of decisions you are talking about. Again, if you're buying a new washing machine, the technical aspects and the numbers and the figures are probably the only thing that should count. Who cares about what a washing machine looks like? But when you buy a house, it's more complex. There's more emotionally charged information that you have to take into account. If you make huge personal decisions between your current job, for instance, or a job offer from somewhere else, or when it comes to things that have to do with love, you know, romantic Love, you're not going to make a pro and con list. And that's hard to verbalize and you can't quantify it in terms of, you know, numbers, but it is incredibly important. So the right balance purely depends on the kind of decision people are making. But often the wrong balance is where they don't take intuition seriously and only want to base their decisions on facts and figures. Very often, that's not a very good idea. Shankar Vedantam I remember speaking many years ago with Danny Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics. And he told me about a very interesting story in his younger days when he was helping an organization make decisions, and the organization was primarily relying on intuition and often Making mistakes, relying on intuition to make judgments, and those judgments would turn out to be wrong. So he came up with a much more methodical way of collecting information, collecting data, understanding the data. But then he had a really important insight, which is that after you collect all of this data, the right thing to do is to actually shut the book on all of the data that you've collected and Then make the decision intuitively. And the point that he was making was that intuition in itself is neither good nor bad. It can produce bad results. It can produce good results. But when intuition is informed by learning and by discipline and by data, at that point, you are turbocharging intuition. And I'm wondering what you make of that, Arp, and if that's a way in some ways of squaring the tension that perhaps has run through our conversation between data and intuition. Ap Dijksterhuis I have to say I completely agree. Intuition that is not at all informed is pretty much useless. And intuition by people who have a lot of experience can be incredibly useful. If there's a house on fire, the question is, can I still go inside to rescue something or will the house collapse? My intuition is useless. But a firefighter's intuition who's doing this, who's been doing this job for 35 years is probably incredibly reliable and it's best device you can get. But, yeah, when it comes to making an important decision, I completely agree with Kahneman. In my own work, we provided people with information pertaining to a decision like choose between four different departments and we give them a lot and a lot and a lot of information. And then we tell them to sit on it for a while sleep on it almost sometimes literally sleep on it and then the following morning follow your intuition you don't have to explain to me why You think this is the best department you know follow your gut and if if if these steps are met so first all this information then a period of unconscious thought, then a quick intuitive Judgment, that's indeed the best way to make a decision. ([Time 1:28:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ebce5ca-2df4-4500-8065-7eae32e88604))