297. Unlock Your Non-Obvious Thinking with Rohit Bhargava

Welcome to episode 297 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Rohit Bhargava, author of the Future Normal.

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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Rohit Bargava. I first met Rohit at South by Southwest earlier this year where we were both speaking. One of the main slides in his presentation said the people who understand people will always win and I knew instantly he would be a perfect fit for the Brainy Business. So here's a little bit more about Rohit. He is on a mission to inspire more non obvious thinking in the world. He is a three time Wall Street Journal and USA Today best selling author of nine books including the one we're going to talk about today called the Future Normal and he's widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends, innovation and marketing in the world. Rohit has been invited to deliver sold out keynotes and workshops in 32 countries around the world to to change the way teams and leaders think at the World Bank, NASA, Intel, LinkedIn, MetLife, Under Armour, Univision, Disney and hundreds of other well known organizations. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur and founding two companies, he spent 15 years leading brand strategy at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett where he advised global brands on human behavior, marketing and storytelling. Outside his speaking and consulting, Rohit has taught persuasive speaking and global marketing as an adjunct professor at Geor Georgetown University. He's frequently quoted in the global media and writes a monthly column on trends for GQ Magazine in Brazil. Now I know you are excited to.

Hear all about what he has to.

Say and really quickly before we get.

Into the conversation, I want to be.

Sure you know that there are links in the show notes for everything including related past episodes, links to articles and books including the Future Normal and some.

Of Rohit's other eight books and so much more. It's all within the app you're listening.

To and@the brainybusiness.com 297 now let's jump right in. Rohit Bhargava, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you so much. Yay.

I am so excited to be talking with you here today, as I'm sure I will have said in the intro. And we were just connecting a little bit on here. We met for 10 seconds at south by Southwest, where I experienced a lot more of you at south by than you you got of me because I went to your amazing presentation and then came by and said, hey, gotta talk to you, gotta have you on the show. And so I'm glad that it ended up being a fit and for you.

To come join me today.

Yeah, me too. And this is my chance to catch up and get a chance to know you, so it's perfect.

Awesome. Well, I love that. Well, for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about your background and the work that you.

Sure, yeah. So I talk about and write about the future at the moment. And my big platform that I've been using for the last 12 years is non obvious. And so I write about what does it mean to be a non obvious thinker. And I come from the world of marketing and advertising, and I know there's lots of interaction between that world and behavioral economics. And I've got a little bit of background in when those two worlds started to intersect for me earlier in my marketing career. So I'm happy to talk about that and the new book and all of those different things.

Yeah. How would you, I guess, jump in and talk about some of that as far as the tie in with marketing and behavioral science and all that good stuff?

Yeah. So I was at Ogilvy at a time when there were several thought leaders in the world of marketing and advertising that were really starting to pay attention to behavioral economics and talk about it as an aspect of understanding your customer in marketing and advertising. So guys like Rory Sutherland or Christopher Graves, like these were early pioneers in trying to blend this world of behavioral economics, which had kind of been, in the academic sense out there, but not necessarily intersecting with the corporate world. And interestingly enough, at Ogilvy, we had an entire division that was dedicated to doing behavioral economics for corporate customers. And I was there kind of at the beginning of that whole journey. So it was really interesting because all of a sudden it was like this whole concept unlocked for us of using psychology of behavior to understand why people did things, which is obviously pretty useful when you think about marketing and persuasion and advertising if you use it in non evil ways.

Yes, definitely. And I'll be linking to Rory's book Alchemy in the show Notes, as well as Sam Tatum, who wrote Evolutionary Ideas and was on the show in 2021 to or 22 to talk about that when that book came out. Both great people at the Ogilvy team.

Of course.

Course.

And yeah, definitely, you know, Ogilvie being a place of lots of non obvious thought, I would say just over the years. Right. So how did you go from that to I guess even the framing of calling it non obvious I think is fun. And I know you told a little bit of story of your background during your talk at south by. So however you want to jump in on, you know, forming this idea of being non obvious and why that's important.

Yeah, I mean, I'll. I'll try and share things I didn't share then because I figure people can just go and watch that video and see the stories there.

We'll link to it.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the term non obvious, it's interesting. I had been using it for a while before I eventually turned it into a platform, which it became later on. But my first book, which came out in 2008, which was called Personality Not Included, was all about why I thought companies needed to have a personality when it came to their marketing and how to create a more human brand. And the very beginning of that book, I wrote about a non obvious way to read the book. And I used that term back then. And it didn't turn into a platform until a couple years later when I then started doing trend reports, which became really popular. And then the trend reports led to some ebooks that I did, which eventually led to me getting a book out in 2015 which was called Non Obvious. And at that point I'd been doing the report for a few years. It was becoming an annual tradition for me. And when the book came out that hit the Wall Street Journal list, that sort of coincided with the time when I branched out and became an entrepreneur and started my own business as opposed to staying in the agency world. And every year after that I published a new version of the book. And so by the time 2020 had rolled around and I did Non Obvious Megatrends, which was the final book in the series, I'd been doing this annual report for 10 years. So then I had 10 years of this track record of talking about trends and the future and it had become pretty popular. I was doing an annual talk at south by Southwest by that point. And so that's kind of where the non obvious platform came from.

Yeah. And so the talk you were doing at south by, you know, and the Future Normal and the non obvious trends. Can you share a couple of Things like what makes one of these ideas non obvious for people and why is it important to be following? How do you even look for something that's non obvious? How do you find that?

Yeah, we published a new book, so you mentioned the Future Normal, which is what we published in 2023. My co author and the we is Henry Coutinho Mason, my co author. And that was sort of the next evolution of this way of thinking about the future. But when I thought about non obvious people were attracted and wanted to hear about the trends. But really what I was talking about in that talk and in the book was a way of thinking and a way of changing your mindset to see what other people miss. And I developed a framework to be able to do that. And it was hugely valuable in the world of marketing and advertising because you're being paid to creatively come up with solutions and to understand people and figure out ways of telling stories. And this idea of being a non obvious thinker I realized was something we were paid for in the creative industry but was a skill set that anybody in any industry could use. And so the book and my talks and all of the things I started doing became about trying to bring more non obvious thinking into the world. And it was about teaching people to be more open minded about finding ideas in unusual places and seeing the connections between things that sometimes don't seem connected. And that became the mission behind this idea of non obvious. Like that's how I started describing it.

Yeah, I know.

For me, A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger is one of my very, very favorite books. And it was the first time that I came across the term of combinatorial thinking being something that sounds super complex to people and is is really easy. Right. Like you said of these non associated ide can come to but are actually connected even though it feels like they shouldn't be. And how that can help you to be more innovative. And one of my favorite things, you know that he says in the book, there is, you know, instead of trying to connect A to B, you want to try to connect A to Z and better yet a to 26, right? To like think about the way that you kind of shift and spread out that thinking. And that's something that's always stuck with me and I love doing question storming with teams. So for you, like how do you help people to start to think about finding those non obvious but important connections to things that seem like they shouldn't go together.

So my background has always been as a storyteller. I mean that's what I associated with, and that's what I love to do and what I started teaching and talking about. And so my entryway into this way of thinking is telling stories. Intersection thinking or intersectional thinking is kind of my version of exactly what you said, which is a combinatorial thinking. I'm saying I'm screwing it up now. Yeah, yeah, combinatorial thinking. See, there you go. But the idea is that you teach people to see unusual things and collect them and then start to spot the patterns between them. And to some degree, it's like building a puzzle and seeing what those different interlocking pieces might be. And to another degree, it's challenging yourself to consume unusual information, different sources. So I have a lot of different exercises that I encourage people to do in their daily routines to try and shake things up a little bit. So watch things that you wouldn't ordinarily watch. Read a magazine that's not targeted to you. Try and break out of this sort of media bias of just consuming the same things. Don't read stories on social media which are tailored and personalized. Oftentimes when the headlines are changed and the images are fixed, you read things in print. Because the thing I read in print is the same thing you read in print, no matter who we are. So these are little hacks that allow you to start to see information and consume it from different sources in different ways and not just surround yourself with stuff you agree with.

Yeah, I'll definitely link to the episodes on confirmation bias and the focusing illusion in how we can get so narrowed in on stuff. So I guess the, you know, the root of that, and I want to talk about storytelling too, but why does that matter, right? Why does it matter to have this differing opinion? Why should we break that up? I obviously have some thoughts on it, but I would love for you to share that with the audience.

Well, I think there. There's a couple reasons. One is that you understand the world and what you're being told from a degree different perspective. If you become someone who is thoughtful about it, you're not as easily manipulated, you're not as easily outraged. You start to give yourself a perspective, which actually is better, I think, for. I don't have the science behind this particularly, but I think it's better for your mental health. You know, I can't imagine that it's a valuable way of living to wake up every day outraged or actively manipulated by the people who are profiting by doing that to you and instead being able to see through some of those things and be a more savvy person when it comes to media consumption. I mean, I think that's hugely valuable for anyone, no matter what you do. I do think there's also an upside when it comes to creativity and being more innovative, being more creative, being more willing to break out of the thing that you've been doing in the past and to do something new or something different, which is another recipe, I think, for being more successful in your career. Because you're not just stuck on doing things the same way that you've always done them, you actually can think about new ways of doing it.

Yeah.

So do you have some examples from a business perspective, whether, you know, we can go back to time with Ogilvy or in, you know, what you've been doing since, of how this non obvious type of thinking, how getting out of the norm, reframing an idea, bringing things together that seem like they shouldn't go together, how that's been valuable for brands, for organizations?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of examples that I use kind of unlock this way of thinking through things that have been hugely successful sometimes in history. So if you think about the founding story of Starbucks and how Howard Schultz was working in the world of coffee and went to Milan on a trade show to basically buy coffee equipment. And while he was there, he was walking down the street and he saw all of these coffee shops where people were just hanging out and spending time with one another, and it was a big part of the community there. And he thought to himself, why don't we have this in America? Why don't we have this type of culture in America? And he came back and he bought the Starbucks brand from the original founders of it. And he founded what he called the third place. Not work, not home, but the third place. And it was a place for people to hang out. And I use it as an example because here's one guy who was traveling, walking down the street, not looking at his phone, you know, not distracted, paying attention to what was going on. And he has the idea that turns into Starbucks, which is one of the most successful brands in history. Imagine if he was looking at his phone, sending that last text message. He never notices these coffee shops and he walks past this billion dollar idea. And the analogy for anyone who's listening to that story is maybe you're walking past those billion dollar ideas yourself because you're not paying attention to it. And so the lesson behind it is we have to teach ourselves to be more observant of the things that we see every day instead of so focused on the things that we need to do or that, that last email that we need to send.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I. So every episode of the podcast and my signature line, I always end with be thoughtful. And that is the be is capitalized for behavioral economics, just for a fun little Easter egg there for the world. But this aspect of thoughtfulness being both, you know, in your own brain, you know, think a little bit more about the status quo and things that we do. But also, you know, when you're in the grocery store, tell people like, ask like, why is this on that shelf instead of this shelf? What if it was somewhere else? Why not look at this? Why not do that? I wonder why they did that that way. That, that aspect of that intentional mind wandering is so important. And you know, however people find that, whether it's traditional meditation or, you know, I like to go out for a run and be able to see, let stuff exist in my head and I find that to be really valuable. Maybe haven't come across my Howard Schultz moment perfectly just yet. Not my billion yet, but you know.

Hey, maybe it's on, maybe it's on its way. But yeah, you're right. I mean, thoughtful we definitely align in the way that I think we, we see the potential for this. Being thoughtful is one of the five habits that I talk about for being a non obvious thinker too. Along with being observant, curious, saying things elegantly and being fickle, which is saving an idea and coming back to it.

I am intrigued by the saying things elegantly for lots of reasons. I, you know, so what can you share about that aspect?

That was probably my English major coming back, but also the idea that in the world of advertising, if you're doing things like writing a tagline, every word matters. I mean, you agonize over the words that you pick when you're doing a tagline or a brand because they matter so much over the long term. And to me that's an, that's a manifestation of elegance. Elegance is, is saying what you mean in a short but beautiful way. And that's about words. I mean, there's other ways to be elegant. But. But that's a lot of what I think about when I writing or when I'm expressing myself.

Yeah, it's the. And you know, I've heard it attributed to Mark Twain and then heard there are many others that have said this over time. But the, you know, sorry this is such a long letter. I would have written a shorter one if I had had more time.

Yeah, it is what every writer would say in some way.

Yeah. And the research showing too, over time that people believe things that are said more simply. It feels more truthful, it feels more honest. It feels like people are more knowledgeable when they can say things in a simple way. When you start to muck it up with big words and it feels really complicated. I know people default to that when it's an area where they feel uncomfortable, but it actually can make it so people are less likely to believe what you're saying and what you're talking about. And so that aspect of understanding it well enough to be able to say it elegantly, I think is a really important aspect that most people don't include in those frameworks or guidelines, like you're saying, which is why I kind of glommed onto that one.

It's a communication skill that anybody can practice and learn. I think that's worth it. I think it's worth it.

Yeah, I would agree, definitely. And so for everyone that is looking to be able to say it more simply, to be a little bit more elegant in their language, do you have a tip of getting started for those who maybe that it's. They've never really thought about the words that much before, felt like it shouldn't matter.

Yeah, I mean, there's a few things. So one is a lot of times the way we express ourselves in written communication is far more complex than what we would already naturally say. So the trick around that is anything that you're writing, particularly if it's very important, you can print it and read it out loud. And anything that sounds like something you wouldn't naturally say, you change. So that's an old trick to be able to get to more human language. It also helps remove jargon and things that we often put into business communications because we're just used to writing in that way. But then as soon as we said it out loud, we're like, oh, I would never use that word. Like that sounds so stupid. And so we fix it. So that's one trick to be able to get past that.

Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. It's amazing how we kind of forget how we interpret information when we sit down and try to write something or to set up the sales language or whatever you like. Forget how you like to be communicated to.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, it is. You landed on something really important, which is that we have to remind ourselves this is not. Sometimes people believe, oh, you just have to be naturally gifted with doing this or with communicating in this way or with being a great writer. And the truth is that sometime, I mean, yeah, talent can help when it comes to some of these things, but we can also teach ourselves to get better at doing these things.

Yeah. And it just. It takes that dedication or focus of choosing what's most important and why you need to focus on that. Because you can't change everything and you can't do it all at once. And so what's important, why does it matter? And I like all five of what you shared, and I think any of them, for anyone that's listening and saying, oh, do I want to be curious first or do I want to be thoughtful? Do I want to say it more elegantly? Whichever one you pick to start with. Great. And then you can just keep going down the list, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's true there is a little bit of a sequence to them. I mean, when I write about them, I talk about being observant as the starting point and then being curious and then being thoughtful about what you've observed, then being fickle, as in like saving it and not overly stressing about having it be meaningful in the short term. And then elegance is kind of the last step. It doesn't have to go in that sequence. But I do put a little bit of sequence to it. Because what I found is when you're writing about these concepts and you're writing a book like that, some people are very conceptual and they want to hear the theory of it and the big idea and that's what they're really engaged by. And some people are like, give me the framework and give me exactly what I need to do, step by step. And that's what they really land on. So as a writer, I really tried to address both of those types of audiences.

I love that. I love it. And definitely that flow makes sense to me. So clearly you were very thoughtful about how you put that sequence into order for people. So when one of the slides, like I said at the presentation, and it was pretty early and really a theme throughout, but this, you know, people who understand people are always going to win. And that is the whole real foundation, I would say, of why behavioral economics matters and where people are saying, well, with like now with machine learning and we've got chat GPT and with AI and with all these things and it's like data, like, where does human behavior even fit anymore? Just like everywhere, but. But no. So how do you kind of align where I've sort of biased it, perhaps with my own opinion there of, you know, why do you say that people need to understand people still in today's world?

Well, I think at the end of the day, the technology is not making all the decisions, right? The people are the ones still making the decisions. And for the foreseeable future, I think that's still how it's going to go. Now, we can rely on technology to help us in various situations, but in many fields, whether it is marketing and advertising or even just being a leader and motivating people and inspiring people, your ability to connect with people is what's really going to make a difference there. And so the people who understand people, they're the ones that are going to win. And you see this in politics too, to a negative degree as well. I mean, the people who understand how to manipulate you and make you angry about things that are really not issues, but who are profiting from that. I mean, you may disagree with them and you may dislike them and never vote for them, but they understand people and that's why they're winning, because they're able to get an emotional response from people through their mastery of some of these techniques. And so I think that you, you know, there are people who I don't like, who I think are doing negative things in the world, but I don't disrespect them or feel like, or classify them as stupid because they're not. They understand what they're doing. Right. And I think that, that you have to be able to, to understand what is happening before you can change the way your mind reacts to it.

Yeah, definitely. When you mentioned the emotional response there, it's bringing it back for me to the importance of storytelling and where you're saying that being, you know, foundational for you. And we've talked a little bit about it, but I would say not necessarily. And serendipitously, I have a series that I've been like putting together that has to do with storytelling of people I'm talking to right now. And so it's like a perfect fit that this is where this episode's going to end up landing. So, you know, why does story matter to you? And when you think about storytelling, what does that mean to you?

Well, let me give you an example. Let me tell you a story, right, as a way of explaining why it works. So one way I could tell you why non obvious thinking matters is logically I could say you need to be more innovative and you need to see what no one else sees by trying something totally different from anyone else, which is true. Or I could tell you the story of Dick Fosbury, who was a olympic athlete in 1968 in Mexico who decided to try the high jump in a way that no one else had ever done, which is he ran up to the bar and he jumped over it backwards. Up until that moment, everyone else had done the high jump, jumping over that bar forwards or with their legs first or anything. But this one guy decided to run over it and he literally flopped. He did a back flop over the bar. And it was so effective that it not only won the gold medal for him that year in 1968, but every Olympic athlete who has done that event since then does the flop. It's named after him. It's called the Fosbury Flop. And the mindset that it takes to see everyone else jumping over the bar forwards or sideways and say, I'm going to turn around and I'm going to jump over that thing backwards, even though no one's ever seen this before and even though people are going to laugh at me and it's going to turn into the gold medal version of how you do this and become the de facto standard for the next 50 years. That's non obvious thinking. That's the power of non obvious thinking. So that's a story. Right. And it tells you the sort of mindset that is required from somebody to totally change and in that case win a gold medal. And I think that when people hear that, it becomes real for them, that they understand. Okay, that's kind of what he's talking about. Talking about.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It. I love that story from when you shared it, you know, in the presentation. And then also. But even just now it's making me think of. And now I cannot think of his name, but there's the, you know, the first bowler that decided to do the two hands, he's from Australia. And that he doesn't put his fingers in the holes. And it was.

Yep.

And people are like, you can't do that. Never going to work. It's not meant to. Not meant to be done that way. That's not how the ball is designed or whatnot. But when you're so that functional fixedness of the. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You know, being too focused is a problem there. So telling that story can then help people, you know, embark in the. Their own version of seeing why non obvious thinking matters.

Right.

When you decide to tell a story, you know, is there an aspect or a framework? And knowing, of course, you know, we could Do a full hero's journey of stories, but in general you don't need that much. You know, how do you decide when to use a story and when to just tell a statement? You know, is there anything when you're pitching an idea or when you're doing a keynote, just, just curious about your thoughts on, on using story.

I think that I'm constantly using stories, but they don't necessarily need to be long, drawn out, super intentional stories. Right. I don't have to go in with every story and be like, let me tell you about the one time where this thing, imagine the scene, it's dark and nighttime and like, you know, people are just like, come on man, like I don't have time for this. Right. So when we say story, sometimes it feels like it has a lot of baggage attached to it. When sometimes a story can basically be an analogy, that is a sentence. Right. You're still using a storytelling technique which is to visualize something for someone through the words that you use instead of just giving them the logical data based argument. But it doesn't have to be this big overblown, once upon a time type of thing that people sometimes are like, oh, we've watched away. You've watched a little bit too much Ted talking like, we don't need this man. So you have to choose the moments for it and you have to get the situation right in the, in the storytelling. Right. And you have to be able to land it quickly enough that you don't lose the audience. And so a lot of what I did or what I learned when it came to keynote speaking and when I started doing a lot of keynote speaking, then started getting coaching for it, and then I took acting training to become a better performer. A lot of what that taught you was to get a sense of the audience and what type of journey they will take with you. And I have permission, when I'm on stage for 45 minutes doing a keynote, I have more permission to take you on a journey through these stories than if I'm trying to quickly explain something to somebody. So you have to read the room when it comes to storytelling also.

Yeah.

And when you have like you said, a 45 minute presentation or you have a whole of bunch book, you know, that you have to be thinking about. There are lots of little stories along the way, but like, what's the full journey that we're going on? Why do we talk about this story before this one? And you know where you did 15 on obvious trends in the talk, you know, which one comes first which one is the one that you end on? How does this one lead into this one? And why would we talk about that instead of this? You know, all those sorts of things.

Yeah.

A little bit of what you're talking about is what I would typically call and what I've taught in classes as storyboarding, which is what's the flow? In screenwriter language, you would call them beats. Right. Or in movies, you'd call them scenes. The idea is like, how do you go from this beat to this beat to this beat? And what's the logical flow between them?

Yeah.

Any advice for someone who is wanting to be better at doing presentations to start thinking through those beats?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that you can take a lot from watching Master Storytellers. I mean, you can take a lot from trying to watch a film or watch a show and map out where those beats are. And for me, one of the things that really helped me is early in my career, I sort of played with the idea of being a playwright and screenwriter. And there are a number of books that are sort of iconic in the world of playwriting and screenwriting. There's a book by Syd Field, who is really well known. There's another guy named Blake Snyder, who sadly passed away, but he had a whole book about screenwriting called Save the Cat, which was amazing. And so a lot of these resources, when it comes to teaching people how to write a screenplay, are really useful for people who are writing in a business context or doing something that's completely unrelated to movies or screenplays or plays or anything like that, because it teaches you story structure. And I think that I definitely benefit now, even from having read and spent so much time studying those techniques, because I use some of them now, probably unconsciously, without even thinking about it.

Yeah, definitely. As they get to just be part of the process for you.

Right.

And that's. I love to hearing all the investment that you've made into being a great presenter. And that's same as what you were saying of, you know, for being a good writer, doing great ads or whatnot. Where people say, well, you're either good at that or you're not. Not like, well, you know, people that say I'm a terrible presenter. I. I don't do great on a stage. Say one like, stop telling yourself that because you will always be that. If you keep saying that, for one, don't prime that there. But like, that's, you know, people see where, you know, for my presentations. For your presentations. Like so many. So many times I've done This talk. Right. So much. I've gone through the aspects of it, and I. I've had it as a book, and I've done this, and I've done improv, and I've done acting, and I've done storytelling. Same stuff. Right. And so there's a lot behind the curtain or wherever else to get to that polished piece. Right. We like to just see the one little like, wow, that's great. They must just be naturally talented at that. And sure, there's some of that, and there's a whole lot of effort and investment that went to get to that point.

Yeah. I would say that for me, I was. I was not the early in my career or even as a. As a kid or even in high school. I was not the natural performer. I mean, one of the reasons why I gravitated towards screenwriting or playwriting is because you wouldn't have to be up there performing. Like, I would be behind the scenes. I'd be ready. And so I learned about story structure by writing about it. I was always a writer. The performance thing came for me significantly later, and I realized that the one thing I was really good at was being able to read a room, an audience, and understand what they needed to hear or what they wanted to hear. And so my speaking style was sort of born out of that, being able to connect with an audience. And then eventually I just got a bigger and bigger audience and bigger and bigger rooms because I could relay that connection on a large stage. And the performance piece was something I had to learn and invest time in doing. And I. I kind of did that in my mid to late 30s, and I'm in my mid-40s now, so that was relatively late in my career that I really invested in becoming great at that. And so natural talent, maybe a little bit, but a lot of it was just finding what I was good at and honing the things that I needed to work on.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. I also.

One other thing, if you don't mind.

This little foray into the. The side tips for things I always like for someone, yourself, who has written so many books, not just one or two, not even just 10.

Right.

But technically.

But yeah.

All right. We'll say. We'll say. Yeah. So how. What are your tips for writing a book for someone who's interested in doing that, you know, what do you say is a good thing to do? What should people definitely not do?

Whatever that.

Wherever the road takes you on book writing advice, the first thing I would.

Say is to be Honest with yourself about whether you find joy in writing. I actually love to write. And so the writing of the books was never a soul draining thing for me. I enjoyed writing. For me it was more about finding the priority of time and then finding the right structure for the books. So the first thing is be honest with yourself about your relationship with writing. The second thing is to remember that there's no such thing as writing one book in one way, because books were written in very different ways. I mean, I've had a book like the newest book, Future Normal was co authored with Henry Coutinho Mason, my colleague. And we took three years and we did a lot of research and interviews and I mean there's 65 or 70 pages of endnotes for the book in the book, Right. At the same time I wrote a career advice book called Always Eat Left Handed, which was my best tips for success for young people. And I pretty much wrote the first draft of that in three weeks. And then I honed it and got editing and all of those sorts of things. I also wrote a guidebook to remote work, which I started the week after the pandemic and we launched it two and a half months later. And then we did a book about diversity called Beyond Diversity with another co author named Jennifer Brown. And that was based on a huge summit that we did with 200 plus speakers. And the entire book process of pulling that into a book involved a editorial team of more than 30 people with everybody doing various things and us compiling all of it together and the whole process took a year. So I share all of those examples with you because there's nothing one way to write a book. There's not one method for it. And for me, across these nine books, I've had very different experiences. Some have been very research driven and very interview oriented. Some have been solo journeys with just me, some have been journeys with co authors. Some have just been something I had in my head and I had to get out of me and a couple weeks later I had a first draft. So there's lots of different ways that I have gotten books out there and tried to share those ideas with the world.

Love it.

Well, thank you for providing those tips. It's helpful, I think for people to, to know what their options are and you know, it doesn't have to be just like what everyone has done. It can be the non obvious approach to book writing. Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, bringing it back, you know, as we kind of close out here with the new book about the the Future Normal, do you have trend or like, one thing that you would want to share about that book, like you said, three years, almost 70 pages of endnotes and thoughts in there. What's the point of that for people? And why do we need to be thinking about what normal will be later?

The big takeaway that I hope people get from the book is that the only future we can build is the one we can imagine. And really what this book is about is to help you imagine a better future by showing you the stories and telling the stories of the instigators, the people, the companies who are shaping that better future by doing really interesting, fascinating things. And so the structure of the book has 30 different trends spanning three different parts. And we talk about how the future will change for how we work, how we live, what we consume, our health, health, our relationships. And every topic that you could imagine we would talk about for the future is probably covered in some way. Everything from space tourism to making weather and controlling the weather, to virtual relationships, to chatgpt and artificial intelligence, to immersive storytelling. We really span a lot of different topics. And so the book is meant to be very wide ranging. And I realized that that could feel like overload for some people. And so we did try and do a few things to try and manage the overload. I mean, we created industry Playlist, what we call industry playlists at the back of the book to say, hey, if you work in this industry, if you work in retail, Here are the 10 chapters you might want to start with. So we tried to break it down for people to give them entryways, but really what this book is about is showcasing the future that is coming, that we think is going to be normal and inspiring. And it's pretty optimistic, the view that we tend to take because we want to try and imagine things based on this question that we continue asked ourselves as we wrote the book, which is, what if things go right? Not if we have the disaster or if robots take over or all the stuff we're used to seeing in science fiction, but like, you know, what if stuff goes right, what would that future look like? And that's what we tried to write about in the book.

I love it. And that's such a, such an important reframe too, where we were talking about even priming yourself of like, I'm a terrible presenter, right? And then that focusing, illusion confirmation bias, it's going to make that be more likely to happen, right? So if we're always talking about what, what if everything goes wrong, how do we keep things from going wrong? We just approach the problem in a totally different way.

Right? That's right.

Yeah. So again, a simple reframe on the non obvious that can change everything, which is the whole point. So yeah, that's right.

That's right.

I mean, I feel like we've got our bow on it here now, but as we close out then, what's the best way for people to find you who are excited to maybe if they wanted a regular dose of non obvious, where might they find that?

Well, that is a perfect segue. So every week I write a non obvious newsletter which comes out every Thursday and it's the most interesting stories of the week that I select based on reading hundreds of stories and curating them into what I find the most fascinating along with my take on why it matters. So if that sounds useful and interesting to you, it's called the Non Obvious Insights newsletter and you can get it by just going to nonobvious.com subscribe or you can go to my personal website which is rohitbargava.com, little harder to spell than non obvious, but rohitbargava.com subscribe and you can get it from there as well. It's the same newsletter and every Thursday you'll just get the most fascinating stories of the week.

Perfect.

Well, we'll make it that much easier too. We'll have the links in the show notes for everyone so they can go find that connect and follow you and get the newsletter and the books and all the things. Right. It'll be in the show notes for the episode. So great. Thanks again, Rohit. It was so great to chat with you again here today and definitely more in depth. And yeah, thanks for joining me.

You too. Thanks for having me.

Thank you again to Rohit Bargava for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation for me? Me, I'm guessing it isn't surprising to learn that there are so, so so many aspects of Rohit's approach to life and business that resonate with me, including taking the time to be thoughtful and curious all the way to saying things more elegantly in the power of storytelling. And though we didn't get into it much, I really like the idea of.

Being fickle with your ideas. I think it's such a fun way to frame that.

I like how that has you coming back to an idea again and again. Instead of trying to make it perfect on that first iteration, you can ruminate and revisit ideas and be okay with changing what you originally thought that's part of the value of being curious and thoughtful. And of course, that storytelling aspect was something that ended up being really a perfect fit with the episodes you've been hearing on the show recently from Troy Campbell on multi narrative storytelling and my conversation with David Paul on behavioral storytelling and so much more. It's such an important aspect of how you present information and getting people to buy in, so I love that it.

Fits so well into the theme of the month or past couple weeks, whatever you call it. You know, serendipity is our friend.

The last thing I want to leave.

You with as we close out the.

Episode is to really take some time to consider framing. If you've been listening to the show for a while or have read any of my books, you know that framing is one of my very favorite concepts and the one that I think everyone should start with. When it comes to applying behavioral economics, you can have a huge impact from a simple reframe without having to spend.

A lot of money.

And whether you think about it as looking for the non obvious, to use Rohit's terminology, or you want to be more thought thoughtful, or just consider your options or flipping the frame, framing is such a key way to do all of that.

However you want to think about it.

Make sure you think about those frames. And that's why framing was the episode I refreshed earlier this week, making it number 296. And that's also my top recommended next.

Episode for you after this one.

If you haven't already heard it. And if you have, there are links for lots of other related past episodes, including those on Priming and Confirmation Bias and the Focusing Illusion and my conversations with Troy and David and Michelle Auerbach and so many more. Those show notes also include links to the books mentioned today, including the Future Normal, as well as ways to connect with Rohit and subscribe to his non obvious newsletter.

It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the.

Brainy business.com 297 and thank you again to Rohit Bhargava for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business podcast.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You won't want to miss it.

Until then, thanks again for listening and.

Learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.