PNTV: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

You're listening to optimize with bryan johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Nodes TV. Today, another great book, David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. David and Goliath Subtitle Underdogs, Misfits and and the Art of Battling Giants. I love Gladwell's style, enjoyed his Tipping Point and Outliers as well. Now he doesn't write traditional self help books of course, but they are packed with wisdom. Philosopher's Note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas from this book. We're going to look at five of my favorites now, so let's jump in. First idea here is the reframe of the classic David and Goliath story. The short story here, and I highly recommend you get the book in general and particularly for the opening story. How he weaves the narrative of the fact that David should have won is remarkable. Now he tells us the ancient armies had three primary different warriors, right? You had your cavalry, the sea here, these were your guys on horses and in chariots. Then you had your infantry, these are your warriors, your foot soldiers, etc. Then you had your projectile warriors, these were your archers and your slingshot masters called slingers. Now apparently these slingers were so lethal that the best could kill someone from 200 yards away. 200 yards away, that's crazy. And they counterbalanced one another, right? But the point of the story is again, David should have won. When you take the data of these slingers and then you look at Goliath and some of the details in the story and modern thinkers look at it and say, you know what? This guy had probably a certain disease that made him so big and made his vision so bad that he actually didn't stand a chance against someone like David, who obviously won. But we've been told the story that he got just absolutely lucky and he shouldn't have won, right? Gladwell challenges that convincingly and says, quoting a historian, he should have won. Goliath had about as much chance of beating David as a Bronze Age warrior with a sword and a shield would have had against a modern warrior with an automatic pistol. No chance. Yet we tell the story completely differently. So Gladwell tells us what other things might we want to revisit and flip around and get some more wisdom out of it. Which leads us to our second big idea. Full court presses. The first part of the book is Disadvantages in advantages. And actually it's the advantages of disadvantages and the disadvantages of advantages. So there are advantages in apparent disadvantages. We just need to look for them. He tells the story of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who now is a part owner or majority owner, I think of the Sacramento Kings who was coaching his 12 year old girls basketball team and he never played basketball. His daughter wasn't particularly good. They had a bunch of people on the team that just, they really hadn't played much before. They couldn't shoot, they couldn't dribble, they just weren't very good. So what this guy decided to do is to run a full court press all the time, literally all the time. And he used his weakness of not having a lot of skill as an advantage. And he just committed to working harder than anybody else. And his team, without a lot of skill but with a ton of hustle, went to the national championships. It's an awesome story. He quotes Rick Pitino who ran his full court press at various places. And the fact is that when you don't have that much skill, you either give up or you compensate for it with an extraordinary amount of hard work. You got to be willing to do that though, because the underdog's competitive advantage is hustle. You've got to be willing to put in the hustle and do the full court press. Awesome story of turning an apparent disadvantage into an advantage. Third big idea, the inverted U. What's an inverted U? That's an inverted U. Really, really cool story. He mentions all the different ways that we see the inverted U show up in society. And the moral of the story here essentially is there are no unmitigated goods. And he uses it in the context of talking about classroom sizes. Most people think that smaller classroom sizes are better, more effective, and it actually follows a U curve, right? If it's too small, it's actually not as good as if it's moderately big. And then it loses its mojo when it's too big. But there's actually an optimum amount here, which is not the smallest possible size and nor is it a huge, huge size. U curves. Everything follows a U curve in our world, or most things do anyway. And there are no unmitigated goods, right? Of just a ton of this one thing will lead to pure goodness, right? I liken this to Aristotle's virtuous mean courage. You may think that courage, you want to have as much courage as you possibly can, but the reality is Aristotle told us there's a virtuous mean, you want to have about that much courage follows a U curve. You don't have enough courage. And what are you, you're a coward. But if you have too much courage, the mojo goes down and you become rash. It's actually healthy to have a certain level of apprehension, right? If you don't have that, you're going to be rash. If you have too little of the courage, you're going to be a coward. U shape curves, you can throw stress into that, you can throw caffeine into that, you can even throw alcohol into that. And he talks about the research on that a little bit, actually improves your lifespan. But too much comes away, brings it down. That's our inverted you the fourth big idea related to our virtue of courage. He tells an extraordinary story about how courage is earned. And he walks us through London. In World War II, when Germany was threatening to bomb London, the British were terrified of the prospect of it and they thought that it would absolutely destroy London and the overall morale of London and their country. And they were petrified about it, right? They actually created all these mental hospitals expecting people to flee London and have industry just completely shut down. And Gladwell walks us through the fact that they essentially got it completely wrong. And what happened was when Germany decided to bomb London and they did so 57 days in a row or something crazy like that, millions of people lost their homes. But what happened was there obviously were people who lost their lives, which was horrific, but a much smaller number than was anticipated. And then there were a lot of what they called researchers called remote misses, right? And those people who didn't have the catastrophic loss, right, of family members and all that stuff, they were remote misses. And what happened to them was fascinating. Where the apprehension they had before the bomb strikes, right? Where they were terrified about it, then they went through it and they endured it. And the difference between that preceding apprehension and their relief afterwards was exhilarating. And they felt this sense of courage and this sense of they can get through anything. They had a confidence, they can get through it. And rather than crumbling, London rose and they felt more strength and solidarity than they could have imagined. And Gladwell tells us the same thing happens with us oftentimes, not every time, but we have the potential to use those disadvantages and those horrific experiences to our benefit to become antifragile that we talk about all the time, right? Nassim Taleb's idea that the wind extinguishes a candle, but it fuels a fire, right? We can take adversity and have it make us stronger. Super inspiring story. Courage is earned, which ties to the next big idea, desirable difficulties. This is the second part of the book, right? So first chapter, the first part rather was the Advantages and Disadvantages. The second one is desirable Difficulties. He shares research on. Again, a bunch of stuff. This one test that's challenging, right? You can test college students on it and see how they do and other people obviously. But the basic idea is it's a challenging test. And the way that the researchers made people better at the test, it's like a logical test, right? Something along the lines of a bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much do each cost? That would be an example of a question in this little test right? Now that's with other questions challenging. You got to think about it. Paradoxically, when they presented the test a font that was really hard to read, it was this italicized 10% gray font that you had to strain to read. It's kind of like annoyingly hard to read. When you made that hard test a little bit harder, performance went up unbelievably, significantly up, right? Desirable difficulties. You'd never expect that making a hard thing harder would increase performance, but it did. And you can talk about all the reasons why, but the fact that it actually worked to the individual's benefit is remarkable. And he uses this in the context of telling stories about individuals who were dyslexic and they had an incredibly hard time reading, but they compensated by learning other skills. They learned how to listen really well and how to interact socially in ways they would not have necessarily learned had they been great readers. A disadvantage had an advantage and they were actually desirable difficulties. Now, Gladwell makes the point that not everyone navigates those difficulties well, but those who do are better off as a result of the difficulty than otherwise. I share my own story in the note and I joke about the fact that I often wish that I grew up in in an affluent, well educated, stable, happy, awesome family, great genetics, all this stuff. But I didn't. I grew up in a blue collar, lower middle class family with a father who struggled with alcohol. His father struggled with alcohol and killed himself. I shared this before I had nature and nurture not working for me as well as it could have been. Now again, there have been times where I've wished that it was little different, right? The silver spoon and the perfect genetic code. But the reality is those difficulties have given me the opportunity to rise up to those challenges. Now I have a deep compassion for what it's like to battle demons and wisdom gained from going through to my own life and being able to say, look, this is what I did. This is what I've studied. And knowing that that's a weakness, what do I do? I run a full court press. I'm not going to complain that I don't have this and this working for me. I'm going to compensate for it and hustle full court press on the fundamentals because I've got a natural vulnerability to the things I don't want to experience. And if I want to win this game, I've got to look at it as desirable difficulties and get the exercise, the nutrition, the rest, the meditation on full court press style. So what about you? What in your life story can you weave as a different coherent narrative? You can look at it and say, yeah, you know what? I had these challenges and this is how it's made me a better person. We have that capacity. And a big part of what our work together is all about is that I'm not pretending it's not easy or that we wish that certain things happened. But the there are enough people who have done extraordinary things as a direct result or influenced by these challenges that we have the opportunity to rise as well we want to do. So think about how you can reframe some of your biggest challenges as difficulties that gave you the resources and the perspective to actually do what you're capable of doing. Remember, courage is earned. I didn't mention in this little section here in the note, I talk about the fact that we don't need to wait for bombs to fall for us to develop this courage every single moment. We have an ability to develop our trust in ourselves. When you don't feel like doing something and you do it anyway, what do you do? You earn trust in yourself. Gladwell says, quoting another researcher, that that trust, that confidence in yourself, is the mother and father of courage. So every single time you say, no, I'm not going to go do that thing that I usually do when I'm not feeling great. You build trust in yourself, which gives you the courage to continue to stretch. And you do it in the little mundane moments day in and day out. Inverted use. There are no unmitigated goods. Find the virtuous mean full court press. I love that. If you've got some weaknesses in certain areas, well, run a full court press. Work harder than anybody else. And remember, three warriors in the old school army. Who knew? But David actually was the favorite in that. What other things going on in your life and in our culture do you want to challenge? The misfits, the underdogs often have a hidden advantage. If you're willing to scratch under the surface and look for it. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd we went from Math to Science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.