The Power of Saying Yes: How Curiosity Fuels Thought Leadership | Dan Ariely | 666

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. I am really excited today to have a guest that I've hoped to get on for, for a long, long time. So my guest today is Dan Ariely. If you don't know who he is, you need to know who he is, and you should have known who he is. He's a New York Times, 3 times New York Times bestseller. Breakaway book was probably Predictably Irrational. He's an expert in behavioral economics. He's worked with companies like Google, Apple, as well as a bunch of governments. And he has launched a bunch of companies and is involved in amazing projects. Instead of talking about him, I prefer to talk with him today. So thank you, Dan. Thank you so much for coming on board today.

Lovely, lovely to be here.

So how did this? Happen, right? Amongst other things, you teach at Duke. So that's a logical, rational progression. But I would argue that the career, the path of most thought leaders is sort of somewhere between random and not linear and all that. How did all this happen for you?

So I had a terrible injury, right? Which is why I have half a beard and scars and so on. I became interested in helping people make better decisions and I, and I took the academic path. Okay. And I did undergrad and I did a PhD and I did another PhD. And then when I was in my second year at MIT as a faculty member, so no thoughts about anything but the academic path, right? So I, I'm very much. Within the academic path.

And that's a hard path as it is, even though it's rational and linear, it's not an easy path to become a tenured professor.

It's not an easy path, but it's a very organized path. Like, you know what's next. And then I have this meeting with Nicholas Negroponte, who is the head of the Media Lab. And you know, when academics ask you questions, they say, where do you want to publish? Or what do you want to work on? And Nicholas asked me, how is your work going to be impactful?

A different question, better question.

Very different question. And I told him, I said, look, the reality is I don't have a good answer. Give me 2 weeks. And I went and I thought about what is this path of academic research publication and how does it make an impact? You know, we have this thing called, we, uh, it's what is your theory of change? How is the thing you're going to do going to— and we, we always think about other things. What's, what's the theory of change of, you know, education or whatever? And I was, okay, how, how is this academic work going to have an impact? And, and I realized that I need to change some things and I, I went and I talked to him about how, how it might do that. And the Media Lab was a very good place to be. And he offered me a job at the, at the Media Lab and That was my first thought. So I didn't plan on this. And I think if I didn't have this really wonderful meeting with Nicholas, I don't think I would have taken it. So that's kind of, you know, when you say, how do people decide on that career path? For me, I didn't decide. It was a random event and then it did this. And then since then, I've done lots of other things. And, but it's, it's been about gambling with my time. Let's say Nicholas tells me, you know, come and have an impact. And I start talking to more companies and start having an influence. Then I write a book, but then I started really looking for new adventure, new intellectual adventures. So, you know, somebody says. Would you be interested in writing a kid's book? I said, yes. And I try. Somebody says, would you try to, would you want to join us and write a pilot for Hollywood? I say, yes. And I try. Uh, somebody says, would you come to a meeting of all the Arab leagues about the future of the Middle East? And I say, yes. So I, I basically say yes to lots of things and I met Through that, lots of fascinating people and had an opportunity to start lots of new, new projects. And my version of luck is that luck is something we do. And luck is about generating lots of options, realizing we're not smart enough to pick which one is good and which one is not, giving them all a fair shot. At least initially, and then cutting the things that don't work and moving with the things that, that work. So from that perspective, when I say I gamble with my time is I try lots of things. Yes. I fail a ton. I take things that don't work out and I stop them. I think, take things that work out and, and continue. And, um, and I have a very deep sense of adventure, so When things fail, I don't feel bad about it. I'm happy I tried it.

So let me ask you this. So you're at a different stage in your career now than you might have been, say, 20 years ago. So the opportunity cost, not to throw an economics term at you right now, of gambling with your time is higher than it would've been. So I'm, I would imagine you have some set or some framework to say, these are things I definitely say no to.

How do you analyze an opportunity or, so I am, I, it's, it's one of my biggest flaws. Okay. So I have, I have rules for what I say yes to.

Okay.

I say yes to everything that comes from hospitals or healthcare because I'm, I owe a lot to the medical system. I always say yes to governments because I think governments can have a big impact.

Okay.

And I always say yes to things in Arab countries because I'm Israeli and Jewish. So if I'm invited to an Arab country, I feel this is my version of, you know, yeah, some diplomacy. But what I say, so these are things I always say yes to, but no, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this. And I, when I say gamble with my time, I really mean it. I was—

stay there a minute because. As a thought leader, I get that response fairly often is I'm not good at this. And part of it could be a growth mindset, a sense of curiosity, a lifelong learner. Everything seems interesting, right? Everything seems like, ah, we, we could justify to ourself, yeah, this could be a good outcome or whatever. And if the investment is quote, only your time, it's fairly limited. Do you have different sets of criteria when you're answering things that are taking more time? Like, Hey, serve as a, a role in this company, invest your money in this startup or, or, or things of that nature.

Yeah. So, so I want to add something else. I also had a deep sense of obligation. Yes. So when people read one of my books and they have a question, you know, I, I feel I started the conversation, they respond, you know, I, I answer, I, I meet, I meet with lots of lots of people and undergrads and, and so on. So, so in terms of, in terms of my time, I, I do, I do spread myself thin. I do have lots of meetings. I don't do well in terms of things that take, take, ah, I do have, I do have one, one strategy that I recommend to people.

Okay.

I get lots of times when friends ask me for a favor. So they say, hey, you know, would you, as a favor to me, would you help Joe? And my tendency for a long time to say, friends ask, I always say yes. Sure. But then what I learned is I go back to the friend and I say, look, you're a friend. If something is important to you, I'll do it. But let me know if this is really important.

Right.

It's amazing how many times they say, oh no, no, it's not really important. They just asked me.

So I, so, so I, it's just that little qualifier to say, I'm glad to do it. So they know you're, you're a friend.

You're a friend. Really care about you, but I just want to make sure that this is really high on your priority list. In terms of investments, uh, I found a very simple rule. I found somebody else who is making those decisions for me. So I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it. I don't know how to do so. So I, I outsourced it. And in terms of, um, commercial things, I, you know, I have my ideas that I try to push.

Okay.

And I usually, I usually work with companies for a while, right? For free with no commitment. Okay. Before I see there's a real synergy. I'm, I'm not at this, at this point I'm looking for things where would be good for me and good for them.

Yes.

And I don't want to, I, I want to date first.

I love that.

Before committing to anything.

I, I want to go back to when Predictably Irrational came out. So is that, is that 20 years yet?

Almost 20 years. Uh, 2008, February, really good time for a book on irrationality with the financial. I, I didn't plan it, but it, it worked out very well for, for this purpose.

2008. Okay. So, so not quite 20 years ago. So interesting that the timing of the book pushed the book to a place it might not have gone before. It's a very well-written book, very well-researched, great storytelling, et cetera. People were far more interested in the irrational nature of humans during the market crash of 2008. That being said, even though, you know, we could say you were lucky that you should have sponsored the recession and paid for that or something. That opened lots of doors and opportunities for you, right? And sort of elevated the, the, the brand and stuff. And it happened very quickly.

And it was fantastic because, uh, people wanted to figure out things and I was very happy to, I was kind of happy to help. And then this, this happened and, and lots of people reached out and, and I got to help a lot. I also got. Access to data and, um, funding for the research. So it was, it was, um, it created lots of avenues of positive impact and I couldn't have, I know you help people think about this in advance. For me, it was all one surprise after, after another.

Interesting. And it, and it opened a lot of doors. So what is it, what are the things that as a thought leader, how do you determine, and I love the way you talk about gambling with your time. I could spend time writing about this or thinking about this or thinking about that. How do you determine what's sort of worthy of significant investments of your time and your energy relative to your thought leadership?

So my analysis is I look at where I think that humanity is underperforming. So I think we could perform here and we're performing here. And so that's the first question. So take different areas.

Stay, stay there for a minute because a lot of, I love that answer, but a lot of folks are looking at it and say, well, where, where's, you know, and you're an economist, right? You know, like where's the biggest opportunity? How do I make the most money? That's not where your headspace is, which is somewhat ironic, right?

Well, so let me tell you the two elements and you'll see. So, so I say where, where are we underperforming? So underperforming in sleep.

Yeah.

And we underperforming in hate and we underperforming in spending time on social media and da da da. You can make a list of those things.

Sure.

And then I say, and where are my specific skills connected? Because my, my goal is to take these big gaps and make them smaller. Yes. So for example, one of my big research projects these days is the last chapter of people's lives. I'm thinking about the chapter from when people get diagnosed with terminal illness until the end of life. And it's a very badly mismanaged chapter. It's, it's slightly more than 5 years on average from the moment of terminal illness diagnosis until end of life. And people basically accept the position of being a patient and they stop being people. Lots of things, but people. Want to die at home, but they die in hospital. Lots of, lots of mistakes in that, in that chunk. That for me is kind of a very good place. Why? We could be here. We are here and it, we have created it. If you asked me to work on global warming, I would say social science can only do little bit things. We need policymakers and so on. This one. I can see the progress. I can see where we could move forward. So I, I pick that topic and I do lots of things to try and, and understand it. Um, I talk to palliative care physicians and there's a physician here at Duke that I spend, when I'm at Duke, I spend Fridays with him, with his patients. And I talk to veterinarians. Who do anesthesia to, I mean, they, they put dogs to, to sleep. And I talked to about 100 end-of-life doulas. I did the training myself to become an end-of-life doula. So I, I'm kind of trying to understand in different ways. Um, I, I helped a couple of people.

Sure.

I, I created a website, The Life We Should Live, and, and people sign up and I, Talk to lots of people who are on the verge or have a family member and so on. And I, I'm formulating my understanding.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL. TL, and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Yeah, it sounds like it's impact at scale, but through something that is bettering humanity, helping people, reducing suffering, whatever the It is there. And I love the fact that, and you have to have the skills, 'cause a lot of people would like to change a lot of things, but I think that there's, they don't ask themselves the question, why me? Could I add anything to this? I might want to help this or end suffering here, but I, I, hey, that's not my skillset. Finding a place where your skills could be applied and you're not, you know, being a doula, you're helping lots and lots of people, but it's limited, right? Whatever. Yours has the ability 'cause it's an idea. That's putting out there. And I think a lot of people probably haven't thought about, God forbid I get this terminal diagnosis, is there a better way to spend those next couple years that would increase my satisfaction, reduce the suffering of family and all those sort of things?

And you just like, right. So for me, for me it's this dual thing. Where is there a big opportunity? Because I think we're underperforming. And where are my skills relevant? And then I'm happy to explore it. And like in the end of life space, I I don't exactly know where it leads me.

Sure.

But, but I don't, I don't like have an outline of a book or, yeah, yet I'm just, I'm just exploring it. But, but for me, the exploration is also an important part. I, I go, I visit, I meet people. So in, in every area I do things, even if it's on poverty, you know, I, I went to slums. I, I spend time.

I, Stay there a minute because now, now you don't sound like an academic and I'm being sarcastic on purpose. Like a lot of academics will say, well, I'm going to read the data. X percent of people get, you know, get this diagnosis and here's the cost to treat someone. End of life is 80% of their medical care for, you know, poverty in this country is, and they can quote the stats and whatever, but not a lot of academics in bed. And actually, I mean, you're spending every Friday and you may determine in a couple months this isn't really a project for me, or, or I've done the best I can, it's not a book or whatever. But I love that level of, of embedding this quantum, the qual that, that drives you.

So first of all, it took me a while. I was a much more dogmatic scientist early on, but I'll tell you, I'll tell you my thoughts about it. I think that eventually we are a tool. Yeah. And we're a combination of all the things that we've learned and, and try to organize. And with science, there's this magical process of coming up with a hypothesis, and then there's a very rigorous process of testing it. But how do you come up with a hypothesis? And if you, if you just read, you know, Excel spreadsheets or whatever, that initial process. So for me, I, I try to kind of get my own understanding. I say, okay, I want to understand poverty and I want to understand end of life and I can't do it by just reading. I need to, I need to meet people, understand and so on. And all of this is, is nourishing me as a learning tool. Once, once I finish that, I could do very specific studies.

Well, and that could either reinforce a bias that you have or what the data, what you think the data is telling you or change it, right? The data might tell you one thing, but you might have a visceral response of being embedded in a poverty-stricken world or dealing with people that are actually at the end of their lives that change your thinking.

That's right. So I could be in a slum and kind of see something and then say, why do people do it? Is this a real issue? Is this important? And so on. And then, so, and there's lots of little nuances. I'll tell you about something very strange. Different. Oh, I'll tell you about this. So, so I went to visit a burn center in Europe and they described to me two explosions that happened quite a while ago, one in Holland and one in Belgium. Yes. And 8 years later, the people in Holland were fine. The Netherlands, the people in Belgium were not.

Okay.

Question is why? Now it turns out that people in the, in the Netherlands were all from a small village. That works that way. So people went to hospital, they went home, and then everybody knew them, so they went out. They integrated back into life.

Yes.

In, in Belgium, the explosion happened in the train station.

Okay.

Everybody went to hospital, went to their homes, but they didn't feel welcome to go out to the community. You know, you're burned, you look strange. It's not easy.

You're the only one in your community afflicted with this.

That's right. That people did not expect them, did not know it, and they basically don't integrate back into life. Now, what an amazing observation. Now, is this enough for academic research? No. But it's a, is it a really interesting starting point of saying, how do we as people with disability define ourselves? How do we think about ourselves? How do we think about the reaction from other people? How do we improve it?

Um, well, in that case, how would, how would you educate the community to be more open, receptive, et cetera, to some of that?

At the end of the day, you want people to have higher self-acceptance, the people with disability. Uh, which by the way, this beard did a lot for my, uh, this half a beard did a lot of my, my self-acceptance. But then you need society to do stuff. But, but anyway, I have a lot of examples like this where I, I see things and, and they bring up thoughts and then you could take them to the next, to the next stage. And then if, you know, since we talk, we talk about thought leadership, I think it both adds to the credibility of people that they, they have seen things and struggled with them. Yes. And you know, at the end of the day, storytelling is useful.

So that's, that's where I was gonna, gonna go next with you as, as, as we start to wrap, is that when I think about where people come from in terms of their careers or professions, et cetera, most social scientists, most academics are not great storytellers, period, full stop.

Right?

They could make their case, they can make their point. They're very thoughtful, analytical. They go through the data, whatever. But you read most of these academic journals and, and it'll put you to sleep, right? Right. I think one of the amazing things about all of your books is that it's the, the, there's drama and tension in the story that leads you to make it a page-turner. And then of course you're taking away a lot of information. It's backed up by data. It's not just a story, but being able to tell a story that's backed up by research and science and all that. That's a, that's a gift. That's an art.

So, so first of all, thank you. I, I think that actually lots of academics are good storytellers. But they only do it in the classroom. So we all, we all have kind of a split personality between how we talk to undergrads in the classroom and how do we present professionally. And, and I think that there's, there's kind of a, um, something in the, in the, in the feeling of academics against that. But yeah, but I think we, we do that. I mean, maybe some people better, some people worse, but it's not as if academics don't have experience with it. It's just that we have this view, oh, this is a presentation.

It has to be in academic mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, you know, the funniest thing is that when people, somebody's worked for a year on some equation and then they put it on the slide, as you can see, it took you a year to come up with this. How do you hope that people would figure out by seeing it on the slide? But, but no. I think it's very important. And the thing, the thing about anecdotes and stories, it's about you want the principle and you want an example to make it, to make it vivid so that people can remember and take, take it away. And I'll, and I'll tell you one other thing that I, I think is important. I think it's important when I look at what I'm trying to do for an audience.

Yes.

Is sometimes I try to give them a fact of, oh, I want you to think about the fact that people who are, feel highly appreciated, work better.

Okay. Right.

But I mostly want to give people a lens. I want to say, if you look at human endeavor from the perspective of motivation, yes, here is what you would see that you haven't done, seen before. If you will look at this through the perspective of our evolutionary history and how we make decisions, this will give you more insight. So I, I think about lectures or books as, as a lens that is not just specific to the, to the factoid, to the, to the, okay, so you learned 10, 10 things, but ideally it's a lens from which to view other, other things.

And you could choose when to use which lens depending on What you're trying to do.

I love that.

Well, I really appreciate your time and your transparency, and I've been a big fan of your work for a long, long time, and it's great to hear the stories firsthand. I appreciate you, Dan.

Thank you so much. I love it to spend time with you.

Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.