The Science Behind Constraints | David Epstein

0:07 Take her. How do you feel about constraints? Oh god, I I hate him. I have a phobia. Tim, I mean being constrained really freaks me out. I I literally get Uh you know, the heebie jeebies whenever I think about

0:20 being you know, handcuffed or unable to move, or wait a minute. Oh god, I don't know. And it's just like being const it just can't move. It's Oh my God, I so It's not not those kind of constraints. What? Oh it's not your secret SM world. We're talking about we're talking about something different here. Three different pitches and not just one. Oh those constraints. Yeah, I I yeah I Thought we were talking something else. So

1:02 Like always. choosing the road less traveled when picking a path that you are constraining yourself to one action based upon a set of situations. Is that yes, that type of constraint. All right. So well then Those types of constraints. I sometimes really like them, right? I mean it it

1:22 It's a bit counterintuitive. But I find them to be liberating. They're not constraining. I don't get heart palpitations from those. Me too. I I I think they're sometimes really good at getting me going or even getting me unstuck. And our guest today, David Epstein, has written a fantastic book about this phenomenon called Inside the Box, How Constraints Make Us Better. Yeah, and it's a fascinating read, and even more importantly.

1:50 I think we had a really great conversation. Truly, listeners will leave with understanding how they can not only embrace the idea of using constraints, but also get the tips and tools that can Use to actually Apply some of these constraints wisely.

2:06 Yeah. We Even go over some other cool tips and what is definitely A legendary. Grooving session. Legendary?

2:16 Yes. Legendary. At least in our own rights. Maybe I just didn't have the right emphasis on legendary. Legendary proving session. Yeah, I didn't say it right the first time, right? Yeah, okay. Well that that would definitely be happening in our own brains. Welcome to Behavioral Groups, the podcast that explores what drives human behavior. I'm Kurt Nelson. And I'm Tim Houlihan. And we use a behavioral science lens to look at how and why we do what we do.

2:46 No. We are excited to have a special sponsor for this week's behavioral grooves. Yes. Behavior Shift is a behavior change company that uses behavioral science to build tools that help you achieve the change that will make your life. better, whether it is identifying your core values to help you set better goals, developing routines and habits to achieve those goals, or building a gratitude practice to bring joy back into your life. Behavior shift helps you do that. From guided goal journals for busy professionals to daily planners to short modules to help you make better decisions or even set better goals.

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4:04 Dot shop. That's behavior shift dot shop. So check it out. You can find a great tool. Uh that will help you We'd a better Uh more productive life.

4:17 When you're thinking of behavior shift, just make sure you get that S H I F T in there. It's a behavior shift. Okay. Yeah. Don't lead out the F. Don't leave out the F. Yeah. Don't leave out the F. Okay. So After you go out and buy the tool that will help you live a better life, you can sit down with a strong pour of positive constraint and listen to our conversation with David Epstein. David Epstein, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and we're gonna start with our famous speed round. And so first of all, would you prefer to learn a new instrument or a new language?

4:59 Yeah. Uh language. New language, great. Oh, that was pretty quick. I gotta ask, in the in the world of like smartphones and And AI and automatic translation and things like that. Will we need

5:13 All that Will we will you need a new language, do you think? Maybe not, but one of my goals in life is to be able to read Jorge Luis Borges in his uh native language. And so that's a thing that's specifically important to me as a goal. I love that goal. Wow. I think that that's uh all right, right. We can go off on whole the engine there, but we're in the speed round and and this is supposed to be relatively speedy. This is very specific. I I wasn't thinking in the abstract about language versus my people that this was relevant too. And and Tim, there is a difference between having something translated and actually being able to understand it in real time where you got the experience of reading. The way you're thinking about

5:56 it in the grammar and all anyway. So So there's like his writing economy as like black magic and I just like Read it and I I I still admire my how does he Get so much in such a small space. And I and I wanna I would like to really be able to intimately understand it in his in his native language. Yeah,'cause even the the English translations are

6:17 Poetic. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Second of our speed round questions, David. Are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker or Something else. Uh neither.

6:30 I keep making it my New Year's resolution every year to start drinking coffee and it lasts till like January third. I'm like, I'm a writer. I should be in Coffee shops. No, it's like no, but it doesn't yeah, no. What's wrong with you? I don't know. That yeah, is it like I just don't care? I mean it's kind of like I know it's not gonna work. It's sort of like a ritual of this being like a failed New Year's resolution now that's kind of a fun thing. Um I think it I think I don't really get much of a rise out of it, which maybe is why Um

7:06 You know, it doesn't really stick. Tim Tim can't stand coffee, so I don't like the taste. Yeah. I like I really like how it smells. Yeah. Oh I'm with ya. I'm with you. I I once stayed in a in a hotel where where the uh they dried the the towels in coffee beans.

7:23 And so the towel smelled like coffee beans. It was fantastic. I loved it. Oh I don't want to put that stuff to my lips. No, but water. Lots of water. All right. Good. Okay. Okay. All right. Third thing run quite. Fantastic. Um Third speed run question, true or false music. Even highly improvised jazz.

7:45 still shows signs of constraint. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean it's a language. It's a grammar. It's a Yeah.

7:53 No, it's I mean those those constraints, those systems Are are what make the language work. Yeah. Perfectly said. We are gonna come back to that and spend more time on that later on. Kurt. All right. Last of our speed round questions. True. We should have more speed round questions. We like speed round. Well, we have more. We could we could just keep going on our we have more speed round questions that we never answer. It's like

8:17 We put a whole list together and then it's like at last minute it's like, ooh, where do I want to go with this? Right. So there it is. Um You want to do more speed round questions? Sure. All right. So fourth and maybe not last speed round question, true or false. Doctor Seuss is the best known author to write an entire book. With only fifty unique words. True. True. I'm trying to maybe maybe the only author I don't know. I mean fifty words is really few.

8:47 Yeah. And Yeah, he was this famous publisher named Bennett Curf. Uh bet him that he wouldn't couldn't write a book using only fifty words. And that that forced him, that constraint forced him to Uh Come experiment with rhythm.

9:02 No, come up with this rollicking rhythm because he couldn't be expansive with his vocabulary. And by the way, when he When Doctor Seuss then started I don't know if I'm violating the lightning round here, but keep going keep going. When He then co founded an imprint called Beginner Books. And it was all built on constraints. So he would he would give vocabulary limits to the authors.

9:23 other all sorts of other rules like the pictures have to be spread across two pages continuously and nothing can be pictured that isn't described in the text. And you can only use uh the these Pure colours, um, you know, a certain number of colours. And for authors that complained or didn't like it, he said, All right, well you're you know, then our imprint isn't right for you.

9:43 Um and it became the most successful Children's book imprint ever and gonna really change children's literature because prior to that when I was reading children's literature for research, it was like Pretty boring. You know, Johnny ties his shoe and walks to school. Like it was not it was not really working. Chick and Jane kind of things, right? That it was yeah.

10:04 Yeah, but the constraints because of that In again, as we're talking about, you know, your book, you know, inside the box and it's all about constraints. Right. So those constraints actually helped how how how does that uh and uh we'll get into this in depth and I know Tim wants to ask a fifth speed round question so

10:25 I'm in overlapping him here, but how How is it that constraints I mean if you think about if general people think about constraints. It's like I am inside this box. I can't be as creative. I can't be as productive. And yet The book and if your premise is

10:43 That's not true. Is that did we get that right? Yeah, and I think so in the in the abstract people think that more freedom or fewer limits will unleash their creativity, but in reality it's just not the case. And as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has written Uh Y you may think your brain's made for thinking, but it's actually made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible because

11:06 thinking is energetically costly and so U you want the the convenient. solution, right? It's like it's like cookies on your browser. It wants to go where it's already been before or do something easy or familiar. And So in fact it makes it incredibly hard to do something creative. Uh when you have a uh

11:25 You know, a cognitive system that Once convenience. has and doesn't so much care if you come up with your your best creative idea and so The best way to make someone more creative is to block the first tool that they would reach for, essentially. Um so they don't go down that path of least resistance.

11:41 And I I kind of did this may maybe I should wait for this, but I I wielded some of this in my own writing of the book. I don't know if I should Well you that was no, I mean you you you applied this to yourself. I mean you you say you you you design the box that you had to write in prior to actually writing. The book. Yeah. Oh that that's a whole that's a whole other one. And so Oh, but but in yes, we can get into all of that, but specifically with like blocking the path of least resistance. So I write about Pixar some in the book and I adapted a rule of theirs that they call the three pitches rule, where

12:13 they would have directors pitch three story ideas instead of one because they found if they only pitch one, they fall in love with it. And it's usually not their best idea, right? The so-called creative cliff illusion. You think your best idea is first, but usually it it comes later. And so I would write the opening of every chapter. 'Cause you just have to get started, right? So I'd write with something that came to mind. Then I'd cross that opening out and force myself to come up with two other places, not just different wording.

12:40 Two other places or scenes or whatever it was where this chapter might start. And Nine of the twelve chapters ended up starting with Um

12:50 the second or third try once I had blocked my first instinct. And Because my first instinct is my first instinct. I don't know why the first thing pops into head. Wha may maybe it's just It was just the last thing I saw or something. I don't know why, but Uh, so it was hard.

13:07 Because once you have something down, you kinda Wanna think that it's right. But I think it was really fruitful. So I was trying to block my own path of least resistance. It is. I love that.

13:18 I love that. Kurt and I come from a behavioral science background, and twenty years ago uh a researcher named Sheena Yangar. uh did this fantastic study on how people buy jam and and what would get people to buy more you know more jam in the supermarket. And in in one condition they handed You know, they they gave people 20 options of you know, put them out on a table and a beautiful display and you get a coupon. And in the other condition, they only got three options. And People were willing to they made more purchase decisions when there were only three options.

13:54 And And we saw that twenty years ago as like, oh, it's a constraint in decision making. But you're Thesis is really about it's just better overall. Like we get so much more, as Kurt was alluding to earlier, creativity, productivity, things like that. benefit we benefit from constraints in all sorts of ways.

14:13 Yeah, let me let me say regarding the jam study, because I think it's like the most famous study decision making. That study. The reason I don't cite it in the book is that I the replication has been a bit shaky. Yeah. Yeah, from time to time. Yes. That said. I think the core

14:32 Has shown up. in a bunch of other places, right? Especially having to do with when choice sets increase complexity. So you see things like Yengar has also looked at people with ex you know, if there's too many four oh one K options at a company, after a certain number of choices, they just Don't even participate, even if that means forgoing the company match.

14:53 Um And with healthcare decisions, if there are too many, they either make worse decisions or they just don't make a decision at all. So That's really counterintuitive, right? You think according to the way that humans are modeled in neoclassical economics. More choices should always lead us to better choices. Always. But

15:10 Turns out humans are not uh Utility maximizing uh automatons. After all. And so

15:18 I I think it's and not not only Does it lead us to either paralysis or worse decisions? But there's also evidence that people are, you know, from like Barry Schwartz and others that Th that people are just less happy with the decision. Yeah. When w whatever it is.

15:35 Right. Because the there's this endless ability to compare to what you what you might have done. I actually just wrote I'm really delaying the speed round here and and I don't know if I've killed it because it was blown us apart here. Yeah. Well Just a whole whole thing here on speed round. That's fine. We're going. I just wrote a a newsletter post because it's around graduation time now. About Robert Frost's poem, uh, The Road Not Taken, because every time around this year I hear it cited a bunch of times. And the typical way it's cited is an ode to rugged individualism, right? It's like you took the road less traveled and

16:12 Um I said the road not taken, the road less travelled. the road less traveled and that that's made all the difference, right? And so the idea is You chose to zig when other people zagged. And that's what led to your success. And I think that's a totally valid message, especially for young people at graduation.

16:27 On the other hand It's absolutely not what Frost was intending. So Th if you read the poem carefully. He says both roads are just as fair.

16:35 He said neither has any difference in how much it's been tried this morning. And he was actually sort of uh having a little fun with his walking partner, this guy Edward Thomas. who when they would come to different paths when they would walk, and the paths would look the same, and he could not decide. And so he would dither over which one to take. And then when they were done with the walk.

16:56 Edward would always say, Ah, we should have taken the other one. And so really frost was kind of Criticizing His decision making where he would agonize over these decisions. that really didn't make much difference. And there's this idea called Fredkin's paradox where

17:12 Yeah. w we're liable to spend the most time on the least important decisions because we're having trouble telling the options apart. Because they're so close and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so it's not that I think the normal interpretation of Frost's poem is is wrong. But

17:25 I I just think it's it's kinda fun that he was recognizing actually the problem of comparing when you can compare all of your decisions to what else might have happened. And and we see this show up in all sorts of weird ways now, like Since the infinite introduction of infinite scrolling, people have been getting progressively more bored. And it doesn't make any sense.

17:46 You know Intuitively. And Researchers who tried to figure out why would do things like assign people to either

17:54 a set of twenty videos that they could choose from. Or just give them one from that same set of twenty that they had to watch. And people who have the twenty. are more bored than those who have to focus on the one. The theory being that Because they're constantly comparing to like what they could have chosen.

18:10 Instead. And so that the Yeah. That feeling of comparison. Like like Frost's uh

18:17 walking mate was doing with trails. spoils the experience of the thing you actually choose. I it's it's fascinating. That That frost.

18:26 Uh poem is about a decision tool. I mean that that's kinda what it is. It's all right. If we're we're stuck here, just take the one that's less traveled. Don't have to then worry about it. It's not necessarily like saying that one's better or not. It's just a way of saying, make that choice and let's just get on with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know who said it, but I th I think it might be Ellen Langer.

18:49 But uh it's something along the lines of Don't make the right decision, make the decision and then make it right. You know, and I think there's some some wisdom to that. Well, and and Herb Simon satisficing ideas. Absolutely. Like just keep moving. It it's it's really life is gonna be okay. And your well being will be better for it.

19:09 Without the agonizing. Yeah, Simon I mean. behind every third rock I've turned over in social science for like a decade. Um

19:20 And That idea of satisfacing Because I think I have maximizing tendencies in many cases. Um, and so you know, or may maybe we would call optimizing now. Um and

19:35 So that's satisfying the idea of kind of having good enough decision rules. was really impactful for me. So For example, my newsletter, this isn't gonna make anybody wanna read it, but um if a if a book tries to be kind of a nine or a ten, you know, in my effort level or or Uh if Or w or my attempt at quality. Uh

19:55 If I get a newsletter post to six and a half. That's my standard. Say send it. Six and a half. I like I like the half is in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Six felt too low, but um And but seven could easily become eight and then it's trouble. So um So

20:12 It's kind of a satisfacing ex Exercise for me. Or at these regular intervals, I'm sending something on every time I send it out. I s I'm I'm sending it out thinking Oh, here's this other idea I'd like to connect it to, or this other thing I'd like to get in.

20:25 But I just now I've gotten used to it. I'm just like This is a six and a half, send it out. And It's kind of important for me and I think people like me. to have some of these areas where we set good enough criteria ahead of time.

20:38 Um So that you don't have to You don't have to agonize. Over everything. So it Uh the example that you just gave indicates that there's

20:47 Different levels of constraint or or actually desire to sort of achieve and perform in different domains. Yeah. Right. And so are there specific areas where you think

20:59 Having constraints is really a good idea. And that there might be other domains where having constraints might not be a good idea. Yeah, I mean, I think there's some level of constraint is going to and structure is going to be useful just about anywhere, but I think there's a lot of devil in the details. So where I said like with a book, I'm trying to get to a a nine or a ten. So I'm not doing that.

21:20 good enough uh criteria. But there are other constraints on me like my Publishers deadline. And Um You know, I I cut this from the book, but I was reading about Hayao Miyazaki because I love his films, you know, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoki and everything. And his lifelong business partner.

21:37 refer to him as the never ending man. Because he said if if we weren't hammering on him. This is when this thing is going to be in theaters, like this is when the previews are gonna happen. He'd continue obsessing over You know, some details in the background of a shot.

21:51 And I kinda feel that way too. So the deadline's very important. You know, knowing Some of the Uh sort of boundaries of the genre. So I know that

22:02 In Maybe all but I'm not really sure. They're gonna be printed in uh multiples of sixteen pieces of paper. And so that's like a uh something that you have to fit into and that includes, you know, citations and front matter and all that sort of thing. So there are other

22:18 boundaries that I'm aware of. Um, whereas my newsletter, it's it's all made up by me, right? No deadline, no word limit, anything like that. So that's where I have to sort of more forcibly put some of those constraints in place. And and so you could put yourself in in more constraints. You could say, I'm gonna do this You know. every day or weekly or some kind of number component. You could say it has a certain it can be it has to be so many words, but it can't be longer than this many words. Um

22:47 And and again. You know, is that Do we need to do this for all of these aspects in our life? Or should we be trying to figure out which are the ones again. Choosing between these two paths.

23:00 Um Do I do I care? Right. And so do I need to be putting constraints on everything or should I be really focusing in on those really important aspects? I mean I think there are so let's say What what would what's an area that comes to mind for you where you think it would be an argument for like maybe we don't want any constraints?

23:20 Oh, that's okay. Um. Oh go ahead. Yeah. fewer constraints, we don't want them to be premature. But you know, let's say

23:37 That's like a dating or something like that. Like a b a choice of a partner is obviously something that You know you might not be inclined to say, Well, six and a half. I'm gonna go with it. Right. Um

23:49 But on the other hand I think There are some constraints that are there and it's you're better off recognizing them, even though you didn't make them. For one is your mortality. Okay. Like you don't want the search to go on forever because there's a very hard deadline that I think we're not that great at thinking about. Like the stoic philosophers talk about Mementomori, you know it's like Every morning, remember your mortality because that will help you figure out what to focus on. And and one thing that I think useful constraints do is force you to clarify priorities.

24:17 And that's what I think that does. And and there there's something like this and all you know. It's called Maranasati in Buddhism. It's like this disremembering your limited time. And I think that can You didn't make that constraint, but that can for some recognition of of how you should make these decisions.

24:33 And there's a famous um So stay on stay on dating. Those are sort of two other Two other points to make because I think that's an area that would naturally come to mind for a lot of people of like I don't want. Any artificial constraints. In John Allan Paulos, the mathematician in his book Innumeracy

24:48 To go through this famous proof of how to select Like get the best chance of having a high quality match mate. And basically Yeah, it's just Probability proof, but

24:58 Basically what he shows is that You should estimate the number of people that you'll ever get to date. And then once you've dated basically about a third of those people. You should pick the next person who outranks all the previous people and stop.

25:13 And so the the path Because it i if you don't do that, if you keep going you're more likely to either end up with a bad fit or with nobody at all. And so the path to the the likely best outcome, right? These are probability.

25:26 Um goes directly through the willingness to stop searching Long before you possibly could. Yeah. And I think that's counterintuitive.

25:37 But I think it's It's kind of profound, especially in a world where you swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, right? And and I think we're starting to see evidence that this does not make people happy. And the psychologist Scott Stanley. It has coined this phrase sliding versus deciding to talk about people in relationships where

25:56 Sliding means They will get in a relationship, but it basically in the interest of keeping their options open. Or or at least feeling that way. Um They'll say, Like, I'm not you know

26:06 I'm not totally sure yet. Right. But escalating commitment happens anyway. So you sort of sleepwalk into it, that's sliding. And if those couples end up married, they're much more likely to get divorced, less likely to be happy. versus people who say, I'm either in or I'm out. That's what it is.

26:22 And so I view that as a type of constraint. Maybe it's a little more conceptual, but making a decision one way or the other.'Cause this whole thing of I've heard businesses talk about Say things. Like I've actually been in meetings where they'll say I try to shadow people at businesses when I can. They'll say

26:37 Oh, this decision's a two way door. And and usually people are, Should we do this or should we not? And they say, Well, it's a two way door. And and my perception is that it really prevents them from committing one way or the other. You know? And I think people sometimes are doing that with relationships where it's like you're not making the decision. So I wouldn't say

26:54 That you should put a constraint on yourself, like I have to find a spouse this month. Right. But I do think there should be things in mind like The amount of time you have. um the realistic sample you're going to ex expose yourself to. And the idea that

27:07 That you should be making a hard decision one way or the other. Uh as opposed to just sort of sort of sleepwalking through this and expecting this completely open process to magically deliver the best results. We talked with Logan Ure, who is a behavioral scientist and a dating expert. And it's interesting because she brought up the similar things, but one thing that you talked about at the beginning is you don't want to necessarily satisfy us for that. And actually Logan said, No, you should. Because we if you have that

27:36 propensity to be a maximizer. It's like Oh, I meant he's a he's a ninety two out of a hundred, but I could maybe get a ninety three or a ninety four or ninety five, and you're going Holy Crap. I'm I'm happy with a sixty five, right?'Cause you make it work and those are different things. Yeah. That's right. And you have to you have right, you have to make it work. No matter no matter who it is, you're gonna have to make it work. Exactly. Am I a hundred?

28:04 No these people think that they are hundreds? Right. So so there's gonna be things that you don't like, just like there are things you don't like about yourself. Um, and so I think that Recognition. Like

28:20 This is something you're gonna have to work on. um is is important and especially It it's like tough to be on the internet now, you know? And and in some ways I'm I'm glad I'm not Uh A young person it's like

28:35 Even even knowing better like I know so much of this stuff is curated and so much of it's fake, but it still kind of affects you if I Oh yeah. All that. how you should be living and how you should be looking and all this kind of stuff. And so I just worry about what that does to our to our psyche if

28:51 Like everybody has these unreal I just don't think it's not a little bit more. Yeah, obviously in human history. We didn't W were probably not well constructed.

29:01 Mm. compare ourselves to the entire world all the time. As opposed to just the people on your block, which is enough, right? That was just more than enough. Yeah, yeah. And so

29:13 I think there could be this really hideous conversion of You know, the this searching for the perfect Um, there actually are surveys showing that socially prescribed perfectionism is on the rise. And

29:27 And the ability to endlessly compare, which I'm like, that just seems like a real recipe for dissatisfaction. Disaster. That that feels like that's a That's an erosion, uh, really, of the human condition that That feels pretty terrible. I I wanted to move from dreaming about

29:45 great partners or the dream boats or the you know, what what we might consider to be, you know, the i the uh the ideal in our relationships to um a dream that uh Dmitry Mendeleev had. uh about the periodic table and'cause you open the book with that story and it's a fantastic It's a fantastic story. Can you it set us up with just a little bit of background of

30:11 Mendelee wasn't the first to try to figure out A periodic table of sorts. But what what does he do and why why did the constraints that he applied work so well? Yeah. That was a that was a very interesting transition from Dream Boats to Mideleyev's Dream, right?

30:27 I think the speed round is dead at this point, unfortunately. Yeah, it is. I'm sorry. You're now into our questions. Here you go. Yeah, so well let me tell you the story that I learned when I was in college chemistry, just quickly to start, which is that That Mendeleev, uh, in the winter of 1869 was trying to order all the elements, the chemical building blocks of the universe. And It was for three days with basically no sleep, he worked at this and Wasn't able to do it and then he

31:01 fell asleep and drifted off into the most important nap in human history. Um Where he saw the elements kind of swirling around and then they they snap together in a grid. And if you move across The grid.

31:13 The chemical and physical properties of those elements repeat. Periodically, hence the name. And This isn't just a poster that hangs in classrooms, by the way. It's like it pointed the way to new materials, to new elements, where they should be. Still motivated this it's still it motivated the search for the underlying cause of this order, which was Adams, et cetera. Um

31:33 And This dream story is what I learned again in college chemistry, you know, scientific society celebrated it, the mattress company Casper used it in marketing. Matthew Walker and his bestseller Why We Sleep calls it the, you know, the ultimate proof of the power of our dreaming brain, like loose from the bounds of reality. And I was surprised to learn.

31:52 That It's Utterly false. Um it didn't happen. Uh in fact, there's a whole history of dubious dream stories in chemistry specifically, but that's a that's wow. Yeah, yeah. Talk about a subgenre. Wow. Yeah, yeah, and I can explain that in a sec, but I'll tell the real Mendeleev story first. Um What actually happened was that he had a publishing contract for a two volume intro to chemistry textbook.

32:17 And He had only gotten eight of the then sixty three known elements into volume one. So you had to get the other fifty five into volume two. And he had to do it in a way that would be make some sense. to beginners. So we had a customer issue.

32:31 And he had a Serious space constraints, space and time, really. Um And so that's what led him to start experimenting with, hey, can I find families of elements that I could describe as a group so that I don't have to go one at a time. And once he started looking at

32:46 elements as families, he started noticing all these similarities. And not just and and sort of repetitive similarities, that that there were like all these analogies between different elements. And it was in doing that that he he landed on the periodic pattern. So he w he was absolutely not looking for a law of nature. He was looking for an organizational scheme for his textbook.

33:04 But that It did. One of the I mentioned that useful constraints can force us to clarify priorities. I think an another, arguably the other main thing that it can do. is launch us into Exploration and experimentation that we never would have undertaken otherwise.

33:20 Until forced. And and that's what happened with Mendeleev. And I I think that gap. Between the myth and the reality. is symbolic of something important, that we overvalue complete freedom and undervalue the power of useful constraints to to

33:33 T. Propel our best thinking. Yeah, I I was gonna ask, like, why is it that people prefer the dream story? Because it it does it is kind of pervasive where the reality of it is not. And I

33:47 You know, is that the reason? Is that we just prefer that idea that Hey, there's this Opportunity to just Anybody if we're working on something can just pop in and there's no work behind it, or what what is that? I think that's part of it. I mean, I think it's just awesome.

34:02 It's just a cool story. Right? Like l lightning strikes of inspiration are cool stories. They they weren't They weren't Uh creativity wasn't Really seen that way until kind of the late eighteenth century

34:18 Romantic period when there was this sort of uh rebellion against the enlightenment, basically. And and that's when you started seeing these stories of people who are just like struck by inspirational lightning or like from the gods or in a dream and all this stuff. And so some I think it was a little bit of a rebellion against things getting too logical. Um but also I d I do think it just feels like

34:42 like what we how we like to think of genius. That these these ineffable uh processes, right? Like what could be more boring than organizing a textbook.

34:53 Uh and Nothing, actually. No. I think the answer is zero. Like there are films and things where they dramatize Mendeleev's dream. Like Dramatizing Organizing elements for a textbook.

35:07 It's not it's not. Nobody's gonna watch that movie, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think it I think it just sort of comports with some of our mythology about how genius uh works, even though That's Not really how genius works. Hey.

35:25 This is Kurt, and we want to say thanks for listening to Behavioral Grooves, and we hope that you're enjoying this episode. But it feels a little bit one-sided. You're hearing from us, but we're not hearing from you. This is Tim and we have two suggestions to remedy that. The first is join our Facebook page and engage with us. We want to talk with you, we want to hear your perspectives, and hopefully our Facebook page might be the place to have some of that interaction. So please, please come and join us. The other recommendation we have for you is to leave us a quick rating. You know the little five-star thing at the bottom of your app? Or a short review, just leave us a few words about what you like about behavioral groups. We'd very much appreciate it.

36:08 Thanks, and we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming. Well, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go to the near the near the end of the book, you talk about framing for innovation and you you you bring up you bring back Dimitri, right? In into this and this idea that Hey, he wasn't the only one that came up with

36:28 Some organizational format for this, and in fact. many of the innovations that we often go and associate with like this lone genius. They were they might have won the race, but by minutes or days or different things, or maybe not at all. And there's multitudes of these that are happening around the world at different places at different times. And you talk about that setting up Uh the the conditions for this and there's a there's that component and and I actually love this part where you

36:59 You bring up the idea of a setter, like a volleyball setter who positions the ball perfectly for a spike. So can you can you talk a little bit about that frame? work of the framing for innovation, but then the setter component that you you You talk about it. Maybe the toughest concept. In in the book.

37:19 in many ways, which I've noticed I always smuggle that into the penultimate chapter of my book. Um and W in with Mendeleev, so he he did make this genius breakthrough, became known as the father of Piotic Table. But in fact There were So there were no periodic tables before eighteen sixty.

37:38 And then there were six. In the next nine years. No. So we went twenty straight centuries with Uh you know. Earth wind.

37:47 uh water, fire as the elements, and then like in the eighteenth century that started changing and and then all of a sudden you get these periodic tables. And What preceded all of those was Uh A meeting in which an Italian chemist said, Hey, look

38:02 All of you are measuring uh weights of elements differently and And other other sort of uh properties of elements differently. And he made a pamphlet and said, Now here's how we're all gonna do it from now on.

38:15 Or we should. And he handed the pamphlet out. And suddenly everybody started using a standardized system. And that meant that Work could communicate across space. And as soon as that happened

38:27 Um It like created a sort of invisible collaboration and and People started Finding the pattern. So Mendeleev Uh, he he sort of won what's known as a priority dispute.

38:40 in science history. Partly because he had the most complete system and he made these bold predictions about where other elements would be, and also because he really wanted to be known. as the founder of the periodic table. So like the one other guy who had basically the same system as him was also at that same meeting where they handed out the standards and was also writing a textbook. So he had the exact same constraints and came up with the exact same table to his historical misfortune, his publisher misplaced it. Oh my god. Um and so it was only found later. But

39:09 That I was using that as emblematic of innovation history where basically every groundbreaking innovation. There actually mo there there's usually one person in the history books that's credited. But There are well known other people who were converging at the same time. I mean, sometimes it's exactly the same time.

39:30 the the transistor, you know, which which enabled our digital age. It's like two one team in Europe, one team in the US, same time. The telephone. Uh Elisha Gray and And Alexander Graham Bell filed in the patent office on the same day. And there were like seven other people that were right, right there at the same time. Um

39:49 Fight. Flight. Flight whatever it is. I mean jet engines, like you know, all sorts of uh rules we use in math and things like that. Um

40:00 It's and and what usually precedes so so in the classic example is evolution by natural selection, where Darwin now for Russell Wallace. When Darwin's Darwin had not published his findings yet. And Wallace sent him Some of his manuscript? And Darwin wrote to his mentor and said, I have never seen a greater coincidence than this. It's like he took the thoughts right out of my head.

40:22 And What led to Darwin and Wallace doing that was obviously they had surveyed really broadly the natural world. But a few other things were going on is is there were these questions that were becoming prominent in their sphere. It's like Darwin kept he had about two hundred and thirty pen pals that he would pepper with questions. And these simil same

40:42 Kind of. uh questions from some of these people would start coming to him that were like Why are we finding fossils of animals that we don't actually see anywhere on earth? Uh why are we finding marine fossils on the top of mountains? Why do the bones in a human arm and a bat's wing and a whale's flipper have so much in common?

41:01 And these questions were well known at the time and people were circling them. And They even knew they're even breeders even knew that there were random variations that would be passed. They didn't know about genes, so they didn't know how this worked, but that random variations they called sports would pop up and be passed down. to progeny. And Darwin was thinking about this, Alfred Russell Wallace was thinking about this, when they both happened to read this essay.

41:26 called on population by the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who was Basically making the argument. That humans would always have a population collapse because population growth would outstrip the food supply and we would always sort of crash back. And and turned out that he was wrong. About

41:40 What would happen with humans going forward. But just setting up that question Wallace and Darwin both immediately started saying How must this operate in nature? And

41:54 That galvanized them both to come up with the idea of natural selection. And it's really You know there there's there there's Probably never been.

42:03 I think quantum revolution and And evolution by natural selection are the two sort of greatest breaks in scientific history with with prior thought. And yet they were really set up by these questions, like multiple people, these things that you think of they're the most uh, you know, singular achievements, but multiple people come to them at the same time because these other people who are really helping define the question really well. sort of focused their attention and their problem solving. And that's what there's an antecedent like that.

42:33 For basically every major breakthrough. in science and technology, right? It's like why All of a sudden when the first chat bot came out, it's like there were all these other AI companies about to jump on it because they were all following these these same trends. Um And so

42:50 It just is a different picture of genius from these like singular people through history. When many of the most important figures have been someone who just incredibly well defines a problem that then Uh focuses other people's thinking. Like the I'll d and I'll I'll I'll stop after this one last example, but David Hilbert, who I think is arguably the most impactful mathematician of the twentieth century.

43:14 Um is best known not for his own math, which was incredible. But because he decided to survey math. and come up with two dozen questions that he thought were important and really rigorously define them and then he passed them out in a pamphlet. At a conference.

43:28 And that said an agenda. for twentieth century math, and most of them were solved. It was just like defining these problems and giving them to people, they immediately start it focuses their energy on what to do. So often

43:42 stating the problem well is often the best way to to To propel a solution. We we need more pamphlets and in the I know. It's just the messages like everybody you gotta come up with pamphlet. Yeah. Right. More pamphlets. Check. Note to self. Um constraint in uh defining the problem. are really critical. And I wanna get back to something that we teed up in the

44:08 Speed round. Way back when, um, about Dr. Seuss. Tell us about the green eggs and ham effect. Can I go back one activity with Doctor Seuss because even before Green Eggs and Ham

44:23 W what propelled that bet? With Bennett Surf, the publisher, who was a legendary publisher, by the way. Like when I get books from my publisher, the return address is Bennett Surf Way or something. Wow. Wow. And so yeah, he was a big deal. Um That first Doctor Seuss was asked.

44:42 If he could write a children's book using about two hundred words from a vocabulary list, which is still very few. And He looked at the list and noticed there were very few adjectives. And started complaining. He made this uh this Susian comment that I love. He said his wife, it's like trying to make a strudel without any strudels.

45:01 And and and eventually just sort of threw up his hands. And said All right. I'm just gonna take The first well, he wanted to write a book about a queen zebra.

45:10 But he that neither one of those words were on the list. So he threw up his hands and said, I'm just gonna take the first two rhyming words. And write a book. And the first two rhyming words were cat. And hat. Yeah. Right.

45:22 And So there he had his Had his book and again this is this is where this rollicking rhythm really started. Where he said, Okay, I can't be expansive with vocabulary. I have to have to experiment with something else.

45:34 And then that led to the bet for green eggs and ham. Could he do it with even fewer words? And the green eggs and ham effect, this is a Uh a term coined by psychologist Catronelle Trump. To describe this repeated finding. In research.

45:49 Yeah. Basically people think they'll be worse off when you hem them in. But in fact. they are almost always more creative. There's a level of constraint at which that Reverses.

46:01 But the level is when you're basically telling someone not only what to do, but exactly how to do it. Yeah. But when you restrict the easy means And still leave them room to surprise themselves. It's like the greatest creative prompt.

46:13 that the people peop even people who identify as not very creative will suddenly become much more creative. Fantastic. Um Prior to starting the recording, you said you were talking about uh UPS and their change management. You want to tell that story, because I thought that was a fascinating part of of the book. So yeah. So UPS is I learned.

46:36 would not have inherently thought that they were an interesting company. Brown. Yeah. Yeah. But fascinating. I mean they had to They had to map all of America because Google Maps wasn't accurate enough for them. Um And They were, you know, they have a a big they have an analytics team.

46:57 And their goal was to try to save some mileage, save some gas, save some emissions, save some time. And so they were grappling with what's called the traveling salesman problem. Where Basically. The most efficient way to connect.

47:12 Dots in different stops. And This seems like it should be simple, but actually the possible combinations are so numerous. That it's like What mathematicians call combinatorial explosion.

47:27 You know, so And and it's gotten even worse for UPS, whereas one of the people at UPS told me that they used to deliver, you know, fifty red sweaters to Macy's or something. Now they have like a hundred and twenty stops and they're all to individual houses. Yeah. So And there there's more ways that you could connect a hundred and twenty dots.

47:45 than there are seconds since the big bang. Um And So They were trying to build an algorithm to improve on this. They realized they couldn't solve it perfectly, but they built this system called Orion that would try to improve.

48:00 Uh and what And what drivers knew. And the first thing they realized was that drivers had some knowledge Did Orion kind of didn't pick up on

48:09 Like drivers would know if you know, school was gonna get out at some certain time and they're gonna have to be careful of kids or somebody had to sign for a package. uh wasn't home, but actually they know they work around the corner or their relative does or something like that. Right. There was all this idiosyncratic knowledge. The drivers had. Um there was

48:27 Hard for Orion to pick up. And Orion also did weird things. Like If if an if a human driver was driving past some side street that had a delivery, they would stop and deliver it, but Orion might say, drive right past it and we'll come back to it later in the day. Or the funniest one was in a cul de sac. Where if you're delivering packages in a cul de sac, you go around the cul de sac, right?

48:45 And Orion would sometimes say to zigzag. Which just feels like totally unnatural. And it it might save Three meters of walking or something like that. But it's weird. And so drivers were rejecting.

48:57 Orion. They didn't want to use it. Like this is weird. This is stupid. Um And so the analytics team that had worked so hard on this was finding that there was no adoption.

49:08 Of this project. And So as they told me, it's like the algorithm was the easy part. the change management was the hard part and what they ended up having to do Was first

49:18 They started making these kiosks. where people could see what Orion was doing they could play with it, like a video game. Well what if it did th what if I did this? What if I did this? How would Orion reroute? And so they tried to make it from sort of blast. black box into a glass box. So you could sort of quarry if you made some change How would Orion reroute? And they like that first.

49:37 But then they started setting it up as what they called beat the computer, where they said, All right, you don't you don't have to follow Orion. See if you can beat it. And One of my favorite anecdotes was one of the a longtime driver. Um

49:50 You know, came back from a day having beaten Orion and said, See, I told you your system sucks. And when they looked at his data, he had driven a hundred and thirty five miles that day. And his average for years had been one hundred and fifty. So he did beat Orion, but it But but trying to beat it, but so much better.

50:08 and ultimately became a a partner system where people would follow Ryan, but they could deviate from it. with their idiosyncratic knowledge. And what I thought was so interesting about the story was that that first that it wasn't the tech, it was the change management was that the w was the issue. And they really had to meet people part way, that these visions of change are much more compelling when they also include a vision of continuity. Where you're using some of that

50:33 human expertise. in instead of just extinguishing it and replacing it, saying You know, w we want that to continue and and here's a tool that can make you even more effective. And I I embedded that in this chapter about how the more radical an idea is or a change, if you want people To come along with it.

50:52 you have to ground it in something that's that's really familiar to them. And and I think ultimately they did a good job of that in UPS. I took an a a a piece of that too is this the sense of autonomy or self-determination, right? And so as opposed to having big brother tell me You suck. you we need to follow this. And we see this in in Tim and I both do consulting with organizations. And we see that kind of top down heavy component going into this. And that usually gets this reactants. It usually gets this kind of pushback from that component. And I think it's really important.

51:27 And I'm I'm I'm seeing it a little bit with AI adoption within organizations. And I don't know if you uh if you've thought about that or if there's anything that you can think about again in that same way. It's a radical change. in how people are operating. But you know, I s I some recent research says that, you know thirty plus percent of people are of employees are actively sabotaging AI adoption processes. Like forty two percent of millennials are actually doing that. Those on my cave

52:00 K M P G I think did some some research on that. So yeah. Well yeah, a few thoughts. And I know that you know the the A I P speakers who mention AI commencement addresses have been getting booed and stuff. I don't know if you've seen them. I mean there's the pushback, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A few things about that. One, so that that idea of I mean Right, constraint is is is It's practically synonymous with something that we find frustrating. Right.

52:25 Um Which I think can be unfortunate because it can be really useful. But Um I think people will often see a dictate. Whether it's a constraint or something else is a punishment at work.

52:37 Because of a lack. of of of sense of agency. And that's where I think you know, leadership is really, really important art. I mean, but to give one example of an executive that I saw do something I thought was cool. Um

52:51 He went to Yeah, took took his his team And said. They were under some pressure. Um and he said

52:59 He did this exercise he called the legacy constraint. We said Let's say we're going out of business in two years. They weren't going out of business in two years, but if they didn't Turn things around, you know, maybe five or ten.

53:11 Um So something had to Change. And he said if if we were going out of business in two years and only we knew it. What will we do differently? Like we our clients, customers didn't know it.

53:22 And people started saying, Oh, you know I'd stop focus on X and I'd start focusing on Y because that's where the real value is. And he said, All right, well Well maybe maybe we should do that then. And I think that was a kind of brilliant way. To let people. Everyone was aware that there were pressures.

53:39 um to bring people into that process of if we have to make some changes, you know, what What What did you do? And and so then I think they felt some agency in that. So it wasn't just this like dictate'cause I've been in a company when I was Um Yeah, at Sports Illustrated and it was part of

53:56 Time Warner and then Time Inc. We would read about changes that were coming in the newspaper. Which was a terrible way. Wow about even if the decisions were good. Yeah. They're gonna be bad when they're delivered that way and people are gonna rebel against them. Right?

54:09 And so I think that that model of it's not that the executive it doesn't get to make the decision. But but bringing people in that way so they're sort of part of it. Um and doing these thought exercises, you know. Like One of the first readers.

54:22 Um Of Inside the box was this guy named Ed Hoffman, who was the first chief knowledge officer at NASA, which is a position sort of for a psychologist that It's supposed to make sure the organization learns from Good and bad performances. So it was forced to be created after the second sh uh shuttle disaster.

54:41 And He said, Hey have to tell you about this mission called El Cross, where the engineers ended up with kind of half the time and budget that they were. Hoping for. And so what do they do? Well, they complain at first. And then one of the team leaders says, Well, you know, if we were gonna get if we were going to get this done

54:58 Anyway. How would we do it? Mm. And that like sparked him. You know, spark them in the way maybe that famous scene in Apollo thirteen does, where they're like, all right, how how would we get this done if we had to?

55:10 And And maybe that was a leader just knowing what motivated their team, but so they said, Well, we wouldn't build from scratch because we don't have enough money or time. So they they borrowed they ended up borrowing imaging equipment from army tanks and engine temperature sensors straight out of NASCAR. And built a probe that confirmed water on the moon. And so that became a thought exercise for them after that.

55:29 Even if they didn't have to do it, it was If we had half the time and half the money, how would we do this? This is a way to spark other possible solutions. So I think doing some of these things as thought experiments with the group. And then maybe you end up taking some of those suggestions. Uh, you know, whatever those things are. Well, if it's a cultural thing, like another exercise I saw, you know, an an organizational leader do was

55:51 If we could only select for Yeah. If we could only have more of one behavior. What would it be? And nobody's ever gonna select for just one behavior, but that has this focusing effect.

56:02 for people of saying like what what you know, so I I think sometimes for leadership doing these these constraint based thought experiments. And by the way I have a list of some that I've seen. done on my website, David Epstein.com. There's like a tips thing. Um that just stuck up there. Um cool. can really kind of bring people into the pro help generate ideas for the leader.

56:21 And also give people a feeling of having been involved in the process. Um And When it comes to AI, that's an interesting one, right? Because people people feel threatened. For good reason. Mm-hmm.

56:34 Over the last year I spent time with one company That helps other companies implement AI. And I don't know if this is exactly

56:44 Relevant to the question, but S some of those companies, my I I sort of broke them down in my mind into two buckets. One that was sprawling implementation, like we need this thing everywhere. We need it we need it everywhere. And that would lead to what some researchers have now called work slot. Just Huge volumes.

57:01 Of stuff. Because it's obviated the need to do the hard work of saying what's not worth doing. And the implementations that seem to me to be more successful would say, what really spend time saying, what is the problem we're trying to solve here?

57:17 And does the tool fit that? Or one company created what they called a map of jobs to be done. And I I think people found that way less intimidating because instead of it just being AI is going everywhere. It was okay, here are the things that we Do here.

57:32 Here's this Here's what's this thing that we can offload for you. So you can focus on thinking about strategy. And and so I think If you can make something more concrete.

57:42 And say, here are the jobs that need to be done. Here are the ones we think AI can do. And here's how we think that works with what you do. I think it can be a little less scary just then like AI Everywhere. You know?

57:53 Um'cause that that feels like a That kinda feels like the devil you don't know sort of thing. Yeah. Well and I love the constraint part that you just brought up that that when you talked about work slot, because it's so easy to do all the stuff, we're just doing everything. When in fact

58:09 know what you need to be doing is is prioritizing and saying Here are as you said. Here's that map of the things that we're going to be working on with this as opposed to just Allowing I've heard I've I've heard many stories of Somebody took a standard operating, you know

58:26 Uh standard operating procedures for the US for their learning department and and then put it into AI and said, here's the global ones. And It's absolutely wrong because it's a vastly different thing and AI didn't get all of those nuances, nor different things, and then that got Elevated to executives and they said, Great, when's it gonna be implemented? And Then the team had to do it.

58:46 You know. basically go and genuflect and say sorry this is we're not anywhere near this. Yeah. So yeah. It's a It's n it's never been easier to do too much. And I love and and and I think what your your, you know In you know, inside the box and what you're talking about here is saying There are ways that we can if

59:07 We can do this smarter if we can put some constraints around some of these things. So Yeah. Also This reminds me of the Sheila Tarmina.

59:18 uh story because of her ability to use constraints. As a five foot two woman uh at the University of Georgia getting into The Olympics in In Georgia.

59:30 How does that And and and then the arc of her career. was To a large degree about constraints. Yeah.

59:38 Yeah. And she's an interesting case because you know, we've talked some about constraints that you could put on yourself or on a team that might might help in this you know, o often we don't get to choose the constraints. And yet.

59:50 My argument is that they can still focus. our our energy. And Sheila So as you mentioned, she was a student and swimmer at the University of Georgia. Um, tried to make the Olympic team the two hundred meter freestyle nineteen ninety two, didn't make it, wasn't really close. And

1:00:05 Retired. And then she for one of her last classes, she took management five seventy seven, in which she learned about The so called theory of constraints. Which is this idea that Um

1:00:18 Uh created by a a physicist named Eli Goldrat Ellie Goldrat. And uh that every system is limited by its single least efficient step, basically. And so no matter how well all most of the parts of a system are working, it doesn't matter if if there's one bottleneck. Yeah, the weak leak in the chain, basically. The bottle yeah, the bottleneck. And

1:00:40 So Sheel was interested in that and decided for her class project to come up with a training plan to target her own training bottleneck and and try to Drop three seconds of two hundred meter freestyle. And so maybe she won't retire myself. That's huge difference at that level. Yeah. Um

1:00:56 And she sort of surveyed her training and realized very quickly that her bottleneck was strength and power. I mean, she like you said, she's five foot two. Um Average elite female swimmer. About five foot ten. Many taller.

1:01:11 Um And So she had a great aerobic engine, world class. But that's what she was spending all her time working on, doing tons and tons of yardage. But that was not the thing limiting her. So she was just working on her strength, even though she was limited by something else. You know, it's like a factory that's like puts fast machines in one area, but doesn't matter because there's a slow one somewhere else that that slows down the whole process. And so she took this training plan unretired.

1:01:39 And went and found a coach. who would implement it with her, that which took her some time because most of the good coaches didn't think that she really actually had the potential to make the Olympics. They implement this plan, focusing on her strength and power, her limiting factor. And four years later, she swim three seconds faster in the two hundred meter freestyle, makes the Olympic team, and then wins an Olympic gold medal as part of the relay team. It's fun to Google image her. because you'll see her with her relay team with a gold medal and it looks like she's 10 inches shorter than the other three women who are about the same who are all about six foot, basically. Yeah. And

1:02:12 She then retires. As an Olympic champ. And Just for health starts working out again, doing triathlons. And now she has this new take on training, right? Focus on your what is the real limiting factor.

1:02:24 She wins the national championships in triathlon, goes to the Olympics, finishes sixth. Goes the next Olympics and triathon again. Retires. And retires again. And learns fencing and horse jumping and And goes to the Olympics in modern pentathlon.

1:02:38 And she's the only woman ever Two uh competed in three different sports In four summer Olympics.

1:02:47 And She retired. Right? If briefly. In her senior year if she hadn't learned about the theory of constraints. And applied it to her training.

1:02:57 And what reading about the theory of constraints, I really started to see a lot of the world in that way of like what really i e in even for my own work, what what really is the limiting step here? I'm doing all these different things. But where is the work piling up?

1:03:12 Um and I think if we can kind of do that and find out what is that bottleneck. Or his Goldwrat would often call it the drum. Because it sets the beat at which the whole system operates. Uh you can really

1:03:24 Unleash. you know, productivity and focus that's that's sort of already in in the system but drowning in in doing Certainly. Focusing on too many different parts. Yeah.

1:03:35 Yeah, I I it I think it's Amazing just to think about her ability to both envision and dream and z imagine great big things about her life. Uh and then But achieve it by Achieve those things by focusing on her constraints.

1:03:52 Th this kind of happened to me too, by the way, athletically. Like I was a walk on eight hundred meter runner in college. I didn't know the theory of constraints. But I I was like not even close to being able to make The team I was

1:04:05 Not good. And There was a young uh volunteer assistant coach who nobody cared what I was doing, nobody cared what he was doing, we kind of experimented. And we didn't use this language bottleneck and all that. But it became very clear that my limiting factor was my ability to recover. Like I just did not recover from hard workouts at the

1:04:24 pace of my peers. And so one of the brilliant strategies Other than dropping my weekly mileage from like eighty to like thirty five. Was to schedule class over one workout a week so that I had an excuse for not showing up. Mm-hmm.

1:04:38 And That worked like rocket fuel. So I started doing two. Two hard workouts a week where my peers were doing three. And I started getting better like crazy. I ended up as a university record holder, you know, I ran at the US national championships in indoors. So

1:04:50 Yeah, I went from walk on to to being decorated and it was very much by doing less work But recognizing what was really the limiting thing here. And for me it was it was recovery. You know, it just didn't it just didn't work for me the same way that it did for other people. It it's it's fascinating'cause it's so counterintuitive, right? I mean when you think about you're doing less work, you're doing less of those things that

1:05:12 Everybody is saying you need to work harder in order to get better, but it's that It's understanding your own bottleneck. And I don't think people I did you come on that by

1:05:24 By like were you how how did you come about that you realized it was the recovery time? Yeah, it was very much so it's funny because, you know, there's that saying I don't know where it's from, but that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. That's exactly what I would have done. Um But

1:05:42 This this young coach Uh notice this immediately, like that through the week, you know, may maybe I could Uh that my relative

1:05:52 'Cause I was still behind these guys who'd been recruit for a while. But that my relative performance would be if there was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout. My relative performance would be The best on Monday.

1:06:04 Worst on Wednesday. And worse on Friday, and then I'd be destroyed if there was a race on Saturday. And there would be things like, you know, then we started measuring my pulse, and I'd be waking up with a pulse still clearly elevated. So obviously I had not. Uh not fully recovered.

1:06:19 Um Just incredibly fatigued, all those kinds of things. So so actually once we started looking, the signs were pretty obvious. But I just wasn't thinking that way until someone attuned me to it or or saw it from the outside, you know, I think that's why

1:06:32 Well that's where where I was going with that is I think oftentimes It's so hard for us to see our own limitations, those own constraints that we or you know bottlenecks that we run into. And oftentimes it is that outside and Coach, you know, if it's a sport thing, or even, you know, there's executive coaches and various different pieces now. But oftentimes it's just having that.

1:06:56 different perspective to come to you and say Here is a way that I'm seeing that we should explore and and once you kinda dig into that, you kinda go, Oh, but you have to have an open mind, like you said, the the definition of insanity is doing that same thing over and over if you just go no this is

1:07:15 This is how I do it. I'm gonna do it that way. Then Yeah. Expect different results. I I the I'cause I'm you know, I'm a hard worker and the I never would have Of my own accord, I never would have accepted the idea that Of doing less.

1:07:30 Like it it required somebody else to come. Say like This is a plan. 'Cause otherwise I just would have been like That it just would not have.

1:07:40 Made sense. Or at least experiment with it. At least give it a try, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because Given where I was There wasn't much risk of trying like it it was it it would make sense to take some big risks.

1:07:55 Um'cause what did I really have to lose? Like I wasn't making the team the way that I was, but It's hard to think that way when you're in the middle of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh David, I would like to take our conversation in the direction of music. Um, and I just want to I would like kudos for both of you for holding it. Why are you laughing? Tim and his music. There you go. All right. Um if you've been through five hundred and fifty episodes like we have, it it, you know. For some reason it still makes great chuckle. I could have told you, Tim, about ten minutes ago there was like a itch in Tim that he just he I if you probably

1:08:33 If you look at his hands, they're probably shaking'cause he wanted to get to his music. In how many of those five hundred and fifty episodes, Kurt, would you say music comes up? Five hundred and forty nine. The one I did solo, the then that one didn't come up. So there you go. First of all, uh I I just have to make a note um that there's you're telling a story about Robert Johnson. uh the the great blues guitarist. Um who is kind of

1:09:03 considered uh uh by many to be sort of the father of the delta blues. But you brought up one of our favorite authors and podcast guests, Gloria Mark. In that story. I'm big fan. Like that was just like That was such a cool connection. I just have to have to just do a little shout out to Gloria as being connected to uh to to that whole and it was about learning guitar.

1:09:26 Um so that was that was kind of the thing. Okay, but I wanna talk about Bach, actually. Uh you want Sebastian Bach. You weren't gonna go down the devil the deal with the devil and and Robert Johnson with that and the real story behind it, which was I think so much cooler. Uh anyway. All right, go, go. It's it is it's a great there's but we should have dedicated a whole episode just to the music references that you have in there, David. Uh honestly, but um But you you you bring up Bach as working within constraints. And it is fascinating. Again, I I'm just gonna mention to reiterate to listeners who may not remember I went to the conservatory of music. in Kansas City and

1:10:08 In studying the the literature of Bach's work, you know, you just see this tremendous rigor of Like the the the pieces, the fuges, the cantatas, the the symphonies, there's very strides on how those pieces are created. Um, and Bach was extremely prolific, you know, eleven hundred compositions compared to You know, Mozart, I think Beethoven had like seven hundred Mozart, maybe six hundred compositions in his lifetime. Incredibly prolific. And Bach kinda set the framework for literally

1:10:40 Very literally for the way we listen to music today. Uh, there's just nothing in music today that hasn't been already explored by Bach. What was it? What did you learn about constraints? From

1:10:53 from this research and from this work that you did on on box music specifically. Yeah, well let me tell I came to Bach, which was I uh When I started getting interested in constraints. My literary agent said. He must have been mentioning it to people.

1:11:08 And One of his Other Uh writers. Name Peter Mendelsund.

1:11:15 Two. Is probably the most Sought after book cover designer in the world. He's the creative director at The Atlantic. He also happened to have taught Ed Juilliard. Uh and was uh you know I The pianist and he's a painter. He's just a maker. Kind of a polymath.

1:11:30 Yeah. And Peter said. Oh I gotta get my piano tuned and give you a lesson because Bach. was driven. Yeah.

1:11:40 And so Peter invited me over and and gave me this incredible music lesson. Where he took me through every movement of Box Art of the Few, which I then started reading about after that. And um you know, in Box His sort of authoritative Biographer.

1:11:56 uh called this kind of the The art of the few Arguably. The The

1:12:02 Apotheosis of of Oxide creative vision. Basically. And I think identified this and and um B minor mass as the two uh compositions where he sort of fully expressed himself. And so the Art of the Fugue. Starts with this simple twelve note.

1:12:20 Melody that's Pretty austere. And Bach then uses that Little kernel. to spin an entire musical universe out of it.

1:12:31 So there are fourteen movements. Um Each Torturing that twelve note. Team.

1:12:38 in increasingly complex ways. And so if and to go back a second, by the way, Peter told me that Bach entered into a world that was had extraordinary number of musical constraints that had been codified. In what was called species counterpoint, which are basically all these rules about good musical hygiene that had to be followed. And some of them are crazy. Like there's Uh

1:12:59 Every piece should have a single highest note that is used once and only once. Only once. And There are all these parallel jumps that you're not allowed to make because we're now used to listening to music like with all these chords and everything, but but there it was different lines of music or melodies were like different voices and they're supposed to remain distinct. And so you weren't supposed to make certain jumps at the same time, or else some of the melodies would would feel like they had converged. So all it's just tons of rules and they were really meant to be followed.

1:13:29 And so he came into this world with lots of musical constraints and then just foist it more and more in his own head, first by picking this. This form fugue. Where You take a simple Theme.

1:13:42 And weave it throughout a piece and continue coming back to it, right? So it's all about like s Like you you're sort of s stuck with this one theme and you have multiple voices that are are chasing and running away from one another and returning to this theme and while they're doing all that, you have to follow all of these other species counterpoint rules. And so it's just like this incredible amount of

1:14:04 Uh Regulations. That you're that you're working inside of. Yeah. And so back

1:14:09 Takes that that twelve note theme. You know, and in one movement he flips it upside down. And in another he has it backwards. And in another, just the rhythm is different. Just doing taking this simple thing and doing everything you can possibly do with it. And then in the later movements, He starts adding in

1:14:31 Uh Second or third themes. So that there are multiple little themes that all of the voices have to circle and come back to, and they can't be doing it at the same time. And so it's getting incredible. incredibly complex. And then the very end he introduces a new theme. That's B flat A C B, which in German musical notation is B A C H.

1:14:51 As a musical theme in which which apparently Peter told me is something that's very, very hard to make work. Yeah with uh in general. Like his name was not the most convenient. Musical notation. But it's just so it it's these fourteen movements of just escalating strictures that he's putting on himself.

1:15:08 And then Peter would stop every once in a while and tell me, that section that I just played That transition had never been heard before. And the reason it happened is because it's the only way for Bach out of this little place where he had cornered himself. It's the only way he can keep moving and still not violate any of those rules. And so it was by putting himself in these corners

1:15:27 And having to find a way out. That uh You know, he he he got to places that that nobody else ever had. And so I thought it was just really fascinating. Because

1:15:38 One because I I I knew that Bach was important, but until I really started researching him I didn't realize that He was like far and away considered by other composers to be the most important composer ever. H his life story was a lot less dramatic than Mozart, for example. So I think he's not as mythologized the same way. You know, he mostly wrote music for a church. Um But

1:15:59 Or or Beethoven going deaf in in his later years. I mean that's that's a dramatic story. Right, right. So Bach did not did not have as much of a dramatic story. Um But it was interesting that he this the most important composer ever really gravitated to this the most rule bound of of musical forms and then hemmed himself in in all these ways and it was trying to get out of the the labyrinths that he himself constructed that that led him to things that nobody'd else ever done. Yeah. It it is fantastic. Uh, just really briefly, uh and I don't mean to make this a um a cue or a prime, but if you were stuck on a desert island and you had a listening device that only had two artists on it. You got the whole catalog.

1:16:43 But Only two artists. Which two artists would you take with you? Well, I know what I know because of my like Apple music thing what my most listened to music was last year, which was Keith Jarrett's the Cone concert. Um

1:16:57 Which is also in the book, but um I think I would want something with words and something without words though. No. Just to have some of that variety'cause you had to get two arts. Variety seeking. Yeah. You get

1:17:12 Little bit or both. So so I think I would probably I think I would probably go with Bach for None. Word music.

1:17:20 And he also has a huge catalog, as you mentioned. So that would be helpful. And I think for music with words I'd probably go with this band called London Grammar that uh Oh. Uh they're bigger in the UK than they are here. Okay. Um Yeah.

1:17:35 So I'm gonna have to check out London grammar now. Uh. Which is you know, we're we're novelty seeking, right? You wanna have it you're stuck there. It's like okay. Now's the time to switch it up.

1:17:49 So and actually even within back though, you you get a variety of different sounds. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. I mean arguably like The And Tyler Cowan has mentioned this before he thinks Fach is arguably the the greatest creator in history of any type.

1:18:04 If you look at quality and volume and innovation. Um And I think there's you know, y that That's not like an argument that can be settled, right? No but I think I don't think that's a crazy thing to say. Yeah.

1:18:18 Totally. We're gonna wrap it up and say David Epstein, thank you so much. for taking this time with us and sharing um a a fantastic book we love inside the box and we want our readers, our listeners to read it. Sorry. But thank you for being a guest on Behavioral Grooves. Thank you, I I very much enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, it was really a lot of fun.

1:18:43 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with David, have a free-flowing conversation, and groove on whatever else comes into our constrained brains. They are. They just are, aren't they? You know, our brains are just constrained. We have limited resources, we have limited abilities, and all those limitations can be Used in our favor. Those can those constraints can absolutely be things that we can exploit.

1:19:11 I think that that's terrific. Yeah, and I think there's a there's there is this idea that Unlimited Options.

1:19:22 are the best way to go. And I mean we've we've Yeah. Talked about that, the choice overload and a whole bunch of other things. Uh that That perception

1:19:33 Isn't Yeah. Right. And uh gut level like give me more freedom, more options to choose from

1:19:43 I should have better outcomes from that. But that's not how We work as humans. All the time. Right.

1:19:53 Well how is it that we work as humans, Kurt? Give us Give us a give us a little bit of how do we know You wanna know how we work as humans, Tim. Here's how it works. We are no I think What David talks about.

1:20:07 And I think this is A key piece of All of this. is that constraints are not the enemy of creativity or motivation or any of those, but they're

1:20:21 Often. The catalyst that actually allows us Two break out of those familiar routines to have the motivation to go and explore something in a new way.

1:20:38 Uh to Make something that is truly unique not because I can bring everything in, but because I only have this set of limited resources with which to build and I need to do it.

1:20:52 And now it makes me look at those in a very different way. And I think that is really It's the But you know. unconventional way of thinking about it. And I think it's really, really powerful. Yeah, I there's a a couple of things I want to say about this

1:21:08 constraint as not being the enemy. Uh the first thing I wanna say is about our sponsor today is behavior shift. And behavior shift in the journals there are prompts and those prompts are pretty specific. Yeah.

1:21:22 You can You can go anywhere you want. from the s from a starting point of a prompt. But the cool thing about staying within the constraints of the of the prompt is to actually think through what the question That you're posed with.

1:21:36 Is asking you. And To to put some mental rigor into that is really is a really healthy and rewarding thing. And and the second thing that I wanted to say about this is specifically on creativity. I have a good friend in Minneapolis, Sarah Morris, who is a singer songwriter, extremely talented songwriter and singer Um

1:21:58 And Sarah has been running a club. For s singer songwriters. Okay. Every week she introduces a new prompt, a one word prompt. For songwriters to use to write a song.

1:22:14 Using that prompt somewhere in the song that week. So fifty two weeks, fifty two prompts. She's been doing this for four years. And she's written a lot of songs. And some of the prompts are crazy. Sparkle. Pumpkin. Uh poster.

1:22:30 You know, they're just like they're not like love, sunset. No, they're You know, uh tall glass. But so that again I love I love that. It it goes back to, you know, the the conversation like Dr. Seuss and the fifty word limit that he uh got imposed. I mean, at first it was what was it, the two hundred w I forget the story exactly, but uh you know, by putting that constraint on

1:22:59 You have to become More inventive. So I can see like having pumpkin Like I why I How am I gonna write pumpkin into a song, into song lyrics? Like you're gonna have to use your creativity.

1:23:15 Yeah. So you're you're constrained because you have to use something. So again, constraint often we think of constraint as being like oh you can't use these things. Sometimes constraint is also that you have to only or you have to use something in part of it. And that's the other part I think that um David highlights that I think is really good. You know, the Uh the conversation that I didn't really understand when you guys were talking about Bach. Um

1:23:42 But you know what that meant, but It sounded really difficult, you know? Well, Bach was a master of constraints. He was absolutely a master of working within the the medium of the day. And yet at the same time, because he Worked so well within the medium.

1:24:05 He w he stretched the boundaries, actually. I mean the weird thing was that there's this opposite effect of what of what happened. I'm not gonna go into I could I would be lo I would love to do a whole grooving session just on Bach, but we're not going to do that. Not today, at least. Not today. People, you might be in for a treat later on. It would be a soul grooving session. That would be a leth because I would just be sitting there going, Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh uh. All right. So yeah, I I think the the takeaway here is really uh if you

1:24:39 You know, if you want more originality, it's not necessarily about removing constraints, it's about choosing those constraints deliberately. And this is the other part that I thought David brought in a great Insight. Is that We need to find the

1:24:57 Bottleneck, not just work harder. And that That bottleneck. Like he brought it. Um when he was talking about Uh Sheila the um

1:25:09 uh the the the Olympian. I can't pronounce her last name, right? But you know, it was the the bottleneck for her was Shila Tormina. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Wasn't her power, it was aerobic. capacity. And so yeah like how do you work on that? For him it was like hey

1:25:28 I I don't really recover from my you know, workouts. And so if you keep asking me to work out more without giving me the recovery time. then I actually decrease my performance. So his constraint was I actually have to take some of my

1:25:50 Workouts out. And allow my body to recover. And I thought that was just Insightful and I think it's difficult. That was the part like How how do you identify that? And that's that's a big piece.

1:26:02 It has. Okay, so what are some things that people could do? Could they could what are some tips, some Tips of the trade here. Kurd, what what what comes to mind as a way of using constraints as a way to Improve your output. Improve the quality of the output. Maybe even the

1:26:20 quantity of the output. All right. So you wanna like get into real kind of things like that we can't. Examples, yes. So Um

1:26:34 There's there's like so black Um Uh uh the I think we talked about this a little bit, right? Like block the obvious rule, right? So don't go with that first solution. What is it I think you you bring this up like in brainstorming. What was the famous quote like

1:26:51 You know, is is that first idea that gets thrown out gonna Be the best one and Nope. Never. Almost never. Right. But you gotta throw the first one out.

1:27:01 In order to keep going. But but our brains tend to latch on to that. We we tend to like if I have That first solution Then

1:27:12 I start to own that and I then limit myself to seeing the opportunity to others. But if I say I have to throw that first one out, but I can't use it. And I have to go to the next one or the next one.

1:27:29 Then it allows me to open up. And so I'm constraining myself. I'm constraining myself by actually adding more work in. Right. So again, the constraints aren't always about limiting things that they're there. So you know, it's it's it's that. Yeah. Uh one of my favorites was half the time, half the budget. Yeah, what we talked about. Yeah.

1:27:51 Yeah, but this is something that I used in when we were in product development. We'd say okay. So to get down to our MVP, our minimum viable product What if we had half the time and half the budget? Actually

1:28:03 Actually play it out. What would that look like? If we had to cut features, if we had to cut certain aspects. And w and how would we deal with that? And that ends up being a really powerful Um constraint.

1:28:19 That forces us to creatively think about well, what could we reuse then from from previous products? What what might might might be some of the things that that really it showed up in the research, but it were kind of spurious, you know, that the clients were talking actually more about this other thing. So maybe we should focus on. So simplify. Yeah. So create like Alright, so What is as you said, it's the you know, the the minimum viable you know, component. And so What is that? And I love this idea of half the time.

1:28:49 half the budget or resources And all of a sudden you're going, Oh crap, I can't how we can't do that and then you You start to think about it and You can.

1:29:00 You can start. Doing that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um You know, I I there's also like if you were able to just change one behavior, one employee behavior. If you're a leader in an organization and you said, I could just get my team

1:29:18 Two every person to do one thing differently, what would that be? You know, it's not changing the world. It's not going out there and we're we're gonna be perfect. But All right, what is that one if I could get everybody to just focus in on one thing and do that, again, you're constraining yourself to the entirety population of behavior change, but

1:29:42 You can use that for your team, but you can also use it for yourself. Like what is the one behavior But I need to change about myself in order to achieve that goal. And we talk about some of that in in some of the behavior shift stuff, right? So

1:29:57 Yeah. Where was a tool that uh we developed when I was in banking uh to work uh to help um advisors, uh wealth advisors help their clients plan for retirement. And so gave them twenty four cards, and on each card was a simple you know, two or three word uh uh identifier, you know, family vacation, you know, or travel, um, you know, uh loved ones, security, blah blah blah, you know, a whole bunch of these kinds of things. And then they had to organize them.

1:30:28 In a way that was Prioritized. The trouble with With twenty four, it's a lot. So

1:30:36 What the instruction was was As soon as somebody started focusing on a couple of them, start pulling others away to reduce. And then say, Okay, now you have to pick you have to pick three out of this group. Here's here's five in front of you. Pick three out of this group. And then there's another set of five. Pick three out of this group. And so you're getting rid of two and two and two. And then out of these, then You have another group of three out of out of these or another group of five. Out of this five, pick three. Out of this five, pick three. And then you get down to five and you say, out of this five, pick the last three. And then out of that three, you say, What's the number one thing in this? Yeah, I love that. I love that. It just it it forces people to make choices. And in a simple way.

1:31:19 And we don't like like But I like all five of these things. I know I want I want security and I want my loved ones and I wanna have a vacation and I wanna have this, but Yeah, you have to prioritize and choose. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Um You know, there's there's Uh this other piece which is

1:31:39 Like Building something only with the existing parts. So if you think about Lego's, right? And and like old day Legos where it wasn't the Lego that you get the like this is the 9,000 pieces. Well you could have 9,000 pieces, but it's not the You know, this isn't the millennium Falcon or this isn't, you know, the this where but it's just your blacks and so

1:32:06 You have Thirty blocks. And now you need to create this. Whatever it would be. And we actually do some team building. things with this where we give

1:32:19 Times. Yeah. You know? Thirty blocks and they have to develop You know, this you know, bridge or something that will, you know, get from you know this block from point A to point B, all sorts of different things in it. But

1:32:34 It's limited. You you can't go and like can they always ask, Well, can I use this? No. You have the materials that you have in front of you. This is what you get to use. Well, can't I bring in No, you can't. And they go, Well, we can't do it and you go, Yes, you can. And it's been done. And I think that is always really good. So you can think about this for a new program. A new workshop, um

1:32:59 You know. Anything that you have from that perspective. I think that's probably enough about constraints. Well, uh the last one I will do is is just Oh you have more. Yeah.

1:33:11 You can't constrain me on this, Tim. No, but the one of my all favorites, and this is this is more about like constraints around Decisions'cause we can get Th there there are things on on making decisions. And so one of these great rules that I that we use and and people just really like is this uh concept called two breaths, seven breaths. And What it is is when you're making a decision.

1:33:39 And this comes down into those different types of decisions, but oftentimes those decisions that we make just routinely, real quick. Or ones that we agonize over that aren't necessarily like buying a house or something else, but Oh my gosh, what What outfit should I wear today, you know, to look here and you agonize over this shirt or that shirt. I do agonize over that every day. Well, here's the thing. Evident by the fantastic shirt that I'm wearing right now. Here's here's a tip, right? It's you know. Make that decision within two breaths.

1:34:12 Or d make sure you don't make the decision before you've taken two breaths. So it pauses you. So so those routine decisions that you often make without even thinking. Thinking about it. You know. Two breaths is enough to actually go Oh, do I Really want that?

1:34:28 Extra large. You know, fries with This You know, I I double size. Yeah, you know, oh do you wanna do you wanna super size it? Sure. You know, no, take two breaths. And go.

1:34:42 Nah, no, I don't. It's it that is usually enough to allow you in your brain to go through that mental gymnastics of saying, Yeah, do I want this or do I not? And then For choosing your shirt in the morning. Yeah. Like You have seven breaths.

1:34:59 And and you gotta make your decision before the end of that seventh breath. And so now it's like, oh the blue one, the yell uh the white one, the blue one, the white one, you know. Oftentimes those are like we we agonize over it when we don't have to, and if we just set that seven rest, it's like oh all right. No. Here we go.

1:35:18 So no fewer than two breaths. And no more than seven. Yeah. Now and again, that doesn't apply to everything. Like if you're making big financial decisions about buying a house or something, take more than seven bucks to make that decision, right? If you're like who am I gonna marry? All right, there you go. And and and if you're you know crossing a walk and you hear a horn. You know, don't go, I'm gonna take two breaths before I decide if I'm going to jump or not jump, right? No. That's all right. Those are yeah.

1:35:49 Okay. Now can we constrain the constraints? Are we are we fully constrained? We can constrain the constraints. That works. Yes. All right. Uh Okay. Groovers. We

1:36:04 We hope that uh you will check out a couple of things, check out our sponsors uh work here, check out um behavior shift. 'Cause it's great stuff. There's lots of tools out there. Uh make sure you get the shift. part in you get that F in the in the behavior shift um in in the uh web address and that sort of thing when you're searching for it. Check out our sub stack. Because

1:36:28 There's lots of great, um, really great work that comes out of there. And I'm saying that because I I don't write all of them. I I don't write hardly any of them, actually anymore. Uh Caroline Schaefer, our producer, is a fantastic writer and she's not AI, she's real, she's human and she's insightful. And so encourage you to check that out. And if you're out on Facebook, we have a vibrant Facebook community. That gets stimulated. Almost every damn day with a groove question. And

1:36:57 I'll tell ya, it the some of the Some of the comments and conversations are just surprising. So If you're not there, you're missing out. I'm just gonna say that. You're missing out.

1:37:09 So, yeah. Constrain your time on Facebook to the Behavior Groups Facebook community page. There you go. Constrain it to just going out to that page. That way you won't get stuck in a group Doom Scrolling, et cetera. So All right. Okay. Hopefully.

1:37:26 Rivers. We hope that you can constrain yourself better this week. And use those constraints to go out and find. Your group.

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