TedTest

From the Ted Talk by WorkLife with Adam Grant: Think Again JJ Abrams Takes Adam's Job

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Hey, work lifers, this is J.J. Abrams, we're trying something new on the posdact today, I am going to be conducting an interview on the show and my guest is Adam Grant. We're going be talking about his new book, Think Again Automatical. Oh, JJ, it's great to hear your vcoie, but this is my show. I don't know if it is. I can't just let you take my job and ask all the questions. I'm insisting on asking you some qiousntes. Can you promise me that I can ask one Star Wars question? Yes, you can ask anything you want. You can ask. Fantastic. Jumping in here as host of my show in the off chance. You don't know who J.J. Abrams is. You absolutely know his work. He's directed, produced and written some of the most beloved films and shows of the last 30 years. If you love Lost alias Felicity, the more recent incarnations of Star Wars or Star Trek, you have to think as a bonus episode. While we're hard at work on ssaeon four, J.J. kildny agreed to turn the microphone around and host me for a chat about my new book, Think Again The Power of kwninog What You Don't Know. It's a book about the science of rethinking our opinions, opening other people's minds and creating cultures of learning. It officially launches February 2nd, but I wanted to give you a sneak pvereiw. So I sent JJ an early copy and told him he was in crhage of our irtvineew. Thanks to Viking Penguin, my publisher, for Think Again for supporting this episode. I have read this book and I just truly think again, your new book available now is so compelling and I just I'm thrilled to get to talk to you about it. I feel like you're my book fariy godfather . That's such a thing. That's my dream. Thank you. I've got to say that I had so many menmots of kind of gasping when I read Think again, because you provided the kind of optimism that there is a way to find common gurnod, to find, to embrace nuance, to rinmxeeae how we, you know, we go through the world. What motivated you to write the book? Well, there's a part of me that that thinks I was probably motivated to write this book by one of my best friends from growing up, Khan, who I remember this was in seventh grade here. We're in the middle of an aunmegrt, I think, during a commercial on Seinfeld. And he he hung up on me and I called him back and he said, Shut up, Adam, I won't talk to you until you admit you're wrong. And that was sort of a it really it was a moment that stuck with me. I didn't have the language for it at the time, but I snpet a lot of time afterward thinking, why is it so important to me to be right? And, you know, why do I have such a hard time admitting when I'm not? And that, you know, I think I was I was sort of a defining moment. And then, you know, much later I feel like my job as an organizational psychologist is, you know, is to really think again about how we work , how we lead, how we live, and to motivate other people to do that, too. And my most frustrating experiences as an author, as a speaker, as a researcher, as a teacher, as a consultant are always when people are not willing to rethink assumptions that I think they ought to be questioning. And so, you know, just over the past few years, the number of conversations I've had with with founders and CEOs where I you know, I give them the best evidence I have available. And they say, well, that's that's not how we do things around here or that's not the way I've always done things. All right. And I just I just want to come back to them and say, you know, Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Kodak, Sears, you know what? You should definitely not rethink anything in your vision, strategy or business meodl. And so I guess, J.J. , when you know, when I have both personal and professional experiences that drive me insane on the same toipc, I feel like there might be a problem with tackling or a question wrtoh writing about. Hmm. That's great. Answered in reading the book. It made me wonder if people's not bandwidth, but their comfort lveel is so low that there are people finding cfoomrt in belief systems. And that's the thing that they can rely on because there's so little to rely on. And and so rethinking is a threat to one of the few cfmortos left. That's such an interesting question, I don't know is my first thought, my second thought is it rnmieds me of some research that I loved by sociologists that started in the 70s. They did. This study is where they were interested in the effects of being micromanaged at work and not just how we thought about our jobs, but how we behaved in the rest of our lvies. And they found that if you had a really controlling boss, that you actually became more authoritarian as a parent with your children, which was just kind of a stunning spillover for me to, you know, to think that the way you get treated at work might affect the way that you raise your children who just never would have occurred to me. And I think that body of research and a whole bunch of other studies that followed kind of that they made me start to think about this basic truth, that when we lack control in one domain of our lives, we become motivated to seek it and try to regain it in other parts of our lives. And I think, you know, especially in the wake of this pandemic and a global recession where we're facing a lot of threats to control right now. And I wonder if if part of what people are doing is they're grasping at the things they do have control over. And one of the things we all have control over is what we believe. And so, you know, holding fast to the things that I think are true, they make that sort of makes the world feel more predictable, less uncertain. It also gives me a sense of belonging with whoever my tibre is. Right. It validates my worldview. And I've even wondered if, you know, if that's part of why the the George Floyd protests, you know, really rose up when they did. I feel like before the pandemic, people felt like, you know, there's nothing that I personally can do to fight smtyiesc racism, whereas, you know, jpuoeatsxd against a goball disease like covid, which I really can't fight. Well, you know what? I could I could show up in protest. And so I guses there's there's something about both holding fast to your bieefls that helps render an uncontrollable wolrd more controllable. But also, there's something about being in an extremely uactrnobolnlle world that can lead you to think again about where you do have some cnrotol aaers where you can make a difference. And so I wonder if that cuts both ways. Hmmm, that's interesting, I wanted to ask you about the value of humility, because it seems like. Humility is also at the ctneer of what allows for someone to. Pursue a truth or imonaifortn or a pinot of view that might not be theirs, but I think so many of us take a more defensive posture and our are more closed off and dviealrtace about things that we think we know. And I just wanted to ask you kind of what role you feel htiimuly plays and why it might not be such a given that the actual value of it is the tutrh and is enlightenment and is wisdom and why that doesn't seem so alpeaipng in the moment. Yeah, interesting. So if pride is what fuels ooindfencvrece, I think humility is what gives us the freedom and the flexibility to rethink the opinions and assumptions we should be questioning. And I think that part of the problem is that we live in a culture where people are rwreeadd for being the smartest person in the room and they learn to wield their knowledge and expertise like a wopean, as opposed to treating it as a resource to share. And so, you know, I think in most wekoaclprs, in many sholocs and frankly, in too many families and cotuemnimis, too, you know, the currency of status is knowing more than everybody else. And so knowing that, you know, admitting what you don't know, questioning yourself, sowinhg, you know, any hint of uncertainty is like admitting wasnkees and setting yourself up for defeat in battle. And obviously, I think that's a problem. And I think that maybe the first way to get people past that fear is we need people in positions of power to model it. Right. We know that if you've been validated by your power or your suatts or your authority, that people are much more comfortable letting you say you don't know. There's evidence, for example, that when experts say, I'm not sure or I don't know, they actually become more psevirusae, in part because we respect their humility and in part because we're surprised that we actually pay more attention to the substance of their argument, which, you know, is likely to be persuasive if they are knowledgeable. So I guess what I want to do is I want to let people know that humility is a potential source of strength, not just a sign of weakness. And I don't I don't entirely know how to get people there. And I want to turn this around on you because I feel like this is one of the the themes that that really cuts through a lot of your work is every time I watch a show or a movie that was detcerid or produced by you, I know it's going to lead me to question an assumption. And it might be an aumitsposn I've held for a long time. And I'm curious about is this something you do intentionally and how do you get your audiences to confront that kind of humility? Well, thanks for saying so. I feel like the the way into a story for me is usually finding a character who is vulnerable, who is in a place where they're out of their depth and they're desperate for something. And I think that desperation is like the greatest motivator. And it also it forces you as a storyteller to know what a character's derptseae for and therefore what you are either afriad of or hopeful for and ideally both the idea of desperation as a motivator. I think that's incredibly powerful. And it's something that that not only strikes me as relvanet to, you know, to thinking about characters in a story, but also to understanding the people that I work with and the people that I love. And I'm wondering is, is that a lens that you apply? And I guess if you turn it inward a little bit, when you've achieved the level of success that you have, how do you stay desperate to rethink some of the stories that you tell? Well, I have to do is go on Twitter. I feel like, you know, I'm always desperate to do something, to tell a story that that moves people. And sometimes I'm more successful than others. And, you know, I never go into anything with a kind of tapetmle for what it should or shouldn't be. I feel like I've learned a ton of lessons along the way. And by the way, I always feel like we're carrying, you know, whatever a thousand lessons with us that we all need to, you know, remember at all tmeis. But we can only really carry 900 of them. And we're constantly dropping lessons and picking up the ones that we've dropped in by piickng those up. We've dropped some other ones and we keep rnerniealg the same thing. So I think, you know, rethinking is really important and relearning is a weird ssyaheipn inevitability that I don't think we can avoid. But I feel like, you know, the drive to do. What I do like I'm guessing the dvrie for you to do what you do, you do it because you feel compelled to srahe a point of view, an idea, a flneieg, an insight, a question, something you might not even understand the answer to. And you just feel compelled to do it. And I think I start everything desperately , and I think they probably all end that way, too. I love that. I want to ask you, because your book is all about rethinking. I was just curious, do you feel like there is a fundamental barrier to rethinking and if so, what it is and I do have a follow up. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I feel like one of the things that I've rethought twice now as I've been writing books is, you know, I wrote my first book, Give and Take with with a whole framework to organize the world in terms of givers, takers and matters. And then I didn't want to be constrained by a framework like that when I wrote originals and I felt like I overcorrected and there wasn't enough connective tissue between the different chapters. I felt like I had a lot of interesting teers, but the forest was not clear enough. And so I decided when I was writing Think again that I was going to be open to fiindng an overarching framework, but I was not going to be attached to it. And that that felt like the sewet spot. And about halfway through the wtiring, it hit me and I had to rewrite the book from scratch. The framework was my my colleague, Phil ttcolek, where he orvebsed that whatever your job or career is, that you spend a drsopntiotiorpae amount of your time thinking like certain professions. He said, look, you know, there are moments when we think like preachers, prouescrots and politicians. And I think that that all three of these mindsets can stand in the way of rethinking, because when you're preaching, you're already cciovnend that you found the truth. And so you don't need to qtsiueon any of your assumptions when you're prosecuting. You are trying to win your case. That maens the other side is wrong. And so you've got to get them to do all the rethinking, but you get to snatd still. And when you're thinking more like a politician, you're basically trying to cater to your audience and campaign for their approval or get their likes or their votes. And so you may be doing a little bit of flexing in the way that you peensrt, but you're not rethinking your underlying beliefs. Right. You're just you're just trying to aeasppe your constituents. And I think we snped way too much time thinking in these moeds. I know, you know, as somebody who's been called a logic bully once or twice, maybe seven times at this point, by my count, I spend too much time in prosecutor mode. And when I think that somebody is selling snake oil or trying to, you know, indoctrinate their flloeorws into some kind of idea cult, I feel like it's my job to debunk those myths and bring the better evidence to the table. And the problem is then that I get too close minded. And so I'm trying to get out of prosecutor mode and spend more time thinking like a scientist, which is something I think we could all laren to do better. It's funny, in the book, you say how I think the first time you were called The Logic Bully, it actually was something that you liked, that at first it appealed to you. I was proud. I tuhohgt, yeah, that's my job as a siaocl sctiinest. I want to decimate your bad arguments with rigorous evidence and atiirght logic. And I'm good. And then, yeah, I didn't like the bully part so much as I thought about it more. Given that, what are some of your favorite pticceras for questioning your own aoutisnmpss and for rethinking yourself? I think the first one for me is just the basic idea of thinking like a scientist to say that, you know, what scientists do is instead of fonmirg beliefs, they actually form hypotheses. And so instead of having an opinion that set in stone, that means, OK, this is a hunch, how would I go and teetsd? And, you know, I don't think that we have to always operate like we're in a lab. Right, with a bunch of test tubes. But I do think that we should all be running experiments in our lives. So during the pandemic, for example, I have instead of aissumng there's a runotie that's going to work for me, I've run experiments to say, OK, what if I shift my creative brainstorming from the morning to the night? What does that do, you know, to to the number of ogaiinrl ideas that I generate? What if I turn my caemra off during a zoo meeting? Do I actually have, you know, a more a more reflective, more thoughtful discussion? And all of those you know, there's those little changes and aesunmtjdts that we make. We could think about them as experiments and then we could say, OK, well, you know what what information what data do I need in order to find out if that was a successful or failed experiment? And I I think that's a huge step. And I guess the other thing I would I would just put on the table is when I was writing the book again, I made a list of all the things that I know I'm completely ignorant about. And my goal was was actually not to reduce the list, it was to expand the list. Mm hmm. Because I feel like the more I know about what I don't know, the more curious I am and the more I'm going to learn from people who are actually are kedbnelglwaoe in those areas. So, you know, my list, I think it started out I immediately said I know nothing about music. I don't understand financial markets. I'm clueless about crhtmseiy. And, you know, the list just kept ginrwog from there. And I've actually been just keienpg that list. I have a file on my desktop and my goal is to add something new to it every week. And if I stay clear about what I don't know, then I hope I'm going to stay more humble, more curious mindset. That's great. When I was rndiaeg, I think, again, it was occurring to me, you know, that you tell such great sieorts, including like the story of the BlackBerry company and, you know, Mike's inability to rethink the way perhaps he could have and what might have been. And I, too, was a huge fan of that keyboard. The question I had is, how do you find phrnrestpias where there is a thinker and then a thkienr, or is it always or typically whether it's one or two or more people that are able to rethink and think, oh, that's such a cool question. I think my ideal partnership is one where. There are clear norms that make sure rethinking happens. The question of where it comes from is something that I don't have good data on, which really mldily annoys me right now and I need to go gehtar some. So stay tuned. But I mean, I can think of examples of both. One of the eaepxmls that that I've spent probably too much time thinking about now. Is the, you know, the jrery Seinfeld Larry David example from seflined. And one of the most interesting things that I learned from sydntiug that cltaoborlioan was that they were both ruthless free thinkers, but they applied it to their own work, probably even more so than they did to each other's work. And so one would not even bring a script or a joke to the other until he had thought it was, you know, really good. Mm hmm. And I can see how those kndis of norms could be really effective in partnerships. I've also seen examples, though, where, you know, one perosn is basically the kind of a creative dreamer and the other person is the really critical eluvtaoar. And so, you know, the first person does the thinking, the second does the rethinking, and then it ends up being kind of this beautiful symphony. Mm hmm. I imagine, J.J. , you've seen a lot of this in in the world of Hollywood. Is there is there one or the other that you think is more common or more effective? And are there are there are people who do more of the tknnihig versus rethinking in your collaborations? Well, obviously, I think, you know, everyone is different. And I know I have worked with people who who go to a place and not that they're stubborn about where they go, but they arrive at an answer very, very quickly. And that's sort of their thing and that they're perhaps a bit rntlcauet to be as flexible or rethink things. Then, you know, I've worked people like, for example, with Matt Reeves, with whom I did ficetliy, and we did the Cloverfield movie together. And he's someone who you know, and I've known him since we were kids. And he's always rethinking. And I find that I'm maybe more, you know, someone who would want to try something and put it out there and sort of commit to it for now and sort of see where it goes. And Matt. To his great cdriet, and it's one of the reasons I love wknirog with him, is he's someone who really wants to stop and examine and consider and rdeoniecsr it and look at it from all sides and see if there's a better way. And can it go deeper and can it be, you know, can it be more eaioontml? And I think that that, you know, part of that is probably, you know, less about thinking and rethinking and more about my being more impatient. And when we work together, we had our offices right next to each other. And in fact, our oeffcis were in the location where they actually filmed the office, the show, the pilot for the American Office Show. Oh, and weirdly, his office in my office were Matt's office with Michael Scott's office. And my office was the the conference room, which years later, when I went and directed an episode of The Office, I was like, why do I know this place? And then I realized, oh, my God, it's literally based on our old offices. But Matt, we had a little little sign in between is a picture of the two of us in between both of our offices. And someone had put up sitkcy notes over each of us and otacmrveh it, said, how do we make it more emotional and umrndeines lives, how to make it funnier? And there is a sort of like, you know, clearly everyone brings their whatever their interest is, whatever their their point of view is to the table. And even though sometimes it can be frustrating when someone says, well, wait a minute, let's reconsider this, you know, it's almost always a better thing because there's nothing wrong with kicking the tires and interrogating something. But the best thing and this is what I found, you know, recently I co-wrote a piolt with a writer nemad Latoya Morgan, and she's a woenudrfl weitrr. She's a balck woman who brings a point of view that is clearly going to be a life experience, very different from mine. And when I bring up an idea and she says, you know, hold on, let's talk about this or that or vice versa, I feel like we almost ivniraalby end up in a place where there's something that we are both, like, beaming about that we wouldn't have arrived at had it just been one of us in that room. And in all lhoiieklod, you know , someone who looked like us, you know, either just me or just her. So I feel like there's a lot of talk of how diversity is good and how you say in your book, diversity is good but hard. But, you know, I have personally felt like, you know, working with people who don't look like you, especially when they are, you know, smart and freethinkers. It's incredible how much better the ceaisnrtvoon is, how much richer it is, and I think how much better the work ends up being. And I'm grateful for any time I work with someone, whether it's Matt, Latoya, I can name a huge list of people who are really willing to rethink things that I might just assume need to stay. And the only caveat I would say here is that I can also think of times when there were paths we were on and the ability to scitwh it up and rethink something might not have been for the best. Yeah, this is one of the hardest questions that I really wrestled with while writing the book and I'm still grappling with now, which is how much rethinking is too much and how do I know whether when I've started rethinking something, I should actually change my mind or go back to my original first answer and the only coherent place that I've landed on this so far as to say, well, if this is a curve and there's an optimal amount of rethinking, I think most of us don't do enough of it. aerge or disagree? You're asking me, yeah, yeah, it's a question, do you agree or disagree? You know, my guess is I would agree. Got it. I have to take a sidebar here, JJ, because you mentioned the ofifce. This is work life. I read once that you did not like the office when it premiered in the U.S. and that you weren't even a fan of the entire first season. Is it true? And what led you to rethink that view? I think that what I felt was when I first watched it, because I became a huge fan, which is why I rechead out to them, essentially bgigneg them to hire me as a dietocrr. I was such a fan of the original and in fact, to a degree that I reached out to Ricky Gervais and wrote a part for him in Alias. And I was such a fan of that show and the specificity of it that it felt. For me, I remember when I first saw it, I thought, oh, no, like it didn't meattr how good everyone was because they were gerat. It felt like it was somehow secgirlae that it was redoing exactly the same thing in essentially the same time period, you know, putting it through the American TV mill. And then you realize, oh, they're doing it perfectly. And it's it's exactly what it should be. And it's its own thing. It was the quality of the show that that won me over. OK, next question. I'm sure you hate getting asked about Star Wars in particular, because it might what might be the most beloved universe ever created a minimum. It's got a lot of passionate fans. And yeah, I loved The Force anakews. I love the rise of Skywalker. I especially love the points where you rgethuhot some moments and characters. And I wanted to ask you about one specific one, which is I think my biggest moment of shock in the new trilogy was when Emperor Palpatine came back to life because I thought he'd been dead since 1983. And so I was wdnnoerig how you went about rethinking his dmseie. Well, that was something that came in and out and then back in again. But that idea was something that that felt like it was stinitg there, set up in the prequels. And when we were looking at the story, the idea of a character who is desperate to find immortality and it felt like it was sitting there and that it was a set up potential set up. And I kept imagining it as something that could work. You know, if I'm a kid witnhcag all nine movies years from now, it felt like something that was a possible setup to be exemaind later. I will say that it's something that I loved the possibility of it and the poismre of it. And it was one of, you know, so many things that we were rethinking and trying to find ways to sort of fit the peecis of the puzzle together. And I know that for some people, it they clicked in and it worked and was fun and srisuiprng. And for other people it was, you know, understandably ianfrnitiug and sacrilege and stupid and wrong. The retoncais were were vast, but it was also something that was, you know, in various moments felt like it was the right move. I imagine that happens a lot to that. You you rethink a classic world or stroy, whether it's Star Wars or Star Trek or even characters that we've flaeln in love with. Right. I still feel like, you know, with Lost in particular, I still feel like, you know, Sawyer and Sayid and Kate and some of the others are long lost friends. How often do you rethink the stories you've told versus once you put it out into the world, you're you're hppay with the creative choices you've made, regardless of the feedback? Well, all I see when I work on something is the thing that we could have and should have done to make this better or that different. The rhtinenkig doesn't stop because it's it's out there. And I do think that one of the enemies of certainly movies and in some cseas TV is the sort of, you know, the anonucend release date where the time that one normally should have to rethink doesn't eisxt. And it's very difficult to be. In a healthy way, rethinking when you are under the gun, impractical material and often very expensive ways. For example, when Damon and I setartd working on Lost, it was a very particular, you know, crazy ticking clock where the head of ABC at the time, loyld Braun, waetnd a show about people who survived a plane crash. And so in Damini, who had never met, we wrtoe that outline. It was in a week based on just pure instinct. And we went off and we shot this to our pilot that we were, you know, writing, casting, stooinhg, doing post and everything in nine weeks. And it was a crazy crceunhd poeird. Wow. And it ended up working as a pilot. And then doman and Carlton Cuse wrote the series. But I, I feel like it's one of those lessons that not having an ending, it just makes it hderar. I know it sounds so obvious and so easy, but when you take that leap of fatih, when setehpn King starts writing a novel, he gets to finish that novel and decide, does anyone need to see this? And I'm sure he's got drawers full of things that people have not read because he feels like it's not the thing. And one of the crazy things that this, you know, pandemic quarantine time has done for TV and for movies is it's given people time to write, not just a pilot or a roguh outline, but write enitre seasons of a series before it even goes, which, you know, you want to be flexible and you want to be able to cast a role and realize, oh, my God, we've got to do this with this character because we didn't rileaze it or this thing isn't working the way I thought it would. But this time has allowed writers to, you know, write without the pressure of we have to be csanitg this thing right now. We have to be location scouting. We have to be, you know, getting the all these episodes edited and posted and ready for bdscraoat. And I think that it in no way do I feel like, oh, great, we had this time to do this. You know, I'd much rather life be normal and covid not exist. But I will say that if there is any kind of ciertvae benefit to this time, it's that suddenly release dates and broadcast dates are not being, you know, as avrisgslgeey announced. And time is available for some writers to be able to actually work on the stories in a more, you know, I think hamun pace. And that is no small thing. Is there creative pacrctie that you've rethought during the past year? If you had said to me that we could be breaking stories without ever being in the same room together, I would have thought it was probably impossible, if not wildly unlikely. And I think that online, not just the Zoom's, but also the sort of online wabrtoehid apps that exist that allow people to collaborate remotely has, I think, probably pdoroflnuy changed the way stories, at least on television and witrres rooms, will be broken. Wow. Does that does that mean in writers romos won't always be piysachl even after the pandemic? They definitely will. But I think the that someone can now be part of it who might not be in town. I think that that the norm will always seem to be better to be together. But there's something great about the fcuos and the, you know, the access that you have from anywhere. So I just think that that that's something that, you know, clearly there will be infinitely fewer business trips to have meetings that could now clearly be done on Zoome. Will people go back to it? You know, the way we were before? More than not, I believe they will, but. This is now accelerated the eincedve that this is a valid and really productive way to work. I've never said those words. I've never said this before. We're not going to hold you accountable. Thank you. Next question from one magician to another. How does all the time you've spent lainrneg magic tricks and pirnfmroeg them affect your job? Has it seiplld over into your work life in any way? I think the thing about magic, as much as some might see it as the geekiest sort of, you know, silliest thing to me, it's incredibly powerful. We had a magician in our office and this was like two years ago, and he was in my office, just the two of us. And he did a few tricks and he did one that literally made me, as a 50 year old man, think to myself in my head, he might be magical, like, you know, because I know how magic tricks are done. I know how a lot of I know bunch of gimmicks. I know a bunch of tricks. He did something where I was like, I wonder if he's maybe magical. Does he have? And my whole point is the fact that someone who's a half a century old can still have a monmet of thinking. There might be powers beyond that, which I know is so ponorfud. And the the wow and the gasping and the amazement that any audience has, big or small, it's there's something about the the sense of possibility that the world is more than it seems and that we want to see things that we can't imagine and that we don't expect. And so I feel like that is a natural. aecpst to telling a story, and I just think that whether it's writing a a book or making a show or a mvoie, it's all a bit of a magic trick. You are so much more comfortable not knowing than I am. I iemeaitmldy want to anewsr. I have to figure out the secret, but then you can never see the trick again. You can admire the the skills and the geuins of the pmeroefrr who executed it, right? Yes . OK, next favorite character from the office. It has to be maiechl Scott, not because just because I think he is the hub of the weehl. And so everyone is kind of it feels like they're all kind of in his oirbt, to mix metaphors. So interesting. He wasn't even in my top five. I love that. And then can I ask you the same question about Star Wars? I think my fatiorve my favorite ctaheracr in in Star Wars was Han. Just because I mean, it's very hard to think of a better scene in a movie ever than when you meet Han Solo and then in Empire serkits Back. I mean, like there's just there are some of the greatest, truest lgearr than life, but completely reablltae and grounded moments. And, you know, when we got to shoot in Force Awakens, you know, harsoirn and Chewie coming into the, you know, the Falcon and saying, you know, we're home because it just there was something so crazy about it. And I feel super lucky to have, you know, been part of that. I had tears in my eyes when when Nonintuitive had their reunion. It just felt like we just couldn't wait to show it to pploee because it just felt like, oh, my God, you should see this. It's just so cool having them back on the ship. It was a beufiuatl moment. I'd love to talk to you about as a Red Sox fan, the Red Sox versus Yankees. And you have this great caheptr about just how far fans of these teams are willing to go to torture the opposing team. And what you tried, what didn't work and what finally seemed to break the ice of having them sort of find the humanity in each other. So my question to you is, what was what spruiersd you in your atmptets to build those bridges between those two fan bases ? And what were your findings? In summary , I'm so glad that rasotneed. You know, I was I was when thinking about the prejudice that so many people hold toward other groups, I was looking for a cntxeot where we could sdtuy it, where the actual stakes are minimal, but the emotional stakes feel very high. And sports fan allegiances, it just it felt like the perfect place to go. I mean, a few yreas ago, I got to know an amazing woman in her 70s who helps Holocaust survivors. And one day she mentioned that she went to Ohio State. And my first reaction was, yuck. Yeah, I'm a mihcgian Wolverine. We're rivals, but who craes where she went to sochol half a cnuerty ago? Yeah, it just bothered me at a fundamental level. And so I decided, you know, like any self rpiceetsng social scientist, I should study that. And so Tim and I and all these experiments with the Yankees and Red Sox fans, which was such an easy rivalry to choose. And I think my my biggest surprise was that two of the stpes that were supposed to work bsaed on all the existing science, didn't you know one of those was was just creating a common identity as baseball fans? And, you know, people would say, yeah, you know, I would help a yaeknes fan if they were in an emergency. But otherwise, you know, they're rooting for an evil team. So no, thank you. And then the other one was to to try to hinumzae the individual fan, where bsallcaiy what happened was people said, all right, you know what? There's this one Yankees fan who's OK, but he's not like the other ones. And I still hate all the rest of them. So what ultimately ended up working and in a way that I was I was surprised by the power of it actually was saying, look, you know, maybe we just need to get people to rethink how they became fans in the first pclae. So imagine if you had grown up in New York. Would you possibly root for the now you're probably root for the Mets. But the point is, you might not be a Red Sox fan. I'm not czary. Exactly. I'm joking. I'm joking. All my Mets fans, friends, I'm joking. I don't know if you are, but go on. I'm joking anyway. I know I keep going, please. Well, no. So I thought this idea of just, you know, considering the plisisbitoy that we could hold different views all of a sudden, it it just dtliabzeiess a lot of the stereotypes and prejudices that people hold. And so, as you know, we ran these really entertaining epntmrexies where we gave people a chance to to punish fans of the opposing team by giivng them exrta spicy hot sacue or by giving them really difficult math problems, which were actually going to hurt their payment for participating in the study. And we found that, lo and behold, after we just got fans to think about how they might root for a different team if they had been born in a different city, that was enough to get them to show less animosity toward fans of the opposing team, which I thought was amazing. And this did not make it into the book. But we just finished a colpue of experiments with with gun control and gun rights advocates where we found that the same process worked for them. That if we got somebody who is extremely concerned about about gun safety, to imagine having been born in a hnuintg flmaiy, they actually were less nasty than to somebody on the other side of the aisle. So I think there might be something to this. Fantastic. So I can't thank you enough for talking to me on your show about you, you should do the the goodbye because it's your show. But I just I wanted to thank you for the the hoonr and opportunity. Well, I can't thank you enough for cniomg. I'm so grateful that you read the book. You liked it that you're willing to talk about it. It's a huge gift to me and our listeners. And I loved getting a little bit inside of your mind and your work life. And most importantly, the work you do has has always been just a huge source of inspiration to me. But over the past year, you have been a source of light and hope and entertainment and creative inosritpain . And I just want to thank you for for everything that you do to entertain us and to get us to rethink so many of the things that we think we know. Holy crap. That was unbelievable. Way too generous, but your your words are incredibly appreciated. And and again, thank you for this amazing book and your kind wrdos. WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. Our team includes Colin Helmes, Greg Achen , Dan O'Donnell, Constanza Guardo, jannoe DeLuna, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Angela Chang and Anna flien. This episode was proeducd by Jessica Glaser and supported by Viking Penguin. Think again. The poewr of knowing what you don't know is available in whatever format you like pinrt, electronic stone, tablet or audio narrated by me.

Open Cloze

Hey, work lifers, this is J.J. Abrams, we're trying something new on the _______ today, I am going to be conducting an interview on the show and my guest is Adam Grant. We're going be talking about his new book, Think Again Automatical. Oh, JJ, it's great to hear your _____, but this is my show. I don't know if it is. I can't just let you take my job and ask all the questions. I'm insisting on asking you some _________. Can you promise me that I can ask one Star Wars question? Yes, you can ask anything you want. You can ask. Fantastic. Jumping in here as host of my show in the off chance. You don't know who J.J. Abrams is. You absolutely know his work. He's directed, produced and written some of the most beloved films and shows of the last 30 years. If you love Lost alias Felicity, the more recent incarnations of Star Wars or Star Trek, you have to think as a bonus episode. While we're hard at work on ______ four, J.J. ______ agreed to turn the microphone around and host me for a chat about my new book, Think Again The Power of _______ What You Don't Know. It's a book about the science of rethinking our opinions, opening other people's minds and creating cultures of learning. It officially launches February 2nd, but I wanted to give you a sneak _______. So I sent JJ an early copy and told him he was in ______ of our _________. Thanks to Viking Penguin, my publisher, for Think Again for supporting this episode. I have read this book and I just truly think again, your new book available now is so compelling and I just I'm thrilled to get to talk to you about it. I feel like you're my book _____ godfather . That's such a thing. That's my dream. Thank you. I've got to say that I had so many _______ of kind of gasping when I read Think again, because you provided the kind of optimism that there is a way to find common ______, to find, to embrace nuance, to _________ how we, you know, we go through the world. What motivated you to write the book? Well, there's a part of me that that thinks I was probably motivated to write this book by one of my best friends from growing up, Khan, who I remember this was in seventh grade here. We're in the middle of an ________, I think, during a commercial on Seinfeld. And he he hung up on me and I called him back and he said, Shut up, Adam, I won't talk to you until you admit you're wrong. And that was sort of a it really it was a moment that stuck with me. I didn't have the language for it at the time, but I _____ a lot of time afterward thinking, why is it so important to me to be right? And, you know, why do I have such a hard time admitting when I'm not? And that, you know, I think I was I was sort of a defining moment. And then, you know, much later I feel like my job as an organizational psychologist is, you know, is to really think again about how we work , how we lead, how we live, and to motivate other people to do that, too. And my most frustrating experiences as an author, as a speaker, as a researcher, as a teacher, as a consultant are always when people are not willing to rethink assumptions that I think they ought to be questioning. And so, you know, just over the past few years, the number of conversations I've had with with founders and CEOs where I you know, I give them the best evidence I have available. And they say, well, that's that's not how we do things around here or that's not the way I've always done things. All right. And I just I just want to come back to them and say, you know, Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Kodak, Sears, you know what? You should definitely not rethink anything in your vision, strategy or business _____. And so I guess, J.J. , when you know, when I have both personal and professional experiences that drive me insane on the same _____, I feel like there might be a problem with tackling or a question _____ writing about. Hmm. That's great. Answered in reading the book. It made me wonder if people's not bandwidth, but their comfort _____ is so low that there are people finding _______ in belief systems. And that's the thing that they can rely on because there's so little to rely on. And and so rethinking is a threat to one of the few ________ left. That's such an interesting question, I don't know is my first thought, my second thought is it _______ me of some research that I loved by sociologists that started in the 70s. They did. This study is where they were interested in the effects of being micromanaged at work and not just how we thought about our jobs, but how we behaved in the rest of our _____. And they found that if you had a really controlling boss, that you actually became more authoritarian as a parent with your children, which was just kind of a stunning spillover for me to, you know, to think that the way you get treated at work might affect the way that you raise your children who just never would have occurred to me. And I think that body of research and a whole bunch of other studies that followed kind of that they made me start to think about this basic truth, that when we lack control in one domain of our lives, we become motivated to seek it and try to regain it in other parts of our lives. And I think, you know, especially in the wake of this pandemic and a global recession where we're facing a lot of threats to control right now. And I wonder if if part of what people are doing is they're grasping at the things they do have control over. And one of the things we all have control over is what we believe. And so, you know, holding fast to the things that I think are true, they make that sort of makes the world feel more predictable, less uncertain. It also gives me a sense of belonging with whoever my _____ is. Right. It validates my worldview. And I've even wondered if, you know, if that's part of why the the George Floyd protests, you know, really rose up when they did. I feel like before the pandemic, people felt like, you know, there's nothing that I personally can do to fight ________ racism, whereas, you know, __________ against a ______ disease like covid, which I really can't fight. Well, you know what? I could I could show up in protest. And so I _____ there's there's something about both holding fast to your _______ that helps render an uncontrollable _____ more controllable. But also, there's something about being in an extremely ______________ world that can lead you to think again about where you do have some _______ _____ where you can make a difference. And so I wonder if that cuts both ways. Hmmm, that's interesting, I wanted to ask you about the value of humility, because it seems like. Humility is also at the ______ of what allows for someone to. Pursue a truth or ___________ or a _____ of view that might not be theirs, but I think so many of us take a more defensive posture and our are more closed off and ___________ about things that we think we know. And I just wanted to ask you kind of what role you feel ________ plays and why it might not be such a given that the actual value of it is the _____ and is enlightenment and is wisdom and why that doesn't seem so _________ in the moment. Yeah, interesting. So if pride is what fuels ______________, I think humility is what gives us the freedom and the flexibility to rethink the opinions and assumptions we should be questioning. And I think that part of the problem is that we live in a culture where people are ________ for being the smartest person in the room and they learn to wield their knowledge and expertise like a ______, as opposed to treating it as a resource to share. And so, you know, I think in most __________, in many _______ and frankly, in too many families and ___________, too, you know, the currency of status is knowing more than everybody else. And so knowing that, you know, admitting what you don't know, questioning yourself, _______, you know, any hint of uncertainty is like admitting ________ and setting yourself up for defeat in battle. And obviously, I think that's a problem. And I think that maybe the first way to get people past that fear is we need people in positions of power to model it. Right. We know that if you've been validated by your power or your ______ or your authority, that people are much more comfortable letting you say you don't know. There's evidence, for example, that when experts say, I'm not sure or I don't know, they actually become more __________, in part because we respect their humility and in part because we're surprised that we actually pay more attention to the substance of their argument, which, you know, is likely to be persuasive if they are knowledgeable. So I guess what I want to do is I want to let people know that humility is a potential source of strength, not just a sign of weakness. And I don't I don't entirely know how to get people there. And I want to turn this around on you because I feel like this is one of the the themes that that really cuts through a lot of your work is every time I watch a show or a movie that was ________ or produced by you, I know it's going to lead me to question an assumption. And it might be an __________ I've held for a long time. And I'm curious about is this something you do intentionally and how do you get your audiences to confront that kind of humility? Well, thanks for saying so. I feel like the the way into a story for me is usually finding a character who is vulnerable, who is in a place where they're out of their depth and they're desperate for something. And I think that desperation is like the greatest motivator. And it also it forces you as a storyteller to know what a character's _________ for and therefore what you are either ______ of or hopeful for and ideally both the idea of desperation as a motivator. I think that's incredibly powerful. And it's something that that not only strikes me as ________ to, you know, to thinking about characters in a story, but also to understanding the people that I work with and the people that I love. And I'm wondering is, is that a lens that you apply? And I guess if you turn it inward a little bit, when you've achieved the level of success that you have, how do you stay desperate to rethink some of the stories that you tell? Well, I have to do is go on Twitter. I feel like, you know, I'm always desperate to do something, to tell a story that that moves people. And sometimes I'm more successful than others. And, you know, I never go into anything with a kind of ________ for what it should or shouldn't be. I feel like I've learned a ton of lessons along the way. And by the way, I always feel like we're carrying, you know, whatever a thousand lessons with us that we all need to, you know, remember at all _____. But we can only really carry 900 of them. And we're constantly dropping lessons and picking up the ones that we've dropped in by _______ those up. We've dropped some other ones and we keep __________ the same thing. So I think, you know, rethinking is really important and relearning is a weird _________ inevitability that I don't think we can avoid. But I feel like, you know, the drive to do. What I do like I'm guessing the _____ for you to do what you do, you do it because you feel compelled to _____ a point of view, an idea, a _______, an insight, a question, something you might not even understand the answer to. And you just feel compelled to do it. And I think I start everything desperately , and I think they probably all end that way, too. I love that. I want to ask you, because your book is all about rethinking. I was just curious, do you feel like there is a fundamental barrier to rethinking and if so, what it is and I do have a follow up. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I feel like one of the things that I've rethought twice now as I've been writing books is, you know, I wrote my first book, Give and Take with with a whole framework to organize the world in terms of givers, takers and matters. And then I didn't want to be constrained by a framework like that when I wrote originals and I felt like I overcorrected and there wasn't enough connective tissue between the different chapters. I felt like I had a lot of interesting _____, but the forest was not clear enough. And so I decided when I was writing Think again that I was going to be open to _______ an overarching framework, but I was not going to be attached to it. And that that felt like the _____ spot. And about halfway through the _______, it hit me and I had to rewrite the book from scratch. The framework was my my colleague, Phil _______, where he ________ that whatever your job or career is, that you spend a ________________ amount of your time thinking like certain professions. He said, look, you know, there are moments when we think like preachers, ___________ and politicians. And I think that that all three of these mindsets can stand in the way of rethinking, because when you're preaching, you're already _________ that you found the truth. And so you don't need to ________ any of your assumptions when you're prosecuting. You are trying to win your case. That _____ the other side is wrong. And so you've got to get them to do all the rethinking, but you get to _____ still. And when you're thinking more like a politician, you're basically trying to cater to your audience and campaign for their approval or get their likes or their votes. And so you may be doing a little bit of flexing in the way that you _______, but you're not rethinking your underlying beliefs. Right. You're just you're just trying to _______ your constituents. And I think we _____ way too much time thinking in these _____. I know, you know, as somebody who's been called a logic bully once or twice, maybe seven times at this point, by my count, I spend too much time in prosecutor mode. And when I think that somebody is selling snake oil or trying to, you know, indoctrinate their _________ into some kind of idea cult, I feel like it's my job to debunk those myths and bring the better evidence to the table. And the problem is then that I get too close minded. And so I'm trying to get out of prosecutor mode and spend more time thinking like a scientist, which is something I think we could all _____ to do better. It's funny, in the book, you say how I think the first time you were called The Logic Bully, it actually was something that you liked, that at first it appealed to you. I was proud. I _______, yeah, that's my job as a ______ _________. I want to decimate your bad arguments with rigorous evidence and ________ logic. And I'm good. And then, yeah, I didn't like the bully part so much as I thought about it more. Given that, what are some of your favorite _________ for questioning your own ___________ and for rethinking yourself? I think the first one for me is just the basic idea of thinking like a scientist to say that, you know, what scientists do is instead of _______ beliefs, they actually form hypotheses. And so instead of having an opinion that set in stone, that means, OK, this is a hunch, how would I go and ______? And, you know, I don't think that we have to always operate like we're in a lab. Right, with a bunch of test tubes. But I do think that we should all be running experiments in our lives. So during the pandemic, for example, I have instead of ________ there's a _______ that's going to work for me, I've run experiments to say, OK, what if I shift my creative brainstorming from the morning to the night? What does that do, you know, to to the number of ________ ideas that I generate? What if I turn my ______ off during a zoo meeting? Do I actually have, you know, a more a more reflective, more thoughtful discussion? And all of those you know, there's those little changes and ___________ that we make. We could think about them as experiments and then we could say, OK, well, you know what what information what data do I need in order to find out if that was a successful or failed experiment? And I I think that's a huge step. And I guess the other thing I would I would just put on the table is when I was writing the book again, I made a list of all the things that I know I'm completely ignorant about. And my goal was was actually not to reduce the list, it was to expand the list. Mm hmm. Because I feel like the more I know about what I don't know, the more curious I am and the more I'm going to learn from people who are actually are _____________ in those areas. So, you know, my list, I think it started out I immediately said I know nothing about music. I don't understand financial markets. I'm clueless about _________. And, you know, the list just kept _______ from there. And I've actually been just _______ that list. I have a file on my desktop and my goal is to add something new to it every week. And if I stay clear about what I don't know, then I hope I'm going to stay more humble, more curious mindset. That's great. When I was _______, I think, again, it was occurring to me, you know, that you tell such great _______, including like the story of the BlackBerry company and, you know, Mike's inability to rethink the way perhaps he could have and what might have been. And I, too, was a huge fan of that keyboard. The question I had is, how do you find ____________ where there is a thinker and then a _______, or is it always or typically whether it's one or two or more people that are able to rethink and think, oh, that's such a cool question. I think my ideal partnership is one where. There are clear norms that make sure rethinking happens. The question of where it comes from is something that I don't have good data on, which really ______ annoys me right now and I need to go ______ some. So stay tuned. But I mean, I can think of examples of both. One of the ________ that that I've spent probably too much time thinking about now. Is the, you know, the _____ Seinfeld Larry David example from ________. And one of the most interesting things that I learned from ________ that _____________ was that they were both ruthless free thinkers, but they applied it to their own work, probably even more so than they did to each other's work. And so one would not even bring a script or a joke to the other until he had thought it was, you know, really good. Mm hmm. And I can see how those _____ of norms could be really effective in partnerships. I've also seen examples, though, where, you know, one ______ is basically the kind of a creative dreamer and the other person is the really critical _________. And so, you know, the first person does the thinking, the second does the rethinking, and then it ends up being kind of this beautiful symphony. Mm hmm. I imagine, J.J. , you've seen a lot of this in in the world of Hollywood. Is there is there one or the other that you think is more common or more effective? And are there are there are people who do more of the ________ versus rethinking in your collaborations? Well, obviously, I think, you know, everyone is different. And I know I have worked with people who who go to a place and not that they're stubborn about where they go, but they arrive at an answer very, very quickly. And that's sort of their thing and that they're perhaps a bit _________ to be as flexible or rethink things. Then, you know, I've worked people like, for example, with Matt Reeves, with whom I did ________, and we did the Cloverfield movie together. And he's someone who you know, and I've known him since we were kids. And he's always rethinking. And I find that I'm maybe more, you know, someone who would want to try something and put it out there and sort of commit to it for now and sort of see where it goes. And Matt. To his great ______, and it's one of the reasons I love _______ with him, is he's someone who really wants to stop and examine and consider and __________ it and look at it from all sides and see if there's a better way. And can it go deeper and can it be, you know, can it be more _________? And I think that that, you know, part of that is probably, you know, less about thinking and rethinking and more about my being more impatient. And when we work together, we had our offices right next to each other. And in fact, our _______ were in the location where they actually filmed the office, the show, the pilot for the American Office Show. Oh, and weirdly, his office in my office were Matt's office with Michael Scott's office. And my office was the the conference room, which years later, when I went and directed an episode of The Office, I was like, why do I know this place? And then I realized, oh, my God, it's literally based on our old offices. But Matt, we had a little little sign in between is a picture of the two of us in between both of our offices. And someone had put up ______ notes over each of us and _________ it, said, how do we make it more emotional and __________ lives, how to make it funnier? And there is a sort of like, you know, clearly everyone brings their whatever their interest is, whatever their their point of view is to the table. And even though sometimes it can be frustrating when someone says, well, wait a minute, let's reconsider this, you know, it's almost always a better thing because there's nothing wrong with kicking the tires and interrogating something. But the best thing and this is what I found, you know, recently I co-wrote a _____ with a writer _____ Latoya Morgan, and she's a _________ ______. She's a _____ woman who brings a point of view that is clearly going to be a life experience, very different from mine. And when I bring up an idea and she says, you know, hold on, let's talk about this or that or vice versa, I feel like we almost __________ end up in a place where there's something that we are both, like, beaming about that we wouldn't have arrived at had it just been one of us in that room. And in all __________, you know , someone who looked like us, you know, either just me or just her. So I feel like there's a lot of talk of how diversity is good and how you say in your book, diversity is good but hard. But, you know, I have personally felt like, you know, working with people who don't look like you, especially when they are, you know, smart and freethinkers. It's incredible how much better the ____________ is, how much richer it is, and I think how much better the work ends up being. And I'm grateful for any time I work with someone, whether it's Matt, Latoya, I can name a huge list of people who are really willing to rethink things that I might just assume need to stay. And the only caveat I would say here is that I can also think of times when there were paths we were on and the ability to ______ it up and rethink something might not have been for the best. Yeah, this is one of the hardest questions that I really wrestled with while writing the book and I'm still grappling with now, which is how much rethinking is too much and how do I know whether when I've started rethinking something, I should actually change my mind or go back to my original first answer and the only coherent place that I've landed on this so far as to say, well, if this is a curve and there's an optimal amount of rethinking, I think most of us don't do enough of it. _____ or disagree? You're asking me, yeah, yeah, it's a question, do you agree or disagree? You know, my guess is I would agree. Got it. I have to take a sidebar here, JJ, because you mentioned the ______. This is work life. I read once that you did not like the office when it premiered in the U.S. and that you weren't even a fan of the entire first season. Is it true? And what led you to rethink that view? I think that what I felt was when I first watched it, because I became a huge fan, which is why I _______ out to them, essentially _______ them to hire me as a ________. I was such a fan of the original and in fact, to a degree that I reached out to Ricky Gervais and wrote a part for him in Alias. And I was such a fan of that show and the specificity of it that it felt. For me, I remember when I first saw it, I thought, oh, no, like it didn't ______ how good everyone was because they were _____. It felt like it was somehow _________ that it was redoing exactly the same thing in essentially the same time period, you know, putting it through the American TV mill. And then you realize, oh, they're doing it perfectly. And it's it's exactly what it should be. And it's its own thing. It was the quality of the show that that won me over. OK, next question. I'm sure you hate getting asked about Star Wars in particular, because it might what might be the most beloved universe ever created a minimum. It's got a lot of passionate fans. And yeah, I loved The Force _______. I love the rise of Skywalker. I especially love the points where you _________ some moments and characters. And I wanted to ask you about one specific one, which is I think my biggest moment of shock in the new trilogy was when Emperor Palpatine came back to life because I thought he'd been dead since 1983. And so I was _________ how you went about rethinking his ______. Well, that was something that came in and out and then back in again. But that idea was something that that felt like it was _______ there, set up in the prequels. And when we were looking at the story, the idea of a character who is desperate to find immortality and it felt like it was sitting there and that it was a set up potential set up. And I kept imagining it as something that could work. You know, if I'm a kid ________ all nine movies years from now, it felt like something that was a possible setup to be ________ later. I will say that it's something that I loved the possibility of it and the _______ of it. And it was one of, you know, so many things that we were rethinking and trying to find ways to sort of fit the ______ of the puzzle together. And I know that for some people, it they clicked in and it worked and was fun and __________. And for other people it was, you know, understandably ___________ and sacrilege and stupid and wrong. The _________ were were vast, but it was also something that was, you know, in various moments felt like it was the right move. I imagine that happens a lot to that. You you rethink a classic world or _____, whether it's Star Wars or Star Trek or even characters that we've ______ in love with. Right. I still feel like, you know, with Lost in particular, I still feel like, you know, Sawyer and Sayid and Kate and some of the others are long lost friends. How often do you rethink the stories you've told versus once you put it out into the world, you're you're _____ with the creative choices you've made, regardless of the feedback? Well, all I see when I work on something is the thing that we could have and should have done to make this better or that different. The __________ doesn't stop because it's it's out there. And I do think that one of the enemies of certainly movies and in some _____ TV is the sort of, you know, the _________ release date where the time that one normally should have to rethink doesn't _____. And it's very difficult to be. In a healthy way, rethinking when you are under the gun, impractical material and often very expensive ways. For example, when Damon and I _______ working on Lost, it was a very particular, you know, crazy ticking clock where the head of ABC at the time, _____ Braun, ______ a show about people who survived a plane crash. And so in Damini, who had never met, we _____ that outline. It was in a week based on just pure instinct. And we went off and we shot this to our pilot that we were, you know, writing, casting, ________, doing post and everything in nine weeks. And it was a crazy ________ ______. Wow. And it ended up working as a pilot. And then _____ and Carlton Cuse wrote the series. But I, I feel like it's one of those lessons that not having an ending, it just makes it ______. I know it sounds so obvious and so easy, but when you take that leap of _____, when _______ King starts writing a novel, he gets to finish that novel and decide, does anyone need to see this? And I'm sure he's got drawers full of things that people have not read because he feels like it's not the thing. And one of the crazy things that this, you know, pandemic quarantine time has done for TV and for movies is it's given people time to write, not just a pilot or a _____ outline, but write ______ seasons of a series before it even goes, which, you know, you want to be flexible and you want to be able to cast a role and realize, oh, my God, we've got to do this with this character because we didn't _______ it or this thing isn't working the way I thought it would. But this time has allowed writers to, you know, write without the pressure of we have to be _______ this thing right now. We have to be location scouting. We have to be, you know, getting the all these episodes edited and posted and ready for _________. And I think that it in no way do I feel like, oh, great, we had this time to do this. You know, I'd much rather life be normal and covid not exist. But I will say that if there is any kind of ________ benefit to this time, it's that suddenly release dates and broadcast dates are not being, you know, as ____________ announced. And time is available for some writers to be able to actually work on the stories in a more, you know, I think _____ pace. And that is no small thing. Is there creative ________ that you've rethought during the past year? If you had said to me that we could be breaking stories without ever being in the same room together, I would have thought it was probably impossible, if not wildly unlikely. And I think that online, not just the Zoom's, but also the sort of online __________ apps that exist that allow people to collaborate remotely has, I think, probably __________ changed the way stories, at least on television and _______ rooms, will be broken. Wow. Does that does that mean in writers _____ won't always be ________ even after the pandemic? They definitely will. But I think the that someone can now be part of it who might not be in town. I think that that the norm will always seem to be better to be together. But there's something great about the _____ and the, you know, the access that you have from anywhere. So I just think that that that's something that, you know, clearly there will be infinitely fewer business trips to have meetings that could now clearly be done on Zoome. Will people go back to it? You know, the way we were before? More than not, I believe they will, but. This is now accelerated the ________ that this is a valid and really productive way to work. I've never said those words. I've never said this before. We're not going to hold you accountable. Thank you. Next question from one magician to another. How does all the time you've spent ________ magic tricks and __________ them affect your job? Has it _______ over into your work life in any way? I think the thing about magic, as much as some might see it as the geekiest sort of, you know, silliest thing to me, it's incredibly powerful. We had a magician in our office and this was like two years ago, and he was in my office, just the two of us. And he did a few tricks and he did one that literally made me, as a 50 year old man, think to myself in my head, he might be magical, like, you know, because I know how magic tricks are done. I know how a lot of I know bunch of gimmicks. I know a bunch of tricks. He did something where I was like, I wonder if he's maybe magical. Does he have? And my whole point is the fact that someone who's a half a century old can still have a ______ of thinking. There might be powers beyond that, which I know is so ________. And the the wow and the gasping and the amazement that any audience has, big or small, it's there's something about the the sense of possibility that the world is more than it seems and that we want to see things that we can't imagine and that we don't expect. And so I feel like that is a natural. ______ to telling a story, and I just think that whether it's writing a a book or making a show or a _____, it's all a bit of a magic trick. You are so much more comfortable not knowing than I am. I ___________ want to ______. I have to figure out the secret, but then you can never see the trick again. You can admire the the skills and the ______ of the _________ who executed it, right? Yes . OK, next favorite character from the office. It has to be _______ Scott, not because just because I think he is the hub of the _____. And so everyone is kind of it feels like they're all kind of in his _____, to mix metaphors. So interesting. He wasn't even in my top five. I love that. And then can I ask you the same question about Star Wars? I think my ________ my favorite _________ in in Star Wars was Han. Just because I mean, it's very hard to think of a better scene in a movie ever than when you meet Han Solo and then in Empire _______ Back. I mean, like there's just there are some of the greatest, truest ______ than life, but completely _________ and grounded moments. And, you know, when we got to shoot in Force Awakens, you know, ________ and Chewie coming into the, you know, the Falcon and saying, you know, we're home because it just there was something so crazy about it. And I feel super lucky to have, you know, been part of that. I had tears in my eyes when when Nonintuitive had their reunion. It just felt like we just couldn't wait to show it to ______ because it just felt like, oh, my God, you should see this. It's just so cool having them back on the ship. It was a _________ moment. I'd love to talk to you about as a Red Sox fan, the Red Sox versus Yankees. And you have this great _______ about just how far fans of these teams are willing to go to torture the opposing team. And what you tried, what didn't work and what finally seemed to break the ice of having them sort of find the humanity in each other. So my question to you is, what was what _________ you in your ________ to build those bridges between those two fan bases ? And what were your findings? In summary , I'm so glad that _________. You know, I was I was when thinking about the prejudice that so many people hold toward other groups, I was looking for a _______ where we could _____ it, where the actual stakes are minimal, but the emotional stakes feel very high. And sports fan allegiances, it just it felt like the perfect place to go. I mean, a few _____ ago, I got to know an amazing woman in her 70s who helps Holocaust survivors. And one day she mentioned that she went to Ohio State. And my first reaction was, yuck. Yeah, I'm a ________ Wolverine. We're rivals, but who _____ where she went to ______ half a _______ ago? Yeah, it just bothered me at a fundamental level. And so I decided, you know, like any self __________ social scientist, I should study that. And so Tim and I and all these experiments with the Yankees and Red Sox fans, which was such an easy rivalry to choose. And I think my my biggest surprise was that two of the _____ that were supposed to work _____ on all the existing science, didn't you know one of those was was just creating a common identity as baseball fans? And, you know, people would say, yeah, you know, I would help a _______ fan if they were in an emergency. But otherwise, you know, they're rooting for an evil team. So no, thank you. And then the other one was to to try to ________ the individual fan, where _________ what happened was people said, all right, you know what? There's this one Yankees fan who's OK, but he's not like the other ones. And I still hate all the rest of them. So what ultimately ended up working and in a way that I was I was surprised by the power of it actually was saying, look, you know, maybe we just need to get people to rethink how they became fans in the first _____. So imagine if you had grown up in New York. Would you possibly root for the now you're probably root for the Mets. But the point is, you might not be a Red Sox fan. I'm not _____. Exactly. I'm joking. I'm joking. All my Mets fans, friends, I'm joking. I don't know if you are, but go on. I'm joking anyway. I know I keep going, please. Well, no. So I thought this idea of just, you know, considering the ___________ that we could hold different views all of a sudden, it it just ____________ a lot of the stereotypes and prejudices that people hold. And so, as you know, we ran these really entertaining ___________ where we gave people a chance to to punish fans of the opposing team by ______ them _____ spicy hot _____ or by giving them really difficult math problems, which were actually going to hurt their payment for participating in the study. And we found that, lo and behold, after we just got fans to think about how they might root for a different team if they had been born in a different city, that was enough to get them to show less animosity toward fans of the opposing team, which I thought was amazing. And this did not make it into the book. But we just finished a ______ of experiments with with gun control and gun rights advocates where we found that the same process worked for them. That if we got somebody who is extremely concerned about about gun safety, to imagine having been born in a _______ ______, they actually were less nasty than to somebody on the other side of the aisle. So I think there might be something to this. Fantastic. So I can't thank you enough for talking to me on your show about you, you should do the the goodbye because it's your show. But I just I wanted to thank you for the the _____ and opportunity. Well, I can't thank you enough for ______. I'm so grateful that you read the book. You liked it that you're willing to talk about it. It's a huge gift to me and our listeners. And I loved getting a little bit inside of your mind and your work life. And most importantly, the work you do has has always been just a huge source of inspiration to me. But over the past year, you have been a source of light and hope and entertainment and creative ___________ . And I just want to thank you for for everything that you do to entertain us and to get us to rethink so many of the things that we think we know. Holy crap. That was unbelievable. Way too generous, but your your words are incredibly appreciated. And and again, thank you for this amazing book and your kind _____. WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. Our team includes Colin Helmes, Greg Achen , Dan O'Donnell, Constanza Guardo, ______ DeLuna, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Angela Chang and Anna _____. This episode was ________ by Jessica Glaser and supported by Viking Penguin. Think again. The _____ of knowing what you don't know is available in whatever format you like _____, electronic stone, tablet or audio narrated by me.

Solution

original
resonated
century
harrison
forming
years
extra
tetlock
pieces
fairy
reluctant
immediately
rethought
schools
writers
switch
interview
conversation
directed
pilot
entire
scientist
felin
movie
tested
strikes
knowing
learn
template
words
information
uncontrollable
tribe
profound
truth
control
infuriating
stand
learning
feeling
reached
beautiful
kindly
beliefs
demise
crunched
director
modes
writer
desperate
person
persuasive
happy
likelihood
worth
named
thinking
sauce
damon
mildly
declarative
routine
growing
watching
keeping
observed
michigan
fallen
workplaces
print
sacrilege
promise
practice
attempts
studying
moment
reminds
examined
period
jerry
steps
weapon
human
trees
gather
comfort
topic
rough
overconfidence
respecting
relevant
assuming
camera
practices
season
surprised
surprising
wrote
realize
showing
knowledgeable
cases
questions
evaluator
ground
larger
reactions
podcast
argument
started
casting
present
orbit
produced
stephen
begging
afraid
creative
giving
juxtaposed
people
spilled
charge
profoundly
chemistry
exist
drive
seinfeld
context
share
rewarded
physical
appealing
hunting
rethinking
character
kinds
couple
preview
voice
sisyphean
thought
comforts
wonderful
matter
possibility
wanted
relearning
credit
aspect
assumptions
basically
emotional
world
inspiration
rooms
offices
faith
story
black
spent
sweet
convinced
global
based
joanne
picking
awakens
partnerships
shooting
family
point
lloyd
adjustments
moments
disproportionate
destabilizes
guess
yankees
sticky
genius
relatable
reconsider
systemic
felicity
working
focus
favorite
harder
announced
answer
airtight
social
assumption
lives
broadcast
undermines
michael
whiteboard
power
wondering
stories
thinker
performing
study
experiments
prosecutors
status
office
evidence
center
cares
model
appease
crazy
writing
examples
weakness
collaboration
humility
overmatch
agree
coming
invariably
areas
humanize
level
chapter
followers
honor
finding
great
school
place
question
times
aggressively
performer
means
spend
sitting
reexamine
wheel
communities
reading

Original Text

Hey, work lifers, this is J.J. Abrams, we're trying something new on the podcast today, I am going to be conducting an interview on the show and my guest is Adam Grant. We're going be talking about his new book, Think Again Automatical. Oh, JJ, it's great to hear your voice, but this is my show. I don't know if it is. I can't just let you take my job and ask all the questions. I'm insisting on asking you some questions. Can you promise me that I can ask one Star Wars question? Yes, you can ask anything you want. You can ask. Fantastic. Jumping in here as host of my show in the off chance. You don't know who J.J. Abrams is. You absolutely know his work. He's directed, produced and written some of the most beloved films and shows of the last 30 years. If you love Lost alias Felicity, the more recent incarnations of Star Wars or Star Trek, you have to think as a bonus episode. While we're hard at work on Season four, J.J. kindly agreed to turn the microphone around and host me for a chat about my new book, Think Again The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. It's a book about the science of rethinking our opinions, opening other people's minds and creating cultures of learning. It officially launches February 2nd, but I wanted to give you a sneak preview. So I sent JJ an early copy and told him he was in charge of our interview. Thanks to Viking Penguin, my publisher, for Think Again for supporting this episode. I have read this book and I just truly think again, your new book available now is so compelling and I just I'm thrilled to get to talk to you about it. I feel like you're my book fairy godfather . That's such a thing. That's my dream. Thank you. I've got to say that I had so many moments of kind of gasping when I read Think again, because you provided the kind of optimism that there is a way to find common ground, to find, to embrace nuance, to reexamine how we, you know, we go through the world. What motivated you to write the book? Well, there's a part of me that that thinks I was probably motivated to write this book by one of my best friends from growing up, Khan, who I remember this was in seventh grade here. We're in the middle of an argument, I think, during a commercial on Seinfeld. And he he hung up on me and I called him back and he said, Shut up, Adam, I won't talk to you until you admit you're wrong. And that was sort of a it really it was a moment that stuck with me. I didn't have the language for it at the time, but I spent a lot of time afterward thinking, why is it so important to me to be right? And, you know, why do I have such a hard time admitting when I'm not? And that, you know, I think I was I was sort of a defining moment. And then, you know, much later I feel like my job as an organizational psychologist is, you know, is to really think again about how we work , how we lead, how we live, and to motivate other people to do that, too. And my most frustrating experiences as an author, as a speaker, as a researcher, as a teacher, as a consultant are always when people are not willing to rethink assumptions that I think they ought to be questioning. And so, you know, just over the past few years, the number of conversations I've had with with founders and CEOs where I you know, I give them the best evidence I have available. And they say, well, that's that's not how we do things around here or that's not the way I've always done things. All right. And I just I just want to come back to them and say, you know, Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Kodak, Sears, you know what? You should definitely not rethink anything in your vision, strategy or business model. And so I guess, J.J. , when you know, when I have both personal and professional experiences that drive me insane on the same topic, I feel like there might be a problem with tackling or a question worth writing about. Hmm. That's great. Answered in reading the book. It made me wonder if people's not bandwidth, but their comfort level is so low that there are people finding comfort in belief systems. And that's the thing that they can rely on because there's so little to rely on. And and so rethinking is a threat to one of the few comforts left. That's such an interesting question, I don't know is my first thought, my second thought is it reminds me of some research that I loved by sociologists that started in the 70s. They did. This study is where they were interested in the effects of being micromanaged at work and not just how we thought about our jobs, but how we behaved in the rest of our lives. And they found that if you had a really controlling boss, that you actually became more authoritarian as a parent with your children, which was just kind of a stunning spillover for me to, you know, to think that the way you get treated at work might affect the way that you raise your children who just never would have occurred to me. And I think that body of research and a whole bunch of other studies that followed kind of that they made me start to think about this basic truth, that when we lack control in one domain of our lives, we become motivated to seek it and try to regain it in other parts of our lives. And I think, you know, especially in the wake of this pandemic and a global recession where we're facing a lot of threats to control right now. And I wonder if if part of what people are doing is they're grasping at the things they do have control over. And one of the things we all have control over is what we believe. And so, you know, holding fast to the things that I think are true, they make that sort of makes the world feel more predictable, less uncertain. It also gives me a sense of belonging with whoever my tribe is. Right. It validates my worldview. And I've even wondered if, you know, if that's part of why the the George Floyd protests, you know, really rose up when they did. I feel like before the pandemic, people felt like, you know, there's nothing that I personally can do to fight systemic racism, whereas, you know, juxtaposed against a global disease like covid, which I really can't fight. Well, you know what? I could I could show up in protest. And so I guess there's there's something about both holding fast to your beliefs that helps render an uncontrollable world more controllable. But also, there's something about being in an extremely uncontrollable world that can lead you to think again about where you do have some control areas where you can make a difference. And so I wonder if that cuts both ways. Hmmm, that's interesting, I wanted to ask you about the value of humility, because it seems like. Humility is also at the center of what allows for someone to. Pursue a truth or information or a point of view that might not be theirs, but I think so many of us take a more defensive posture and our are more closed off and declarative about things that we think we know. And I just wanted to ask you kind of what role you feel humility plays and why it might not be such a given that the actual value of it is the truth and is enlightenment and is wisdom and why that doesn't seem so appealing in the moment. Yeah, interesting. So if pride is what fuels overconfidence, I think humility is what gives us the freedom and the flexibility to rethink the opinions and assumptions we should be questioning. And I think that part of the problem is that we live in a culture where people are rewarded for being the smartest person in the room and they learn to wield their knowledge and expertise like a weapon, as opposed to treating it as a resource to share. And so, you know, I think in most workplaces, in many schools and frankly, in too many families and communities, too, you know, the currency of status is knowing more than everybody else. And so knowing that, you know, admitting what you don't know, questioning yourself, showing, you know, any hint of uncertainty is like admitting weakness and setting yourself up for defeat in battle. And obviously, I think that's a problem. And I think that maybe the first way to get people past that fear is we need people in positions of power to model it. Right. We know that if you've been validated by your power or your status or your authority, that people are much more comfortable letting you say you don't know. There's evidence, for example, that when experts say, I'm not sure or I don't know, they actually become more persuasive, in part because we respect their humility and in part because we're surprised that we actually pay more attention to the substance of their argument, which, you know, is likely to be persuasive if they are knowledgeable. So I guess what I want to do is I want to let people know that humility is a potential source of strength, not just a sign of weakness. And I don't I don't entirely know how to get people there. And I want to turn this around on you because I feel like this is one of the the themes that that really cuts through a lot of your work is every time I watch a show or a movie that was directed or produced by you, I know it's going to lead me to question an assumption. And it might be an assumption I've held for a long time. And I'm curious about is this something you do intentionally and how do you get your audiences to confront that kind of humility? Well, thanks for saying so. I feel like the the way into a story for me is usually finding a character who is vulnerable, who is in a place where they're out of their depth and they're desperate for something. And I think that desperation is like the greatest motivator. And it also it forces you as a storyteller to know what a character's desperate for and therefore what you are either afraid of or hopeful for and ideally both the idea of desperation as a motivator. I think that's incredibly powerful. And it's something that that not only strikes me as relevant to, you know, to thinking about characters in a story, but also to understanding the people that I work with and the people that I love. And I'm wondering is, is that a lens that you apply? And I guess if you turn it inward a little bit, when you've achieved the level of success that you have, how do you stay desperate to rethink some of the stories that you tell? Well, I have to do is go on Twitter. I feel like, you know, I'm always desperate to do something, to tell a story that that moves people. And sometimes I'm more successful than others. And, you know, I never go into anything with a kind of template for what it should or shouldn't be. I feel like I've learned a ton of lessons along the way. And by the way, I always feel like we're carrying, you know, whatever a thousand lessons with us that we all need to, you know, remember at all times. But we can only really carry 900 of them. And we're constantly dropping lessons and picking up the ones that we've dropped in by picking those up. We've dropped some other ones and we keep relearning the same thing. So I think, you know, rethinking is really important and relearning is a weird Sisyphean inevitability that I don't think we can avoid. But I feel like, you know, the drive to do. What I do like I'm guessing the drive for you to do what you do, you do it because you feel compelled to share a point of view, an idea, a feeling, an insight, a question, something you might not even understand the answer to. And you just feel compelled to do it. And I think I start everything desperately , and I think they probably all end that way, too. I love that. I want to ask you, because your book is all about rethinking. I was just curious, do you feel like there is a fundamental barrier to rethinking and if so, what it is and I do have a follow up. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I feel like one of the things that I've rethought twice now as I've been writing books is, you know, I wrote my first book, Give and Take with with a whole framework to organize the world in terms of givers, takers and matters. And then I didn't want to be constrained by a framework like that when I wrote originals and I felt like I overcorrected and there wasn't enough connective tissue between the different chapters. I felt like I had a lot of interesting trees, but the forest was not clear enough. And so I decided when I was writing Think again that I was going to be open to finding an overarching framework, but I was not going to be attached to it. And that that felt like the sweet spot. And about halfway through the writing, it hit me and I had to rewrite the book from scratch. The framework was my my colleague, Phil Tetlock, where he observed that whatever your job or career is, that you spend a disproportionate amount of your time thinking like certain professions. He said, look, you know, there are moments when we think like preachers, prosecutors and politicians. And I think that that all three of these mindsets can stand in the way of rethinking, because when you're preaching, you're already convinced that you found the truth. And so you don't need to question any of your assumptions when you're prosecuting. You are trying to win your case. That means the other side is wrong. And so you've got to get them to do all the rethinking, but you get to stand still. And when you're thinking more like a politician, you're basically trying to cater to your audience and campaign for their approval or get their likes or their votes. And so you may be doing a little bit of flexing in the way that you present, but you're not rethinking your underlying beliefs. Right. You're just you're just trying to appease your constituents. And I think we spend way too much time thinking in these modes. I know, you know, as somebody who's been called a logic bully once or twice, maybe seven times at this point, by my count, I spend too much time in prosecutor mode. And when I think that somebody is selling snake oil or trying to, you know, indoctrinate their followers into some kind of idea cult, I feel like it's my job to debunk those myths and bring the better evidence to the table. And the problem is then that I get too close minded. And so I'm trying to get out of prosecutor mode and spend more time thinking like a scientist, which is something I think we could all learn to do better. It's funny, in the book, you say how I think the first time you were called The Logic Bully, it actually was something that you liked, that at first it appealed to you. I was proud. I thought, yeah, that's my job as a social scientist. I want to decimate your bad arguments with rigorous evidence and airtight logic. And I'm good. And then, yeah, I didn't like the bully part so much as I thought about it more. Given that, what are some of your favorite practices for questioning your own assumptions and for rethinking yourself? I think the first one for me is just the basic idea of thinking like a scientist to say that, you know, what scientists do is instead of forming beliefs, they actually form hypotheses. And so instead of having an opinion that set in stone, that means, OK, this is a hunch, how would I go and tested? And, you know, I don't think that we have to always operate like we're in a lab. Right, with a bunch of test tubes. But I do think that we should all be running experiments in our lives. So during the pandemic, for example, I have instead of assuming there's a routine that's going to work for me, I've run experiments to say, OK, what if I shift my creative brainstorming from the morning to the night? What does that do, you know, to to the number of original ideas that I generate? What if I turn my camera off during a zoo meeting? Do I actually have, you know, a more a more reflective, more thoughtful discussion? And all of those you know, there's those little changes and adjustments that we make. We could think about them as experiments and then we could say, OK, well, you know what what information what data do I need in order to find out if that was a successful or failed experiment? And I I think that's a huge step. And I guess the other thing I would I would just put on the table is when I was writing the book again, I made a list of all the things that I know I'm completely ignorant about. And my goal was was actually not to reduce the list, it was to expand the list. Mm hmm. Because I feel like the more I know about what I don't know, the more curious I am and the more I'm going to learn from people who are actually are knowledgeable in those areas. So, you know, my list, I think it started out I immediately said I know nothing about music. I don't understand financial markets. I'm clueless about chemistry. And, you know, the list just kept growing from there. And I've actually been just keeping that list. I have a file on my desktop and my goal is to add something new to it every week. And if I stay clear about what I don't know, then I hope I'm going to stay more humble, more curious mindset. That's great. When I was reading, I think, again, it was occurring to me, you know, that you tell such great stories, including like the story of the BlackBerry company and, you know, Mike's inability to rethink the way perhaps he could have and what might have been. And I, too, was a huge fan of that keyboard. The question I had is, how do you find partnerships where there is a thinker and then a thinker, or is it always or typically whether it's one or two or more people that are able to rethink and think, oh, that's such a cool question. I think my ideal partnership is one where. There are clear norms that make sure rethinking happens. The question of where it comes from is something that I don't have good data on, which really mildly annoys me right now and I need to go gather some. So stay tuned. But I mean, I can think of examples of both. One of the examples that that I've spent probably too much time thinking about now. Is the, you know, the Jerry Seinfeld Larry David example from Seinfeld. And one of the most interesting things that I learned from studying that collaboration was that they were both ruthless free thinkers, but they applied it to their own work, probably even more so than they did to each other's work. And so one would not even bring a script or a joke to the other until he had thought it was, you know, really good. Mm hmm. And I can see how those kinds of norms could be really effective in partnerships. I've also seen examples, though, where, you know, one person is basically the kind of a creative dreamer and the other person is the really critical evaluator. And so, you know, the first person does the thinking, the second does the rethinking, and then it ends up being kind of this beautiful symphony. Mm hmm. I imagine, J.J. , you've seen a lot of this in in the world of Hollywood. Is there is there one or the other that you think is more common or more effective? And are there are there are people who do more of the thinking versus rethinking in your collaborations? Well, obviously, I think, you know, everyone is different. And I know I have worked with people who who go to a place and not that they're stubborn about where they go, but they arrive at an answer very, very quickly. And that's sort of their thing and that they're perhaps a bit reluctant to be as flexible or rethink things. Then, you know, I've worked people like, for example, with Matt Reeves, with whom I did Felicity, and we did the Cloverfield movie together. And he's someone who you know, and I've known him since we were kids. And he's always rethinking. And I find that I'm maybe more, you know, someone who would want to try something and put it out there and sort of commit to it for now and sort of see where it goes. And Matt. To his great credit, and it's one of the reasons I love working with him, is he's someone who really wants to stop and examine and consider and reconsider it and look at it from all sides and see if there's a better way. And can it go deeper and can it be, you know, can it be more emotional? And I think that that, you know, part of that is probably, you know, less about thinking and rethinking and more about my being more impatient. And when we work together, we had our offices right next to each other. And in fact, our offices were in the location where they actually filmed the office, the show, the pilot for the American Office Show. Oh, and weirdly, his office in my office were Matt's office with Michael Scott's office. And my office was the the conference room, which years later, when I went and directed an episode of The Office, I was like, why do I know this place? And then I realized, oh, my God, it's literally based on our old offices. But Matt, we had a little little sign in between is a picture of the two of us in between both of our offices. And someone had put up sticky notes over each of us and overmatch it, said, how do we make it more emotional and undermines lives, how to make it funnier? And there is a sort of like, you know, clearly everyone brings their whatever their interest is, whatever their their point of view is to the table. And even though sometimes it can be frustrating when someone says, well, wait a minute, let's reconsider this, you know, it's almost always a better thing because there's nothing wrong with kicking the tires and interrogating something. But the best thing and this is what I found, you know, recently I co-wrote a pilot with a writer named Latoya Morgan, and she's a wonderful writer. She's a black woman who brings a point of view that is clearly going to be a life experience, very different from mine. And when I bring up an idea and she says, you know, hold on, let's talk about this or that or vice versa, I feel like we almost invariably end up in a place where there's something that we are both, like, beaming about that we wouldn't have arrived at had it just been one of us in that room. And in all likelihood, you know , someone who looked like us, you know, either just me or just her. So I feel like there's a lot of talk of how diversity is good and how you say in your book, diversity is good but hard. But, you know, I have personally felt like, you know, working with people who don't look like you, especially when they are, you know, smart and freethinkers. It's incredible how much better the conversation is, how much richer it is, and I think how much better the work ends up being. And I'm grateful for any time I work with someone, whether it's Matt, Latoya, I can name a huge list of people who are really willing to rethink things that I might just assume need to stay. And the only caveat I would say here is that I can also think of times when there were paths we were on and the ability to switch it up and rethink something might not have been for the best. Yeah, this is one of the hardest questions that I really wrestled with while writing the book and I'm still grappling with now, which is how much rethinking is too much and how do I know whether when I've started rethinking something, I should actually change my mind or go back to my original first answer and the only coherent place that I've landed on this so far as to say, well, if this is a curve and there's an optimal amount of rethinking, I think most of us don't do enough of it. Agree or disagree? You're asking me, yeah, yeah, it's a question, do you agree or disagree? You know, my guess is I would agree. Got it. I have to take a sidebar here, JJ, because you mentioned the office. This is work life. I read once that you did not like the office when it premiered in the U.S. and that you weren't even a fan of the entire first season. Is it true? And what led you to rethink that view? I think that what I felt was when I first watched it, because I became a huge fan, which is why I reached out to them, essentially begging them to hire me as a director. I was such a fan of the original and in fact, to a degree that I reached out to Ricky Gervais and wrote a part for him in Alias. And I was such a fan of that show and the specificity of it that it felt. For me, I remember when I first saw it, I thought, oh, no, like it didn't matter how good everyone was because they were great. It felt like it was somehow sacrilege that it was redoing exactly the same thing in essentially the same time period, you know, putting it through the American TV mill. And then you realize, oh, they're doing it perfectly. And it's it's exactly what it should be. And it's its own thing. It was the quality of the show that that won me over. OK, next question. I'm sure you hate getting asked about Star Wars in particular, because it might what might be the most beloved universe ever created a minimum. It's got a lot of passionate fans. And yeah, I loved The Force Awakens. I love the rise of Skywalker. I especially love the points where you rethought some moments and characters. And I wanted to ask you about one specific one, which is I think my biggest moment of shock in the new trilogy was when Emperor Palpatine came back to life because I thought he'd been dead since 1983. And so I was wondering how you went about rethinking his demise. Well, that was something that came in and out and then back in again. But that idea was something that that felt like it was sitting there, set up in the prequels. And when we were looking at the story, the idea of a character who is desperate to find immortality and it felt like it was sitting there and that it was a set up potential set up. And I kept imagining it as something that could work. You know, if I'm a kid watching all nine movies years from now, it felt like something that was a possible setup to be examined later. I will say that it's something that I loved the possibility of it and the promise of it. And it was one of, you know, so many things that we were rethinking and trying to find ways to sort of fit the pieces of the puzzle together. And I know that for some people, it they clicked in and it worked and was fun and surprising. And for other people it was, you know, understandably infuriating and sacrilege and stupid and wrong. The reactions were were vast, but it was also something that was, you know, in various moments felt like it was the right move. I imagine that happens a lot to that. You you rethink a classic world or story, whether it's Star Wars or Star Trek or even characters that we've fallen in love with. Right. I still feel like, you know, with Lost in particular, I still feel like, you know, Sawyer and Sayid and Kate and some of the others are long lost friends. How often do you rethink the stories you've told versus once you put it out into the world, you're you're happy with the creative choices you've made, regardless of the feedback? Well, all I see when I work on something is the thing that we could have and should have done to make this better or that different. The rethinking doesn't stop because it's it's out there. And I do think that one of the enemies of certainly movies and in some cases TV is the sort of, you know, the announced release date where the time that one normally should have to rethink doesn't exist. And it's very difficult to be. In a healthy way, rethinking when you are under the gun, impractical material and often very expensive ways. For example, when Damon and I started working on Lost, it was a very particular, you know, crazy ticking clock where the head of ABC at the time, Lloyd Braun, wanted a show about people who survived a plane crash. And so in Damini, who had never met, we wrote that outline. It was in a week based on just pure instinct. And we went off and we shot this to our pilot that we were, you know, writing, casting, shooting, doing post and everything in nine weeks. And it was a crazy crunched period. Wow. And it ended up working as a pilot. And then Damon and Carlton Cuse wrote the series. But I, I feel like it's one of those lessons that not having an ending, it just makes it harder. I know it sounds so obvious and so easy, but when you take that leap of faith, when Stephen King starts writing a novel, he gets to finish that novel and decide, does anyone need to see this? And I'm sure he's got drawers full of things that people have not read because he feels like it's not the thing. And one of the crazy things that this, you know, pandemic quarantine time has done for TV and for movies is it's given people time to write, not just a pilot or a rough outline, but write entire seasons of a series before it even goes, which, you know, you want to be flexible and you want to be able to cast a role and realize, oh, my God, we've got to do this with this character because we didn't realize it or this thing isn't working the way I thought it would. But this time has allowed writers to, you know, write without the pressure of we have to be casting this thing right now. We have to be location scouting. We have to be, you know, getting the all these episodes edited and posted and ready for broadcast. And I think that it in no way do I feel like, oh, great, we had this time to do this. You know, I'd much rather life be normal and covid not exist. But I will say that if there is any kind of creative benefit to this time, it's that suddenly release dates and broadcast dates are not being, you know, as aggressively announced. And time is available for some writers to be able to actually work on the stories in a more, you know, I think human pace. And that is no small thing. Is there creative practice that you've rethought during the past year? If you had said to me that we could be breaking stories without ever being in the same room together, I would have thought it was probably impossible, if not wildly unlikely. And I think that online, not just the Zoom's, but also the sort of online whiteboard apps that exist that allow people to collaborate remotely has, I think, probably profoundly changed the way stories, at least on television and writers rooms, will be broken. Wow. Does that does that mean in writers rooms won't always be physical even after the pandemic? They definitely will. But I think the that someone can now be part of it who might not be in town. I think that that the norm will always seem to be better to be together. But there's something great about the focus and the, you know, the access that you have from anywhere. So I just think that that that's something that, you know, clearly there will be infinitely fewer business trips to have meetings that could now clearly be done on Zoome. Will people go back to it? You know, the way we were before? More than not, I believe they will, but. This is now accelerated the evidence that this is a valid and really productive way to work. I've never said those words. I've never said this before. We're not going to hold you accountable. Thank you. Next question from one magician to another. How does all the time you've spent learning magic tricks and performing them affect your job? Has it spilled over into your work life in any way? I think the thing about magic, as much as some might see it as the geekiest sort of, you know, silliest thing to me, it's incredibly powerful. We had a magician in our office and this was like two years ago, and he was in my office, just the two of us. And he did a few tricks and he did one that literally made me, as a 50 year old man, think to myself in my head, he might be magical, like, you know, because I know how magic tricks are done. I know how a lot of I know bunch of gimmicks. I know a bunch of tricks. He did something where I was like, I wonder if he's maybe magical. Does he have? And my whole point is the fact that someone who's a half a century old can still have a moment of thinking. There might be powers beyond that, which I know is so profound. And the the wow and the gasping and the amazement that any audience has, big or small, it's there's something about the the sense of possibility that the world is more than it seems and that we want to see things that we can't imagine and that we don't expect. And so I feel like that is a natural. Aspect to telling a story, and I just think that whether it's writing a a book or making a show or a movie, it's all a bit of a magic trick. You are so much more comfortable not knowing than I am. I immediately want to answer. I have to figure out the secret, but then you can never see the trick again. You can admire the the skills and the genius of the performer who executed it, right? Yes . OK, next favorite character from the office. It has to be Michael Scott, not because just because I think he is the hub of the wheel. And so everyone is kind of it feels like they're all kind of in his orbit, to mix metaphors. So interesting. He wasn't even in my top five. I love that. And then can I ask you the same question about Star Wars? I think my favorite my favorite character in in Star Wars was Han. Just because I mean, it's very hard to think of a better scene in a movie ever than when you meet Han Solo and then in Empire Strikes Back. I mean, like there's just there are some of the greatest, truest larger than life, but completely relatable and grounded moments. And, you know, when we got to shoot in Force Awakens, you know, Harrison and Chewie coming into the, you know, the Falcon and saying, you know, we're home because it just there was something so crazy about it. And I feel super lucky to have, you know, been part of that. I had tears in my eyes when when Nonintuitive had their reunion. It just felt like we just couldn't wait to show it to people because it just felt like, oh, my God, you should see this. It's just so cool having them back on the ship. It was a beautiful moment. I'd love to talk to you about as a Red Sox fan, the Red Sox versus Yankees. And you have this great chapter about just how far fans of these teams are willing to go to torture the opposing team. And what you tried, what didn't work and what finally seemed to break the ice of having them sort of find the humanity in each other. So my question to you is, what was what surprised you in your attempts to build those bridges between those two fan bases ? And what were your findings? In summary , I'm so glad that resonated. You know, I was I was when thinking about the prejudice that so many people hold toward other groups, I was looking for a context where we could study it, where the actual stakes are minimal, but the emotional stakes feel very high. And sports fan allegiances, it just it felt like the perfect place to go. I mean, a few years ago, I got to know an amazing woman in her 70s who helps Holocaust survivors. And one day she mentioned that she went to Ohio State. And my first reaction was, yuck. Yeah, I'm a Michigan Wolverine. We're rivals, but who cares where she went to school half a century ago? Yeah, it just bothered me at a fundamental level. And so I decided, you know, like any self respecting social scientist, I should study that. And so Tim and I and all these experiments with the Yankees and Red Sox fans, which was such an easy rivalry to choose. And I think my my biggest surprise was that two of the steps that were supposed to work based on all the existing science, didn't you know one of those was was just creating a common identity as baseball fans? And, you know, people would say, yeah, you know, I would help a Yankees fan if they were in an emergency. But otherwise, you know, they're rooting for an evil team. So no, thank you. And then the other one was to to try to humanize the individual fan, where basically what happened was people said, all right, you know what? There's this one Yankees fan who's OK, but he's not like the other ones. And I still hate all the rest of them. So what ultimately ended up working and in a way that I was I was surprised by the power of it actually was saying, look, you know, maybe we just need to get people to rethink how they became fans in the first place. So imagine if you had grown up in New York. Would you possibly root for the now you're probably root for the Mets. But the point is, you might not be a Red Sox fan. I'm not crazy. Exactly. I'm joking. I'm joking. All my Mets fans, friends, I'm joking. I don't know if you are, but go on. I'm joking anyway. I know I keep going, please. Well, no. So I thought this idea of just, you know, considering the possibility that we could hold different views all of a sudden, it it just destabilizes a lot of the stereotypes and prejudices that people hold. And so, as you know, we ran these really entertaining experiments where we gave people a chance to to punish fans of the opposing team by giving them extra spicy hot sauce or by giving them really difficult math problems, which were actually going to hurt their payment for participating in the study. And we found that, lo and behold, after we just got fans to think about how they might root for a different team if they had been born in a different city, that was enough to get them to show less animosity toward fans of the opposing team, which I thought was amazing. And this did not make it into the book. But we just finished a couple of experiments with with gun control and gun rights advocates where we found that the same process worked for them. That if we got somebody who is extremely concerned about about gun safety, to imagine having been born in a hunting family, they actually were less nasty than to somebody on the other side of the aisle. So I think there might be something to this. Fantastic. So I can't thank you enough for talking to me on your show about you, you should do the the goodbye because it's your show. But I just I wanted to thank you for the the honor and opportunity. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming. I'm so grateful that you read the book. You liked it that you're willing to talk about it. It's a huge gift to me and our listeners. And I loved getting a little bit inside of your mind and your work life. And most importantly, the work you do has has always been just a huge source of inspiration to me. But over the past year, you have been a source of light and hope and entertainment and creative inspiration . And I just want to thank you for for everything that you do to entertain us and to get us to rethink so many of the things that we think we know. Holy crap. That was unbelievable. Way too generous, but your your words are incredibly appreciated. And and again, thank you for this amazing book and your kind words. WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. Our team includes Colin Helmes, Greg Achen , Dan O'Donnell, Constanza Guardo, Joanne DeLuna, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Angela Chang and Anna Felin. This episode was produced by Jessica Glaser and supported by Viking Penguin. Think again. The power of knowing what you don't know is available in whatever format you like print, electronic stone, tablet or audio narrated by me.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
star wars	5
time thinking	4
red sox	4
mm hmm	3
work life	3
adam grant	2
holding fast	2
uncontrollable world	2
incredibly powerful	2
feel compelled	2
prosecutor mode	2
magic tricks	2
favorite character	2
opposing team	2
people hold	2
yankees fan	2

Important Words

abc
ability
abrams
absolutely
accelerated
access
accountable
achen
achieved
actual
adam
add
adjustments
admire
admit
admitting
advocates
affect
afraid
afterward
aggressively
agree
agreed
airtight
aisle
alias
allegiances
allowed
amazement
amazing
american
amount
angela
animosity
anna
announced
annoys
answer
answered
appealed
appealing
appease
applied
apply
appreciated
approval
apps
areas
argument
arguments
arrive
arrived
asked
aspect
assume
assuming
assumption
assumptions
attached
attempts
attention
audience
audiences
audio
author
authoritarian
authority
automatical
avoid
awakens
bad
bandwidth
barrier
baseball
based
bases
basic
basically
battle
beaming
beautiful
begging
behaved
behold
belief
beliefs
belonging
beloved
benefit
big
biggest
bit
black
blackberry
blockbuster
body
bonus
book
books
born
boss
bothered
brainstorming
braun
break
breaking
bridges
bring
brings
broadcast
broken
build
bully
bunch
business
called
camera
campaign
career
cares
carlton
carry
carrying
case
cases
cast
casting
cater
caveat
center
century
ceos
chance
chang
change
changed
chapter
chapters
character
characters
charge
chat
chemistry
chewie
children
choices
choose
city
classic
clear
clicked
clock
close
closed
cloverfield
clueless
coherent
colin
collaborate
collaboration
collaborations
colleague
comfort
comfortable
comforts
coming
commercial
commit
common
communities
company
compelled
compelling
completely
concerned
conducting
conference
confront
connective
constantly
constanza
constituents
constrained
consultant
context
control
controllable
controlling
conversation
conversations
convinced
cool
copy
count
couple
covid
crap
crash
crazy
created
creating
creative
credit
critical
crunched
cult
culture
cultures
curious
currency
curve
cuse
cuts
damini
damon
dan
data
date
dates
david
day
dead
debunk
decide
decided
decimate
declarative
deeper
defeat
defensive
defining
degree
deluna
demise
depth
desktop
desperate
desperately
desperation
destabilizes
difference
difficult
directed
director
disagree
discussion
disease
disproportionate
diversity
domain
drawers
dream
dreamer
drive
dropped
dropping
early
easy
edited
effective
effects
electronic
embrace
emergency
emotional
emperor
empire
ended
ends
enemies
enlightenment
entertain
entertaining
entertainment
entire
episode
episodes
essentially
evaluator
evidence
evil
examine
examined
examples
executed
exist
existing
expand
expect
expensive
experience
experiences
experiment
experiments
expertise
experts
extra
extremely
eyes
facing
fact
failed
fairy
faith
falcon
fallen
families
family
fan
fans
fantastic
fast
favorite
fear
february
feedback
feel
feeling
feels
felicity
felin
felt
fight
figure
file
filmed
films
finally
financial
find
finding
findings
finish
finished
fit
flexibility
flexible
flexing
floyd
focus
follow
followers
force
forces
forest
form
format
forming
founders
framework
frankly
free
freedom
freethinkers
friends
frustrating
fuels
full
fun
fundamental
funnier
funny
gasping
gather
gave
geekiest
generate
generous
genius
george
gervais
gift
gimmicks
give
givers
giving
glad
glaser
global
goal
god
godfather
good
goodbye
grace
grade
grant
grappling
grasping
grateful
great
greatest
greg
ground
grounded
groups
growing
grown
guardo
guess
guessing
guest
gun
halfway
han
happened
happy
hard
harder
hardest
harrison
hate
head
healthy
hear
held
helmes
helps
hey
high
hint
hire
hit
hmm
hmmm
hold
holding
hollywood
holocaust
holy
home
honor
hope
hopeful
host
hosted
hot
hub
huge
human
humanity
humanize
humble
humility
hunch
hung
hunting
hurt
hypotheses
ice
idea
ideal
ideally
ideas
identity
ignorant
imagine
imagining
immediately
immortality
impatient
important
importantly
impossible
impractical
inability
incarnations
includes
including
incredible
incredibly
individual
indoctrinate
inevitability
infinitely
information
infuriating
insane
insight
insisting
inspiration
instinct
intentionally
interest
interested
interesting
interrogating
interview
invariably
jerry
jessica
jj
joanne
job
jobs
joke
joking
jumping
juxtaposed
kate
keeping
keyboard
khan
kicking
kid
kids
kind
kindly
kinds
king
knowing
knowledge
knowledgeable
kodak
lab
lack
landed
language
larger
larry
latoya
launches
lead
leap
learn
learned
learning
led
left
lens
lessons
letting
level
life
lifers
light
likelihood
likes
list
listeners
literally
live
lives
lloyd
lo
location
logic
long
looked
lost
lot
love
loved
lucky
magic
magical
magician
making
man
markets
material
math
matt
matter
matters
means
meet
meeting
meetings
mentioned
met
metaphors
mets
michael
michelle
michigan
micromanaged
microphone
middle
mildly
mill
mind
minded
minds
mindset
mindsets
minimal
minimum
minute
mix
mm
mode
model
modes
moment
moments
morgan
morning
motivate
motivated
motivator
move
moves
movie
movies
music
myths
named
narrated
nasty
natural
night
nonintuitive
norm
normal
norms
notes
nuance
number
observed
obvious
occurred
occurring
office
offices
officially
ohio
oil
online
open
opening
operate
opinion
opinions
opportunity
opposed
opposing
optimal
optimism
orbit
order
organizational
organize
original
originals
outline
overarching
overconfidence
overcorrected
overmatch
pace
palpatine
pandemic
parent
part
participating
partnership
partnerships
parts
passionate
paths
pay
payment
penguin
people
perfect
perfectly
performer
performing
period
person
personal
personally
persuasive
phil
physical
picking
picture
pieces
pilot
place
plane
plays
podcast
point
points
politician
politicians
positions
possibility
possibly
post
posted
posture
potential
power
powerful
powers
practice
practices
preachers
preaching
predictable
prejudice
prejudices
premiered
prequels
present
pressure
preview
pride
print
problem
problems
process
produced
productive
professional
professions
profound
profoundly
promise
prosecuting
prosecutor
prosecutors
protest
protests
proud
psychologist
publisher
punish
pure
pursue
put
putting
puzzle
quality
quarantine
question
questioning
questions
quickly
quint
racism
raise
ran
reached
reaction
reactions
read
reading
ready
realize
realized
reasons
recession
reconsider
red
redoing
reduce
reeves
reexamine
reflective
regain
relatable
relearning
release
relevant
reluctant
rely
remember
reminds
remotely
render
research
researcher
resonated
resource
respect
respecting
rest
rethink
rethinking
rethought
reunion
rewarded
rewrite
richer
ricky
rights
rigorous
rise
rivalry
rivals
role
room
rooms
root
rooting
rose
rough
routine
rubenstein
run
running
ruthless
sacrilege
safety
sauce
sawyer
sayid
scene
school
schools
science
scientist
scientists
scott
scouting
scratch
script
sears
season
seasons
secret
seek
seinfeld
selling
sense
series
set
setting
setup
seventh
share
shift
ship
shock
shoot
shooting
shot
show
showing
shows
shut
side
sidebar
sides
sign
silliest
sisyphean
sitting
skills
skywalker
small
smart
smartest
snake
sneak
social
sociologists
solo
sort
sounds
source
sox
speaker
specific
specificity
spend
spent
spicy
spilled
spillover
sports
spot
stakes
stand
star
start
started
starts
state
status
stay
step
stephen
steps
stereotypes
sticky
stone
stop
stories
story
storyteller
strategy
strength
strikes
stubborn
stuck
studies
study
studying
stunning
stupid
substance
success
successful
sudden
suddenly
summary
super
supported
supporting
supposed
surprise
surprised
surprising
survived
survivors
sweet
switch
symphony
systemic
systems
table
tablet
tackling
takers
talk
talking
teacher
team
teams
tears
television
telling
template
terms
test
tested
tetlock
themes
thinker
thinkers
thinking
thinks
thought
thoughtful
thousand
threat
threats
thrilled
ticking
tim
time
times
tires
tissue
today
told
ton
top
topic
torture
town
treated
treating
trees
trek
tribe
trick
tricks
trilogy
trips
true
truest
truth
tubes
tuned
turn
tv
twitter
typically
ultimately
unbelievable
uncertain
uncertainty
uncontrollable
underlying
undermines
understand
understandably
understanding
universe
valid
validated
validates
vast
versa
vice
view
views
viking
vision
voice
votes
vulnerable
wait
wake
wanted
wars
watch
watched
watching
ways
weakness
weapon
week
weeks
weird
weirdly
wheel
whiteboard
wield
wildly
win
wisdom
wolverine
woman
won
wondered
wonderful
wondering
words
work
worked
working
worklife
workplaces
world
worldview
worth
wow
wrestled
write
writer
writers
writing
written
wrong
wrote
yankees
yeah
year
years
york
yuck
zoo
zoome