#547： Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment
Episode Stats
Summary
The standard route to success in modern life goes as follows: work hard in high school, score high on your SAT, get into a good college, do well in your classes, get a good job. For some people, that path works. But for others, it leaves them disengaged and frustrated because it doesn t actually lead to a life of fulfillment. My guest today has spent his academic career studying individuals who have bucked the standard formula for achievement and found success on their own terms. His name is Todd Rose, and he is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the co-author of the book, "Darkhorse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment."
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. The standard
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route to success in modern life goes as follows. Work hard in high school, score high on your SAT,
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get into a good college, do well in your classes, get a good job. For some people that path works,
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but for a lot of people it leaves them disengaged and frustrated because it doesn't actually lead
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to a life of fulfillment. My guest today has spent his academic career studying individuals
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who have bucked the standard formula for achievement and found success on their own terms.
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His name is Todd Rose. He's a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the
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co-author of the book Dark Horse, Achieving Success in the Pursuit of Fulfillment. We begin our
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conversation discussing what Todd calls the standardization covenant, including how it
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developed to serve institutions rather than individuals and why following the standard
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path often leads to frustration. Todd then explains his idea of an alternative dark horse covenant and
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what it looks like theoretically and in the lives of those who followed it. He then walks us through
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the steps that dark horses follows to find success and fulfillment on their own terms,
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including focusing on micromotives to figure out where you fit, making decisive choices,
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creating your own options, and trying new strategies until you find something that works.
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We end our conversation with how Todd would like to see the dark horse dynamic incorporated into our
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educational system. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash dark horse.
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So you are a co-author of a book called Dark Horse, Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of
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Fulfillment. So the book's all about this. It's all about people who gain success through
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unconventional ways. Before that, let's juxtapose that with how people typically think or achieve
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success. You call this in the book, you call this path to success that we've all heard about,
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know about, and probably followed, the standardization covenant. What does the
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standardization covenant look like in your eyes?
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Well, I mean, when I think about what success looks like in our standardized systems,
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it is basically, you know the destination, you know what you're going to go after,
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you work really hard and you stay the course. You show grit, determination. But in the end,
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it really is about trying to compete to be the same as everybody else, only better. And it has very
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little to do with who you are and what you really care about.
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So this is basically the path that's been set out for almost, I would say, 60, 70 years,
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since the end of World War II, probably. You go to college, you get a job, you do really well your
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job, you'll go up the hierarchy, and eventually you can retire with a gold watch and drive a Cadillac.
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Exactly. And by the way, we call it a corporate ladder for a reason. There's a one path and you
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climb as high as you can go, but you're competing against everyone else for the exact same prize.
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And that corporate ladder goes all the way down to, you start learning this in elementary school.
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You understand people get ranked in certain orders based on how well you are. And as you said,
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everyone's doing the exact same thing, but they're just doing it better.
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Sure. Yeah. Well, and it's on purpose. So the idea of this standardization covenant is,
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as a society, at the beginning of the industrial age, we basically gave up on our individuality.
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And we said, look, it's just more manageable if a few people control the system and we decide
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what the paths are like and what the criteria is, and we can kind of manage it. We only need,
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say, three ballerinas, or we need five engineers, whatever. It's less about you and what you're
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capable of, and more about filling some preordained slots.
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Right. The standardization was developed to benefit institutions, like government,
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corporations, even if like a ballet could be an institution as well. You just need certain
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slots and we're going to look for the cream of the crop.
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While that's still going on, we still hear this talk about you need to find fulfillment
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in your work. And the standardization covenant talks about this, but they talk about it in different
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ways. How do you achieve fulfillment or a sense of purpose within this, where you're just doing
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what everyone else is doing, but only better? Yeah. I mean, I think everybody wants, in an ideal
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world, they want to be successful and happy, right? They want to live fulfilled lives. And
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what we've been taught is that if you just fit the mold, climb the ladder, and actually achieve
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excellence within the system, that fulfillment comes as a consequence of that. In some ways,
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you can think, well, maybe that's true. If I'm excellent, I'll be fulfilled as well. But I think
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what we're seeing now is generations of people who have actually arrived at that place and realize,
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look, I made it according to society, but I'm deeply unhappy. I'm not fulfilled. And so I think
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the game is up. Yeah. I think everyone's met those people who've achieved success in their field,
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doctors, surgeons, attorneys, the top of their field, making lots of money, and they're just
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miserable. Yeah. And it's like the worst part about it, which is to say, well, that's nice.
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You're doing something that you're obviously good at, but you get one life. And in a sense,
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we're here and our ability to live a life. And what you really want are people who are able to
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find passion and convert that into purpose and turn that purpose into contribution and achievement.
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And what we find is that it's just really hard to do at scale if you've standardized the whole
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system. And the other part of the standardization covenant is that you have to know, like you have
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to work at what you're doing for a long time to get there, perhaps, right? And you have to know where
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you want to go at a really young age, like when you're 18. It's like when you go to college,
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okay, you need to pick out what your major you're going to study. And this is where you're going to
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go into your career. If you're going to medical school, you have to know that you're going to be in
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school for seven years. Even if you have no experience with medicine, you might find out you might not
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like it. But if you want to do that, you sort of have to grid it out and keep doing it.
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You're going to find out the hard way and either suffer through a life. I actually have a friend
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who's a very, very good lawyer who confided to me not too long ago that he wished he had chosen a
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different profession. And I kept thinking, but he's got student loan debt. He makes pretty good money,
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so he can't really... To start over and you think, wow, how sad is that? That because you achieved,
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you're sort of trapped. And I think we do this at such an early age. Those of us, I have two boys.
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But the number of times people ask them, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they're like,
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I'm like 14. Why are you asking me this? As if somehow, if you haven't already nailed down
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which of these predetermined destinations you're going to strive for, something's wrong with you.
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Right. And you highlight research in our book that our personalities aren't even really set or just
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not until our mid to late 20s. So it's like you're asking an 18-year-old whose adult brain
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is still developing, hey, you got to pick the career that you're going to do when you're 40,
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when you might be a completely different person. And you're going to be stuck with that.
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Right. You're going to be... You think about we're constantly changing the things that matter to us
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and who we are, especially at that age. And then the reality is that the environment's changing.
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So if I decide, yeah, I'm going to be a lawyer or whatever, but why am I making that choice? Is it
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because I have an uncle that's a lawyer or because I'm told that this is the safe sort of path and it's
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respectable? You think about all the really interesting sort of careers right now. You
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think about something like an app developer. That thing, that idea didn't even exist 12,
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13 years ago. That wasn't a thing. It's like the idea that you're somehow going to peg in your mind
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something 15, 20 years down the road and then go that direction. The reason it's so toxic is that
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it takes your eye off of what you should be focused on, which is maximizing the opportunities
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in front of you based on who you really are. And another part of the standardization covenant
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that you write about and to tell in the book is that it rests on the premise of meritocracy,
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right? That we reward talent and hard work. But you and your co-author make this really compelling
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case that meritocracies or at least how they are in the standardization covenant where there's this
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ladder you follow doesn't really reward talent and hard work. Explain that.
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Yeah. So look, the one we have right now, and by the way, it's pretty timely given the college
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admissions scandal and the kind of things going on where it's pretty clear it's not just simply about
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who deserves to be there. But when you have a standardized system, so think about right now,
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if you just use the college example, it's not really how talented you are. Picasso wouldn't
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have got into Stanford's visual arts program unless he had great SAT scores. It doesn't matter
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what else he had to offer. So we've narrowed this thing down to a single dimension or a couple of
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things. And we're not trying to understand what people are good at. We're just basically force
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ranking them. The SAT is bell curved. It guarantees half the people fail, even if they're all qualified.
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When you think about most of these institutions, like universities, they have a scarcity model of
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quality. They're trying to educate as few people as possible. And then they call that quality.
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And so basically, we end up getting ranked on one dimension on something they've decided,
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and then they pick a few people and they call that good. But the reality is we have a lot more
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to offer. People are deeply individual. Our talents are far more expansive than what fits on a single
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test. And if we were serious about helping people really develop their talents and make contributions,
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we certainly wouldn't create this kind of system.
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So, okay, the standardization covenant is this idea that we've all sort of been enmeshed in since
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childhood, that you go up the ladder, you get the degree, you do all the things so you can be better
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than everyone else, so you can get whatever at the end, right? You talk about something called the
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Dark Horse Covenant. What is the Dark Horse Covenant?
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So, it's a different social contract. And I'll just tell you as background, the point of the book
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was, like you said at the start, we just started studying people who were incredible at what they
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do, but who didn't follow the standardized path. And just trying to figure out who are these people
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and how do they do it? Is it just like dumb luck? Nobody should listen to them at all? Or might there
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be some things we could learn? And the book is really about the fact that, in fact, there are
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some common things that really make them capable of pursuing a different kind of life. So, out of
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that, you realize, wait a minute, if it's not just about these folks, it's about all of us, then we
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can start thinking about, wait, what kind of covenant would we make with ourselves as a people
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if we wanted to live more fulfilling lives? And the Dark Horse Covenant is simply this. Instead of,
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know your destination, work hard, and just stay that standardized course, it is about harnessing
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your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence. And the difference there is
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pretty stark, that it is about knowing who you are. Your individuality matters, and it's not
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selfishness. It's just your distinctiveness. And you would have an obligation to actually convert that
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into a fulfilling life and then make a contribution with that. And in return, our society owes you the
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creation of good fit. We owe you that we create good educational environments that actually match
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who you are and help develop you rather than just batch process you. And we create contexts at work
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that allow you to thrive and contribute the best. And that seems almost obvious. Of course, you would
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want that. But it stands in stark contrast to this idea that you really don't matter. The system matters,
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and you're just a cog. And for me, the important thing is, is that we just have to remember that the existing
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social contract we have, the Standardization Covenant, we created. Nobody forced it on us. Like, we agreed as a
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people, you know, our great-grandparents did, that this was an okay trade-off. And so, we can remake it
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So, throughout the book, you give examples of these dark horses, people who gain success in very unconventional
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ways where they found fulfillment and purpose with their work. What are some notable examples? Who
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are some notable examples of some dark horses that you covered in the book?
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So, from the outset, it was funny because whenever we were thinking about these dark horses, the easy
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ones to figure out were all famous people. You know, like Richard Branson, who I really like as a
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person. I think he's a great guy, and he's a classic example of a dark horse. But I grew up in rural
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America and pretty poor. And for me, I said, you know, I don't, I like these people, but I want to
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talk to everyday people who didn't have a lot of money and didn't have a ton of connections, but still
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managed to do this. Because I thought, if we focused there, we'd be likely to find patterns that would be
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useful for everyone. So, that's what we did. So, we tried really hard not to find any sort of name
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brands. But that said, we studied hundreds of people from all walks of life, as wide a range of
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professions as we could find. Everything from, you know, experts at wine to embalmers, right? Like
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to, you know, closet organizers. But, you know, some of the people that were just remarkable,
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interestingly, they kind of break down into like two kinds of dark horses. The one that you're
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probably imagining is the one that they struggle early, they fail early, and then suddenly they just
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catch fire and they're amazing. And we found plenty of those. For example, like we talked to
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a woman who dropped out of school in high school, had a kid early on, was working in a fast food joint
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in her teens and early 20s. And you flash forward today, she's an internationally respected astronomer
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who has discovered a planet, discovered an asteroid, and did all of that, including publishing in like
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the journal Science, never having gone to college. She still doesn't even have a high school diploma.
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The other kind of dark horse that we found, which I think is even more general, were these people who
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were really actually fantastic at what they do. They were the people who you would say, boy, by
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society's standards, they're successful, who reach a point in their life, they're like, this is, I'm just
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not happy. I'm not fulfilled. And they make these incredible pivots into stuff that you're like,
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really? That's where you went? And then they go off and then you just do amazing things and you still
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don't see them coming. So for example, spoke to another woman who had actually, you would have
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thought was acing the standard path. She was raised by the classic tiger mom parents and she finished
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high school at 15, finished college at 19. And then she landed a really sweet high profile job
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at one of the top consulting firms when she was 20. And she was like, had this just like stellar career
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right in front of her. Yet a few years later, she wakes up and recognizes she's living a life based on
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her parents view of success and she's not happy. So she makes a decision to pursue what mattered to
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her, makes a pivot. Today, she is a chef and the mastermind behind one of the most acclaimed supper
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clubs in the country. No, that's awesome. My favorite that you talk about the highlight of the book is
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the lady who, Susan, she's in a crappy marriage. She went to a concert and at that concert, she decided,
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I'm going to be a sound engineer. And she went on this path that took, you know, I think more than
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a decade. And she ended up being the princes, the artist formerly known as Prince, or is he now just
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Prince? Incredible, right? The sound engineer for him. And what I love, she's one of my favorite
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people in the world. This is one of the fun things about this project is you meet people and you don't
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want to be them. Like, I don't want to be a sound engineer, but knowing her makes me want to be a
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better person. She taught us that living a fulfilling life isn't all upside. Sometimes
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you have to get yourself out of really bad, abusive relationships. There's a hole you're in.
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And that's the starting point. But she said, I don't even know why. She didn't want to be a
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performer. She knew that. And so she's like, I don't know, this sound engineer. But what's so
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interesting and lays out, we lay out in the book in greater detail, the kind of choices she's going to
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make to really live that kind of life, including being a secretary at the place where they train
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people because she couldn't afford to go, but she could get enough training and convincing the
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military to send her some technical manuals so that she could keep getting more training and then just
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doing the things that need to be done. And then what I love is, you know, there she is getting to
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share this moment actually back in the LA Coliseum where she left because her husband told her she had
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to be home in time or she was going to get beat. There she is with Prince back there enjoying this
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incredible success with Purple Rain and to be able to live that life. And then as, as you see in the
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book, you know, she goes on to do other things because she realizes this is a never-ending process.
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Yeah. And she went to school in her forties because it was like, there's something, the next
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challenge. And that's what I love about this fulfillment orientation, which is these dark horses. I was
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always surprised. I really genuinely thought that to be a dark horse, to buck this standardized system,
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you would have to be someone like Richard Branson. I mean, I know Sir Richard. He's amazing. And he
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really loves bucking the system. I think it's just part of what really gets him off. If somebody else
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wants him to do it, he's probably not going to do it. I thought that most people would have to be like
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that. You'd have to really be able to gut it out. And that's just not what we found. And instead,
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without fail, every one of these dark horses got on their own path because they bailed on society's
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view of success. They bailed on the standardization idea. And they, to a person said, success to me is
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about pursuing fulfillment, accomplishing things that truly matter to me. And since we're so
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individual, the second you commit to that, it's unavoidable that you're actually going to have to
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get off the beaten path once in a while. And so just what we see is time and time again,
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these people being able to do that and creating very reliable paths. And so what I liked is it
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would be one thing to say, oh, cool, pursuit fulfillment. That's the kind of life you want
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to live. But what you see with these dark horses is they reveal a set of things you need to know
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that when you know them, it makes it a very, very stable, reliable path to success and happiness.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Well, let's walk through how you can figure out what will bring
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fulfillment. So I think one thing about making fulfillment your goal, it's great, but there's
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also, it's kind of can be a two-edged sword because you're like, man, that's a lot of pressure
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because it's existential. I think that's why some people find the standardization covenant
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comforting. It's like, well, here's this thing. It's already set for me. I don't have to really
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think about it. I'll just do it. So how can you figure out what will bring you fulfillment
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so you don't have that existential angst where you're lying in bed and it's like, am I really
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doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing? Yeah. Well, and look, the reality is that pursuing
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a fulfilling life does have more responsibility. There's no autopilot version of this. No one can
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give it to you. You have to earn it yourself. But I can almost guarantee you, as someone who's
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a fan of what you all do, I'm going to go ahead and almost guarantee the people listening and the
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people on the website are people who actually care about this kind of stuff, your self-improvement
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and trying to live their best life. So here's the thing. In the abstract, it can feel overwhelming
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because absent the reliable, even if it's not that great sort of beacons that society gives us,
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what do we anchor around? So what we found is that there's really these four things that they know
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that make this work. And they'll sound pretty straightforward. But look, the first thing,
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and it's the most important thing, is you absolutely have to know what motivates you.
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And we call it micromotives in the book because it was incredible how individual they are. When you
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think of motives, you tend to think of these, a small number of them that are just big. Like,
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okay, wait, I'm competitive. Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty competitive. Or I like money or I like
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collaboration. But in reality, the things that truly get you up in the morning can be incredibly
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particular and subtle and may not really apply to really almost anybody else. For example,
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we talked to a guy who, I mean, no kidding, his primary motive, I mean, it's just incredible,
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was aligning physical objects with his hands. I actually, when we talked to him, I thought,
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this can't be true. First of all, it doesn't sound remotely motivating to me at all. And it just
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seems so particular. Really, that must represent something more general. But it was really specific
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for him and it really mattered. And he had been able to convert that into some engineering work
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that had been amazing and then left that work and it fell apart on him. And then he came back in his
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life later and realized he's now like the top upholstery repair person in New York and he loves it.
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You got to know these things about yourself because you can be successful by society standards
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without knowing who you are and what matters. But you can't live a fulfilling life,
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not systematically, because it's about making choices and accomplishing things that matter to
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you. So the question would be like, well, then how do I start to figure out what motivates me?
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It seems, think about it, schools don't help. We never ask kids, ever, about what really matters
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to them. We tell them what they should care about. But what we found, and I'll give you the simple
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version here and the book kind of elaborates more on it. The most, I mean, it will sound simple. I
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promise you, any listener that just puts this into play in their life will be shocked at how
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big of a return on investment you'll get. So it's simply like this. If you think about the things
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that you enjoy doing right now, whether they're at work, whether they're at home, recreation, whatever.
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If you start making a list of those things and ask yourself, why? Why do I like this?
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So my example, I love football. Love it. I'm passionate about it. I played it when I could.
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I watch it every time. Luckily, I'm in Boston, so I've got the Patriots for quite a few years.
00:22:06.720
So it's been, it's a good run. But then it's why, right? What is it about? So is it because it's
00:22:13.360
competition? Is it because it's outdoors? Is it because it's collaborative, a team sport? Is it
00:22:18.180
because it's strategy involved? You and I could both like football for very, very different reasons.
00:22:22.880
If you know the why, it's everything. Because if you do this a couple of times with the things
00:22:29.320
that you enjoy, you'll start to see patterns. And those patterns become your real motives.
00:22:34.740
And now that I know if it's because I like collaboration and strategy, well, you know
00:22:38.720
what? There's a whole bunch of other things that can also be fulfilling to me. And I understand how
00:22:42.420
to find my way to those things. I love it. And you gave the example that I liked in the book was
00:22:48.160
someone who likes birds. I just love birds. But like, well, you might like how birds look and that
00:22:53.400
could take you down one path. Or you might like how birds sound and that could take someone down
00:22:56.940
another path. And in fact, it did. As you're saying, it's so remarkable because they get so
00:23:02.060
specific. And I'm like, really? There are actually people who end up becoming what we call like
00:23:06.520
birders. There's whole professions where people go out and discover birds. And they actually are
00:23:11.040
really interesting and important careers. I, for the life of me, would be like, I would rather dig
00:23:16.260
ditches. I can't even imagine that. But what we found is some people were like, no, all that
00:23:21.360
matters to me is the visual aspect of it. They could care less how they sound. And then some
00:23:25.900
people are like, I don't even want to see them. I need to hear them. And they can imagine the
00:23:29.560
waveform of the sound. And it was funny, after we wrote the book, there was a more serious
00:23:35.840
conversation going on in Australia about someone who actually was claiming they wanted to have
00:23:40.220
assisted suicide and they had to leave the country. And one of the things the gentleman said,
00:23:44.260
he was like, you know, 100. And he said, look, I used to love birds. I've lost my sight. And all
00:23:51.320
I can do is hear them. And I don't care about that. He'd rather like end his life than have
00:23:55.240
to just hear birds. What motivates us is incredibly specific. And nobody can tell you what it is,
00:24:02.420
but you can figure it out for yourself. And when you start to get a hold of that, then suddenly
00:24:07.260
making choices about your life becomes a heck of a lot easier. And that idea that feels scary,
00:24:12.560
as if you're going to drive yourself off a cliff, suddenly doesn't feel as risky or scary anymore.
00:24:18.200
Well, that's the next step, choices. And this is all about finding fit for what motivates you.
00:24:24.500
And this is counterintuitive to, I mean, you kind of hear talk of this in the standardization
00:24:29.060
covenant. You want to find a job where you fit, but it's like you have to fit in a certain way,
00:24:33.340
right? You have a predetermined choice, right? And you got to fit there. How is choosing
00:24:42.740
Yeah. So there's a couple of things that we saw with dark horses with the role of choice that I
00:24:47.700
think is super important to appreciate. The first is just simply that actually recognizing that choice
00:24:55.360
is really important. Because in the standardization covenant, we're actually actively discouraged.
00:25:00.720
The number of real choices that we have in our life. I mean, if I go to the grocery store,
00:25:04.340
I have a lot of choice because it's a market and people want to sell me stuff.
00:25:07.240
When you think about the institutions that are about developing who you are,
00:25:11.420
you have very, very few choices. And so what you end up doing is hoarding them and you get them and
00:25:16.420
you hedge. And it's like, ah, I don't want to make a mistake on this one. Like what college am I
00:25:20.720
going to go to? What major will I have? Right? What's my first job? Dark horses, they just,
00:25:25.280
they look for choice everywhere, even small ones. And they recognize that there's never such thing as
00:25:30.820
just an equivalent option. One choice is always going to be closer to fulfillment than the other.
00:25:36.420
And they make them. They just, they don't hedge. They figure out what the thing is and then they
00:25:41.560
jump in and do it. And look, they're not always right. There were plenty of examples where people
00:25:45.700
said, wow, that just didn't turn out to be the right thing, but they learn from it and they make
00:25:50.120
a better choice next time. And so what's fascinating about that is that from the outside,
00:25:56.560
it looks like they're just taking risky bets. It just really does. Even when we were talking,
00:26:01.920
I'm like, wow, you sold everything and went to rural England to learn about horticulture and you
00:26:07.740
were like, wow, that seems like there could have been a better way to do that. Because from our
00:26:12.440
perspective, we don't know their motives. We don't know their individuality. And so we're applying this
00:26:17.540
very averaged lens to it. What are the odds that someone, like if we say that you want to be a
00:26:23.560
programmer, we say, well, only one in 10 people get a job in Silicon Valley. And you tell me,
00:26:28.100
hey, I'm going to move to Silicon Valley because I'm going to get a job as a software engineer.
00:26:31.980
I'd say, boy, that seems like a really risky choice. One in 10. Well, that's just playing
00:26:36.540
the odds across everybody. And what dark horses do is because they know their individuality,
00:26:42.920
they can accurately judge fit better. So it's not one in 10. If you know what motivates you and what
00:26:50.080
you're good at, and you understand the job that's there, it's not a guarantee, but you can know,
00:26:54.900
actually, I have a really good shot at being great at this. And so we see them recognizing
00:26:59.220
choices and making them. And then the third aspect of it is, and this was actually pretty
00:27:06.780
cool to me, and it was eye-opening, is that often when we think about choice, we think about the
00:27:11.600
choices that people show us. That actually, okay, you can do X or you can do Y. And we're like,
00:27:16.500
oh, cool, that's choice. Well, not really. That's just picking. They've already decided what the
00:27:20.540
options are. But it's a little bit like the first time you go to a burger joint, and they're like,
00:27:26.240
oh, well, you can get on the menu, and then you realize there's a whole off menu that they're not
00:27:29.920
telling you. But if you ask for it, you can get it. These dark horses show us this over and over
00:27:35.480
again. In fact, it's not just about doing what people give you. It's actually making your own
00:27:39.900
options. Like I said, like the Susan Rogers. If she wants to be trained as a sound engineer, well,
00:27:45.320
go to one of the schools that trained you. Well, that's not open to her. So she's going to work
00:27:49.560
her way through to be a secretary at the place and make a deal that she can sit in on classes
00:27:53.920
when they're available. That wasn't an on-menu option, but she's going to figure it out.
00:27:59.600
And I think one concern that people have that have grown up in the standardization covenant
00:28:03.940
and the parents of these individuals is that if they go off this off-path route,
00:28:10.600
they're not going to be able to support themselves. They're not going to have health insurance.
00:28:14.100
It's going to be super risky. But Susan's a great example. She found a job where she could
00:28:18.580
pay the rent, pay for food. But at the same time, she was learning a skill. She got her foot in the
00:28:25.960
door. And I think you made that a good point. A lot of these dark horses, they weren't just
00:28:29.900
these careless, daredevil, risk-taping type. They were actually just very smart about taking
00:28:36.940
It's exactly right. So once you see their path through the dark horse lens and you start to
00:28:43.660
know about who they are, and then you look at the choices they're making, you go, oh,
00:28:48.020
that's really, really smart. That's a very clever, you've minimized actual risk. The riskier thing
00:28:54.340
is to put yourself in a situation that is like a terrible fit for who you are and then hope that
00:28:58.680
things turn out. But to your point, I think it's really important that when we think about things
00:29:05.220
like fulfillment, if we're not careful, it can be interpreted as like, this is very selfish,
00:29:11.860
free riding, kind of like, do your thing and it doesn't really matter. It's just, it was never
00:29:16.980
the case. Not only is it not okay, you have a responsibility to be responsible. And when you
00:29:22.800
look at the way that dark horses made choices, what was interesting is you're trying to maximize
00:29:27.180
fit. That's first thing. But then what was really cool, and I think this is really valuable for all of
00:29:31.880
us, is you can play a little game of, can I live with the worst case scenario of this choice?
00:29:37.480
So nowadays, I have two kids, which means I have some financial responsibility. There are things
00:29:43.880
that are no longer options for me because of the life I chose to live and I want to live.
00:29:49.760
So if I have a chance to make a jump, but one of those worst case scenarios is losing everything
00:29:55.780
and my family suffers, then I'm going to pass on that one because I'm unwilling to live with the
00:30:01.060
worst case scenario. And then what you do is you go to the next best fit. And what they keep doing
00:30:05.500
is saying, how do I get to that place where I can live with the worst case scenario and I have a good
00:30:10.600
fit? And so as a parent, I look at that as well now and I think, so how do I know that my boys who
00:30:17.800
are college and since graduated, how do I know the things they're doing right now are actually a path
00:30:22.980
of fulfillment or just screwing off? And for me, it always comes back to that idea of taking
00:30:28.840
responsibility for the choices. So when I think of the classic case of moving to Los Angeles to be
00:30:35.800
an actor and parents are like, oh my goodness, this is going to be the end. What I would ask them is
00:30:39.740
like, okay, wait, it's one thing if they're in LA, they've got seven roommates, they're bussing tables
00:30:46.380
in the evening and they're making it work, even though for you, you go, wow, that just seems like
00:30:52.220
you're struggling. That's a sign that this is a fulfilling path. Either they're going to learn
00:30:56.380
something or it's going to work out. If on the other hand, they're like, mom, dad, can you pay
00:31:00.480
my rent? Mom, dad, can you get me a car? Can you get like, that's not fulfillment, right? And it won't
00:31:06.520
turn into it. So this idea of knowing who you are and being willing to take responsibility for the
00:31:12.320
choices is a really important sign that you're on the right path. All right. So dark horse, they don't
00:31:18.000
pick, they choose. And choice means sometimes coming up with your own choice that no one never saw
00:31:23.500
before. So look for micro motivations, choose occupations that fit you and your micro motivations,
00:31:29.980
or maybe your, and also your current circumstance. If you have kids, you might have to,
00:31:33.700
job might not fit you anymore because of you have the obligation to them. The next step is know your
00:31:39.360
strategies. Yeah, this is, I get excited about this because this one just confronts head on this
00:31:46.840
ridiculous myth in our society about the nature of talent. And the way we've been taught in our
00:31:52.900
existing system is you try things and when you're not good at them, the response is, well, maybe I'm
00:31:58.980
not cut out for that. Maybe I'm not, you know, that good at it and I'm going to move on. I mean,
00:32:04.340
that's a simplistic explanation, but I think it's close. What we saw with dark horses, and it was just
00:32:10.000
so remarkable, is once they've figured out what they care about and they've made a choice, well,
00:32:16.320
you still have to accomplish things. It's not passive. So now you got to get good at stuff. You got to get
00:32:21.180
good at things that you care about. And what they would do is they know they care about this,
00:32:25.640
so they're not going to let go of it. And what you'd see is they'll try a strategy and then it
00:32:30.860
doesn't work. They'll just keep cycling through strategies. And from the outside, it looks
00:32:34.680
incredibly inefficient, but they're not doing the same thing over and over again. They'll just keep
00:32:38.980
swapping out new strategies until the one that clicks and it clicks and they go. And what they teach
00:32:44.740
you is that real achievement is not about some innate talent. It is about the right fit between your
00:32:50.040
individuality and the strategy. And there are always multiple ways to get to that finish line.
00:32:57.160
Always. What I love about it is it completely changes how I think about how I'm going to make
00:33:02.140
progress as an individual. And it was just, we saw in everything from Rubik's Cubes to Master Psalms,
00:33:09.840
how you're going to pass the hardest test in the world, basically. Almost nobody does it the same way.
00:33:14.620
It's just incredible. But one thing I've noticed, particularly since I'm online,
00:33:20.020
I kind of interact with online business world, online entrepreneurs, where you have these people
00:33:25.820
talking about living an unconventional life or whatever. But they're often, they're still looking
00:33:31.400
for a strategy that sort of fits the standardized covenant. They're looking for the thing that's
00:33:37.420
like, it'll work no matter what. They buy courses, like, you know, pay thousands of dollars for this
00:33:42.540
online course. Like, here's, follow these 10 steps and you will be successful in your unconventional
00:33:48.300
Yeah. No, I mean, look, that's why, that's why when we see that happen, it's always an indicator
00:33:55.300
that you're actually lacking a deeper understanding of who you are. Because as you, as you truly understand
00:34:02.420
that, that becomes the anchor that you can say, look, I know this isn't going to work. And if you
00:34:07.360
don't really have a good understanding of yourself, then you will fall back on, let me just see how
00:34:13.020
society tells me to do this. Because what's your substitute? If you find yourself relying on the
00:34:19.780
tried and true because you're hoping you're just playing the odds at that point, it's okay. Just step
00:34:24.220
back and realize you got more work to do on understanding what truly matters to you and what
00:34:29.960
Yeah. I get asked quite a bit, like, how do I start a podcast and make it successful? I was like,
00:34:34.580
man, I don't know. Like, I started, I started to start 10 years ago because like the internet was
00:34:39.100
completely different when I started. And I don't know what worked for me is probably not going to
00:34:45.120
But think about what you did. So this is what I think is so remarkable. So you're, you obviously have
00:34:48.900
a, you know, lots of success, but I'm going to go ahead and wager that this was not like a,
00:34:55.520
there's not a blueprint. You knew you cared about it and you got started.
00:34:59.280
And you make choices and you learn from people. You look at other folks and you think this,
00:35:04.020
you always want to take advice and then you got to do stuff that you know works for you and try it
00:35:08.540
out and let go of stuff that doesn't. And that sort of authenticity to who you are becomes fundamental
00:35:14.020
to your ability to, to be as good as possible at what you're doing.
00:35:18.860
Well, another part of this dark horse covenant, uh, sort of tactic is you have to ignore the
00:35:25.320
destination, which is like completely counter from the standardization covenant where you have to
00:35:29.100
know, like, you know, when you're, like you said, like your kids, when they're eight years old,
00:35:32.560
they're getting asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like they know their destination
00:35:38.680
I think what's really important here is destination. Isn't the same thing as goals.
00:35:43.000
You should have goals, but goals when they're useful are like, we call them like smart goals,
00:35:47.100
specific, measurable, actionable, whatever. Yeah. It's one thing to say like, okay,
00:35:52.420
I want to start a podcast. Well, there's certain things I need to get better at.
00:35:56.000
I'm going to do these things. I'm going to learn how to interview. I'm going to learn how to whatever.
00:35:58.760
Okay. But yeah, if you start talking about things that are 10, 15 years out that are contingent on
00:36:05.060
a bunch of other things, first of all, that destination, I guarantee you won't look like
00:36:09.300
that by the time you get there. The other thing is, is it may be an actual terrible fit for who you
00:36:14.040
really are. And so what dark horses do, and I think is, I mean, just profoundly important
00:36:18.820
is by ignoring, you'd never hear them say, what do you want to be when you grow up? That's just
00:36:23.400
a dumb question because it will corrupt your decision-making process. Because the second I
00:36:28.700
latch onto something far in the distant, and I don't really know why I'm doing it. I lose sight of
00:36:33.780
the fact that every single day I have choices to make every day. We all do big and small, and they
00:36:39.760
need to be made based on a real understanding of who you are, what matters to you, what motivates you.
00:36:44.460
And it is that consistent ability to make those kinds of choices that will carve out your path,
00:36:50.360
that'll give you the best chance to be excellent because you are fulfilled. The quickest way to
00:36:54.980
wreck that is to pick what society is telling you to be 10 years from now and start making choices
00:36:59.620
based on that. Yeah. I think you quoted Paul Graham in the book. He says a lot of the successful
00:37:03.940
entrepreneurs that he's encountered, they don't have 10-year plans. They've got a goal. They're
00:37:09.180
looking at the next goal. That's pretty much it. Of course, right? The truth is, is anybody that's
00:37:15.760
been successful, this is how you become really successful. And it's only in hindsight that it
00:37:20.940
all looks like it's stitched together in some perfect preordained plan. But the reality is the
00:37:26.480
most important choices most of us make when we feel like we're leading successful lives are these
00:37:30.440
incredible twists and turns that you just never would have thought would be there for you and you
00:37:36.900
would have been blind to had you not been looking for them. Right. You use the concept of gradient
00:37:41.360
ascent. It's like how people can climb mountains. Yeah, isn't that? We couldn't help it. At the
00:37:47.140
end of the day, we're scientists and we had to slip back into, you know, when we think about how we
00:37:51.740
model complex problems that don't have solutions, it feels intractable. But actually, the thing called
00:37:57.000
gradient ascent in computer science, it turns out you can find the answer to anything. You just have
00:38:03.100
the algorithm take a few steps in a direction, look around and say, look, am I making progress
00:38:07.280
toward the peak or am I going down? And if you're making progress, go forward again. You can make
00:38:11.980
that step-by-step process and actually maximize a mathematical solution. And it actually, I think,
00:38:18.400
is a good metaphor for life. You don't actually have to already know the peak you're aiming for
00:38:23.020
in order to get there. You just don't. And what's nice about these sort of four ways to figure out
00:38:28.260
the thing they'll bring in fulfillment, it's very fluid, right? It's not like, I mean, your micromotives
00:38:33.320
could change as you get older. Like what your micromotives were when you're 20 might be different
00:38:37.500
when you're 35. For sure. And what's nice is that, and I hope they are, what a boring life if the
00:38:43.300
exact same thing. What I think is really powerful about this is, you know, I have a colleague and
00:38:48.620
friend who I was just with a couple of days ago who was explaining that, you know, forever she was in
00:38:54.080
love with spreadsheets. Like that was her thing. And she said she woke up one day after like a
00:38:59.980
decade of being awesome at this stuff in her work and was like, I can't touch another spreadsheet.
00:39:05.900
I literally just hate it. It was like her spreadsheet moment. Now, had she not understood that it wasn't
00:39:11.440
about spreadsheets, it was actually about, there was like a, there's a logic to what it was doing.
00:39:16.100
So it was the logic that she liked. So she was able to immediately like, you know what? Great. So I'm
00:39:21.080
going to move on. I'm going to do something different. So she was able to engineer this
00:39:25.080
consistent fulfillment, even though the environment's changing. And so this sense of understanding
00:39:30.140
that that's how fulfillment works allows you, like if you're in a job and they're like, well,
00:39:34.920
the job's done. You loved it. You thought you'd find a perfect fit. Guess what? If you have a good
00:39:39.060
understanding of these basic principles, you can make the next move. Similarly, if suddenly I'm just
00:39:44.620
like, you know what? I don't, I'm not as competitive as I used to be. Okay. Well, I can be aware of that
00:39:49.540
because I'm feeling it. I can feel it in my day-to-day experience. I can reassess and I can
00:39:54.560
make a new choice. So to me, this understanding of pursuing fulfillment to achieve excellence
00:40:00.060
puts so much control in an individual's hands, regardless of circumstances, you can carve out a
00:40:06.980
fulfilling life. And it sounds like you can even apply this in professions that have that more
00:40:11.080
standardization covenant hierarchy, like a doctor or attorney or a corporate suit.
00:40:16.540
Yeah. Even when the gatekeeping aspect is really rigid, it's super hard. You're not becoming a
00:40:24.780
doctor without going through some specific things. We see it all the time is when you get into the
00:40:29.840
profession, you realize it's almost crazy that we call it the same thing. The range of things you
00:40:34.860
could do and still be a lawyer is remarkable. And so the ability to still say like, even though I've
00:40:40.940
come through the straight and narrow, cause I had to, I can still keep optimizing even within that
00:40:45.980
profession in ways that can be everything from completely unsatisfying to incredibly fulfilling.
00:40:52.560
And what's nice about that, I think this idea is it takes pressure off young people, or it can take
00:40:57.320
pressure off young people. They really understand it. It's like, okay, you're 24. You don't have to
00:41:01.200
have this all figured out now. You have a long time to figure it out. It's like a lifetime, it's a
00:41:06.720
It is a process. I mean, that almost seems cliche, but it really is. And the thing is, is that
00:41:12.720
I feel like, and, and, and, you know, with my own kids, I mean, this is always the litmus test for me
00:41:18.560
is what I, do I really want them to live by this book? And I can honestly say, yes, I feel extremely
00:41:23.600
confident that this is a way for them to live the kind of life they want to live. It's empowering.
00:41:28.300
It can be a little scary. Like I said, you lose, lose sight of the, the, the things that you've been
00:41:32.140
told all your life are the sure signs of, of how you have success. But once you get into the habit
00:41:38.140
of this, of being true to who you are and learning how to make choices and learn from them quick,
00:41:43.120
not only is it, do you end up places that are just super interesting and successful, but the, the,
00:41:48.520
the journey is actually interesting. It's actually enjoyable. And I think nowadays, what more could
00:41:54.360
you ever want as a person or as a parent than to have yourself or your children be able to have a
00:41:58.980
life that is that rich and meaningful? So we got the standardization covenant. It was created
00:42:03.600
to benefit institutions. It allows us to educate a lot of people at once, hire people at, you know,
00:42:10.060
a bunch of people at once. But then you have this dark horse covenant that's very focused on the
00:42:14.340
individual and it's personalized. So there's sort of this conflict there. How do you think we can
00:42:19.480
resolve that, particularly in, in, in the world of education where, you know, you, you grow up,
00:42:23.440
you get put into a system where you're sitting in the desk, the teacher lectures, the same thing,
00:42:28.420
to all the kids. How can you develop a dark horse education within that system?
00:42:34.920
Yeah. Look, I mean, it's pretty simple. I mean, under this new covenant, the truth is what we're
00:42:40.420
changing now is the purpose of these systems. You take something like education. The purpose of
00:42:44.980
education is actually to batch process kids and sort them into predetermined outcomes that society has
00:42:51.040
said they want. I mean, that's at the end of the day, that's, that's what we do. It doesn't mean
00:42:54.460
we don't have amazing teachers, doesn't mean we don't have caring adults, but it is the purpose
00:42:58.440
of the system. If you now want a system who sees its job to understand and help develop each kid
00:43:06.360
to their full potential, and more importantly, help these kids figure this out for themselves,
00:43:11.300
that's a very different system. And now you could almost think like, well, that seems impossible.
00:43:14.980
But the good news is with my think tank, I mean, we actually engage in this kind of systems change
00:43:19.200
work every day. There are some remarkable things going on. And at the core of this big change in
00:43:25.680
the purpose of education is actually a focus on more personalized systems that care about
00:43:31.080
individuality. And this is almost crazy to me because what's odd is we figured out how to
00:43:36.400
personalize almost every other aspect of our lives. But when it comes to our kids and their education,
00:43:42.080
we seem shockingly content with the status quo, but we shouldn't. Our education system doesn't match
00:43:47.020
our capabilities for personalization. And frankly, we're letting our kids down right now.
00:43:51.540
So what are some things that have been done to, I mean, just sort of a highlight of some of those
00:43:55.180
things? Yeah, no, look, I am wildly optimistic about where our public education system will be
00:44:00.880
in a decade or so. We know the purpose is wrong. We're trying like crazy. We have the tech to be
00:44:06.600
able to do something different. So here's the handful of things that have to shift that are
00:44:11.180
shifting. Actually, I'll tell you the one that I think is must have and is already happening,
00:44:16.000
which is you have to shift toward what we call mastery learning, which means allowing kids to
00:44:21.080
learn at their own pace until they truly understand the material rather than just passing kids from
00:44:25.880
grade to grade as long as they don't fail. And the good news is that mastery learning is already
00:44:30.420
taking hold all around the country. In fact, there's actually, you think about something like
00:44:33.760
Khan Academy, where basically anyone can do that online and schools use it all the time. But you go to
00:44:39.240
something like the state of Idaho, which is literally committing to making mastery learning the core of how
00:44:43.560
things happen. And what's so great about it is when you shift away from a fixed amount of time and then you just
00:44:48.960
rank kids with a grade to mastery learning, what we see without fail is that kids were turned out to be just
00:44:55.880
far more capable than we ever imagined. That like with just a little more time and support, what one kid can do
00:45:02.800
academically, most kids can do. And so for me, that's not only good for the individual. When you think about the kind of
00:45:09.020
talent we're about to unleash with a system that's focused on mastery, it makes me pretty hopeful about
00:45:15.040
the future. Well, Todd, this has been a great conversation. Is there someplace people can go
00:45:19.120
to learn more about the book and your work? Sure. You could go to toddrose.com or follow me on
00:45:25.700
Twitter at LToddRose. Fantastic. Well, Todd Rose, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:45:31.300
Yeah, thank you. Like I say, it was Todd Rose. He's the co-author of the book Dark Horse. It's available
00:45:35.820
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his
00:45:39.360
website, toddrose.com. That's Todd with two Ds. Also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:45:44.540
slash darkhorse, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:45:55.400
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:45:58.960
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00:46:02.840
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00:46:39.060
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