The Art of Manliness - #547： Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. The standard

00:00:11.720 route to success in modern life goes as follows. Work hard in high school, score high on your SAT,

00:00:17.040 get into a good college, do well in your classes, get a good job. For some people that path works,

00:00:21.420 but for a lot of people it leaves them disengaged and frustrated because it doesn't actually lead

00:00:25.620 to a life of fulfillment. My guest today has spent his academic career studying individuals

00:00:29.380 who have bucked the standard formula for achievement and found success on their own terms.

00:00:33.160 His name is Todd Rose. He's a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the

00:00:37.000 co-author of the book Dark Horse, Achieving Success in the Pursuit of Fulfillment. We begin our

00:00:41.160 conversation discussing what Todd calls the standardization covenant, including how it

00:00:44.840 developed to serve institutions rather than individuals and why following the standard

00:00:48.300 path often leads to frustration. Todd then explains his idea of an alternative dark horse covenant and

00:00:53.040 what it looks like theoretically and in the lives of those who followed it. He then walks us through

00:00:56.880 the steps that dark horses follows to find success and fulfillment on their own terms,

00:01:00.580 including focusing on micromotives to figure out where you fit, making decisive choices,

00:01:04.800 creating your own options, and trying new strategies until you find something that works.

00:01:08.520 We end our conversation with how Todd would like to see the dark horse dynamic incorporated into our

00:01:12.480 educational system. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash dark horse.

00:01:17.220 Todd joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:26.880 All right, Todd Rose, welcome to the show.

00:01:30.800 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:01:31.940 So you are a co-author of a book called Dark Horse, Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of

00:01:37.520 Fulfillment. So the book's all about this. It's all about people who gain success through

00:01:42.400 unconventional ways. Before that, let's juxtapose that with how people typically think or achieve

00:01:49.520 success. You call this in the book, you call this path to success that we've all heard about,

00:01:55.860 know about, and probably followed, the standardization covenant. What does the

00:02:00.080 standardization covenant look like in your eyes?

00:02:02.660 Well, I mean, when I think about what success looks like in our standardized systems,

00:02:06.980 it is basically, you know the destination, you know what you're going to go after,

00:02:10.900 you work really hard and you stay the course. You show grit, determination. But in the end,

00:02:16.460 it really is about trying to compete to be the same as everybody else, only better. And it has very

00:02:22.100 little to do with who you are and what you really care about.

00:02:26.320 So this is basically the path that's been set out for almost, I would say, 60, 70 years,

00:02:31.420 since the end of World War II, probably. You go to college, you get a job, you do really well your

00:02:36.260 job, you'll go up the hierarchy, and eventually you can retire with a gold watch and drive a Cadillac.

00:02:41.320 Exactly. And by the way, we call it a corporate ladder for a reason. There's a one path and you

00:02:48.740 climb as high as you can go, but you're competing against everyone else for the exact same prize.

00:02:52.920 And that corporate ladder goes all the way down to, you start learning this in elementary school.

00:02:57.280 You understand people get ranked in certain orders based on how well you are. And as you said,

00:03:02.860 everyone's doing the exact same thing, but they're just doing it better.

00:03:05.560 Sure. Yeah. Well, and it's on purpose. So the idea of this standardization covenant is,

00:03:13.340 as a society, at the beginning of the industrial age, we basically gave up on our individuality.

00:03:19.680 And we said, look, it's just more manageable if a few people control the system and we decide

00:03:24.620 what the paths are like and what the criteria is, and we can kind of manage it. We only need,

00:03:30.080 say, three ballerinas, or we need five engineers, whatever. It's less about you and what you're

00:03:35.040 capable of, and more about filling some preordained slots.

00:03:39.360 Right. The standardization was developed to benefit institutions, like government,

00:03:44.840 corporations, even if like a ballet could be an institution as well. You just need certain

00:03:49.700 slots and we're going to look for the cream of the crop. 0.99

00:03:52.200 Right. As they see it. Yeah.

00:03:54.620 While that's still going on, we still hear this talk about you need to find fulfillment

00:03:58.920 in your work. And the standardization covenant talks about this, but they talk about it in different

00:04:04.540 ways. How do you achieve fulfillment or a sense of purpose within this, where you're just doing

00:04:09.620 what everyone else is doing, but only better? Yeah. I mean, I think everybody wants, in an ideal

00:04:14.660 world, they want to be successful and happy, right? They want to live fulfilled lives. And

00:04:18.380 what we've been taught is that if you just fit the mold, climb the ladder, and actually achieve

00:04:25.460 excellence within the system, that fulfillment comes as a consequence of that. In some ways,

00:04:30.800 you can think, well, maybe that's true. If I'm excellent, I'll be fulfilled as well. But I think

00:04:34.560 what we're seeing now is generations of people who have actually arrived at that place and realize,

00:04:40.140 look, I made it according to society, but I'm deeply unhappy. I'm not fulfilled. And so I think

00:04:46.220 the game is up. Yeah. I think everyone's met those people who've achieved success in their field,

00:04:51.840 doctors, surgeons, attorneys, the top of their field, making lots of money, and they're just

00:04:57.240 miserable. Yeah. And it's like the worst part about it, which is to say, well, that's nice. 0.98

00:05:02.980 You're doing something that you're obviously good at, but you get one life. And in a sense,

00:05:09.540 we're here and our ability to live a life. And what you really want are people who are able to

00:05:14.380 find passion and convert that into purpose and turn that purpose into contribution and achievement.

00:05:20.160 And what we find is that it's just really hard to do at scale if you've standardized the whole

00:05:26.240 system. And the other part of the standardization covenant is that you have to know, like you have

00:05:31.780 to work at what you're doing for a long time to get there, perhaps, right? And you have to know where

00:05:37.100 you want to go at a really young age, like when you're 18. It's like when you go to college,

00:05:41.300 okay, you need to pick out what your major you're going to study. And this is where you're going to

00:05:44.920 go into your career. If you're going to medical school, you have to know that you're going to be in

00:05:48.600 school for seven years. Even if you have no experience with medicine, you might find out you might not

00:05:53.720 like it. But if you want to do that, you sort of have to grid it out and keep doing it.

00:05:58.260 You're going to find out the hard way and either suffer through a life. I actually have a friend

00:06:05.240 who's a very, very good lawyer who confided to me not too long ago that he wished he had chosen a

00:06:11.220 different profession. And I kept thinking, but he's got student loan debt. He makes pretty good money,

00:06:17.820 so he can't really... To start over and you think, wow, how sad is that? That because you achieved,

00:06:23.420 you're sort of trapped. And I think we do this at such an early age. Those of us, I have two boys.

00:06:29.440 But the number of times people ask them, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they're like,

00:06:34.780 I'm like 14. Why are you asking me this? As if somehow, if you haven't already nailed down

00:06:40.060 which of these predetermined destinations you're going to strive for, something's wrong with you.

00:06:45.640 Right. And you highlight research in our book that our personalities aren't even really set or just

00:06:52.360 not until our mid to late 20s. So it's like you're asking an 18-year-old whose adult brain

00:06:59.260 is still developing, hey, you got to pick the career that you're going to do when you're 40,

00:07:03.220 when you might be a completely different person. And you're going to be stuck with that.

00:07:07.000 Right. You're going to be... You think about we're constantly changing the things that matter to us

00:07:11.220 and who we are, especially at that age. And then the reality is that the environment's changing.

00:07:16.780 So if I decide, yeah, I'm going to be a lawyer or whatever, but why am I making that choice? Is it

00:07:21.200 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

00:07:26.340 respectable? You think about all the really interesting sort of careers right now. You

00:07:31.780 think about something like an app developer. That thing, that idea didn't even exist 12,

00:07:37.460 13 years ago. That wasn't a thing. It's like the idea that you're somehow going to peg in your mind

00:07:41.760 something 15, 20 years down the road and then go that direction. The reason it's so toxic is that

00:07:47.260 it takes your eye off of what you should be focused on, which is maximizing the opportunities

00:07:52.160 in front of you based on who you really are. And another part of the standardization covenant

00:07:57.320 that you write about and to tell in the book is that it rests on the premise of meritocracy,

00:08:02.740 right? That we reward talent and hard work. But you and your co-author make this really compelling

00:08:07.960 case that meritocracies or at least how they are in the standardization covenant where there's this

00:08:12.920 ladder you follow doesn't really reward talent and hard work. Explain that.

00:08:18.460 Yeah. So look, the one we have right now, and by the way, it's pretty timely given the college

00:08:25.400 admissions scandal and the kind of things going on where it's pretty clear it's not just simply about

00:08:30.880 who deserves to be there. But when you have a standardized system, so think about right now,

00:08:36.360 if you just use the college example, it's not really how talented you are. Picasso wouldn't

00:08:42.760 have got into Stanford's visual arts program unless he had great SAT scores. It doesn't matter

00:08:47.120 what else he had to offer. So we've narrowed this thing down to a single dimension or a couple of

00:08:52.120 things. And we're not trying to understand what people are good at. We're just basically force

00:08:57.940 ranking them. The SAT is bell curved. It guarantees half the people fail, even if they're all qualified.

00:09:03.800 When you think about most of these institutions, like universities, they have a scarcity model of

00:09:09.780 quality. They're trying to educate as few people as possible. And then they call that quality.

00:09:14.880 And so basically, we end up getting ranked on one dimension on something they've decided,

00:09:19.780 and then they pick a few people and they call that good. But the reality is we have a lot more

00:09:24.260 to offer. People are deeply individual. Our talents are far more expansive than what fits on a single

00:09:31.020 test. And if we were serious about helping people really develop their talents and make contributions,

00:09:36.600 we certainly wouldn't create this kind of system.

00:09:39.800 So, okay, the standardization covenant is this idea that we've all sort of been enmeshed in since

00:09:43.880 childhood, that you go up the ladder, you get the degree, you do all the things so you can be better

00:09:49.460 than everyone else, so you can get whatever at the end, right? You talk about something called the

00:09:55.280 Dark Horse Covenant. What is the Dark Horse Covenant?

00:09:58.360 So, it's a different social contract. And I'll just tell you as background, the point of the book

00:10:05.400 was, like you said at the start, we just started studying people who were incredible at what they

00:10:10.960 do, but who didn't follow the standardized path. And just trying to figure out who are these people

00:10:17.220 and how do they do it? Is it just like dumb luck? Nobody should listen to them at all? Or might there

00:10:23.240 be some things we could learn? And the book is really about the fact that, in fact, there are

00:10:27.340 some common things that really make them capable of pursuing a different kind of life. So, out of

00:10:34.540 that, you realize, wait a minute, if it's not just about these folks, it's about all of us, then we

00:10:38.580 can start thinking about, wait, what kind of covenant would we make with ourselves as a people

00:10:42.660 if we wanted to live more fulfilling lives? And the Dark Horse Covenant is simply this. Instead of,

00:10:49.520 know your destination, work hard, and just stay that standardized course, it is about harnessing

00:10:54.300 your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence. And the difference there is

00:10:59.320 pretty stark, that it is about knowing who you are. Your individuality matters, and it's not

00:11:04.680 selfishness. It's just your distinctiveness. And you would have an obligation to actually convert that

00:11:10.840 into a fulfilling life and then make a contribution with that. And in return, our society owes you the

00:11:17.260 creation of good fit. We owe you that we create good educational environments that actually match

00:11:22.660 who you are and help develop you rather than just batch process you. And we create contexts at work

00:11:28.760 that allow you to thrive and contribute the best. And that seems almost obvious. Of course, you would

00:11:34.200 want that. But it stands in stark contrast to this idea that you really don't matter. The system matters,

00:11:39.780 and you're just a cog. And for me, the important thing is, is that we just have to remember that the existing

00:11:47.080 social contract we have, the Standardization Covenant, we created. Nobody forced it on us. Like, we agreed as a

00:11:53.220 people, you know, our great-grandparents did, that this was an okay trade-off. And so, we can remake it

00:11:59.060 tomorrow if we want to.

00:12:01.180 So, throughout the book, you give examples of these dark horses, people who gain success in very unconventional

00:12:07.120 ways where they found fulfillment and purpose with their work. What are some notable examples? Who

00:12:14.020 are some notable examples of some dark horses that you covered in the book?

00:12:17.600 So, from the outset, it was funny because whenever we were thinking about these dark horses, the easy 1.00

00:12:23.640 ones to figure out were all famous people. You know, like Richard Branson, who I really like as a

00:12:29.960 person. I think he's a great guy, and he's a classic example of a dark horse. But I grew up in rural 0.99

00:12:36.700 America and pretty poor. And for me, I said, you know, I don't, I like these people, but I want to

00:12:44.200 talk to everyday people who didn't have a lot of money and didn't have a ton of connections, but still

00:12:48.900 managed to do this. Because I thought, if we focused there, we'd be likely to find patterns that would be

00:12:54.360 useful for everyone. So, that's what we did. So, we tried really hard not to find any sort of name

00:12:59.360 brands. But that said, we studied hundreds of people from all walks of life, as wide a range of

00:13:05.140 professions as we could find. Everything from, you know, experts at wine to embalmers, right? Like

00:13:10.980 to, you know, closet organizers. But, you know, some of the people that were just remarkable,

00:13:15.840 interestingly, they kind of break down into like two kinds of dark horses. The one that you're

00:13:19.880 probably imagining is the one that they struggle early, they fail early, and then suddenly they just

00:13:24.800 catch fire and they're amazing. And we found plenty of those. For example, like we talked to

00:13:31.520 a woman who dropped out of school in high school, had a kid early on, was working in a fast food joint 1.00

00:13:40.020 in her teens and early 20s. And you flash forward today, she's an internationally respected astronomer

00:13:46.340 who has discovered a planet, discovered an asteroid, and did all of that, including publishing in like

00:13:53.340 the journal Science, never having gone to college. She still doesn't even have a high school diploma.

00:13:57.860 The other kind of dark horse that we found, which I think is even more general, were these people who

00:14:03.880 were really actually fantastic at what they do. They were the people who you would say, boy, by

00:14:08.500 society's standards, they're successful, who reach a point in their life, they're like, this is, I'm just

00:14:13.480 not happy. I'm not fulfilled. And they make these incredible pivots into stuff that you're like,

00:14:18.440 really? That's where you went? And then they go off and then you just do amazing things and you still

00:14:22.640 don't see them coming. So for example, spoke to another woman who had actually, you would have 0.82

00:14:27.760 thought was acing the standard path. She was raised by the classic tiger mom parents and she finished 1.00

00:14:32.740 high school at 15, finished college at 19. And then she landed a really sweet high profile job 0.97

00:14:39.520 at one of the top consulting firms when she was 20. And she was like, had this just like stellar career

00:14:44.740 right in front of her. Yet a few years later, she wakes up and recognizes she's living a life based on

00:14:50.660 her parents view of success and she's not happy. So she makes a decision to pursue what mattered to

00:14:56.620 her, makes a pivot. Today, she is a chef and the mastermind behind one of the most acclaimed supper 0.93

00:15:03.180 clubs in the country. No, that's awesome. My favorite that you talk about the highlight of the book is

00:15:08.140 the lady who, Susan, she's in a crappy marriage. She went to a concert and at that concert, she decided,

00:15:15.380 I'm going to be a sound engineer. And she went on this path that took, you know, I think more than

00:15:22.080 a decade. And she ended up being the princes, the artist formerly known as Prince, or is he now just

00:15:28.200 Prince? Incredible, right? The sound engineer for him. And what I love, she's one of my favorite

00:15:34.720 people in the world. This is one of the fun things about this project is you meet people and you don't

00:15:38.760 want to be them. Like, I don't want to be a sound engineer, but knowing her makes me want to be a

00:15:42.920 better person. She taught us that living a fulfilling life isn't all upside. Sometimes

00:15:47.860 you have to get yourself out of really bad, abusive relationships. There's a hole you're in.

00:15:53.900 And that's the starting point. But she said, I don't even know why. She didn't want to be a

00:15:58.000 performer. She knew that. And so she's like, I don't know, this sound engineer. But what's so

00:16:01.660 interesting and lays out, we lay out in the book in greater detail, the kind of choices she's going to

00:16:07.620 make to really live that kind of life, including being a secretary at the place where they train

00:16:14.040 people because she couldn't afford to go, but she could get enough training and convincing the 0.74

00:16:18.480 military to send her some technical manuals so that she could keep getting more training and then just

00:16:24.220 doing the things that need to be done. And then what I love is, you know, there she is getting to

00:16:29.040 share this moment actually back in the LA Coliseum where she left because her husband told her she had

00:16:34.440 to be home in time or she was going to get beat. There she is with Prince back there enjoying this

00:16:40.760 incredible success with Purple Rain and to be able to live that life. And then as, as you see in the

00:16:46.160 book, you know, she goes on to do other things because she realizes this is a never-ending process. 0.71

00:16:50.960 And she got her PhD to be a professor.

00:16:52.400 Yeah. And she went to school in her forties because it was like, there's something, the next

00:16:56.520 challenge. And that's what I love about this fulfillment orientation, which is these dark horses. I was

00:17:01.860 always surprised. I really genuinely thought that to be a dark horse, to buck this standardized system,

00:17:08.720 you would have to be someone like Richard Branson. I mean, I know Sir Richard. He's amazing. And he

00:17:14.620 really loves bucking the system. I think it's just part of what really gets him off. If somebody else

00:17:20.340 wants him to do it, he's probably not going to do it. I thought that most people would have to be like

00:17:26.280 that. You'd have to really be able to gut it out. And that's just not what we found. And instead,

00:17:30.540 without fail, every one of these dark horses got on their own path because they bailed on society's 1.00

00:17:38.960 view of success. They bailed on the standardization idea. And they, to a person said, success to me is

00:17:44.920 about pursuing fulfillment, accomplishing things that truly matter to me. And since we're so

00:17:49.860 individual, the second you commit to that, it's unavoidable that you're actually going to have to

00:17:55.380 get off the beaten path once in a while. And so just what we see is time and time again,

00:17:59.620 these people being able to do that and creating very reliable paths. And so what I liked is it

00:18:05.520 would be one thing to say, oh, cool, pursuit fulfillment. That's the kind of life you want

00:18:08.680 to live. But what you see with these dark horses is they reveal a set of things you need to know

00:18:13.380 that when you know them, it makes it a very, very stable, reliable path to success and happiness.

00:18:19.960 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:18:21.900 And now back to the show. Well, let's walk through how you can figure out what will bring

00:18:28.860 fulfillment. So I think one thing about making fulfillment your goal, it's great, but there's

00:18:33.820 also, it's kind of can be a two-edged sword because you're like, man, that's a lot of pressure

00:18:37.060 because it's existential. I think that's why some people find the standardization covenant

00:18:43.140 comforting. It's like, well, here's this thing. It's already set for me. I don't have to really

00:18:46.740 think about it. I'll just do it. So how can you figure out what will bring you fulfillment

00:18:52.460 so you don't have that existential angst where you're lying in bed and it's like, am I really

00:18:56.120 doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing? Yeah. Well, and look, the reality is that pursuing

00:19:02.200 a fulfilling life does have more responsibility. There's no autopilot version of this. No one can

00:19:06.660 give it to you. You have to earn it yourself. But I can almost guarantee you, as someone who's

00:19:13.400 a fan of what you all do, I'm going to go ahead and almost guarantee the people listening and the

00:19:18.260 people on the website are people who actually care about this kind of stuff, your self-improvement

00:19:23.100 and trying to live their best life. So here's the thing. In the abstract, it can feel overwhelming

00:19:30.000 because absent the reliable, even if it's not that great sort of beacons that society gives us,

00:19:36.120 what do we anchor around? So what we found is that there's really these four things that they know

00:19:41.460 that make this work. And they'll sound pretty straightforward. But look, the first thing,

00:19:46.560 and it's the most important thing, is you absolutely have to know what motivates you.

00:19:53.080 And we call it micromotives in the book because it was incredible how individual they are. When you

00:19:59.540 think of motives, you tend to think of these, a small number of them that are just big. Like,

00:20:03.760 okay, wait, I'm competitive. Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty competitive. Or I like money or I like

00:20:08.240 collaboration. But in reality, the things that truly get you up in the morning can be incredibly

00:20:13.940 particular and subtle and may not really apply to really almost anybody else. For example,

00:20:21.460 we talked to a guy who, I mean, no kidding, his primary motive, I mean, it's just incredible,

00:20:27.240 was aligning physical objects with his hands. I actually, when we talked to him, I thought,

00:20:32.660 this can't be true. First of all, it doesn't sound remotely motivating to me at all. And it just

00:20:37.880 seems so particular. Really, that must represent something more general. But it was really specific

00:20:43.700 for him and it really mattered. And he had been able to convert that into some engineering work

00:20:48.460 that had been amazing and then left that work and it fell apart on him. And then he came back in his

00:20:54.040 life later and realized he's now like the top upholstery repair person in New York and he loves it.

00:20:59.660 You got to know these things about yourself because you can be successful by society standards

00:21:05.000 without knowing who you are and what matters. But you can't live a fulfilling life,

00:21:09.600 not systematically, because it's about making choices and accomplishing things that matter to

00:21:14.320 you. So the question would be like, well, then how do I start to figure out what motivates me?

00:21:19.320 It seems, think about it, schools don't help. We never ask kids, ever, about what really matters

00:21:24.780 to them. We tell them what they should care about. But what we found, and I'll give you the simple

00:21:29.540 version here and the book kind of elaborates more on it. The most, I mean, it will sound simple. I

00:21:35.160 promise you, any listener that just puts this into play in their life will be shocked at how

00:21:39.340 big of a return on investment you'll get. So it's simply like this. If you think about the things

00:21:44.500 that you enjoy doing right now, whether they're at work, whether they're at home, recreation, whatever.

00:21:51.120 If you start making a list of those things and ask yourself, why? Why do I like this?

00:21:55.800 So my example, I love football. Love it. I'm passionate about it. I played it when I could.

00:22:01.040 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.

00:24:24.240 Yeah.

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

00:24:40.080 differ in the dark horse covenant?

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, 1.00

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 0.78

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 1.00

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

00:28:35.480 smart risks.

00:28:36.940 It's exactly right. So once you see their path through the dark horse lens and you start to 0.80

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

00:33:47.840 life.

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

00:34:28.840 you're good at.

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

00:34:43.140 work for you. Just, I don't know.

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

00:35:35.420 with a dark horse. They typically don't.

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 0.99

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 0.99

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

00:41:05.940 lifetime process.

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

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The Art of Manliness - September 30, 2019

#547： Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

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