00:01:43.100Head to factormeals.com slash manliness50off and use code manliness50off to get 50% off
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00:02:02.840and use code MANLINES50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year
00:02:08.140while supplies last. See website for more details. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition
00:02:14.140of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors,
00:02:18.840thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and
00:02:23.940filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice
00:02:28.060timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles
00:02:32.400in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our Substack newsletter at dyingbreed.net,
00:02:37.400and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at
00:02:41.000strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.
00:02:48.840Professor of psychology, Angela Duckworth is famous for her work on grit,
00:02:55.300the combination of passion and perseverance that leads to high achievement.
00:02:58.540But she's come to an increasing appreciation for the fact that success isn't just a matter
00:03:02.200of the qualities inside you. It's also driven by what's outside you, your peers, your mentors,
00:03:07.360and even your zip code. Today in the show, Angela, whose latest book is Situated,
00:03:12.080Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best, shares how our environments play a much
00:03:15.780bigger role in shaping us than we realize she explains the three box model of behavior why
00:03:20.360relying on willpower is a fallible strategy for altering your habits and why the most effective
00:03:24.420way to change yourself is to change what's around you we discuss how different situations bring out
00:03:28.500different versions of ourselves and how to shape your surroundings to encourage good habits mitigate
00:03:32.420bad ones and become who you want to be whether that means rearranging what's on your desk or
00:03:37.000moving across the country after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is situated
00:03:45.780All right, Angela Duckworth, welcome back to the show.
00:03:56.620Thank you so much. Looking forward to our conversation.
00:03:59.160So the last time we had you on was way back in 2016, episode number 210. This is a long time ago
00:04:05.600to discuss your book, Grit. So you're the grit lady. I'm sure people who are listening know you
00:04:11.420because of your work on Grit, you got a new book out and it's all about how our situations
00:04:19.040can contribute to our success. So Grit was all about how perseverance and passion lead to
00:04:25.060success. This book, Situated, is all about how the situations we find ourselves in can help that.
00:04:30.580How did you make that shift from how our internal world or internal motivations or internal drives
00:04:35.800contributes to our success to looking at how our external world contributes to that?
00:04:41.420You know, in a way, I think my career as a scientist obsessed, fair to say, with achievement
00:04:47.580and human potential. Maybe it was the natural thing to look inside the head of high achievers
00:04:53.060first to ask, you know, what are these mindsets that differentiate them from people who don't
00:04:59.640work as hard or aren't as resilient? You know, to ask, you know, what kind of goals do they set?
00:05:04.180How do they organize their goals? What habits do they have? And, you know, that is a lot of
00:05:08.620what psychologists do is they look at what is going on mentally. But if you widen the aperture,
00:05:15.500and I don't think it's a contradiction, this new work on the power of your environment to shape
00:05:21.880your outcomes. I don't think it's a contradiction, but it is an expansion because I think if you
00:05:26.800widen the aperture and now you see this person with all of their positive, optimistic thoughts
00:05:32.840and the mindsets and the habits that lead to those thoughts, that lead to their actions,
00:05:36.560And you ask the question, where do those thoughts come from? I mean, what influences, you know, how we think about what we're doing and, you know, whether we should give up or whether we should keep trying or, you know, try something different.
00:05:50.140And you end up realizing that to a great degree, our thoughts come from our situation. When we're around certain people, you know, a coach or a mentor, a teacher who really believes in us, we find that our internal thoughts are more positive. There are more confident and optimistic.
00:06:14.720So the expansion to the common denominators of the situations of high achievers was, I think, in some ways, it was natural and in many ways inevitable.
00:06:28.680And you use the story of Michael Phelps as a way to explore this at the very beginning of the book.
00:06:33.200So Michael Phelps, most winningest Olympian in the history of America.
00:06:38.560And we typically think of this guy, man, this guy is gritty because he would show up to practice
00:06:42.280every day, even on Christmas, even when he was kind of sick. But you explore like, well, yeah,
00:06:47.880he had grit, but also his environment that he found himself in helped with that.
00:06:53.060I don't know if there is a paragon of grit who is grittier than Michael Phelps. And I
00:06:57.480very intentionally chose him to demonstrate that grit is a lot of achieving greatness,
00:07:05.000But it is not everything. Michael Phelps had an amazing mom to begin, Debbie Phelps, who might well be grittier than her son Michael. You know, they would be neck and neck, I think, in a competition. She raised Michael and his two sisters for a lot of their childhoods.
00:07:22.620She was a single mom because she and her husband had split up.
00:07:26.320She was working as a public school teacher, later a principal, so not a lot of money.
00:07:32.340But she had this unshakable faith in the potential of her children, including Michael, who was not at the beginning of his life, I think, anyone who the teachers were singling out as like, oh, most likely to succeed.
00:07:50.400You can imagine what a, you know, extremely energetic boy with ADHD, like what the letters home from teachers sounded like. And the reason I want to emphasize how important it was to have a situation with a parent like that is that you can imagine a pain in the butt little boy going a completely different way in life.
00:08:13.080But this very wise mother wrote back to those teachers and said, you know what? He's really smart. You may not see it. I do. He's also extremely disciplined when he is doing something he's interested in. And by the way, this kid has so much energy. You got to put him in the back of the room and let him stand up and walk around because he'll learn for you, but maybe not in the conventional seating arrangement.
00:08:37.540So that was just like one little anecdote to, you know, illustrate how important this particular situation was for bringing out Michael's best. But the other element I want to raise is that Michael happened to be born in Baltimore. Wasn't complete chance because his older sisters also swam. And when they got competitive, they realized that there was a pool and a coaching system that was a little farther away from their home than was convenient.
00:09:06.720It was like an hour drive both ways.1.00
00:09:08.840Debbie Phelps had a motto, have minivan, we'll travel.
00:09:12.240And so this, you know, long trip became a little bit arduous.
00:09:14.600They actually moved to be closer to this world-class pool in North Baltimore.
00:09:19.760And that is actually where Michael started his swimming career.
00:09:24.140First, just watching his sisters swim up and down this pool when he was too young to get in,
00:09:28.720and then himself getting into the pool.
00:09:32.060Well, it is the premier youth aquatic program in the country. And it had at the time somebody who I think you could argue is the best swimming coach in history, and that's Bob Bowman. And so would Michael Phelps have become Michael Phelps, the Olympic star, the most decorated Olympian of all time, as you said, but I think he's also the athlete who has broken the most world records.
00:09:57.480I think he's broken the world records for breaking world records, if I'm not mistaken.
00:10:02.000You know, would that have all happened if he hadn't had the best swimming coach in history
00:18:23.180We had Michael Inslikt on the podcast a while back ago, and he's done a lot of research on that.
00:18:27.980And that was the big surprising takeaway that I got from that interview was that,
00:18:31.400you know, these people who look really gritty and they're just, you know, white knuckling it,
00:18:35.880they're not usually. They just, they enjoy what they're doing. And so they, they do it.
00:18:40.600Can I just say, cause we all call him Mickey, Mickey Inslikt. I mean, you have great taste.
00:18:46.060Mickey Inslikt, I think has made more progress in really understanding, you know, the fallibility
00:18:52.800of willpower than maybe any other scientist. So I'm glad you had him on the show. I think that is
00:18:58.640one of the big take homes. I mean, he's been studying self-control as long, maybe longer than
00:19:03.680I have. And the persistent myth that to get things done, to be really productive, like you have to
00:19:10.540have this like mental muscle to force yourself to do hard things is really misguided. Yeah. I think
00:19:17.340one of the things you talked about too, the reason why we typically default to willpower is that we
00:19:21.320moralize it, right? We think, well, if you're trying really hard, it means like you're a good
00:19:26.300person if you have to grit your teeth. And he says, eh, maybe we shouldn't moralize exercising
00:19:32.900self-control. It's crazy how much we moralize it, right? Like there's some virtue in suffering.
00:19:38.580And I mean, if you interrogate that, you're like, why? Like there's virtue in honesty.
00:19:46.240And I think there's virtue in persistence. I think there's virtue in doing hard things.
00:19:50.900But the suffering per se, you know, the like it has to feel bad, like it has to feel bad or doesn't count somehow, like have to be straining. I think it's a mistake. I think it's an understandable mistake because we've all experienced the pairing of struggle and eventual victory.
00:20:08.940So we know that very often the path to excellence has some feeling of suffering.
00:20:17.080What I want to say is that precisely what that path has is effort.
00:20:21.720Effort often feels like suffering, but I will give you the counterexample of the flow state.
00:20:27.840When you are in the flow state, performing at your very best, at the highest level of challenge, where you can just surf the wave,
00:20:35.600you are at maximal effort, but you do not feel like you are suffering. In fact, you feel the
00:20:41.640opposite. So I think it's a bit of a red herring to say pain is gain. I think it's better to say,
00:20:48.360even if it doesn't rhyme, that effort is gain. So I need to lead a life of effort,
00:20:54.500but I don't want to be chasing suffering or chasing pain per se, because I'm occasionally
00:21:00.240going to be led in the wrong direction. And I think that's a lot of what great coaches do.
00:21:05.060They make sure that the effort you put in the pool for two hours is high return effort.
00:21:12.200And I don't think they're going to tell you it's going to be fun necessarily or that you'll
00:21:16.180even be guaranteed to achieve the flow state.
00:21:18.900But I don't think a great coach in particular is looking to increase suffering from like
00:21:23.860nine to 10 to make people feel bad for feeling bad's sake.
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00:37:08.780dot com slash aom and now back to the show okay so our situation determines our thoughts and our
00:37:17.480thoughts can lead to action so the idea is like okay if you want better thoughts without having
00:37:21.400to like work too hard and rely on willpower to generate those thoughts to you know get the action
00:37:25.320that you want to do put yourself in a situation that will sort of naturally give you those thoughts
00:37:30.380and those behaviors you mentioned this idea of situational agency a lot of people might be
00:37:34.720listening is like, well, you know, a lot of my situation I find myself in, I don't have a lot
00:37:39.020of control over. Like I didn't get to choose the family I was born into. And maybe they came from
00:37:42.480a rough family. You don't get to choose your background that you have, your race, gender,
00:37:48.340things like that. It's like, well, what do I do? How can I have any control over my situations?
00:37:53.260But you say, well, no, they're still there. Like there's still agency to exercise. So let's talk
00:37:59.020about how we can do that. You talk about the very first thing, we can change our environments so
00:38:04.260that we're more likely to follow through on our goals. What are some examples of changing our
00:38:09.820situational environment so that we can be more successful? I would recommend starting with your
00:38:15.640personal space. And everyone can do that right now. I mean, wherever you are, wherever you're
00:38:20.260listening, just what is right in front of you? You know, what can you reach and what can you see
00:38:25.200very clearly? I can see a water bottle. I can see my book, got a laptop, stack of post-it notes,
00:38:32.100I'll tell you what's not here, like Diet Coke, which I don't want to drink anymore, my phone, which I deliberately put far away so that it's not distracting me. The curation of your personal space gives you the opportunity to friction up the temptations that you don't want to eat, that you don't want to touch, that you don't want to see, and to friction down some things that you do want to do.
00:38:57.000You know, a lot of people tell me like, oh, I really should read more. Like I'm on my phone at night, but like, oh, my God, I haven't read a book in a year. All right. Well, friction down reading, like put books near you. So many parents that I know who have especially risen in socioeconomic status within their lifetimes and then raised children and hope for them to go even further. They are so intentional about bookshelves. They're like, when I get rich, I'm going to have a house with wall to wall bookshelves. And then they do.
00:39:26.560So you can curate that personal space, that bubble that is, you know, roughly three feet in radius, you know, because that's about what you can reach and see with, you know, high acuity.
00:39:37.000I would decorate it with reminders after you've taken out the temptations.
00:39:41.600I can't tell you how many high achievers I know who have a favorite quote that they either get tattooed or like, you know, made into a bracelet that they can, you know, wear around their wrist or made into a plaque that they can hang on the wall or a paperweight that they can put on their desk.
00:39:56.000you know, these quotes are not like 150 words long. I mean, they are clearly short enough to
00:40:02.020commit to memory. Why do they do that? Because we are responsive to our situation. They want
00:40:09.480their eyes to alight on those beautiful words several times during the day and just remind them
00:40:16.440of who they're about and what they're trying to do. So you can absolutely make a long list
00:40:22.020of things that you can't change, including all the things that you said, Brett, you know,
00:40:26.000like your family of origin, you know, your hometown, right? Like you may love it, you may
00:40:30.100hate it, but it's not under your control. What is under your control though is a lot. And I would,
00:40:35.520I would begin with your physical personal space because you can do it right now.
00:40:40.840There's a lot of great stuff in there to the point about using quotes. Montaigne,
00:40:45.920the famous essayist and philosopher, in his library on the beams on the ceiling,
00:40:51.520he had quotes written like inscriptions. I've seen pictures. They're in his chateau,
00:40:57.840I guess. Yeah, chateau. He had a castle. I love this. I mean, he has them everywhere,
00:41:01.440right? They're carved into the wood. It's a beautiful scene. And I am sure that if I could
00:41:07.360go back and interview the guests that you have interviewed, people like Bob Bowman,
00:41:10.960like that these treasured quotes these like mantras that people live by you know like montane
00:41:17.020was a smart guy and he probably could have recited those quotes to you but he wanted to stare up at
00:41:23.720the ceiling occasionally and see them yeah and then this also reminds me of alexander graham bell
00:41:30.860he you know the guy who invented the telephone he actually had different workstations for different
00:41:36.520types of work he was doing really so yeah so in his in his office near the laboratory this is what
00:41:42.820his daughter said he occupied his mind with problems connected with experiments so this is
00:41:46.800the little office near the laboratory and then in his study in the house he thought and worked over
00:41:51.620his theories of flight this guy was thinking about flight too not just i didn't know that and then the
00:41:55.780mabel ben bray this was his houseboat was the place to think of genetics and heredity so he had
00:42:01.660like different workstations for different types of work he was doing. And then by consistently
00:42:06.720doing specific types of work in each place, the locations became prompts for certain kinds of
00:42:14.180thinking. And you know, Brett, I know remote work is a complex and controversial topic. And I'm not
00:42:20.160here to say that like, it's a bad thing necessarily for you, given all the pros and cons to work
00:42:26.060remotely. I mean, for anyone, I'm not saying you in particular, but I do think one of the real
00:42:31.140downsides of working out of your bedroom is you have like the opposite of what Alexander Graham
00:42:36.960Bell had. You know, there's no transition. It's a funny thing that I feel like the clothing that
00:42:41.460people wear today, you know, are they working out, going to bed or going to work? Like you're not
00:42:47.240sure because it all is athleisure, right? I mean, there was a time historically where like
00:42:51.300put on a suit and tie or, you know, you put your hat on as a sort of like signal, like you're going
00:42:56.840out into the world with some formality. Then you take your hat off and you change maybe into your
00:43:02.540slippers. I do think that if you are somebody who does a lot of work from home, you need to create
00:43:09.740an Alexander Graham Bell division of situations because otherwise, when does your work self know
00:43:16.380that it's time to relax and be like dad self? When does dad self switch into some other self?
00:43:24.620I think that in my limited experience, because I did write this book partly from my house, I took a sabbatical, and I thought it would be best for me to be in my pajamas all day working furiously on this manuscript.
00:43:40.900And in retrospect, I don't think that was the best for me.
00:43:44.200And I think the blurring of the lines of all the selves, because I didn't have the physical cues to tell me, like, nope, switch, click, was not great.
00:43:53.680Yeah, I work from home and I do a moderated form of location switching. So there are different parts of the house in which I do different kinds of work. So I like to do my administrative work at my desk, my office, and then I do my writing on a couch in my bedroom.
00:44:10.560And I think it helps a little, but I don't think it's as effective as with transitioning between distinct places.
00:44:18.360A related issue and related to remote work is that a lot of work today is on our computer and our phones.
00:44:25.000The problem with those things is that there's just this mixture of personal and work in the same device.
00:44:31.000I have this problem, so I'll be working and then I'll get distracted by a personal text or email and I'm like, okay, I got to take care of this thing.
00:44:37.120or I'll get distracted with watching a YouTube video or something.
00:44:41.920Any tips for how to shape our digital environments
00:44:45.200so that we can take advantage of the situational effect?
00:44:58.820I have to post things on Instagram as part of my job,
00:45:02.360but then I have no idea what happened to the last 45 minutes.
00:45:05.880the co-location of all that is good in the world with the, the, the temptations of all the things
00:45:15.300that are bad in the world. I mean, those are extremes, but you know, in our phone, we have
00:45:18.960everything, you know, like our QR codes, the text message to our mom, our email, endless YouTube
00:45:25.760videos, um, Instagram, TikTok. I mean, there's just all in one place. And I think that is again,
00:45:33.260the opposite of what Alexander Graham Bell had the wisdom of. It's like you want places for
00:45:37.840certain things. We also just think about, you know, the history of humanity. You know, you could pray
00:45:42.360anywhere, but it is special to pray in a church or a mosque or a synagogue. The division of, you
00:45:48.540know, where we eat being in a certain room of the house from another room where, you know, you're
00:45:54.160going to relax and be with other people, like the family room, quote unquote. I think phones are
00:45:59.300really the opposite because in, you know, one three by six little rectangle, just everything
00:46:05.140is there. And I will tell you, like Mickey Inslicht, I do study self-control and resisting
00:46:10.860something that is easy, that is immediately gratifying and novel is very hard for human
00:46:21.040beings to do when, of course, at the very moment that you're indulging in that video or whatever
00:46:27.340it is that you're wasting time on, you know you should be doing something better. But given that
00:46:33.100choice, it's not only little kids who like eat one marshmallow instead of waiting for two
00:46:37.920marshmallows. It is all of us who struggle. And that goes back to this willpower conversation.
00:46:45.020It is therefore a question that I should answer, like how can you use a situational strategy
00:46:52.820rather than willpower when everything's in your hand. I think that is one reason why when you can,
00:47:00.440you should put your phone not only, you know, more than three feet away. I would argue based
00:47:06.600on my research in another room, what's special about being in another room? Like you literally
00:47:11.900cannot see it. You not only have to reach for it, you'd have to get up out of your chair
00:47:16.400and walk somewhere for it. Those elements of friction, I think are enormously helpful.
00:47:21.420I mean, it's not a miracle cure, but in our research, for example, students in America,
00:47:27.420and I say America because some of this research was done with the Gallup organizations. It was
00:47:31.000a representative sample of American teenagers. The farther the phone, when they're studying,
00:47:36.720the higher their GPA. So I think you can say to yourself, when I can and when it's appropriate,
00:47:43.040I'm just not going to have it in the same room as I am. I think that's one thing you could do.
00:47:48.680And the second thing I'll say is that, you know, there are all kinds of apps that you can install that try to create those barriers inside the phone, you know, Opal, OneSec, you know, things that will disable certain apps for certain times of day or will put some friction in.
00:48:05.480I mean, if you use OneSec, every time you go to the app that you have identified as a temptation, it puts a delay in, you know, the screen turns red and then it turns gray. It's very slow. And then it asks you, are you sure? And, you know, after that period of time, sometimes you still want to go on that app. But very often, in fact, in research studies, you know, significant reduction in the unwanted use of the phone.
00:48:29.000So I want to say that the co-location of everything in the phone is one reason why we carry it with us everywhere, including the bathroom, which is gross, but we all do it, including me. But if you can uncouple the good from the bad, and if you can just put the whole damn thing in another place when you can, like you're going to a meeting or you want to really pay attention when you go to yoga or whatever you can do, I think that's the solution.
00:48:54.080Okay. So for unwanted behaviors, friction up, add more friction to do it. And then for behaviors you
00:48:59.220want to do, reduce the friction. Yeah. Friction up, friction down.
00:49:03.180Friction up, friction down. So yeah, you can apply this to your digital life, your work life.
00:49:08.100Yeah. Fitness, if you want to, or health. If you want to eat less junk food, like don't buy junk
00:49:12.780food. If you want to exercise more, you know, buy a kettlebell so it's in your house. You don't have
00:49:16.900to go to the gym. So just that's frictioning down. So yeah. Okay. The first thing is just,
00:49:20.540you know, think about your environment, what you can do to shape it, to help you achieve the goals
00:49:24.960that you have. Let's talk about this idea of social environment. How can we use our situational
00:49:29.920agency to choose our social environment so that we're more likely to do the things that we want
00:49:36.640to do? Because as we mentioned earlier, when we're around different people, we behave differently.
00:49:40.920You know, shaping your social environment, admittedly, is a lot harder to do than, you know,
00:49:46.540putting a water bottle next to you or like, you know, writing down your favorite quote and taping
00:49:50.780it up next to your computer. But it's at least as important, arguably more so. And the first thing I
00:49:57.400would say about your social environment is to have a social environment. And why do I need to say
00:50:01.880that? It's because for the last 10 or 20 years, the amount of time that Americans spend by
00:50:08.480themselves, so not in any social environment, but in fact, in a solitary environment, it's really
00:50:14.640skyrocketed. And it turns out that like, we're not just working alone, we're doing everything
00:50:20.240alone. We're eating alone. We're doing things under our roof that we used to do outside of the
00:50:26.760home. And again, pretty much all functions, you know, exercising, eating, working, et cetera.
00:50:33.040And so why is that a problem? I think one of the most important things to understand
00:50:37.900about human nature is that things go better in box three and box two when box one includes other
00:50:44.740people. I have a postdoc in my lab, postdoctoral fellow named Donegan Folk, and he's analyzed
00:50:50.880data on how Americans spend time. And it's very detailed data, so you know whether they're with
00:50:56.620other people, whatever it is that they're doing. And one of the striking findings is that everything
00:51:02.080is better together. I think that suggests that one way you can shape your social environment
00:51:08.620is just to make your environment a little more social. I'll give you an example. I think for
00:51:15.060a lot of people, they want to work out more. And I don't know that the first thing that leaps to
00:51:19.740mind is a social solution to working out more. And people are like, oh, I'm going to write down
00:51:25.260my goals. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to make a
00:51:29.680schedule. I'm going to start running. But you can do those things with other people. One of the best
00:51:36.000ways to do that is to have a friend who has similar goals to be your accountability partner.
00:51:41.720I know that I will get out of bed for you much more reliably than if it's only for myself and
00:51:49.880my own resolution. You can join a running club. I think in Philadelphia, which is where I live,
00:51:55.340There are over 50 running clubs. And when I see them on this trail that's a few blocks away from my home, it's called the Schuylkill River Trail, I always smile. Like, I know that those people are going to be great. You know, I know that this habit is going to stick more than if it's just them and their own resolution, their own willpower.
00:52:17.820I also know that they'll be happier. Not everyone has to have a social routine and so forth, but I just want to press the point that almost anything that you can think of undertaking alone, training for a marathon, going to the gym, starting a new company, going to church more, almost anything that you can say, I want to do this, you can do it with another person or more than another person.
00:52:42.920And you can do it as a team as opposed to a solo striver.
00:52:46.920And I think that will change everything.
00:52:50.980Yeah, because they'll hold you accountable.
00:52:52.560You're more likely to get motivated to get out there if you know someone's going to be holding your feet to the fire.
00:52:57.660So, yeah, if you want to exercise more, join an exercise group or running club.
00:53:00.240If you want to write more, find a writing group that you can join in your location where you meet up, you know, every other week to talk about what you're working on.
00:53:06.940The other thing with being situationally agentic about your social environment is that not only can you get that accountability from other people, but it can also put you in cultures that will set you up for success.
00:53:20.520What role does a group's culture play in our situation in helping us achieve our goals?
00:53:27.820First, I'll distinguish, at least for myself, what the difference is between the kinds of social engineering, if you will, that we've been talking about.
00:53:36.000Like, yeah, I'm going to join a running club and, you know, like I want to work on this project with another person from culture.
00:53:41.500I think culture is more abstract. Culture is more all-encompassing.0.99
00:53:44.820You know, the culture of Philadelphia is the culture of Philadelphia because the way we do things in Philadelphia is different from the culture of San Francisco or Cleveland.
00:53:54.040The way we do things around here, not just the intimates, your own friends and family, your co-workers, but just the way everyone does things around here. That's what culture is. And I think culture matters.
00:54:09.040matters. I mean, the culture of where you work, the vibe, the values, the way we do things around
00:54:16.200here at this place, I think that's enormously influential of our box two thoughts and then
00:54:22.780our box three responses. And some cultures are extraordinarily demanding, but also supportive.
00:54:28.880I think those are the best cultures, particularly for excellence. You know, you want to be in a
00:54:33.940culture where it's just never good enough, the never ending journey to improvement. And at the
00:54:41.560same time, it sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. There is this unconditional support,
00:54:47.580this like unconditional acceptance of you as a person, even if performance is never good enough,
00:54:53.700people are always good enough. And so those are the cultures, I think, that if you want to realize
00:54:59.340your own potential. You have to navigate toward, you have to ask yourself, and I think we're
00:55:04.140talking about this last because it's the hardest, right? It's like, well, how am I going to change
00:55:07.060that? Like, of course, I would love to work at, you know, X, Y, and Z, but what magic wand is
00:55:12.760going to make that happen? Or yeah, I'd love to live in Silicon Valley, but like, I don't have
00:55:16.620the money to move. I can't do it. I think we're talking about it last because it's the hardest,
00:55:22.020but I think it is also the most effective because when you change culture, you change all the
00:55:26.440physical objects that are within reach and within sight. You change your peer groups. You change
00:55:31.200the people you have access to as mentors. I mean, you change everything. So I think the idea that
00:55:36.260we can think like immigrants, right? Like if you think like an immigrant, you think it is possible1.00
00:55:41.860to change in that more radical way than anything we've discussed so far. And that transition cost,1.00
00:55:47.860though great, may be worth it. I think that's the recommendation because what happens is that
00:55:53.680people fall into what's called status quo bias, this clinging to the way things are. Well, I live
00:56:00.940here. I've always lived here. I know how to live here. Work has to be this way. And that more
00:56:06.400radical move may be exactly the form of situational agency that you need to see radical change.
00:56:14.600You mentioned this idea of microcultures in your book. What's that?
00:56:17.240Macroculture is, you know, I've moved to France. Microculture is I've moved across the city of
00:56:26.000Philadelphia, you know, maybe even a few blocks. I mean, again, speaking just from where I am and
00:56:31.480where I live, if you take a 10 minute walk from my house, you can end up in a different culture
00:56:37.740than my neighborhood. And this is very much the conclusion of Raj Chetty, the Harvard economist
00:56:44.260who has studied economic mobility for his entire career,
00:56:48.420the idea that opportunity, that culture,
00:56:52.580is not only a matter of countries or even states or cities,