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1:04

Build For Tomorrow.

1:07

This is Build For Tomorrow, a podcast

1:09

about the smartest solutions to our most

1:11

misunderstood stood problems. I'm Jason

1:14

Feifer. Have you ever done

1:16

something and it did not go

1:18

as you hoped and then you just

1:20

felt empty. And

1:22

you started obsessing over it,

1:24

like going through every detail over

1:27

and over. Imagine all the ways

1:29

you could have done better Well, I

1:31

recently had a kind of

1:33

embarrassing experience like this and it made

1:36

me feel a little crazy and then it sent me

1:38

down a rabbit hole to understand what

1:40

was happening to me? And I wanna

1:42

tell you about it because what I found was

1:44

pretty helpful. And maybe the next

1:46

time you are obsessing over what could

1:48

have been, It can be helpful to you

1:50

too. So some context.

1:53

As you may know, I released a book in

1:55

September. It's called Build For Tomorrow, just

1:57

like this pod and as part of promoting

1:59

the book, I asked every

2:02

big podcaster I know if they would

2:04

have me on their show because, you know, podcasts

2:06

are one of the best ways to promote books. And

2:08

for the most part, everyone said yes, which was

2:11

awesome. And then the tapings all went

2:13

pretty well, which was also awesome except

2:17

for two of them. Those

2:19

did not go so well. And when

2:21

that happened, I just could

2:24

not stop obsessing over

2:26

it. The worst experience

2:28

happened after I went on Gary

2:31

Vaynerchuk's podcast. So maybe you

2:33

know Gary's name he's a big celebrity

2:35

in the entrepreneurship space. He has a super

2:37

devoted fan base. And I I've

2:39

known Gary for years. I've interviewed him many

2:41

times. So here's how

2:43

he opened up the podcast. It was a very

2:45

natural way to do it. He explained that I'm

2:48

usually the one interviewing him, but now it's

2:50

a role reversal and he's interviewing me.

2:52

And then he said, welcome my friend

2:54

Jason to the show. Jeez, how are you?

2:56

Hey man. Great to see you. This is really fun

2:58

to be on the other side of this. III don't even

3:01

know how it's gonna go. I don't

3:03

even know how it's gonna go.

3:05

What are the words coming out of my mouth?

3:07

What am I talking about? and the

3:09

rest of the show just felt like that. Like,

3:12

I wanted to say something smart and instead

3:14

what came out of my mouth was just like a

3:16

b minus. I stories fell flat,

3:18

my points felt disjointed. I was not

3:20

as sharp as I wanted to be. I I could

3:22

feel it in the moment as it was happening.

3:24

And to be clear, Gary did nothing

3:27

wrong. He was welcoming and

3:29

engaging. I just could not find

3:31

my footing. I don't know what it was because I tired

3:33

that day? Did I have too many things on my mind?

3:36

And now, maybe you think, Jason, you are

3:38

being hard on yourself. This sounds

3:40

totally fine. And that is

3:42

true, rationally speaking.

3:45

But, you know, we are not dealing with

3:47

rational thought here. We are dealing with

3:49

something else. We are dealing with me. a

3:51

guy who is feeling a lot of pressure to maximize

3:53

every opportunity and who holds himself to

3:55

a very high standard. So when the interview with

3:57

Gary ended, Well,

4:00

we had taped it remotely, which meant that I

4:02

was then just sitting alone in my bedroom

4:04

and thinking, god.

4:06

I blew that. I blew a huge

4:08

chance to sell books and win over some of

4:10

Gary's audience. And then my

4:12

brain I just went, I don't

4:14

know. I guess it it just said

4:18

maybe it was fine. This is what my

4:20

brain is thought. Maybe it was fine. So I

4:22

tried to tell myself, I started to say out

4:24

loud. It was fine. It was fine.

4:26

It was fine. I started to pace in

4:28

my room talking to myself, repeating it. It

4:30

was fine. It was fine. I did this for minutes. It

4:32

was it was fine. It was fine. But I

4:34

was also thinking, no, it

4:36

was not fine. You could have told that story different.

4:38

could have made that point when he asked you that thing or

4:41

I don't know or maybe it was fine. It was fine.

4:43

And then I realized, oh, crap. I have to

4:45

run across town for this important meeting where I have

4:47

to be really on I am in no state to

4:49

do that right now because I'm assessing over this thing.

4:51

So I need to get this out my head. So I walked to

4:53

the subway and I was repeating it. It was fine. It was

4:55

fine. Then I'm on the subway. It was fine. It was

4:57

fine. It was No. It wasn't fine. Like, I'm literally

4:59

saying this out loud. I should've done this. I should've done

5:01

that. Maybe it was fine. I don't know. And then I thought,

5:03

okay. This this needs to

5:05

stop. Like, it needs to stop right now. This is crazy.

5:07

what else can I do here? So

5:10

I wondered, well,

5:12

what is happening to me right now?

5:14

Like, I've blown things

5:16

before and I felt bad about them, but

5:18

this feels like it's at a new level. I'm

5:20

not usually talking out loud to myself.

5:23

So Is this a thing that happens to

5:25

people? Is there a term for

5:27

what's happening to me? Is there scientific

5:29

literature on it? Because that

5:31

would make me feel less crazy, I

5:33

guess. So I started

5:35

googling around and soon I found

5:37

it. I found the term.

5:40

The term for what my brain

5:42

was doing. And it is

5:44

called counterfactual thinking.

5:47

Counterfactual thinking.

5:50

Turns out it's also very common.

5:53

And now that I knew what it

5:55

was, I could call people who study

5:57

it to ask what the hell is

5:59

going on

5:59

with me. which

6:00

is what I did. And so counterfactual thinking

6:03

is usually defined as simply

6:05

mentally simulating alternatives

6:09

to reality. and playing

6:11

them out and considering the

6:13

outcomes. In other words, it is

6:15

what if thinking? What if this

6:17

happened? What if I did that? Differently

6:19

comparing reality to an

6:21

imaginary world. Oh,

6:23

that voice you heard was John. John

6:25

Petricchioen? And I'm a social

6:28

psychologist. and professor at

6:30

Wake Forest University. And he specializes

6:32

in, among other things, counterfactual

6:35

thinking. My research has shown

6:37

that people are very, very

6:39

good at generating

6:41

these thoughts quite automatically. So

6:43

don't feel bad if if

6:45

you had the thoughts automatically and

6:47

you couldn't get rid of though. But here's the

6:49

interesting thing, which is going to sound obvious

6:51

at first, but is also pretty profound.

6:54

We also know that especially when

6:56

you're looking or you're hoping for a

6:58

desirable outcome. It's very easy

7:00

to undo just about

7:02

anything and to ventamentally

7:04

assume that it that it would have

7:06

changed the outcome in a in a

7:08

positive direction. Right. We

7:11

assume that if something had been

7:13

different in the situation in which we

7:15

are now regretting, it would have been different

7:17

in a better way. that

7:19

if only I'd said this or that thing on

7:21

the podcast that it would have been better, I would

7:23

have sold more books that if only you turned

7:26

left and said a right, you would have gotten that important

7:28

meeting on time that if only you'd stayed with that

7:30

girlfriend or boyfriend, your life would be

7:32

better and happier. If only,

7:34

if only, we think

7:36

we know what went wrong, and

7:38

therefore, we are sure about how it

7:40

could have gone right. But

7:42

that is wrong because

7:45

we don't know that at all. It's very

7:47

seductive and automatic and

7:49

can happen even at an implicit level.

7:51

We're not even aware of it. And shaping

7:54

our judgments and our decisions

7:56

in a way that we haven't really

7:58

fully explicitly

7:59

thought out. We may not have said.

8:02

We may not have Said

8:04

even in our self talk to ourselves,

8:06

we may not have written it down, but it could still

8:08

have quite the effect on

8:10

learning and memory and

8:12

decision making in the future. So

8:14

what is that effect? And

8:16

how can we shape it ourselves?

8:19

to gain some control back from the

8:21

counter factual thoughts to

8:23

counter the counter factuals. That

8:26

is what I went in search of. And I

8:28

have to say, The more I learned,

8:30

the better I felt, and I hope you can

8:32

feel the same. It's all coming up

8:34

after the break. Did you

8:36

know that the average podcast listener

8:38

subscribes to six shows. Well,

8:40

assuming you already subscribed to my show, then I

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11:04

Alright. We're back. So here's what we're gonna do. First,

11:06

we are going to understand more

11:08

about counter factual thinking. How

11:10

it happens? why it happens and

11:12

what we're missing when we're stuck

11:14

obsessing over what could have been.

11:16

And then we'll talk about what we

11:18

can actually do about to

11:20

try to unstuck that obsession.

11:22

Before we explain how it happens, let's explain what

11:25

it is.

11:25

That's a good plan. Okay? This

11:27

is Amy.

11:28

I'm Amy Somerville. I'm a social

11:30

psychology PhD who does

11:32

research on decision making and a version of the

11:34

special interest in how we think about what

11:36

might have Ben and the emotion of

11:38

regret.

11:38

So here's where to start according

11:40

to Amy. There are actually two

11:43

kinds of counter factual thinking and

11:45

we experience them at different times.

11:47

So you can

11:48

think about how things could have been

11:51

better and we call that upward counter factual

11:53

thinking, you're sort of looking up and imagining

11:55

how things could have been better.

11:56

That, of course, is what I was doing.

11:59

And

11:59

then there's also something called downward counterfactual

12:02

thinking. WHERE YOU THINK ABOUT HOW THINGS COULD

12:04

HAVE BEEN WORSE. WHEN I

12:05

FIRST HEARD THAT, I THOUGHT, WHY

12:08

WOULD ANYONE obsess OVER HOW THINGS COULD HAVE

12:10

BEEN WORSE I mean, if

12:12

you're feeling bad, it's all it's already

12:14

bad. And yet there are

12:16

many reasons. For example, survivors

12:18

of tragedy will keep THINKING ABOUT

12:20

HOW CLOSE THEY WERE TO INJURY OR

12:22

DEATH, BUT IT CAN HAPPEN MORE

12:24

CASUALLY.

12:24

THERE'S SOME REALLY INTERESTING WORKED BY

12:26

Laura CRAY AND BY appabriel that has

12:28

actually found that that downward counterfactual

12:31

thinking has some really interesting

12:33

value to us that it actually makes us feel that things

12:35

are more meant to be So if I

12:37

have you think about how, like, you might never

12:39

have met your best friend, that relationship

12:41

actually feels more meaningful to you. But,

12:43

okay,

12:43

we're gonna set all that aside now

12:45

because we're not actually here to talk about

12:48

downward counterfactuals today. We're

12:50

here to talk about upward counterfactuals.

12:52

Where Negative events.

12:54

prompt

12:54

us to think about what

12:56

could have been different. We want

12:58

to reinvent how could I have

13:01

avoided this bad thing.

13:02

But this doesn't happen all the time, of

13:05

course. Not every bad thing

13:07

leads to obsessive counter factual

13:09

thinking. So Why sometimes? What

13:11

is more likely to cause it? Amy

13:13

says that science has identified a bunch

13:15

of causes, and we're gonna talk about

13:17

three of them briefly here. The

13:19

first is proximity. Is there

13:21

something where something

13:23

was, you know, physically or numerically

13:25

or temporarily close For

13:27

example, people who miss a flight by

13:30

five minutes are more likely to

13:32

obsess over it than someone who missed a flight by an

13:34

hour. Because, you know, it was so

13:36

close they feel like had they just made

13:38

one different decision along the way

13:40

they could have made that flight. The

13:42

second common trigger is routine.

13:44

if we do something that's out of

13:47

routine or abnormal, that really

13:49

sticks out to us. So,

13:50

like, let's say you always prepare for

13:52

a meeting. And then one day you don't prepare and the

13:54

meeting was awful. So now you'll start to

13:56

think, if only I'd prepared, if

13:58

only I hadn't deviated from the

14:00

routine, And the third

14:02

trigger is if you are a person

14:04

who feels like they're in

14:06

control. There

14:07

does seem to be a link between feeling

14:09

a sense of head of personal agency

14:11

and control and feeling like

14:13

you're in charge of your own

14:15

destiny that does

14:18

relate to counter fact virtual thinking that you're

14:20

more likely to have these thoughts about, oh, I

14:22

could have done something different if you

14:24

have sort of that worldview. And for

14:25

what it's worth, sample size of one here.

14:28

But when I think back to what

14:30

triggered my own counterfactual thinking, I could

14:32

relate to all of that.

14:34

And here's another thing. Counterfactual

14:37

thinking does

14:39

not, by its very nature,

14:41

have to be bad or disruptive. It

14:43

can just be a thought So

14:45

what was I doing when I could not

14:47

get over it? Well, that's an added

14:49

layer on top. It's what psychologists

14:52

call illumination.

14:53

People can ruminate overall kinds of

14:55

things, not just counterfactuals. And the

14:57

word literally comes from how

14:59

cows digest their food, which

15:01

is that they vomit it back

15:03

up and chew it over again and again

15:05

and they keep so

15:07

it's super gross metaphor, but I

15:09

think actually really captures that

15:11

sense of something that's just sort of this

15:13

involuntary, intrusive, like,

15:16

it just keeps coming back up whether you

15:18

want it to or not.

15:19

So now let's get to the question that feels really

15:22

personal. Why do we do

15:24

this? I'd raised that question

15:26

earlier in the episode, but now it's time to go

15:28

deeper into it because When I spoke

15:30

with Amy, I had a theory.

15:32

I have this assumption, which could be an

15:34

incorrect one. But the assumption is that if there is

15:36

something common that happens in

15:38

our brain, then there was

15:40

some kind of evolutionary purpose

15:42

to it even if it doesn't get expressed

15:45

in maybe the way in which it was supposed to

15:47

be. And and so my best guests

15:49

here with with counterfactual thinking or

15:51

or illumination, I suppose, is is that

15:53

the reason that we do this is because we're

15:55

programmed to learn. And so we go through

15:57

experiences, and then we're trying to take the

15:59

lessons from those experiences. But the

16:01

problem is that if if those

16:03

experiences don't match up our expectations, then

16:05

we're in a kind of loop where we

16:08

realize that we maybe have learned a hard

16:10

lesson, but it feels very bad. And

16:12

so what we end up doing is kind of going back and trying

16:14

to, like, wheel the past

16:16

into some kind of different

16:18

experience. Am I am I right

16:20

there? What do we know about why this

16:22

is a thing that happens? Howard Bauchner:

16:24

Yeah, so you're you're exactly right.

16:26

So those of us who have what we call sort of

16:28

a functional view of counterfactuals

16:31

believe exactly that. The counterfactuals are

16:33

what help us learn from our mistakes.

16:36

And my colleague Rachel Smallman has

16:38

done a lot of really interesting work showing

16:40

that there's actually a link between counterfactuals

16:43

and forming intentions for the

16:45

future. So, you know, if you

16:47

were walking around with your coffee this

16:49

morning and you spilled it on yourself

16:51

and you say, ah, I like I should have put

16:53

a lid on my coffee or I should have

16:55

used a travel log instead of an

16:56

open mug, then you're more

16:59

likely tomorrow morning to say, oh, let me put

17:01

that lid on at the hotel or let me grab my

17:03

travel mug out of the cabinet instead of my open mug

17:05

at home. and therefore avoided

17:07

in the future. But there's

17:08

another camp of thinkers and

17:10

they say no counterfactuals

17:13

are not a byproduct of the way that we learn. They

17:15

are instead a byproduct of how

17:17

we make sense of the world, which is

17:20

what drives a lot of our biases and

17:22

misunderstanding. Like, we

17:24

want

17:24

the world to seem controllable

17:26

and to have the world seem like it

17:28

makes causal sense. was

17:30

really kind of psychologically threatening to think that,

17:32

like, just bad things happen randomly. And

17:35

so sometimes counterfactuals can be

17:37

used just as a way of

17:39

kind of telling a story that

17:41

makes the world seem

17:44

more kind of sensible. For

17:47

example, Amy says that

17:47

you can see this in victim blaming. So

17:49

let's say someone forgets to lock their

17:51

front door one night and that their home gets

17:54

broken into. other people might think,

17:56

well, if they locked their front

17:58

door, the home wouldn't have been burglarized.

18:00

So it was their fault, which

18:03

maybe, maybe not. But what's

18:05

really happening here is that those other people

18:07

are trying to make sense of this

18:09

story in a world in which they do

18:11

not want to be the person. that bad things happen

18:13

to. So they wanna transform this

18:15

from a story about random

18:17

chance where a bad person just

18:19

decided to do a bad thing

18:21

to a random person into a story

18:23

about what could have been done to

18:25

avoid it because that feels

18:28

safer. random chance is

18:30

scary. And this is actually one of the

18:32

great dangers of counterfactuals because

18:34

even if counterfactuals are a means

18:36

of us learning from experience, it's

18:39

also very hard to know what

18:41

lesson we're supposed to learn from any

18:43

one situation. you

18:44

can focus on the wrong

18:46

specific behavior because

18:49

it's unknowable. Like, which of these

18:51

specific behaviors would

18:53

have changed things.

18:54

Maybe locking the front door would have deterred

18:57

the burglar or maybe not because

18:59

if the door was locked, they would have just broken through a

19:01

window. We don't know. we

19:03

often can't know. Amy

19:05

used a simpler example to illustrate

19:07

this. You heard it a second ago. She was

19:09

saying, you know, you're carrying a cup of coffee and you

19:11

spill it on yourself. So what are you

19:13

gonna learn from it? You know, you're you're probably gonna think,

19:15

well, if I did just if I

19:17

only didn't do this one thing, I wouldn't have

19:20

spilled the coffee. But Alright. One

19:22

thing. To not drink coffee, to

19:24

not walk with coffee, to not have a

19:26

lid on your coffee, to not fill the cup up

19:28

as much as you did, as it turns out,

19:30

Amy says, unless a bad

19:32

outcome is very clear,

19:34

like touching a hot stove and getting

19:36

burned, then people aren't

19:38

actually very good at identifying the thing that

19:40

led to a bad outcome. We

19:42

know that

19:42

there are biases in the way that

19:45

people tend to come up with

19:47

these things. So we talked about this

19:49

idea of, you know, what's your

19:51

routine and people tend to focus on

19:53

the things that are out of routine. People

19:55

also tend to focus on

19:57

things

19:57

that kind of happened early or

20:00

late in a string of events. So

20:02

I grew up in Indiana, so basketball was

20:04

basically a state religion. And you see

20:06

this all the time. Right? Like, there there is the

20:08

guy who misses the shot right at the

20:10

buzzer and, you know, they were

20:12

down by one. And if he'd made it, then they

20:14

would have won. And, ah, like, if he just

20:16

made that shot. But of course, every

20:18

single missed shot has exactly the

20:20

same impact on the score. Right? If the guy who,

20:22

in the middle of the third quarter, had

20:24

made that shot too, That also

20:26

would have came to the outcome of the game

20:28

by exactly the game. They could have

20:29

they could have about ten instead of down one at the end

20:31

of that game if a couple other people had made

20:33

shots. Exactly.

20:34

Yeah. So if you

20:35

can't quite identify the thing that would

20:38

have made the difference, then you're

20:40

gonna do one of two things. Either

20:42

number one, you're

20:44

going to learn nothing from this thing that you're

20:46

obsessing over. Or number

20:48

two, you will potentially draw the

20:50

wrong lesson. And perhaps

20:52

this is why people do not learn

20:54

from experience nearly

20:55

as quickly as we would hope and

20:58

and think they would.

21:00

That is John Petachelli from Wake Forest

21:02

again. For example, he says okay.

21:04

So he describes the study in which

21:06

people are asked to make a decision based

21:08

on coin flips. and what

21:10

they don't realize is that the coin is

21:13

weighted so that it ends up landing

21:15

twice as much on heads as it does

21:17

on tails. Most people

21:19

think that People would learn

21:21

that quite readily because heads is

21:23

coming up twice for

21:25

every one tails on

21:27

average. But it takes quite a while

21:29

for people to learn that maybe upwards

21:31

of sixty flips if they're even

21:33

paying attention. Why? Again,

21:35

too many factors. you're not paying close

21:38

attention, you think it's random chance, you're

21:40

focusing on other things happening in the study,

21:42

and this is a simple scenario

21:44

a coin flip has a very limited number

21:46

of factors. Now, make that

21:48

more complex, like why you blew it

21:50

on a date or why you blew that

21:53

meeting or why I blew those podcasts.

21:55

Maybe you've done forty podcasts

21:57

and all all other, you know, thirty nine or

21:59

thirty eight of them have gone well. It's

22:02

very difficult and say, well, I'm gonna learn

22:04

from this one decision. It's

22:06

very seductive to think I'm going to learn

22:08

from it, but But chances are if you're in the same

22:11

exact context, you're gonna make the same

22:13

decision. And then maybe

22:15

even ruminate over the

22:17

same counterfactuals. So

22:19

this doesn't sound very promising. Does

22:22

it? I mean, here we're trapped in a kind of

22:24

thinking that maybe helps us

22:26

learn or maybe just helps us

22:28

tell comforting fantasies about the world.

22:31

Either way, we're so bad at learning

22:33

from experience that we're doomed to repeat the

22:35

same mistakes we regret anyway. or

22:37

are we? There is

22:40

actually some hope for us yet.

22:42

I promise. And that is what's

22:44

coming up after the break.

22:47

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22:49

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24:51

Ari, we're

24:53

back. And now it is time

24:55

to talk solutions. although let's

24:58

set some expectations here.

25:00

When I asked Amy if there was some

25:02

kind of simple exercise that people

25:04

could do to escape counterfactuals,

25:07

said I don't

25:08

know that there is. Because,

25:09

you know, when we become the human

25:12

equivalent of the spinning pinwheel

25:14

of death on a screen, you can't

25:16

just reboot the system. Instead,

25:18

the starting point has to be understanding

25:20

what is happening in your head

25:22

and then using that awareness to

25:25

your advantage. Like, for example, to

25:27

go back to one of the things that Amy said

25:29

could trigger counterfactuals.

25:30

We know that people

25:32

tend to feel the most

25:35

ongoing regret about the parts of their life

25:37

where they feel a

25:38

sense of control and they feel like things

25:40

are important. And so I think partially

25:43

just recognizing that, right, that

25:45

you you're feeling this

25:47

big regret in the moment because

25:49

this is something that is gonna continue

25:51

to matter to you. Right? If it

25:53

was not important, you would just get

25:55

over it. And so I think

25:57

accepting that that's just the price of

25:59

caring a

25:59

little bit.

26:00

I really like that phrase, the price

26:03

of caring. And it

26:05

reminded me of something that my wife often

26:07

tells me when I get into moments like this, which

26:09

is basically like Nobody is thinking

26:11

about this as much as you are, she tells me.

26:13

Not the podcast host, not the

26:15

podcast listeners. Nobody. So

26:17

I told Amy what my wife

26:19

tries to do is to get

26:21

me to care a little less. Right? To

26:23

say, you know what? Fine. Even

26:25

if it was bad, what does it matter?

26:27

because people will forget it instantly.

26:29

You didn't do something terrible. You just

26:31

didn't perform as well as you thought you would. Right?

26:33

Like, nobody's gonna write about how terrible you

26:36

were on Gary V's podcast. they're just

26:38

gonna take it as it is. And so

26:40

maybe just care a little less or

26:42

put it in perspective about how how it's not

26:44

it's not

26:44

important Yeah. One of the things you were saying, you know, that your wife might

26:47

tell you of, like, people are gonna forget this

26:49

in five minutes. I

26:50

you think think is

26:51

that idea of taking kind of a longer

26:53

kind of temple oral time. So

26:56

there's a lot of work on this

26:58

idea that there are real

27:00

differences in how we think about things that

27:02

are close to

27:04

us physically in time or things

27:06

that are far away. So this comes up, you

27:08

may have heard of, like, the delayed discounting effect.

27:10

So this is something where

27:12

If I tell you, I'll give you a dollar

27:15

right now, or I'll give

27:17

you five bucks a week from now.

27:19

Most people take the dollar right now. But I

27:21

say, hey, I'll give you a dollar

27:23

a year from now, or

27:25

I'll give you five dollars a year and

27:27

a week from most people take

27:29

the five bucks. Because when you're

27:31

really thinking about right now, like, right now, like, yeah,

27:34

like a buck would be great. I could go down the

27:36

hall. I could get a out of the vending

27:38

machine, that'd be really nice before I go on stage. There's sort

27:40

of this closeness to it

27:42

versus when you think about a year

27:44

from now, right,

27:45

that difference of a week feels super abstract. Like,

27:47

of course, I'd take five, dollars that's totally

27:49

the rational choice here. And so

27:51

I think that taking that kind of

27:54

long view about your own regrets as

27:56

well. There

27:56

are some things where you

27:58

make a decision now that five years

28:00

from now, you are still gonna be thinking about. that

28:03

decision. Like, our decisions have

28:05

consequences. But there are also

28:07

some things where five

28:09

years from now, you're not even gonna

28:11

remember what it is upset about right now. And so I

28:13

think really trying to

28:16

triage on that is really helpful.

28:18

So kind of taking the the long

28:20

view of Okay, five years

28:21

from now, what is it that you think you

28:23

should have learned from this moment? You know,

28:26

five years from now, is this even a thing

28:28

you're gonna care about.

28:30

I think is probably one of

28:32

the best things you could

28:33

try. That's awesome. I'll tell you that what up

28:35

being the Cure for me was the

28:37

podcast coming out. Because when it came out

28:39

and people didn't react negatively to

28:42

it. Right? I mean, maybe they could have

28:44

reacted more positively to it.

28:46

I don't know. But that's now that's a level of

28:48

abstraction that I sort of can't can't

28:50

deal with. Right? But when when

28:52

I got messages from strangers who said that

28:54

they they liked that episode.

28:56

I could just feel that tension

28:58

immediately disappear from my body.

29:00

It's

29:00

very good. We started up by talking about

29:02

Upward and downward counterfactuals and

29:05

and it's really all very

29:07

relative. One of the great examples

29:08

of this is there's a lot of evidence

29:10

showing that if you show people

29:12

the faces of Olympic Medalists and

29:14

have them rate how happy or

29:17

upset these medalists look on the medalist.

29:20

Silver medalists are consistently

29:22

the least happy people on

29:24

the podium. because they're thinking

29:26

about I could have won gold

29:28

and actually bronze medalists tend to

29:30

be substantially happier than silver

29:32

medalist because they're thinking I

29:34

want a medal. Like, I almost didn't win a medal, and I

29:36

won an Olympic medal. That's amazing. And so

29:38

I think that, you know, trying to take the view

29:40

of, like, remembering that as

29:42

a actually objectively better off in the

29:44

bronze medalist. You know, is also, I

29:47

think, a really helpful thing.

29:49

So know,

29:50

yes, maybe the podcast could have gone better,

29:52

but like, wow, you were a guest

29:54

on a podcast that you

29:56

really admired. And you know, that was

29:58

an amazing opportunity

29:59

and focus on

30:02

that thing that was good about

30:04

the situation. and

30:06

really kind of keep that comparison point in

30:08

perspective.

30:08

That's amazing. I love that.

30:10

But we could go one level deeper

30:13

because here's the thing. counterfactuals can

30:15

trap us in a bad way of

30:17

thinking, but counterfactuals might

30:19

also be our escape route.

30:21

Here is John again. Well, the

30:23

trick is And it's gonna sound a little

30:25

funny, but the trick is to

30:27

consider additional alternatives,

30:29

to consider other counter factual.

30:32

Here's why. John reminded me of something

30:34

that psychologists call the availability

30:38

heuristic, which basically means that we are

30:40

biased towards the stuff that's easiest

30:42

to remember. This came up a few months ago in

30:44

an episode of this podcast that I

30:46

titled All The Fund Facts You

30:49

Have Wrong. where we misinformation

30:51

spreads in part because lies

30:53

often feel true and are just

30:55

easy to remember. That is

30:57

the availability heuristic. So

30:59

the easier it is to generate a thought or

31:02

the easier it is to generate examples

31:05

of an event or an examples of an

31:07

argument you're trying to make the

31:09

easier it is, the more likely we think

31:11

it is to be true, or the

31:13

more likely we think it is to occur. And

31:15

if that's the case, then every

31:18

time we run through a counterfactual in our

31:20

head, the idea becomes even

31:22

more compelling and convincing to us.

31:24

It feels truer through

31:26

repetition. So instead of doing that, instead

31:28

of convincing ourselves through repetition, we

31:30

should instead add noise,

31:33

add more things to consider or

31:35

fight the counterfactuals with counterfactuals. If

31:38

you open your mind to them, it's much

31:40

easier to see, well, you know what?

31:42

Maybe it wasn't such a bad podcast

31:45

because it could have been a hell of a lot

31:47

worse, which I admit

31:50

is true. I mean, a b performance is

31:52

still better than a total

31:54

embarrassment. I don't know who first said it. I think it's

31:56

been around probably for at

31:58

least two centuries, the better to

32:00

have loved and lost than

32:02

to never have loved at all. Right? Would

32:04

you have rather not done that pot

32:06

cast at all. I mean, that's another alternative.

32:10

Right? At least you did it. You know,

32:12

at least you you got it out there

32:14

and once you expand those

32:16

possibilities. It's easier to kind of give yourself a break.

32:18

I didn't know who said that either, but

32:20

I got curious. So I looked it up. It's

32:22

often attributed to Shakespeare, but it's

32:25

actually from the English poet Lord Alfred

32:27

Tennison in an eighteen fifty poem

32:29

of his called Inn memoriam

32:32

AHH The poem

32:34

was about the death of his friend Arthur

32:36

Henry Hallum, AHH

32:39

Poitt who died of a stroke at age twenty too.

32:41

The original line was almost exactly as

32:43

people say it today. T is better

32:45

to have loved and lost than never

32:47

to have loved at all. But

32:49

anyway, we digress. The point here is there

32:51

are a lot of things that we can tell

32:54

ourselves. And just because we tell ourselves

32:56

one thing, doesn't make it true.

32:58

That actually was the biggest takeaway

33:00

for me in these conversations.

33:02

You know, both Amy and John made

33:04

this point to me I referenced

33:06

it earlier in the episode, we

33:08

base counterfactuals on a belief that if

33:10

we just did one thing different,

33:13

everything would have been better. But

33:15

we don't actually know that. It may

33:17

not be true. Everything we do is

33:19

the product of a million random

33:22

actors, only some of which are in our control.

33:24

Amy compared it to an entrepreneur whose

33:26

business fails and who then beats themselves up

33:28

by thinking, if only I'd

33:31

made this decision. If only I'd done that partnership,

33:33

if only I'd hired this

33:35

other person, then the business would

33:37

have survived. And, you know,

33:39

know Maybe that's true. But

33:42

also, maybe it's not. A lot of

33:43

dentures failed, not because people made bad

33:46

choices, not because people were bad

33:48

entrepreneurs, but

33:50

Things failed because there were these massive forces

33:52

outside of anybody's control and

33:54

ability to predict. Run the scenario

33:56

ten thousand times and

33:59

make slightly different decisions each time, and you still

34:01

might end up with ten thousand

34:03

failures. Not everything is a

34:05

recipe for success. Sometimes,

34:07

it just wasn't your day. I

34:09

have to say, terrible as that

34:12

all sounds. The inevitability of

34:14

failure actually gives me a

34:16

little comfort It's like, I

34:18

don't know, I feel like I have

34:20

control over most things in my life and

34:22

that's why when something doesn't break my

34:24

way, I beat myself up over it. You know, I figure, I was in

34:26

control. How did I mess it up? But

34:28

if we can't control everything,

34:30

then maybe

34:32

it's maybe it's

34:34

not worth beating ourselves

34:36

up over. I know I'm probably

34:38

teetering into cliche territory here

34:40

if I'm not already there a long shot,

34:42

but it makes me think, you know,

34:44

like every all star basketball player

34:46

missed a game winning shot. every

34:50

meticulously prepared political candidate

34:52

still bombs in a debate. If

34:54

our definition of success is complete perfection,

34:56

though we are only setting ourselves

34:58

up for failure because nothing is perfect.

35:00

No matter how much we

35:02

think we know about how to

35:06

create perfection. So where does that leave me? Well, it leaves

35:08

me thinking about this question that

35:10

I heard somebody say a long time

35:12

ago on a

35:14

podcast. I wish I could remember who

35:16

it was so I could credit them. But anyway, they were saying that look, if

35:18

we ask the question, is this

35:22

perfect? about the things that we are doing

35:24

or evaluating or wondering whether

35:26

they're worth our time or

35:28

effort? Well, then

35:30

we already have our answer because nothing is perfect. So you ask

35:32

the question, is this perfect? And the answer

35:35

is no. And if that's the

35:38

filter through which we're going to push things, then we're going to

35:40

filter almost everything out.

35:42

But what if instead we asked

35:45

a different question? what if instead

35:47

we ask, is this new

35:50

problem better

35:51

than our old problem?

35:54

Because when you ask

35:56

that, well, you just leave open the reality of problems.

35:58

Problems are part of the process.

35:59

And therefore, the problem

36:02

doesn't scare you

36:04

off. It's just well,

36:06

you know, it's just the cost of

36:08

admission. And also, that means that you can

36:10

then track progress

36:13

through problems. to whole embarrassing thing with me and

36:15

the Gary Faynerchuk podcast. And I think, well,

36:17

you know, the podcast

36:20

came out and people listened

36:22

to it, and a bunch of people actually reached out

36:24

to tell me that they really liked

36:26

it. And I still think

36:28

I could have done a better job,

36:30

but, you know, Is this

36:32

a better problem than another

36:34

problem? The old problem, I guess, was

36:36

that I wasn't on Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast.

36:39

Now I have been and I reached some

36:42

people. And even though I didn't do it

36:44

perfectly, I guess that's a better

36:46

problem, isn't it? That is

36:48

how I'm going to try to look at things from now

36:50

on and maybe you want to

36:52

too. Counterfactual

36:54

thinking, terrifying is it can feel is also a good

36:56

problem to have because it

36:58

means we did something meaningful. It

37:00

means we had something on

37:02

the line It means we

37:04

tried hard and are committed to

37:06

trying again and maybe we'll

37:08

even learn something. Because as

37:10

the old poet said,

37:12

have podcasted and delivered a

37:14

mediocre performance

37:16

than to never have podcasted at all.

37:19

And that's our episode. Now,

37:22

here's a question you did not expect

37:24

or maybe you did, but that would be really

37:26

weird. Here's the question. do

37:28

humans and cockroaches have in

37:30

common when it comes to performing

37:32

tasks? This came up in

37:34

my research search for this episode, and I will tell you the answer in a

37:36

minute. But first, if you

37:38

are going through a big change

37:40

at work

37:42

or in your life right now, then you need a copy of

37:44

my new book. It is called Build

37:46

For Tomorrow, just like this podcast.

37:50

It combines lessons from this podcast with lessons from the smartest

37:52

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37:54

innovation and provides a step

37:56

by step action plan for how you

37:58

can thrive in changing

37:59

times and find opportunity

38:02

in adversity. It is available in

38:04

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38:06

so just go wherever you find any

38:08

of that or to jason pfeiffer

38:10

dot com slash book. And if

38:12

you want even more advice and encouragement

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on how to adapt fast, then

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going to jason pfeiffer dot com slash newsletter. You can also get

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38:30

This episode was reported and

38:32

written by me, Jason Feiffer, Sound editing

38:34

by Alec Bayless, Our theme music is

38:36

my Casper baby pants. Learn more at

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baby pants music dot com.

38:40

Thanks to Adam Sokulek for production

38:42

help. This show is supported in part

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visit stand together trust

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dot org. Alright. Now,

39:16

as promised, let's talk about cockroaches.

39:19

As I spoke with John about counter factual thinking, we got

39:22

off on a tangent about

39:24

performance because as you heard earlier, we tend

39:26

to counter factualize things

39:28

where we feel like we're in control or have a routine. And

39:30

that led John to tell me a few

39:32

crazy things about what improves people's

39:34

performance in high

39:36

stress situations. including

39:38

if you have a well practiced

39:40

skill or behavior and you

39:42

have an audience, people tend to

39:44

to perform better. that's an old sort

39:46

of social facilitation theory. It was

39:49

even demonstrated with cockroaches that

39:52

that cockroaches ran faster mazes

39:55

to the food when they were being

39:58

watched. Why other

39:59

cockroaches in another container that that

40:02

they could get, you know, that they could

40:04

conceivably see So

40:05

the next time the pressure's on and people

40:07

are watching, just think to

40:10

yourself, I will do this

40:12

like a cockroach. so

40:14

inspirational. Hey, that's the end of

40:16

this episode. I hope I won't suffer any

40:19

counterfactual thinking after I publish

40:21

it, but there is only one way to find out,

40:23

so here it goes. Thanks for listening.

40:25

I'm Jason Pfeiffer, and let's keep

40:27

building for tomorrow.