0:15

Pushkin. I'm

0:18

doctor Laurie Santos.

0:19

I'm Tim Harford, and this.

0:21

Is another crossover episode of my podcast

0:23

The Happiness Lab.

0:24

And my podcast Cautionary Tales.

0:27

Laurie, last time I took the lead,

0:29

I told you a story about the tensions

0:31

between everyone taking a vacation at

0:33

the same time and an idea from

0:35

Stalin's Soviet union, where

0:38

it was decreed that workers had to stagger

0:40

their days off, no matter what that meant for

0:42

missing leisure time with their friends and families.

0:44

So this time it's the return

0:47

match, as it were. So, what cautionary

0:49

tale of happiness have you got install for me?

0:51

Oh, it's a good one.

0:52

It's a story of how we're all biased towards

0:55

action and how we sometimes struggle to do

0:57

less, especially when it involves doing

0:59

nothing at all. It's a tale that will take us

1:01

to where the blue skies start turning to inky

1:03

black, because today we're going to go

1:05

to the very edge of space. My

1:31

story today involves one of my favorite American

1:33

heroes, Major Charles E. Jaeger,

1:37

as a young fighter pilot in World War Two, Chuck

1:40

not only shot down a huge number of enemy

1:42

aircraft but also successfully evaded

1:44

the Nazis when he was shot down over occupied

1:46

France. During his time on the run,

1:49

Chuck helped the French resistance attack German

1:51

troops and even won a

1:53

medal for helping an American pilot cross

1:55

the snowy Pyrenees to reach safety in

1:57

Spain. Chuck was just that

2:00

kind of hero, and he didn't

2:02

chill out during peacetime either. He

2:05

kept flying, securing his place in history

2:07

by traveling faster than the speed of sound

2:09

in a rocket powered aircraft he named

2:11

Glamorous Glennis in honor of his

2:13

wife. Other

2:16

pilots had perished in their pursuit of this speed

2:18

record, but Chuck broke the sound barrier with

2:20

characteristic nonchalance. He even

2:22

failed to tell his team that he'd fallen from a

2:25

horse and broke in several ribs just before

2:27

his test flight. He probably figured

2:29

that they wouldn't want to trust a guy who could barely raise

2:31

his arms to fly their expensive experimental

2:33

aircraft. But

2:36

none of these stories explained why Chuck Yeager

2:38

is a hero to happiness experts like me. That

2:41

stems from an incident that took place later a

2:43

couple of weeks before Christmas in nineteen

2:46

fifty three, Chuck

2:49

was now piloting an upgraded version of the

2:51

glamorous Glennis, the new X

2:53

one A. The X one A

2:55

was built to travel more than twice the speed of

2:57

sound. Chuck was excited to try out

3:00

the new aircraft, especially since

3:02

a pilot from the US Navy had recently

3:04

beaten his record. Chuck was pretty

3:06

eager to reclaim his crown as the fastest

3:08

man alive. Back

3:11

then, no one really knew what would happen to an airplane

3:13

or a human body when it reached that velocity

3:15

in height. The forces Chuck was about to

3:17

face were as unprecedented as they were dangerous.

3:21

So cut to December twelfth, nineteen fifty

3:23

three, Jaeger's tenth flight and the

3:25

X one A began routinely enough. Chuck

3:27

and the X one A got carried high into the sky

3:30

by a big bomber plane. The

3:32

X and A was then dropped from the belly of the bomber

3:34

and Chuck ignited the experimental rocket enter.

3:39

The X and A flew upwards fast, but

3:42

soon started kind of freaking out. It

3:45

was pitching and rolling and tumbling. Chuck

3:48

grappled with the controls inside the cockpit but

3:50

nothing the pilot did seemed to stop the plane's

3:53

violent descent, and

3:56

so the X one A was now plummeting out

3:58

of the sky while tossing its poor test pilot

4:00

around like a rag doll. At

4:03

some point, Yaeger was thrown violently into

4:05

the cockpit's canopy. He even

4:08

cracked the plastic with his flight helmet. All

4:11

this goes to say this was not a good situation.

4:14

In a matter of seconds, the experimental aircraft

4:17

dropped more than six miles. Even

4:19

if Jeger had known how to stop the X

4:21

one a's rapid descent, he was two dazed

4:23

to operate the controls. Was the

4:25

plane rolling or spinning? Chuck

4:28

had no idea. There was nothing he could do

4:30

but surrender to the g forces jostling

4:32

him in his seat as the aircraft fell

4:34

towards the barren Mojave desert below.

4:39

Laurie. This is the kind of cliff hangout

4:41

opening that my cautionary tails listeners will be

4:43

familiar with. A doomed plane and an

4:45

equally doomed pilot hurtling towards

4:47

Earth. So what did

4:50

Chuck Yeger do?

4:51

Nothing?

4:52

Nothing, well, mostly nothing, which

4:55

is why happiness experts like me loved what happened

4:57

next. Chuck

4:59

was known for his nerves as steel, but this

5:01

situation had him totally spooked. He

5:04

later said that if the X one A had been fitted with

5:06

an ejection seat, he would have used it, but

5:08

most experts say if he'd done that, there'd

5:10

be no way he would have survived. In the parlance

5:12

of test pilots, he would have been committing suicide

5:15

to save himself from dying. So

5:17

without any way to escape, Yeager had two

5:19

options. Option one, he could do

5:21

everything in his power to write his tumbling rocket

5:24

ship to be fair. This was what

5:26

Truck tried to do at the beginning, but his

5:28

attempts to use the controls didn't work. At

5:30

best, they did nothing, and they also may

5:32

have made a bad situation even worse. So

5:35

once the plane's descent became too violent, he

5:38

was forced into option number two. Just

5:40

do nothing, just write it out,

5:43

and that is exactly what saved him. When

5:47

the X one A hit about twenty five thousand feet

5:50

if finally steady, the aircraft

5:52

was still spinning, but it was the kind of spin

5:54

that Yeager was familiarate. Once

5:56

all the nightmarish bucking and tumbling was over,

5:59

the veteran test pilot was finally able to

6:01

pull up the nose of his craft down to twenty

6:03

five that I would want to get back

6:05

to bank.

6:06

Huh.

6:07

If you listen to Yegger's cockpit recordings, his

6:09

fear is very obvious and his

6:11

relief is palpable. I

6:13

can't do much. Before I got it,

6:16

he knew he was in trouble, but in the end

6:19

he was going to make it home all right.

6:24

I don't know a thing up or not. The

6:29

wild Ride wasn't a total disaster. The

6:32

X one A had topped out at mock two

6:34

point four to four, and that

6:36

record was finally enough for Chuck Boy.

6:39

He told his team, I'm not going to do that

6:41

anymore.

6:42

Well, Jaeger

6:46

walked away safely from the X one A and

6:49

never flew a wocketplane again.

6:53

I love the story, Laurie, and it's definitely a cautionary

6:56

tale. But what's the happiness moral

6:58

of this anecdote?

7:00

Well, I first heard this story from one of my favorite

7:02

meditation teachers, the psychologist Tara Brack.

7:05

She shares it as a cautionary tale. But our usual

7:07

need to constantly be in control of every

7:09

facet of our lives. When Rafe's with

7:11

a problem, most of us instinctively want

7:13

to take action. We feel the need to do

7:16

something, even in cases when we kind

7:18

of know our actions will be ineffective or

7:20

even make stuff worse. Tera says

7:22

that in times like this we need to copy

7:24

the great Chuck Yeger. We need to pause,

7:26

take our hands off the controls, and

7:28

just let things be. This pause,

7:31

Tera writes, gives us a possibility

7:33

of a new choice.

7:34

Now, sitting back isn't something that

7:36

comes naturally to many of us, so let's

7:38

have a think about the ways in which it could

7:41

actually be the key to performing better and

7:43

feeling happier. When I'm struck

7:46

by some of the caution detales that

7:48

we've had over the years

7:50

where doing nothing is in fact

7:52

precisely the right thing to do,

7:55

there's one on the subject of masterly inactivity,

7:58

which features Helena Bottom Krter

8:00

as the formidable Lady Sale.

8:03

In the disastrous British Army

8:05

operations in Afghanistan in

8:07

the nineteenth century, this idea of masterly

8:09

inactivity was raised,

8:12

and it applied not just to maybe

8:14

the British should never have invaded Afghanistan,

8:16

which I think, with hindsight is obvious,

8:19

but also parenting, maybe we

8:21

should do less parenting or medicine,

8:23

maybe doctors should be doing

8:26

less, prescribing fewer tests, prescribing

8:28

fewer treatments. Even soccer

8:30

goalkeepers are too committed

8:32

to being active when faced with a

8:34

penalty was in fact they'd be better off if they

8:36

stayed Still.

8:37

Wait, wait, Tim, as you know I'm an American

8:40

on behalf of my fellow Americans, can you

8:42

just explain what this penalty kick example

8:44

is in a little bit more detail.

8:46

Sure, I mean, I understand that the joys

8:48

of soccer are finding American

8:50

shaws these days, but maybe

8:52

not this particular study. So some

8:55

I think there were economists who started that actually

8:57

looked at what goalkeepers do

9:00

when faced with a penalty kick.

9:02

And basically, in the penalty kick,

9:05

the striker gets to try and put

9:07

the ball in the net, and

9:09

they can boot it to the left, or they can boot it to the right,

9:11

or they can bout it straight down the middle, and the

9:14

goalkeeper doesn't have much time to

9:16

react. And so the standard

9:18

procedure for a goalkeeper is just to guess it's

9:20

fifty to fifty. Just dive to

9:23

the right or dive to the left,

9:25

and you got a fifty percent chance a going the right way. Even

9:27

if you do go the right way, you might not save it. I mean, actually,

9:30

most penalties turn into goals. Usually

9:32

the keeper isn't able to save it, but

9:34

there's a lot of pressure on the keeper to try.

9:36

So the goalkeeper will usually leap

9:39

off to the left or the right. If they leap in the wrong

9:41

direction, well, you know, no one blames them for that. But

9:43

actually quite a lot of penalty kicks

9:45

go fairly close to where the goalkeeper

9:48

originally was standing. They go right

9:50

down the center or near enough to the center,

9:52

and you can prove that if

9:54

the goalkeeper had not dived either way,

9:57

they probably would have had a better chance of

9:59

saving the penalty kick. They

10:01

would also have looked ridiculous

10:04

if the kick had gone far to the left or

10:06

fart of the right, because they would have looked like they weren't

10:08

even And so there's

10:10

that pressure to act, even when just

10:13

waiting and standing still would have been a

10:15

better thing to do.

10:16

Yeah, but I think it's something that's really hard

10:18

for our mind. I mean, take the medical case you mentioned.

10:21

I've seen the importance of doing

10:23

nothing in cases where friends of mine

10:25

who've had cancer have been advised, well,

10:27

rather than do some surgery, rather than do some chemo,

10:30

let's just watch and wait. I

10:32

think this is what doctors often call nonoperative

10:35

management or active surveillance, which I think

10:37

is a funny term, this idea of active surveillance,

10:39

because it feels like there's nothing active about it. It's complete

10:41

inaction. You're just kind of sitting there waiting, and

10:43

I think people don't like that. I mean, some studies, especially

10:46

for some cancer show that this can be really

10:48

helpful for dealing with a cancer.

10:50

Right.

10:50

Sometimes you go through chemo and surgery, but

10:53

there's a tumor that's going to grow back anyway, and

10:55

so it was just like silly to take the risk of

10:57

doing all that surgery and chemo. But the

10:59

idea of just sitting there and like seeing

11:01

what your tumor does, it's just an incredibly

11:04

scary situation for people

11:06

who are facing it. People just want to do something,

11:08

even if if it's futile, to feel like they're taking

11:11

some kind of action rather than doing nothing.

11:12

Which I suppose is why that word

11:15

active is so important. Active

11:17

surveillance, so the idea that you are

11:19

doing something, the challenge of course is

11:21

to know whether active

11:23

surveillance, whatever it is, masterly and activity, to

11:26

know whether doing nothing is the right

11:28

thing, And for that you would need some

11:30

kind of statistical evidence

11:32

base, you'd need some kind of rigorous

11:35

experiment. But I know doctors

11:37

are quite convinced that they are over

11:39

prescribing too many tests, too

11:41

many treatments that are not necessary.

11:44

And so the question there is, well, why do they feel

11:46

that that's the right thing to do, or or maybe they don't feel

11:49

it's the right thing to do, why do they do it? And

11:51

it is often a fear of being sued by

11:53

a patient, or simply just trying to get

11:55

rid of a patient who is pestering them and

11:57

saying I want you to do something, like okay,

11:59

fine, you want me to do something even though I shouldn't

12:01

do anything. I'll give you this drug or I'll

12:03

prescribe this test and that'll help you to

12:06

go away.

12:06

So it seems like we'd all be much happier,

12:08

maybe even healthier, if we could figure

12:11

out the importance of sometimes doing

12:13

nothing. But tim sometimes the best

12:15

decision isn't just to pause and do nothing.

12:18

Sometimes the best thing we can do is to actively

12:20

take something away but it turns out

12:22

this subtracting stuff seems to be even

12:25

harder for our lying minds to deal with. It's

12:27

something that we're very, very bad at.

12:29

We are, indeed, and we'll learn more about

12:31

that when this Caution Retail's Happiness

12:34

Lab crossover episode returns

12:36

after the break.

12:43

Welcome back to the Happiness Lab.

12:45

And welcome back to Caution Retales.

12:47

Wait, Tim, remind me do you usually introduce a

12:49

second historic story after the break in your episodes,

12:52

Because if you do, I have yet another fun tale,

12:54

one that's not about the advantage of doing nothing

12:56

but about the power of taking stuff away.

12:59

I'm going to stop you, Laurie, go for it. Go

13:01

ahead, How could I resist?

13:03

Well?

13:03

Story number two doesn't take us as far back

13:05

as the nineteen fifties, but it does involve

13:08

a clever strategy for operating yet another

13:10

hard to deal with vehicle.

13:11

Oh, let me guess, hard

13:13

to deal with vehicles combine

13:16

harvesters, no giant

13:18

robots that you get to settle or I don't know.

13:20

Tell me.

13:21

Actually the story involves a bike, like

13:24

just a regular kids bike.

13:25

Oh okay, well, hopefully it's

13:27

a good story.

13:28

Well, the story begins with a guy by the name of Ryan

13:31

McFarland. Ryan came from a long line

13:33

of motorsports junkies. His grandfather

13:35

was a race car engineer, and Daddy McFarland

13:37

ran a motorcycle shop. All this meant

13:40

that Ryan spent his childhood having fun with

13:42

all kinds of dangerous wheeled vehicles.

13:44

He rode dirt bikes and played in go karts and race

13:46

stock cars. Ryan

13:49

was eventually able to translate his love for

13:51

all things wheels into a profitable engineering

13:53

career. He made a name for himself patenting

13:56

both a better bike seat and a new wheelchair

13:58

suspension system. So you could

14:00

imagine Ryan's delight when he finally

14:02

became a dad himself. Pretty

14:04

much as soon as his son Body was out of the womb,

14:07

Ryan was ready to pass on the farl In

14:09

family love of wheels. Body was two

14:11

when he got his first cycle, but riding

14:13

a bike Ryan quickly realized is

14:16

kind of hard for a toddler. Ryan

14:18

was passionate about getting Body on two wheels

14:20

as soon as possible, so he spent thousands

14:23

of dollars buying Body the usual learner

14:25

vehicles, toddler tricycles, trainer

14:28

bikes, even a training wheel equipped

14:30

motorcycle.

14:32

Oh wait, a training wheel equipped

14:34

motorcycle. You're trying to convince me that that is

14:36

a typical learner vehicle. I'm not buying it.

14:38

That seemed like a terrible idea for a two year

14:40

old.

14:41

Well, I think it was tim Basically, nothing

14:43

Ryan bought worked, Plus none of them were

14:45

all that good at teaching a little kid the most important

14:47

part of riding a bike, which is the art of

14:50

balancing it. You can't learn to equalize

14:52

your weight on a bike with training wheels because the wheels

14:54

wind up doing all the balancing work. And

14:56

so Ryan decided to engineer a new kind

14:58

of bike, one that even a toddler

15:01

like body could learn to balance.

15:02

And how did you do that?

15:03

Well, his solution was.

15:05

To start with a typical bike, but rather

15:07

than adding something new to the bike's design, he

15:09

chose to take something away. He

15:12

got rid of the pedals. Ryan

15:14

was the first to design what's now known as a strider

15:17

or balance bike. Kids can easily

15:19

get the bike moving just by pushing their feet on

15:21

the ground, kind of like Fred Flintstone

15:23

style, and without pedals to worry

15:25

about, even a two year old could ride it. On

15:28

the strider, Body was able to learn to steer

15:30

and balance, all the stuff he'd need when

15:32

he graduated to a real bike or

15:34

I guess a motorcycle. Ryan

15:36

was able to turn his idea not just into a tory

15:39

for body, his balance bike turned

15:41

into a global company which has now sold

15:43

millions of pedalist bikes in less than a

15:45

decade.

15:48

I love this, Laurie, and as somebody who's written

15:50

about the history of technology, I feel

15:52

obliged to point out that this is

15:54

what bikes were originally like. They

15:56

were sometimes called the hobby

15:58

horses. Oh, the

16:00

Germans had, I think the Louf machine.

16:03

I forget exactly what it was. The dandy horse

16:05

was another thing they were called. The bikes originally

16:08

didn't have pedals because the whole idea of pedaling

16:10

you needed gears. He needed a chain.

16:12

It was too difficult. And so we had

16:14

bikes like this all along, and then somehow

16:17

we forgot them, and then Ryan reinvented

16:19

them for toddlers, which is brilliant.

16:21

But I'm curious, why did you want to tell

16:23

me the story? What's going to do with happiness?

16:25

Well, the real reason I wanted to mention Ryan's story

16:27

is it involves a practice that's super good for our happiness,

16:29

but also one that's really hard for our minds to do.

16:32

To get his design right, Ryan had to take

16:34

something away. He had to subtract the

16:36

pedals, and the research has shown

16:38

that subtracting stuff is much harder than we

16:41

think. I first learned about Ryan's

16:43

project in this book by Lydie Klotz.

16:45

He's a professor of engineering at the University of

16:47

Virginia. He's written this awesome book

16:49

called Subtract The Untapped Science

16:51

of Less. But he does all these experiments

16:53

where he shows just how hard it is for adults

16:55

to figure out how to solve a problem that

16:58

requires taking something away. He does these

17:00

fun studies with his college students where he shows

17:02

them this kind of lego bridge type

17:04

thing that's sort of uneven. It's kind

17:06

of about to collapse because it's got one leg

17:09

in the wrong spot, and he asks

17:11

subjects do something to make this structure

17:13

a little bit more stable.

17:15

And so subjects have two choices.

17:16

They could add a bunch of new blocks

17:19

so that this structure becomes more stable, or

17:21

they could just take away the one stupid block

17:23

that's extra on one side.

17:25

And so then all of a sudden, the thing would balance better.

17:27

And what he finds is that even if you suggest

17:30

to subjects like hey, it's also possible

17:32

to take stuff away, subjects have a

17:34

really hard time with this. They're much

17:36

more likely to add a bunch of stuff, which takes

17:38

them more time than just to take one thing away.

17:41

Lidy found that subjects even still do this

17:43

when you charge for the amount of blocks they're

17:45

going to use, So subjects now have to pay ten

17:47

cents for every extra block they put on, and

17:49

it's still really hard for them to figure out that they have

17:52

to take some stuff away to make this work best.

17:54

I had the privilege of interviewing

17:56

Lidi for the Financial

17:58

Times. I read his book and I found it

18:01

really fascinating. And when I first saw

18:03

the work on Legos, originally

18:06

the whole idea was sparked because he noticed

18:08

that his son just naturally pulled

18:10

away the extra block. So his son

18:12

didn't seem to have a problem subtracting, but it didn't

18:14

occur to him to subtract. And when I first

18:16

thought, I thought, yeah, well, I mean no, I

18:18

like Lego, that's great, but is

18:21

this really of practical significance?

18:23

But then some of the other experiments

18:26

that Lady had been doing with his coauthors

18:29

were I think much more obviously

18:32

relevant to day to day life. For example,

18:34

one of the ones he did was he got people to suggest

18:37

improvements to a recipe for soup. Here's a recipe

18:39

for soup. How do you make it better? And

18:42

people would always suggest, oh, well, you could add

18:44

some cream or garlic or salt

18:46

or whatever. They're suggest adding steps

18:49

or adding ingredients, and very few

18:51

people said, no, you need to take away

18:53

this ingredient because it's going to swamp everything else.

18:56

There seem to be this inbuilt bias, and even

18:58

when he suggested cases

19:00

where it was absolutely obvious

19:03

that you should take something away, people didn't.

19:05

So for example, in one experiment,

19:07

they showed people itinery

19:10

for a day in Washington, d C. I

19:12

used to live in DC. It's a lovely city. There's

19:14

loads to do, but this itinery was crazy.

19:17

I think they had twenty four different stops

19:19

and they would basically be going to a Library

19:22

of Congress, twenty minutes there, get back

19:24

in the coach, down the mall to a museum.

19:26

Twenty minutes in the museum, get back in the coach, take

19:28

you somewhere else, and you just go all over DC and

19:30

try and see everything. And it was clearly insane.

19:33

And they were given this itinery and told,

19:35

okay, how do you make it better? And

19:37

the obvious answer is take out some of

19:39

the stops, give everything some room to breathe,

19:42

less time driving from one place to another,

19:45

more time actually enjoying what

19:47

you're seeing. And people just didn't

19:49

do it. They would rearrange the

19:51

order of engagements, they'd maybe try to make things

19:54

a bit more efficient or more logical, but

19:56

they did not remove stuff, even when it was

19:58

clear that everything was just too

20:00

much and subtraction was the only answer. So this seems

20:03

to be really quite a deep bias in the way

20:05

we.

20:05

Think, and the travel example, I think shows

20:07

just how much it can affect our when

20:09

we have too much stuff, when we don't realize

20:11

the power of taking things away. I've been on those vacations

20:14

where it's like just too many things,

20:16

Just like wait, if I just took out one or two

20:18

of these and I could just sleep in an extra

20:20

hour, I could just take a moment to rest,

20:22

I'd feel so much better. But it's not

20:24

just like ephemberal things like travel plans where

20:27

we mess this up, we also mess this up with the literal

20:29

stuff that's inside our houses. And Tim, I know this

20:31

is something that you've actually written a book on the

20:33

kind of striking way that our materialism is

20:35

problematic for us, and sometimes we don't subtract enough

20:38

of our own stuff.

20:39

Yeah, I got involved in this by

20:41

accident. So I wrote a book a few years ago

20:43

called Messy, and it's

20:46

kind of a messy book. It's about improvisation

20:48

and jazz and filing

20:51

cabinets and conversations

20:53

and all kinds of things. It's sort of a messy

20:56

book, and in many ways it's the book I'm

20:58

most proud of. But when I published

21:01

this book around about the same time,

21:03

Marry Condo's book, The Life Changing Magic

21:05

of Tidying was also out. It was a

21:08

huge bestseller, and so people were always

21:10

asking me to talk about, you know, the

21:12

contrast between my book and Marry Condo's

21:14

book, because I'm for mess and she's for tidy,

21:17

and you know, and actually I kept

21:19

saying, I don't think I mean, I

21:21

loved her book. Actually, I don't think there's as much

21:23

of a difference as you might think,

21:25

because really the point

21:27

that she made in the life changing Magic of Tidying

21:30

is you can't organize

21:32

your way out of too much. You

21:34

could only subtract your way out

21:37

of too much. You have to get rid of stuff.

21:39

So in fact, her book is not really about tidying.

21:42

Her book is about minimalism. Her book is about subtraction.

21:44

And I've got absolutely no problem with that. Sometimes

21:47

you need that space. And I

21:49

was similarly skeptical about organizational

21:51

systems. I don't think organizational systems

21:54

solve the fundamental problem of too much

21:56

stuff going on. But yet we fool ourselves

21:58

into thinking that, you know, if only we did

22:00

have the right hacks, if only we had

22:03

the file of facts, or if only we had the right software,

22:05

then we could solve all the problems in our lives by

22:07

just getting organized. And sometimes,

22:10

no, there's twenty four hours in a day, there's

22:12

only so many rooms in your house, that there's

22:14

only so much time, there's only so much

22:16

space. And I think a

22:19

really fundamental insight of

22:21

economics, and people don't think of economics

22:23

as offering wisdom for day to day life,

22:25

but I think it does really fundamental insight

22:28

and economics is everything has an opportunity

22:30

cost and what that means is everything

22:32

you do, everything you buy, every

22:35

hour you spend is getting

22:37

in the way of something else. It's something else

22:39

you can't do, It's some other way you can't

22:41

spend that hour, it's some other thing that you

22:43

can't afford to buy because you bought that

22:45

first thing. And when you see everything

22:47

as potentially getting in the way of everything else,

22:49

you start to realize, as Ldiklott

22:52

says, not only should you be subtracting

22:54

the bad stuff, sometimes you have to subtract

22:57

the good stuff as well, because subtracting

23:00

the good stuff makes space for more

23:02

good stuff and to enjoy the good stuff

23:04

that you have.

23:06

I think this is so important for myself

23:08

in so many different way. But this is also

23:10

something that I've seen in my students.

23:13

Right. They have these college students today have these

23:15

such like over subscribed schedules,

23:18

like they just never have time to do anything. And

23:20

I think that's because they grew up in generation where

23:22

parents gave them so much to do that they got

23:25

used to not ever having time to do stuff.

23:27

I know you've talked a little bit about helicopter

23:29

parenting. This is something that we talk a lot about

23:31

on the show But one way to describe

23:34

helicopter parenting is the problem of not

23:36

subtracting enough. Right, you want

23:38

your kids to, you know, learn how to

23:40

play soccer, and you want your kids to get piano

23:42

lessons, and you definitely need them to get a math tutor

23:45

and an SAT tutor and all these things, and

23:47

so you pack as kids' schedule to the

23:49

point that they have no time for rest, no time

23:51

for play, no time for being social with kids their

23:53

age. And the right solution isn't to give them

23:56

more tutoring, it's to just subtract

23:58

stuff. I think what happens is that parents

24:00

have kids' schedules that are just really

24:03

oversubscribed, and then they get worried of

24:05

like, oh, well, he doesn't have time for play, he doesn't have time

24:07

for friends, So I'll just add in a play. No,

24:09

I'll squeeze that into all the other stuff that kids

24:11

have to do. But this over scheduling,

24:13

the research shows, makes kids like way more

24:16

anxious. Anxiety disorders are going

24:18

up. Kids will sometimes report sometimes

24:20

like you know, we very busy adults do, that they have no

24:22

time, that they feel overwhelmed by their schedule,

24:24

when it also feels like everyone would

24:26

just be much happier and probably

24:29

everybody would perform more successfully

24:31

if we could just take a bunch of stuff out of

24:33

kids' schedules.

24:34

Yeah, and I think an important thing to underline

24:37

we kind of already said it, but let's say it again because

24:39

we're adding, not subtracting as I always do,

24:42

is there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff.

24:44

There's nothing wrong with having a masth tutel, there's nothing wrong

24:47

with learning an instrument, there's nothing wrong with

24:49

with learning a sport. It's all good.

24:52

It's just there's a limit. And sometimes

24:55

we like to tell ourselves, oh, well, if we just

24:57

get rid of all the wasted time, we

24:59

get rid of all the bad stuff, then we'll have

25:01

time to focus on what really matters.

25:03

But actually know, sometimes you have to get rid of stuff

25:06

that you really do want to do, that stuff that is

25:08

worth doing, because you can't do everything, and

25:10

it's painful to face up to that.

25:13

So the question is why don't we follow this

25:15

idea of less is more? Why

25:17

is it something that's so hard for our minds. We'll

25:20

learn some ways that we can all do this better. When the

25:22

Cautionary Tales Happiness Lab crossover

25:24

it gets.

25:24

Back from the break.

25:30

Welcome back to the Cautionary Tales Happiness

25:32

Lab crossover. So, Tim, before

25:34

we left, we were talking about ways that we

25:37

can make subtraction a little bit more

25:39

obvious for our lying minds. And

25:41

one of the ways that occurs is when

25:43

sadly there's nothing we can do but

25:46

subtract. I know these are cases that you've talked

25:48

about on Cautionary Tales before. So maybe

25:50

share one of these stories where people can actually subtract,

25:53

but only when they're kind of forced into a corner

25:55

and they have to.

25:56

Yes. The example that has

25:58

haunted me ever since I

26:00

heard it was Keith

26:03

Jarrett, the great jazz pianist,

26:06

and his attempt to play a solo

26:08

piano concert in the great German

26:10

city of Cologne. And that

26:13

particular concert, it was the largest concert

26:15

that Jarrett had ever played solo. He was still quite

26:17

a young man, I think he was still in his twenties.

26:20

There was a mix up at the opera house.

26:22

The promoter was very young, she was a teenage

26:24

girl called Vera Brands, and she

26:27

or the opera house between them had

26:29

not got a good piano on

26:31

stage for Keith. He'd requested a particular

26:33

piano Bozendorf for Imperial. He's

26:36

a real perfectionist. And instead they looked

26:38

around for a bozen door for piano, and they'd found this

26:40

beaten up rehearsal model, not a

26:42

proper grand piano. It's not big enough,

26:44

but also in really bad condition, out

26:47

of tune, pedal sticking, all

26:49

kinds of problems. And Jarrett

26:51

basically said, look, I can't play this. If

26:54

you can't get a new piano, I won't play, and

26:56

he left. But it turned out they couldn't

26:59

get a new piano. There wasn't enough time, and

27:02

Jarrett eventually realized

27:04

that if he didn't play, then

27:06

this poor girl who was promoting

27:09

basically her first concert was going

27:11

to be torn apart by this crowd of angry

27:13

German jazz fans who would show up for it was a late

27:15

night concert at eleven thirty. He probably had a few

27:17

beers. They're going to show up at this concert

27:19

and there'll be no concert. There'll be know Keith Jarrett.

27:22

So Jarrett decided, okay, I have to do it.

27:24

I have to play this thing. And so he walks

27:26

out on stage in front of this packed

27:28

auditorium fourteen hundred people

27:31

sits down to play this piano

27:33

that he knows is unplayable, and it

27:36

is the concert of a lifetime. It is his most

27:38

successful ever recording, and

27:40

because of the manifest limitations of

27:42

the piano, he was forced into

27:45

playing what was basically a much simpler

27:48

melody, a much simpler approach to

27:50

improvised jazz than he would normally

27:52

use. He was using a restricted number of keys,

27:54

he was avoiding certain areas of the keyboard,

27:57

he was keeping it quite simple and rhythmic.

27:59

And the point is he could have done

28:01

that on any piano, and yet he

28:03

didn't because it never occurred to him.

28:05

You know.

28:05

He always wanted to use the full range of

28:07

what was available, and it was only when all

28:10

of those options were cut off

28:12

and he was absolutely backed into this corner

28:14

that he discovered this simple style, which

28:17

continues to be his most loved

28:20

work. And I think that's just an

28:22

insight into the way that we

28:24

don't do it unless we're forced to. We often need

28:26

this disruption, we need this problem to

28:28

occur before we find a new solution,

28:31

a new way of solving our problems.

28:33

And that new solution, in this case and in many cases,

28:35

actually involves doing less

28:37

than we've done before.

28:39

And I think this is one of the strategies that Lighty

28:41

Klotz mentions in his book right, which is

28:43

to pretend that you're forced into this, like

28:45

he suggests in a business meeting, and

28:47

when you're trying to figure out some problem, to

28:49

just have somebody on the team say, Okay,

28:52

what if we were forced to take something away?

28:54

What if we were unable to add something and we

28:56

just had to take something out?

28:57

What would we take out?

28:59

Right? That kind of thought exercise winds

29:01

up putting you in the simulated situation where

29:03

maybe you can't add anything else, you got

29:05

to take something away.

29:06

What would be the one thing you take away?

29:08

And the experiment, while it doesn't come to our mind

29:10

naturally, when you kind of strong arm people and say

29:12

no, no, no, you have to pick something to take away, what would that

29:14

be, all of a sudden, the strategies can start

29:16

seeming a little bit more obvious. So that's

29:18

kind of one of my favorite ones, is to ask this question,

29:21

Okay, if I was forced to take one thing away,

29:23

what would that be. It's helped me in my schedule

29:26

immensely right where I'm looking at the month

29:28

ahead and I'm like, there are just too many trips,

29:30

Like I just can't fit all this travel in. Sometimes

29:33

I ask myself, okay, if I had to take one away,

29:35

like if you know, I don't know, some huge deity came down

29:37

as like no o, your's this kind of schedule monster,

29:40

like you have to take one thing out of there? What would it be? Usually

29:42

I have an obvious answer. I'm like, well, I didn't

29:44

want to do that trip. That's the one that's kind of least interesting

29:47

to me, or maybe the least valuable, And that

29:49

can kind of force you to realize like, oh wait, maybe

29:51

I can just take that one out. You don't need the mean schedule

29:53

monster to show up to kind of force you to take something

29:55

out.

29:56

You can make that decision for yourself.

29:58

Yeah, I mean it reminds me we often

30:00

see politicians saying,

30:02

oh, we're going to have a rule that if

30:04

you introduce some new regulation,

30:07

you're not allowed to do that unless you cancel

30:09

an old regulation, a kind of one in one

30:11

out, or sometimes it's one in two

30:13

out. You have to cancel more regulations than you had,

30:16

and to some extent it's a bit silly. I

30:18

used to long, long, long, long, time ago, I

30:20

used to work in regulatory reform at

30:22

the World Bank, and we used to try to measure the burden

30:25

of different business regulations around the world. Fascinating

30:28

work, and we try to be quite sophisticated

30:30

and try to produce all these comparisons.

30:32

So one country could say, well, this is the regulations

30:35

for setting up a business in this country. But if

30:37

you're an entrepreneur in the neighboring country,

30:39

it doesn't take you a year to set up a

30:41

business. It takes you seven days. So

30:44

why is that? What are the stages that take so long

30:46

in one country and that don't exist in another

30:49

country. That's really insightful,

30:51

I think, and informative. But sometimes

30:53

just that simple rule is hey, you've

30:55

got to remove a regulation, figure out what it

30:57

is. Sometimes that's enough that'll do the

30:59

job.

31:00

Another thing that does the job is really trying

31:02

to harness your inner economists and

31:04

to really think about what those active opportunity

31:06

costs are like to really be mindful

31:08

of the other kinds of things you could be doing

31:10

if you were able to subtract something. And

31:13

one of my favorite strategies for that I first learned

31:15

about in Hal Hirschfeldt's great book

31:17

about our time biases. He talks

31:19

about what economists and psychologists have referred

31:21

to as the yes damn effect and how to

31:23

deal with it. And so the yes damn effect

31:26

is probably something that will be familiar to many of our

31:28

listeners. Somebody says, hey do you want

31:30

to do this presentation? Or Hey do you want to

31:32

go to this kind of not very interesting dinner

31:34

party, or hey do you want to sign up something in

31:36

your schedule?

31:37

And you feel kind of bad, so you're like yes.

31:40

Then weeks later that project or that

31:42

dinner party comes up, and that's where you

31:44

say damn.

31:45

And so that's the yes damn effect.

31:47

You say yes to something, time passes

31:49

and then you see it in your calendar and you're like, damn.

31:52

So how do we deal with this?

31:53

Yeah, I mean that's very familiar.

31:55

I know that experience.

31:56

It's not unique to me.

31:58

Yeah. My general kind

32:00

of heuristic is I should just say no to more

32:02

things than I think I should, and over experience

32:05

you learn it, but then you know it's never

32:07

entirely successful. So is there a tick

32:09

that you'd recommend to get more out of this

32:11

yes?

32:11

And the trick is what's known as the no

32:14

yay effect, or you kind of do the same

32:17

thing, except you start by saying no and

32:19

then you experience the consequences later on

32:21

of what that feels like.

32:23

So let's kind of play this out. Lauria, do

32:25

you want to do some project?

32:26

You know?

32:27

To do this date?

32:28

I say no, definitely don't want to do that. But

32:30

I don't stop there. I record

32:32

the fact that I was asked to do this, and so I

32:34

go to that date in my calendar when that project

32:37

I just said no to would have been due, and

32:39

I write in, Hey, Laura, you didn't have to do

32:41

the project this day. And then you get to

32:43

that date in the calendar and you realize, oh, my

32:45

gosh, my day would have been so much worse

32:47

if I had that huge project to do, and

32:49

then you have the experience of yay.

32:51

And so this is the no yea effect.

32:53

And the reason I love it so much is it gives

32:55

you these kind of periodic reminders

32:57

of the fact that saying no had

32:59

a reward, right, Like you are training

33:02

your brain to notice that no doesn't just

33:04

kind of feel yucky in the moment, because I hate saying

33:06

no to stuff. I don't like the feeling of like oh,

33:08

it's wanted me to do it. I feel kind of bad.

33:10

I feel kind of guilty. You're kind of giving

33:13

yourself the opposite emotional reaction

33:15

when that date of the thing finally comes

33:17

up, where you get the moment to remember, oh my

33:19

gosh, I just saved myself this time. I'm so kind

33:22

of proud of myself unhappy. And so the

33:24

no yay effect has been really powerful for

33:26

me because it's helped me like, remember

33:28

how happy I am that I didn't sign up for something.

33:30

In the first I really like that, Laurie. It's

33:32

very it's very clever. I actually have an

33:35

even simpler hack that I

33:37

use all the time. So this works

33:40

if there's someone else to whom you're accountable,

33:42

if you have a spouse, for

33:44

example. And this just going

33:46

back to that original insight about opportunity

33:48

cost, like everything you say yes to is

33:50

getting in the way of something else, And flip

33:53

that around. Everything you say no to every

33:55

time you're invited to some commitment, every

33:57

time you say no to that, you're saying yes

34:00

to something else. So the way I phrase it is

34:02

if I say no to some trip,

34:04

some dinner, some commitment, if

34:06

I say no to that I'm also saying

34:08

yeah, yes to my family. I'm going to be at home.

34:11

I'm going to be spending time with my wife and kids. But

34:13

I don't just tell myself that. I tell my

34:15

wife that, and when I am

34:17

replying to the email, because

34:19

it's always an email, when I'm replying to the email

34:22

saying this is really kind, but I'm

34:25

afraid I can't do it. I just blind

34:27

copy my wife and it's like a little

34:29

note to her, look at what I just said no to,

34:31

because I'm saying yes to you, And it just makes

34:34

it much more positive to me. Slightly

34:36

fills my wife's inbox with my refused

34:39

invitations, but I think that overall she appreciates

34:42

that visibility into the decisions I'm having

34:44

to make every day and saying I'm not going

34:46

to do this, I have something more important waiting

34:48

for me at home.

34:49

I bet that increases marital satisfaction in

34:51

a bunch of different ways. I might have to do this.

34:53

My poor husband's inbox is going to implode with

34:55

all the things I'm saying no too. But

34:58

the cool thing is that there are these ways that we can kind

35:00

of bring subtraction to the forefront. It doesn't

35:02

come naturally, but like with a little bit of extra

35:04

work, scribbling things in the calendar and

35:06

extra BCC on the email kind

35:09

of bring subtraction to light and maybe that will

35:11

make us a little bit happier.

35:13

Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the Happiness

35:15

Lab.

35:16

Well, it's been a pleasure, Laurie, thank you for joining

35:18

me on Cautionary Tales. Dr

35:20

Laurie Santos, as you know, is the host

35:22

of the Happiness Lab.

35:24

And Tim Harford, as you know, host Cautionary

35:26

Tales. Both podcasts are productions of Pushkin

35:28

Industries and are available wherever you get your podcasts.

35:31

Now, this is the last of our planned crossover

35:33

episodes, but it isn't the final time

35:36

that we're going to be collaborating. On

35:38

March the twentieth, Laurie and I are

35:40

going to be teaming up for a special show

35:42

dedicated to World Happiness Day.

35:44

Yes, Tim will be joining me for a chat alongside

35:47

our fellow Pushkin podcast hosts Maya

35:49

Schunker and Malcolm Gladwell. We we'll all

35:51

be considering ideas for making the world a slightly

35:53

happier place, and we hope to see you back

35:56

then.