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1:47

...a podcast where we talk to smart people,

1:50

but not necessarily done by smart

1:52

people. That is an awesome question.

1:55

This one goes down probably on one of my

1:57

top five. Hey, I like nutrition. I

1:59

like to eat...

1:59

This is the coolest thing ever. We're going to

2:02

do this forever. I wish I paid more

2:04

attention in that class. You know, I'm going to be honest.

2:07

I don't understand that. As a man, I just, I

2:09

don't get it.

2:11

Welcome to smart people podcast.com.

2:15

Hello and welcome to smart people podcast conversations

2:18

that satisfy your curious mind. Chris

2:20

Stemp here.

2:21

Thank you for tuning in. I hope your day is going

2:23

well. I hope you're having a good week, enjoying

2:25

the summer. I'm feeling

2:28

bubbly. And the reason is

2:30

I just finished this interview.

2:33

I don't always record the intro

2:36

right after the interview, but in this case I did. And

2:38

just not only such a good vibe, but I

2:41

feel like this information

2:43

can make the world a better place. I

2:46

can't always say that about information.

2:48

It might be interesting, but

2:50

is it transformative? And so I hope

2:52

you enjoy it. And if you do, I hope you

2:54

tell others. That's what I want

2:56

to do with this show. I also want to get

2:58

to know you better. You said this a few times, but

3:00

email me, Chris at smart people podcast.com.

3:04

If you only want to dedicate five minutes, I'd love

3:07

to send you a few questions slash

3:09

survey to see how you engage

3:11

with the show. But

3:12

I'd love to hop on a zoom call for 15, 20, 30 minutes

3:14

with you. If you're down, I'm

3:17

doing that with a listener in one hour. I'm

3:19

going to talk to somebody. So Chris smart people podcast.com.

3:22

This week on the show, we are interviewing

3:25

Christian Modsberg and

3:28

Christian is the author of the brand

3:30

new book. Look how

3:32

to pay attention in a distracted world.

3:35

And in my opinion, this book is a little less

3:37

about what you might think, which

3:39

is distraction, social media.

3:41

It does cover that, but it's about how do

3:44

we observe the

3:45

world, observe phenomena,

3:48

observe the things we enjoy in a

3:50

different way that allows

3:52

us to feel more human, feel more connected,

3:55

uncover and learn more and

3:57

essentially understand our reality.

4:00

It also

4:02

helps because when you understand the

4:04

things that matter to you the most in a deeper

4:07

way, your life changes.

4:09

And I think you'll find that to be the case when you listen

4:12

to this episode. Christian is

4:14

co-founder of the consulting firm, Red

4:16

Associates. He writes, speaks,

4:18

and teaches on the practical application

4:20

of the human sciences. His work has appeared

4:23

in the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Financial Times, et

4:25

cetera. He's written multiple books. He

4:27

is a full-time professor of applied humanities

4:30

at the New School for Social Research in New York,

4:33

senior fellow at the Health and Global Policy

4:35

Institute in Tokyo, Japan, and

4:37

an overall brilliant and

4:39

nice guy. Let's get

4:41

into it, an interview I really enjoyed with

4:44

Christian Madsberg on his new book,

4:47

Look, How to Pay Attention in a Distracted

4:50

World.

4:51

Enjoy.

4:58

Christian, we were just talking about it. It's

5:00

been 10 years ago. I know. 10 years

5:03

since we had you on. Welcome back. Thank

5:05

you. I've heard you made some podcasts in between. A

5:07

couple, just a few. What are

5:09

some of the most impactful

5:11

or memorable things that have happened to you since the 10 years

5:14

we last talked?

5:15

I had three

5:18

children. I wrote a couple of books. I

5:21

sold my company. I

5:23

started a couple of other

5:25

new ones. Wow. There

5:27

was a lot to it, actually, if you think about those 10 years.

5:30

You just made me feel pretty miserable about the last 10

5:32

years of my life. I mean, no,

5:35

I'm kidding. I actually, you said three children?

5:38

Yeah. Well, one was a little earlier, but yeah, I had two.

5:41

Yeah. I got my

5:43

third on the way. So we're living

5:45

at least the same similarities in that. In

5:48

the last 10 years, what is your proudest

5:51

moment

5:52

outside of family? Because everybody feels like they're

5:55

going to say family. So outside of that. I

5:57

mean, I was really proud when I

5:59

sold. my company because it

6:01

was a company made up by humanities

6:04

majors and anthropologists

6:06

that everybody says are difficult

6:09

to hire or difficult to get in

6:11

a give jobs. But we

6:14

showed I think that the mark through

6:16

showing it in the market that you

6:19

could do something really valuable and

6:21

that that group was a very valuable

6:24

group of people. So it was it was

6:26

good for me to say that not

6:28

only the

6:29

things we did in the company were I think

6:32

helpful and and innovative

6:35

but also the market showed it it

6:37

wasn't there's no discussion

6:39

then so I was kind of proud

6:41

of that. Yeah which company

6:43

was this? It was called Red Association

6:46

it is called Red Associates. Okay so you

6:48

don't you don't own it anymore but you're still

6:50

part of it. Not really no no okay

6:53

but it's still a great great firm

6:56

and does really interesting things

6:58

at the highest level so it's

7:00

a fun group.

7:02

It's consulting based on observing

7:05

human behavior or something along those lines? Exactly.

7:08

So trying to understand groups of

7:11

people how they

7:13

act and think and move

7:15

around in the world that

7:18

was sort of the that's the idea and then doing that

7:20

for hospital systems

7:22

or automakers or governments.

7:26

So the leadership teams and

7:28

the sort of the top of those firms the

7:30

boards help them understand

7:32

what's happening to humans and

7:35

you know generally what on earth is happening in

7:37

our culture. Do you feel like your

7:40

new book here is almost

7:42

a direct

7:43

line to that organization?

7:45

I mean it's almost exactly what you all

7:48

did in red is what you're writing

7:50

about here? In a way yes so there's sort

7:53

of two steps between it one is I'm

7:56

a professional observer it's my thing

7:59

and I

7:59

I made a living out

8:02

of it. And then

8:05

when different universities saw

8:08

that this is working, it seems like what you're

8:10

doing is helpful and successful,

8:14

then the question was, can you teach it? Like,

8:17

is it possible to take whatever

8:19

it is you're doing by observing humans in

8:21

their context around the world in

8:23

a sophisticated and organized way?

8:26

Is it possible to teach that at a graduate

8:29

school level? And then

8:31

I went to teach it at the new school

8:33

in Manhattan where I ran a class

8:35

called Human Observation.

8:37

And that class ended up being this

8:40

sort of iconic thing that

8:42

the kids wanted to go through and

8:45

enjoyed being part of. And

8:47

then when I thought, okay,

8:48

that class seemed to work, I

8:50

should write a book about that. So the book

8:53

is basically that class. And

8:55

the class is basically my 25 year

8:58

experience as an observer. So, yeah.

9:00

There you go. So in a way, yeah.

9:03

If you were to try

9:05

to narrow it down to one thing, what

9:07

is it that you do different when it comes to

9:09

observations than the average person?

9:11

In

9:14

the book I call it, look, don't think.

9:17

So it is instead of having

9:20

opinions about things, judging

9:22

things, thinking you know how

9:24

the world works, you record,

9:27

you look, you describe

9:31

before you have opinions. So there's

9:33

this state you could get into as a

9:35

human where

9:38

you observe how other people

9:41

look.

9:41

You look how other people look, you think about

9:44

what other people think. You try to understand

9:46

what's their world like. And

9:48

you can do that in a kind of a pure way. You

9:51

can spend time trying to

9:54

understand,

9:55

observe people observing, basically.

9:58

So there's a level above normal. observation,

10:01

which is the observation

10:03

about how this whole thing works. And I think that's

10:06

what I tried to offer tools for in

10:09

the book and what I've done my whole life really.

10:12

As you were saying that, I realized

10:16

I like to think I'm pretty good at

10:18

quote unquote, reading

10:20

other people, sensing other people. But

10:22

I realized that the way I do that is through

10:25

a lifetime of experiences that I'm running

10:28

these observations through to try to make assumptions

10:31

and hope that they're right, which I feel

10:33

like is completely at odds at what

10:35

you're

10:36

discussing, which is try to observe

10:38

without doing all of that. Is that true? As

10:41

much as you can. It's impossible

10:43

for humans not to have a level

10:46

of assumptions. And we invest up, we're not like,

10:48

we're not looking at other people. Like you could look at bacteria

10:51

or planets or something like that, where

10:53

you can have a view from nowhere, because

10:56

in order to understand people, you have to involve your own

10:58

world and your own experience and emotion.

11:02

But you could try to do it as pure

11:04

as you can. And you can try to arrest your own assumption,

11:07

your own bias, your own experience

11:09

as much as you can in order to just describe.

11:13

So it's a kind of

11:16

a state you can get into that

11:19

we all do all the time, but you can

11:21

be better at it and you can practice

11:23

it. So,

11:26

so what you're doing is what everybody's doing

11:28

all the time. But there is this sort of

11:30

second order or meta

11:33

skill that you also have,

11:36

I'm sure. But that you can also

11:38

practice just like going to the gym or something. You

11:42

said this

11:42

phrase, you said, essentially observe

11:45

and just describe. And I think

11:47

that is a great

11:50

explanation of it. My challenge

11:53

is what do we do with that description? So

11:55

say I'm observing somebody and

11:57

I'm just describing, looks like they're.

12:00

feeling tense here or they look they're

12:02

showing me in their shoulders that they're tense and

12:04

they're this and that

12:07

don't I then have to make interpretations

12:09

about what that means to provide any meaning

12:12

to it? Yes as a second

12:14

step as a crucial second step

12:16

so separating those two is important

12:19

because you did it otherwise you just end up repeating

12:22

your own assumption

12:23

and you see things through the filter of

12:25

your experience and you learn very little. So

12:28

I'm gonna make an assumption here

12:31

most of the time we

12:33

combine observation

12:36

and meaning into one and that is where

12:38

we run into problems but

12:40

if we do those two things but we just separate

12:43

them that's where we might be able to observe

12:45

better. The best we can yeah.

12:48

The best we can. So an example could be

12:50

I asked one of my students one of my students

12:52

was interested in what's it like to be seen

12:56

like being seen by a by

12:58

another person by your teacher something

13:00

like that that somebody sees you

13:02

and we said like how

13:05

could we observe people

13:07

being seen

13:09

like observe it happening

13:11

and we went to a jazz

13:13

club in Manhattan

13:16

and basically observed a jam session

13:19

so here are extremely skilled

13:21

musicians some of them young some of

13:23

them old and they

13:25

of course have a pattern they have the history

13:28

of jazz they have chords and rhythm

13:30

structures and so on but

13:32

if somebody comes in with their guitar and

13:35

they don't know that person how does that

13:37

person what is it like to be

13:39

seen as a musician then and

13:42

what we did all we did was instead of being immersed

13:44

in

13:44

the music instead of being sort

13:48

of doing what normal people would do

13:50

when they come to a jazz club we would basically

13:52

just observe the dynamic between the musicians

13:55

and how people would basically

13:57

it's brutal it's a it's a terrible

13:59

terrifying situation because they're

14:02

so good, everybody's so good at what they're

14:04

doing. So if a new drama comes in,

14:06

the amount of mistakes that drama needs

14:08

to make in order to not be seen,

14:12

or if somebody does something in particular, you

14:15

could see the others react with a sort of

14:17

a gasp because somebody did something

14:19

really cool and did a chord that

14:23

was unusual but fit in or something like

14:25

that. So by just

14:27

recording the dynamics between them

14:29

and around the phenomenon of being

14:31

seen, you

14:33

can start seeing this whole pattern of behavior

14:36

and this whole emotional landscape that

14:38

happens when you are a jazz musician. And it says something

14:40

more general about

14:43

what it's like as a human to be seen and

14:45

how we could see each other. So

14:49

it's the idea that you get into this stance

14:51

of description

14:53

that helps when you

14:55

then later analyze,

14:58

judge, have all kinds of opinions about it. But

15:00

there's this sort of space you can

15:02

capture that's really hard, but you can capture

15:05

it where you just look.

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Fresh for everyone. I

17:23

was just thinking how difficult that

17:26

would be. So I have this

17:28

assumption, I require more

17:30

sleep than I feel like a lot of people. And

17:33

my reasoning for that is because

17:35

I feel like I'm thinking all the time. I'm not

17:37

saying it's a good thing, it's just part of my personality,

17:39

and so I'm using up these energy

17:41

components, right, these calories and whatnot, and

17:44

I need to replenish them. I could

17:46

imagine the same being true for you

17:49

if you feel like observing at that

17:51

level, which is conscious,

17:54

and I think

17:55

so much of what we observe is subconscious

17:57

or unconscious,

17:58

then it just could be time. Is

18:00

that the case at all?

18:02

Yeah, it is definitely. And

18:05

it's not, it is natural in

18:07

a sense, but it's unnatural to stay it

18:09

in that situation too long. But

18:13

yeah, it's definitely tiresome. I've tried,

18:16

especially if it's a culture that

18:18

I don't know so well, being

18:22

in it for, you know, meeting

18:24

someone, following them a whole day, you're just

18:26

smashed in the even. Because

18:29

it's so, there's

18:31

so much intent

18:32

in the way you're doing things. By

18:35

the way, I think people need more sleep than they get

18:37

in general. And I, you know, I've

18:40

seen, I've talked to some of the most

18:42

successful people in the world over the years

18:44

and they say, I can ask,

18:46

I can maybe work three hours a day.

18:49

Like real work. The

18:51

rest is just getting coffee and meeting

18:53

people and moving things around

18:55

the actual, I don't think many people can

18:57

do more than three hours of

19:01

actual work.

19:02

Somebody less. I think

19:05

that's really actually an important, although

19:07

somewhat side conversation, an important thing.

19:10

I was thinking about this the other yesterday. I had

19:12

one

19:13

important task to get done and

19:15

it took almost all day, but that was because

19:18

I had to refuel in

19:20

between deep

19:22

thought. And then when I

19:24

did this thing, I was exhausted. For

19:26

me personally, I judged that. And I think

19:28

a lot of people do judge and say, why couldn't I do it

19:31

faster? Why was this so tiring?

19:33

But maybe it's that if everybody's

19:35

doing that, but nobody wants to admit it. Exactly.

19:38

And when you get people, like really

19:41

successful people that can allow themselves to

19:43

admit it and you, and you

19:45

talk to them for a little while and they open up, they say,

19:47

well, actually I only get started at one. I

19:50

mean, the rest is just spinning wheels. And then

19:52

I have this moment and

19:55

that's all I need.

19:56

So I think

19:58

we're over.

19:59

If you think you can do knowledge

20:02

work and be productive for 10 hours a day, you're probably

20:04

kidding yourself. You heard it here first folks

20:06

and I completely agree. I

20:08

wanted to again, there were some parts of your book

20:10

that really jumped out to me and they fit in

20:13

this conversation we're already having.

20:14

And the book is called Look, How to Pay Attention in a Distracted

20:17

World.

20:19

You say that learning to see our reality as

20:21

it is, as it actually exists,

20:24

is a skill that will change your life.

20:26

How do you believe it does that?

20:28

I've seen it. So

20:31

in

20:32

around maybe 2017, 2018, I

20:35

started noticing something with my students

20:38

because I was teaching this class every

20:40

year and they started saying

20:42

they felt they were languishing. They felt

20:44

that they were distracted. They felt that

20:46

they didn't really get much done compared to what

20:49

they wanted. And it was

20:51

not a new thing, but it was more than

20:53

I'd seen before. And

20:55

I think what we ended up

20:58

diagnosing it as, diagnosing is a medical

21:00

term, but what we ended up thinking

21:02

it was, was abstraction. That

21:06

if you lead a life

21:07

where everything is abstract, you

21:10

lead a life through numbers or through

21:12

a screen or something

21:14

like that, or through

21:16

abstract opinions about the world, you

21:19

don't experience the world directly. It's

21:22

as if you live

21:23

with a window between you and the world. And

21:26

the technique of observation that I'm trying to describe

21:28

in this book, gets you back into

21:30

a direct relationship to the world.

21:33

So you can see

21:37

actually what people are doing, rather

21:40

than thinking you already know and just

21:43

judging them based on that. It's

21:46

so easy to get into this sort of

21:48

abstract relationship to the world if

21:50

you already have opinions

21:52

about everything. And a lot of the

21:55

languishing they felt, I think came from too

21:57

much opinion,

21:59

too many things.

21:59

they already knew, and

22:02

being taught that having opinions and

22:04

making arguments is the core

22:06

of academic skill

22:09

or intellectual skill. And I don't think

22:11

it is. I think observation comes before that.

22:14

And then I could see them transform. I could see

22:16

them relate to the world in a different

22:18

way, much more fresh in

22:21

their relationship to the world. And they still

22:23

write me every week, people that I taught 10

22:26

years ago saying,

22:29

we

22:29

use it every day. This

22:31

refreshing of the attitude towards

22:35

the world. So I think it

22:38

makes them feel better. I think it's

22:40

just healthy to have a more

22:42

direct relationship to the world than

22:45

an opinion-based or theory-based. Why

22:47

do you think it makes us feel better? They

22:49

say that they feel connected again.

22:52

So imagine you live

22:54

in a city

22:56

and you just drone through the city. You do the

22:58

things you do and you never stop

23:01

and just describe what's going on. You

23:04

sit on the town square. I

23:07

live near Union Square in Manhattan

23:10

and I often sit down and just write down what's

23:13

happening with the chess players, like the dynamics

23:15

of it, who comes, who goes, how many

23:17

times they need to lose before

23:20

they leave again, how crushingly good

23:22

the people playing there are. If you

23:25

just describe what's going on,

23:28

you start feeling connected to the place. You

23:31

start feeling connected to it again. I could

23:33

see the worst place I've seen was actually with

23:35

executives. So an

23:38

executive in an auto maker firm,

23:40

let's say a car company, they're so

23:42

far away from people using cars in

23:45

normal ways. That means that

23:47

everything in their world becomes abstract. It's

23:50

market shares and investment criteria

23:52

and all kinds of abstract things

23:55

that you need. But if it's all you have,

23:57

if you have no connection to normal

23:59

people, using vehicles

24:01

in their lives for helpful and important

24:04

things on a normal Tuesday. If

24:06

you have no relationship to that direct experience,

24:09

then all of it becomes sort

24:11

of a mush of

24:14

abstraction.

24:15

And I've seen executives when I've taken them

24:17

and done the things I did with, I just told you about

24:20

with the test players on Union Square. If

24:22

you take an executive and you give

24:25

him a pair of jeans and go to

24:28

a normal place in Virginia, like

24:30

a place in Virginia where people buy their

24:32

cars old and

24:36

figure out what's their life like and what role

24:38

does the vehicles have in their lives,

24:41

then suddenly the world snaps into place and

24:43

becomes much more colorful

24:45

and rich because it's real rather

24:48

than abstract.

24:49

So there's something

24:51

really satisfying and healthy about

24:53

having that relationship to the world.

24:55

I was just having a conversation about

24:57

AI and this idea

25:00

of the matrix. And

25:01

I have this theory. You know, I think a lot

25:03

of people fear that when AI

25:05

gets good enough, we will turn

25:07

into the matrix, right? Literally the movie where

25:10

we're just

25:11

in a pod,

25:12

you know, where we're harvested for energy

25:14

or something. And you can create

25:16

a world that is so realistic

25:19

that will appeal to the human mind.

25:21

It doesn't need actual reality.

25:24

It can just deal with the digital world, the

25:26

metaverse, et cetera. And I have this

25:28

theory that is we are more

25:31

intelligent than that. Our body, maybe

25:33

not our mind, but our soul, whatever you want to call

25:35

it, is more intelligent than that, that it will always

25:37

know that something is missing in

25:39

the screen, in the messing

25:42

with our minds in a way that is not actual

25:45

reality. The reason I'm saying that

25:47

is for some reason what you

25:49

just said strengthens that belief in me, which

25:52

is just we can sense

25:55

when we are not

25:56

living in the world

25:59

as we were meant to. do, and not observing

26:01

in that way and not feeling and sensing

26:03

and being in that way. There's a lot

26:06

of bogus hyperbole going on

26:08

about AI right now. And

26:10

some of it might end up be true, but in

26:12

general, I'd be skeptical when AI

26:15

engineers start philosophizing

26:18

about the questions

26:20

of reality and be too

26:23

clear in

26:25

their opinions because no one knows these

26:27

things. But I'd

26:30

say

26:32

the body

26:34

is part of our and

26:36

core of our perceptual apparatus.

26:39

Without our body, we can't see things

26:42

in space. There is like

26:44

so much less information available

26:47

to be processed when all that

26:49

is is us looking at a

26:52

screen or having light

26:54

projected into our eyes. Our

26:56

bodies are a perceptual

26:58

apparatus

27:00

that gives us a clue about

27:02

how our perception works in general.

27:05

So imagine you can either see

27:08

reality as a dataset, right? So

27:12

color, distance, space, shape, and

27:14

so on. And

27:16

you can then see our

27:19

perception being just taking

27:21

in through our perceptual apparatus, our

27:24

redness and our eardrums, the

27:27

world as it is. And then somehow it

27:30

turns up as a meaningful place.

27:33

Or you could say because we have bodies

27:35

in space usually, we know

27:38

that world. We

27:41

already know what that world is. So when

27:43

you see a table and chairs and so on, you

27:45

don't see, if you see a chair, you

27:48

don't have to see all the data points of the

27:50

chair and then connect

27:52

it to a table. What you see

27:54

is dinner,

27:55

right? And you see the whole social

27:58

human world.

28:00

immediately. You don't have to process

28:03

all the data points to do that. We need much

28:05

much less data than a machine does.

28:08

So it's incredible that anyone would

28:12

think that this meaningful rich world we

28:15

live in can somehow be reduced to

28:18

the intake of data.

28:19

An example, actually a good example,

28:21

is notes. So if you hit on a piano

28:23

you hit a C on a piano and that is

28:27

of

28:30

course a sound wave and

28:33

that sound wave hits your eardrum. But

28:36

if that sound wave is in one chord that

28:38

sounds classical or

28:41

the same sound wave in another chord that sounds

28:43

jazzy, it's completely

28:45

different experiences. One is in the world of

28:47

classical, one is the world of jazz and

28:50

that means that the same input,

28:52

the same sort of data input can be

28:55

in completely different worlds that have very little to do

28:57

with each other in terms of when classical

29:00

music is usually seen as older than

29:02

jazz. Jazz feels like a certain

29:05

point in time. We have a whole human

29:08

understanding of that. So

29:10

that is so rich, so beautiful that

29:13

thinking that that will go away or will

29:16

be out competed I think is... I don't

29:18

think people have good reasons to do that. Yeah,

29:21

I agree with you and this is kind of furthering

29:23

that thought. You mentioned a

29:25

couple of things about why

29:28

learning to see reality as

29:30

it exists can change our life

29:32

and in that discussion

29:34

you talked about how we

29:37

often bring too many opinions

29:40

to the table and we kind

29:42

of feel we need to judge them to have an argument and

29:45

it reminds me of a guess we had on

29:47

a long time ago. I think it

29:49

was an ethics professor and I've used

29:51

this example a couple times he said

29:53

I don't believe we need to have

29:56

opinions

29:57

and I remember hearing that going well that's weird like

29:59

why? He

30:00

said because when almost what you're saying when you

30:02

have them you have to color everything

30:04

through them and I said well What about

30:06

when you have to make a decision? He said don't

30:09

have opinions until you must make

30:11

that decision and

30:12

it's Fundamentally changed the

30:14

way I go about life. I'm not a very opinionated

30:16

person anyways never have been but

30:19

it just furthered

30:21

That belief and I think you're

30:23

talking about that when you have an opinion Oftentimes

30:26

it's human nature to try to support

30:28

that opinion. We don't like to be wrong.

30:31

So this

30:32

Style of observation if

30:35

we can practice it allows us to drop

30:37

it But that is also hard because

30:39

we are predictive machine. So

30:42

how do we balance that? Genetic

30:45

want and need to predict and

30:47

know with the ability to just

30:49

observe

30:50

What I'm trying to offer is a technique to

30:52

do that is a what is a is a way

30:55

to get

30:56

good at that Is it possible

30:58

to do that all the time? Absolutely not?

31:00

You can even if you think about

31:03

it the most basic way if I

31:05

live on for on 13th Street in Manhattan

31:08

and I walk down the street

31:10

normally There I'll see

31:13

Cars and people

31:14

and I would somehow without thinking at

31:17

all just walking through I can somehow

31:20

Find my way two blocks

31:22

later where I need to pick something up Let's

31:25

say so we have this type

31:27

of attention that is almost panoptic That

31:31

where you're not paying attention to anything in particular,

31:33

but you know what things are and you judge

31:35

that's a firetruck That's a school, you

31:38

know and so on and we can

31:40

somehow with With

31:43

very very limited information because we already

31:45

know what they are. We can find

31:47

our way through it Now that's the normal

31:50

everyday experience of attention. That's

31:52

how we pay attention usually Then

31:55

there is another type of attention that everybody talks

31:57

about and want more of what you could call focus,

31:59

right? So that is blurring out everything

32:02

and focusing in on something particular.

32:04

That could be the color of a fire truck, let's

32:06

say, or it could be a particular person

32:08

you see in the street or a dress you like

32:11

or something like that. That's focus. That's

32:13

the kind of attention we say to our children. You

32:15

know, pay attention. We want you

32:17

to focus in on something. Those

32:20

are the two types of attention we mostly talk about.

32:23

There's a third type and that third type I call

32:25

hyper reflection in the book.

32:27

And it is paying attention to how

32:29

people pay attention.

32:31

So you look at how

32:33

does all these other, how does this work? How does

32:36

all these people know how to organize

32:38

themselves so that the kids are

32:40

at home and suddenly they are in school?

32:43

Like

32:43

how did that piece

32:46

of logistics of people finding

32:49

their way through their life, knowing

32:51

what schools are, knowing what streets are,

32:54

knowing what kids are, where they are in

32:56

their age and so on. How does all that work?

32:59

And that's a type of attention that is

33:02

almost like a meta skill or a second

33:07

order type attention. And that

33:09

one is something you have to do. Like that's

33:11

something you make a choice to do it in

33:14

order to figure out

33:15

how does this street work and

33:18

what is a school,

33:20

you know, and fundamentally how

33:22

does all this happen and based

33:25

on what are they doing, what they're

33:27

doing. So that's kind of an attitude

33:30

of description

33:32

because if you start getting

33:34

into the first type of attention, which is the

33:36

panoptic type, you just drone through

33:39

it and you don't

33:40

see any of it. And most of the

33:42

time that's fine, but not in those situations. That's

33:44

what I was going to say. And I think this is where

33:47

one of the clear

33:48

delineations is, isn't

33:51

it true that that is part of

33:54

the human experience

33:56

that it's actually a, it's actually

33:59

a feature number. a bug that we are able

34:01

to observe kind of generally and

34:03

not have to think consciously? You

34:06

could even say, I mean, some people make the argument

34:08

that when we are at our best,

34:11

that's what we do. Like,

34:13

if you see a great basketball player

34:16

or a great soccer player and

34:20

you look at them

34:21

as they're playing masterfully, they're

34:25

not paying attention to anything in particular.

34:27

They just know the patterns of play

34:30

with their bodies. It's not an intellectual

34:32

process. They don't have language for it. That's

34:35

why when you ask them after the match, how did you

34:37

do that? And they don't know because they were

34:39

just completely immersed

34:41

in that kind of panoptic type attention. So

34:44

some people would argue that

34:46

it is actually when humans

34:48

are at their best is in that situation.

34:51

I'm not judging which is better or worse. It's just

34:54

different types of attention. And the

34:56

first type, the panoptic type of attention is a beautiful

34:58

thing. It's extraordinary that we can

35:00

do that. And that's why it's so fun

35:02

to watch basketball. Okay. Give us a

35:04

few scenarios or your favorite

35:07

scenarios in which you think this type

35:09

of observation that we're talking about is most

35:11

helpful. When should we, in our minds,

35:14

because we're all beginners at this now, click

35:16

over and say, ooh,

35:18

I'm going to do what Christian talks about

35:20

now because it's going to benefit me somehow?

35:23

So I have sort

35:25

of one trick

35:26

in my bag and it is coming

35:30

out of a philosophical tradition called phenomenology,

35:33

which is a German, French tradition

35:35

from the 20th century. And the

35:37

idea behind phenomenology

35:40

is that there are phenomena in

35:42

the world. There are social phenomena like

35:44

being seen or like

35:47

playing chess or winning or money,

35:51

let's say. And I think all of

35:54

us are relating to phenomena

35:56

in our work life and our everyday life. So

35:59

let's say you work in a bank. and

36:01

you help people invest their money. If

36:04

you just do that as an abstract thing, and

36:07

you put money to different

36:09

money managers or whatever these people do, invest in stocks

36:11

and invest in bonds and so on, then

36:14

you can do that. But

36:18

you can also have a permanent sort of project

36:20

with yourself. That is, what is money? How

36:25

does this thing work? It really is

36:27

a big scheme in a sense, right? How do we

36:29

call this money? How does it

36:31

work? But also how do people relate to it and

36:34

how do the people I advise relate to it?

36:37

And if you look at money, for instance, there are

36:39

many types of money. There's not just

36:41

money, there are many types. There's fast

36:44

money that you spend on groceries,

36:48

let's say, that you just have a

36:51

transactional relationship to. And then there's a

36:53

different kind of money, which is your children's education

36:56

money, that has a very different experiential

36:59

quality than

37:01

fast money you spend on milk and butter.

37:04

If it's for your children's education, it has a

37:06

different texture to it. And

37:08

so if you're working in a bank and advising

37:10

people like that, studying

37:12

the phenomenon of money, as it

37:15

relates to the experiences of the people

37:17

you are helping and

37:19

working with every day, that gives you

37:22

sort of a whole other texture to it. Picking

37:24

a phenomena that's important to you,

37:27

it could be money, it could be being seen, it

37:29

could be being informed

37:32

about topics

37:34

like

37:37

the ones you're dealing with. What's

37:40

the process and experience of dealing

37:42

with those when it comes from books or podcasts

37:44

or other things? If you follow that and

37:46

you study that in the real world,

37:49

like people doing it, not thinking about it, not

37:52

people writing about it, but actually doing it, then

37:54

you get a whole other relationship to it. So

37:57

the trick is, pick a phenomena

37:59

describe what's

38:02

going on, what the structure of that phenomena

38:04

is as

38:06

it's playing out in normal,

38:08

everyday life. That sounds really hard

38:11

to do. I'll tell you where I'm going. I'm

38:13

relating it to my life as I do on this podcast,

38:15

the only thing I kind of know. I do

38:17

learning and development, leadership development,

38:19

and I do it because I love people. I want

38:22

to help them

38:23

live a better life through information, knowledge, behavior

38:25

change.

38:26

I'm thinking, okay, this is

38:29

need to get better observing people and

38:31

what they want and all that stuff.

38:35

But understanding that

38:38

phenomena,

38:39

observing it,

38:40

internalizing it, leveraging

38:42

that knowledge to change my behavior seems like an

38:44

almost impossible task. I

38:48

don't think it is. I don't know how to do it. I don't think it

38:51

is. I know that's what your book is about and that's where we're going. So

38:54

we talked a little bit about observing

38:57

from a descriptive standpoint. Let's start

38:59

there. What are some key tips on how we can

39:01

do that and make sure we're doing it in the way

39:03

that is best?

39:05

Maybe I could tell a story to

39:08

explain. So at some point, I

39:10

worked with an American, large

39:13

American company that makes

39:15

drinks for us. So

39:17

they make carbonated drinks, sugar

39:20

drinks, teas, all kinds of things. And

39:24

we were thinking about making a big

39:26

push into tea. And coming

39:28

from America, your opinion

39:30

about tea or your assumptions about tea

39:32

is that it's cold, probably peach flavored

39:35

and very sweet. Where

39:37

if you're from China, which is where we were interested

39:41

in figuring out tea because tea is

39:43

from China, I took

39:45

the executives and I basically transplanted

39:48

them into normal people doing normal

39:50

things on a normal day in different

39:53

places in China for a while. And

39:56

one of the things they came back, they

39:58

basically came back just descriptions. Just

40:01

what are they doing? How much are they drinking? With

40:04

whom? When? What

40:06

do they look like

40:09

before? What did they look during? What did they look after?

40:11

So basically just a description

40:13

of the days of the people that

40:16

they were spending time with, that we've sort

40:18

of forcing them to spend time with. And

40:21

then what they came back was lots

40:23

of information about it. And we looked at

40:25

it and one of the executives

40:28

said, what really was different, what's

40:30

really different here on all the

40:32

observations we have is none

40:35

of the

40:36

people relate to tea as

40:38

adding something. Where

40:40

in America we add sugar,

40:42

we add carbonation, we add all

40:44

kinds of things to it in order to pick us

40:47

up

40:47

in a sense, right? To give us a jolt of

40:50

sugar. But

40:52

what they found in China was that tea removes.

40:56

They drink it in order to remove stress,

40:58

to remove toxins in

41:01

their body, to remove effects of food.

41:04

So where Americans look at tea as adding,

41:07

they look at tea as

41:10

taking away bad

41:12

things from your life. So a whole other way

41:14

of thinking about tea. And then they started looking at America

41:17

and looked at tea and said, well, this

41:19

is something people need. They really, really need

41:21

a vehicle with which

41:24

they symbolically and practically can

41:26

take away the things that they'd

41:29

like to get rid of in their everyday life. Which

41:32

is the opposite of what they thought it was.

41:35

So only through forcing them on a

41:39

normal Tuesday, being somewhere with

41:41

normal people, they could see that actually

41:43

we have it a hundred percent wrong what

41:46

we're doing. And we need to rethink

41:47

our approach to what we make, how

41:50

we make it, how we talk about it, all

41:52

of it really, from

41:53

adding things to life to

41:56

subtraction, basically. So

41:59

that's maybe an interesting

41:59

example of just describe

42:02

for long enough until it

42:04

sort of snaps into place and you can

42:06

see our fundamental language,

42:08

opinions, assumptions about this might

42:11

not be completely right and in this case completely

42:13

wrong.

42:14

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Check it out, Marketing Against the

43:04

Grain. Is it possible to do

43:07

this without

43:09

having the ability to

43:11

be in the house, right,

43:13

in this example? And what I mean is, and you talked

43:16

about this, right, if executives are unable

43:18

to see the person drive their car,

43:20

are they able to observe

43:23

at this level? Because this could go across

43:25

anybody. It could go across trying to grow a podcast

43:27

without being able to literally

43:29

observe how people are consuming podcasts. You

43:32

have to do that. You have to get out of your

43:34

office and be in the world.

43:38

It's

43:42

not easy, right, because you have to go

43:44

and do it and kind

43:46

of be hidden in plain sight

43:48

as you do it. But

43:53

I tell you, it's enriching. So

43:56

I had a student who had very,

43:58

very strong opinions. homelessness,

44:01

for instance. And he was working

44:03

in a government agency and he was quite

44:05

negative. And

44:09

he then went, bless

44:12

him, he went for nights and

44:15

walked around New York to

44:18

understand what's it like to not know where

44:21

to sleep tonight.

44:22

And he found that even saying

44:25

sleeping is ridiculous because

44:28

of the light, the smell and the sound

44:31

of the situation people are in when they

44:33

live like that and how dangerous it is.

44:36

So by looking at that, he understood that

44:40

you need a lot of light when you sleep on

44:42

the street. The place smells like

44:44

death. It has like a very clear sort

44:47

of tooth decay kind of smell, which

44:49

is terrifying. And

44:52

the sounds are enormously

44:54

booming at night because of all the construction work

44:57

and trash work and so

44:59

on.

45:00

So suddenly he got into this whole

45:02

other relationship to what homelessness is. And

45:05

he could then start advising on other

45:07

types of policies towards

45:09

homelessness. So he got suddenly a relationship

45:12

to homelessness that was real. It

45:15

wasn't pretty. It wasn't nice

45:17

in that sense, but it was deep and

45:20

it was real. So even he just walked

45:24

four or five nights and talked

45:26

to people and presented himself and had a relationship

45:29

to these people that gave

45:32

him a

45:35

lot of texture, you

45:37

could say, in terms of what it might be

45:39

like to be someone else. Is that the full

45:41

picture? Of course not, but

45:44

it's better than not doing it. And

45:46

in this case, if you have a

45:48

little bit of an innovative mind or

45:50

a commercial mind, it's impossible not to get ideas

45:53

from that. It's impossible not to start thinking,

45:56

how could I serve these people better or how

45:58

could I make something better?

45:59

You mentioned something in your book and

46:02

all of this is coming together.

46:05

You say understanding the social context

46:07

of our world is the most important path you can take

46:09

to arrive at meaningful insights.

46:12

Tell me a little bit about that because as I was listening

46:14

to that story, this social context,

46:16

homelessness is one of those exact

46:18

examples. So tell us about how

46:21

we can understand that

46:23

to arrive at insights. Right.

46:25

There are a lot of people that have a lot of opinions

46:27

about social affairs. And

46:31

people that have never been a teacher have a lot of opinions

46:33

about

46:34

teaching. And people that

46:36

never run a hospital have a lot of opinions about

46:39

hospitals are being run or should be run.

46:42

And a lot of hospital

46:43

managers that have very little

46:46

understanding of what it's like to be a nurse

46:48

or a cancer patient. So

46:51

by using these techniques, you can try

46:53

to do that. You can try to get closer

46:56

to the context of the people that are involved

46:59

rather than assuming all

47:01

sorts of things about it. And

47:03

I've had hospital administrators

47:06

look at what it's like for a

47:08

family to go from not knowing that

47:10

dad has cancer to the father's

47:14

gone. And that whole process

47:17

gives you an understanding of how a

47:20

system, a hospital system can support

47:22

in a meaningful, helpful way

47:24

and when it can't. So you

47:27

got to go and do the

47:30

sometimes unpleasant and sometimes cumbersome

47:32

and sometimes, you know, heavy

47:36

work of direct

47:38

observation of whatever phenomenon

47:40

you're dealing with. And

47:42

that gives you context. And within

47:44

that context, information

47:47

like other types of studies, other kinds

47:49

of science suddenly gives

47:52

you texture. And you

47:54

can understand it's not just 72% feels this or that it

47:56

is why. is

48:00

this data showing up in this way. Right. So

48:03

so it's a it's a it's a thing that it's

48:05

a it's a practice that

48:08

gives you context of the people you're working

48:10

with or what I work for. That makes

48:12

it much easier to process other

48:14

types of data

48:15

and that undermines your assumptions because

48:18

they might be wrong. I was just thinking about

48:21

where I would want to leverage this. And of course,

48:23

one is professional world. One is interest. But

48:25

a big one for me is the people I care most

48:28

about. And as we started off talking about,

48:30

you know, you have children and how

48:32

can we leverage this in our personal

48:35

relationships to

48:37

do the thing that I think is most

48:40

beneficial for others, which is to see

48:42

them and understand them in a way that

48:44

is not just through our lens and

48:46

through our ego and through our selfishness.

48:48

Right.

48:49

Well, you offer people

48:51

your time and attention. So

48:55

let's say it's your kids school.

48:57

I sometimes get furious

48:59

over something with my kids school, but

49:01

I don't allow me to be

49:04

furious before I've had a look.

49:06

So then I ask, can I come and

49:08

sit in the hallway for two hours

49:11

and just see kids and students and things

49:13

being moved around going by? And can I be in a

49:15

class? I won't say a thing. I'm just looking.

49:19

And it gives me an understanding of why

49:21

it is I'm furious. And I might get even more furious

49:23

because of it or I might get less. But

49:26

I at least I offer my attention to

49:30

the things that rob me the wrong

49:32

way or I'm confused about

49:34

or we disagree about in

49:36

some way or another. I think we

49:38

we owe that to each other. I

49:41

think the people on the right in America

49:43

owes the people in the on

49:46

the coasts owes it

49:48

to the people in the center

49:51

to.

49:52

Observe a little bit

49:54

instead of having so many opinions. And

49:56

I think the left owes it

49:58

to the right to. to do that,

50:00

I think the right owes it to the left to

50:03

do that. I think

50:06

we owe it to each other that

50:09

we will take time out to observe

50:13

each other in order to see if we can iron

50:15

out differences. It seems like

50:17

we're moving in the wrong direction in that sense. We get

50:19

more and more fears about each other and listen

50:21

less and less. I think we ought to offer

50:24

our attention for a little

50:28

while before we start

50:30

being so furious about everything. It's

50:34

not just your people in your life, it's also

50:36

politically, in

50:39

terms of all the conflicts we have,

50:42

I think a lot could be solved by just

50:45

looking instead of thinking

50:47

and

50:48

pontificating.

50:51

Looking instead of thinking.

50:55

There you go. I mean, if you had to explain, at least

50:58

from me, if I had to explain in one phrase,

51:01

what is this about? It's that. It's put

51:03

a little bit more emphasis on what you see

51:05

as opposed to what you think and what you think you

51:07

see. Exactly. There's a story,

51:09

I don't know if it's true, but

51:12

there's a story that Ludwig Wittgenstein, who's

51:14

at least a candidate to being the most important

51:17

philosopher in the 20th century, the Austrian

51:20

philosopher. Apparently,

51:23

in the last note in his

51:25

last notebook before he died was

51:28

the last sentence was look,

51:30

don't think. If

51:33

he boiled down his entire philosophy that

51:36

was about embodied experience

51:38

about how humans make

51:41

sense of language, it is that.

51:43

It is start by looking and

51:45

then you can think all you like afterwards, but start by

51:47

looking.

51:49

One of the last things I want to mention is how we

51:51

can do this

51:53

with people who are complex, who

51:55

will do things and say

51:58

things that seem to counteract.

51:59

You mentioned the left and the right. I

52:02

think there's a lot going on there You

52:04

talk about the best observers take note of

52:06

what people say, but they don't put

52:08

great stake in it

52:11

How do we observe? better

52:14

without listening exactly,

52:18

right well

52:21

There's a reason why people say what they

52:23

say and I'm more interested in that reason

52:26

than in what the act what they actually say

52:29

so There's a lot of you

52:31

know in the world of corporations There's a lot of market

52:33

research where people are asked, you

52:36

know, do you like this or that and they

52:38

say they like the red one But

52:41

if you follow that you end up making the

52:43

red one and that might not be what

52:45

they meant in that point so

52:48

There's a lot of emphasis on but he said

52:50

that

52:50

and well he might not have meant it

52:53

So so it's more that you that

52:56

you in that hyper hyper reflection

52:58

type of observation. I'm saying is How

53:00

does that statement fit into how

53:03

this person makes sense of the world? so

53:07

rather than taking the individual

53:10

Statements of someone saying

53:13

that is a part of a data set that

53:15

explains how That person

53:18

makes sense of the world and maybe we need to make it green

53:20

or maybe he meant something else So

53:23

it is it is Listening

53:26

to structure to the structure

53:29

of meaning rather than to the individual

53:31

sound bite And that

53:33

is hyper reflection

53:35

the structure of meaning instead

53:37

of a sound bite. How do we do that? And here's why

53:40

I ask I've always been fascinated by this idea

53:42

of people say they want the red one But they really

53:44

want the green one I think people know

53:47

the story about Steve Jobs used to do that a

53:49

lot

53:50

But I don't know how you can possibly

53:53

do that like I don't know how

53:55

I can hear you say one thing and

53:58

Know you mean the other without

53:59

putting so much opinion

54:03

on it, which is what we're advocating

54:05

against. Right. I

54:07

mean, I had a conflict with my daughter

54:10

yesterday and she said, I

54:12

don't like this dress.

54:14

I said, we just got this dress.

54:16

What are you talking about? I don't like this dress.

54:19

But two days ago, you liked it. I said,

54:21

yeah, I don't like it. And

54:23

then after having gone through three

54:26

different dresses that she didn't like for going

54:28

out somewhere, it turned out it's because she

54:30

didn't want to go out. It

54:32

had nothing to do with the dress. And

54:34

had I taken the statements like, let's get

54:37

a different one, you know, and we ended up in this whole

54:39

conflict about which dress when

54:41

it had nothing to do with dresses.

54:44

So there's sort of, some people call that deep

54:46

listening, you know, which

54:48

is, which is like, listening

54:51

to the world that somebody

54:53

else is in and what that world

54:55

looks like, rather than

54:58

taking whatever is available

55:00

right in front of you and just taking

55:03

grabbing onto that and then fighting over that. So

55:05

it is, how does something

55:07

make sense to someone else rather

55:09

than what are they saying in this

55:11

moment right now? That's,

55:14

that's helpful in coaching.

55:17

I think you do some coaching. I'm sure

55:20

it's helpful in leadership. It's helpful

55:22

just in personal

55:24

relationships that

55:28

the fundamental attitude to observing

55:30

is one of how does

55:33

the world show up

55:34

to this other person or this group of people

55:36

as meaningful? What

55:39

is meaningful? What's not meaningful? How

55:41

does it all work? If you, if you have that attitude,

55:43

you end up not fighting over dresses, but figuring

55:45

out why is it you don't want to, why

55:48

is it you don't want to go?

55:49

And that is, it is a hard skill.

55:52

And I think it also requires, it can't

55:55

be done quickly or

55:57

flippantly, you

55:59

know, cause. you just won't get,

56:01

for a lot of reasons, you won't get enough data even.

56:04

Exactly. I mean, I

56:06

think of it as an attention

56:09

gym, right? That

56:11

you go to the gym and you can run

56:13

fast or

56:14

shoot basketball as well or something like that.

56:17

But attention also requires discipline.

56:20

And it requires that you practice.

56:23

And it's something you have to do every day, just like you need to

56:25

move every day. And we all

56:27

know how to do it, but we're not all good at it. And

56:30

I think you become good at it by practicing

56:32

ongoing. And the

56:34

beginning is find a phenomenon

56:36

that deeply interests you

56:38

and to describe,

56:40

just describe. For

56:42

long enough, until you have, you feel

56:44

a data set where you can start

56:47

seeing patterns. And once you start seeing patterns,

56:50

you can start concluding a little more

56:52

strongly. But that's

56:54

like a gym. And I think it's necessary. It

56:56

makes people feel better. It makes people more effective,

56:59

connected to the world in a different way. Misunderstand

57:02

each other less. It's

57:05

a good thing to do.

57:06

If you were to have to boil down this skill

57:08

into say three specific

57:11

behaviors, what

57:13

would you recommend if somebody wanted

57:15

to observe better? Pick

57:19

a phenomenon, keep it in front of you. Be

57:22

sure you have it when you look,

57:24

that you

57:26

still, if you're looking at being seen at a jazz

57:28

club, you make sure that

57:30

you have that phenomenon in front of you

57:32

when you look. Two, arrest

57:35

your judgment.

57:37

Make

57:39

sure that it creeps up on you constantly, on

57:41

us all the time. But make sure that

57:43

you catch it when it happens

57:46

and put it aside. And three,

57:49

describe

57:50

what you see,

57:52

what you actually see. Not

57:54

what you think you see, not what you want to

57:56

see, but what you actually see.

57:59

My

58:02

favorite book in the world is called The Peregrine, and

58:04

I have a whole chapter about it in the book.

58:07

He observes Peregrine falcons,

58:10

the bird, and he

58:12

uses it as a way to understand the place he lives. He's

58:16

the most masterful poet,

58:19

you could say, the best

58:22

observer I've ever seen. That's

58:25

why I read the book every year. I just love it. But

58:28

it's the best observation of something, because

58:30

he becomes the

58:32

place. When you read the book,

58:34

he becomes a bird, in the sense

58:37

that he's so immersed in the observation

58:39

of this bird, that he

58:41

ends up saying we when it stoops.

58:46

It's a description of a kind of obsession,

58:49

but I think observation

58:52

hinges on a level of obsession. I

58:55

think the best

58:56

executives in the auto industry are

58:58

obsessed about how people relate

59:01

to their vehicles. I think the best

59:04

people that relate to money have

59:08

an obsession about how money works and how this

59:10

whole thing plays out. So

59:12

there's a level of obsession

59:14

involved that can

59:18

be involved, that can drive

59:20

enormous insight.

59:22

I'd say obsession might

59:24

be a fourth out

59:26

of your three, that

59:30

keeping the phenomena in front of you in

59:32

a way where you go deeper

59:34

and deeper and deeper in understanding

59:36

how something works. You know, as you were

59:38

saying that, there's few things in my life

59:40

I feel like I've been obsessed about. But

59:43

one,

59:43

and it just feels like I didn't

59:46

choose it, is sports. And just

59:49

ever since I can remember, I love

59:52

the feeling of it, the internal state of it.

59:55

My primary sport was baseball, and I stopped

59:58

watching baseball, even though I still play softball. and

1:00:00

stuff. I stopped watching baseball about a decade

1:00:02

or so ago. And I was just with some

1:00:04

friends and they had a game on it where we're watching.

1:00:07

And about halfway through, they're

1:00:09

laughing at me. And I said, what? And they

1:00:11

said, you haven't shut up the entire

1:00:14

game. Because to your

1:00:16

point,

1:00:17

the obsession of observation, I mean,

1:00:20

I know like so intricately

1:00:22

every play and every body movement,

1:00:25

every factor involved

1:00:27

that I was observing it

1:00:30

at that level. And that's what you

1:00:33

reminded me about right there and

1:00:35

why you can observe in that way

1:00:38

when you are obsessed because you want

1:00:40

to understand how it

1:00:42

all works. I mean, I know

1:00:44

now I'm just going off on a tangent, but I love

1:00:46

this for this fact.

1:00:48

I was playing golf with my dad the other

1:00:50

day. We hadn't played in six

1:00:53

months because I had back surgery and

1:00:56

I played one of the best rounds ever.

1:00:58

And he said, Chris, I've been watching you play golf for about 20

1:01:00

years and you've never had this ball

1:01:02

flight.

1:01:03

What happened? I said, I changed

1:01:05

my grip. And he said, why? I said, I

1:01:08

went to a PGA tournament a couple

1:01:10

of weeks ago and I just watched every

1:01:13

one of them hit.

1:01:14

And I noticed that

1:01:17

when they made, when the club

1:01:19

hit the ball, it was pressed forward a little

1:01:21

bit. It was so square and the way

1:01:23

it came off. And then I thought about how

1:01:26

did they do that? I looked

1:01:27

at it in comparison to the

1:01:29

way I hit driver and

1:01:32

that was it. And we played five times since then and they've

1:01:35

been some of the best rounds of my life. So anyways, that

1:01:38

is, I am now interpreting what you're talking about

1:01:40

through my phenomenon. Yeah. Anyway, which is

1:01:42

an embodied experience, right? Don't

1:01:45

you feel closer to golf?

1:01:46

Yeah. A hundred percent. Exactly. Yeah.

1:01:49

That's such a, it's so cool.

1:01:52

I say this, people might be listening

1:01:54

going, Chris, I really don't give a shit. And that's fine,

1:01:57

but it's to help maybe put some

1:01:59

context.

1:01:59

around where this can be in

1:02:02

your life. Maybe you just had your aha

1:02:04

about what your obsession is and your observation

1:02:07

and going deeper there and maybe leveraging

1:02:10

that skill elsewhere, places that you want

1:02:12

to improve at or

1:02:14

dig into maybe. And a different example,

1:02:17

if you care a lot about

1:02:19

climate change,

1:02:20

then

1:02:22

take the time to figure out

1:02:24

how people relate to nature.

1:02:27

Like what does nature mean

1:02:29

to people? And observe it, don't

1:02:32

judge. Just observe how people interact

1:02:34

with nature, how people relate

1:02:37

to the outdoors, how

1:02:39

some people have a very abstract relationship to nature.

1:02:41

So climate change is about a graph

1:02:44

issued by the UN. And for

1:02:46

other people, it's about fixing the waterways

1:02:48

down the street, but all of them are

1:02:50

relationships to nature. So the phenomenon is

1:02:52

human relationship to nature. If you obsess

1:02:55

over that,

1:02:56

and look

1:02:57

at it wherever you go, you

1:02:59

end up having a much better understanding in how we

1:03:01

do something about climate change and how people's

1:03:04

behavior around nature can be

1:03:06

a way to inspire

1:03:09

and to do stuff. So

1:03:12

that's what I mean. Obsession can be if

1:03:15

you care about climate change, to study

1:03:17

how people relate to nature on an ongoing

1:03:19

basis. And it'll make you connect to them

1:03:21

in a different way and understand them much better. It's

1:03:24

funny you say that, I mean, I'll plug it here and

1:03:26

I'll tell you just because

1:03:27

you might enjoy it. I created a

1:03:29

new podcast, it's called The Week on Earth. And

1:03:32

I created it with my brother who's brilliant.

1:03:35

And we just wrapped up the first season a couple months

1:03:37

ago. But in it,

1:03:39

we try to do that. So the

1:03:41

first episode is about toilet paper,

1:03:43

but we interview somebody who talks about

1:03:46

the boreal forest, which is where

1:03:48

most of the toilet paper comes from. And

1:03:50

then this woman, amazing storyteller,

1:03:52

talks about the animal species

1:03:55

that call the boreal forest home and what

1:03:57

happens to them when we...

1:03:59

you know, clear cut it for this. And

1:04:02

you can kind of like, if that

1:04:04

relates to you, it will grab

1:04:06

you. Or mail trucks,

1:04:09

there's this big push for electric mail trucks. So in

1:04:11

your neighborhood, when your kids are riding

1:04:13

a bike,

1:04:14

if they smell exhaust fumes, do they have

1:04:16

to? Because it could have been an electric mail

1:04:19

truck if we would just dedicate some money there.

1:04:21

So I think it goes into

1:04:23

what you're talking about. It just gets me more excited

1:04:26

about it. Yeah, sounds like

1:04:28

you're doing it.

1:04:29

Yeah, and it's fun. Well,

1:04:31

Christian, I love this. And I wanna point out

1:04:33

that the book, one of the things

1:04:35

I really like about it is,

1:04:38

and you did it on the podcast,

1:04:40

the storytelling, the way in which you tell

1:04:42

stories that

1:04:44

enable us to understand this idea of observation

1:04:47

is really interesting. And leveraging

1:04:50

the philosophers of

1:04:52

old and where this comes from. I just, I wanna

1:04:55

highlight that for those listening, because

1:04:57

it's not just a

1:04:58

informational

1:05:00

book. It is actually

1:05:02

enjoyable to read, which can be difficult

1:05:05

sometimes for these. So the book is called, Look,

1:05:07

How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World.

1:05:10

Christian, where else can you

1:05:13

point those listening? I

1:05:15

have a website, which is my surname, m-a-d-s-b-j-e-r-g.com.