 Welcome to the show, Vikram. We're really excited to dig into your book for our audience. I know Johnny and I both really thoroughly enjoyed it. So we not only enjoyed the book, but took a lot out of it ourselves. And I know Johnny and I both in running this show and the training programs, we feel much like yourself. Like we are drowning in information and even feeling anxiety when I unplug from that information stream. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how the book came together for yourself and what you learned about yourself in writing this book because I feel like there was a big part of that in the process as well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, AJ, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be with you guys today and to share some of my thoughts. So the origin of the book, fascinating question, probably more fascinating than you realize. So I started thinking about multidisciplinary thinking in the context of financial bubbles. So my first book was a book called Boom Bustology. It was about how you can use multiple lenses to triangulate and see something that specialists that were focused on it wouldn't see. So an economist will tell you prices are right. And I'm like, yeah, but that's just not true. We know they get far away from right. And they're like, no, they're always right. And I'm like, well, okay, both psychologists, others can help me figure that out. So anyway, I was given a talk about how to think about financial bubbles. And then older gentlemen, he must have been in his 90s, came up to me after the talk and said, hey, Vikram, I'd like to keep in touch. Can I have your email? Sure. Here you go. Thank you, sir. Please do keep in touch. The following year, he sent me an email. He said, you'll never believe this, but your framework was so helpful to me when I received a cancer diagnosis. And I was like, wait, what? My framework was for financial bubbles. And he said, no, you're not thinking about it correctly, nor are you thinking big enough about what your ideas are. What you're suggesting is a way to understand uncertainty. And I was like, wait, that's pretty profound. Wow. The fact that it was helpful to someone in a life-threatening medical situation was really empowering, exciting to me. And so what I ended up doing was I took a couple of year fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, where I got to just step back and think about this stuff. And as I did, what I realized was, in fact, thinking for yourself really is about keeping some of these influences on you in check by triangulating, by using multiple perspectives, et cetera. And so it seemed to be an idea that was bigger than just finance. And the result of that effort of figuring that out and spending time thinking about it is the book. And so that's the origins of it. Now, many of our listeners might not even be aware of what these influences are in our lives. So I'd love to start there because I thought as the book progressed and we started to unpack this, we realized, I certainly realized that there's a lot more influence in my life than I'm even paying attention to. And a lot of it is happening invisible to most of us. I know Johnny's talked about this on past episodes. So what are those main influences? Yeah, so we'll have to start with the fact that we're all drowning in information and data. And as a result of that, we're drowning in choices. And so because there are so many choices being put in front of us, often we believe there is a correct answer. There's an optimal choice. And so we also know we can't get there. We just, we realize we don't know enough about every decision we're being asked to make that we sort of need to find someone to help us get to that optimal choice. There's this fear of missing out on the optimal choice. And so we run headlong into the arms of experts and technologies. But by doing so, what we're allowing is these other, what I call them at points in the book, I refer to them as focus managers. You let them manage where you focus. And so if you go to a doctor who says, okay, you're of a certain age, you should go see a cardiologist, you go see a cardiologist, the cardiologist tells you cholesterol is really important. And so you need to manage your cholesterol. But that's a little bit, so you're focused on a really micro element of something having to do with your health. What turns out you can lower your cholesterol using a statin pretty easily. And it does work. But it doesn't necessarily prevent your risk of heart attack or lower your risk of heart attack. And that's because, you know, taking a foreign substance to lower cholesterol actually interferes with insulin production increases your risk of diabetes. And you offset one gain with another loss and the end is your left where you are. I use that example to show that sometimes we get our focus managed for us. And cholesterol is a great example. Like why do you care about cholesterol? I have no reason why I should care about cholesterol. Other than insofar as it affects other things that I do care about. And so, you know, there's an interesting dynamic where we let people manage what we pay attention to. So at some level, what I'm suggesting is we need to be a little more mindful and take a step back and think about what we're thinking about. I think it's also easy to think in parts rather than systems because we have so much information, we can just zoom in anywhere that we want. Oh, I have a problem here. Well, give me all the information that I could possibly read about this one thing. But we're taking it out of context if it's a complex system. Bingo. The key word you just said there was absolutely great, which is context. Context matters. We become so focused on generating dots that we're forgetting to connect them. And we also don't realize that these experts are framing our thoughts and beliefs for us. And, you know, Daniel Kahneman is an excellent researcher on exactly this subject. And when it comes to medicine, and we'll go a little further in this example, even doctors, when they are explaining treatment, the way they frame the end result will change what they prescribe for you. And many of us don't realize that. We're like, oh, we're just getting the best treatments. Well, guess what? Pharmaceutical companies are pre-framing for the doctors, and then they walk into the room and they pre-frame for you what those results are going to be. And because of that tunnel vision, we oftentimes find ourselves going down the wrong road. Yeah. So let's elaborate on that a little bit for our audience, because I know you had a great example in the book. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, the framing for those that are not familiar with the framing problem, but, you know, if I frame something to a doctor that says there's a 90% chance of success with this procedure, more often than not, the doctor's going to say, let's pursue, let's follow that procedure. If I instead say there's a 10% death rate from this procedure, same, two sides of the same coin, they're going to say, oh my God, 10% death rate, we don't want to do that. And so the fact that framing can change a course of action, despite not presenting new data fundamentally, just framing it differently, really creates, unfortunately, the opportunity for a loss of autonomy on the decision makers part. The framer steals the autonomy from the decision maker, or the supposed decision maker, right? At some point, you can get tautological here. We don't want to do that. But it is hard, because if you're trying to think about it in systems terms, what you realize is the frame actually informs the decision, which if the decision framer realizes that, then they're going to frame it in a certain way to manage you. And so you're not just giving up control over where you focus. At some level, you're being nudged into a decision. And that is really why I'm asking people to take a step back and push back, actually, and title of the book, but think for yourself, right? And we all file into these traps, these mental traps. And whether someone else is influencing us or internally with confirmation bias, where we're only looking for things that reaffirm our beliefs, we can very quickly get wrapped up in the wrong choices for ourselves and also decision paralysis. And I think, as you talked about to start, the plethora of choices available to us. And I think of the classic going to the Cheesecake Factory. And you could sit there for 45 minutes and not make a choice, because you're only on page three of a 30-something page menu. The book highlights that as we've grown with technology and inputs and information, the choices are endless. And we want, of course, to make the right choice. So we'll seek out these influences without realizing how they're framing us and sending us in the wrong direction. So how do we work to take back that autonomy in our decision-making process? Yeah, so some of it, AJ, doesn't matter, right? Like, so I have an example in the book, like, my wife and I stressing out about what movie to watch. Right? I mean, there's a million choices of movies to watch every night on demand, on my favorite, between Netflix, Hulu, Divi, throw on Comcast, or I guess they call it Xfinity Now, whatever. The whole list is overwhelming, Apple TV. I mean, there has to be, given that opportunity set, there has to be the perfect movie for my mood, her mood, this time of day, the weather conditions, the humidity, whether I've eaten sugary food or salty food before I sat down on the couch and what kind of drink I have in my hand. There's a perfect movie for that setting, right? There must be. Why couldn't there be? There's a million movies out there. And yet, the stress and anxiety of thinking about that perfect movie leads to the suboptimal outcome of constantly worrying. So what I suggest is there's times where it's okay to give up autonomy. A movie is a low-stakes decision. Let me just take the Netflix recommendation. It's an hour and a half, two hours. I'll be done. All right, fine. And if I just go with it, yeah, I might get disappointed in watching like that first episode of Black Mirror, which I still can't get out of my head. It's horrible, right? But like, you know, there'll be other times where I'm satisfied. And net-net is probably okay, right? For a low-stakes thing like that. When it gets to higher-stakes decision-making, that's where I really want to see some mindful proactive engagement on the part of individuals say, hey, look, I need to go get a second opinion. Or yes, I understand what you, Mr. Financial Expert, are telling me about my potential chances of retirement at this stage given where we are. But I want to understand the assumptions you're making in forming this assessment. And so I may change my career trajectory, my income objectives, et cetera, if I think differently than you do, vis-a-vis the underlying assumptions. And so I want a more mindful, more engaged, more proactive approach when we're talking about the high-stakes decisions. The low-stakes decisions, it's overwhelming to sort of go through. This takes effort to think for yourself. It really does. And so, you know, watching a movie shouldn't be a taxing endeavor. It should be an enjoyable one. And so make it one. Well, I certainly felt your pain in the book. I've lived that exact experience 45 minutes of searching later. One of us wins and the other one falls asleep frustrated. Exactly. Yeah. A lot of people say they've definitely had similar experiences. So when it comes to these higher-stakes decisions, that triangulation that you talked about earlier, bringing in multiple viewpoints to get a better resolution of the problem at hand, many of us don't know where to go for those other viewpoints because we do fall into the trap. Well, this person's an expert. They're highly specialized and everyone's recommending them. Or technology's advancing. So I'm just going to trust what's on the internet or what's on my phone to give me that resolution that I'm looking for. In these high-stakes decisions, what are your processes for getting to that triangulation and getting a better resolution of the problem? Yeah. So, AJ, the first thing I do is always seek out effectively a devil's advocate logic. So I'm being recommended, I should do this. Okay, wonderful. Let me go see who's recommending the opposite. Or let me suggest that that's the wrong course of action. And let me go read that, read up on that. And so you mentioned earlier in the conversation, the idea of us often falling into this confirmation bias, this is my attempt to suggest, hey, maybe the expert is falling into a confirmation bias and you should go seek to disconfirm by seeking data that contradicts the recommendation. So actually going in the opposite direction, rather than merely seeking confirmatory data. So that's number one. Number two is to actually go out and triangulate laterally and not just the opposite. But okay, you're giving me a choice of I should do A or B. Well, hold on a second. Is there C? Well, nobody talked about C, right? So, okay, I can either take the statin, or I can not take the statin, but maybe I can exercise, or maybe I could actually eat differently. And they're sort of not even, they're sort of orthogonal to the discussion, if you will. And so I think sometimes just expanding the thinking process, zooming out is the way I describe it, could prove constructive to reframing the problem even and understanding your choice architecture as that's been managed for you actually. So I think that's part of it. But it's also just being broader and trying to take a step back and seeing the connections. You know, I think that's important. What do you think would be a reason why so many people are afraid to hear the opposing idea or the information from the devil advocate perspective? For AJ and I, we do that through a lot of our decisions. We both are, we come from different backgrounds. We have a lot of fun with that. And if we both agree, we'll, we'll seek that out together. However, I see it a lot just in my friends alone of how protective they are of, of their ideas. Yeah. Yeah, I think, look, in academia, there's a, there's a belief system that exists that oftentimes the academics, they write a dissertation, they spend four years coming up with ideas, and then they spend the rest of their career defending those ideas, whether they're right or wrong. Right. So there is a little bit of that logic, which is, I, hey, I've got, this is associated with me. I can't change my views now. I put that stake in the ground. Where there are some others who I think are really brilliant in being more dynamic in their thinking as, you know, someone changes their mind, then if the data changes, they change your mind on what do you expect them to do? Right. And the sort of logic seems sound. So I think there's, there's part of that is sort of being a little more intellectually flexible to be open-minded, to abuse opposite your own. That comes with a greater appreciation of context and being more of a generalist than a specialist. Right. So a generalist has this, I would argue, a natural inbuilt humility or humbleness to it, because a generalist realizes that there's an expert on every domain that they may touch on, who knows more than he or she does. And so if I'm a generalist and I'm talking artificial, well, surely there's someone who knows more about artificial intelligence. If I'm talking about, you know, financial products, okay, well, there's someone who knows more than me there. We're talking about educational thought. Well, surely there's someone who knows more than me. And so as a result, they're more open-minded. I think they're naturally more open-minded because they're broader. And if you're broader, you realize your perspective is limited. Your perspective is biased. Your perspective is incomplete. And for that particular domain, there may be someone who knows more than you. So you're more intellectually flexible, I guess, or more willing to be open-minded. I think a big part of what I'm experiencing and COVID is a fantastic example of this is the headlines driving the story and our inability to go beyond just the punchy, oh, it's this result, it's that, and really go a level deeper. Now, experts tend to go so deep sometimes that they trap themselves, as you said, and they can't really back out, sunk cost, fallacy, and, hey, this is my career is on the line. But many of us, as we're trying to reach an understanding, we're getting tossed around by just the headline, the tweet, the sound bite, and not actually getting to that level deeper where we can get a better understanding of, well, what are the upsides and the downsides of these choices that I'm making? Do you see the influence of technology hindering expertise? Because, you know, as we generate these headlines, these sound bites, and it seems like our attention span shrinks, it becomes difficult to even grapple with these bigger decisions we have to make. Yeah, look, Agent, the whole method and mechanisms, the architecture of how we consume information has been changed radically by information technology. And so think of how you consume news. I still, in fact, I have something, I literally read magazines, physical magazines, I go through them. I, people think I'm antiquated. I have newspaper, you can see my officer, I've got newspapers, I've got physical, I flip them. Why is that? Because I'm exposed to different headlines in the process. If you are looking based on the alerts you've pre-programmed as an interest, you're living in your silo of focal points. That's what you've chosen. And by the way, the algorithms know that you've said you're interested in electric vehicles. And you know what, you're going to get every headline related to electric vehicles at the expense of everything else that might otherwise influence your thinking. And so technology has definitely created these filter bubbles, these echo chambers, these areas of real overemphasis. And so you suddenly believe these things are the most important things in the world because that's the only information flow you're seeing. And so I think the technology intermediated news flow, if you will, is motivated by that surveillance capitalism logic of sort of getting you to click, getting you to give up some behavioral data, feeding something that lets me figure out what you're more or less likely to do in the future. And so I get really bothered by the technology, by technology's impact upon our consumption of news. Now there's ways to combat that, right? I mean, so if you're on Twitter and you're following CNN breaking news, why not also follow Fox breaking news? I'm not suggesting one or the other is right. I'm merely suggesting that you're going to confuse the algorithm as to how they categorize you. And therefore, you may get more unbiased information into your feed or, you know, or equally biased, I guess, or balanced bias is probably a better way to put it. And so, you know, proactively using technology to get multiple perspectives, if you're mindful enough to know that the perspectives you're getting all come with an agenda, go get multiple, and you may be able to negate some of that problem. I find it to add to that this idea that you can have a the big idea, you can do all this research, you can put it into a book. But if it doesn't have the PR team marketing it correctly, no one's going to know what's going to get it, no one's going to hear it, which comes down to I was laughing because the cover of your book as simple as it is, it is so perfect. Because it's all you it has everything you need to know what's in this book, just by the cover. Once again, carefully crafted optics and imagery. So you don't have to think about what is this book about? No, it sort of shows the mindlessness of what we've done. Oh, my just complete mindless stuff. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, it's funny, there's a lot of stories in the whole land of GPS, which I find fascinating how people can literally stop thinking about driving, drive on to active runways, little and people drove past signs that said active runway caution, no driving around the barriers going, wait, people almost died. And then following like goat trails up mountains to the point where literally there's been mayors of cities around the world have said, you know, do not use Google Maps. It's not accurate. You will get lost. We will not bail you out. We won't send in the heavy lift helicopter to pick up your van two thirds of the way up a one way trail on a mountain. Well, that's a phrase in your book that has stuck with me since reading it, which is learn dependence turns into bled obedience, which I was like, perfect little sound bite right there, which stuck because now I see it everywhere. Yeah, no, it's unfortunate. Hopefully we're going to combat it a little bit with the book. That one hit really close to home. I was vacation with my fiancee in Sardinia, and we had rented a car and they had to give us cars on the island. And, you know, the roads are very small and the GPS will take you on the small roads. It's not going to pay attention to the large BMW that you're driving. That was the last rental car available. So, you know, I'm following the GPS. And all of a sudden I get in a one way situation where I have to Austin powers the car, back it up, turn it around, tourists are yelling at me. And in that moment I realized, you know, I've given up a lot of my autonomy to technology. I trust the maps on my phone. You know, before my phone, I had to figure it out for myself, and I would pay attention to landmarks and I'd be a little more cautious before just barreling down a highway that takes me to an airport. In that moment, you know, where we are so dependent on technology, do you have checks for yourself that allow you to step away from, as the cover of the book shows, that cliff that the GPS might be sending us on? Yeah, you know, it's a tough question, because I think what I've tried to do is I've been trying, as you've seen and you've heard me speak, I literally, I went and I got a dumb phone. There's no GPS on this thing. There's no way for me to type in the directions and follow it. I have to think about it. And so like I'm working on tricking myself into sort of becoming less dependent. And I think part of that is just becoming more mindful, right? I mean, one of the stories in the GPS thing that I talk about is, you know, a bus driver with a bunch of young athletes coming back from a game takes the bus and runs into a overpass clipping the top of the bus. Fortunately, no one got hurt, but like, and the reason that happened was there was a bus setting on the GPS. And so he felt safe. I don't need to pay attention to underpasses. Historically, all sorts of drivers paid attention to the height of the overpass or underpass or whatever you want to call it. That when you're driving, like, okay, I have a clearance of 14 feet. My vehicle's 13. I'm good. Okay. It's the opposite. The clearance is 13 and the vehicle's 14. We got to stop or we're going to clip the top foot. And yet we're seeing more of those clippings happen actually, right? Indicating less thinking. Now, we've bashed on experts a bit, realizing that being hyper-specialized and hyper-focused, if we're not triangulating, getting more viewpoints that can lead us astray, we've talked about technology. Now, there's a third and many of our clients, especially when it comes to socializing, they gravitate towards this as well, which is rules. And we oftentimes blindly follow the rules that other people have set up for us, whether it's our parents, our teachers, or even the DMV and that insanity, as you point out in the book. In your expertise, how much should we be looking to break rules, flout rules, look for other alternative routes? Because I feel like many times I myself feel boxed in by rules, but that certainly upsets my family when I'm looking to break. Well, the way I would think about it is what I'm getting at is the power of expertise. And expertise can be embodied in numerous forms. In the form of a human being, we'd call that an expert. In the form of technology, it might be a system, an algorithm, etc. In the form of a checklist, it could be a managerial control mechanism, which is really where oftentimes these rules and checklists come into play as a mechanism to control large groups of people and try to, in fact, actively get them to not think. And so I'm going to go in a direction that could be somewhat controversial, but I'll go there anyway, and maybe it'll inspire more listens, which is what the algorithm should be focused on. So take the recommendation relating to masks, like we should all be wearing masks. That's a rule, wear the masks, right? Now, what if you're walking on a beach by yourself, up in Maine, with no one for hundreds of yards around you? Do you still have to wear the mask? The rule is to wear the mask. Now, I would suggest to you the context there allows you to break that rule. There's not a human being around. And so it required you to think about the purpose of the rule. It requires the rule maker to share with you the context and objective of the rule. And so it requires a more thoughtful dialogue about the rule, an understanding of why we have the rule. And it's the same thing that I say, okay, you want me to take this cholesterol reducing medication? Why? What's the motivation? What's the context? What's the belief is what's going to happen? What's the rule? I have to take into account those questions. And so if you understand the context, I mean, Johnny said it earlier, context matters, right? So the context becomes critical. And it's true with rules as well. What's the purpose? And, you know, I think in the book, there's a funny story about my wife and I and our two kids going to a restaurant at like 430. And that's about normal when you have young kids in the suburbs. That's not as odd as you might think. And the restaurant had a couple of tables already seated. And, you know, the guy had a rule that could only have 15 people seated in any half hour period of time. And we would have been 16 if we had actually sat there, would have tipped him over. And so he looks at me and says, I'm sorry, we just can't seat you another half hour. And, you know, I say half an hour with two young hungry kids as it might as well be like two days, come back two days from now. Like, it just doesn't work. And so, you know, I asked him, look, we see the empty tables. Is there something wrong? Do you have a mad rush of reservations coming? Like, what's the problem? He's like, no, it is this rule. We don't break the rule. We're not that kind of place. I said, what? Okay. But can't we just count the two kids as one? We'll have them half a meal each, something like that. No, that's the rule. And it results in some infuriating outcomes. If that host had actually stopped and thought for a minute, the purpose of the rule was to make sure there was a smooth flow of people into the restaurant that no one ended up waiting, that the good positive experience happened, that it was intended to ensure a positive experience for customers rather than this mindless, okay, only 16, only 15 people per half an hour, you would have had a different result there. But that's mindless. That's what happens. And you bring up a great point that a lot of times, those who are setting the rules have ulterior motives that we're not necessarily privy to. And this came up in COVID around the don't wear masks at the very beginning. And it wasn't actually because it didn't protect us or helped us. It was just, hey, there's most likely going to be a shortage for the people who are closest to the problem. But our experts, our leaders wouldn't level with us on the rule. And I find that that's really the most infuriating part when it comes to following rules is if you don't ask why you don't appreciate sort of the structure that that rule is reinforcing, well, of course, it's going to lead you astray. And as we saw now, many of us are struggling to even find masks because some people flattered the rules bottom up in droves. And unfortunately, we saw here in the US, especially that many of our medical professionals didn't get access to it. And how much of that is, you know, the powers that be in the invisible hand going on here, and many of us who want to just break the rules for breaking the rules versus that deeper level of the critical thinking, you know, and I felt the same way in college. We kind of fall into these rules and patterns that others have set for us without even thinking twice. Yeah. So actually, one thing I would say is it's really important to understand the roles these experts have and try to look through to their ultimate objective. So, you know, Joe Nye is a former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School colleague and friend of mine, a mentor in some ways, at least intellectually so. And, you know, he spent a lot of time in government, spent a lot of time advising senior leaders of government, including presidents about how to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. And he described it as such, he said, look, if you had a geopolitical threat emerging, you could understand where everyone in the room would stand on the issue by looking at where they sat. I was like, what? He said, you can understand where people stand based on where they sit. I said, okay, explain it. And so he does. And he says, fundamentally, if we have a conflict emerging, and I turn to the fellow from the State Department, that's where he sits, he sits in state, where does he stand on the issue? He stands that we should be pursuing a diplomatic path. Okay, move on over to the guy from Treasury, where does he stand on how we should deal with this issue? Sanctions. Okay, keep going over to the Pentagon. Where do they stand on the issue? Military course of action. Keep going, et cetera, et cetera. Likewise, I think this phrase really captures how to manage where people, you want to understand where people stand on an issue, look at where they sit. Because that often influences them in more profound ways than we realize. And so coming back to this topic of COVID and masks that you raised, you know, a public health official has one objective. They sit in a perspective that encourages a population level sort of concern. Now, that's not the only way to think about it. They're thinking about transmissible diseases. That's an important perspective, but it's only one piece of the mosaic. What is the mental health cost of having young kids locked up and not see their friends and not be playing sports and be stuck in home on Zoom for hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months? There's a cost. I don't know what it is, but there is a cost. That's not factored into the public health person's perspective. Talk to a mental health person, I bet you they'll factor that in, but they may not care as much about transmission, et cetera. Keep going. What's the cost of a mammogram that was missed? I mean, I don't know, but it's not zero. It's not zero at the population level. What's the cost of a teeth cleaning? If you missed your hygienic appointment, your dentist, you don't get your teeth cleaned. Again, it's not zero. It's something. When we add up all these other things, this whole idea of lockdown actually becomes less obvious. It's a lot more nuanced. I guess that's really what I'm suggesting when we deal with these experts, that we need to understand there's a lot more nuance than gets conveyed to us. As a systems thinker, when you start connecting dots across domains, some of these things are a little more complicated. They aren't as obvious as some of the political types may allegedly be. That comes back to the triangulation of getting multiple different perspectives. We've certainly seen it when COVID hit. Every one of all of our friends turned into epidemiologists right out of the gate because they read from one piece of how this works and what's going on. Now they're all experts and now they're yelling at everybody on social media. As you just mentioned, there are so many other components. How about the psychological point of view? How about the economic point of view? All of those things have to be weighed in to navigate our way through. No matter which direction you're choosing, there is going to be pluses and minuses to it. How are you supposed to calculate what that is if you don't have a full 360 perspective? You're 100% right, John. That's what you need to do. You need to understand that there are two sides of the ledger. You do need to get that disagreement. Actually, disagreement is healthy. A lot of people are like, oh, we're trying to get consensus, so then we know we have agreement. I totally disagree. I actually think you want to seek out the disagreement. You want to find the disagreement. In fact, in the book, I found it here. There's a quote that I used from Alfred Sloan, the chairman of General Motors, which is perfect. He shows up at this meeting making a big decision and everyone is sitting there. He says, gentlemen, I take it, we are all in complete agreement on the decision here. He looks around and the bobble heads on the conference room table, they're all bobbling along. He sees everyone's head nodding. He says, okay, then I propose we postpone further discussion on this matter to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about. It's hard to understand complex decisions without getting that disagreement on the table. These are matters of judgment. If they weren't matters of judgment, they would have been decided. Now, the book outlines a framework for four types of decisions, complex being one of them. You have simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic. Now, many in our audience are in decision maker positions or moving up the career ranks to become a decision maker. Let's unpack that a little bit more because as we've seen many of us immediately seek out technology or experts, now we're learning, okay, we need to broaden our scope when we're trying to solve these problems, but this framework I thought was really powerful. Yeah, so it's called the Cunifin framework. It's not mine. It's designed by a couple other academics and consultants that came up with it, but I find it very powerful, which is why I put it in the book. It's a framework for thinking about the context of the decision problem that you're facing. So what kind of problem set, what kind of problem environment are you in? And it starts off with something simple and simple can be thought of as an environment in which there's a very clear cause, very clear effect, cause, effect, known, visible, simple. Think of it as something software can do. I want to calculate the interest your credit card statement will have on it this month. Okay, we could have people sit there and calculate average balance, or you could say that's just math. We know that we take the average balance, we put the interest rate, we get an interest payment due. Okay, that's simple. We can automate that very quickly. Think about that as rules thrive in an area of simple. Complicated is these existing cause and effect relationships still exist, but they're buried under other cause and effects, and it's really sort of multiple layers and it's hard. Your car, your car stopped working. Okay, maybe you, but not me, could figure out what's wrong. I'm going to turn around and be like, okay, card and work. Let's get someone here who knows cars. Let me get that expert, that expert who's going to say, okay, I'm going to diagnose the problem. Okay, it's not the battery. Okay, it's not the alternate might be the starter. Okay, having this spark plug issue. Oh, this, whatever, they're going to understand all the interacting moving parts, all of which by the way, could be broken down as simple. So multiple simple overlapping and organized in a whole milieu of different ways. And that expert knows how these pieces come together, but they're all simple cause and effect relationships. And so therefore in a complicated domain, you want an expert, right? So an expert's going to help you diagnose a problem. It's in their domain. They're simple cause and effect. You cross a major threshold when you go from complicated to complex. Complex is a situation where moving parts are affecting other moving parts and cause and effect are not stable relationships that something causes something else. The effect causes a different thing to change, which may come back and affect you here. That is really a tough domain. Complex environments require multiple lenses and systems thinking approaches. You have to triangulate. Expertise here can actually mislead because an expert's going to live in a silo and the value is not in the silo. It's in the data that connects the silos. And so connecting the dots, seeing the mosaic is actually what you need here. Think of it as that parable of the six blind men who stumble upon an elephant, right? I mean, the first one grabs the leg and is like, okay, I got a tree. I got a tree. Next one grabs another. Okay, we got a tree. Okay, now they all think it's a tree. Then some guy grabs the tail. He's like, oh, no, it's a snake. It's a snake. You know, another one grabs it, etc. It goes on and on and sort of they get confused. It's only seeing the hole by connecting the dots across multiple perspectives that you get any sense as to what's happening. And likewise, in a complex environment, I would suggest the same thing needs to take place. Every perspective is biased and incomplete and limited. And so we need multiple perspectives to make sense of what we're dealing with. The fourth category in this framework is chaotic. And that's where really, there's no sense of everything's just seemingly random interconnected. You can't sort of make sense of it. It's all chaotic. And the only hope you have there is to break it down slowly into pieces that are complex. And then possibly the hope is gain some understanding to make it complicated, etc. But at least, you know, there's a hope there is breaking it down into pieces. Right. So taking a step back, I feel it's just a common refrain in many of these situations where we're running headlong into, hey, I got to solve this problem. There's a role for experts. There's a role for rules. There's a role for technology. We don't want any one of those three dictating all of our decision making processes or taking our critical thinking away from us. In reading the book and really thinking about my experience in graduate school and being someone who is hyper focused and siloed on cancer biology and in particular colon cancer. How do we zoom out of that and start to become a generalist? You know, many in our audience are exactly that. They are living in that silo. They are paid for their expertise. But as we know, life is going to throw a lot of decisions at us that we may not be the expert in. What are your recommendations for becoming the generalist? Yeah, well, AJ, first of all, the interesting thing is we frame it and we discuss it as a binary outcome. It's not binary, right? I mean, like, you're not expert. You are not, yes, you are expert in something, but that doesn't mean you're not a generalist in other things. And you have different roles. We all wear different hats. I have a professional hat I wear. I have a different hat on a personal level. I have a different hat as a parent, et cetera. And so, you know, this idea that we're either one or the other is a little bit of a false sort of binary belief system. We're a little bit of all in all domains. Nevertheless, your question of how can those that are professionally specialized become more generalist in logic? And here I would say it really has to do with ambition and objective for you and your career. You know, there are plenty of people that I know, especially in the medical profession, and scientific domains, that they're really motivated by a specific problem. I want to see if I can get light to refract in this way to send signals down this path and this efficiency without wavelength dimension, multiplexing or whatever. And so, that's a really interesting scientific motivation that drives them and they're happy to be focused and driven towards that objective. And there's a role for them. Now, if instead that same scientist said, you know what, I'm motivated by running a research lab or I want to run a university, well, then I would say, okay, hold on a sec, you can do your research, develop proficiency and expertise, but supplement it by maybe serving on a faculty committee about the budget or faculty committee on diversity and inclusion on students or mentor different students or possibly even go spend some time with the finance and business side of it, maybe spend some time with the provost, possibly with faculty recruiting, so you learn some HR capabilities and diversify your skill set because your ambition is to get higher into a more generalist demanding role. The generalist role and logic really is at a higher level where you're being tasked with navigating the uncertainty and leading. Large groups of people, if you're content with your research or you're focused in, there's no real reason to push it. And so part of it has to do with ambition and career ambitions and I would say that's important. Nevertheless, everyone I think could benefit from taking a broader perspective on even what they're doing. And so, if you in fact, you are focused on a particular scientific pursuit, why not look at the adjacencies? Okay, so you're focused on optics. Well, what do we get? What can we learn from, you know, electrical signal processing? Or what can we learn from applied physics and other domains? Or, oh, you know what, actually, we're not biology. Let's move beyond just physics. And maybe we can study the physics of different biological systems. Oh, hold on, let's go a little further. Social physics. Yeah, now that's getting interesting. Like, okay, can we quantify relationships between people? Is it understandable? Are you getting into Skinner and some of the surveillance capitalism logic and and Pentland and so, you know, you can diversify slowly and broader. So that's another and then if you're a young professional, not in these domains that are either that lend themselves towards deep specialization, but you can task with a specialized role, what I would say is think of your career as a set of tours of duty. So okay, you got two years as a financial analyst and investment bank. Great, go do it. Do it well. And when you're done, think of it as that tour of duty is complete. Now go diversify your background. Go be a marketing analyst. Go go run operations for a small factory, etc. diversify your skill set so that you can be that generalist over time. Doesn't have to be a specialist or generalist today, but over time you evolve by broadening your experience space. This is what General Electric did when they were developing the world's best general managers. They did it by rotating people in this general as well. You're great at aircraft engine operations, you're a great factory manager, and you're a rising star. Wonderful. We're going to put you in financial services marketing next. Like, wait, what? And they generalize the skill set and they develop a breath that complements their depth. And that's what really helped them navigate. I'm certain that's why GE produced some of the world's best CEOs over many decades. They since lost their way. But, you know, back then they were doing really well. Yeah, that's powerful advice. I know when we think about our career trajectory, we often think about it as a very linear experience, but the data doesn't show anyone's career trajectory is very linear. And that tour of duty mindset of, you know what, I'm going to go, I'm going to pick up the skills that I need, and what can I bring with me onto my next role. And also you start to understand the interplay of how all these systems work together. The other thing I'd say is, don't think of it as a career ladder. Everyone's always thought this ladder image is just wrong. Think of it as a career jungle gym. Okay, so you go up. Maybe it's time to go left. Maybe it's time to go right. Maybe it's time to go down and over then up three steps. I mean, the path doesn't have to be the old, I go work for a company, I take the next step, take the next step, take the... By the way, it could be. I'm not saying it doesn't, that's wrong. That might work for some. I think it works for fewer and fewer, but maybe for some. But I think the career jungle gym is a better analogy than the career ladder. I like that analogy. Now there was a very small section in the book, but it definitely piqued Johnny and my interest because we've talked a lot about the influence of social media on our mental health and well-being. Social media unrest and how what we're seeing in everyone else's highlight reel, realizing that our life may not be that highlight reel, actually the book says could be provoking some of these bigger problems and conflicts that we're facing as a society. That was mind blowing for me because I'm looking at it at a very much personal level and thinking about my own comparison amongst peers, entrepreneurs, et cetera. I didn't really think about the more global influence that this is having and how we're creating this environment where the comparison is leading us astray. Yeah. No, it's a disturbing development to be sure. What I talk about is how social media to begin with we all know is biased, right? Everyone's highlight reel. That's a great way to describe it, but nobody posts negative. Oh, I screwed up this job interview today. I got fired today. Hey guys, I lost this big pitch. I was called in with my boss and I just dropped the ball. People don't post those things, right? My girlfriend don't mean my boyfriend don't. That's not what gets posted. People present positive over biased. In aggregate, that leaves you or the user or the consumer of this information flow feeling on the margin because you live in the real world. You experience ups and downs, but you're seeing a world that's only up for everyone else. If you don't take a mindful approach to thinking about that, you're going to feel like you're being left behind, that the world is better than the one you're experiencing. Now, what happens if everybody feels that way? And we saw this in Latin America and some other places that resulted in mass unrest, really. If everyone feels that they're being left behind. And by the way, I still hear the news flow that, you know, Elon Musk is now the third richest man or this habit. I still hear, geez, everybody else is doing really well. What about me? I'm still worried about my mortgage payment, right? Like this is not fair. The system is broken. So it's fine if I feel that way. But what if everyone at the same time or large portions, 95% of the people feel the same way? Well, then they're going to take to the streets and say, let's break the system. Let's change it. And I sense that is a little bit of what we've had not only in Latin America and around the world with all the social unrest in 2019. But I think, I don't have data to back this up, but I think the lockdowns have exacerbated the feelings. Because as people have been stuck at home during this COVID related lockdown, they've consumed more social media. They haven't changed their posting behavior, still positive disposition. Oh, I've gotten to spend time with my family on this lockdown. It's been great when skiing, we're hiking, we're outdoors, we're biking, great family time. It's been fabulous. What about the person saying, I'm worried about my mortgage payment. I don't think my job's going to be there when this lockdown ends. Or you know what? I've got cut back from five days a week at my job to two days a week. I'm worried about making ends meet. People aren't posting that, but they're feeling it. And when they're feeling it and they're seeing other people have the other, I'm not sure. But I sense when you combine that with the political polarization we've had in America recently, that's a toxic cocktail. And I don't like it. Vikram, there was another phenomenon that your book had brought up and you put together a story of how it affected you. And which is when social media came out, all of us were in this mad scramble to collect followers, to collect the bigger your followers, you can monetize that. And now the more listening and the more attention you get, you're able to take control of what's going on. But the actual fact is, the more followers you have, the more you become a prisoner to your followers and what they expect. And you eliminated that with a story of LinkedIn. If you could share that with us so that our audience can understand how this works. Sure. Look, this was me admitting the whole list of things that I myself fell victim to this logic, right? I mean, so I'll give you the background as this. In 2014, I was told, you need to start writing more so the speakers, we're always paying attention to you have more content, get it out there. So I started writing a weekly piece and I was writing it on my website and it was fine. In 2015, I started putting it up on LinkedIn, which, oh my God, the audience went from like, my mother and my sister reading it when it was on my website to, well, my wife maybe, possibly sometimes. But then it eventually moved over to LinkedIn and started getting hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people reading everything I was writing. And LinkedIn listed me as one of their top voices. Then it went up from 10,000 to 50,000 to hundreds of thousands every week, reading myself, going up to 50, 200, 500,000, 700,000. I'm like, well, this is, and I realized that I would literally go and hit refresh every hour or two to see what the likes and the views and the like shares and the comment count was. And suddenly I found myself writing, not for the joy of expressing my ideas and congealing my thoughts that writing can be powerful for doing, but I was writing what I thought would resonate with others. I became a tool of what I thought the mass sentiment was focused on rather than expressing my own thoughts in my own way. And so I didn't know what to do, but I was really disturbed. I found myself like, this is horrible. Like, what happened to me? I feel like I really lost my way. And like I, you know, still have a smartphone, but sort of don't use it now and move to the dumb phone, start transitioning slowly. I did the same thing. I went away from the weekly writing, and then I just cut it off. I stopped writing because I figured I wanted, and that's where I channeled my energy towards a book instead, because it allowed more contemplation. And, you know, now it's done. I don't like no likes, doesn't matter. It's done. I've gotten my thoughts out. Well, one of the things that that brought up is because here it is, you are a professor, you're very knowledgeable, you're an adult, and you've got sucked into this trap. And, but we're also seeing an overwhelming majority of young people, teenagers, preteens, doing TikTok videos, collecting mass audiences, and now all of a sudden they are expected to put out certain videos and, and, and certain opinions and certain ideas. And it makes it incredibly difficult for them to progress, for them to learn, for them to change, which would encourage their audiences to open up their minds and to be malleable on certain ideas, and, and to change their opinions and become nuanced about things. And it's people, I certainly know of all the people that I follow, what I expect them to say every time a new bulletin comes out. Yeah, look, it's disturbing. I think the digitally native and those that grew up with this sort of social media native is even more problematic because they, they're more worried about the perception than the experience. Right. And so, I mean, I remember there was a Wall Street Journal article that took place right as I was wrapping up the book that said, you know, please like this Instagram photo. I had, you know, my Instagram vacation because I had a professional help me with it. Like, I would sort of wait, what? And there are professional Instagram tours that take place now. Hey, you want to see the sites and get the right pictures in the right way with the right outputs for the right, wait, hold on a sec. What happened to going to see the sites for the sites? Going to see the sites so that you can share with others that they think you have this wonderful world where you say like, it's, we've really lost our way, I think in some, in some of that thinking. You know, what I've done with my kids is we've really tried to discourage as much as possible the social media side of things. We realized we can't, you know, contain them, but also encourage multiple forms of interaction with friends. So it's not just that way. You got to, you know, if you want to follow your friend from school, you're going to still see your friend from school. Right. I mean, that's one way to do it. You can't just go follow random people and live in that random ether world. You got to sort of be in the real world too. And so yeah, I think it's hard. I don't have a great answer there. I don't think any of us do. Exactly. I think we all face it and even I'm sure some in our audience are wondering, guys, you talk about social skills and conversation. Why are we talking about critical thinking? Well, this is an important part of having incredible conversations is developing out a critical thinking tool set to allow you to go a level deeper, to go beyond that boring small talk. And we've felt the pressures ourselves, you know, checking the downloads, checking the reviews and all of a sudden we all do become beholden to your audience. And you lose sight of what it was that actually created the curiosity in you in the first place to write, to record, to shoot the video. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's right. 100% right. Now some in our audience are struggling with the curiosity piece. And we get this question a lot in our mailbag. How can I become more curious? My job as me hyper focused on a problem and outside of that in my social life, I kind of keep to myself. So I'm not as curious about the world or people around me as I should be. And I think as a parent, you're certainly trying to impart this curiosity on your children as well. What is your advice in that situation if you don't find yourself as curious? Yeah. So one of the things that I've done to really spur imagination and therefore creativity, which is related to curiosity, maybe not identical, but sort of related to and is I'm really forcing, in fact, I forced my students at Harvard in an engineering class to read fiction and watch movies. And you're like, wait, what? Yeah, it actually forces you to think differently about the world and sort of incorporate different perspectives. You know, I, for instance, I had my students after thinking about the ethics of decision making and inequality, we had them read Never Let Me Go, which is a novel by Kazuli Shigoro, and there's a book or a movie about as well, which is really shocking. It's sort of like so disturbing. And I won't ruin it for your listeners, but if you haven't read Never Let Me Go, I'd encourage it. It'll really get you to think differently about decisions and sort of inequality and like, I also, in fact, here this morning, I'm reading this book here, I'm reading this book, The Creative Habit by Twila Tharp. She's about so far from my world, I couldn't imagine someone further. And yet there's a connection because of the creativity angle, the curiosity, how does she compose ballet for the world's leading ballet? What does she think about? How does she work? How does she organize her life and day to day to inspire and get creative instincts and those juices of creativity and curiosity going? So that's it. The other thing I find for curiosity development is just having conversations with people that are different than you, actually taking that, and I'm not talking about jumping on a Reddit and asking a question. I'm talking about actually meeting with people that are different than you, friends of friends of friends, random people, and actually having a conversation. What motivates you? Where did you come from? What do you care about? What are your topics of interest, et cetera? And you know, I think that that helps having that curiosity, but I do think fiction encourages people to think differently, broader, wider, you know, same thing with movies, hypothetical scenarios like that. I think that's helpful. Now, we would be remiss in this information age if we did not touch on the misinformation. So there's been a rise in information, but there's also been, and you can blame it on various amount of sources, foreign influence, corporations, you name it. What are your mechanisms that you have to allow you to sort through not only the great information that seems so overwhelming, but the misinformation that we're all flooded with? Sure. Well, look, I think if you take the tools that I suggest are useful for thinking for yourself, there's almost a natural safety check, if you will, in there. If you are of the belief that every perspective is biased, limited and incomplete. Well, then when you see that post that says something so outrageous, even if it has 5 million likes on it, you're not going to just blindly believe it. You're going to stop and think for yourself as a heck. Does it make sense that this presidential candidate would be running a child pornography ring from the back of a pizzeria? That doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe that, rather that, oh my God, look what this person's doing. At some level, it's about thinking for yourself. Just take a step back, triangulate. Every perspective is biased, limited, incomplete, so triangulate. Did I see another source? I also make sure that the information I receive comes from multiple sources. It's not just triangulating. Maybe it's the same data, but it's coming from multiple curated trustworthy sources, as opposed to a social media feed. That may mean I read physical newspapers, they're economists, I flip it every week, but I also, when I'm on Twitter or wherever, I am consuming information from Fox News as well as CNN. I am consuming information from as fringy a source as I can. So oil, I'm looking at the oil market. I'm reading the association for peak oil studies that says we're running out of oil and I'm reading some of the other groups that say there's more oil than we know what to do. I read the fringes because the truth is in between. It allows me to really get an appreciation for the disagreement and understand what's driving it. If I understand what's driving the disagreement, then I can have some sense as to where I feel the topic lenses. So yes, it requires effort. It requires some effort, which is why I think it's important for the big issues, but I do think it's important in order to combat misinformation. If you triangulate, if you're using multiple sources, it's less likely that you will get wrapped into this misinformation. I think it's a great challenge to give our audience as well as to start to think about some of the biases that you're bringing into who you follow and what streams of information you consume and look for, well, what are the opposite viewpoints and can I follow them and can I consume them as well? Because you're so right. The truth is often in the middle, we just don't spend the time moving from our polls right now as we're all feeling this polarization. There's been a real degradation in respect for nuance, which is really, I think, a big problem. Yeah, as we're seeing the rise of TikTok and videos being a minute and 30 seconds and everyone wanting the shortest, quickest burst of information, we have moved beyond 140 characters, but there's no nuance in that 60-second clip. There's no nuance in that tweet and that's lost, unfortunately. You'll love this. I was just reading with my son Fahrenheit 451 recently, Bradbury's book. In it, there's a section where it says people stop reading books, they just wanted the digest of the books. Then they stopped reading the digest because that was too long. They wanted the digest of the digest they didn't even need in the books. My son says to me, is this how we got to Twitter? Yeah. Nine years old. I'm just sort of like, wait, what? Yes, actually, this is problematic. That goes back to that curiosity point. You bring this up in the book when it comes to scientific research that many times some of the most profound developments in complex systems happen with those who are just starting out in their career because they're willing to connect dots that those who are more specialized in siloed refuse to even look for. Having that curiosity of the nine-year-old as you're consuming this information, I think, is a powerful view. That beginner mindset is really critical. It's helpful. We love to wrap every episode with what our guest X-Factor is. We believe an X-Factor is when a mindset and a skill set combine to make you unique and fantastic at what you do. What do you think your X-Factor is? Yeah, I think I'm a global generalist. I think that really has to do with not only perspective, but also approach. Global, I say, because I like to look beyond our borders. I find I learn more about America when I'm with non-Americans when I'm outside the country. Likewise, traveling, as I've done, I'm fortunate to do a lot of. I think it helps improve my sense of what matters, where, and to who, and how things can transpire, how one system that we live within isn't necessarily obvious or certain, and in fact may be perceived totally differently by others. Likewise, the sort of generalist logic suggests that every perspective is biased and incomplete. I'm not an economist, although I've done a lot of economics work. I'm not a political scientist, although, again, I've done a lot there in government policy and related stuff. I'm not a financier, although I've spent some time doing finance. I'm not a, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think what makes me unique, I don't know if it's working, but it's worked for me, is having a global approach and a generalist mindset. That's what I think works for me. I love that. It's a fantastic X-Factor. Thank you for taking the time out to join us on the show and help our audience develop out their critical thinking skills. We really appreciate it and enjoyed the book thoroughly. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.