The Agility Quotient: Why IQ and EQ Are No Longer Enough

0:00Ryan Hanley:Outsourcing taste, to me, seems like a deathstroke to your long-term success. But what's missing, and I think what AI will never replace, is that human sense of intuition. I really believe that what's more important is what you release and what you let go of. How are we going to compete as the world rightfully becomes more driven by AI and more optimized? We all know IQ. Most of us have heard of EQ. How does AQ fit into the equation? And AQ stands for your agility quotient, and it's your capacity to handle change, disappointment, and uncertainty. What got you here won't get you there.

0:39Ryan Hanley:I'd love to start our conversation actually in your first book. And you have this, like the four pillars of spiritual strategy, inquiring inward, manifesting mindfully, enriching your energy and becoming brilliant. I'd love for you to dig into this concept, you know, just maybe break down these four pillars and why the idea of spirituality, which some people have a reaction to, right? Certain people have different perceptions and biases or whatever around this idea of spirituality. Like, why use that term and how does spirituality work into being a leader, being an executive and really growing in our work?

1:24Where it comes from is from lived experience. And when I started thinking about these things, I was working as an executive at a venture fund in New York. And so I was surrounded by all these people who were at the top of their game. This fund is probably actually one of the largest in the world now. And we were early investors in Instagram and Spotify. And I was working with people who were really at the top of their field. and what I noticed is that not everyone was happy. The large lion's share of people who I met who had every reason to feel fulfilled and feel like they had meaning, no matter how much they achieved and how much wealth they created, there was still this missing piece of not even just happiness but even trusting themselves.

2:14And so during my time there, I really tried to compete on sort of the, I don't know what you would call it, but like the way that we all normally do, like what's on your resume. But I just wasn't one of those people. I hadn't gone to Harvard Business School. I hadn't gone to Stanford undergrad. I'd gone to a state school and I was a really unusual person to be at a fund like that. And I realized that the reason why I had earned that place wasn't necessarily because of my degree or my pedigree credentials. it was because I really was in touch with not only, you know, data, information, had a good network, but also I really trusted myself and my intuition, which came from my spiritual practice.

2:56So that's where the four pillars come from, because I think that we are inundated in a world where we have all the information we could ever need at our fingertips, right? Like you can use AI to be one of the greatest venture fund analysts you can ever find, right? Like you can get all the data you want. You can make charts. But what's missing, and I think what AI will never replace, is that human sense of intuition. And I think you can think of it spiritually, or you can even think about it scientifically. They describe intuition as a process that the body and the brain do together, where you can actually process information faster than you have conscious awareness of.

3:36And a great example of this is when people play chess. The great chess masters who have played, you know, thousands of games, they know their next move without having to consciously think through, okay, there's a queen here, there's a knight here, I have this many pawns left on the board. They just feel it. Athletes describe the same thing where, you know, at a certain period of time, you, after a certain period of time, you don't really have to think, okay, what's the right play or the right pass for me to do right now? You just feel it in your body. And we all have that because we've all been living in this world as humans navigating our lives, and we have to trust that.

4:10And so these four pillars are a way to pull us away from our screens, away from social media, away from comparison to other people, and return back to hearing our own voices, which can be really hard because the world is so loud. So even the first pillar, inquiring inward, it's very simple. It's just stillness and silence and solitude. And you actually don't need very much of that, but we are really lacking in it, especially, you know, if you have kids or you're busy or you have employees. When do you ever have 15 minutes just to think? Sometimes it's in the shower or on a walk, and that's why those brilliant ideas come to us in those rare, quiet moments of stillness.

4:54So that's the first pillar, and I think it's actually one of the most important because it's the easiest to do, and once you start doing it, your whole world opens up. And my favorite example of this is with Einstein. And he was known for—actually, wait, let me just start from the beginning. It's been a while since I actually thought about this book.

5:15Ryan Hanley:So I've just been on like an AQ press tour. But yeah, one of my favorite anecdotes of this is with Einstein. And when he was stuck on some sort of really unyielding scientific problem, he didn't spend more time researching. He didn't consult colleagues. He would actually just take a nap. So he would sit in a rocking chair and he would hold two metal balls in his hands. And he would allow himself to drift into that space between sleep and being awake, where things were really quiet and really still. And just as he started to fall asleep, the balls would drop from his hands. They would wake him up with noise.

5:50He would have arrived at the answer to his question. And so we don't all need to just nap intermittently throughout the day in a rocking chair with two metal balls, but it's this idea of creating that stillness in our lives. And you might call that spirituality. Some people call it, you know, forest bathing, meditation, even just exercise. But whatever it is, that's your, whatever it is, we all need a gateway or a path to hearing our inner voice more clearly.

6:17Ryan Hanley:Yeah, but Liz, like we got to be grinding all the time and pushing hard. And if we're not, then we're falling behind, right? Like we got to be doing market research and copying people and figuring out what they're doing and dissecting and implementing new plans and running A-B tests and push, push, push. Or otherwise, don't we just get left behind in this wave and onslaught of activity? How does, like, how can we, if we're still for even five minutes, aren't we falling behind? That is one of the biggest myths that has been perpetuated over the past couple decades. And you see it all the time. I come up through tech culture.

6:53So I have been working in startups since 2008. I, you know, worked at a venture fund for four years. And now I coach CEOs and founders of tech companies. And that myth is one of the biggest disservices that has ever been presented to us, which is the idea that you need to be sleeping in your office. You need to be grinding, hustling, just taking a bunch of Adderall and drinking coffee and putting in more hours throughout the day. But it's not actually about quantity. It's all about pure quality. And that's what I coach my clients on is I think about their brilliance and their genius as a finite resource, right?

7:33It's a gas tank for your car. And if you're constantly running on empty, it doesn't matter how much time you're sitting behind the wheel. You're not going anywhere. You need a full tank. You need to feel at your best self. So I'd honestly rather have, you know, 15 minutes of peak Ryan, right, than six hours of you at your worst when you're depleted, you're not in touch with yourself, you're not thinking clearly. And so I think that the return to this understanding that we are so much more than how much time we log behind our computers is really, really important. especially in the age of AI, where I think it becomes really easy to sit there and just type, type, type and accumulate information.

8:14I think the myth is related to how smart people accumulate, right? You accumulate wisdom, you accumulate contacts, you know, you log the hours behind your desk. But in this new paradigm, I really believe that what's more important is what you release and what you let go of. It's a constant process of not just accumulating information, but also understanding how to unlearn.

8:39Ryan Hanley:I think this is so incredibly relevant to what literally every human, whether it's in a business context or in a personal life context, relationally, etc. This is like the challenge of our age, it seems like. Like the idea of even, like, I like to read. And I like to start my day with reading. And I have a library of books and I've read some I've read five times. I'm always, I always got two or three books going and I just love to read. And I particularly like to start my day reading. And I had someone recently was like, well, if you read for a half hour, then like, you know, isn't that like, what do you, why don't you just like have AI do a summarization of the book?

9:23Ryan Hanley:And, and I, and I've tried to explain to them that even though, you know, I'm reading, I'm not necessarily still in so much as I'm just sitting in my head, the calm, the tactile nature, I use this app called Endel, which is like sound waves for ADHD minds that kind of helps you concentrate, which I've actually found, I wasn't a believer until I started using this app, but I'm an incredible believer in particularly people who may have some hyperactivity, like how sound can really help you focus. And like, even a half hour of that, man, it's almost like a meditative state is just being still in that regard, like not even just going pure calm or doing a walk without headphones.

10:05Ryan Hanley:And even that people will fight. They're like, oh, just get the book summarized via AI. And I'm like, you're almost missing the entire point in my mind. If everything is an AI optimized, summarized version of the thing with just the three key points of, you know, this 165 page, you know, or 200 page, you know, work that someone did. And all you really care about are the five key points. Like one, I feel like you're not retaining it. Two, you're going to really struggle to own it. That it seems more like just an egotistical checkbox that somehow now you can like quote that book in one way that allows you to be smarter at cocktail parties.

10:44Ryan Hanley:And like this, it just feels like the vibration level of every decision we make is just tuned way up. and even people like everybody is like just dialed way up and they can't figure out how to come back down. So if you're one of those people and you're sitting here going, man, this is me. Like I struggle with stillness. Like I struggle with this idea. I feel like I constantly have all this activity in my brain. What is the first step, particularly for maybe say one of your executive coaching clients or a founder who finds himself in this place and is aware enough to know it's not the path, but maybe not educated enough or just hasn't spent enough time with it to start to develop more stillness.

11:32Ryan Hanley:What are some ways that you work with your clients to build stillness into their busy lives? 100%. Well, the first thing I'll say is that we can all feel energy, right? It's not like a, it's not a spiritual woo-woo thing. You definitely know when you meet someone at a dinner party and you sit next to them and you immediately think, okay, this person's running hot. I do not want to talk to this person. Their intensity is amped way up. Or you're like, oh, this person's just like not giving me anything. Like we all feel, and you can walk into a room of 50 people and know what the average energy level is right away.

12:03This is something we're all really skilled at. You know, humans are tribal creatures. We're meant to experience that. And so what I'll say to that is like when I have clients who are way up there, they're running so hot that it's like boiling water, I actually recommend that they take a 24 hour reset. And that's it. They need to go away somewhere. They can't be in their home. They should probably be alone. And all they need to do is be close to nature, have some movement, whether that's, you know, exercise or a hike, and have that stillness, you know, those three S's of stillness, silence, and solitude.

12:39And you don't really need a long time. I mean, I experienced this the other day because I have a new baby. I have a newborn at home. I have an eight-week-old. I've been on book tour. I was on book tour until 39 weeks. I was running so hot. And then I dropped my phone in the bathtub because, of course, I was trying to optimize my bathtub time by taking a bath while also listening to a podcast at one and a half X speed. It was relaxing but also learning. And my phone dropped in the bathtub, so I didn't have a phone for 24 hours until they could mail me one. And that was my reset. I felt so much better afterwards because I wasn't compulsively getting all this data and information streamed at me constantly through my phone.

13:14So it's actually really, it will feel very, very hard for the first six hours, but afterwards your mind will rest in this place where it's supposed to be. And what I think you're saying about books is a real thing because I always say, I heard this somewhere, I don't remember where, but a book is actually a trampoline for your own imagination. So you're reading, right? Like if you get a summary on Blinkist, you don't have that space to bounce off of the book. But when you're reading that tactile book, you're turning the pages, your mind's drifting off a little bit, you're hearing the music, that actually gives spaciousness for your brain and your intuition to think about your own life, even if you don't realize that you're processing it.

13:54That's why sometimes when I'm reading, I really have that stillness. I'll jump up and be like, oh, I have this great idea for my business, or I need to do that. Do you ever have that that experience? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:04Ryan Hanley:Constantly. I actually have an AI agent dedicated to all the crazy ideas that pop into my brain. And that's perfect. And you said it's like meditation. And I think that what you have actually done is created a hack for someone who has ADHD, because for you probably sitting in a room like or underneath a tree for 20 minutes with nothing is not going to be good for you. I also have ADHD, but you're you're getting just enough stimulus, but still enough space for your brain to operate at peak creativity. Yeah, it's funny. Meditation does not work for me. I've tried it a million times. I completely believe that it works for some people.

14:46Ryan Hanley:And so I'm not knocking it. I just that does not work. I've found I need to be doing something but detached from technology. And if it's tactile, that's an added bonus. So it's something like I love to golf and immediately in certain circles, you get the, you know, they just think it's, you know, a bunch of buddies pounding beers and talking crap on a golf course and wasting time. Right. Like, but for me, what I love about it is one, I don't have my phone, right. I'll block that time off. I'll just throw the phone in, in, in the cart and I won't even look at it for, you know, two, three hours, depending on how long I'm playing or whatever.

15:26Ryan Hanley:and then there's a you're in nature but there's also like this tactile experience of having to focus for moments and hit this little tiny ball and try to keep it in the fairway and all the different skills that go into it same thing with like say coaching baseball or going for a run but even even that I lose it a little bit like prayer actually works really well so if I'm if I'm if I'm prayer and, you know, reciting or reading the Bible, say I'm a Christian, like that, that will work. But that pure silence or like without some sort of activity, it's really hard to find that place. Like it's almost like certain portions of my brain need to grab onto something in order for the creative part to have space.

16:14Ryan Hanley:And I guess my question for you in this long diatribe is like, how do you, how does someone figure out their version of this? Is it just kind of F-A-F-O? Is, are there like for certain personality types, there are certain paths that seemingly work better? Like, how do you find that? Because I could, like, you could say, you know, meditation, Ryan, meditation, and I could go meditate and come back and be like, Liz, what the heck, man? Like meditation doesn't work for me. How do we start to figure out what that version of this is because I couldn't agree more with you on this stillness aspect. I think it is the baseline building block of everything else that you teach and really of success in our lives is this idea.

16:57Ryan Hanley:If we can't find this, it seems like we're on a hamster wheel that just goes nowhere. Yeah. I don't actually think it's hard to figure out what the thing is. And I actually, it's funny with my clients, I call it like finding your church. You don't have to necessarily think of yourself as a religious person or you can. But, you know, one of my clients, it came from her where she was talking about how, you know, when she goes to visit the place where she grew up, she'll go sit by the ocean and she's like, oh, that's my church. And then I'm like, okay, well, what is it for everyone else where you can hear that?

17:33And I think that everyone kind of intuitively knows what theirs is. You know, another client, his is going on really, really long bike rides. You know, the more stressed out he is at work, the longer the bike rides will be. And that's just, you know, enough physical activity for him. But it clears his mind in that way. But I think the key to it is releasing our productivity bias. So it's not actually like really a strategic thing. It's more of giving yourself the permission to say, go golfing for two or three hours and know that that is actually the best thing that you can do to refill that gas tank of creativity, of power, of, you know, even, you know, your synapses connecting.

18:15It's a way of just like thinking of your brain as a really pristine being that you really have to care for, right? And it needs time to rest. It's the same thing as like when we take our computers and if you have 80 or 90 browser tabs open, of course your computer is going to crash. And so you just have to shut those browser tabs and know that restarting your computer is the best thing that you can do. You know, there's that urge to just keep working and be like, okay, I'm going to work through this. And so I think it's for everyone accepting that operating at their greatest potential is not the same thing as being your most productive and busy.

18:55We think that they're related, intertwined, but they're very, very different. And so once you give yourself that permission and even force yourself to say, hey, what can I find that's an hour of that stillness a day, then let yourself do that for me. I used to think it was such a waste of time to cook for my family. And I would just think, you know, I live in New York most of the time and I would just think, oh, well, I can, you know, just make something for the kids really easily. And then like my husband and I will have takeout and that's the most efficient thing. And then I realized it's an hour for me that I love that's quiet.

19:31I get to be a little bit creative, especially if I'm making something that I know how to make really well. And I'm like, wow, I can feel my gas tank rising. And so that's a good way to even think about it too, is really keep tabs of that from a quantitative state. So the goal is to wake up and do whatever you can to get yourself to attend energetically, and then have one or two points throughout the day where you're re-upping whatever's in your gas tank. And so if people struggle to, you know, to relax and give themselves that stillness in time, sometimes thinking about that way feels more productive than just saying, okay, I'm going to have, you know, I'm just going to have like two hours where I'm, you know, doing nothing.

20:14Ryan Hanley:I couldn't agree with you more. And guys, you guys listening to this, I think this idea of, I love this productivity bias idea where we've been almost programmed to believe that, you know, TPS ports, TPS reports slid across the desk is more important than the quality of the information on the individual, you know, report or whatever. Like it's, I just, I look at, I think about like, like, you know, obviously mental health is an issue that people are dealing. There's more talk and people with mental health issues today than, than ever before in history. And I'm not a psychologist nor am I trying to maybe diagnose this but it is interesting to think that as as we as more emphasis has been put on efficiency and optimization and total task output our overall mental health at least particularly attached to work has not improved uh that there you know so you know causation doesn't equal correlation and again I don't have studies to go behind this but I'm sure we could go do some research.

21:21Ryan Hanley:But as we become more efficient and AI and automated, and I think those things are very positive. I mean, a big part of my work is helping people remove those things or use automation, AI and outsourcing to get back more of their human time. But like, there definitely is a correlation there. And it feels like, you know, you see your grandmother, you know, spending two hours making a sauce and cooking, you know, this beautiful, you know, spaghetti dinner or whatever. And you're, oh, you know, well, you know, grandma, that was, she also probably had a really solid mental health. She felt very satisfied.

21:59Ryan Hanley:She was cooking for her family. She created this thing. She used her knowledge. She had built up over years making this and little iterations to make it her own from probably her mother or her father, whoever taught it to her, you know, et cetera. And like that time though applied to some, you know, spreadsheet or, or, or, or time audit is going to feel like wasted time, but she probably sleeps well that night. Feels very satisfied with the connection that she has with the people who are eating this food that she made for, you know what I mean? Like there's something there that I feel like as a, we're discounting and it, it, it certainly impacts our personal life.

22:38Ryan Hanley:But I feel like, and this is why I was so excited to talk to you, I feel like this is a big part of our work life that we are not talking about enough. It's just so much optimization, optimization and efficiency. And I really love this argument that that just might not be the best thing for us. I love the example of a grandma making sauce because part of this too is how are we going to compete as the world, you know, rightfully becomes more driven by AI and more optimized, you're seeing this trend where it's actually more important to have a personality now, to have perspectives and opinions. And, you know, you can use AI to do all the things that don't require that, of course.

23:21Like, that's great. Like, I'm a big, big fan of that. I'm a big fan. I'm probably one of the most efficient people in the world. But also it is going to be an advantage to have taste, to have the ability to curate, to know yourself, and to be a little bit of a, you know, to have a counterfactual opinion, to be a little bit of a, you know, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. I'm going to see things differently. And that only comes through lived experience. And so it's taking the long way, I think, is often sometimes the shortest path somewhere.

23:53Ryan Hanley:I love it. I wish that I had this at my fingertips. tips I don't, but I saw this woman who was talking about, she created an Instagram reel, and it just caught my attention around taste versus pastis. Now, first, it caught my attention because I had never heard the word pastis before, so I had to go look that up. And for those of you

24:14Ryan Hanley:creative mimicry is essentially pastis. So you see, you know, you're a painter, and you see Da Vinci and you start, you know, you first start by trying to mimic Da Vinci's style and then maybe you create your own. And her, the point that she was making, and it kills me that I can't remember her name, but I just, I watched this, I watched this like five times, was that we have over-indexed I'm past these at the expense of taste and who we truly, who attracts the most value are the individuals who have taste, the, you know, Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, you know, I mean, who have this, this individual taste.

24:59Ryan Hanley:Maybe there are pieces of their work that were pulled from other things, but, but it was their particular taste that defined the product that they created that drew so much attention to them and that we've AI in particular was her point is really just a pastiche engine. All it's doing is going out, seeing what else has been done and pulling it back into some sort of mishmash based on your prompt. You're not actually it's not creating taste. And that her argument was we need to start indexing back to taste. And, you know, with the pitfall being your taste could suck and it could be terrible and people cannot like it.