World-Renowned Psychologist: What If The Problem Isn't You? | Angela Duckworth

0:00Angela Duckworth: I said, Mom, I feel like a failure. And I will quote her directly. You're not a failure. It's a process. Everybody knows you for grit. I think without passion, you don't really develop perseverance. Trying hard is the final common path to human excellence. The brain is use it or lose it and train it to gain it. For our audience, how do they translate that to what do I do on Monday morning? Change your situation in ways that remind yourself of your goals and put things that take you away from your goals far away. If you widen the aperture, it gives you a new toolkit. What's the one productivity hack that you swear by?

0:35Angela Duckworth: Goal fusion means taking that tedious task and fusing it to a higher order task where the meaning is very clear to you. Tom Brady was once doing sprints in a parking lot and he said, I'm winning the Super Bowl. Loneliness is on the rise. Do you think working from home is a bad thing? What I really think is behind the loneliness epidemic is really spending almost all of our time in our homes. If you do not see physically the people that you work with, you will not be friends. And the number one predictor of being happy at work is to have a friend at work. Ask for advice. It's part of human nature to not be able to figure things out on our own.

1:09I could just listen to you for hours.

1:11Angela Duckworth: Hi, I'm Angela Duckworth. Today, I'm reworking with Tim Campbell. What if the problem isn't you?

1:28Hi, Tim here, and this is Reworking. I'm here because I want to help answer the questions that really matter to you about work and help you succeed on your own terms. One of the biggest questions I hear is this. When things aren't going well at work, how do you know whether you need to change yourself or change the situation you're in? Most of us have been taught that the answer is always self-improvement. Be more resilient, be more disciplined, be more productive, work harder, just push through. And while there's value in all of those things, what if the problem isn't a lack of effort? What if the environment around you is making success harder than it needs to be?

2:06To help answer that question, I've invited one of the world's leading psychologists, Angela Duckworth. Angela is a professor, researcher and best-selling author whose work has transformed how we think about achievement. Millions of people know her through her groundbreaking work on grit, the idea that passion and perseverance are key drivers of success. But in her latest research, Angela is exploring something equally important. The role our situations play in shaping our behaviour, our performance and our potential. You'll finish today's episodes knowing when to rethink your environment and how to create the conditions that allow your best work to emerge.

2:41Most importantly, though, it should give you the tools to stop asking what's wrong with me and start asking, what about this situation is helping or hindering my success? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the conversation. So if anything resonates with you, let me know in the comments. Everybody knows you for grit. That's the big thing that you started out, but you've written a subsequent book and you've gone to different avenues with that second book, right? Tell me what you feel somebody who had written or read grit initially and had stayed in the position and gone through. Try harder. They've done the try harder and they feel they shouldn't have tried harder, they should have done different.

3:22What would you say to them?

3:24Angela Duckworth: I think trying hard is great. I think trying hard is the final common path to human excellence because, you know, the brain is use it or lose it and train it to gain it. So as a psychologist who started out studying high achievers, the common denominator that I found is that they were willing and able to invest enormous effort and I think since we're having a real conversation let me just say consistent effort really the mark of high achievers is that they are consistent so they come in Monday but they do it Tuesday and they do it on their good days and they do it on their bad days and they do it for days, weeks, months, years, decades in some cases a lifetime So trying hard is good, but trying hard in a situation where your effort isn't paying off is bad for two reasons.

4:19Angela Duckworth: One is it's like having an investment that's not paying dividends. So you keep putting in effort, you don't get a lot out of it. And the second is that you're a human being and there are no human beings who continue to invest effort where it doesn't pay off. So you will eventually feel burned out. You will eventually feel unmotivated. You will eventually feel disconnected from your work. So the idea that we need to put ourselves in situations with people and in places where effort pays off, that has occupied me for the second half of my career. And what has that given you that you didn't have in the first half?

4:53Angela Duckworth: You know, I think that when you have the complete picture, I mean, if you widen the aperture so that you see everything around the individual, not just yourself, but maybe the people you care about. And one of the things that it gives you is a new toolkit for improving your own performance. But I'd like to begin with my mom because actually, I think for me, it gave me a perspective that made me realize that I have a mother who has always been gritty but was misunderstood even by her own children, including me. My mother immigrated to the United States when she was 24 years old. She came from China with an ambition to be an artist.

5:35Angela Duckworth: She felt like she could not in her native China or later Taiwan where her family moved, become the painter that she wanted to be. So she sailed across an ocean. She landed in a country where she was the first in her family to immigrate. She knew no one. I mean, this is a story of grit, right? What I didn't realize growing up was that I had a gritty mom. Why? Because when I saw my mom, she was cooking, cleaning. Yeah, just my mom. Never talking about art, by the way. Never painting. We never went to art museums. We didn't go to art galleries. And so I didn't understand that my mom was a gritty, aspiring artist.

6:15Angela Duckworth: It wasn't, however, her lack of grit that explained her action and her inaction. It was her situation. And what I mean by that is my dad. So when my mom got to the United States, she met this tall, handsome, and smart man. They fell in love. They danced the jitterbug. They got married. And what happened was that she had a situation where her life partner did not support her work as an artist. He wanted a wife, and he wanted a mother. And so what I want to say about recognizing that everything we do and feel is a function of who we are as an individual and our situations, I think is a paradigm shift that is humanizing.

7:01Angela Duckworth: I now respect my mother's ambition. I recognize her grit. And by the way, when my father did pass, she was able to actually begin painting again. She got an art studio. She paints every day. And I think I now recognize that whenever we judge someone, we're so quick to say, that person's not gritty. This person lacks ambition. When to really understand behavior, including our own, we have to understand the situation. The context, it matters, right? It always matters whether we pay attention to it or not. You talk about aperture. I'm a massive photographer, right? So I want to get a bit more focused.

7:41Angela Duckworth: What a great metaphor then. Oh, perfectly timed. Wide angle lens, you know, portrait mode. You focused on your dad. You focused on your dad. And for you, dad had a recognition folder where he was very clear about this is what's rewarded, right? So for you, what did that do for you? So as I said, my parents both immigrated. And as many immigrants have, they had a kind of like we're going to achieve in this new culture. In fact, that was a motivation for him as well. He wanted to achieve his own ambitions as a chemist. He worked for the DuPont Chemical Company for most of his life, most of his career.

8:18Angela Duckworth: And he really did have a three-ring baby blue binder on the bookshelf of his home office. And on the spine, it said accomplishments. And when you open that binder, it did not have to do with his children's accomplishments. They were literally news clippings, notes from the chairman of DuPont. They were his accomplishments. But I thought it was a great physical metaphor for what he really cared about. So I did grow up in that context in which achievement was more important than anything. Achievement was more important than happiness. Achievement was more important than health. And that really did probably give me my lifelong pursuit as a psychologist, which is to understand, you know, what are the physics of achievement?

9:01Angela Duckworth: And as I said, the first discovery was, wow, the physics of achievement are so much about effort. It's not just natural talent, which my dad liked to talk about a lot, who was smartest, which of the cousins in our family was smarter than me. But I will also say that something that was omitted from those conversations with my dad was the importance of context, was the importance of having the right mentors, being in a school where, you know, all that effort pays off in learning as opposed to in many schools, all effort paying off in almost nothing. the people, the places I think the conversations I had about achievement with my father were useful but I think they were incomplete it really hits me because my mum's above your head right?

9:44Angela Duckworth: the first thing I saw when I walked which is by the way very deliberate I assume she watches over me and she means an awful lot to me because in a similar way to your dad having a folder my mum had my record of achievement we actually called it a record of achievement so she had the accomplishments but yours They were mine, but she wanted me to have a compliment that she could never get. Not because she wasn't clever. What's her story then, if you don't mind sharing? She's from Jamaica, immigrant to this country when she was 16. And she had to work to make sure her children became more than what she was.

10:19That was her driving force.

10:21Angela Duckworth: She was a stepping stone for your ambitions. So the context there was that everything she tried to get me to do, to be gritty, to persevere, to push through. To achieve your potential, yeah. was because she didn't get the opportunity. Right. So she wanted me to be better than her. She wanted you to have a better context than for you. So social mobility. That is a through line for immigrant parents in particular, right? But immigrants in general. So for you, was that the context that you started the grit journey on? It is. And for some people, there may be one person under a rock somewhere. What was grit in a couple of seconds?

10:53Angela Duckworth: Oh, I should say what grit is. I don't think everyone is required to actually know what I've been studying. But grit, I term this combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals. So it is consistency and stamina, but in two dimensions, not just your effort. So that's perseverance for long-term goals, but actually also what you're interested in. So kind of pointing in the same direction, you know, if you're really somebody who's passionate about communicating ideas, then in whatever forms you do it, that is where you're going. if you're passionate about chemistry, as my father was. Everything that he did professionally really was about that aim.

11:31Angela Duckworth: So that's what passion and perseverance is. And what it isn't is giving up easily, not working hard. It's also doing things in different directions all the time. And people don't get very far when they keep climbing new learning curves. So that's where I began as a striver. Even before I was a researcher, I knew I wasn't the smartest in my primary school. And that's not false humility. I mean, I could look to my left and look to my right and I could see other students learning more quickly than I did, more easily than I did. They would just catch on, you know, the teacher would write something on board and they're like nodding and saying yes.

12:10Angela Duckworth: And I'm like, what? How? But I could outwork them, right? So grit is where I began personally as a striver who wanted to be accomplished probably in large part for her father's love. But regardless, I think actually everyone has some level of ambition. And so grit is where I began as a psychologist. Grit is also where I began as a striver herself. So someone who's listening to our conversation, which one's more important? The passion of a destination or just getting through and waiting for that to arrive miraculously? I've gotten that question before, Tim. And it came from a professional football team who I will not identify.

12:52Angela Duckworth: I need to hasten because I'm American. I mean, American football team. I was about to say, which league are you talking about? Yes, we're talking NFL. And the National Football League is maybe as popular in my country as football is here. And the question was, we have a new recruit. We're not sure if we should sign them. And they had evaluated their passion and perseverance. And they said, you know, very high on perseverance, less on passion. Like, which should we care more about? Yes. And I said that if you have passion first, I mean, if you really love what you do, if it is the expression of your personal values, if every day you wake up and you're thinking about it voluntarily, if when you're watching a movie and even you're taking a break, but you sort of spontaneously see connections to your work.

13:42Angela Duckworth: I think that to me is the first foundation of grit. You can learn work ethic. You can learn to take feedback. You can learn to get coached. You can learn to fail. I think without passion, you don't really develop perseverance, at least not in the way that is sustained for days, weeks, months, years, decades. Yeah. And my view, because passion is talked about in the UK all the time. Is that right? Oh, my gosh. I didn't know that. It sounds American to me, passion. Maybe it is. Maybe we've caught that cold. Who knows? But essentially, everyone talks about this passion. And I get slightly irked. And I tell you why.

14:21Angela Duckworth: Yeah, challenge me on this. It's a conversation, right? Because me and my wife have been together 30 years, right? And I want to talk about your version of second marriage as well at some point, right? Yeah. We've been together for 30 years. The first couple of months, I was incredibly passionate about our relationship, as was my wife. Going a couple of years down the lake when I'm leaving socks on the floor, the toilet seat up, etc. The passion sometimes wanes. It goes up and down, right? You're feeling less like that. Less of a fairy tale. But what has always connected us is the purpose that we both share.

14:51We came from dysfunctional households and we made a promise to each other that we would always have clear communication, be honest with each other and do stuff from a place of love, right? So when the passion is crap, just like motivation in a way, what holds us together is the purpose. So the passion is not the prerequisite for me.

15:08Angela Duckworth: I want to challenge you on that because when I define passion, I say it is loving what you do, right? It's pointing in the same direction. It's having loyalty, actually, to some goal that really defines you. Now, I said, you know, that means kind of waking up in the morning and saying like, oh, I want to know more. I'm curious. But it's also purpose. And actually, as a psychologist who studies motivation, I will say that when psychologists use a term that is often used to intrinsic motivation, right? Maybe not use as much as passion. But intrinsic motivation means for psychologists, motivation that comes from the inside.

15:41Angela Duckworth: And it's contrasted with extrinsic motivation. How much will I earn? What are the perks? What will people think about me? Yeah, status, right? Celebrity. And so there's external motivation and there's internal motivation for all of us. But there are two components of intrinsic motivation. One is interest and the other is purpose. feeling like you are part of and in service to an ideal that is larger than yourself. And for many, you know, marriage is their covenant or we're dedicated to this family. It may not be the most interesting thing. It's certainly not always the most enjoyable thing, but it's still part of passion to say that this is what I'm all about, right?

16:23Angela Duckworth: There is a purpose here that we have agreed to, that we have promised ourselves to. So I want to expand our definition of passion beyond this is fun, you know, I really like it. Yeah, I vibe, you know, to very, very much to say that the purpose is part of it, at least from a psychologist who studies intrinsic motivation. Yeah. For our audience, how do they translate that into what do I do on Monday morning? Because Sunday's here, I'm not in the greatest job. I have ambitions beyond where I am now. How do they take that for a Monday morning exercise? Well, if it is Sunday and you're thinking about tomorrow morning, if you're thinking about the next day's work, let's really zero in on that.

17:06Angela Duckworth: Well, you're probably not going to quit tomorrow, right? Although I do think for many people, asking the big question of whether I am in the right industry, am I in the right career, am I working for the right people? Okay, let's just say that that's not what you're going to think about for the next day's work. I will say that there is a technique that was recently developed by a psychologist named Ayelet Fishbot at University of Chicago. She studies motivation as well. And she would say that when you have something tedious to do the next morning, you can fuse the goal of doing the tedious task with a higher level purpose.

17:43Angela Duckworth: For example, I really hate revising PowerPoint slides. It is apparently a necessary part of my job as a professor. and usually for a given lecture I will revise the slides 17 to 20 times and I know that because I rename each file so it's version 1, version 2 and I'm like on version 16 and it's incredibly tedious like oh the font should be two points bigger but oh wait I made it two points bigger on this slide and I now have to go back to the other slides and it makes a difference a small difference but it does make a difference it's part of my job I find it tedious Goal Fusion means taking that tedious task and fusing it to a higher order task where the meaning is very clear to you.

18:23Angela Duckworth: I am a teacher. My job is to share psychological wisdom. So here's how Goal Fusion works. You sit down in your chair and you open your laptop and you open those PowerPoint slides. And instead of having the self-talk of, oh my God, version 18, really? You have the self-talk of, I am sharing psychological wisdom. That is what I'm doing. You create a connection between the tedious task and its higher order objective. And I'll give you one celebrity example. So Tom Brady, the American football quarterback, was once doing sprints in a parking lot. It was before a charity golf tournament. And one of his friends drove in, parked the car, said, Tom, what are you doing?

19:07Angela Duckworth: And he said, I'm winning the Super Bowl. He had fused the task of doing sprints whenever he could in his spare time to this higher level goal. So if it is a kind of a Monday morning like, ugh, you can say, what is the TTS task for? And you can create a connection between that task and the objective, which probably does inspire more passion. Love that because that's a practical thing someone can take away straight away. You can literally do it immediately. And it does work, by the way. And I really do say that to myself when I have to open version 18 and then 19. And I'm like, you know, it's like, what are you doing, Angela?

19:43Angela Duckworth: Oh, I'm sharing psychological wisdom. Well, connecting to something that's bigger than us. Another thing that's bigger than us is the feeling of love. You talked an awful lot about the impact that your aunt and uncle had in your relationship of finding out who you were and what it was connected to. Tell me a bit more about that and why is that important? Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I don't think there is a person who can really be successful and healthy in the long run who doesn't have unconditional love, non-conditional sort of whatever you do, you're still the center of the universe.

20:20Angela Duckworth: Affection from at least one person. And child psychologists, as you very likely know, call this attachment style, right? And the idea is that when a very young child grows up and they try to figure out what the world is like and what their place in the world is like, the best way to make those conclusions is to say, I am attached to a secure foundation. There are people who will love me no matter what. I am the center of the universe. And for me, it wasn't actually my father and my mother. I had this aunt in Chinese, and I'm going to butcher it because I'm Chinese American and I'm terrible. child.

20:59Angela Duckworth: Shao Ayi means little auntie. It was the little sister of my, and then her husband, who I called big man because he was taller than me, but it turns out he's actually, yeah, my uncle big man turns out not actually to be a very big man, but he was when I was growing up because I was very small. And they made me feel like the star of every show. They lit up when I walked into the room. And I feel to this day that to the extent that I am successful and absolutely to the extent that I'm happy and able to have healthy relationships with other people, is that I have that secure attachment. I have the sense that whether it's a good day or a bad day, whether this project is a success or a failure, that I'm enough.

21:39Angela Duckworth: I'm more than enough. I'm amazing. And that's a learned behavior. It is learned and it's not guaranteed. There are other attachment styles. So there is insecure attachment, which is that you don't feel like you're found. You feel like sometimes you're good enough and sometimes you're not. This is when parents and others treat you inconsistently as the object of their affection. And there's another attachment style called avoidant where because of a history of not getting reliable affection, you avoid attachments altogether. These are people who grew up to not have stable relationships. They're not willing to be vulnerable, to be invested.

22:21Angela Duckworth: So I think I have to say I had the benefit of being securely attached, you know, not only to my parents, but especially to this aunt and uncle.

22:37So somebody who is feeling unsure, how do they build up that network? Because lots of people, the studies are quite clear, loneliness is a bigger factor for many people. On the rise, right. Where we should be more connected with all the devices we have. loneliness is on the rise. How is somebody building up that unconditional foundation for themselves, rather than relying on somebody else, whether they're a big or little are?

22:59Angela Duckworth: Well, you can't change the past. I mean, that is one thing that I think should be acknowledged. And you might look back at your child and say, I didn't have secure attachment, right? I didn't have the benefit of these like, loving figures who were there at every turn. And I don't think that's the end of the story. Because the research on attachment shows that attachment style, as it's called, changes. And it changes with your current circumstances. So the question is not what situation were you in? The question is what situation will you be in? And will you place yourself in? You know, I think one of the things that we can do that's really immediately actionable is we can ask ourselves of the people we spend time with right now, you know, who really does bring out our best?

23:39Angela Duckworth: Who makes us feel like we are enough? And who makes us not feel that way? And I'll just give you one example that says it's only minutes old. So I am delighted to be in conversation. It's also stressful. And there are ups and downs for anyone, including this author and this scientist. And I got a text message today from a friend named Katie. And she just was checking in on me. I told her, I was like, I'm jet lagged. And she sent me pictures. And she just sent me this kind of affirmation that made me feel loved. And I feel like if we can just audit our close personal relationships now, maybe we need to spend more time with those people and maybe we can intentionally do so.

24:23Angela Duckworth: And so that to me is something that is the first step. And just to say to young people in particular, because as you know, it's young people who are spending less and less time with anyone. So to begin spending time with people, I think that's where to be at. And then, of course, spending time with people who make you feel good about yourself. I love it because I'm very key about staying by myself. I don't spend an awful lot of time with many people. I'm an introvert. Yeah. I'm an introverted extrovert. I can do all the tap dancing, but I need to be in a dark room by myself. But the audit bit is very interesting.

25:01Because the more successful I've got, the less people I have around me.

25:04Angela Duckworth: Oh, that's interesting. But tell me what you mean by that. Like, are you isolated all day long? Obviously, you have a huge team, right? Yeah. I choose to be quiet. Yeah. Well, I'm not saying that everyone has to be an extrovert, by the way. I don't think when scientists talk about the loneliness epidemic, they're not saying it's an introversion epidemic. Right. Let me ask you this. Like, what is a day in your life like? You know, I know they vary, but, oh, you're married. I mean, like, how alone are you? I think anybody who's a creator spends time alone. But tell me what you mean. Are you really isolated?

25:38Angela Duckworth: Do you not have friends? I have lots of friends. I have lots of, I could be out every single day of the week. What I mean is that where I get my energy from is being by myself. I don't get my energy from being in a pub or like at a party. I can be in the party and I'll be the life and soul of that party. And everyone's like, you're great. Oh my gosh, I made them. But then we say to my son, we say his social battery dies out and we know he's got to go in a corner. I have a social battery. Okay. So again, I think introversion, extroversion is very important. By the way, it's one of the primary personality characteristics that comes out of any personality test.

26:14Angela Duckworth: No matter what tradition, introversion, extroversion, anybody who's taken a personality test, you'll remember you had an introversion, extroversion score. They're two ends of a continuum. I started to even admire the Briggs test and everything. Yes, and that is the first dimension of the four. And by the way, I'm an E, apparently. I'm an extrovert. Although, I think not in all situations. But here's what I want to say about introversion, extroversion. And there is new research on this. So even though it's been studied for many decades, the recent research suggests that it really is about energy.

26:42Angela Duckworth: When you are an extrovert and you go to a dinner party, you're so charged up that you want to have a drink afterwards. If you're an introvert and you go to a dinner party, you're like, now I need to go home and take a nap. So there is something about situations that naturally give us energy and naturally take it away. But I don't think that's what's really behind the loneliness epidemic. What I really think is behind the loneliness epidemic is like we're documented now in very, very strong longitudinal research as a society of really being isolated in more profound ways than about introversion, extroversion.

27:19Angela Duckworth: For example, really spending almost all of our time in our homes. So the number of minutes that we spend out in any way, like taking a walk on the side while going to the store to buy our food, exercising, dining, working, etc., it's all come into the home. Into the home. So physically we're isolated in that way. Inside the home and outside the home, we're less likely to talk to other people. Introverts, by the way, tend not to get their energy sapped from talking to the people they really know best. I mean, introverts don't feel exhausted talking to their wife, you know what I mean? But maybe acquaintances at a party.

27:56Angela Duckworth: But the idea that we are becoming solo livers, you know, in the most profound way, I think that's what we're talking about. And it is, I know it sounds like introversion, but it's not. So do you think working from home is a bad thing then? You know, I have to say. Post-COVID, obviously. Yeah, so I have to say that it's a complex issue. And so, you know, we're in the age where people want you to know, like, thumbs up, thumbs down. But it's more complex than that. I will say this, that at some point, if you do not see physically the people that you work with, you will not have a relationship with them.

28:30Angela Duckworth: Now, it's not up to me to tell you the cadence, right? I think we, you know, for many years had a five-day-a-week. That's how often I see these people. Maybe it's not five days a week. But if it's zero days a week for 52 weeks a year, I will tell you, you will not be friends. And the number one predictor of being happy at work is to have a friend at work, to have a best friend at work. You cannot have a best friend at work that you've never seen, you've never breathed the same air, you've never had a cup of coffee or tea with, you don't know if they have a dog, you've never met their children, you don't know if they're married or not because they're just always on a screen.

29:04Angela Duckworth: So I think some of the conversations, the interactions, and frankly the chemistry that's possible in person, I think it's only possible in person. And so that's, to me, what I feel about remote work. You decide how frequently and in what context you want to see people non-remotely. But if you don't, I don't think you can have the quality of relationships, the creativity, but just the camaraderie that's possible when you do. I really worry because... What do you think? My issue is that we've got great studies that show four days a week are good things in lots of studies around Europe. It's balancing the flexibility.

29:44Angela Duckworth: And by the way, a lot of people, actually most people need to concentrate alone. I mean, to your point about wanting to be alone, the scientist who mentored me in my work on expertise was Anders Ericsson. He's a cognitive scientist and he gave birth to the whole field of deliberate practice. 10 ,000 hours of practice make you great, right? He discovered in his research on chess players, but also people who had very social jobs, like their speakers or their CEOs, they have to do the highest quality practice, the hours that are complete concentration mentally. It's actually quite usually done alone, not with other people, for the simple fact that you can't really, even basketball players, for example, who are at the peak of their careers, they will say that when they're really practicing something that they can't yet do, they have to do it with nobody else on the court.

30:36Angela Duckworth: Now basketball is a team sport, So eventually they have to integrate that. But I do want to say about this kind of like solitude and yes, we need remote in that sense, right? Like if you're being interrupted all day, like how are you ever going to concentrate and do hard things like deliberate practice? But I do think that the trade-off there, you know, is it four days a week for you? Is it three days a week? Or is it that we have an annual meeting because the whole company is remote? But my God, we're all going to fly to this place and we're going to spend the weekend together. I think that's elemental because we're human beings.

31:09You've also said that, your concept around failing, you've said you're not failing, you're trying to grow in a new place, right? For somebody who's listening to this, who feels they're in a difficult position, how do you bring that to life for them?

31:22Angela Duckworth: So I failed, you know, I don't want to, well, quite recently, Tim, actually, or I'd like to say most dramatically, I was writing this book, Situated, and it was going from bad to worse. And it was not for lack of effort, Tim. I don't think you'll meet somebody who's willing to work harder than I'm willing to work. I knew from the second you shook my hand. You know, did I have a grip? Yeah, so maybe that was indicative. But, you know, I had this sabbatical. So I had this time off from my teaching and my professional duties as a professor. And I started working with a, you know, rough outline. and I read hundreds of papers and I wrote and wrote and I had index cards and I had outlines and I found myself digging a hole that was deeper and deeper and I have to say the words that came out of my mouth to my mother whom I called with increasing frequency because I was just a mess I said, Mom, I feel like a failure and I will quote her directly my mother whose second language is English said, you're not a failure.

32:36Angela Duckworth: It's a process, right? And this is what she said. And it was very hard for me to hear, but I do think it's an answer to your question. What did my mother mean? You're not a failure. It's a process. I think when you're failing, all you are seeing increasingly is your own esteem crumbling, your worth, you know? If I can't write this book, then I'm not a writer. Your reputation, your brand, everything. It's everything. And I think when you say reputation and brand, that's kind of from the outside. You know, really my worth to myself. So to really feel like a failure feels like you're not only failing others, like in the most profound way, like your entire self-worth is evaporating.

33:19Angela Duckworth: And when she said it's a process, she actually then explained like when you're making a painting, right, sometimes a painting is what you want and sometimes it's not. Every brushstroke is imperfect. And by the way, after this painting, there's another painting, right? There's always another painting. I think she wanted me to see this really more as a journey than a destination. She wanted me to see that my struggle was a path. I, of course, at the time, didn't want to hear anything of it. None of the metaphors worked for me. But I do think... They never do in the moment, though, do they? In the moment, they were hard.

33:49Angela Duckworth: But, you know, there was a reason I kept calling my mother, right? And to hear it again and again and again and again, you know, you're not a failure. It's a process. You're not a failure. It's a process. Here's another metaphor. You know, that's what we do for the people that we love. And I think those phone calls matter. I don't think it's an instant solution. But I think hearing that again and again from my mother and from other people, and then also being shown a way forward. You know, I got editing help. I got, you know, help from my husband as well as my mother who, you know, started becoming a little bit of an editor herself.

34:18Angela Duckworth: I would send her things. And she's like, well, that's not as good as what you wrote before. And that was helpful. So I think the thing I want to say is that anybody who has really failed knows what I mean when it can be like so emotionally devastating. And to recognize that exactly as you say, Tim, at that moment, all you can see is the failure and you can't see beyond it. And the moment I did say, this is a painting. There will be others. It's going to be imperfect no matter how it turns out. The moment I really embraced it, I think, was a turning point for me. Yeah. The amount of times that I've failed and I've had to step outside of the narrow view.

35:02Can you tell?

35:03Angela Duckworth: Now, you extracted a failure story from me. So do I get one? Of course. It's only failure, right? Yeah. One for one. My mom would say, exchange is no robbery. That's right. After winning a television show in the UK, I was on a platform. I could go anywhere, do lots of things. People wanted me at the table because I was popular. I then spun out of the vehicle I was in and launched my own very first company. And within six months, I'd burnt through all the cash and it collapsed. I drove to a very interesting, not very sexy or glamorous beach and was crying in a bowl of muscles thinking about how to have to sell my very fast motorbike in order to get me out of the situation I was in.

35:43And I realized in that moment, I'm quite religious, more spiritual. in that moment I hadn't done everything to mitigate the position I was in and also my arrogance had led me there I believe that I could do everything on my own yeah and I think I needed a lesson as profound as failing to teach me to rein back the things that were never going to serve me well and focus on the things that were going to save me well and what really was powerful what you said was connecting with people who just like your very creative mum could tell me there was a chance to go again.

36:19Angela Duckworth: And it wasn't about this moment because in my very tunnel view. Right. And you're like cognitively narrowed sort of like, I can't see anything. Oh my gosh. The world was ending. And the reason I gave you the external point because I was measured by the external points. So everybody was going to say, oh, you failed Tim. It was a disaster. Once I took a step back and breathed and spoke to people who knew more than me who'd failed lots of times beforehand and realized it was part of the process. Yeah. I love what he said. I could then see things to do I could see moves to make I could make more phone calls and I just came out the other side better as a result of having gone through it but in the moment there will be lots of people who are so stuck they can't see the other side you know I want to say Tim that when we have these expressions like take a step back right put it in perspective and as you said you're a photographer it's like you know zoom out rather than zoom in I think when we are really failing and we are really hurting, it is like we have our nose against the glass.

37:20Angela Duckworth: And it's like all you see is that. And by the way, then it takes up your entire field of view and it's the only thing. And people will say things to you, but you have your health, but your children love you. And you're like, well, I don't care. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Words are coming out of my mouth. I don't know what you're saying. And to take that step back is quite literally to see things in perspective. I have an uncle by marriage. His name is Ken Duckworth. he's a psychiatrist and he's actually for many decades been the chief psychiatrist of the national alliance for mental illness in the united states meaning he's in a way like america's psychiatrist and what ken duckworth said to me when i said can you summarize all therapy like just in a sentence he was like okay uh he's like can you can i have semicolons and i was like sure he's like okay he's like stipulations are important yeah he was actually very good i was like you know and i'll never forget what he said he said here's what you learn in therapy when you are struggling, one, notice it.

38:16Two, sit with it.

38:19Angela Duckworth: Three, put it in perspective. Notice they're anxious, sit with it, meaning don't start drinking, don't start taking drugs, like sit with it, put it in perspective. And that last thing is what we're just talking about. Putting it in perspective is zooming out, not zooming in, taking a step back. But I think maybe for both of us, and I can certainly speak emphatically for myself, the only thing that really helps me put things in perspective is another person, my therapist, my husband, my editor, my friends. I mean, they're the ones who drag me backwards and say, wait, wait, wait, you've got your nose against the glass, right?

38:54Angela Duckworth: You're not seeing all these other opportunities. You're not seeing this in context. You're not seeing that you are healthy and you are happy in other ways. And I think that to me is a lesson. So yes, notice it, sit with it, put it in perspective. Is that good? It's like really good. Listen, I want to come to dinner at your house. Your family network. Jason, my mom. It'll be a party. But that's the hardest thing to do though, to get that perspective because in the moment, you're so deep in it. You're hiding the shame, all these other things. By the way, you're speaking very broadly about mental health issues.

39:28Angela Duckworth: And he wasn't just talking about one particular one. It's like for anything, you know, your addiction, you're like, yeah, your depression. Notice it. sit with it, put it in perspective. But yeah, absolutely. But you've also talked about when people are struggling, they tend to blame themselves. I think in my case, that's exactly what I do. And by the way, that's a doom loop, right? Because when you really blame yourself, right, you're just getting deeper and deeper. And it's not a rope out of the pit, right? I think that we're also told not to blame the situation. And therefore, if you're not going to blame the situation, then you are going to blame yourself.

40:03Angela Duckworth: and like all advice, there's nuance that's lost there. I don't want my two, my daughters are in their early 20s and as young women, I don't want them to walk around the world blaming the situation, oh, you know, this boss is crap, you know, like it was unfair, you know, I didn't have enough time. I didn't raise them that way. But I think that when we teach our children to blame themselves and not blame the situation, sometimes they can misstep. For example, sometimes it isn't you. It isn't that you didn't try harder. It's not your fault. Sometimes it's that the situation did need to be different, does need to be different, and sometimes you need to change it.

40:43Angela Duckworth: So I think the idea here is that, of course, we have to take individual responsibility. But I think the situation is something we shouldn't ignore. So this is leading into the new book. That is what I've been thinking about the situation. Tell us what you have been thinking about. Yeah, my research career. So when I was trying to understand behavior change, I was running all these experiments where I was trying to get people, for example, not to procrastinate or to work out more. And what I did was I tried to make them have more willpower. So I said, well, I know there's this part of the brain.

41:21Angela Duckworth: It's actually the doors of lateral prefrontal cortex. We are able as human beings to exert willpower. we can force ourselves to eat something or not. We can force ourselves to climb the flight of steps or not. We all know what it feels like. Young children do too. There are children's stories about willpower. So the most straightforward thing to do is what most people do, which is like, well, yeah, get over it, get a stronger willpower muscle. But what happened, Tim, was that most of my experiments, in fact, if I think about it, all of them, where I tried to increase willpower, they were all total failures.

41:55Angela Duckworth: In the willpower condition, people didn't do any better than no treatment at all. And furthermore, they felt exhausted. They were like, oh, you know, you want me to do this thing and just do it, just force myself. Not only am I failing, I'm feeling tired. And so what I was able to do was to change my situation. I started to collaborate with another psychologist named James Gross. He studies emotion and emotion regulation at Stanford University. And after studying emotion for many decades, he came to the conclusion that you cannot change your emotions directly. If you're feeling anxious, you cannot will yourself not to be anxious.

42:33Angela Duckworth: If you're feeling depressed, you cannot will yourself not to be depressed. You have to ask, what thoughts are leading me to act and feel this way? And what situation is inspiring those thoughts that in turn inspire that reaction? So we call this the three boxes model. That first you have your objective situation that in turn shapes your thoughts. That's the second box. Those thoughts in turn shape box three, which is your reaction. And instead of working on just trying to fix box three immediately. Which everybody does. Which is what everybody does. And research shows people are like five to one.

43:08Angela Duckworth: They'll just be like, I need more willpower than like, oh, I need to ask somebody for advice. You know, like I need to ask somebody for support. We go right to box three. We're like, I'm eating too much. I'm going to eat less. You know, like I procrastinate. I'm going to procrastinate less. I lose my temper. I'm not going to lose my temper. But we need to trace it back to its motivational origins. So I think the radical paradigm shift is a completion of saying like, it's not just the person's individual will, it's the thoughts that give rise to those impulses and it's the situation that gives rise to those thoughts.

43:40Angela Duckworth: So the three boxes model teaches you to start with box one, start with the situation. So somebody listening to this who is anxious about the next job opportunity or something in their relation, they need to sit with themselves. in the middle there and then say, what is the catalyst for this? Yeah, I think that if you take the time and it's not easy, and I know in a culture of immediate gratification, asking people to do anything that's like more than one click is a big ask. No, I like big ask. Ask them. Because you know, if you want the real answer, right? The real answer is not will. Because that is a kind of like, oh, I'll just, you know, I really do think you have to recognize first your thoughts.

44:20Angela Duckworth: And by the way, when I say not easy, I think much of modern psychotherapy is box two to box three. You go to a therapist and they help you understand what kind of thoughts lead you to feel insecure, anxious. Okay, now that you've understood your thoughts, well, a lot of therapists will work there. It's like, how can we change those thoughts? To me, if there is something, for example, a book that you've read that really gives you the right mindset. if there's a person that you talk to who really puts you in the right frame of mind, those are box one solutions. And, you know, it can come down to tattooing something on your forearm that reminds you, wearing something around your neck, you know, putting that book that you really want to remember on the shelf, picking it up occasionally, going to talk to the therapist, reading it.

45:08Angela Duckworth: Yes, yes, reading it. Even though looking at it, though, you know, I think sometimes has that effect. But I think it's always saying, like, I can change my thoughts, but instead of just trying to change them directly, why don't I put myself in a situation that changes them for me? My thing, my version of that is if I'm trying to aspire for something, I'll take a screenshot on my phone because I know I'm going to pick up my phone several times throughout the day. Brilliant. And the second I see it, I'm like, aha, is this taking me towards this or off it? Exactly. And you know what? You're not the only high achiever.

45:37Angela Duckworth: I know who does that. Oh, wow. Oh, I'm upset. I thought it to be the only one. I thought I was like... You are, I have to say, well, can I say you're the first one who's done it through those screenshots? Yes, thank you. Maybe a pioneer in the self-affirming screenshots. You know, most of the CEOs I know, since our CEOs, I mean, they have it engraved in marble. They have it like painted on the wall. So, you know, maybe this is a version that's more... Now I've got envy. No, you're democratizing it. You're democratizing it. But you know what? Be your own ad agency. Like what billboards do you want to see?

46:05Angela Duckworth: And, you know, I only have Post-it notes. I haven't even like worked my way up to screenshots. I have these little two by two yellow Post-it notes. And I put, here's one that I installed in my office recently at eye level. So I would see it's the first thing I see when I walk into the office and it's the last thing I see when I leave every day. It's Nelson Mandela. I never lose, I win or I learn. Now that is not a long quote, right? I never lose, I win or I learn. Why do I need it on a post-it note? I mean, I've just said it to you aloud. It's committed to memory. I want to see it every day and I want to see it numerous times a day.

46:37Angela Duckworth: And so that's why it's at eye level. And yes, I am my own advertising agency. It's just one way that you can exercise situational agency, change your situation in ways that remind yourself of your goals. And by the way, put things that take you away from your goals far away.

46:59How do people who are thinking about making transitions to, they might have started a new job or thinking about, how can they have so much confidence in one space and then move that situation and then they all go?

47:11Angela Duckworth: You know, it is one of the eternal truths and also one of the great mysteries of human nature that when we move from one domain to another, usually our skills don't transfer. So this is actually, as you likely know, what psychologists call transfer is when like, oh, you're good at A, and then you can transfer those skills to B. The assumption is. And for example, say you are a great athlete, right? And that's all about perseverance and grit and like learning from failure and like winning some days, losing others. it's sometimes hard for athletes to take all of those life lessons and then transfer them to their new job or to math class or what like.

47:50Angela Duckworth: So one thing we should just forgive ourselves and be a little compassionate is that when you're like, oh my God, I was really resilient in this domain. Like, why the hell is it not transferring? Well, you're human and most human beings don't transfer spontaneously. So one thing that I think just to recognize is that transfer is not automatic, but it is possible. And I think one of the things that enables us to do that is when we have a mentor, I mean, for many of us, it's the mentor in the first field who saw you play sport, who knows how strong you can be. You call that person up. They have nothing to do with your new life.

48:21Angela Duckworth: They're actually not an accountant, right? You know, maybe they coached you in tennis or running or something. But you call them up and sometimes you're weeping, right? And you're deeply insecure and you don't feel like you're the person. You feel like you've disappointed everyone, including that, you know, favorite mentor. and I think that mentor will show you, will point out to you, will say, you know what? This is like that. You know what? I've seen you do this. Here's what I'm going to recommend. Call me back next week after you've tried such and such. And since I have interviewed so many coaches, sometimes when I'm interviewing them, I kind of cheat a little and I ask them to coach me.

48:56Angela Duckworth: And I'll tell you a true story. So I was having trouble sleeping. I'm not a great sleeper, honestly. I think I have a very active arousal. My active brain, and then if it wakes up at 2 in the morning, hello. Yeah, it doesn't matter how exhausted I am. So I was with a world-class coach who I've been studying, Bob Bowman. He's a swim coach. He was the swim coach for Michael Phelps, the great Olympian, and also many other Olympians. If he were a country, I think he would rank like fifth or something in the world for like most medals won in recent Olympics. and I said to him like, well, Bob, you know, I'm having trouble sleeping and he kind of went into coaching gear and then he was actually giving me advice that was, you know, useful and, you know, showing me that like certain things that I had done before, I could transfer to this, you know, I was in Austin visiting him.

49:49Angela Duckworth: He was like, oh, you could do, oh, you've been taking a bath? Like, so I was like, yeah, but my house is a bath and, you know, this hotel room. He's like, does it have a shower? And I'm like, yes. He's like, well, then take a shower. He's like, what do you like to do to work out? I was like, well, I mean, at home, I go to this yoga studio. He's like, get a yoga video and do yoga tonight. In fact, he sent me home that night and he said, you need to do yoga and you need to take a shower, a hot shower. And I did both of those things and I went to bed and I slept through the night. I think we need mentors.

50:20Angela Duckworth: We need advisors. We need coaches. It's part of human nature to not be able to figure things out on our own. Everything, yeah. Yeah, pretty much anything. We can't figure out as well as we could with another person. But overachievers, you kind of buy into the perception that you can create everything around your environment. The self-made man, the self-sufficient. Yeah, it's a myth. It's a myth. I'm feeling very triggered in this position. What about you? How would you attribute your own success? You've had a journey and you shared one of your failures, but you're obviously successful. How much credit do you take?

50:56Angela Duckworth: How long is your acknowledgement section? Massive. But I only know that now. Now I know it. When I was young, dumb, and doing other nonsense, I believed that it was all about me. It was how hard I worked. I read grip from cover to cover. I was in there. Seriously. But that's why I'm so excited about it. Because I was that person. But I now know there was a whole team of people around me. Starting from my mum, my sister who defended me, the first teacher who stopped me getting expelled, the person who gave me my first investment, the person who gave my all of these people contributed to the person I am who can see things in a completely different way but I didn't have that humility and acknowledgement when I was younger because I was so concentrated on running 100 miles in that direction and you know and on your own and of course there is a part of the story which is your own individual effort and to communicate that it's both and not either or well look the Beatles have a theme song for this right?

51:51Angela Duckworth: Help, right? Help, I need someone, right? But I really, I have listened to that song. I sometimes play it to remind myself, you know, the high achievers that I study, they're on a journey too, and they have ups and they have downs, and they usually begin where you began, which is individual effort and what I can do. And as I said, that's very important, because you don't want to go through life saying like, well, you know, somebody should do it for me. So individual effort deserves its own song. And there are many songs about individual effort and heroism. But as you get older, as you become more mature, as you become more wise, you recognize your profound interdependency.

52:31Angela Duckworth: And if you fail to miss that, you know, if you, sorry, if I should say, if you fail to capture that, right, if you had to learn that lesson, I do think you eventually reach a professional and personal crisis, where your individual, I can do everything is going to be your undoing. Yeah. What are the red flags for people? Because we're not talking about the person now, we're talking about the environment. What are the red flags for an environment that are not conducive for someone to be productive? So I'm going to give you one red flag, which is I think burnout is a sign of mismatch. And I say that based on research.

53:06What does burnout mean? Because that means lots of things to lots of people.

53:10Angela Duckworth: So burnout is a term that comes from research in particular on the psychology of the workplace. So the science of burnout really is different from the science of depression insofar as burnout is how you feel about your work in particular, right? And it has three features. One is exhaustion, and that is where burnout gets its name. When you're burned out, you feel burned out, completely depleted, spent. The second feature is a sense of kind of cognitive detachment. You're like not in the flow. You're sort of there, but you feel like you're going through the motions and reading from a script, but you feel strangely disconnected from the people you work with, the people you serve.

53:50Angela Duckworth: The third is a sense of helplessness, a kind of motivational paralysis. You're like, everything I do fails, like nothing works, right? So these three features add up to burnout. And I think some people will say, I recognize that and I've experienced it or I am experiencing it. Some people have not yet experienced burnout. Maybe some never will. But the science of burnout says that when people experience burnout, they blame themselves. And honestly, when leaders witness burnout, they often blame the person. I've been asked many times, Angela, how do I fix these burned out people? Like, what's your advice to fix them?

54:23Angela Duckworth: And what Christina Maslacht, who was the pioneer of the science of burnout and the psychologist who coined the term burnout, she said after a lifetime of researching it that it's a mistake to try to fix the person. it's almost always a mismatch with the situation. First of all, that person wouldn't be burned out if they weren't trying hard. Slackers don't burn out. They may have other problems, but burnout's not one of them. If they're not trying hard, they will not get burned out. But trying hard in a situation which is mismatched, not just for workload, one of the key insights from this research is that people think burnout is only from the mismatch of I need to work 60 hours for my requirements, but I only want to work 40.

55:05Angela Duckworth: that's only one way. You can also be mismatched in values. There's also a mismatch sometimes in community. If you feel like people are really not doing things as a group in solidarity, but you're sort of fighting with other people. Autonomy, if you feel like you're being asked to do things, you have no problem with the number of hours that are being asked, but you feel like you have no choice. Your own opinion matters nothing. So whatever the burnout mismatch is, it is a mismatch between the person and the situation. You cannot cure it without diagnosing it. But I do think it opens up a toolbox for saying, I'm experiencing a real thing.

55:44Angela Duckworth: It's not a myth. Burnout's a thing. It doesn't last forever. When it stops is when you've changed the situation. I could just listen to you for hours. It's like... Because you like love behavioral science. Like I do. No, no, no. But you love your behavior, right? But I'm obsessed with human behavior. Yeah, I know. I'm obsessed with it. And I love experts who have deciphered bits of it. That is the bit that really excites me. So we're moving to the next section of the final section of our conversation, unfortunately, which is called the payoff. And it's all about you giving your advice on some specific things.

56:20So it's quickfire, relatively quickfire things. But I want to get your insight into certain things. The first one is the habit that you would steal. So tell me one habit that you've used that is a game changer for you.

56:31Angela Duckworth: I will tell you a game-changing habit. Seems silly, but man, it does the trick. I want to work out more, and I don't always have an Olympic coach telling me to work out and texting me to remind me. And send me yoga videos. I mean, it would be great if I did, but Bob Bowman is not my personal coach. I lay out my workout clothes the night before. You know, that's so trivial because my workout clothes are all just in one drawer, and they're there. What's the difference between reaching to the fourth drawer of my bureau in the morning to get the top out and the shorts out and the socks out to that and having them laid out on the bureau.

57:06Angela Duckworth: It's a world of difference. I will tell you when I wake up in the morning and the workout clothes are the first thing I see, I can't avoid them. It's the easiest thing to do. I put them on and once you have your workout kit on, you're going to work out, right? So that has been my habit is to always put my workout clothes out the night before, especially when you're traveling when you're like, I mean, if you're going to root through your suitcase, then you do have the will of an Olympic athlete. But I don't. And so that's one thing I do. And guess what? Olympic athletes do it too. Amen. And the very fact you packed it is important.

57:36That's another habit.

57:36Angela Duckworth: I do always pack enough workout outfits for every day that I'm away. You and my wife are so similar. It's ridiculous. Productivity hacks next. What's the one productivity hack that you swear by? Productivity hack. Well, okay. On the wall of my office, I not only have a 2x2 post-it note. I've discovered that you can write on glass, right? Because you can erase on glass. And I have written there, ask Andrea. And more generally, it's ask others. But Andrea is an administrator in my department. Every time I've made a stupid decision, like, oh, I bought a monitor and I can't get reimbursed, or I thought it would be okay to do X, Y, or Z.

58:13Angela Duckworth: Oh, I should have asked Andrea. And the more generalizable productivity hack is to ask for advice. We've been talking about that this whole show. But ask someone, you know, and actually don't just ask ChatGPT. Increasingly, people are going to AI. Of course they are. It's 24-7. And I'm not saying you shouldn't use AI. Half of my lab works on AI. But ask a person. Ask someone you know. Text someone you know. Call someone you know. Not only will you get smarter, you will build the foundation of your relationship. So I wrote Ask Andrea because I keep forgetting. But if you only want to write one word, just write ask.

58:50What's on your not-to-do list?

58:51Angela Duckworth: Do you know I actually literally have a not to do list? I have a to do list on the left side and I have a not to do list. What is number one on your not to do list? I have a sleep to do list, you know, includes yoga. And like, you know, and on the not to do list for sleep, it says and there's a little box. I put like box not to do and I get to check it when I don't do it is to think or do work. Think about work or do work, you know, right before bedtime, because then my brain is just going. so yeah my not to do is to think about talk about or do any work before i go to bed so most people have a caffeine cut off you have a work cut off i have a work cut off yeah i have a caffeine cut off too by the way i need everything going in my direction yeah we need we need darker rooms with blank blinkers on what's your greatest failure i think my greatest failure really was failing to write this book uh it was followed by you know more writing but it was a complete failure i told my publisher I couldn't do it.

59:48Angela Duckworth: I tried to break my contract. I told everybody that I knew that I had given up. And then I un-gave up, but it still is my greatest failure. Are you proud of this book? I'm prouder of this book than anything I have ever done. It was my greatest failure. It was the hardest thing I ever did. And I'm proud that I finished it. You know, Tim, the reason this was hard was many. But one is, it is so hard to write about, to think about, or to even recognize your situation. And I couldn't do it. And then I found a way to. But to this day, it's my proudest intellectual achievement. Final, last but no least least, one piece of advice that you wish you had earlier?

1:00:35Angela Duckworth: I think the advice I would give my younger self is that your accomplishments are not you. Growing up with a father who had a baby blue binder to document all of his accomplishments and being told that what you achieve is more important than anything else, I think I would advise that younger self to not believe that. I will never stop believing in achievement as being important and I will never stop trying to achieve. But my value is not my achievement. My value is being a person. And so my advice to my younger self and to my present self who often forgets is you are not your achievements. Be as ambitious as you want, but your achievements are one thing and who you are is another.

1:01:25Amen. Your daughters are very lucky.

1:01:29Angela Duckworth: I'm lucky to have them. Angela, you know, I could talk forever and listen to you for an infinite amount of time, but thank you so much. Your new book, tell people what it is and where they can get it. The new book, Tim, is Situated. Find the people and places that bring out your best and you can get it wherever you buy or listen to your books now. Do you know what? I think you're one of those people. You're one of those people, Tim. I've enjoyed this. It's so good. Listen, it's so good.

1:01:59A huge thanks to Angela for joining me on Reworking. I absolutely love the conversation about finding the bigger purpose behind the boring stuff, investing properly in relationships we have at work and recognising the limits of willpower. That last one's really important because however determined you are, you can't always force yourself to thrive in an environment that simply isn't working for you. As always, I would love to hear from you. I do this because I want to help demystify work. I want to help people be more successful and feel more in control. So do drop me a line on socials or email at reworking at bowermedia.co.uk.

1:02:35We've also launched the Reworking newsletter to help grow this community even more so do keep an eye out for that and make sure that you're signed up because I'll be sending out regular updates on what I've taken from these conversations and what I think will be really useful and remember make sure you leave your gym kit out before you go to bed see you next time