Dolly Parton is burning up, not burning out | from WorkLife with Adam Grant

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. And today we're setting aside our usual format to remember someone deeply loved and admired across the world. Country music superstar Dolly Parton. The singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian died yesterday, August 25th, at the age of 80. She helped shape American music as we know it with songs like 9 to 5, Jolene, and I Will Always Love You. Those songs have captured generation after generation. Beyond her music, she leaves behind a theme park, a children's literacy program called Imagination Library, which has gifted hundreds of millions of books to kids, and a way of being that made people all over the world feel like she was family.

0:52To honor her, we are bringing you a conversation. She sat down for in 2022 with organizational psychologist Adam Grant, back when he was host of Ted's podcast, Work Life. It's a chance for all of us to spend a little more time in Dolly's company and celebrate her incredible life. We hear her talk about her creative process, how she balanced getting things right with getting things done and how her humble beginnings remained a grounding force throughout her life. So I count my blessings far more than I count my money because I know that this could have not happened to me. I see so many people more talented than me that never make it.

1:32And the fact that I have just done so well, I'm amazed myself. What I love about this conversation is Dolly is just Dolly. Funny, wise, generous, entirely herself. She talks about the night she wrote two of her most famous songs, why she always called herself a professionalist rather than a perfectionist, and about the philosophy that carried her through a career spanning more than half a century. I don't look at my life in terms of regrets. Some people say, well, there's mistakes. I say, no, because what I did at the time was what I felt like I needed to be doing at the time. So I can't really call that a mistake or call it a regret.

2:12I was building. When it comes to advice on work, life and love, hers is simple. We have what we call in our imagination library, dream more, care more, do more and be more. So ponder that and do that. You can find Work Life with host Molly Graham wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's Dolly's conversation with Adam coming up right after a short break.

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4:24Hey, Worklifers, it's Adam Grant. Today, I'm excited to bring you a conversation I had on Clubhouse with a legend. Thanks to our sponsors, LinkedIn, Morgan Stanley, ServiceNow, and UKG for making it possible.

4:43Joining me today is the one and only Dolly Parton. Musician, businesswoman, actor, author, humanitarian, one of the greatest songwriters and most beloved humans in this galaxy. Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to be with you. And thanks for all those compliments. I don't think I deserve all that. I'm pretty sure you've earned them all. And it's an honor to have you here. So I'm very excited to talk about your new book and your album. But I just want to start with a quote of yours that I loved, Dolly, which is, you once said, after you reach a certain age, they think you're over. Well, I will never be over.

5:23I'd love to hear more about that. What keeps you motivated at this stage in your career to keep writing and working? Well, first of all, I love the music. I was born to be a singer and a songwriter, and it was a song that brought me out of the Smoky Mountains to Nashville. It was a song that has taken me everywhere I want to go, and out of that song, so many wonderful things have branched out for me. Even if I had never made it in the business, I would have continued to do my music because I can't help that. That's just inside me. Even if I'd have done nothing more than be a waitress, I'd have been saving them tips to go down and do a demo and try to get my song still recorded and make an album.

6:04Like I said, I'd sell it out of the back of my car. All us artists have done that at one time or another, but I would continue to do it. But thank the Lord I'm not having to do exactly that these days. But that's how much I love the business and how much I love the singing and the songwriting. That's beautiful. Well, you've also reinvented yourself very recently. Run, Rose, Run is your first ever novel. And of course, it comes with an album. Would love to know what motivated you to write fiction and why now? Well, James Patterson, one of the world's greatest writers ever, he contacted me and asked if I would be interested in writing a book with him.

6:42And I thought, well, why me? You seem to be doing all right on your own. He said, I have an idea. And I said, well, I'd love to hear what you got to say. So he flew to Nashville and we got together. and he told me that he had gone to school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and he'd always loved it, and I always wanted to write a book about Nashville. And I thought, well, you've come to the right girl, because I know a whole lot about Nashville. And so we talked about it, and we came up with an idea to write about a young girl's struggles. And you have to read the book. I can't tell you the ending, but she's running from something and running to something, the character Annie Lee, who will eventually become Rose when all the secrets are out.

7:24But anyway, we were working on the book, and all of a sudden, like a lock bulb went off in my head. I thought, well, duh. I'm from Nashville. I'm a songwriter. Why don't I just write an album to go along with it? Almost like a soundtrack to the book. And I don't know that it's been done before, but it seemed to me to make sense. We will have no spoilers today, but I would love to hear about the creative process and how the experience of telling a story with Patterson was similar to and different from working on a song. I don't have many co-writers when I write songs. Very few, actually, because I like the process of writing alone.

8:04It's a very sacred time to me, but I have written songs with a few other people, and so it was kind of like that, working with a co-writer on a book, but the process was pretty comfortable, actually, the way we decided to work. We would call each other. We'd talk by phone, emails, faxes, and visiting. He would come down and visit every few months. And I would send the lyrics to the songs. He'd send stuff back. And it was an unusual way to do it. But it didn't seem like a foreign thing to me because I love stories. All my songs tell stories. And he's a storyteller. I'm a storyteller. So it seemed to work out really well.

8:43I'm curious about whether the process of writing the album actually influenced the book at all? Yes, it did. And vice versa. He would send stuff to me and I would get a great idea for a song about something that he had sent. And then I would send him the lyrics and he'd incorporate a lot of my lyrics into the characters in certain situations that would inspire him to come up with other ideas. So it was really amazing how it all turned out, even better than we thought. We'd never discussed me doing an album, but all of a sudden it seemed to be my best way to contribute to the book. Well, I want to ask you a little bit about how your career has evolved over the last few decades.

9:23And obviously one of the themes that you've talked about for a long time is sexism. And Dolly, one of the things I admire about you among many is that you don't run away from criticism. You reclaim it. You take ownership over it. You performed Dumb Blonde back in 1966, Backwoods Barbie in 2008. And now in your new album, you have Woman Up and Take It Like a Man. Tell us why. What's behind all this? I just really love being a woman. And I think everybody should be able to be proud of who they are and use their own strengths and their own talents and be recognized for that. The two women, Ruth Anna, the older woman that was once a serious big star, and then Annie Lee, the Rose character later on, you'll find out who she is.

10:08But they both write songs. They're both independent. They both have a mind of their own, as I do and as I always have. They were griping about this and that and the men doing this and that. And I thought, well, just don't gripe about it. Do something about it. So I just started writing this song, Woman Up, Take It Like a Man, Be As Good As or Better Than. Just woman up and take it like a man. To me, it was like a new little nine to five, like a new little woman's anthem. So it's just in praise of women. and I thought it was a clever title. I thought so too. And I'm so glad you mentioned 9 to 5 because as an organizational psychologist, I study work for a living.

10:48And so that song could be the theme song of my life. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how has your view of work changed since you first wrote 9 to 5? And what is pouring yourself a cup of ambition like today? Well, that's a good question. I've got so many irons in the fire, some of them burning my own butt. But I have to get up earlier. I have to work longer. And I have to have a bigger cup of ambition in the morning to get it all done. But somebody like me, I always wanted to be a star. And I wanted my dreams to come true. And they did. And there's always a dream within a dream within a dream.

11:21Because it's like I often say as a joke, but it's the truth, that I've dreamed myself into a corner, meaning my dreams have come true. So I have to keep them alive. You know, everything kind of springs off. It's like a tree with deep roots and many branches and many leaves. You get a chance to do something else because you build a brand and all that. Every day something new comes up, and I can't deny it. And I have to get in there and be with it. I can't just leave it. As long as I'm living, I can't leave that in the hands of other people. I have to be on top of all of it to make sure that it's being done right the way that I want it done.

11:58Well, when I hear you say that, it sounds like perfectionism. But you've said, no, I'm not a perfectionist. I'm a professionalist. What's the difference? There's a big difference. I am a professionalist. When I say I'm not a perfectionist, I work hard. I want things right. But for instance, like if I've recorded a song and maybe it's not technically correct or maybe something happened, if it's emotionally right, I leave it like it is. If it's a first take and it had that feel and that heart and that emotion, rather than doing it over and over and over until it becomes the words that don't have that same thing.

12:37And the same like even hosting shows on TV. If I mess up, I just make that part of the show. I don't worry about that later unless I've really done something awful. But as far as I just try to make whatever happens part of the show. I know some people that are perfectionists and they drive you up the damn wall. You know, I think I couldn't work like that. You know, I could not because I like to enjoy my work. I like to have it be fun. And I like the people around me to have fun doing it. So, but I'm professional in the fact that I stay with it. I'll work till I fall over to get things done and to get them as right as I know how to get them.

13:17How do you deal with those moments where you do make mistakes or where something doesn't go as planned? And it's so common, especially for women in this world where women are pressured to be perfect, to beat themselves up. And you seem to just take it in stride. How? Well, of course, I don't like it. Everybody likes to do their best at all times. We don't like to mess up. I don't like to make mistakes. But like I said, if you've made a mistake, it's best you just pick it up, turn it into something positive. Because even on a show, sometimes your best moments I've found in all the years I've been in concert, sometimes the best part of my show is when I've messed up.

13:52and people know you're human and they see how you're going to get out of it and you're right there in the spotlight. You have to deal with it. Same with life. I don't punish myself for that. I love that. It sounds like you don't waste time shaming your past self. You're just trying to educate your future self. Yeah, exactly. And that's how you really need to look at it too. It's just like when I get bad reviews on an album or something I've done. A lot of people really just get all tore up and they're just depressed and do whatever. I don't like it. It hurts my feelings and it's embarrassing. But I look at it like, well, they must have had some reason to write that.

14:31There must be some truth in it. Surely nobody would be just cruel enough and mean enough to just say something. I try to look at it deeply and think, well, you know, they probably got a point. And I'll just try to look at that and try to change it and make improvements for the next time.

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16:42Dolly, a lot of people call you a national treasure. And obviously you are beloved by so many people, not just in America, but around the world. And obviously one of the things that comes with that level of love and celebrity is people are afraid to hurt your feelings or hurt their relationship with you. And I imagine at some points that might make it hard for people to be honest with you. And you're obviously someone who values honesty. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about how to make it easier for other people to tell the truth and how you also managed to be honest with them. I have the saying, and I've heard it before, it's better to choose what you say than to say what you choose.

17:23Because you're not out to hurt somebody. In my position, I've had to hire so many people in my life, and I've had to fire some as well. And that is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I cry over it. I stress over it, you know, knowing that I'm going to have to deal with it. But I just ask God to give me the strength and the courage and the right words. If you do believe, if you're a person of faith, it's good to pull on a little bit of that extra stuff by being more spiritual and how you kind of look at it through the eyes of God and try to think that every person is a human being. Everybody hurts.

18:00So you just have to be smart about that. A good human being would do that anyway. Some people just want to be mean. One of the things that I think is striking about you is how grounded you are. And I know that's in some ways part of your upbringing. You've said that you grew up dirt poor in a one-room cabin with 11 siblings. But it would be, I think, easy for a lot of people in your position to lose sight of that. So how have you stayed so down to earth? Well, because I was dirt poor, I was born in a one-room cabin right on the banks of the little pigeon. And there was only three kids at that time.

18:34But we did move on over to our old Tennessee mountain home where there were a few more rooms. But we kept having one kid after another. There was 12 of us. My grandpa was a preacher. My mom was very religious, very spiritual. So I learned all the good lessons about loving your neighbor as yourself and judge not, lest you be judged. Through God, all things are possible and all those wonderful things that I learned. So I count my blessings far more than I count my money because I know that this could have not happened to me. I see so many people more talented than me that never make it. And the fact that I have just done so well, I'm amazed myself.

19:14It's almost scary sometimes. I hope I can always live up, you know, to the expectations of me. It would break my heart, you know, not to. But I'm very humble. And that's because of my love for God and my trust in that. Well, you've also taken incredibly meaningful strides over the years to pay forward the blessings that you've had. I saw one in the news just last month that starting in February, every employee at Dollywood who wants to pursue higher education gets 100 percent of tuition covered. How did that come about? Well, that's something I'm very, very proud of. The reason we do it, we love our employees and they're wonderful people.

19:55We want them to have every chance in the world because a lot of them are poor people as well up there in the mountains or people that certainly couldn't afford to go to school or have that education. So we try to let them go to school. That's all of our employees. Everybody has the same opportunity. If you want to do it, we're going to pay for it. And we try to encourage them, you know, to learn, study the things that would be great. So when they do get that education, they can come back and work with us, whether it be in culinary, whether it be in business or marketing. We have a list of things that we would suggest that they study, but they can take night schools.

20:32They can do it in the free time or when we're closed for the winter. So they can do it any number of ways. But if they want to get that education, we are going to pay for it. I would love to see every company on earth make that commitment and follow your lead. Well, some of them might. I hope they do. Let's make it happen. Those of you who are listening who run businesses, this is the example to follow. Dolly, when you were just getting started out as a business owner, what was bad career advice that you received? Anything that people advised that either you regretted following or you were glad that you didn't?

21:04I had it more than once. The main advice that people wanted to give me was to change my look and to go simpler with my hair and the way that I dress, not to look so cheap. Nobody was ever going to take me serious. they would say. The way I look and the way I looked then was a country girl's idea of glam, just like I wrote in my Backwoods Barbie song. But people wanted me to change. They thought I looked cheap. But I patterned my look after the town tramp. And everybody said she was trash. And in my little girl mind, I thought, well, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up. So it was really like a look that I was after.

21:41And I wasn't a natural beauty. And so I just like to look the way I look. I'm so outgoing inside in my personality that I need the way I look to match all of that. It's interesting to me when you talk about your work ethic. Over the years when studying creativity, I find myself constantly having to tell people, you cannot rush creativity. Great ideas take time. And yet your career suggests that that might be wrong. One of your biggest songs, I Will Always Love You. You wrote that in one night and then another, Jolene, in the same night. Who does that and how did you do it? Well, I don't really know that they were written the same night.

22:21When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette because that could have been a few days apart, you know, because when I write, I would write, you know, just put things on little cassettes back in the day. But they also wound up on the same album. You know, the Jolene album had I Will always love you on it. So they were certainly written within a very short span of time. But at that time, you know, I was I was very creative and I was very emotional during that time because when I wrote I will always love you, I was trying to leave a bad relationship, meaning I was in partners with the Porter Wagoner.

22:56I was the girl singer on the show that was one that was the top show. But when I had started with Porter, I had said that I would stay for five years because I didn't come to Nashville to be just somebody's girl singer. I wanted a career of my own with my own band, and I had mentioned that before. And so as the years went by, we had recorded duets, and I was a big part of the show, but the years were slipping by, and I kept saying, I have got to go. I've got to go. And we were fighting a lot. We fought back and forth a lot because we disagreed on a lot of things. But that stubborn streak in me was saying, I'm going no matter what it costs.

23:33I have to go now. And I just knew that God was leading me because I had always asked him to, and I believed that he had. And I was fortunate to have got the job, but Porter knew exactly what I was thinking before I even went in. But he was not hearing it, and it was just a lot of heartache and trouble. So I just remember going home, and I thought, well, what do I do best? How do I talk to this man? I write songs. So I wrote I Will Always Love You, took it back the next day, sat down and played it to him. And he was crying. He said, that's the best song I ever heard. And you can go as long as I get to produce that song.

24:11And I had a couple of other songs after that. But I finally got out and got on my own. And the first song, I wrote a song on the way home after that called Light of a Clear Blue Morning. When I was leaving Porter's show and I was really going to be free, that's the song that I wrote. Wow. I'm curious about how that unfolds minute to minute while you're writing. Vonnegut wrote about swoopers and bashers, where swoopers basically pour out the ideas, and then they come back to it later and edit. And bashers actually fine-tune every word and every sentence as they go. Which one are you when you write a song?

24:49I'm all over the place. I just write what I feel. Sometimes the melody comes first, sometimes just some words I've got. But for the most part, they pretty much fall at the same time. But I have a lot of stuff I can't write right then, and I'll write something down, and I try to get it to a little cassette if I've got a melody going, so I don't forget it so I can get back to it when I can. Like if I keep a little tape recorder by my bed, because sometimes I dream stuff, and I used to think I'd remember it, but you don't. I just love to write. I don't have to write. Well, I do have to write because it's just so much part of me.

25:27But I mean, nobody makes me write. It's just something I love to do. With all the passion you have for songwriting and all the different hats you wear, it would be very easy for you to burn out. How do you avoid that? Well, I don't have time to burn out. I'm burning up. Sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get a little, you know, I think, ah, Lordy, I'm going to slow down a little bit. All right, I'm going to burn up because I'm a creative person and every new thing will create something else. and energy begets energy and creativity begets creativity. So I just really have to stay with it because I want to see things happen.

26:06I want to make things happen. In those moments where you do feel a little bit exhausted, what do you do to re-energize yourself? Well, I go home, I cook, I read. I always have my spiritual work that I do. I always say when things are bad, I pray. When they get worse, I pray harder. and that's pretty much the truth. But I just relax. My husband and I have a little RV. We kind of travel around within a, you know, 100-mile radius of home, go see parts of Tennessee. We have picnics by the river. I love to play with my little nieces and nephews. I have them over, spend the night to swim. I have a trampoline, which they love.

26:46I really re-energize through the kids. Excellent. Well, that is actually a great segue to, are you up for a lightning round? A long guess. How bad is it going to strike me? Oh, I was thinking it would be electrifying for the audience. How's that? Okay. I've got a few questions. Short answers are great, but tell us as much as you want. The first is, on the heels of this collaboration with James Patterson, I wondered what living person you would most love to collaborate with next. But as far as music, I'd love to do something with Ed Sheeran. I've always thought our voices would be so beautiful together.

27:22Ed, if you're with us right now, we hope you'll follow through on that. What about your favorite song on your new album? My favorite song is Blue Bonnet Breeze, because I love story songs, and I got to do all those harmonies myself. And I just love that kind of a song. I love them all, but that's my very personal favorite. Was there a proudest moment of your career? Well, I've had many proud moments. The first very proud moment was when I became a member of the Grand Ole Opry back in the late 60s. And I was excited to be part of that, something I had dreamed about all my life. What about on the flip side, your biggest regret professionally?

28:02My biggest regret is that I have no regrets.

28:07I have to ask you to elaborate on that. No, I'm just saying I don't look at my life in terms of regrets. Some people say, well, there's mistakes. I said, no, because what I did at the time was what I felt like I needed to be doing at the time. So I can't really call that a mistake or call it a regret. I was building. Dolly, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a joy to talk with you. I want to remind everyone to check out Run, Rose, Run by Dolly and James Patterson. And Dolly, let me give you the last word. Do you have any advice for our audience on work, life, love?

28:44We have what we call in our imagination library, dream more, care more, do more, and be more. So ponder that and do that.

28:56I've had a chance to reflect on my conversation with Dolly, and there is a lot to process. She still has a fax machine. She wants to collaborate with Ed Sheeran. Maybe they'll do a song called Imperfect. As I thought about the conversation, there were a few things that really stuck with me. One, her identity is anchored on being a creator more than a performer. It seems like performing is a means, but the end is self-expression. Dolly said she has to write because it's a part of her and something she loves to do. She's not motivated to sell concert tickets. She wants to create and share music.

29:32When she said she was burning up, I thought of what psychologists call harmonious passion, creating for the sheer joy of it. That's intrinsic motivation at its purest. Two, she seemed remarkably unconstrained by concern about how she would come across. When I interview prominent people, especially live, I often catch glimpses of impression management worries. They want to be on brand and hit certain talking points. But as I listened to Dolly and watched her over Zoom, it felt like she was thinking out loud. Has she always been so confident and self-assured? Or has that freedom of self-expression grown over time?

30:12I was reminded of a classic Hollander paper on idiosyncrasy credits. The idea that as you gain success and status, people give you license to deviate from expectations and express your own values. I think Dolly's accumulated a lifetime of idiosyncrasy credits, and I wonder if that's made her less worried about conforming to other people's expectations, and also if it's made it easier to roll with mistakes when they happen. Finally, it's refreshing that she refuses to let routines dominate her life. I loved when Dolly said she wasn't a swooper or a basher. She was all over the place. It's a welcome contrast to all those productivity hackers who are admonishing people to have the discipline to stick to the exact same habits day after day, which sounds like a recipe for rigidity, not originality.

31:05Work Life is hosted by me, Adam Grant, and produced by Ted with Transmitter Media. This episode was produced by Cosmic Standard. Our team includes Colin Helms, Greta Cohn, Dan O'Donnell, Constanza Gallardo, Joanne DeLuna, Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Hannah Kingsley-Mah, Asia Simpson, Samaya Adams, Michelle Quint, Van Ben Chang, and Anna Fuhrer. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Our fact checker is Mirabelle Jasuth-Hasan. Original music by Hans Dale Sue and Alison Leighton-Brown. I don't care about fashion. Although they call me a fashion icon, and I think that's the funniest thing I ever heard. Because I don't, you know, I never think of myself like that.

31:45Although, I guess I've started a few trends, but that was just out of ignorance. More than a few.

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