How Regret Motivates Us — with Daniel Pink

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1:53Welcome to the 329th episode of the Prop G Pod. The Doug's on vacation. That's right. I'm in a field running. So in place of our regular scheduled programming, we're sharing a conversation with Daniel Pink, the author of various bestselling books, including The Power of Regret and When, as well as the number one New York Times bestseller, Drive, and to Sell is Human. We discussed with Daniel Regret, human motivation, and his Washington Post column, Why Not? He's a great storyteller, interesting concepts. It's like if Ted exploded or if Ted was personified, I think it'd be Daniel Pink. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Daniel Pink.

2:32So let's press right into it. You wrote a book about regret, the power of regret. You said that the advice you always give is to stay positive, look ahead, and never dwell on the past, which is harmful. Why? Because we have completely misunderstood this emotion of regret. We've been told, as you mentioned, that we should be positive all the time, never be negative. We should look forward, not back. And that's bad advice. It goes against the science. What the science tells us is that if we don't ignore our regrets and don't wallow in our regrets, but confront them, think about them, look them in the eye, it's a transformative emotion.

3:08It helps us in a variety of ways. Well, that makes sense. My struggle is I make mistakes every day and I can't forgive myself. And I don't know if that's regret, but where does regret become unhealthy and a source of depression where you can never get out of the past? Well, I mean, there's a big difference. So when it's a source of depression, that's a medical issue. What I'm writing about here is I'm not a doctor, so I can't I can't opine on the medical dimensions of it. Essentially what we should be doing. And I think there is some relation in how the scientific ways to deal with regret are actually very similar to cognitive behavior therapy, which is essentially not looking at your emotions as who you are, but as something that is going on as something that is going on in your life.

3:53that is to examine them. And so when you talk about reckoning with a regret, one of the first steps is something called self-compassion. And self-compassion is in some ways a triangulation between self-esteem and self-flagellation. We tend to believe that lacerating self-criticism is the way to get us to perform better. And there's no evidence of that. There's also very little evidence that kind of constantly patting yourself on the back and boosting your self-esteem is good. What seems to be good is the work that Kristen Neff has done at University of Texas on self-compassion, which is essentially treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt, recognizing that mistakes, setbacks, regrets are part of life, and then using that as a stepstone to thinking about your regrets.

4:36One of the things we see in the research on self-compassion is that people have a very, many people, particularly high achieving people, have a very difficult, they talk to themselves in ways they would never talk to anybody else. So if I were probably to harness your self-talk, all right, we were to use those headphones you're wearing now and create this magical thing that allows me to hear what you're saying to yourself, especially in the face of a mistake. It would probably be brutal. It would probably be lacerating. It would probably be cruel. And chances are you wouldn't say that to somebody else.

5:06And so what the research on self-compassion tells us is don't treat yourself better than anybody else, but don't treat yourself worse than anybody else because it's not effective. So all of this just makes all sorts of sense, right? I've always said that, and one of my things, it's like three of my last five New Year's resolutions have been to forgive myself. What is the actual cognitive behavior of the exercises to get better than this? Logically, it is impossible rationally, logically not to agree with you. What are the actual behavioral modification techniques for getting there? I'll give you an example, okay?

5:37Because this goes to some of the other ways that we deal with regret. What seems to be a very effective technique on a whole range of things is what's known as self-distancing. Um, there's a psychological phenomenon known as Solomon's paradox, which is that we human beings are pretty good at solving problems, but we tend to stink at solving our own problems because we're too close to them. So a way to be more compassionate to yourself is to, is to say what you would say to someone who is telling you what you're telling yourself. So if you had a friend who was telling themselves, you're an idiot, you're an imposter, you don't deserve to be here, you're worthless.

6:14What would you say to that person? I mean, what would you say to that person? You'd say, for God's sake, stop it and list off some positive metrics. That's the kind of thing that you can say to yourself. There are other great self-distancing techniques. One of the best decision-making self-distancing techniques is when you're stuck on a decision is to ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do? That's a great, very specific, practical tip. But in a business setting, you can use the old Andy Grove technique where he said when he faced a tough decision back when he was the CEO of Intel, he would ask himself, if I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do?

6:55And he almost always knew. And so the idea here in the research on self-distancing is that when we tackle our own problems, our own issues, we tend to look at them like scuba divers. And what we should be doing is looking at them like oceanographers, getting above them. And there are ways to do that. There's research showing that actually you can improve your performance. If you want to talk about self-talk, you can improve your performance by talking to yourself in the second person or the third person. Instead of asking yourself, what should I do? Say, what should you do? Or better, what should Scott do?

7:27In an effort to understand the difference between unproductive and productive regret, Have you been able to reverse engineer productive or unproductive regret to any sort of identity or experience, gender, the way you were raised, your approach to life? Not really. I mean, I can answer that question in two different ways. Number one is that for this book, what I did is I did two things. I did the largest public opinion survey ever conducted on American attitudes about regret, trying to identify whether there were demographic differences in how people experience regret or what they regretted. So looking at everything from race, from education level, even things like introversion, extroversion, belief in God, et cetera, et cetera.

8:08The one demographic difference that came out in this public opinion research had to do with age. And what it showed is that people in their 20s had about equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction. That is in the architecture of regret. You can regret something you did. You can regret something you didn't do. People in their 20s had roughly equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction. But as people age, the inaction regrets take over. When you get to be in your 40s, certainly 50s, 60s, 70s, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets by three and a half, four to one. So that's a big difference in the content of what people regret.

8:49But when you look at things like, do men and women have different regrets? There's some evidence, there's modest evidence showing some differences. In my research, I saw a tiny little bit, not that much on race, a little bit on education level. I found that people with large amounts of formal education actually had more career regrets than people with less formal education, which sort of is superficially surprising, but perfectly understandable because if you have more education, you have more opportunities, which means you have more opportunities foregone. And so the demographic differences in what people regret were not massive.

9:26Now, I also did a piece of qualitative research where we collected regrets from 26 ,000 people around the world. And there I found that around the world, people seem to have the same four core regrets. They go deeper than simply a regret about a career, a regret about romance, a regret about health, a regret about finance, go deeper than those surface domains of life. Are these the four you're talking about in your book, Foundation, Boldness, Moral, and Connection? Can you say more about those? Sure, sure. So the four regrets. So again, we have this pretty remarkable database of regrets from 134 countries.

10:01The survey was up in Chinese, was up in Spanish and obviously was up in English. And the four regrets that people around the world seem to have are exactly, as you say, foundation regrets. It's small decisions people make early in life that accumulate to terrible consequences later in life. I spent too much and saved too little, and now I'm broke. I didn't exercise or eat right, and now I'm profoundly out of shape. So that's a foundation regret. A boldness regret is a very big category of regret. You're at a juncture in your life, and you have two choices. You can play it safe, or you can take the chance.

10:33And overwhelmingly, when people don't take the chance, they regret it. Now, that's not true for everybody. There are plenty of people who take a chance and it goes south on them and they regret it. But they are massively outnumbered by people who didn't take the chance. And again, what's interesting here is that it doesn't matter the domain. So I have hundreds of people who regret not asking somebody out on a date. Hundreds of people who regret not traveling, not starting a business, not doing something that required a little bit more boldness than they were willing to offer up at the time. Third category, moral regrets.

11:08another time where you have a choice. I can take the low road. I can take the high road. I can do the right thing. I can do the wrong thing. Overwhelmingly, most people, most of the time, regret doing the wrong thing because most people are decent and most people want to be decent and most people feel crappy when they're not decent. And the final one are connection regrets, which are about relationships and not only romantic relationships, but the full spectrum of relationships in our lives. So you've got a relationship. that was intact or should have been intact, say with a friend or with a sibling or with a parent or whoever, and it comes apart.

11:45And in many cases, the way these relationships come apart is unexciting and undramatic. They just kind of drift apart. Somebody wants to reach out, they don't because they think it's going to be awkward and they think the other side's not going to care. So it drifts apart even more. And so those are the four regrets. Foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work, boldness regrets if only I'd taken the chance, moral regrets if only I'd done the right thing, and connection regrets if only I'd reached out. And it's remarkable consistency all over the world in the way people talk about these regrets and the content of their regrets.

12:21I love this type of research. In addition to yours, I read a lot of what my colleague at NYU Adam Alter has written about palliative care and end of life. And it foots to everything you're saying. The only thing we haven't talked about, and it's sort of a mix of all of them or an alchemy of all of them, is that people, the number one regret I've read is that people wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They'd wish they'd forgiven themselves. And that is one of my favorite sayings that's gotten me through a lot of hard times is nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. And that when you look back on your life, you won't be as upset about the thing that happened to you.

12:55You'll be upset about how you responded to it. Your thoughts? I think that's generally right. I mean, that's that is essentially the underlying philosophy of the underlying theory of cognitive behavior therapy, which is basically how you respond to it. It's also essentially an element of stoic philosophy, which has become incredibly popular now. And so, but I mean, the other thing, I mean, you know, I think what's interesting about these regrets is, you know, interviewing people about their regrets is that when people tell you what they regret the most, they're telling you what they value the most.

13:26And so what we know from these four regrets is that people value stability. They value growth and learning and not wasting their time on the planet. They value goodness and they value love. And I think that's very consistent with some of the other research we know that we have on human flourishing, part of which tells us that ultimately at the end of our lives, what's going to matter to us is, did we have people in our lives who loved us and did we love other people? Period, full stop. I mean, if you look at the research, if you look at the grant study at Harvard, this lengthy, multi-decade, longitudinal study of human flourishing, that's what it shows.

14:08And I think what's interesting about this research on regret and in general is also to your point, Scott, is most decisions we make in a given day don't really matter all that much. And I think this is why it's important to think about our regrets. You probably made 100 decisions yesterday, and it's today, and you don't remember most of them. But there are decisions and indecisions that you made, that we made, human beings made, each of us a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that not only do we remember them when we don't remember most decisions we made yesterday, not only do we remember a decision or indecision from 20 years ago, but it bugs us.

14:46That's a very strong signal. That's telling us something. And so we have a choice. We can either plug our ears and say, nope, I'm going to be positive all the time. Or we can say, oh, my God, I'm the worst person in the world and let it topple us. Or we can say, huh, that's interesting. That's a pretty strong signal. Let me listen to this signal. Let me use it as data. And when we do that, there's a lot of evidence showing that regret can help us on a whole range of different things. It can help us become better negotiators, better problem solvers, avoid cognitive biases, strategize better, find more meaning in life.

15:19we'll be right back

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16:14Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about Call EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.LILY.COM or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not Play Play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Made the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.

16:56When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets Mom's 60th. Surprise! And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. I think of you as the motivation guy. I first came across your work. I was excited that you agreed to come on the pod because I remember literally 10 or 15 years ago, I stumbled upon this video where you used an animation to kind of brilliantly and succinctly, I'm sure you know the video.

17:39It went everywhere. And I feel like that was sort of an inflection point for you. You kind of owned motivation. Your book, Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, I loved the way you broke it down, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Can you say more about those three pillars of the motivation stool? Sure. I mean, what we know about, especially motivation at work, is that we sort of have this head fake going on. We think that a certain kind of reward, what I call if-then rewards, are the secret to effective motivation. If you do this, then you get that. If you do this, then you get that.

18:16And we have now 60 years of research showing us that if-then rewards are pretty good for simple tasks with short-time horizons, but not that effective for complex tasks with long horizons. And that for complex tasks with long horizons, what we want to do in the workplace especially is pay people well and then, as you say, offer them those three things, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. So autonomy is, do you have some control over what you do, how you do it, when you do it, where you do it? Mastery is, are you getting better at something that matters? Are you making progress in something meaningful?

18:48And purpose is, do you know why you're doing it? Are you making a difference in the world? Are you making a contribution in your own little terrain? And those are the things that actually lead to enduring motivation. These if-then rewards are like, it's like, you can keep shoveling coal into the furnace, but it burns up pretty quickly. But these autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which form sort of the trifecta of intrinsic motivation, lead to enduring high performance. And what are the enemies of motivation? I was default to the word now. You want to write a book? Just start. So many people come up to me.

19:26I want to start a podcast. I want to write a book. I'm like, okay, start. Other than that, I don't know what advice to give you. What are the killers of motivation? motivation? Well, I mean, there are all kinds of killers of motivation. I mean, part of what it part of it is, I mean, what you're talking about in a way is, is procrastination, which is a problem of emotional regulation. They sort of have this inchoate desire to, to write a book, but they don't want to deal with the discomfort of sitting down and writing the first sentence because that's really painful. Uh, you know, and so I actually think that your advice to just start is, is right.

19:58I think what you want to do is you want to try to change. You want to offer people some scaffolding and some structuring on that. So, you know, if you want to write a book and is set out in your calendar today, 15 minutes to start writing and then do 15 minutes tomorrow and then do 15 in your calendar, 15 minutes the next day, and then expand that. And over and over and over, that's how you write books. I mean, I've written seven books. Do you think I would, if I were to have waited until I was inspired to start writing, I wouldn't have written a word I've written. And I'm able to write books because I care about what I'm writing, but also because I show up in my office at 830 and write and do my job.

20:38And then I do it the next day and the next day and the next day. And I do it even on the days that I don't feel like doing it. I do it on the days, especially on the days I don't feel like doing it. It's like the famous Julius Irving quotation. It's like being a professional is doing what you love to do even on the days you don't feel like doing it. Let's talk about that. What is your process? It sounds like you go into an office, but when you're writing a book, that's kind of, I think, what you're known for. What's your process? You've written seven books. How do you – is there – could you offer anyone some structure around how you get these things done?

21:11I look at writing books like a blue-collar job. I think of it as being a bricklayer. And so what I do in terms of the actual execution of the book is I'm talking to you from my garage office. I live 22 steps in that direction. I'm in Washington, D.C. This is my garage office. Pink Ink World Headquarters is a converted one-car garage. And at 8.30 in the morning when I'm writing a book, I come into this office and I give myself a word count. It varies depending on where I am in the process, but I'll give myself a word count, 600 words, 700 words. I don't bring my phone with me in the office. I don't open up my email.

21:47I don't watch ESPN highlights. I don't do anything until I hit that number. And then when I hit that number, I'm liberated to do other stuff, but nothing until I hit that number. Some days I hit that number at 1030, 11. Other days I don't hit it till late in the afternoon, and those are crappy days, but I don't do anything until I hit that number. And then I do it the next day, and then I do it the next day. So if you want to have process, it's not anything exalted. It's not like I sit in the corner over here with a smoking jacket on, listening for God to dictate sentences to me. No, I show up in my workspace and I do my work.

22:27Your dad, my understanding is two daughters and a son. What is your work on motivation and regret? How does that change your approach to parenting? You know, I think I'm a pretty autonomy supportive parent to use that kind of technical language. So I try to support my kids autonomy. So not be directive, too directive about what they have to do. Now, the underlying fact here is that, I mean, we have 50 years of evidence that the effect of parenting on kids, especially their intellect and their personality, is very small. So, you know, the unhappy fact of genetic research for many parents is that identical twins raised apart are more similar in intelligence and in personality than fraternal twins raised together.

23:16So, you know, arguably the most important things that a parent gives a kid, in my view, especially in America, are genes and a zip code. If you look at the work of Raj Shetty, the most important thing a parent gives a kid are genes and a zip code. Now, again, when we're talking only about their outcome, I mean, you know, I gave my kids genes and I gave my kids a zip code, but more important than anything else, I love them more than anything in the world. and whether that has an effect on their outcome, I don't know. But, you know, it's what it's what it's what parents do. But I don't I think a lot of parents are mistaken about how much control, how much effect they have over who their kids become.

23:55And what about being a good partner? What about being a good husband? When it comes to regret, I think it's really important to talk to your partner or even your kids about your own regrets. That is, a lot of times people sit with their regrets. They think that somehow they're the only one who has those regrets. And we have ample evidence showing that writing about your regret or talking about your regret, it can be quite effective because it's an unburdening, it's a sense-making. And the other mistake that we make, this is true not only with our kids and with our partners, but out there in the world, is that we mistakenly believe that when we talk about our mistakes or our screw-ups or our setbacks, that people will think less of us, when in fact we have some good evidence that people think more of us, that they admire our candor, they admire our courage.