The Myth and Power of Control

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Caroline Webb, who's the CEO of Seven Shift, a firm that shows people how to use insights from behavioral science to improve their working life. Her book on that topic, which is sort of our topic today, is How to Have a Good Day. She is a senior advisor to McKinsey, where she was previously a partner. Caroline, it is such an honor to be speaking with you today. Books are great and your whole career clearly shows that the things that you talk about, you also put into practice.

Caroline Webb: That's very kind. I actually set myself a rule that all the advice in the book had to be advice that I took from myself, that I had to walk the talk. So, yes, I would say the advice in the book has really helped me in my career for sure. No question.

Anita Brick: Wonderful. So first of all, there was an executive MBA student who said, I'm all about tweaking things to make my life better. Given that I have a robust career, full family life, and school, how do I start with finding areas ripe for tweaking? As many, many things seem important to me?

Caroline Webb: Well, first of all, I love the language here about tweaking things to make my life better because that's really the philosophy of what I've seen work really well for busy people is thinking about what are the small changes that are going to have a disproportionate impact in your life. Recognizing that it's not always easy to turn your life upside down and completely change the way that you go about each day.

So tweaks. Yeah, that is absolutely the right thing to be looking for. And if you're very, very busy and you're feeling pretty great actually about everything that's in the portfolio, you just want to make it more enjoyable and you want to raise your game as you're going through it. I think a really good place to start is actually to think about your best days, to think about what's really special about them.

What is it that marks out the difference between those really special days and, you know, three days and that will give you, in particular, I think, a clue as to where you might want to start, because everybody's a bit different. Some things I think everybody should do to help themselves set up a good day. Each of us has areas where we're genuinely strong and areas where there are gaps.

So I would think about the best days. Identify where the gaps are by thinking about you at your best, and how do you get more of that? The nice thing I hope about the book is that you can dive into whichever chapter is the one that you most need, in whichever order you want. I think the other thing I would say about the tweaks is, you know, just think about the scaffolding of your every day, think about email meetings, tasks on your calendar.

These are four things. Maybe. Maybe you're into instant messaging more than emails. But messages, meetings, tasks and calendar the things that you can do around those four building blocks of your day. My goodness, there's so much that you can tweak in each of those categories that can make a big difference with email. You can batch your email processing.

You're spending less time on it because your brain actually only does single tasks. It doesn't multitask. So if you do one thing at a time and you blitz your email, you get it done more quickly. Meetings. If you start them with a positive question, you'll have everybody thinking more clearly because people's brains won't be on the defensive. You're thinking about your tasks.

You don't overload your brain as much when you think about only the tasks on your to do list that you really want to get done now, and you put the rest of it aside so you're not overloading your brain and on your calendar, thinking about strategic downtime, planning the the tasks in the meetings, we forget to think about the time in between.

All the evidence suggests that your brain is doing a huge amount of processing work when we think we're taking it easy and taking a break. So being smart about planning breaks and so on. These are tiny, tiny, tiny tweaks, and the chances of those making a difference in your life are quite high. But there's probably a whole bunch of personalized advice as well that will come from that. Looking at your best days and looking at the gap.

Anita Brick: I like that a lot, because I have found personally that sometimes really tiny things that seem almost insignificant, they build up over time can have an impact. There was a question because you were talking about single tasking. To be perfectly honest, I am not very good at single tasking. Apparently this weekend MBA student isn't either. And he said being totally up front, I'm a multi tasker and I know from reading research on it including your book, it lowers productivity. What would you recommend to someone like me who aspires to a single task? But I'm having a hard time getting there. Where would you suggest I start?

Caroline Webb: This person speaks for most of us, right? I mean, one of the reasons we like multitasking is because we get a little bit of a kick out of the feeling of being wanted. You know, when the little pinker buzz pops up, it makes you feel connected to the world. Possibly there's some novelty, something exciting in there, and the brain treats novelty and social connection as very rewarding.

You need to think about how you can make it rewarding for you to do a single task. One thing that I found really helpful. You know, when I came out of corporate life to focus on writing the book and starting my company, I actually had to raise my game on single tasking because I was at my desk and on my own a lot more.

So much easier to distract, actually, strangely, it's perhaps not what I expected. I think the best place to start is picking the most important thing that you have to do, which for me for quite a long time was writing the book. And then get yourself a timer, put it on your desk and set it for the amount of time that you want a single task, and then press go and let it countdown to zero.

You feel strangely good when it hits zero. It's just a tiny reward to compete with the tiny rewards that come from feeling like you've got a new message, and it also gives you a bit of a point of focus. You can start small. You can try five minutes first of all, and I'll be honest, that is when I have had a period where I've been doing less single tasking. I have to start back at a small amount five, ten, 15, 20 build it up again. It's something which gets easier the more that you do it. So I hope that helps.

Anita Brick: Oh, I totally agree. In fact, I was working on this really big project that lasted for about two years. I knew that I wouldn't be able to, even if I worked every moment the last three months, I wouldn't be able to get it done. And that's what I did. I will tell you, I found something actually yesterday online where in addition to it counting down, it gives you options for sound. And this is gonna sound really corny, but I found one that has clapping at the end.

Caroline Webb: I don't know exactly. Exactly. Oh, that's just fantastic. I really like that. I've also toyed with tracking the amount of time that I've actually managed to stay offline. I do think generally the spirit behind what you're saying is it's very useful to think about technology that can help, rather than technology that can just distract. I used an app called Stay Focused to block my access to social media sites during working hours. It's a really good example of what you're talking about with the clapping and the apps that can help you manage your addiction to social media and so on.

Anita Brick: I got it, so there was an alarm and she said, Hi Caroline, thank you in advance. I understand the concept of fake it till you make it and the physicality of it. I know that the Harvard studies back this up, but I'm not sure I buy into or can really revolve around and get around the fake it part personal authenticity. Your insights are greatly appreciated. What do you say to someone like, well, it's not authentic for me to fake it, but we know that sometimes you have to do that and then it becomes natural.

Caroline Webb: Lots of research suggesting that if you smile and if you breathe more deeply and slowly, and if you stand tall and proud, then you boost your happiness and your confidence and your relaxation. This is quite interesting. It's also a bit weird. It's perhaps a bit easier to think of doing the breathing one and the standing tall one, because they're you don't really have to do anything which looks at all fake.

It's very easy to do some really deep belly breathing without anyone noticing that you're doing it, especially if you sort of lift your torso up in terms of power posing. Well, I mean, really, that's often just a question of standing up straight, putting your shoulders back, taking your space. I'm smiling. I totally get you. I know that fake smiling, which I think really is the research really right.

But it seems to lift people's mood. For me, the phrase that I think of is finding a reason to smile, and it doesn't have to be all that big before I give a big speech or I'm going into a big meeting, the client meeting. I use this a lot. I grin, I just grin, I think, oh, how exciting that this is going to happen. And I go up and I shake people's hands and I find a reason to grin at them. It's not fake. It is real. It is quite deliberate rather than just, you know, happening because you happen to find something funny. But I think deliberate isn't the same as fake. And I think I would sort of perhaps explore that.

Anita Brick: I like that. Switching gears a little bit and evening MBA students said, Hi Caroline, thank you for writing your book. You mentioned that while our habits can be sticky, our brains are adaptable. People tell me that I'm set in my ways and I'm only 28 years old. I do want to be more open. How can you help my brain? Help me?

Caroline Webb: Well, you know, all of us have this sort of bizarre mix of the fact that our brains are much more flexible than anybody thought they used to. I mean, there was a time, not too many decades ago, where the prevailing view in scientific circles was that your brain was more or less fixed from the age of about 20, you know, different people choosing different ages as the cutoff point.

But there was a sense that there wasn't a great deal of flexibility in the brain after a certain point. And now we know that's completely not true, that merely undertaking a new activity or thinking a new thought will actually channel new pathways in your brain and extraordinary ability of the brain to reorganize itself, you know, even after really quite traumatic injury.

So we all have this capacity deep, deep capacity to, to learn and to to change. And also, the more that we do something, the more it gets ingrained as a stronger neural pathway. So you've got this sort of funny mix in the sense that you can be very fixed in your ways the more you do something, but you can't change.

This is true of all of us, not just the person who's raising the question of being set in their ways. I have a little reminder, set up for myself on the three things that help here. One is repetition. When we were kids, we worked hard at learning to ride a bike. We fell off, and then we had to get back on.

Lots of times as adults, we try something new and we think that it didn't work. We need to channel a bit of that childhood perseverance. That is what we know. Reinforce is neural pathways. So not to give up the first time when it doesn't quite work, but to say, okay, what can I learn from that and what will I try differently next time?

So repetition. The next thing is rewards. That question of what I learn from this is very rewarding because learning is a very rewarding thing for the brain. So thinking hard about, okay, what can I learn from the experiences and if it's not going brilliantly is quite important. And actually just patting yourself on the back. Most of us, when we try something new, new approach to meeting, new approach to handling a particular task, we don't stop and say, hey, well done Caroline, well done Anita, you actually tried something out and it was, you know, maybe 50% successful.

I'm a big, big fan of giving yourself a little reward. And then the third are, it's also easy to remember repetition, rewards and reminders. Much, much easier to remember to try something new. There's a concept called when then or implementation intentions where you say, I'm going to try this new approach to this meeting in a very specific setting.

The trigger of saying, when I'm sitting down at 3 p.m. in this meeting, then I'm going to try this new thing of opening with a positive question, makes it 300% more likely that you'll actually do something. According to research by Heidi Grant Halverson. There's something quite interesting about just, you know, recognizing that change. There's a bit of a technology behind change.

You know, you can't just expect it to happen. And repetition and rewards and reminders are really important. And I was in a taxi once with a guy who I was talking about, this book that I was writing, and he said, you've got to issue a pebble with every book. Tell me more. Why would you say that? That's fascinating. And it turned out that for him, he keeps a pebble in his jacket pocket all the time to remind him of whatever it is that he's working on. Right then becomes a personal development. This was an unusual taxi ride. The point is that he understood the fact that you need reminders and prompts in a busy life to remind yourself of what it is you're trying to do. Thanks.

Anita Brick: Perfect sense. We know there's something that goes along with that, and this is an executive MBA student. I think he is open to change, but he is concerned. He said. I worry all the time. I attribute my worry to my deep commitment, conscientiousness and desire to achieve excellent results. My manager, on the other hand, thinks something else. What would you recommend that I do to refocus my energy away from worrying? And by the way, no pressure. My whole family has them.

Caroline Webb: Sense it's funny. Well, there's no doubt that people do have different personalities. There is a different balance between optimism and pessimism. And most of us, I have a few thoughts. You don't have to change completely and sort of say, well, I'm never going to worry about anything ever again. I think there's a way of harnessing it and structuring it potentially useful, a way to channel this natural instinct on the structuring it.

I'm often trying to get my clients to do a bit of what he's talking about. You know, they're overconfident about decisions that they're making. And I get them to do something called a pre mortem, where I get them to think about, okay, this project has died. It went horribly wrong. It's a year in the future. What went wrong?

What did you do wrong? It's a really good way of getting that extra perspective that we often lack, because of all the biases and heuristics that bedevil our decision making. I think if you can put some structure around it and bound it and then say, okay, well, what do I do with this worry? Well, if this were to happen, what would I do now differently?

I think that's one thing I'd say. Another thing I mentioned is harnessing it. I also think there's technical distancing, which might be interesting. It's a way of basically adopting a different perspective, taking yourself out of the place that you're in right now. It's still thinking about what's going on, but saying, what will I think about this when I look back in a year's time? That's quite something. That's pre mortem. There's also, you know, what will I think about this when I look back on this in a week or in a month or what would I advise my best friend to do? In other words, you still think about the situation deeply. So obviously you know something that comes naturally, but you put some structure around it.

You harness it, you push it into a more useful direction. And certainly what you see in neuroscience research is that when people use the distancing technique, it reduces their reactivity to stressful situations. I would suggest that, but there's one other thing. You don't just want to structure it and you don't just want to harness it. There's one thing you can do going back to this point about plasticity of the brain, the malleability of the brain, there's an exercise called the Three Good Things, which you might have heard of three blessed to have sometimes known as yeah, it's used in all sorts of different ways.

It's a really powerful way of quickly boosting your sense of well-being. Lots of research on that. I use it at the end of the day because of the peak and the effect, which means that we disproportionately wait for the way that something ends, as well as its peak ending on a high note, which is a really good thing to do. Doing these three good things.

Exercise means that also your ending on a high note, but you're thinking about retraining your brain a little bit because if you get a little bit of a habit going around that, and I do it with my husband every evening, we don't just do three now, we're just kind of saying, what was the good stuff that happened today?It just retrains you a little bit and it lays down the neural pathways that are around that particular thinking pattern, just to set that alongside your natural tendency to think things through and think about the downsides.

Anita Brick: Good points. Here's something. And it's a little complementary to what we've been talking about. And Allen said, I read Dan Gilbert's research about how people overestimate both the positive and negative outcomes. Maybe I'm different, but I actually overestimate the negative and underestimate the positive. What would you suggest that I do to alter this for my benefit?

Caroline Webb: I think Dan Gilbert's research is really encouraging in terms of our long term resilience. We might think that we're being totally knocked sideways by something bad happening, but actually, research suggests that we do have a tendency to bounce back. What you're talking about with the sort of, you know, overestimating the negative. There's a whole body of research on something called loss aversion, which suggests that, yes, we are uniquely sensitive to loss. Anything which suggests that something is being taken away from us, that we might end up in a worse situation. You know, we are very geared to keep ourselves safe. That's, you know, the front line role of our brain. So we are very, very sensitive to anything which, you know, might be perceived as a threat, don't you think? There's just your alarm, some of the same advice about potentially retraining your brain to think as much as you can about the good things?

I do also see that when you're trying to combat loss aversion and making choices in your life, it really helps to paint the picture of what you're going to gain from making a change because losses loom larger than gains. To use Daniel Kahneman's phrase, we do have a tendency to fixate on the downside risks of what we're doing. We don't tend to think about, well, what's the shining possibility that actually is out there? If I take this chance or make this decision, that might be helpful for someone who is very, very conscious of their loss aversion.

Anita Brick: That's a good idea. It's something that I think a lot of people can relate to. A weekend MBA student said, well, I like your approach to managing one's day. I don't have much control over how I spend my time, as I am in an early stage company with high demands and long hours. I know I need to do something or I will burn out. What are a couple of things that are super short in terms of time commitment that I could add to my day?

Caroline Webb: Excellent question. We all have periods in our lives which are much more intense than we might choose them to be, or maybe which means we're choosing it, but it's still putting a strain on us. I gave a talk at Google in London recently, and there was a young engineer who came up to me with almost the same question.

He said, if you could only say one thing, what would it be? Clutching my book with, you know, obviously lots of things in it. It's hard, right? Because I don't know what the gap is. I don't know personally. What gives you, you know, most of an emotional boost. But I do know that sleep, above all else, affects both your mental acuity and your emotional resilience in a way that really makes it the first thing that you should seek to protect.

If you're trying to sustain yourself and be resilient to a challenging period. The research is really, really incontrovertible on this. I mean, this has been a big journey for me, and actually quite a lot of my clients and colleagues that I know really started paying a lot more attention to sleep as a CEO, that I know who used to be one of your classic, I only have to have a few hours a night, but after you started reading the research and tuning into really how different he was when he didn't have the sleep that he needed, he started using a sleep tracker.

And you know, they are not perfect at all. But just the very fact of deciding to prioritize it now means that he is just much more thoughtful. If you notice, as he's been falling behind for a couple of days, he has a phrase which I really loved, which was, you know, everything that we know about the processing that happens when we sleep and the importance of it for learning.

And so memory suggests that if you don't get enough sleep, then it's like working on a document all day and not saving it. At the end of the day. He's also big on naps. The literature on naps is actually quite encouraging. Obviously most companies don't have not pods. Unfortunately, there is such a thing as an eye mask and earplugs and even these ostrich type pillows which you can stick your head in.

When I was at McKinsey, that was I'm going on record saying, that's not what I was. At McKinsey, I used to sometimes put myself into the nurse's station. If I really, really, really needed a sleep to pick me out for 20 minutes, I think. Sleep. Do you have time for it?

Anita Brick: Maybe 1 or 2 more questions?

Caroline Webb: Oh yeah. At least I'm loving this. This is great. Okay, good.

Anita Brick: So in a lot of said and I really this was a fun question. He said, hi, Carolyn. How would you suggest that I could create areas of serendipity, opportunities to create a really good day, for example, by networking far away from my center of circle. Maybe you have some ideas that I haven't thought of. Thank you in advance.

Caroline Webb: Best regards to an interesting question. How do I create areas of serendipity? Well, there's some nice research that a person might enjoy reading about. On the power of weak ties and weak ties of the people that we encounter each day, who are not our friends or our close colleagues, but are just people we interact with who you know, might be the barista or the doorman on the building. They're people that we could interact with more than we do.

And the research suggests that even those who have a preference for introversion rather than extroversion get a big boost in well-being by taking a leap and having a tiny conversation. So rather than just wordlessly handing off your money when you get your coffee or your lunch to say, hey, I like your music or busy today, you know, I mean, you really don't have to do big things.

And the research is really interesting and compelling. On this. The fact that it gives you a bit of a boost makes you feel more connected. And of course, what a great way of bringing in a bit of serendipity into your day. You never know where the conversation might go.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right.

Caroline Webb: Another one random act of kindness is a phrase. You know, a lot of people know. Not so many people know that the research really backs up the power of doing something randomly, unexpectedly, generously and kindly. Might be giving someone a really nice compliment that they're not expecting. Maybe it's their outfit. Maybe it's something they've done for you. It doesn't have to be much, but just giving a little bit of yourself, giving up your seat when you have two random acts of kindness.

Definitely a lovely way to bring a bit of serendipitous feel good factor into your day. I could go on. There are a few others I could think about. You know, for example, you're more likely to come up with startling insight on a problem you're stuck with if you decide to describe the problem in a completely different way.

You might write in longhand, or you might get up on the wall and use lots of sticky notes to map it out physically. Or you might go to a cafe and say, how is this cafe like my problem? Yeah, interesting research suggests that shaking it up and seeing the problem from a different angle, really different angle, is often quite key to having surprising, unexpected insights. I'll stop there.

Anita Brick: I totally agree, it's interesting. There's a professor who spent a lot of work around the power of the weak ties, and one of the things that he said, which I totally agree with, he said, you go into a new context and you learn how to solve a problem. You bring it back to your context. Everybody thinks you're a genius.

Caroline Webb: Yes, because.

Anita Brick: It had never been done that way before. And you bring it in so there can be a little bit of an upside in terms of your reputation, too, if you think about a problem very differently, definitely.

Caroline Webb: I think absolutely, a lot of the most powerful breakthroughs in science are said to be at the intersections between different disciplines. And I definitely see a lot of people doing really interesting work at the intersection between the disciplines, you know, taking ideas that perhaps have long held sway in psychology and saying, okay, well, how do we think about that in the context of neuroscience or economics or vice versa? Thrown away.

Anita Brick: That's really where you sit, the discipline that you have because of what you've done now and in the past. It's very, very nice. One of the things we like to do at the end of the call is sum up, what are three things that a person could do today to begin to consistently put themselves in the line for having a good day?

Caroline Webb: First of all, something about setting intentions because your brain can only process a certain amount of stuff. It's constantly filtering out a good chunk of reality, and you don't realize that you're only experiencing a partial, edited version of reality. What determines what you actually experience on the day is what's kind of already on your mind. So if you're in a bad mood, your brain will say, right, I now need to make sure you notice everything that confirms that the world is a terrible place.

Oh, and you know that person is smiling over there. I'll decide that that's not relevant for you to really perceive being more deliberate and saying, okay, what am I aiming for today? What really matters to me in this conversation or whatever? And where does that mean I want to put my attention? That's a process I call setting intentions.

You know what matters to me? What does that mean? I want to notice. So that's the first one's quite deep, actually. Chapter one for a reason. It's really, really fundamental. And it's so quick. If you're in a bad mood just to say, okay, I'm going to notice, let's say three good things and then you're in a better mood and then your brain decides, right.

Okay. So Caroline obviously wants to look at good things. Now I may see more good things. So that's first and second. How do you build connections with other people? When we think about ourselves having a good day, we don't think so much about the people around us. There's questions about how do I show appreciation? How do I do one nice thing for someone else today?

How do I do something generous? It's strangely powerful, I think, because it gives us a sense that we have something to give. It makes us feel more abundant. Let's say that's one thing I would say. And then I think the third thing I would say is just be kind to your brain. You know, there are things that we know that help your brain function really well.

I banged on about sleep. There are other things too, you know, single tasking, giving yourself breaks, the sophisticated part of your brain. The deliberate system isn't just responsible for you being smart. It's also responsible for self-control and reasoning of all types and a great deal of all sophisticated emotional capacity. If you are kind to your brain, you're not only going to think more clearly, you're also going to help yourself be a nicer person. And that seems like a great thing to end on, really.

Anita Brick: I thank you very much. If people wanted to learn more, which URL would you suggest that they go through?

Caroline Webb: I would suggest they go to Caroline web.co. A couple of nice things await that. One is something called a Good Day Index, which is a quiz you can take which gives you a sense of your chances of having a good day. That also gives you a list of tips, one related to each part of the book to get you started on raising that percentage. Believe you can also sign up for a free chapter of the book as well. That chapter, I suspect, is going to be chapter one, which is on intentions, which is fundamentals. So everything else that's in the book.

Anita Brick: Thank you so much. This was really fun. I love the work that you're doing. When we can make those small changes, they can have a really big impact on our day and not just our day, but all the people that are around us.

Caroline Webb: Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I love the questions and I wish everybody all the best. Who's listening?

Anita Brick: Great. Thank you and continued success with the book. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.