Leidy Klotz | The Untapped Science of Less

Srini Rao: Welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Leidy Klotz: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Srini Rao: It is my pleasure to have you here. So I actually got ahold of your book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. Oddly enough, before your publicist sent me a pitch saying, Hey, if we want to have you as a guest.

Srini Rao: And I was like, well, yeah, of course. Cause I plan on reaching out to you eventually anyways. But, um, before we get into the book, I want to start with what might be a very odd question. But given that, I think of you sort of as a social scientist and that is what birth order were you and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you made with your life and your career?

Leidy Klotz: Interesting. First, first in my family. Um, and so, and I've got a younger sister who's a year and a half younger than me and a younger brother who is five years younger than me. Uh, and the impact I think, um, One thing that comes immediately to mind is, I mean, my younger sister is a total badass. I mean, she's like, uh, you know, medical school at Johns Hopkins division, one athlete, you know, the top award at her school for sports and academics, um, you know, three beautiful kids, a great husband.

Leidy Klotz: Uh, and so, yeah, so it's horrible, right? This is your younger sister and this goes all the way back. I remember when I was, I think I was like second grade and. Um, all my friends came running in and they're like somebody beat Derek Baldwin in a race on the playground. And Derek Baldwin was like this, a second grader who should have been a third grader and was just like faster than everybody else.

Leidy Klotz: And I was like, who beat him? Who beat him? And it was, my little sister had beat her race. And you know, so this is like constantly happening to me. I mean, I remember doing like a jumping competition with my aunts and uncles and my sister could jump farther than me when she was five and I was seven, you know?

Leidy Klotz: So I think anytime I started to, uh, rest on my laurels or think I was good because I was like beating people my own age. I had this reminder of this little sister who is better than me at stuff. So that definitely kept me motivated also just. It kept me and inspired, uh, you know, part of it is competition, but the other part of it is seeing like somebody do these amazing things and seeing that it's her, her work ethic and her intelligence, um, and realizing that those are things that I also can, can copy.

Leidy Klotz: Um, so, so there's been that impact. I I'd also say that, um, you know, being the older, my brother, the relationship was a lot different because I mean, when you're five years apart, you're basically, I remember not having. Uh, a conversation with him where we're on the same level really until after I came back from college and I come back from college and you're like, oh Rick, that's my brother's name.

Leidy Klotz: He's all grown up now. And, you know, he can, you can have like a big kid conversation with him and now we're kind of tears. And, and so that, um, uh, in terms of education, but he's also, he's a econom economics professor. Um, and I'm an engineering professor by training and, uh, a lot of the social science stuff I've picked up in conversations with him.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and so, so certainly it is, uh, it's helped me that way with the brother and sister. And then the last thing I would say with the, like the relationship with the parents, I mean the first kid in my family, I mean, my parents are both amazing parents, uh, and they spend a lot of focus on getting it right with me and we're very, um, Uh, I mean, strict, but not strict in a way where they're going to like hit me if I was doing things wrong, just like high expectations for the first kid.

Leidy Klotz: And, you know, I, there's a famous story in our family where my dad. Um, made me retake, uh, an exam. Um, and I got educated in New York state and they had this like standardized statewide test that, you know, people got different scores on and I had gotten like an 86 on it, which was one of the highest grades in the class.

Leidy Klotz: But my dad made me go to summer school for it because it's like, no, you have to, you have to have an a, and so that I'm there in summer school with all these people who failed it. Right. And then there's me who like, I'm there because I need to get my grade up five more points, which, you know, it was just like a hard iteration of the test is why I got an 86.

Leidy Klotz: But anyway, I mean, so my parents really, um, you know, paid a lot of attention and. Uh, you know, had had high standards for us and not necessarily high standards in what they wanted, but high standards in what, what we wanted. Um, and so all of those things affected us. And I think, you know, my brother, for example, by the time he came through high school, my parents had gone through it with my sister and I, and they were quite a bit more relaxed than what he was allowed to do.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I do. I can, I can relate. I it's funny because we, we seem to have like very parallel paths. So my sister is a, uh, you know, same thing, med school, grad 3.9, seven GPA at Berkeley, chief anesthesiology resident at Yale, and you know, fellowship at UCLA at our, I remember talking to a buddy of mine from Berkeley, who you go into the home, there's a Harvard neurosurgeon.

Srini Rao: He's like, yeah, your sister is like every Indian parent's dream come true. And I'm just like, well, that would make me every Indian parent's nightmare come through. Yeah.

Leidy Klotz: What was her? Uh, what was her non a N my sister had that same exact GPA and she got a, she got to be like her second semester. Fourth year.

Leidy Klotz: Oh, okay. Well, at least with your sister, it's like a legit class. Didn't get a bad grade. And my sister just got a bad grade in a class where the professor not a bad grade to be where the professor just didn't give any A's and, uh, all my brother and I just loved that so much because it ruined her for oh, the last semester, but, well,

Srini Rao: yeah, no, I mean, my sister was one of those people that it was kind of.

Srini Rao: Ready from the get go. We were like, you know, we knew she was just smarter than all of us. I mean, we took her to NASA when we were kids, you know, we lived in Houston or Texas. And so we would take people to NASA because back in those days, that's what, you know, you, you were able to do there as a tourist attraction, people would go nuts.

Srini Rao: And so we're taking this tour of NASA and, um, you know, they tell my sister about the atomic clock, right. And the atomic clock supposedly only goes wrong every 100 years. And you know, you imagine this like four year old raises her hand says, okay, great. How do you know this is true? And the guy looks at her and says, well, somebody told me.

Srini Rao: And she says, do you believe everything? Everybody tells you and my dad and I were just like, oh my God, like a four year old. And so it's kind of, the joke is like, if you're in a room by sister, she's the smartest person in the room, but that actually segues to a question that I have for you. So you allowed that to inspire you and I can tell you for me watching my sister.

Srini Rao: There was a really long period of time where I had this just immense inferiority complex about the fact that she had done everything that people consider successful by, you know, typical Indian standards. I mean, doctor, you know, being a doctor is like the most noble thing you could do. I can win a Nobel peace prize and people had realized, yeah, you're still not a doctor.

Srini Rao: So I wonder how did you, like, how do you balance the sort of, you know, finding inspiration in, in, you know, a younger sibling who has, you know, so accomplished, but at the same time, not letting it become an inferiority company.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, I don't, I mean, I'm not as bold as you where I went and did something. That's kind of, totally out of the norm for, you know, my parents aren't Indian obviously, but they're, I think they've like had some of those same stereotypes of, um, caring about certain professions and it's not like I was, you know, doing podcasting.

Leidy Klotz: And then my sister came along and went to medical school. It was more like I was doing a okay job in my career, in academe, in, um, in engineering. And then my sister goes to medical school and I'm like, Hmm. I wonder if I could do a PhD, uh, I think, and I mean, the soccer is another example. So I went and I played division one soccer and, you know, it was like one of the, probably the first person from my town ever to do that.

Leidy Klotz: And I'm sitting there feeling good about myself that I, you know, started as a freshman in division one soccer. And then, but I played at, uh, a small school in division one and then my sister, you know, I'm my S uh, starting my junior year. And my sister gets recruited to go play at Maryland, which is top 10 division one soccer.

Leidy Klotz: And I'm like, great. Now, like now what do I do to like, to seem cool compared to my sister? I need to, you know, not just be on a division one soccer team, but we actually need to win some games or like when championships or something like that. And so. It's never been, um, fortunately for me, it's never been where she's like so far on a different level that I haven't been, it's always been like, oh, well I can do something that's like one or two steps away from what I'm currently doing.

Leidy Klotz: It's not like a total career shift for me. And then, I mean, the things where it's a, I mean, this is easier now that I'm 43 and she's 41 than when I was seven. But, um, the, the, the things where she's just like on a different level and I'm never going to catch her. Of course, now that I'm a little more grown up.

Leidy Klotz: I'm okay with that. I guess when I was a kid, I think you just kind of a. Create your own things that are important and say that well, I don't care about, you know, grades in, in, uh, in undergrad because that's, um, you know, I'm focused on other things. So I guess I kind of like shifted the goalposts a little bit for myself.

Leidy Klotz: And that, that helped with the fact that she was such a rock star in the conventional ways.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, it's funny. We were exactly the same age and I think for me, it's been kind of the same sort of experience, right? It's like, I, you know, I had a self-published book that was a wall street journal bestseller.

Srini Rao: I remember, you know, when I had

Leidy Klotz: this amazing we'll,

Srini Rao: we'll talk about that. Off-air but like, um, when I, I remember when I got my book deal, one of the things I wanted to be able to do is tell my dad, this is actually harder than getting into medical school. So I remember asking my editor at penguin was like, okay, what are the actual odds that somebody ends up here in your office?

Srini Rao: And she said about one in 5,000. I'm like, until I go home, I was like, dad, you realize like one in 5,000 people get a book deal. That's less people than get into med school. Didn't make a damn bit of difference.

Leidy Klotz: Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Well, you know, I think that makes a perfect segue to. Talking specifically about education, um, in general, you know, we're, we're, you know, it's funny because we're talking about sort of markers for success and, uh, you know, and it's funny because it's also very relevant to the whole idea of subtract because there's this sort of just relentless drive or more right.

Srini Rao: You know, more AP classes, more extracurricular activities, you know, better grades, you know, like higher GPA is more as kind of the default narrative of our culture. Um, and you being, you know, in a professor at an educational institution, especially when, like, you know, university of Virginia, which I know is kind of like a Berkeley, it's one of the best public schools in the country.

Srini Rao: If you were tasked with redesigning the education system to accommodate the needs of students today, so that they're prepared for the world that they're going to encounter when they graduate, what would you change about it?

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Leidy Klotz: That's how we're advancing climate solutions. Find out more@energyfactor.com.

Srini Rao: This episode of the unmistakable, creative is supported by the longtime academy, a new podcast about how to be a good ancestor. It's a show about time and how we think about time. Short-term thinking can be really stressful. And some of us find it difficult to plan for tomorrow or next week, let alone next year or 10 years from now.

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Srini Rao: Time is long, the long-time academy,

Srini Rao: and I realized we could do an hour podcast on that subject.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, no, I have a lot of thought. I'm just trying to prioritize the top one. Uh,

Leidy Klotz: I, I mean really high up there is thinking about. The availa, like the best ways to deliver the best available content. I mean, this notion that every single university should have a professor lecturing about, and I'll use this example from engineering. It's like, there's this course called statics. And it's a course that everybody has to take.

Leidy Klotz: It's the same exact thing everywhere. Like w why do we have, uh, a substandard teacher? I mean, not substandard teacher, but somebody who's not the very best statics teacher teaching students that course. Um, and so is there some way that we can take advantage of the fact that you've got, uh, maybe some amazing statics teacher who can deliver the content in kind of a conventional way that a lecturer would, but then also have people on the specific campuses that are helping, uh, Helping the students really, you know, take the content that's been delivered and then do the, do the actual problems.

Leidy Klotz: And so I think, you know, kind of the, I think we've seen that the Coursera is of the world and, uh, you know, just online education in general Khan academy. I mean, these are all amazing things, but at the same time, they're not a substitute for in-person learning anybody who has. Try to learn during the pandemic or had people trying to learn during the pandemic has seen that.

Leidy Klotz: But if we, we do need to think really carefully about what can be delivered in the, in that kind of online format and what can be delivered in person and then kind of segment those, uh, kind of take a step back, I think, and then come back to education and say, okay, this is, this is what we're gonna deliver as online stuff.

Leidy Klotz: And this is what we're going to delay deliver online or virtual. Uh, and this is what we're gonna deliver as in-person things. Um, does that make sense?

Srini Rao: Yeah, no, that makes, that makes complete sense. I mean, Seth Godin talks a lot about this and he says, you know, it's kind of absurd that people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go listen to somebody lecture.

Srini Rao: He said when the real value would be to get those groups of students into a discussion and watch the lecture at home.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. And I mean, again, this is something I try really hard to do and. Explain that to students. Right. Cause it's really hard to break them out of that thinking, but it's like, okay, what makes university of Virginia Good?

Leidy Klotz: It's like, yeah, we've got some good professors. But the thing that is distinguishing this university is your, your peers. And this is me talking to the students, right? You are going to school with these amazing students from all walks of life who have tons of things to, to share with you now and after you graduated into the future.

Leidy Klotz: So if we're not, if we're, if we're bringing you together in a classroom and not allowing you to talk to each other, we're missing the biggest opportunity. Uh, so I would, I would agree with that one. I think that's one big thing that needs to change with education. Um, I do think where this is a little old, not old fashioned, uh, but maybe not talked about as much.

Leidy Klotz: I think that the, the role. Of in terms of con con contributing to knowledge like science, right? The university has these people who have time to study things that don't have an immediate profit motive is like, that needs to be ruthlessly protected and it's getting eroded away. I mean, it's, you know, more and more as like, okay, what are we doing for entrepreneurship?

Leidy Klotz: Which again, I'm not saying that. Creating new knowledge is the most important thing. I'm just saying that this is one of the only places that that can happen. And if we don't, if we don't keep doing it here, nobody else is going to it's like everybody's doing entrepreneurship and the universities get so caught up in profit motives and okay.

Leidy Klotz: Run the universities like a business. And it's like, yeah, certain, certain elements. Sure. But we can't lose this, um, learning for learning's sake and creating knowledge for creating knowledges sake. Because again, that's the, that's the unique niche in society that this institution can fill. And it has done a really good job filling historically.

Leidy Klotz: So as we kind of modernize, I think that's like maybe a little bit of getting back to the roots there of what academia can do that. Um, other, other sectors don't necessarily. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Well, I mean, I think the irony of that is that, you know, prioritizing the creation of knowledge for the sake of knowledge actually feels entrepreneurship.

Srini Rao: Like we wouldn't have scientific breakthroughs that lead to companies, if people weren't doing that.

Leidy Klotz: Exactly. Yeah. And we need, that's another thing that we need to do in academia is show how that's happening. Right. We can't just rely on other people to communicate that for us, because of course the, you know, where it's not that we're creating knowledge that we don't think will ever be useful.

Leidy Klotz: It's just, we don't know 100% how it will be useful. And, uh, and it's certainly that is, there's a huge societal value to it. Um, in, in most cases.

Srini Rao: And speaking of, of knowledge, that's useful, this is something I've talked about on the show before and something I'd be curious to hear from your perspective, particularly, you know, at a place like UVA, when I got to Brooklyn, Basically life, you know, the options were presented to me like a fast food menu.

Srini Rao: It was kind of like, these are the majors, these are the potential career paths that, you know, each of them will lead to choose one, you know, and make a commitment to it. And it's like, wait a minute. So I'm making a decision about what I'm going to do with my entire fucking life before I've lived any of it.

Srini Rao: And so people, and then you think, well, of course, people end up in jobs. They hate because of this. Now you probably get to talk to the students, you know, like early in life enough that you can have an influence on them. One, why is that the case? How do you break them of that conditioning? Because I can tell you that I always made every single choice based on whatever I thought would get me a job.

Srini Rao: And I distinctly remember three weeks into freshman year, which is ridiculous. I go into a career fair, you know, which is meant for seniors. I talked to some guy who I think worked at Anderson consulting, which eventually became Accenture. And he tells me we don't hire English majors. And so I never took an English.

Srini Rao: So that was the end of my decision to be an English major. And I've never once applied for a job there, you know, and I feel like that happens to so many students. Yeah.

Leidy Klotz: I'm so glad you brought that up. I mean, I might even put that higher on my list of things to change about education is just, I mean, I get, we need to have these categories, but the over-reliance on these categories.

Leidy Klotz: I mean, um, I, I, first of all, I'm an engineer for this very reason. Like, that's why I'm sitting in an engineering building. I went to school and they said for engineering, you have to decide before you even come in. Right. It's like, if you don't start in engineering, you can't switch in because you've, you'll be behind.

Leidy Klotz: You won't have taken calc one, two and three. And so I started in engineering and then every year I would go to my advisor and say, I don't know if I really like engineering. And I mean, fortunately I went to, uh, I went to Lafayette college as an undergrad. And so like liberal arts and engineering school.

Leidy Klotz: And so the advisors offered, what I think was the right advice. They said, you know, you can do engineering. You don't have to be an engineer. And it's a good platform for these other things. And I was at a school where. You know, even the engineers had to take, uh, you know, basically 25% of our credits in writing the first few, four years.

Leidy Klotz: Uh, and so I, it was a good baseline, but you know, this decision that I made when I was 18 years old, based on, oh, you can't do this. If you don't do it now is, is influencing my life to this day. So personally I have succumbed to that. I, I think, you know, maybe I'm just justifying this after the fact, but in my case, I don't think it's been bad.

Leidy Klotz: And, but now when I talk to students, the exact thing that you're talking about happens, I mean, it's not just majors here. We have these ridiculous minors. And then like in our art department, we have subtracts within civil engineering. And so students are coming to me like, should I major in, I don't know if I want to do the infrastructure systems track or the.

Leidy Klotz: Environmental track and oh no, this is gonna, you know, of course, try to figure out what you're most interested in, but this matters zero after you get your first job, or probably not, even when you get your first job in this case, because no employer knows that UVA even has these subtracts. They're not asking the students about this.

Leidy Klotz: Um, so to, to break them of it, I, I mean, I spend a lot of time saying. It doesn't matter. Um, and I can draw on personal experience for that. After I, uh, after I did my undergrad degree, I played professional soccer for a couple of years. And then I went and worked in the construction industry, which was kind of like the consulting industry version of what civil engineers do.

Leidy Klotz: And, you know, I just saw firsthand that it didn't, there were all these people in this industry and it didn't matter what major they had. It mattered how smart they were, how much they liked their job and how, how good they did at it. And, um, so I draw on that experience to tell students that it doesn't matter and not to stress out about it too much.

Leidy Klotz: And, uh, and really, you know, your question about. Getting a job, right? I mean, that's the exact students at Berkeley and UVA. The question is not whether you're going to get a job. If you can't get a job that something is like fundamentally wrong with the economy, right. We've got bigger problems than you getting a job.

Leidy Klotz: The question is what's going to be a fulfilling life for you. And that's, you know, it's not something you're going to figure out in the first three weeks of college, but it's something that you should start thinking about and that's the way to be thinking about the career stuff. So that's what I try to, um, help them, help them think about, but I do.

Leidy Klotz: I mean the other, I mean, it's, it really is something that we do, that's detrimental to the students because it's the only time in your life to where this whole, it's the first question everybody gets asked. Right? What's your major and it's, and it, so of course, they're going to think that this is like a really important thing and never again, Life is that the first question you're asked?

Leidy Klotz: I mean, you might get asked as the first question, like, what's your job, but that's quite different than what, what your, what your major is. And so we, we make it seem like this thing is that really matters when in fact it doesn't.

Srini Rao: Uh, yeah, I mean, I think the, the common thread I've heard when I've asked people similar questions, uh, you know, we had a Sarah Stein Greenberg, there was a professor at Stanford and she said, you know, this should really be a period of exploration.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Sadly it's not, it's one that sort of kills curiosity and, you know, replaces it with conformity. You know, like I had this sort of same experience. It was like, here's Berkeley, this incredibly diverse place with all this really smart people. And I'm like, this place is a breeding ground for conformity.

Srini Rao: Like everybody is a future lawyer, doctor investment banker. Um, like those are the most sort of sought after professions. And you know, to me, that was just. I feel like I missed out, you know, like I, I look back now and think to myself, like, wow, this is you read this really kind of limited my experience in terms of what was possible in college.

Srini Rao: But I think part of that is also the conditioning, right? I mean, so I I'd imagine a student at UVA is very similar to a student at Berkeley, meaning that they probably path of the more valedictorians of their high school. They're probably the smartest person in their class. Not that I was like, my group of friends in high school is so smart.

Srini Rao: The dumbest ones went to Berkeley. Like we were the dumb people, like, you know, but then you get to a place like Berkeley and suddenly you realize, holy shit, these people are way smarter than I am. Like, there were times when I thought I didn't belong there. Um, but even when I went to speak to my high school, AP English teacher's class, after I got my, um, I was stunned by how worried they were about what they wanted to do with their lives.

Srini Rao: And that just seemed like such a waste to have taken this period of your life, where you have this freedom to explore. And then you don't, you know, like there's no time in your life. I always say if I went back to college now. Yeah. I would approach college like van Wilder. Yeah.

Leidy Klotz: It's uh, it's true. It's like the worry, right?

Leidy Klotz: It should, it shouldn't be a worry about what you're going to do. It should be like all this amazing anticipation about what you can set yourself up for. What do you think about, uh, a gap year? I never would have done this because I was so focused on soccer that like I, and you needed, that was the way to play soccer was to start.

Leidy Klotz: But I do think that, I mean, when I went back for my PhD, for example, I'm five years out of college. I'm sitting in this class and it's like on the, on the surface, the most dull class ever, it's a research methods class, but I'm there with four other students and this brilliant researcher who's, you know, telling us the inner workings of her brain and how she does research.

Leidy Klotz: And I'm like, this is the most amazing experience ever. And I think I appreciated it because I had seen the working world first. Um, and I don't. You know, this isn't a scientific study of all the students I've ever taught. But I do think that like some of these students who have done, you know, whether it's military service or just something for a couple of years, and then they come back or totally, they're engaging with school in a much different way than the students who are just doing it as the next step, in the steps of things that they're supposed to do.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Mean, it's funny. Cause you know, I remember talking to Cal Newport about the book, how to be a straight a student. He said that that book was written specifically for the type of student you're talking about. And I very distinctly remember, like when we had junior transfers come into. And they all came in with sky high GPA's they absolutely killed it because I think they just knew they'd kind of acclimated to, you know, life in college.

Srini Rao: Whereas when you go straight to a four-year college, it's kind of like, oh, you're thrown into this new environment, trying to find a sense of identity. And you layer on top of that. You know, all the classes you have to take, you know, surrounded by, you know, the sort of ruthless competition. I had a colleague of my dad's, uh, in high school, tell me once he said, you know, if you survive undergrad at Berkeley, everything in life that comes after will see museum comparison.

Srini Rao: And, you know, I think there was a grain of truth to that because it's not a pleasant place to go to school,

Leidy Klotz: not for undergrad. That's I'm wondering, I mean, that's another thing where that I think a lot about, because I mean, of course you assign a lot of work. The students are going to have to do a lot of work.

Leidy Klotz: It's kind of forced them. It's gonna force a certain type of thing, right. A work ethic. You're going to learn a certain amount of things. You're gonna learn how to prioritize your time. And then the other side of that is it takes away any sense of exploration. I mean, like I did the only time in my life where I didn't read was as an undergrad in college because I didn't have time to.

Leidy Klotz: And so I don't know. It's like, there's how do you, how do you balance this? Giving people flexibility to, to study things that, that they want to with this very real need to, um, to have them actually learn stuff. And in particular, I think it's really valuable to at some point. Just learn that you can do really hard things.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, I think I'd imagine in a lot of ways, UVA has a lot of similarities being a public school. It's just, you know, endless amounts of bureaucracy and bullshit. Um, you know, Berkeley is a pain in the ass to live in. Like almost every house you can rent to live as a shithole. But I remember seeing the comparison, you know, with friends, like I, one of my friends who went to UCLA for med school, he told me that when people came to UCLA from Berkeley, they found it really easy.

Srini Rao: She, and he said, the people who came from Stanford actually found it much harder. Ad my sister said the exact same thing. She said med school was a breeze in comparison to Berkeley. Um, but you know, I think that that segues perfectly into one sort of final question about education, which is the value that we placed on the elite university.

Srini Rao: You know, um, to the point where, you know, you have a high school school districts, like Palo Alto was a crazy teen suicide rate, largely caused by this pressure to succeed. You end up with a college admissions scandal, and then you brittle students with student loan debt, uh, you know, from your vantage point as a professor, how do you one solve this problem of, you know, perception of the value of, of sort of an elite school, which don't get me wrong.

Srini Rao: I'm not questioning that there is some value, right? I mean, you're a professor UVM, a Berkeley grad look, I'd be lying to you. If I told you that didn't open certain doors, I saw it firsthand. And the contrast, because I went to Pepperdine for my MBA program and I saw, you know, when you were at Berkeley McKinsey, Bain, Google, like all the companies that people dreamed about working out, they came to recruit students at Berkeley.

Srini Rao: Nobody didn't recruit anybody. Um, so there's no question that that carries some weight, but the thing is, I think we place so much value on it and now, you know, it's so bad. My sister, and I know we're both, like if we had to compete now to get into any of the schools we got into, we wouldn't get in. Like I wouldn't get into Berkeley now.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. It is crazy. I mean, I've got a seven year old and you're looking at what the high school age. I mean, kids who are 10 years away from where he is right now are doing to prepare their college applications. And it's ridiculous. Um, I want a cool solution. I've seen, uh, Barry Schwartz. He wrote the paradox of choice and he's a, I think he's actually a Berkeley professor.

Leidy Klotz: Now. He was at Swarthmore for a long time. He has this cool idea for, I think it's basically like a, um, a lottery and I mean, I, you can Google the article and make sure that it's exactly what he's saying, but my understanding of it was like, okay, Yeah, there is some value, uh, to, uh, a student that has, or to a university that has a better student to faculty ratio.

Leidy Klotz: Right. And, but, but the difference between Harvard and Yale or Berkeley and UVA, or, you know, there isn't a difference and the students are picking based on trivial things like, you know, the, the architecture of the campus, or, you know, where you fed when, or, you know, where, where your sister got in. Uh, and the.

Leidy Klotz: So his point was okay, you get people into categories and then just do a lottery that, you know, kind of sends people off to the universities. And, um, so it takes away some of the really strong pressure, um, for, you know, finding one specific place and focuses people a little more just on like, okay, doing the things that you need to be prepared to be in one of these, um, to, to go, to, to go to a college, uh, that, that helps you develop.

Leidy Klotz: Um, I will. I mean, and I also like that. I mean, Malcolm Gladwell has a bunch of stuff on, you know, that's kind of, poo-pooing the whole notion of elite universities in the first place. And I, uh, like, he's like, if you were gonna donate, I remember this because, um, he said, you know, if you're going donate, uh, $10 million donated to Rowan university instead of Stanford.

Leidy Klotz: And it's, I mean, I don't know, um, with, if you're trying to make social impact, I think there's still an argument to be made for, um, that these kinds of elite institutions that are doing really great stuff that combined some of the best minds and like put them in this environment that I there's there's value to that.

Leidy Klotz: I mean, of course there's also value to the Rowan universities that are serving tons of students, but, um, I don't want to say like, oh, all college education, it should be exactly the same. And I do think that there's a, you know, there's a reason that some universities cost more. I mean, sometimes that reason is because they have fancy amenities and good dining halls, but other times it's because they have a really low student to faculty ratio, which means that they can offer writing classes where the professor has time to come on a not everybody's assignment.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and so, so anyway, very short lottery system is, uh, is a good suggestion, but I do, you know, for any high school kids who are listening to me at focused on figuring out what you, what you like and being, being great at it, and the university stuff will fall into place. Hi, this is Paul rust from the width Gorley and Russ podcast.

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Srini Rao: This acclaim podcast features award winning veteran journalist, Richard Sergei, and acclaimed writer and producer Tavia, Gilbert. Find them wherever you get your podcast. The stories of impact podcast is supported by Templeton world charity foundation. Yeah, I think the, the one funny thing I always do, like when I think about that advice is that I wonder if I would have been open-minded enough to even consider, you know, the practicality of it when I was 18 years old or I would have been like, you're an old fart who has no idea what you're talking about.

Srini Rao: This sounds like a, like, literally the things I've learned from my guests, I would have written off as new age bullshit when I was 18 years.

Leidy Klotz: Right. Yeah, that's true. Um, and you just don't know, right? You don't even know what the options are. You're like, oh, you can do anything you want. And then you're like, okay, well I can be a professor like my dad or computer program, or like my mom, those are the two things that I would have known about, or I can like mow grass, which is what my summer job is, you know?

Leidy Klotz: So you just don't have exposure to like these things that you can do to make a difference in the world. So, I mean, there is that part of it with the majors and I guess maybe that's what we should be doing a better job of is explaining to people that these are just, you know, we're just showing you potential paths.

Leidy Klotz: We're not forcing you into narrow boxes that are going to define you for the rest of your life.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, speaking of potential paths, I think that that makes a perfect segue to actually getting finally into the content of the book. So what in the world led it to this book, this perspective, um, you know, like how did you get interested in this subject and how did it lead to this.

Leidy Klotz: Yes. I mean, I'm an engineer by training. Um, but I think the issue that I try to have my research be relevant to our environmental issues and, um, climate change in particular. Uh, so exploring those two things for a long time, um, it just became really clear that a lot of these things that we build and design and ways that we act that are not sustainable, that are kind of helping not helping our species thrive on this planet.

Leidy Klotz: A lot of these things are behavior, right? Th the technology is there. We know how to make a net zero energy house. We know how to use electric cars. We know how to zoom instead of travel to Europe for a conference. Um, and so of course keep advancing the technology and the widgets, but like, how do we understand human behavior and how that impacts the, you know, the state of the planet and as.

Leidy Klotz: Working on that I got interested in like, okay, what are the fundamental mindsets that might be holding us back? And that brought me to, um, I mean, I'd always been interested in kind of minimalist architecture and, oh, it's cool that, you know, that house there works without a central heating and air conditioning system.

Leidy Klotz: I mean, if you're in Boulder, Colorado, there's a house in, in Snowmass for example, that, um, that doesn't have central heating or cooling survives in that climate. And, you know, Curt provides a very comfortable indoor living environment for occupants. And this is something that we know how to do. Um, And so why aren't, why aren't we doing it more?

Leidy Klotz: And, um, so eventually I got to, okay. The thing I'm interested in is not like this end state of minimalism where there's like no HPAC system or there's no, uh, extra frills on a building. It's more, what's this act of getting to there. So what's this act of, of taking away. And funny enough, I was, um, the, the biggest, the closest thing to an epiphany, I guess, came when I was playing with my son, who's three at the time.

Leidy Klotz: And we were playing with Legos and building a bridge out of the Legos. And the problem we had was the bridge wasn't level. And so I went to make it level. I turned around behind me to grab a block, to add to the shorter column. And by the time I had turned back around, he had removed a block from the longer column and he's a horrible subtractor.

Leidy Klotz: But, um, in that moment he had. Thought to solve the problem by taking something away. And, um, that really crystallized the thing that the book's about, which is when we encounter problems or situations, whether they're physical things like the Legos, or, you know, uh, a piece of writing a podcast that you need to edit.

Leidy Klotz: Uh, why is it our first instinct to think, what can we add to this, uh, to this situation? And only subsequently, do we think, what can we subtract? And oftentimes we don't even think what we can subtract. And, um, it wasn't just, it didn't just go from the Lego bridge to the book. I mean, we did tens of thousands of hours of research to show that.

Leidy Klotz: And we found that, like, what I had done in that situation is pretty typical for what happens with our core thinking process, which is. We're presented with a situation. We take it in. So we're looking at this Lego bridge, or you're looking at your, your own house that you want to renovate and make better, or you're looking at, um, a piece of writing or even the, you know, when we talked about education and some of the problems there, it's like, you're looking at, uh, the outline for your course and the, the, and you think, okay, how can I change this?

Leidy Klotz: How can I make this better? Arguably, this is like a fundamental thing, not fundamental. This is, this is like the core act of making society better. Um, and our first instinct is, is the thing, what can we add to this? And what we found in our studies was that oftentimes people chose adding even it was objectively the wrong answer.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and so we've got, uh, my favorite study that we did is the, are these grid patterns and what was cool about the grid pattern. They're devoid of context. Um, so you, when, when I added to the Legos, you might say, well, well, that's just because you grew up playing with Legos and you're used to adding, and then I might say, well, why did I grow up adding to Legos?

Leidy Klotz: But anyway, that all of these specific contexts, you could make that same critique. Um, but the grid patterns are something that people hadn't encountered before and you could make these, the task was to make grid symmetrical, left to right, and top to bottom. And you could, we put extraneous marks in one of the quadrants of the grids.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and so one way to make the grids to the metrical was to add to the three quadrants that didn't have the extraneous marks. Um, but we told people to do it in as few clicks as possible. The other way. To make them symmetrical was to subtract from the quadrant that did have the marks. And that was the better way because it took fewer clicks.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and so people would, would miss that more than half the people would, would get that wrong. They would say, oh, they would add to three corners, even though the right answer was to subtract from one corner. And when you showed them that, that was the right answer. They're like, oh, of course I got that wrong.

Leidy Klotz: Um, and the reason is because you think first to add, right, we, we process things sequentially. And so we think first to add, and then we move on without even considering whether subtracting maybe a better option. So that that's the, you know, that's chapter one of the book. And I mean, but the whole book relies on that new scientific insight that we, you know, we systematically.

Leidy Klotz: I think to add first, we systematically overlook subtraction. Um, and then, you know, I'll, I'll shut up in a second here, but even after that, of course, you know, we can think of things. Um, well, the first problem with subtracting is that we don't even think of it. And then there are all these other reasons why, okay, why don't we think of it?

Leidy Klotz: But then even when we do think of it, we often don't choose it. Um, and so the book goes on to explain, to explore why, why has this happened? You know, what are the biological and cultural reasons, but then also what, what can we do about it? How can we find subtracting more? Because you know, the argument that I make in the book is that this is an unmapped opportunity.

Leidy Klotz: You know, we haven't been doing it very much. And, um, so there's, there's potential out there in taking things away to make our, our world a better place and to make our personal lives a better, better for ourselves.

Srini Rao: Uh, well, we'll, we'll get into all of those, but, um, so one of the things you open the book by saying is that neglecting subtraction is harmful in our households, which now commonly contain more than a quarter of a million items.

Srini Rao: Someone has to organize and keep track of all those juicers ill-fitting clothes, Legos, and long sense, deflated monkey balloons from family trips to San Francisco. We neglect the distraction in our institutions, in our governments and in our families. We default to adding requirements. And it's kind of funny because it reminded me of a story.

Srini Rao: Cause I, you know, we're, we're working on a personal knowledge management course with this new note taking up. Okay. Information overload comes up over and over again is a big issue for people who are on our email list. And I was waiting to finish writing that section of the newsletter until I had my conversation with you, because I was like, oh, wait a minute.

Srini Rao: I'm like, I'm going to have a conversation with a guy who was an expert on this. I should wait. But after reading that quote, it reminded me of a story with my mom. So my mom keeps our house like Buckingham palace. It's immaculate to the points where it drives people insane. Um, I had a friend come over in high school and she's like, damn, your house is so clean.

Srini Rao: And I said, yeah, you see those pennies on the floor. When my, when you leave, my mom is going to come in here and yell at me and say, there are pennies all over the place. And that's exactly what she did. So a couple of years ago I was living at my parents' house and, you know, she was not happy with the state of my closet.

Srini Rao: Um, because she just didn't like, we're talking Buckingham palace to the point where if clothes are not hung symmetrically and don't look like you're in a damn goodness, do we'll get yelled at. My solution was simple. I walked in and I got a garbage bag and I just dumped like four of them. I said, all right, cool problem solved.

Srini Rao: And she was like, don't be a smart ass. And I'm like, I'm not being a smart ass. And I realized the key to dealing with that situation was as somebody who would naturally tends to, you know, let clutter accumulate was simply to have less stuff. But how do you know? So that's an example of how this harm by relationship with my mom, which

Leidy Klotz: is, you know, in my mind, you know, a really good thing that

Srini Rao: I figured out the key to making sure that my mom doesn't irritated by my mess is simply to have less stuff.

Srini Rao: But I'm really curious, you know, we talked about institutions, but let's talk about governments in particular. Like what, I mean, what is it that minus, you know, the endless amounts of bureaucrats who don't seem to do anything, but, you know, get on the news and bullshit, um, you know, economic theory and that doesn't lead to any real action.

Srini Rao: What can we subtract from government that would actually serve citizens in a better.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. I mean, I think the specific subtractions are, you know, up to the experts. I do think that one of the things that the research and I mean, experts I'd say broadly, it doesn't have to be one of these bureaucrats.

Leidy Klotz: Who's doing economic theory because I think there's experts in all walks of life. And I try to highlight them in the book. Um, uh, the, the example of the monkey balloons in San Francisco for example, is from Superman, who is a neighborhood activist in San Francisco and, uh, was instrumental in removing the Embarcadero freeway from their waterfront, which is where my son got the monkey balloon, which is now stored in our house.

Leidy Klotz: So anyway, um, with the, with the experts in mind, um, but I think we, like, how do we remind ourselves that subtracting is one basic option for improving government? And one of the things I learned about after writing the book actually, um, it was a. And from my understanding, British Columbia put in place a rule where if somebody came with a piece of, if you brought a piece of legislation, you had to suggest two pieces of legislation that were already on the books that could go.

Leidy Klotz: Um, so it's a really beautiful way of kind of number one, forcing people to not forcing people, but just reminding people to consider subtracting, but also like tying it directly to the audition. And this is kind of like the, if you, if people have a stop doing list, right, that you're, oh, every week when I do my to-do list, I'm also going to do a stop doing list.

Leidy Klotz: It's kinda, this is a kind of a personal way where you might keep adding in check. And that was the policy way where you could keep adding in check. And what was interesting about the British Columbia example is of course, It turned things around. It would have to write the growth of regulations started to go down.

Leidy Klotz: And, um, but then it, the story I was told at least is that the people, they didn't need it anymore. They didn't need this requirement because people were thinking about ways to make government better by, by taking things away. Um, and so I think that example of, uh, you know, what we found in our research is left to our own devices.

Leidy Klotz: We don't think of this. And, um, and so if we can help ourselves think of it more with these reminders at the point of making the decision, um, that can be really useful across these sectors, including.

Srini Rao: We'll we'll come back to the, the productivity thing. Cause I think that's the part that's really going to be a, of interest to a lot of people listening.

Srini Rao: You alluded earlier to the sort of biological reasons why we have this sort of instinct to add. Um, and when I bought that and even read those sections of the books, a couple of things came up for me. We had a, a woman here who had been a financial advisor to, you know, billionaires, you know, very well off people.

Srini Rao: And you know, of course the, the conversation about money came up and she said, you know, the thing that causes us so much misery is that as a society or as individuals, we have no idea what our definition of enough is. And so we basically just pursue more. What, so what is the biological drive for this just constant, you know, relentless pursuit of born.

Leidy Klotz: That's interesting. Um, yeah, there's a couple, one is a little, well, I mean, so the biological things are things that have helped us pack pass on our genes. I mean, the financial advisor example reminds me of pack rats, um, and the pack rats, uh, when, when they studied them, if you. Have a pack rat and they've got their stockpile of nuts.

Leidy Klotz: You take away their nuts and they immediately stockpile again. And you're like, oh, well that's pretty rational. Right? Because if my pantry was bare, I would stockpile. But then you have to remember that the pack rats, aren't like thinking into planning ahead, they're just acting instinctively. And so their instinct is to acquire more and we all share that instinct when it comes to food, at least in the case of the pet rats.

Leidy Klotz: Yes. It's food, but it's also. Stuff that there it's resources, right. It's resources for the future. And so it's not hard to see how that could kind of extend to financial resources where we have this biological instinct to not be satisfied, to think that we don't have enough. Now, of course. I mean, the key distinction here with these biological reasons is that we're not beholden to them, right.

Leidy Klotz: I mean, we can think and plan and we can override instincts, um, the other, so there's that kind of acquisitiveness that is it's tied to food, but also that extends across all of these other aspects of our life. Um, and then the one surprising one that I found was just this desire to display competence, uh, in the famous biological example, there is bowerbirds they build these ornate nests in the male bird.

Leidy Klotz: Builds the nest and then the female bowerbirds go around and look at the nest and decide who to meet with based on the, the nest that they liked the best. Um, and then the funny thing is that females then go build a nest to shelter the children. So the whole point of the male's nest is just to show that the male is effective at interacting with the world.

Leidy Klotz: And the idea there is like, well, if this male is good at building a ornate nest, there did also have your genes for finding food. And those would be good genes to have in my kid and to pass down to the next generation. Um, but that desire to display competence, right? I mean, we do that through, through building in the physical world and it's since been extended to task completion.

Leidy Klotz: Right. And so when we, um, basically. But getting through your to-do list or sitting in a redundant meeting or, um, you know, sending an email that's marginally useful, but shows that it shows that you're alive, right? Those are ways that we show competence and that is a biological, uh there's there are biological roots to that.

Leidy Klotz: Um, so those are, you know, that acquisitiveness, and that desire to display competence are things that we need to be aware of. I mean, that those are deep rooted things that we all have in us. And that kind of, that definitely work against subtraction. Well, you know, it's funny

Srini Rao: because you're talking about email.

Srini Rao: I couldn't help, but laugh. When you had mentioned this, you wrote that section where people were, you know, were forwarding, you know, Cal Newport's article on, you know, email making professors stupid and discussing the entire thing over

Leidy Klotz: email. It was so great. I was so, I mean, yeah, that was thankfully I have this practice of, you know, just patching when I check my emails and I'm sure I would have, I don't know.

Leidy Klotz: I like to think I wouldn't have chimed in, but I very well could have, but then finally one of the professors pointed out the, the irony of this and the whole list just went quiet. Nobody even like acknowledged that it was a really good point. Just kind of like curled up into their little corners. So

Srini Rao: I think that, that, you know, you know, it makes a perfect segue to something else I wanted to ask you about.

Srini Rao: One of the things you say in the book is that synaptic pruning is the name neuroscientists have given through this automated subtracting, just as fruit trees grow limbs. We grow synaptic connections between the neurons in our brains. And it kind of made me wonder about our, you know, media consumption habits.

Srini Rao: We, that we consume media today because you know, like if you look at one of our listeners, even probably a, and I've seen this with people, they have like a hundred different podcasts they're listening to, and they're like, okay, wait a minute. Like, I create a podcast. I don't listen to any podcasts that, you know, just because it's not my preferred form of media consumption, but it made me like, think about my reading habits too, because I read a lot of books just by the nature of the work that I do.

Srini Rao: Like my brain is just like this encyclopedia of information, but it kind of made me wonder, it's like, okay, well, what, I get more out of the content if I consumed less of it.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. I mean, and that's, um, you were mentioning the note taking app and obviously there's a place for taking notes, but this, uh, There's this productivity tip that has helped me a little bit, which is to take less notes.

Leidy Klotz: Right. And so it's like, I don't need to, after this conversation with you sit there and write down or during the conversation, I'm not writing down everything that's happening. I mean, yeah. I might want to write down a couple of things that I might not otherwise remember, but like the big ideas that you've shared, uh, are things that I am going to remember.

Leidy Klotz: Right. They're not going to get pruned by my synapses. Uh, and so I think, um, just being aware that, uh, that that's what our, our minds naturally do. Um, but then also exactly, as you said, if you're not, uh, if you're not, you can also consciously do it, I guess. Uh, and so, you know, think about what you're allowing into your precious mental.

Leidy Klotz: Space. I mean, I think the were amazing in terms of how much information we can accumulate, but it's, there are limits somewhere. And if you're, um, I've, you know, I found myself running on a treadmill, watching the news, listening to a podcast and my running. I mean, my running time is. Think of important things.

Leidy Klotz: Like that's where I think of like the title of a book or what my next project to be and not, but not if I'm listening to a podcast and watching the news at the same time. So, so I mean, I'd be the last person. The last thing I would want to say is like, okay, don't accumulate knowledge, right? Don't, don't allow information into your brain, but you do need to be kind of conscious about how we let it in and also think about how, how much time we're devoting to processing it right.

Leidy Klotz: And prioritizing it. And I think that's what the note taking apps can help with. Right. Is that helps you organize what you think is most important and then keeps you focused on the stuff that's important to you and helps you set a filter for what you might not let in to the, to our precious mental space.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah,

Srini Rao: it's funny because as I, it was just, you know, wrapping up the book notes for, you know, um, your book before our conversation and getting them into, to my note, taking up, you know, took a, take a break. And I had an idea for a blog post huddled information overload is making us, you know, uh, stupid, unproductive, and poor.

Srini Rao: And I'm like, wow. I was like, I did not expect that to come from this. But, um, so you know, the reason, and I'll tell you where that idea came from, because I think it there's a grain of truth to this. And because I am building this personal knowledge management course and had gotten to this section on, okay, now that we've laid the foundations for this, which was, you know, relentless filtering and prioritization, let's talk about how to actually build this in a way that you.

Srini Rao: I feel like you're losing your mind because you know, there are two common threads I saw when we did the research for, you know, what people's biggest issues were. One was the fact that they could never remember where the hell they put anything. So they couldn't retrieve information. It's like they would take these notes and those notes would be useless because they didn't know where the hell they were at.

Srini Rao: I was like, okay, I can figure out how to solve that problem. But the thing that you made you made a really good point was to take less notes. Um, but this point in particular struck me. You said too much information threatens our mental health from persistent frustration of interrupting emails through the clinical anxiety, born from overload of shopping choices, too much information and dangerous.

Srini Rao: The participation required for a functioning democracy. People are inundated with so much content, good and bad that it's hard to separate the signal from the noise we can systematically consider the merits of every baby crib mattress or learn the nuances of it, uh, of every tenant candidates, planner, or frightening lack thereof.

Srini Rao: First bonding decline. And that is spot on, you know, like I think about an average date that I go and read things on medium and, you know, reading that made me wonder, it's like, okay, am I going to actually fucking use this in any way at all? Like, why am I reading this? It made me want to stop and say, okay, like maybe I don't need to read this.

Srini Rao: Um, maybe there's nothing that's useful. Like to the point where even in my newsletter, I said, you know, I'm writing this newsletter about a personal knowledge management system and how to build one. If that's not one of your goals or priorities at the moment, you should stop reading this email and delete it.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So how do we deal with this? I mean, everybody here has heard all of Cal Newport's ideas, um, which are fantastic. Uh, some of which have challenges for a lot of people. I think. I mean, because I think it's, it's not like we don't intellectually understand all of this. It's whether we take intellectual understanding doesn't necessarily translate into practical actions.

Leidy Klotz: And it's, uh, it's not a new problem there. I mean, yes, we have more information and that's like a blessing. Um, it's not the information. Age is no more a problem than iron was in the iron age, but the, the like loud Sue said two and a half millennia ago to, to gain knowledge, add things every day to gain wisdom, subtract things every day.

Leidy Klotz: And you know, every there, you can go find a quote from every a hundred years since have somebody reminding us of that. And I think the neat reason we need the reminders is cause it's hard. And so, I mean, how do you break subtraction into this kind of knowledge management system? Right. I mean, one of the things I talk about in the book and is one of the most powerful forms of learning both for yourself and for society is to say, okay, this is something that I used to believe.

Leidy Klotz: Or used to think as important and I no longer do. Right. And I, I screwed this up earlier in the conversation I'm talking about. One of our fundamental things is contributing to knowledge as professors and that kind of implies adding. But if you look at Nobel prize winners, very often, they're subtracting the prevailing idea.

Leidy Klotz: That's the revolutionary thing in, in social thought. And when you think about that from your own personal growth and development, I mean, what has more influence, um, you know, adding on one more little nugget of stuff onto some topic that you're already really good at, or is it, you know, kind of subtracting out something that you thought that was wrong and was holding you back in your mental model.

Leidy Klotz: So it's like, how do you, how do you subtract ideas from your own mental models? And this is hard. I mean, there's a whole, a lot of this research actually came out of UC Berkeley, but there's, you know, there's this whole trend in education to help people identify misconceptions, common misconceptions that people brought into their classrooms and.

Leidy Klotz: It's well-meaning because the idea of being like, how do you build knowledge on top of something that isn't right in the first place, but scholars eventually gave up trying, because it was just really hard to get people to get rid of their misconceptions. They modify them. Instead. One of the story I used in the book is Santa Claus.

Leidy Klotz: And when I was my son loves Legos and Santa Claus brought him Legos and. But that he was like, well, what, what, what the hell? Why did Santa Claus bring me Legos? I thought he just had wood. Right. I thought he just had like this woodwork shop up there and how did he make Legos? And he said, oh, for Legos. He, uh, he works directly with Amazon and my son was like, oh, oh.

Leidy Klotz: So, I mean, that's the exact same thing that happens with, instead of sort of attracting that, you know, he's presented with this evidence, which is that okay, Santa Claus, supposed Santa Claus brought them these Legos. And it contradicts what he already knows, which is that Santa Claus is at the north pole making stuff out of wood.

Leidy Klotz: And instead of subtracting the belief about Santa Claus, he modifies his, all of his beliefs instead. So he says, okay, well, Santa Claus can, can do this. If you worked with Amazon, which is another thing that he was already familiar with. And, um, so I don't know. That's a long-winded way of saying, I think in these note-taking apps, in our personal practice, how can you kind of devote time to subtracting ideas?

Leidy Klotz: So in addition to the filtering, right, because you know, not letting stuff in, that's just, uh, uh, not adding and if you're already overwhelmed, um, you know, this isn't kind of relieving the overwhelm any, but in addition to not adding stuff that isn't adding any value, how do you get rid of stuff that is, is holding you back?

Leidy Klotz: Um, yeah, so it's. You do

Srini Rao: the, the thing that, you know, as I sort of started kind of hashing this out in my mind, and I was thinking about this and I came with the idea, I started thinking about like the idea that information overload leads to my OPIC consumption habits into myopic viewpoints. You know, and this is literally what I wrote.

Srini Rao: I said, you know, basically my APIC consumption habits are an occupational hazard for online marketers. Self-help junkies people who watch political news and anyone who wants to build an audience for their work. People who read health interests, keep reading self-help books, whether they watch Fox news or CNN, the news they consume becomes the filter through which they see the world.

Srini Rao: And this leads to what Eli Pariser in his book, which was also called the filter. To end up in filter bubbles and echo chambers. So basically, you know, what's interesting is, you know, we just had a guest here. Um, then, you know, based on our composition, you might really like his book. He wrote a book called the life-changing science of detecting bullshit.

Srini Rao: One of the things he said is that the more that you are surrounding yourself with like-minded people who believe the same things you do, he said one, you end up with confirmation bias, but he said it also creates, you know, it, it creates a very polarized society. And, you know, and I thought about that even from the standpoint of somebody who wants to create, um, when they have myopic consumption habits, they don't have a, you know, bold and compelling point of view.

Srini Rao: Like I remember, I think probably in 2013, I stopped reading books about how to build an audience, stop building, you know, reading books about how to, you know, use social media more. And the irony was that my audience started to finally grow and I realized it's because I wasn't reading the same bullshit that everybody else was reading.

Srini Rao: Like I was diversifying the input and also reducing it so that I would start to have my own ideas. And it just kind of struck me that there's like the consequences of this down the road are far more severe than we think.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah. That's a beautiful example. I mean, there's a couple of things that I love about it.

Leidy Klotz: I mean, I love the myopic consumption notion and I think a lot of the things, everything from the way you're describing it, it ties in nicely with the more vivid and concrete kind of physical world things that we add. Right. So just in the same way that, uh, you know, this cluttered house, or even if it's not cluttered, it just gives your mom a bunch of stuff to do to keep everything organized.

Leidy Klotz: That's the mental equivalent of like these, all this information that we're trying to deal with. The other thing I really like about it is that. You know, you, you haven't short changed the role of actually knowing stuff. Right? You read those books about platforms. You just realize that you were saturated and now the, now what you needed to do was to, you know, stop reading those books and maybe even strip away some of the, some of the things.

Leidy Klotz: So I think, you know, I think one of the reasons we don't do good less often is because we. Uh, we think that lazy less is the same thing as this kind of less, beyond more noticeable, less. I call it in my book. I should have called it unmistakable less, but the, um, but the, um, but this last where it's like, okay, you've added, you've added, you've added.

Leidy Klotz: And the adding is good enough. Right. You've got this knowledge now about like how to grow your online community, but then you don't stop. You subtract, you take stuff away. And I think that example of, you know, you reading all those books, it's like, yeah, you're an expert in this now. It's not like, you're, you're ignorant.

Leidy Klotz: This isn't the same as I haven't read any of those books. And if I just said, okay, I'm not going to read any books to grow my online platform. It would stay small like it is. Um, so I think that that's a really great, um, really great illustration. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Well, I think the other thing that really came to mind for me as I was going through this, it was something novel.

Srini Rao: Robbie Khan said, you know, there's a, it's funny, despite not listening to podcasts. This is one podcast episode that I have recommended to every single person I've ever met. It's phenomenal. He did such a good job. Um, it's, you know, the, the title is obviously very click baity. It's how to get rich without getting lucky.

Srini Rao: But it's a wealth of knowledge. I mean, I created a mind map of it and it's insane, but there was something he said that really struck me, uh, was he said, you know, you would be better off reading the foundational texts in a given field and a hundred things about that, you know, field. So he said, if you want to learn everything, you want to know a business, go read the wealth of nations.

Srini Rao: And you know, I was an economics major in college and like, I thought this was going to be a pain in the ass. And it is a really pain in the ass type of book to read because the language is archaic. It's, you know, confusing. Uh, but what is amazing is that when you actually sit down to take the time and read it.

Srini Rao: Holy shit. These are 200 year old economic principles that apply to every business today. Like every bit of it finally occurred to me that as the person who leads the company, I'm doing a lot of shit that I shouldn't be doing. And division of labor is the key to maximizing output. And you start to kind of say, okay, well, how does that apply to my life?

Srini Rao: And you realize that, wait a minute. Yeah, he's absolutely right. If you have the foundational text, the other stuff you read just sort of becomes stuff for interest almost.

Leidy Klotz: Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I, how do you square that with the updates? I mean, what I really love when I'm trying to learn about something is finding.

Leidy Klotz: And so, I mean, I'm, as a scholar, I'm always trying to like merge stuff from different fields. And it's amazing when I can find a book where somebody is kind of like updated all the latest information from a field. I mean, because so often you're just kind of poking around just getting little bits and pieces, but how do you know, like, okay, what parts of Smith?

Leidy Klotz: I mean, Smith. Obviously, right? Yeah. There's pieces that are outdated. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Yeah, no, I mean, I imagine what I'm trying to do. I have the basically. Five times a week or three times a week, I'm talking to somebody like you. Um, you know, so between a thousand interviews and a thousand books, it's kind of like, I have this encyclopedia in my head and my joke is like, damn, if I could access this, you know, like with the push of a button, I would be a genius.

Srini Rao: I also realize not all of it is relevant to that. That's one thing that is really important, but so, you know, we're, we're getting towards, uh, you know, the end of an hour or so. Um, so for people listening to this, you know, I think there are certain things that are going to be of interest in the big one being how the hell the irony, right.

Srini Rao: Is how do I get more done by using these concepts? It's funny because, um, I, this is something I go back to over and over again, like people will tell me they have this like eight, 10 item to do list. I'm like, great. Make it three, finish the three, and then just add. Surprisingly where I learned that from was from a happiness researcher.

Srini Rao: Um, Shawn ACOR talks about this concept called success accelerants. And he said, you know, the brain makes progress towards a goal based on the perceived distance, that goal. So I was like, if you have 15 tests to do list, even if you have three of them done, you'll feel like you didn't get a damn thing done.

Srini Rao: So just put three on there and then add the ones that you want to finish later, later. But I'm, you know, from your perspective, like for somebody who's listening to this, who's annoyed for her creative who wants to get better at managing their time. Um, and like I said, ironically, get more done. Um, if you were to give them sort of, you know, a practical way to take this and put it into action in their lives, um, what would you have them do?

Leidy Klotz: Just don't forget your other option, right? I mean, there are two basic ways to change situations. One is to add things to them and one is to take things away. I mean, I, I love the advice from essential ism and tell Newport's work and, you know, Shawn ACOR. And, but the unique thing that I have to say is that, you know, this, this is an option that we're systematically overlooking.

Leidy Klotz: It can help no matter what we're trying to do, whether it's get more stuff done or whether it's just be happier in general. Um, and we're not, we're not using the option. We're systematically overlooking this option of taking things away. And so, so one is don't forget it. And if, hopefully you can remember that.

Leidy Klotz: Um, if the second kind of tier of that is can you put in place these cues for yourself? That subtracting is an option. So the equivalent of the British Columbia, where they're saying, if you bring a, if you bring a thing to add, you also have to bring two things to take away. Where, what are the important things in your life, where you can force yourself not to overlook subtraction, because you know, you listened to this podcast.

Leidy Klotz: Hopefully you'll remember it. You read my book, hopefully you'll remember it forever across all contexts, but that assuming that doesn't always happen, how can you just put in place things that make it so you don't forget this at the key decision points in your own life. And I think that's the unique piece of insight that I can offer here.

Leidy Klotz: Uh,

Srini Rao: wow. Well, this has been amazing. Um, so I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the end. Let's take a look. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable.

Leidy Klotz: Um, I think it's all the mistake people. Um, I don't know. Has anybody ever said that?

Leidy Klotz: So I think, I mean, it's the distinct, it's the difference, right? It's the difference between the, what the current state is and what the, um, what the UN you have to know what the current state is to make yourself unmistakable. It almost goes back to your, uh, to your example, right? To be unmistakable in your online presence.

Leidy Klotz: You have to understand what all the mistakes people are doing in their online presences. And I think. Uh, it also makes me think of, uh, I've been watching a lot of norm McDonald, YouTube videos since he passed away. And, uh, uh, somebody asked him if he subverts the genre intentionally and I mean, he did, or no, he didn't ask him if he did a day, asked him this, he thought somebody else did it.

Leidy Klotz: And it was somebody who didn't think very highly of. And he said, well, to, to subvert the genre, you actually have to know the genre in the first place. And so I think, you know, when Nora is saying, okay, you've got to subvert the genre, which I think is something that he did in comedy. Uh, He's missed unmistakable in that sense.

Leidy Klotz: Um, but to do that, you also need to know what all the mistakes people are doing. And then that, of course, you know, kind of ties into all these. Once you realize that, then it's like, okay, how do you become a mistake? It takes hard work to understand what the mistake won't people are doing. It takes being thoughtful, or it takes persistence, um, to kind of stand out from the crowd.

Leidy Klotz: So that's, that's my answer. All the mistake while people is what makes, what makes you on mistake? Double

Srini Rao: amazing. Um, well, uh, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom and your insights. This has been awesome. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else here?

Leidy Klotz: The book, the book, read the book. That's the best thing. I mean, it's all the, all my thoughts condensed in the most effective way I could think to get them across or in the book. I mean, I have a Twitter account. You can Google me and see what I'm up to the latest academic research. But I mean, the reason I wrote a book is because this was the idea.

Leidy Klotz: That was the one that I think can, can help people. So that's the, that's the first stop. Awesome. And you can get that if there's an audible version, for those of you who like to listen to podcasts,

Srini Rao: amazing. And for everybody listening, we'll wrap the show with that.