Sheena Iyengar | How to Think Bigger and Solve Complex Problems

Srini Rao : Sheena, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. You have a new book out called Think Bigger. And as I was telling you before we hit record here, I had actually literally just finished reading your previous book. The Art of Choosing was about to reach out to you when your publicist did. So that was very serendipitous. But before we get into the book and your work, I wanted to start asking, what is one of the most important things that you learned from one or both of your parents that have influenced and shaped who you've become and what you've done with your life and career?

Sheena Iyengar: Interesting. My father died all of a sudden when I was 13. . And I remember the, one of the things that I most remember about my dad was back in the day, my father used to love to drive. He was an immigrant and he used to love to jump in the car on a Friday night and we would just go, I don't even know where half the time, but I was always thrown in the backseat.

And mom and dad would start driving and mom was in charge of the maps. This is, before gps. And my mom would be reading the map and dad would make a mistake and my mom would be like no, you have to go back. Go back there and then, and we'll make a right there. And my dad would always say, Nope, , you should, A man always has to go forward.

I can never go back. Okay. . And somehow that line has always stuck with me. I would say my mother, the line she gave me that I often quote her on, particularly if I'm doing a talk for. Women. And the reason why they should have careers is, when my father died and he died all of a sudden when I was 13 and my mother was, and my sister was five.

My mother changed at that moment. She was a very traditional woman. But she became a kind of odd feminist. Not that I would ever describe my mom as a true feminist, but she said to me and my sister repeatedly after that, is, I never want to hear you walk in this door and talk about marriage.

And I never wanna meet any man you wanna marry until you first stand up on your own two feet that you have to be able to take care of yourself. And it's funny that line cuz my mother would always say, stand up on your own two feet and with your back straight. And that was her line. And this is long before leaning in or leaning out ever came into the world.

So I always just say, you gotta just stand up straight.

Srini Rao : That is really contrary to like the typical Indian mom who's obsessed with her daughter getting married or their son getting married. And we'll come back to that. One thing I wonder is for you losing your father at such an early age and maybe this is one of those things you only recognize in retrospect, but what did that make you change about how you would live your life going forward based on that experience?

Sheena Iyengar: Oh it was big. It was a very big deal that my father died. It changed my life dramatically because I was. Both my sister and I are blind, and I though, even though we were both blind, because we were blind and my father had died, my mother made the very controversial choice that she wasn't going to leave money aside for a dowry or a wedding.

That it was more important that we get a good education. And, paradoxically, I was the first female in my family to be allowed to go away from home to go to college. And that's because my dad died. So it, it made tremendous change. The fact that he died, it was almost like because of his death. It was an opportunity in a sense for freedom.

Not that my dad was sitting around taking away our freedom, it's just that we then had to be less traditional. . .

Srini Rao : Yeah. This is something I, I always wonder about because, I'm fortunate that I still have my parents and I've talked to people who have lost parents. And I feel like to me it's one of those experiences that there's no self-help book for this one where you can talk to people about it and it just seems like it rock your world.

I Especially as a 13 year old girl. Cuz even now as a 44 year old man it's, to me, I think that is literally the most terrifying thing. My biggest fear in life especially being single, is that one or both my parents will die before I get married or have kids.

Sheena Iyengar: Yeah. My, the other thing that happened when my father died was, we were a traditional Indian family and we were my parents were very devout Sikhs and so I used to go to the temple a lot. But the . And one of the things that was very important, , I think to both my parents, but maybe more to more so for my father, is he really didn't want everybody to know that his children were going blind.

, that was something that as many Indian families do, they keep it quiet If there's a child that has some sort of an impairment. And I, I think there was a good amount of shame, a good amount of worry, what would people say? And so there was a lot of pressure on me to always hide it or find ways to disguise it.

But when he died, when my father died, first of all, my mom no longer wanted to go to the because then she would be seen with pity because she was a widow with these two children. And then on top of that, it became much harder for me to really be able to hide anymore my vision. Gotten to the level that I was nearly impossible.

So in that sense too, his death was a trauma. But at the same time, it was also a moment of freedom because it also meant that I no longer had to hide. Yeah.

Srini Rao : If I remember correctly, from the art of choosing, you weren't born blind. Correct? Like you started going blind with age. I

Sheena Iyengar: was born with a rare disease, a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa.

Now a lot of Indians have retinitis pigmentosa, but I was born with a rare form of it, so I was born legally blind. So it's believed that I was born with maybe 2200 or 2,400 visions. So I never had proper, like full site, but I certainly had some. It's also believed that I was colorblind, or at least very nearly colorblind from very early on.

I certainly got around a bit independently. I learned how to read and write and I still know how to write my letters and things. I stopped being able to read and write by about eight or nine, at which point it was just too painful. And yeah, it was a gradual decline, but I never had 2020.

Srini Rao : Yeah. One thing I wonder is this is something wondered, cause I've had one or two blind guests here before and I've always wondered, like when you lose something like your vision, which is fundamental, I think something that we all just take for granted.

How does that impact one the way that you interact with other people from an early age to now as an adult, and then what happens to your other senses? Do they become much more heightened? Is your sense of hearing much sharper than the average person's because your site is impaired?

Sheena Iyengar: It's interesting, a lot of people ask that question, and I've tried to think about what the answer to that is. And one, one of my problem is I don't have this counterpoint this com be able to compare what I was like when I was cited versus not cited. And honestly I just dunno how to run that counterfactual.

I like to say, do I have a better memory? People certainly think I do. I think I just had to pay a lot more attention. Yeah. To keeping track of information and being organized. I probably am more organized than the average person. Do I listen better than other people? In some ways I do, and in some ways I, I don't, right?

, example, I'm the person who really doesn't like music despite our stereotypes about blind people liking music. Why? Because I find music to be distracting from all the other things that I have to listen to. . So I think I just am more likely to be reliant and pay more attention to those other things because they're giving me information.

. think I most rely on my hearing and my memory bank or probably the two things I most rely on. And what was your first question? She said, do I have better senses? Yeah.

Srini Rao : Does it change, does it alter, are your other senses heightened because of the fact that you're blind?

Oh. And then your social interactions with people. What are those like? My

Sheena Iyengar: social interactions definitely are different. Although again, I don't know what it would've been like if I had been cited, and I certainly have noticed that my interactions with people are different than other blind people's interactions.

So there's obviously some individual difference variable there going on. However, here's what I will say about being blind that I. Think people often don't necessarily think of first is that even though they'll know objectively speaking of blind, they will forget that I'm not gonna be able to pay attention to their facial expressions.

. And so I'll misinformation, and I'm always very cognizant of the fact that I'm trying to listen to their tone of voice to see if there's something up and that I should be aware of it. So on the one hand, it's a, it's an information asymmetry problem that I can't see their facial expressions. And it's hard for people to communicate everything verbally.

Yeah. There's some things they're just not, they're not used to doing on the other hand. So in that sense, it's a negative. On the other hand, the fact that I can't see their facial expressions is in some ways a positive because sometimes when I'm in a meeting, And there'll be something that everybody else might be thinking, but no one has the courage to say it because I can't see their facial expressions.

I'm much more likely to just say it . And it's almost like people have come to count on me to say it. And that's because they really don't feel the punishment. Yeah. True. I'd say that's one thing that's that people that's counterintuitive for people. . I guess the other thing about being blind is that people think that I must be sitting in the dark or something.

It's their worst fear, I have never sat in the dark, ever. I don't know what the dark is. I think sighted people are more aware of what the dark looks like than our blind. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I've constantly mapping on visuals in my head. So I'm like living in my own little dream world, yeah. But I'm never in the dark.

Srini Rao : Yeah. That's interesting cuz I know you're a writer, so it's making me think about as a writer. Oh, and

Sheena Iyengar: I guess in that sense, the one sense, yeah. That I think I do spend a lot of energy on counterintuitively is visuals. I make a lot of visuals.

I'm constantly constructing them. That's part of my way of understanding my world, even though I don't see. .

Srini Rao : Okay. So that raises a question particularly cuz I, I have a four month old nephew and he's just now he's five months old and, watching that kid just adapt to the world around him and look at everything and take in everything.

Having not seen things do you, like, how do you construct visuals when you don't know necessarily, you don't have a representation of what something looks like?

Sheena Iyengar: I guess I make it up. Okay. And many times I will imagine what somebody or something looks like that's totally untrue and then someone will correct me and then I'll empirically or objectively understand that my visual is incorrect.

And I'll go back to seeing them the way I see them. , like for example for you. Yeah. I've already constructed a visual. I have no idea what you look like. I don't like nobody else described to me what you looked like. So I actually have no basis by which to come up with a visual of you, and yet I have a visual of you.

Wow.

Srini Rao : So I, I know that you teach at Columbia. I, this is one thing I wonder like a city like New York. I had one other guest here, funny enough, who actually I think taught at Columbia as well, who is blind.

Sheena Iyengar: Is that the Economist?

Srini Rao : No, I think if I'm trying to remember his name. He was a guy who was friends with art Garfunkel.

Sheena Iyengar: Oh. Sandy. Sandy Sandy Greenberg. Yes, I've

Srini Rao : met him. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember him telling him his story about how art Garfunkel helped him, get through. Yes. Because unlike you, he wasn't blinded at birth, but that's right. He lost his sight. But I remember him telling me about that. How do you navigate day to day in a city like New York?

Because I find New York overwhelming, and I can see, and every time I walk out of the subway station I'm like, it looked like, somebody kicked over an ant hill at Grand, like when you walk out of the subway at Grand Central Station.

Sheena Iyengar: So one of the things that is also amazing about being blind is that you learn things about people that most people I think otherwise wouldn't know or wouldn't have encountered.

I would say that New York is the best city to be blind in. It's not that it's the cleanest, it's not that. Like the safest in terms of all the scaffolding everywhere. You could fall down a flight of sub, a flight of stairs that are sticking out. You could file a fall down subway stairs. You could cross at the wrong place.

But it is actually in many ways, the best city in the United States to be blinded. And the reason is because A, the grid is very understandable. It's linear, so it's easier for a blind person's head to get around. I don't have to worry about too many angles, et cetera, when I'm getting around the city.

Second, and this is even more critical, unlike other cities, if I'm going to a street I'm just standing there waiting for the light to change. I can tell you nine out of 10 times, I don't have to ask somebody. I don't have to guess. . Invariably the mentality of a New Yorker is when they're crossing those, you can go, they won't say hi.

They won't say goodbye. They won't introduce themselves. They won't hesitate. And oh, is it okay if I ask you if you would like my help? No. They cut through all that crap. They just say, you can go. Yeah. And that's very New York.

Srini Rao : So just one more question and I promise we'll get to the book. You mentioned, your mother was like, no, I want you to stand in here on two feet as a single Indian, 40 something male.

I never hear the end of it about dating in relationships. And I, this is something I wondered. Cause I, I had a blind guest here, a male blind guest, and I was like, what about dating? He was like, oh, blind guys are the biggest pigs you could possibly imagine. He was like, I was like, really?

He was like, oh yeah. He's we're far

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worse than you are. But how are, like, what are romantic and end relationship interactions like for somebody like you?

Sheena Iyengar: So I think blind people. I think it's hard for me to answer that question for blind people because I do have an extra layers here. Blind in the, in America, who came from a traditional household. So clearly the baseline for me was supposed to be an arranged marriage. And one of the great disappointments for my parents was the idea that was not in the cards.

Yeah. And when I, and that was part of the reason why my mom put the money towards college, I think everybody was unsure as to whether I would be able to have a romantic relationship. And I think I, myself was conflicted about it. I have, I would say the most significant relationships in my life was I was dating.

A blind wasp sort of white guy who was blind when I was young. And there were certainly some cultural conflicts there between his being American, white American and me being Indian American Plus, the usual Indian mom wanting what they want, which is I know it only most logical to them.

. And then I ended up marrying a Brahman. I think you're a Brahman, right? I am South Indian Brahman. Yep. I think you're a yet, right?

Srini Rao : I'd have to look. I literally filled out a shaw.com profile yesterday just to see, because one of my friends was like, oh, you should try it. I was like, I thought only Indians in line India used that site.

And yeah, I was looking at it, I was like, wait, there I was like, Brahman and there 700 categories of Brahmins. Yeah,

Sheena Iyengar: but there's actually real matchmakers. For your, for Brahman, south Indian Brahmans in the States. But anyway, I married a south Indian Brahman and a yang from, and who I knew at Stanford, we both were PhD students together.

And that was interesting. It was very controversial, certainly for his family. They wanted, the usual, they wanted another Iyengar, another Brahman, and they also certainly didn't want somebody who was raised in the US and they certainly didn't want somebody who was blind. That was certainly a lot of complexities.

And then um, many years later, about 18 years later, I got divorced and I would say now my significant other is a Jewish American scientist who's a car, a cardio. Well-known cardiologist. And I guess it's uncited and so I would say, I have had relationships. Is it a non-issue that you're born?

No, I would never say that. Yeah. Is it something that causes anxiety and complexities in a relationship? Absolutely. One of the first things that I do when I go on a date and the moment a man shows interest, I pointedly ask them how would you feel? Like, how would you handle these situations?

Because I know now what kinds of things would disturb somebody if they were dating a blind person. . I also know what kinds of things people can say on a date that can, be fairly. Obnoxious. Not that people are only obnoxious to blind people, but . Yeah. My, my favorite one was I went on a date and I'd actually a told the guy ahead of time, I'm blind, and he said, you wanna meet me?

I always do that. And he goes yeah. I wanna meet you. And of course they wanna meet you because they're curious. And then you get there and you're in the middle of, the meal and you're talking and he'll suddenly say to you how would you know if you love somebody? I want real love.

Now I'm here thinking, wait, what does vision have to do with love ? But yeah. But you discover people's assumptions. .

Srini Rao : Yeah. Speaking of assumptions so I think this will make a perfect segment in the book. You work at what is arguably one of the most elite educational institutions in the world.

You and I both were raised by Indian parents, where the expectation is that not only will you go to college, you'll go to the Best Am school you get into So one thing I wonder about as an educator if you were tasked, which I realize is a big question, and I ask this to every educator cuz I myself am curious about it and I feel like, I was a failed byproduct of this elite education system.

If you were tasked with redesigning the entire thing from the ground up, what would you change? What is wrong with it today? What works and how would you improve it?

Sheena Iyengar: It's interesting that you're asking me this question right now because my son is in his senior year in high school and just went through the college application process and he is the son of two academics.

And I actually did ask myself this question and maybe ended up pushing for things that are fairly controversial in Indian culture. So I thought given the pandemic and all that, our high, our teenagers went through that maybe it was better for a young person right now to be less focused on going to a high ranked institution, which tend to be bigger, tend to be high stress and instead good with small college where he could finally have the experience that he was supposed to in high school.

More attention, more ability to debate, hear himself speak where the professor cares. You don't have to like, almost prove that you're worth talking to, otherwise you're gonna be going to the PhD student. Then the professor doesn't have time for you. So my son primarily applied to small colleges and that's unusual for particularly Indian academic.

Srini Rao : I'm the son of an academic, . Yeah. And a Berkeley undergrad, so I know that all do well.

Sheena Iyengar: Yeah. And the other thing I would say, so that's one thing I do think that we should pay more attention, not just to the rank of the institution, but really pay attention to what are they gonna be doing during these four years?

What do we want them to achieve? , is it pure credentials? Is it a social experience? Is it learning who they are? And I thought that it would be better for my son to spend the first four years of his real education, learning who he was and what he cared about. And then he, after that would have anyway, probably go to grad school and then at that point, get the credential that you really need.

Now, as good Indian parents, because I was more American. The Indian parent of US said, whoa. But he has to go then to a small college that also has a joint program with a premier engineering school, ,

Srini Rao : or a pre-med program, probably one of them. Exactly.

Sheena Iyengar: So he can only go to colleges, apply to colleges that had a three, two program.

, which is fine by me. That was a compromise. Now, the second thing I would say, after having gone through the process and now just thinking about it from the perspective of a choice scientist , is it's a ly obvious to anybody who's looking carefully at how these college application and admission processes are working, that they have a lot of candidates that they can't really differentiate between, yet they're supposed to create a merit-based admission.

and they're supposed to figure out how to make this merit-based admission be one where, the group of people they accept provide a sort of diverse group that'll create a thriving culture, yada, yada, yada. I don't think they have a way from the information that they're gathering to figure all that out.

. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about is, and this is a wild idea on my part, is I would say I would change the college admission process. I would say, look, as long as you have these criteria, whatever criteria that the institution wants to set, so let's say it's Columbia University and you wanna have a criteria that says only people that have an S A T score of, I don't know, 1450 or 1500 and above, or an A C T score of 34 and above.

plus a GPA of X. So you come up with some criteria and you say, anybody with these criteria apply? And now you just run a lottery. So it's cleared to everybody that everybody was equally qualified, but you use a lottery system and while on the face of it, that might feel unfair to some people. I actually think that's more fair.

It takes the pressure off and it takes all the negative emotions off. It acknowledges that all these people were equal and it allows people to feel good if they went to another school or another. You know what I. Yeah. So that's my wild idea. They'll never do it, but .

Srini Rao : As a person who studies choice, and I think this will make a perfect segue into your work and the book.

I wanted to bring back a clip from a previous episode with David Epstein about choice in particular. And I want to hear your thoughts on this. Take a listen. We'll underestimate

Sheena Iyengar: future change at every time point, even when we're very old. But at no time is that more true than from about 18 to the late twenties.

That's when you undergo the fastest time of personality change. . And so essentially right at the start of that period, we're telling someone pick now, which, which is really asking them to pick for a person they don't yet know. . And certainly in a world they can't yet conceive unless they have a crystal ball that most people don.

And so I think it's a particularly bad time to make ironclad long-term plans, and we should be much more oriented toward pick something, and I'm stealing this idea from the economists and statistician, Robert Miller, as we, we should orient people toward do the thing that's gonna give you a high information signal about whether it fits you or not.

Srini Rao : The reason I wanted to bring back that clip in particular is one, because you study choice. Two, you're an educator, and three, that is not the way that most Indian kids are taught to think. Because I very distinctly, and this is something I've mentioned on the show before, remember my dad talking to one of my uncles and like son and a ninth grade?

And he is what does he wanna do? Does he want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer? Does he wanna work with computers? I'm like, you've limited this kid's option to four potential futures. And he's a freshman in high school, and my uncle's like, all he cares about right now is girls. I'm like, that's all he should care about.

He's in ninth grade. . So with that in mind, talk to me about one your view on that, but how you got into this work around studying choice and how it led to the book that you, the, that you just wrote recently.

Sheena Iyengar: Oh, that's a big question. , I would say to be fair to Indian parents as well as uca many education systems around the world that are different from the u the American one, what they're doing is trying to give people a track or a path so that they have something so that they're not lost.

And the proof of that is that they're not gonna be lost. They'll be tracked into something. They'll have something that enables them to take care of themselves. You're an engineer, you're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you're a carpenter, you're a whatever. That's a system we have in India that was stolen from the Brits.

We have that in Britain. We have in many parts of Europe. The American system says, look, I'm not gonna pa track you and give you a bucket you into a particular way of living and way of being at such an early age. I'm gonna let you explore for a while. And on the positive side is you might discover something really amazing and whatever you discover, you chose it on the negative side, you could be exploring for a very long time and end up empty-handed or dissatisfied with what you've chosen, which can also happen.

Yeah, so I think that's the trade off between the two systems. The,

how did I choose to study choice and I would say both my books are essentially about choice. . And the reason why, I guess the way in which I came to choose that, so back to how being blind and my father dying when I was 13, was a moment in many ways of freedom for me was that, was blind.

And so the obvious careers for an Indian girl were considered to be off the table. So I didn't have the pressure to be a doctor, to be an engineer. And so my mom had no idea what a blind person could do. She just knew that I needed to stand up on my own two feet. At one point, I remember my father said to me when I was like 10 years old, he.

When you grow up I think it's best that you become a, this thing called a psychiatrist. You'll be able to do that because all you'll have to do is have someone lay on a couch and then they talk and then you listen . And that was what my father says this to me very seriously, right? My mom had apparently read about some blind psychiatrist and the Reader's Digest or something.

And I once tried to look up who was this person my mom might have read about. And I found some story about some blind psychiatrist who actually ended up getting indicted for murdering people or something. Geez, . And I don't know. But anyway, so they had no idea what a blind person could do. And, but at the same time, I didn't really have the option to just live on government handouts or just.

Do nothing. My mother was economically not in that situation where I could just do nothing. We were lower middle class and so I knew that the whatever was gonna happen in my life was up to me. So when I went to undergrad, I looked around for different options.

And I will say that, as someone growing up in, near, in the high schools here in the us it was not easy. Like even in school, my guidance counselor thought that I, like most other blind people, would end up on government handouts. And if you look at the data, even now, most blind people do.

But I wanted to be something. And I applied and got fortunate enough to get to the Wharton School of Business because I Decided I really wanted to do business because, I couldn't be a doctor or couldn't be an engineer, but I could do business and I was gonna make a lot of money.

That was what I was thinking when I got to undergrad. And when I got there, I of course realized very quickly it wasn't gonna be that easy to find opportunities. I This is back in, 1988, we didn't have ada. It was not a crime or illegal to say, look, we don't think he was a blind person could do this job.

And so I had many, things I wanted to be like, I wanted to be a marketer. I wanted to be a brand manager type. I wanted to be a traitor. I wanted to, there were lots of different things that I was thinking of doing. And then I started to expand beyond that and I said, oh could a blind person be an anthropologist or an archeologist?

And then I remembered what my dad had said about becoming a psychiatrist. And I thought, oh, okay, let me go try to go figure that out. and I looked into trying to become a psychiatrist and getting a medical degree and that, back then it was not that easy. It was not, it was gonna be difficult to make that case.

And as I was doing my undergrad, I stumbled upon a course that was called Social Psychology. And it was cre, it was all these experiments

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that scientists had run that was looking at human behaviors. And I was fascinated by it. And I remember walking into the professor's office to ask him if he would hire me as an ra.

And it was a long pause. His name was John Sini and there was his long pause and I started in that pause to explain to him why I thought I would really be a good candidate for an RA and how I could get things done. And I still remember that day where he started to pound his desk and he said, I have it, you, it.

and he was in the middle of doing a bunch of studies on embarrassment, where he was, telling people embarrassing things about them. You're very smelly, or you just failed this basic test. And he wanted to see the difference between getting this information about yourself when you're looking at yourself in a mirror versus being told by a person.

And it occurred to him, wow, this could be a really interesting manipulation to be told by a person who you knew couldn't see you. I was the perfect experimenter for that particular job. And so that was my first break. Now, what I would say is what I learned over time was that even though there weren't at that time blind, social scientists that I could find, it wasn't obvious to me that anybody was gonna say no.

What was gonna be the reason why I couldn't do this? And it seemed to me that. , this could be something that I could make happen. And that's what essentially I was looking for. What could be a job that I could do that I would be really good at, and that I would really like doing. And so I began to do studies.

As an undergrad, I got fortunate because I did the very first study on religion. And from there I went to Stanford. And when I went to Stanford again, I was looking around, okay, now that you're here, Sheena, what do you wanna study? And I realized that what I really cared about was human motivation and how to be productive.

Like what? Of course, I cared about that I was this blind person that everybody kept thinking I was not as capable as I thought. and I kept feeling like people were selling me short. So I cared about motivation. I cared about being productive. At the same time, there was this other layer going on, which was the fact that I was an Indian and American and I had to navigate these two seemingly competing cultures.

And cultural psychology was becoming big at that point. The difference between the Japanese versus the Americans and the Chinese versus Americans was really entering our sort of academic and intellectual space. And we were just starting to discuss that. And so I was like thinking how can I combine those interests?

And at the same time, remember I had an interest in business and things that were very much about decision making, like marketing decisions stock decisions. And so I then began to look at what were the core.

If you thought about motivation, what were the big categories of motivation and one of the biggest categories of motivations about which in some sense we had written a lot about as social scientists and philosophers and political scientists. And in some sense we had actually a very limited lens on was choice and self-determination.

And I, when I started to read the stuff on choice and self-determination, maybe it was because on the one hand you had these great lines, which I, as an immigrant's child was really taken by, right? Like life, liberty, and the pursuit of death and equal opportunities for everybody. These were the core principles and the American dream.

And so on the one hand he had that, and on the other hand you had all these studies that showed that choice was this great motivator. . On the other hand, anytime I would say to my mom, I can do whatever I want. Or I would say to my mom when I was really angry at her mom, I don't really care. Okay, just do whatever you want.

These were insults in my world. And I began to realize that, we didn't have a very rich understanding of choice. It was very limited, and it had really just been provided to us by certain assumptions from Western intellectuals. And it was really in 1993, the end of my first year in my PhD program that I started to ask the question, we so far have thought of choice as something universally understood in the same way, because it's innate, it's inborn.

But what if we were to think of choice as a social construct? . And that was really the beginning of my work on choice. But I'm also at that moment making a choice. And that choice was the choice to study choice. And I did make that choice in a very conscious way. I was very consciously saying, look, I wanna study choice because this is something I care a lot about because of my own personal experiences.

But it's also something where I somehow implicitly understood that this was a topic that was so rich that was so multifaceted because so many different disciplines and so many people from different walks of life cared about it. That I, that the, no matter how long I studied it, it would never be done.

That it would keep giving. And so I would say the best choice I ever made in my life was the choice to study choice.

Srini Rao : . . Let's get into the book because one of the things you talk about at the opening of the book is you say, we're all capable of generating an infinite number of creative combinations.

Let's call them choices. Creating a new choice that's valuable, calls for great discernment. You must pick apart the choices you've identified in the routes you could take to make your idea real. And that's no easy task. We can now refine our definition of innovation, a novel, useful combination of old ideas that come together to solve a complex problem.

And I was thinking about how we could actually demonstrate this framework for people because I know it's layered. And I thought to myself let me just, let's find a problem that I actually have and break it down through your framework. So one thing that I know is difficult is when people listen to podcasts they're often on the go.

So I thought, okay, how do I get more of my podcast listeners to sign up for my newsletter? Which is a very simple sort of way to start this. But if we're look at that question through this framework, can you walk us through each of these elements? Because I think it'll help people understand it.

Sheena Iyengar: Oh, I like that. So how do I get my current podcast listeners to sign up for a newsletter? Yeah, that's a nice problem statement, by the way. What I like about that is we can define it as a question. It's concrete. We can imagine what a solution would feel like. And we know how to break it down because it is concrete.

So you didn't make it too big, you didn't make it too small, and you made it so that it would be meaningful. So that's step one actually, of defining your problem. So my question back to you then is what are your biggest challenges? Why don't people. ?

Srini Rao : I think that one, a lot of people are usually not in front of their computers when they are listening to a podcast.

Like for example, I I strangely don't listen to podcasts, but when I do, it's only in the car. So obviously I'm not clicking links to sign up for a newsletter, , and I know for a fact, like our podcast listener base is far bigger than the size of our newsletter. The numbers are wildly different.

So I've always wondered, it's okay, how do I match them up? Or like, how do I get more people to come to the website? And I, like I said the first issue is the fact that I, at least this is my assumption, is that for the most part, people are not in front of their computers. And I know this because it's the same issue we face with advertisers as well.

And I think it's what most podcast advertisers face does that help.

Sheena Iyengar: So your first sub problem is how do I make it seamless for people to sign up and it doesn't require their hands? That might

Srini Rao : be one way to put at it. Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar: Okay. And what's another reason why they don't have signups? Or is that your biggest reason?

I don't know if

Srini Rao : that's the biggest reason. I think then the other is, what is the incentive? And it's I get the podcast, like if I, for example, I don't sign up for newsletters when I listen to somebody's podcast. I'm like I have the podcast. Why would I sign up? What is the incentive to sign

Sheena Iyengar: up?

Okay, how do I, or you could for that one, I would say, what are the different kinds of incentives that would make people want to continue engaging in this material? Yeah.

Srini Rao : So those, and we've tried we've tried offering free guides and stuff like that. So I always wonder okay, where, what else could we be doing here?

Sheena Iyengar: Okay, so you now have your problem and you have two sub problems, right? Yeah. And if you were to solve for these two sub-problems, making it seamless and giving people an incentive, if you could simultaneously solve for both of those, do you think it would significantly increase, it would significantly solve your problem?

Srini Rao : It may, I would have to test it to find out. But just talking to you is making me think it's okay, I know there are options where we can have people send in text messages to sign up for an email list and they can do that with their voice. So that's one thing. I can, find out incentives, but yeah, so I guess it would to some degree.

Sheena Iyengar: Can you think of a third big problem that would also be important so that we can either stick to two sub problems or we can add one more?

Srini Rao : I think getting people to visit the website, but that's I think within those same problems. I'm trying to think of what would be the next sub problem in all of this, because I know that you say that any big problem is made up of multiple sub problems.

Sheena Iyengar: ,

and it sounds like you wanna make it seamless. , you wanna give people incentives who wanna continue and you wanna increase exposure. That's fair. Yeah. Okay. So let's take up the first one. How do you make it seamless? So within industry what's the best practice? What's a really successful podcast that does what you want it to do in terms of getting people to sign up and what do they do?

Srini Rao : The one that I heard actually was, from one of my friends, my friend, I was on Verl, who's a guest here, and he had mentioned hey, you can, if you want access to this thing, just, send a text message with my name to whatever number. And then that was it. And who does that?

He's 1% done that. But I've heard of other people doing it too.

Sheena Iyengar: So for a tactic, you wanna find an example of a very successful podcast. So it's within industry. And what are they doing so that you can carefully observe what it is that they're doing. So you know how to mimic it. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. That's within industry one tactic, cuz, but as you know from the method, yeah. You have to also have a tactic outside of industry. . So who else has this problem? Where they're trying to get people to immediate, to seamlessly take action after learning something useful.

Srini Rao : You're an educator.

Do you have that problem?

Let's say somebody sits in one of your lectures, they teach you, teach them something that's actionable. Cause I know plenty of people who take online classes who literally pay for them and never even watch one lecture use.

Sheena Iyengar: Yeah. So let's see. So I guess that's why faculty write books as a way to get people to Remi to remind them. . You have pharmaceutical companies that then send doctors, send their. sort of doctor, like people to go talk to doctors. Yeah. About their drugs. So there's this sort of follow up.

Srini Rao : You just made me think of something because I get spammed from people who are trying to sell me health insurance like 20 times a day somebody sends me a text about their health insurance plan, even though I have health insurance. Not that I want to text my listeners 20 times a day, but

Sheena Iyengar: it does sound like getting some sort of a thing where you can make it through voice such that you now have access to be able to connect to them in a way that's seamless, would be helpful. , yeah. Would help in your solving of your problem, in terms of incentives, what are you giving them that they might want?

Srini Rao : We have a guide on how to build a second brain using a notetaking app that I use, but you just made me think of something that I hadn't thought to do. I mention it in the episode, but there's no link in the show notes. and I know people will pop on their show notes and I, you just reminded me of that.

I don't know why I hadn't thought of that until now. Cause that's so stupidly simple.

Okay,

Sheena Iyengar: I think we've begun to solve your problem, but I think you see how you would use the method. Yeah, absolutely. And I would search beyond what I'm saying, just search far and wide and still observing.

What are people in your industry and out of your industry doing to solve analogous problems to yours. , you're not the first person that's trying to figure out incentives to get people to do something that, they may not realize would be helpful for them. , oh, churches have the same problem.

Srini Rao : Okay, so walk me through, so you mentioned looking outside of the industry that you're in, and I, you actually had this example of Henry Ford in the assembly line and how that is idea didn't actually come from manufacturing, came from meat processing, if I remember correctly. .

Sheena Iyengar: Yes.

Oh, you want me to tell you the

Srini Rao : story? Yeah. Can you explain Yeah. To explain that to people because I think that, you're right. There is a sort of myopic view for people, particularly in the online space who do the kinds of stuff that I do to look literally just within our industry.

It's oh, let's look at all the other online marketers are doing.

Sheena Iyengar: Do you want me to tell the Henry Ford story or the Netflix story? I think the Henry

Srini Rao : Ford story, what you're talking about. You like Henry Ford. I think the Netflix story is very familiar to everybody, . And I think somebody told before the Henry Ford story was one that really stood out to me.

So

Sheena Iyengar: did Henry Ford invent the car? The answer is no, it already existed. Was Henry, did Henry Ford invent the assembly line for which he's often credited? The answer to that is also no. The best practice in the industry back then was the assembly line, which os mobile was already using. The question that Henry Ford was answering is, how do I make the car affordable?

Back then, the car was about roughly somewhere between two to $3,000. This is in the early 19 early 19 hundreds. So what are the three sub problems? How do I reduce the cost of labor? How do I reduce the amount of time that it takes to make a car? How do I reduce

,

the cost of material? So how do I answer the first one?

How do I reduce the amount of time reduce the cost of labor? The assembly line did that because now you have one set of people who know how to do this part of car making and another set of people who can build a engine or a battery, et cetera. And by specializing their skillsets, you could pay them less.

And you have more people that can do it. The second one was, how do I reduce the amount of time? It took about 12 and a half hours to build a car back then. And so Henry Ford is on a mission to see how do I reduce that? He discovers in the, one of his engineers discoveries in the slaughterhouses of Chicago in a sort of a meat processing plant that they had something that they called the dis, the moving disassembly line.

where the animal would be on tracks and it would be moving to the employees. And so as it was moving, the employees would cut whatever piece they needed to do or do whatever task they had associated with their part of the job of packing the meat. And, but the animal was moving to about, they didn't have to go to the animal.

So then they bring this back to the car manufacturing and they call it the moving assembly, right line. Because the car is being built, it's not being taken apart by, by making the tracks move to the employees as opposed to the employees moving to the car, they were able to reduce the amount of time it took to build a car from 12 and a half hours to about three hours.

So it was huge. . Then the third thing they did was they asked the question, how do I reduce the cost of material? And around that time there was this brand new chemical paint that came on the market, which Henry Ford called panning because it looked like the black lacquer of Japanese art. And Henry Ford was famous for saying you could have a your car in any color you want, as long as it's black.

And that's because the benefit of panning is that the paint would dry in about two days at max, somewhere between 24 hours and 48 hours. The average car back then took about seven days to dry. So he's making the car faster and it's drying faster. And what's happening within a few years is he's dropping the cause.

of ma of a car, then because of all these things that he's doing, he's bringing down the cost of the car to about $300. And that was huge. And that's literally what made the car, the vehicle of, every household. Now, one of the things that in modern day sort of creative people talk about is they talk about how important it is to do customer anthropology when innovating.

And a comment on that is that, yes, you can learn a lot about what's wrong with what currently exists by studying your customers and looking at what challenges they're having. But we should never make the mistake of thinking customers know the best solution to the challenge that they have. . If Henry Ford back then in the early 19 hundreds when the car was over $2,000, if he'd asked his customers what they were looking for, they would've told him they wanted a faster horse and buggy.

Srini Rao : So walk me through the tools that you offer because you talk about three tools. One is the choice map, which you say serves as your personal library for that one problem where you store all the elements as you build your idea. . The second tool is the Big picture score, and the third tool is the third I test.

So talk to me about how those all work together to solve a problem.

Sheena Iyengar: The choice map is what we just did with Henry Ford Problems, sub-problems. What's a tactic that will solve each of the sub-problems? And I collect all that information and then I try to combine those pieces in my. . Now in the case of Henry Ford, I'm magically telling you the exact elements he combined.

He obviously was looking around at a lot of different elements, which he ended up rejecting in favor of the ones he ended up using. So you should never limit yourself to just one tactic per sub problem. So the choice map is that it's getting the pieces and it's organizing it in a way so that you can very deliberately combine.

Because in think bigger, we don't rely on randomly occurring flashes of insight. We're being deliberative about having that meaningful flash of insight. The big picture is so often we find a solution and then we don't want it. And that's because we don't go through the effort of really thinking about what's our criteria, what's our selection criteria or criteria for success.

And so with the big picture dos, and we have a method by which you create a score for every solution you generate is we ask you the question, if I were to create the ideal solution to this problem, what should it feel like? And we don't ask what should it feel like to just one entity, right? Because current innovation methodologies, they either only care about the feelings of the ideator, the creator, because obviously it's his or her passion that's the most important.

Or we only care about what the customer thinks because customers are king. And so what we do and think bigger though, is we focus on three different stakeholders and we give them all equal weight. There's the ideator. How do you want the ideal solution to feel? So for Henry Ford, the ideal solution should feel.

Like something you wanna buy and the masses would wanna buy because he wanted everybody to have a car. He wanted to be the Carman. What did the customer want? They wanted something that was affordable. And who were his gatekeepers and allies? Meaning the people that were gonna try to make it difficult for him and the people that were gonna try to make it easy for him.

The gatekeepers were gonna be his competitors, of which he had plenty who were gonna try to undermine him. And what would they want? They're gonna try to find some crack. And the allies are people that could potentially make it easier for everybody to have a car. And so alliances say with governments that could actually build roads became key.

And so understanding the wants of these these different stakeholders becomes important that we didn't say. What solutions these stakeholders would want, just their wants. And so now, if you were to build a choice map, like a prototypical choice map would have let's say, would have be like a five by five.

A five by five, you could create 3,125 unique solutions. It's the big picture score, the big picture scoring system that allows you to identify the do the dominating alternatives. Now, when people have solutions that go with their pure gut, which one sounds sexy or is that cool feeling shiny toy?

That's how people miss the fact that the segue really wasn't solving a problem for anybody. People don't want wild ideas just for the sake of a wild idea, right? , it actually has to. So sometimes what, so what the big picture score does is it enables you to see all your favorite ideas. What score would they really have?

And that enables you to pick the idea that may not be the sexiest, but may actually be that common, that blend of sexy but useful, but meaningful. So that's the purpose of the big picture, to allow you to see the trade-offs associated with your top options. The third one is the third eye test. If you let's imagine you have, you've narrowed in on, I don't know, one or two options, and they seem really good in your head.

You think they're great, they're gonna solve the problem. Let's just imagine you have one. You think it's perfect. You're not done yet. You're not ready to go out and prototype. Or create a minimum viable product, you have to still do the third eye test. And while the third eye test is a unique way of collecting feedback it's not after ideation.

It's still part of ideation. And so what we do in Think Bigger is we don't run out and ask people, do you like or dislike my idea? What we do instead is we go and we share our idea, we describe our idea, and it's actually better to describe your idea verbally. First. You can, you maybe create a visual, but we don't need to build it out.

It's actually a better test for you and for others. If you're forced to have to describe it verbally and you describe it and then you don't ask people, what do you think? Can you critique? , you really only ask people one of two questions depending on where you're at with your ideation phase. You either ask them, how would you improve it?

Kind of a little kid coming up to you and they say, oh, look at my drawing. Rather than saying, oh, this is really nice, you say, oh, what is this? And then they say, oh, it's a dog. And see, and then say, oh, okay, show me your dog. Okay, see, this is the head, this is the, the little pause, et cetera.

And then you say, okay, how about if we improve it by doing dot. Okay, so the first thing you wanna do is ask how would you improve it? Then in the next phase, as your idea is fleshing out more and more, and you're starting to feel like, you know what? I think people are understanding what I'm saying.

Now you start to ask people. Hey, if it were you describing the idea, how would you describe it? By the way, that's a very powerful tool. Asking somebody, how would they describe the idea you just presented to them? Because now you get to see what they heard. You get to see what's stuck. You get to see how they would've framed it.

It might actually teach you something about what things, how ways in which you could edit your idea. It's not about judgment. It's still not about whether they like or dislike, or whether they're gonna buy or not buy. Who cares about that? Yet? You're still creating your idea. So the point at which you have an idea where I, you see what I see where there's alignment.

Now you finally have an idea, and at that point you can decide, is this an idea where it's pursuing? And if it is, then you're ready to prototype. Or do whatever it is that your next phase in building it

Srini Rao : out. So as I'm listening to you describe this, it takes us back to the beginning of the conversation.

Cause my instinct being the weirdo that I am is thinking, oh, I wonder if I could apply this to online dating.

Like the problem of, finding like a life partner since the sub problem being my mother . , I'm saying that somewhat facetious, but you get the point. But I'm curious have you seen people apply this in social context

Sheena Iyengar: as well? Absolutely. You can apply this in social context.

I, I use the choice map to help me find a romantic partner. Absolutely. I use it to help me figure out, okay, he's gotta, my son's gotta apply to 15 colleges. How do we figure this out? I knew it was too difficult of a challenge for somebody. at that age. So sure. I use it for all kinds of things.

Srini Rao : Alright. Give me the condensed version of how you would apply this to finding a romantic partner.

Sheena Iyengar: How do I find somebody, I don't know what your main criteria is, but how do I find somebody that would be, let's say, I don't know, good fed or shared interests or whatever is important to you. Yeah. Okay. And so the sub problem is how do I figure out how to communicate or represent myself so that they can see what my interests are, second sub problem, how do I interpret or study others' representations of themselves so that I can identify if they have the characteristics I'm looking.

I suppose those are your two big sub problems right there. . And third is what are the different venues in which I can go to where I'm most likely to find the characteristics that I'm selecting for? Yeah. So that in the first saw problem, that means you look first in dating. What are the narrative styles that are more productive and by productive?

It depends on you as to what your criteria is. Are you looking for a lot of likes or are you looking for a fit? And so what are people doing in their narratives to best portray themselves such that they're more likely to identify a fit? You would look that first in. Then you would look that, look for that.

In terms of other products like companies, a lot of them are looking for the right kind of person to hire. Religious organizations are often trying to figure out who's most likely to be a good fit for their organization or charities, et cetera. This is not a problem that's unique to dating.

The second sub problem is how do I interpret narratives such that I can figure out who this person really is, right? And so you because it's not easy to interpret dating profiles, say on various dating apps, right? So are there you, I would do research on, okay, are there people that are really good at reading these profiles to identify characteristics?

So I would probably go talk to those matchmakers the very famous sort of fancy matchmakers. But then again, this is not a problem that's unique to dating sites, right? There's how do you figure out which wealth monitor is actually telling you the truth and isn't gonna be the next Bernie Rad off, right?

Who did that, right? And you can think of other kinds of industries in which that same question pops up. .

Srini Rao : Yeah. Wow. This has been fascinating cause I literally my, my thought is to go transcribe this extract, have my AI basically extract this and generate a template so that I can do this over and over again.

I like, I feel like you've given us a methodology for solving all sorts of problems in our lives.

Sheena Iyengar: Oh, yeah. I do think of it that

Srini Rao : way. Yeah. This has been really cool. I have so enjoyed talking to you. I have one last question which is how we finish all of our interviews. The unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Sheena Iyengar: What do I think?

Srini Rao : What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Sheena Iyengar: Unmistakable, yeah.

it has to be something that is truly memorable about that person that is recognizable. Cause it's not something so wild that, I don't know what it is, has to be recognizable, but memorable. So it could be a name, it could be, way that they, an idea that's associated with the person.

It could be a visual attached to the person, but sure, that's, it has to be something that I would say is unique, but re.

Srini Rao : Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work the book and everything else that you're up to?

Sheena Iyengar: They can definitely follow me on LinkedIn in other social media sites.

So I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Facebook. They can definitely follow me in any of those places. They can also go to my webpage and I would love it if they bought a copy of my book, think Bigger. And I really want everybody to think bigger about their lives because that's the way we create our most meaningful choices.

Amazing.

Srini Rao : And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.