Tim Klein | The New Science of Navigating School, Careers and Life

Srini Rao

 Tim, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Tim Klein

Oh, super, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Srini Rao

It is my pleasure. You were actually my first interview after one month, a one month hiatus after 10 years of not taking a break from the show. So yeah, well, you have a new book called How to Navigate Life, which as I was saying to you, it is now officially in my top 10 book recommendations for 2022 for anybody. But before we get into all of that, as you know, having listened to the show.

Tim Klein

Nice, it's the bandicoot, I love that.

Srini Rao

I want to start by asking what I think is a very relevant question given what this book about and that is what did your parents do for work and how did that end up influencing where you've ended up with your life and career.

Tim Klein

Yeah, they influenced me a lot. So my parents are very much hippies from the counter-cultural generation of the 60s and 70s. They're both from New York City. My dad was a New York City cab driver, and they decided to move up to rural Vermont and try to do a yeoman farmer lifestyle, like going back to the land. And so that's where I'm from originally, is Vermont.

Yeah, my mom was a potter growing up. She had her own pottery studio and she helped run a co-op, a artisan co-op. And my dad was a public servant. He was a House of Representative in the state of Vermont. And so they both kind of instilled in me this rugged individualism and really empowered me to go my own way. And yeah, I think in our book with me and Belle, we talked, I've been in education for a long time. And I think what they did for me is like they didn't put a lot of pressure on me at all. And they really

My dad said the only thing he did as a parent was he trusted me to figure it out. And that's very simple advice, but that was actually very profound. And like when I dug into the research on what students need to be successful, it actually was spot on. So yeah, that's my parents in a nutshell.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, okay. New York City cab driver is kind of, you know, one of those professions that's pretty much non-existent today thanks to technology, which I know you talk about creative destruction later in the book, which we'll get into. But from both having been a public servant and New York City cab driver, which in many ways is another massive public service up until services like become long. What did your dad teach you about human relationships?

Tim Klein

He really taught me that they were everything. Like my dad, I mean, if there's any Vermonters listening, Tony Klein, he was like big fish in a small pond, but he was like, he's a huge character. And he was very much, you know, he was very high level thinking. He was really, really good on policy, but he was really a public servant in the sense of he was there to serve people. And I think that's something that's got lost in, you know, politics and everything. He saw serving people was the number one thing he wanted to do. So I was like,

You know, he was a great orator, he was a great speaker. You know, he could tell the most amazing story, but I think his purpose as, he loved doing the things for like individual constituents. You know what I mean? Like anyone coming to him with an individual problem that they had. And so he really was like people first in what he did. And he really was all about solving problems. And he also was not afraid to, he's not afraid to shake it up at all. He's not afraid to ruffle feathers. And I think he kind of instilled that in me as well.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

And I think that worked because he couldn't hold down a job. He was the type of guy who would like come home one day as a carpenter or as a roofer and be like, couldn't do anymore, quit, have to find a new one. And my mom didn't like it, but she supported it. And I think for better or worse, he's instilled some of that trailblazer in me as well.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so typically I think the perception, at least mine, is that, you know, if you're a New York City cab driver, you're a blue collar worker. But which makes me wonder, what was the narrative about education when you were growing up with your parents?

Tim Klein

You know, so that's really, so both my parents, it's really interesting, are like, the youngest of three kids, and they were the youngest by a good amount, like seven, eight year difference between them. And so my dad, he was growing up, you know, Jewish immigrant family, super hardworking. Both his sisters, one is a very prestigious psychologist, one is a very prestigious lawyer, they have the Ivy League degrees, and so.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

he had to go on these huge footsteps and he basically just said like, F that and he just wasn't gonna do it, right? And so he just wholly rejected it. And so he rejected it, my mom rejected it. And so, you know, they very, very early on rejected the path towards wealth, status, prestige and power. And so I never had, so they never literally put any pressure on me academically. It's funny, cause it's like.

Srini Rao

Right. Yeah.

Tim Klein

I went to University of Chicago, I was a teaching fellow at Harvard University. I've been at all of these super, quote unquote, prestigious universities. They could have cared less about my academics growing up, honestly. Like there was no, it's just not what they valued in me. It's not like, yeah, go ahead.

Srini Rao

Hahaha

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, the reason that came up is I remember you were saying you're of Jewish descent and you know, having listened to the show, we've had a lot of people also who are Jewish on the show. And from what I understand, growing up Jewish isn't very different than growing up Indian, where the narrative is doctoral or engineer as you just, you know, proved it by talking about your dad's siblings. So what do you think it is that enabled that sort of you know what, F this, you know, spirit, I'm going to go and do my own thing despite the fact that

they were raised in an environment in which that is the conditioning.

Tim Klein

Oh man, that is a great, great question. I mean, I think it was a product of the time, like that, you know, the counter-cultural revolution of just like rejecting it in the 60s and 70s. Also, my dad was terrible at school. He was like, I think the second worst in his class in high school. He barely graduated high school. He only went to college to avoid the Vietnam draft. And so it was like...

I don't even know if he could have embraced that academic performance and like trying to achieve at all costs, even if he wanted to. And so I think as a way, like I think he knew he wasn't gonna win at that game. He was never ever going to meet, follow up in the footsteps of his sisters. And so he just decided not even to try.

Srini Rao

Okay, so you got into the University of Chicago as a Berkeley undergrad, I know damn well what it takes to get into the University of Chicago. And from what I hear, it's a brutal academic environment. So where does that come? Where does the drive to get to that come from inside of you? Like what spark that

Tim Klein

I'm gonna go.

Tim Klein

Well, let me be clear. So I went to graduate school at University of Chicago and I went to their social work school and a lot of these Ivy League schools have a lot of graduate schools where they don't tell you the acceptance rate of them. And there's a very specific reason because they're a lot easier to get into than undergraduate. And so I fall, yeah, so I actually, you know, high school, I went to Ithaca College, it's a great place, but I literally never applied myself at all.

Srini Rao

Okay.

Srini Rao

Mm, okay.

Srini Rao

HAHAHAHA! Yeah.

Tim Klein

in high school or undergraduate. I just did just enough to get by where I wasn't going to raise any red flags, where there was gonna be undue attention on me for my poor performance. So it was just like, I did as little as possible. But I actually decided to go to University of Chicago because I'm from Vermont originally, and then I go to college in upstate New York. But then after college, I go and move to Chicago. And I just, through happenstance, decide to, I get a job at a boys and girls club.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

in the oldest public housing development in Chicago, in the Julius C. Lathrop homes. And coming up a guy, Vermont is the whitest state in the country. It's like 98%. Yeah, and so I'm like glow in the dark white, right? And so going to Chicago, working in public housing, being the only white person there, just it opened my eyes to like systemic inequities and like the students I was working with at the time. And I was in the games room, I was hosting like,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

So I hear.

Tim Klein

pool tournaments and bumper pool and trying to make sure they weren't breaking ping pong paddles. But I was working with these young people who were like amazing. They were really funny, they were charismatic, they were super compassionate. They were actually, even though they couldn't have been different from who I grew up with, they reminded me of me and my friends growing up, but they were having massively different outcomes, right? Like the year I was at Chicago.

185 Chicago public high school students got shot that year. And so, you know, like all my friends are just like the default mode is like going, graduating high school, going to University of Vermont, you know, like just going on that path. I was seeing these students, exact same capabilities as what I grew up with, but they were having very different outcomes. And that kind of made me see some invisible systemic inequities, systemic structures.

Srini Rao

Wow.

Tim Klein

that were negatively impacting them, and I was getting advantage from through, you know, just because I was lucky in where I grew up and who I was. And so it was that trying to address systemic inequities that got me to University of Chicago.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it's funny because I and you probably heard me say this on the show numerous times. I think that one of the things that has happened over the past few years as I've had all these conversations is just a much, much higher level of awareness of just how privileged of an upbringing I had. You know, it's not like we were rich, but if your dad's a college professor, you're definitely not suffering. And I realized like what a contrast that was to so many people. One thing that I think was interesting there too.

the things that I wanted to ask you about is you had this co-author, Bell, and the contrast between what both of you were taught was pretty, it's funny because I read hers and I was like, yeah, that's my story. I read yours and I was like, yep, definitely not my parents.

Tim Klein

Yeah, we have this such a funny, you know, so we both, we work together, we've written this book together, we do, we're like thick as thieves, we work, do a ton of work together in the purpose lab, which she runs at Boston College. So Belle is this, she knows, she's the Dean of the Lynch School of Human Development at Boston College, PhD from Michigan, you know, she's, but it's like immigrant family, right? Where it's like she, and I don't wanna speak for her story, but it's in the book where she talks about, you know, it was like you.

and you go be a doctor and you go on that path for financial stability and security. And yeah, she decided to be a psychologist and it was like, you know, is that a real doctor or not? So it's just like the level of, yeah, so it's like the level of expectations put on her was really, really wild. And what's really interesting is cause like her mode, which we call the performance mindset in the book, right? Where like the purpose of like, yeah, it's like.

Srini Rao

Ha ha, yeah!

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yep, we'll come to that, yeah.

Tim Klein

basically the performance mindset is the purpose of life is to be successful, right? And so that's viewing life as this zero sum hyper competitive game or race. And the goal is to win, to beat everyone. And so, you know, that race worked for Bell until it didn't. And we just contrast that with the way I live, we call it the passion mindset, where I was literally living, I thought the goal of life was to be happy, was to live completely in the moment.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Tim Klein

And like if Belle is doing what she was supposed to, I was only doing what I wanted to do. And if I didn't wanna do something, I wasn't gonna do it. And that worked for a while until it didn't, cause it just led to like a very self-indulgent, self-centered lifestyle where it was just like, I had to keep upping the ante on what I was doing to find that next high or whatever. And so, yes, it's been this beautiful balance that we found because we come from super different backgrounds.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tim Klein

But we've really met in the middle in how and how our work comes together to support young people

Srini Rao

Well, I want to come back to all of this because this is really getting into the core of the book, but there's one other thing that you talk about at the beginning of the book and that is that you're like this badass tennis player.

Tim Klein

Yeah, quote unquote. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Srini Rao

So, well, I wanted to know what that has taught you about what skills you got from that experience that have transferred later in your life that you've applied, you know, to you both your career and life in general.

Tim Klein

Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I say quote unquote great tennis player because you like because I mean, so I was like, well, one what's interesting, I don't even talk about in the book is, um, you know, my dad was fantastic father super involved in sports, he was my basketball coach, soccer coach, baseball coach, all that. And then it's an act of defiance, I go pick up tennis, which he doesn't know anything about he plays very rarely. And so I start and I just go start playing tennis as a way just to not be coached by him, which

Srini Rao

Right

Tim Klein

was a jerk move looking back on it. But anyways, I start playing tennis in Vermont. I start tennis at like 10 or 11 years old, which was super early in Vermont, but that's incredibly late, anyone who's playing competitive tennis. So I just go through, you know, I'm in Vermont, I go 53 and four, I think is the record. I lost four times in my entire high school career. We went to state championship, you know, I'm runners up in doubles, I'm top 10 in the state. And yeah, I think what I look, but...

Srini Rao

haha

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tim Klein

So I had a ton of success playing tennis and looking back on it now, I was miserable the entire time I was playing because it was like the goal was to win and I was so stressed out and I was so angry and the entire 99% of the time you're actually playing tennis, I was miserable and then I would win the match and I would get a moment of relief just until the next match, you know? And so, yeah, that's influenced me a lot, I think.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Srini Rao

Have you ever read the Andre Agassi memoir open? He actually opens the book by saying, let me let you in on a secret, I hate tennis. That's literally the opening of the book.

Tim Klein

Yeah.

Tim Klein

Right.

Right, and he talks about, right, in that book, his dad chose for him, he was gonna be this amazing tennis player, right? He like, Jerry rigs the tennis machine so it can shoot 100 mile per hour balls at him so he can get the best return of serve, right? And it's, you know, his dad was ahead of his time in how he was thinking about success, because he was like, I'm going to start super early, I'm gonna get this competitive advantage, I'm gonna make my kid.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm.

Tim Klein

hyper-focus on tennis to be the best, because he's going to out-compete everyone. And we're actually seeing that mentality everywhere in education. It doesn't matter if you're in engineering, robotics, crew, anything we're in, it has become this incredibly hyper-competitive sport now, where you have to be in the top 1% to be successful. You know, and as you know, Andre Agassi's book, he talks about

his depression, his anxiety, his burnout. You know, like he wrote that book, I think like 10 years ago, but the mental impact he talks about there, we are seeing so many young people and young professionals having that same mental response to the pressure that they're feeling now, whether it's depression, anxiety, or burnout.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Well, I mean, I think that you know, I remember I may have mentioned this show before my one of my oldest bold roommates One of my oldest friends she had a daughter right before she was born They were living in San Francisco and they put their daughter on the waiting list for a school before she was born for kindergarten They moved to Chicago I think she was five years old and the school called and not to say that she had been accepted but that she was off the waiting list for the school Italy

Tim Klein

Right. And then.

Srini Rao

We're putting unborn children on waiting lists for schools? Like, what is the world coming to?

Tim Klein

Yeah, and then, yeah, you know what happens when they get off the waiting list? That five-year-old has to interview to prove, yeah, to prove they have what it takes to get into the school.

Srini Rao

Oh, I've hurt.

Srini Rao

Yeah, yeah, I've heard. Well, so let's get into the book. And there's one other question I want to ask you, which I think will make a perfect segue into the book. So you have Bella as a co author and you with these wildly different backgrounds. And what that kind of sparked for me was, you know, I my parents are first generation, I'm second generation, obviously. And I'm wondering, with people who are children of immigrants who now have children who they're bringing up in the United States.

Are you starting to see a change in that narrative of like, you know, go to school, get a job, you know, what you call a performance mindset, or is that just being passed on from generation to generation?

Tim Klein

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to speak for my experience. I've actually found that immigrant kids, a lot of times, especially like low income, middle income ones are actually more purposeful in what they're doing because a lot of the time they can see and they've witnessed the sacrifice that their parents have put on them to come here. So a lot of the time they don't take education for granted and they take it a lot more seriously than.

a lot of students who are born here who just didn't, their parents didn't have to make that pressure. But we are seeing a pushback in that performance mindset because I think more and more young people are feeling like the game is rigged. You know, a lot of them are feeling, yeah, so.

Srini Rao

No.

Srini Rao

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think with you bring up Varsity Blues, you know, in the in the book, not for the people listening, not the movie, but the scandal. And I remember thinking, yeah, you know, this honestly is a game. And it's rigged in favor of people who are from privileged circumstances. I know this because I was one of them.

Tim Klein

Yeah, and I think what's so interesting about that Varsity Blues scandal is that you look at the people involved in it, and it was the most privileged people, the most connected people. You know, one of the daughters who didn't even know her parents were rigging the game to get her into USC, she was already making six figures as a brand influencer on YouTube and Instagram. It was like, they didn't need.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tim Klein

They didn't need this help at all. They were going to be fine, no matter if they went to college or not. But I think what I find really, really interesting about that Varsity Blues scandal is that everyone is feeling this anxiety and this uncertainty and fear about their young people being able to feel successful. And it says something about this moment in time that even the most richest, privileged, most connected people,

still will risk jail time because they don't feel like they're on stable enough grounds. Whether that's correct or not is the perception that they aren't. It really speaks to this moment where we're in with who can be successful and how many people feel like they can be successful and live a meaningful life moving forward.

Srini Rao

Mm hmm. Well, I mean, I think that makes a perfect segue into the book. And the thing that I really I wanted to start with is why has it taken so damn long for I mean, and I still don't believe that what you're talking about in this book is, you know, even like close to pervasive in the university system quite yet. I know this is my dad's a college professor. I'm literally using his office because he's pretty much, you know, retired at this point. But and.

Why, you know, like honestly, I as a Berkeley undergrad, nothing you talk about in this book was any look, nobody ever talked to me about thinking about navigating life this way. The only thing that I was taught is pretty much what you call the performance mindset, which you basically say, you know, people with performance mindset view life as a fierce cutthroat competition. The mindset is ubiquitous. And today's parents also refer to a snowplow parents a term that while the juror of captures our determination and skill leveling.

any and all obstacles that stand between kids and success, we make helicopter parents look like amateurs.

Tim Klein

Yeah, I think so, you know, I'm a clinical therapist by background. I was a school counselor for a long time. I've worked in, you know, undergraduate and graduate. And so I've been working, Bell and I both have been working with students one-on-one at like every phase of the, of the education journey. And I think one thing we realized in our work was that

Students are under unbelievable pressure to be successful, as we've talked about. They know exactly what they want to do. And I think what we realize is that we've never taught young people how to decide. We've never taught them how to make big decisions in life. And over the last 30 or 40 years in education, without even us knowing it, the purpose of K-12 education has been college prep.

Right? It was like the only reason you get really, really good grades, you pad your resume, you do community service, is to get into the most rejected college that you can get into. And we, and for a very, very long time, we've never questioned, well, why do I want to go to college? Because we just assumed, well, the better college you go to, the more money you're going to make in your life. And so we've gone so long without questioning the purpose of education. We never taught young people how to be successful. And that's why

you know, Bell and I talk about it in our research, we're in this middle of a college and career navigation crisis where students are working harder than ever before, but they're adrift, they're lost, they're dropping out of college, they're switching their majors, they're switching their jobs, you know? And to us, it's because we've just never taken them the time to help them choose for themselves. What do they wanna do with their lives?

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny you say that because, you know, obviously, like I said, you know, you get told, be a doctor if you want a good life, you grow up Indian. And I remember going to give this talk to my high school AP English teachers class. And the question I got over and over again was, what am I supposed to do with my life? And I was like, oh, my God, seriously, you've not even lived a fraction of your life and you're worried about how you're going to spend the rest of it. You don't have enough data points to figure that out.

That to me has always been the most shocking thing is that we put this much pressure on people to make choices About their entire lives when they've lived a fraction of it

Tim Klein

Yeah, yeah, and the research bears that out where it's like, you know, I have a five and a half year old and a three year old and they're super purposeful. They're very intrinsically motivated. They're just curious about the world and they do whatever they want. And Bell's research has found that like kids up until around seven, eight, nine years old, they just play, right? They just play and they just experience the world, the process of it. And then around fifth and sixth grade,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

They go from play to performance, because they get this idea that like, okay, I'm playing for keeps now, my grades matter, my standardized test scores matter. And they really have this feeling that what I do as a seventh or eighth grader can influence the trajectory and the opportunities I have as I get older, right? And so it really is, you know, we've created, it started, I think, with like No Child Left Behind and this boon on standardization and standardized test scores, but we've really turned.

the education system into this linear path, where you have to be checking off these boxes and you have to be going in one straight direction up. And it really sends this message that, you know, if you don't know what you wanna do and if you don't know where you wanna go in life, you're lost. And if you're lost, you're losing. And so a lot of the time, students, it feels better to say, I'm gonna go be a doctor, even if you've never spent five minutes shadowing a doctor or you don't even know what they do on a day-to-day basis. That feels...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

hahahaha yep

Tim Klein

Yeah, that just feels much better as an answer than I have no idea what I want to do with my life. So young people are grasping for bad ideas because it's better than no idea at all.

Srini Rao

Well, I think I probably may have said this before. Like I remember when I told my mom was like, Mom, I don't want to be a doctor. I hate going to the hospital. I get sick all the time because I used to get frequent cold. And my mom said, don't worry. You'll develop immunity. Like a typical like an Indian mom. Well, okay, let's talk about this sort of shift from, you know, this performance mindset into these two other mindsets. One is passion, obviously, which you actually criticize.

Tim Klein

Very practical.

Srini Rao

personally agree completely with your criticism. I think it really kind of echoes a lot of what Cal Newport talked about in his for one of his early books, so good they can't ignore you. And then you go into the purpose mindset. So what is the distinction between both of those?

Tim Klein

Yeah, yeah, so, and I love this screening because I feel like this, I've been listening to you for a while, so it's like you grew up in the performance mindset, right? And I feel like, right? And then you rejected it, right? And so we are actually seeing, yeah.

Srini Rao

Oh, absolutely.

Srini Rao

Well, that's because it didn't work much, much like much like your co author, Bell. If I, I tried the performance mindset for so long that ultimately people always ask, yeah, as one of my friend, Matthew Monroe asked me once he was like, you know, why did you end up doing this? And I said, look, I followed what you call the performance mindset, Tim. And the thing is that what I realized is for the overwhelming majority of people, the performance mindset either leads to, you know,

satisfactory results where their life is okay or amazing results. Mine were abysmal. So to me, I had no choice but to question it.

Tim Klein

Yeah, right, yeah, right, just like my dad, right? Because it wasn't working for you, so it's like, but we're actually seeing this culture, so performance mindset basically views life as this never-ending race. And I think, and it's like you just have to be running as fast as you can, as early as you can, and you can never stop, because success is defined by how you compare to other people. And we're at this point in education and the world of work where people are realizing, what's the point of being successful if I'm miserable? And with the performance mindset,

Srini Rao

Yeah!

Tim Klein

It's not a question of if you're gonna burn out is when. And so we're seeing this dramatic shift and rejection of the performance mindset. And we see it in the great resignation. You know, we're seeing it in college applications, a million less students applied to college last year. So they're just being like, you know what? This definition of success isn't worth it. I'm gonna go all the way on this other end of the continuum. And I think the purpose of life isn't to be successful. The purpose of life is to be happy. And that's really what we call the passion mindset. And so...

If you believe the purpose of life is to be happy, your strategy is to maximize positive emotions and is to minimize negative emotions. And if you can follow that very simple formula, the hypothesis goes that you are going to live a happy life and your life is gonna be more purposeful. And what's interesting about that is that the research shows and is very, very clear that the more you put happiness as the central value in your life,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

higher levels of depression and anxiety, lower performance, lower relationships with other people. It actually has a lot of the same dangerous destinations as the performance mindset. And I can talk more about that, on why that is. Yeah, and so I think both of them, because the way to think about it is, if the purpose of life is to be successful or it's to be happy,

Srini Rao

Yeah, yeah, please.

Tim Klein

You can't just open up a dictionary and look at Merriam-Webster's and look at the definition of happiness and say, yep, that's the thing, and I'm just gonna go pursue that, right? Happiness is not objective, it's subjective. So when we say we're gonna go pursue happiness, we say, well, am I happy? And then we ask, well, am I happy enough? And it's really hard to answer that question. And so what do we do? We look around ourselves and we compare ourselves to other people and we say, well, how happy am I compared to that person over there?

Right? And so what it does, it sets these really high unrealistic expectations about what life should be. And I think the way to really understand the downside of the passion mindset is for anyone who's been married on this or think about like a birthday, you go into your wedding day with incredibly high expectations for that day to be perfect, right? You need everything to be perfect. And then what happens is that if there's any bad weather, if an uncle drinks too much alcohol,

or if a cousin comes in with questionable political statements, if anything goes slightly wrong, you're devastated because your expectations are not being met, right? And then you realize the gap between your expectations and that makes you even feel worse and it becomes this downward spiral. And we think about that, compare that with going to the DMV, you know? And actually the DMV has done a lot better lately, but when people go to renew their license in person,

there's no expectations that that's gonna be a good time for them, right? And so they go in and if they only spend an hour and 15 minutes at the DMV, they're like pleasantly surprised and because their expectations were so low, it actually boost their wellbeing and they're actually happier in that moment. And so the downside of the passion mindset, it's just, it sets these expectations that we can never hit and it also makes us just only focus on ourselves and how we're feeling all the time.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tim Klein

and it disconnects us to the outside world.

Srini Rao

Hmm, wow. Let's talk about what you call this difference between you know, fixed games and growth games, because it sounds to me like, you know, the performance mindset is very much a fixed game. And one of the things you say is that people play fixed games for the outcome, which is to win and fixed games are defined by limitations. The rules tell you what you can and cannot do and who can or cannot play. In contrast, people play growth games to the process. The goal is to enjoy playing and to keep on playing for as long as possible.

growth games are defined by possibility. And to me, this is incredibly relevant to people who do creative work.

Tim Klein

Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's really, you know, this is like, there's hallmarks there of, you know, the finite and infinite games, if anyone's read that book as well, but it's really about, it's asking people what's the time horizon on what they're trying to achieve in their life. And so, you know, for young people, we're putting so much pressure on them to play the fixed game of getting into the best college, getting the job with the highest career, and a growth game is really about asking yourself,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

what is something you wanna be doing for the rest of your life? And so one of my favorite questions I can ask any young person is like, no matter what your job is, growing up in the future, in your vocation, what do you always hope to be doing? Is it solving problems? Is it collaborating with other people? Is it managing different groups or systems? And so a growth game is really thinking about, when I think about what direction I wanna go in life.

What is the process I wanna be engaged in? And the difference there is, you know, a growth game, you play a growth game to try to play it for as long as possible. And you play a growth game to continue that game. And so when I was playing tennis, that was a fixed game. You play tennis to end the game, right? You wanna actually end a game as fast as possible. So the fixed game in tennis, I wanted to beat my opponent as fast as possible because the goal was that outcome. I've...

recently started playing tennis again and I've divorced myself from winning or losing because I realized the goal is for me to play to get exercise, to push myself, to continuously be growing over time. And so to me, now I've shifted to like playing tennis is winning at the same time. And it's just, it's a hard, it's a hard concept for students to grasp a lot of time because it's so antithetical to the systems we've designed for them. And just the last point on that, I'll just, I think

Parents today are obsessed with these short-term fixed outcomes of just like, if my kid gets into the best college they can, I've done my job and they'll be fine. And so we just have these very short time horizons that we're putting a ton of pressure on students to be fulfilling, and it's causing them to lose sight of the growth gain.

Srini Rao

Mm, wow. One thing you talk about is this whole idea of creative destruction and technology, where you say foundational theory in labor economics is creative destruction. Its premise is that any economic innovation will destroy old ways of working and introduce new, more efficient ones. And you go on to talk about routine-based technical change. But I think this is what struck me the most. You said, if we're serious about preparing students for their future careers, we have to ask.

Are schools prioritizing skills that will be evergreens or the ones that will soon be automated? And my answer is no, they're not. But you're an educator, I'm not.

Tim Klein

No, you're right. I mean, so it's like, basically, you know, we did a ton of research, because a lot of it, you know, our work is around helping people find purpose in life, right, and that's living a life that's personally meaningful that also contributes to the world beyond the self. And the reason we do that is because all the research shows that people with a sense of purpose, if they have some purposeful goal that feels meaningful to them and contributes to the world beyond the self.

and it's education dependent, meaning they can see how doing well in school serves as a stepping stone to reaching that goal. You know, better academic outcomes, better mental health, they live longer, they make more money, more satisfied. Like every indicator is with purpose. I'm hesitant to use the word purpose though because it feels very Pollyanna-ish to people, right? And they roll their eyes when they hear find your purpose in life because it's just been misunderstood.

So we, Bell and I spent a lot of time about how can you make purpose really, really practical? And how can you be like, yes, it's about purpose, but also still setting students up to be getting jobs that they're going, that's going to pay them well, that's going to get money on the table and get that financial stability that's really driving the fear of their parents. And so what you're talking about with creative destruction is we looked at the research on how technology is going to be impacting the labor market moving forward. And essentially,

We've known, labor economists have known for about 80 years that anything that involves a pattern or a process or repeatable actions, anything that can just be done in the same way over and over again will eventually be automated by technology. We're seeing this with GPT-3, where they're writing technology. There's so much, all of our life is being automated. And so basically,

What we're saying is that it's not a question of if it will be automated, it's a question of when. And when you look at the skills that will not be automated, that are most valuable in the workplace moving forward, most in demand, and most durable in the face of technological disruption, it's what we call uniquely universal human skills. So it's creativity, critical thinking. You know, AI is very good at spreadsheets and like running algorithms, very, very bad at critical thinking.

Tim Klein

and creativity, much worse than my five-year-old kid. So, or it's about being a facilitator, it's about being able to connect on an emotional level with someone or being able to change your communication to read the room and collaboration, or it's being able to, you know, have good time management and organizational skills. And so, we talk about that because learning those skills in a rapidly changing world will make you most in demand and it'll make you most marketable and it'll make it easier to find a job.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tim Klein

but our research shows that those are actually the skills that are most purposeful to people. These are the skills that they actually wanna do. They're not, it's not AWS cloud computing that's super purposeful to people. It's being able to be creative or to solve problems or to make complex things work together well, so.

Srini Rao

Mm hmm. Yeah. So you take that whole idea and then you break it down into these sort of archetypes, which I thought was really interesting, where you break them down into creators, facilitators and drivers. One, you know, how did you come up with that archetype and what are they? Like, what is what are the characteristics of each one?

Tim Klein

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, well, there's this trope in education that like 85% of jobs that our kids will take will not exist in the future. Just patently untrue. That's not based in any research or anything. It's just like a really good sound bite. It goes viral, and so that's why it gets posted. But so we actually looked at every...

Every education framework out there, social emotional learning, 21st century skills, castle, there's research, you can go look at every single skill set out there that we're teaching young people, and it really comes down to three buckets of skills. There are skills that involve thinking, using your mind, creativity, innovation, problem solving, right? We call those cognitive skills or creator skills.

So that is, you know you wanna be a creator, the main thing you wanna do is use your brain. And then the second skillset is what we call, like you said, facilitator. And these skillsets focus on interpersonal interactions. So basically focusing on other people, communication, collaboration, leadership, persuasion. Any skill that involves interacting with other people is a facilitator skillset. And then the third archetype is what we call driver. And driver is all about being able to

managed systems. So that's around time management, organization, attention to detail. And so if creators come up with innovative ideas, facilitators are the ones who get people to rally behind those ideas, and the drivers turn those ideas and those people and coordinate actions through a system to turn those ideas into goals. And so again, this sounds very abstract, but then when you look at it, there's research by David Deming.

who's this incredible labor economist from Harvard University. With Burning Glass Technology, they looked at every single job description that was posted online in the last 12 years. And then they said, okay, what are the most in-demand skills that we're looking for here? And it turns out the skills we're teaching in education, the skills that we say are important in education, employers are saying the exact same thing. So employers are looking for cognitive skills, which is the same thing as a creator.

Tim Klein

They're looking for social skills, which is the same thing as a facilitator, and then they're looking for character skills, which is the same thing as a driver. And so, you know, there's this huge critique on liberal arts education right now, right? If you hear someone who's going to a school and majoring in psychology or history, everyone's like, oh my God, what a waste of money, what are you doing? Well, you actually look at the research and actually a liberal arts education is the best at teaching these.

three different universal human skills. And so I would argue that liberal arts is wildly underrated right now, but we do a terrible job of explaining how your philosophy major is giving you a skillset that's transferable to the workforce. And that's really at the heart of what Bell and I's work is doing, is how can we make those bridges by all using the same language of skills.

Srini Rao

Well, I want to talk briefly about values. One of the things that you say, because I think that figure out what your core values are. One, if somebody had told me to sit around and figure out my core values, as I've said a thousand times, this all sounds like a bunch of new age bullshit. Like if you had asked me this when I was 20, which is hilarious considering the work I do, I, my old roommate used to tease me. He said, you realize that half the stuff you call new age bullshit is what your own damn podcast guests come and teach you. Right. And I'm like, yeah, I'm well aware of that, but.

That being said, I, you know, for me, it's always one of those things that like, I want to dig deep into before I actually say, okay, it's not BS. And I feel like figuring out values has always been one of those sort of, you know, like nebulous things. It sounds good in books, like it's like Simon Sinek says, start with Y and everybody basically thinks, oh, I'm going to plug my, you know, like ideas into a formula. Because I remember when Simon Sinek told me, he said, you're wise that you're obsessed with people who are good at unusual things.

And I remember getting out of the conversation thinking, that's great, Simon, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? And of course, 15 years later, every single person on this show and everything I've done since is a reflection of exactly what he said.

Tim Klein

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, we, you know what, that chapter, we struggled writing a lot, because it was like, it's crazy how much in society we talk about core values, and then when you try to drill down, just like what you're talking about, Trini, what exactly is a core value, it's incredibly hard to define, and it's like, oh, you know it when you see it. And so, where I landed on that is, you know what you actually value?

by understanding what you don't value. And so in the research of core values, something is valuable only because it is scarce, because there's not a lot of it. And so a true core value is you are willing to sacrifice something substantial. It has a high cost, but that cost is worth it to you because you hold it so much. And so we see these, you know,

companies and corporations who put their mission statements on their wall and core values on their wall are on their websites and they sound great and they don't mean anything because they are not willing to sacrifice for those things. Right? And I have an idea for you and I think I know what your core values might be if you want to dig into it a little bit. Yeah so, yeah okay so we so core values is basically

Srini Rao

Uh huh.

Srini Rao

Yeah, go for it. Yeah, just we have something concrete to work with

Tim Klein

You know, we looked at, we took Shalom Schwartz's work, who's this really, really excellent researcher on global values, and he's done research on global values in like 70 different cultures all across the world, speaking different languages, incredibly diverse data set of universal global values, and he basically values are on two different spectrums, right? And so on one spectrum, so if you envision an x-axis, there is this spectrum of individualism to collectivism.

And basically what that comes down to on this continuum is, do you believe when I win, we win? Like so the better I do, the better my group is going to do. Or do you believe when we win, I win? So the better the group does, the better I am going to do. And just to take that one level further, is basically what is the purpose of any group or company? Is the group for individuals to serve that community or is the purpose of the community to serve the individuals?

And so, we have to ask ourselves, do we, are we collectivists or are we individualists and where are we on that spectrum? And by the way, there's no right or wrong answer there, but each of us is on that spectrum. I'm wondering for you when I say it like that, do you feel like you lean individualistic or collectivist?

Srini Rao

You know what, I'd probably fall somewhere in between. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm driven by self interest to a degree that is probably higher than the average person.

Tim Klein

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and one way to look at that is like autonomy, right? And it's like do you want the freedom to make your own this is autonomy? Doing what you want to feel or but for some you Autonomy right so individual autonomy would make you more Individualistic right because you want the freedom to make your own choices and do what you want versus some people view Especially Eastern cultures view autonomy as making individual choices. That's for the betterment of the group

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Oh yeah. That's extremely important for me.

Tim Klein

Again, nothing wrong, I'm individualistic as well, so it's like nothing wrong with that. The other spectrum, the Y axis here, is growth versus stability, right? And so it's basically, do you view change as an opportunity to make things better, or do you view change as a threat to make things worse? And I would just say no one is completely growth or stability oriented, but we have a tendency.

you know, we have a tendency to lead one way or the other. And so which would you, growth is opportunity or growth is a threat?

Srini Rao

Yeah, growth is definitely opportunity. Like if I valued stability, I wouldn't be doing this.

Tim Klein

Exactly. And so here's the difference, right? Where what's really interesting about stability and growth values. We value stability, which is, you know, preservation, loyalty, ritual, tradition. There's all of these individual core values associated with stability. We tend to value stability when we don't have it, when there's a lack of stability there, right? And so it might make sense, you know, for like

immigrant families coming in or parents growing up who didn't have a lot of stability, they really, really value it, right? But then it's hard for younger people to have that same sort of value for stability because they've had it their whole lives. And what's interesting with growth, it's the presence of growth, mastery, wisdom, adventure, independence. The more we experience growth-oriented values, the more we value them. So it's all dependent on our lived experiences. And so...

You know, in our work, you would be called, because you're individualist and growth oriented, you'd be called a trailblazer, right? And so trailblazers are people who like to work outside of existing organizations. They like to go their own way. They don't like to follow structure. They like to follow their own ideas. They don't mind being rebellious and being able to go off and do their own thing. I wonder, does that resonate with you?

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. I saw it like right when I read that I was like, yeah, that's me.

Tim Klein

Right. And so, yeah, and so and then we have, you know, three other, we have the builder, which is growth oriented and collectivist. So that's someone who's very growth oriented as well. But they're more collectivist and they want they like change, but they want to change communities, organization systems to better serve more people. And on the other hand, we have champions who are individualistic, but stability oriented. And they are people who like love individual achievement.

and recognition and power, and they love stability. They want like a stable job where there's black and white rules because they're going to learn what those rules are so that they can maximize their own individual behaviors to optimize their performance. And then the final value archetype is a guardian, which is someone who's stability oriented and collectivist. And they are all about protecting what's tried and true. There are people who love ritual, community, tradition.

You know, they live for spirit week in a school, and these are like your cultural drivers of any organization you're in. And we would just, I think any good community organization needs a diversity of all those value archetypes.

Srini Rao

Wow. So let's get into one other aspect of this. I think this makes a perfect setup to talk about something else that you go on to talk about, which is something where you say a critical piece of what's needed to meet needs in the world is caring for our own essential needs. Hard to meet other needs when our own needs go unmet when we're coping with adversity from an unmet need.

put on our own oxygen masks first. Over the long term, those successful people balance it too. They find a way to meet their own needs by meeting the needs of others. And the reason this struck me is when I had conversations with people, particularly parents who are listeners to the show or subscribers to the podcast who had creative projects that they wanted to do, one of the sort of underlying themes was they felt like they were being neglectful when they made time for themselves.

And I, and so like, literally I was like, that's the answer right there as to why. And in that moment, when I read that, I was like, you're actually doing a disservice to the people you love if you feel like you're neglecting them by not making time for your dreams. Um, but I'd like you to expand on that because like that, you know, it's easy for me to say that I don't have to deal with kids, you know, in diapers and, you know, kids yelling at me and all sorts of shit like that.

Tim Klein

Yeah, I mean, yeah, the way we put it, so it's like I'm a social worker by trade, and so like social work, built into it, is like there's tons of vicarious trauma in there, you're dealing with very, very heavy stuff all the time, and like so, you know, it really comes from having clear boundaries, and we call it, it's really about, you know, a big part of our book is that,

Living a purposeful life is doing something that's personally meaningful, but also contributes to the world beyond the self. And a lot of, and what we say, understanding the positive impact you wanna make in the world comes from the problems that you wanna be solving. And the more pro-social people are, the more they care about solving big issues in the world, the more pro-social, the more motivated they are. But there's this fine line between service and sacrifice. Right? And so we say, you know, like,

you have to play the long game, you have to be willing to serve other people. But if the line in the sand is if it comes at sacrifice to your own self, you actually are doing a disservice to your community, to your kids, to your family, because if you're sacrificing more, that's not a long, sustainable game that you're playing. And so it's really about taking time for yourself is not selfish.

it's rest and recovery and recharging. And if you can find a balance of carving out some time for yourself, that's actually gonna sustain you. So instead of being like a super on point parent for six years and then you burn out, you're going to be much more consistent over 20, 30, 40 years because you have a more balance in how much time you're for yourself versus for your kids as well.

Srini Rao

So before we get to talking about, you know, college itself and education, there's something that I wanted to say, and this probably was my favorite passage in the entire book. And you said the path metaphor is misleading. It gives students a false sense of how life actually looks. It gets them fixated on reaching the end of the path, be it graduation acceptance into college or a specific profession. If you think you're on a path that leads somewhere special, you can't help but be anxious about get there.

By using the path metaphor, we set the wrong expectations for students that their school and career journeys are like lovely, well-marked trails, and you contrast it with what you call the Seeker's Journey. And the reason I think that probably struck me so much was like, yeah, that's literally my life story in a nutshell. You summed up my entire life in one passage, Tim.

Tim Klein

Well, can you talk a little bit more about your Seeker's Journey, if I may?

Srini Rao

Well, here's the thing. Like I it goes back to that exact point. And this is something I've shared before. So I don't want to belabor it too much. But I was an intern at Sun Microsystems and I remember thinking, OK, I don't have the grades to get into banking or consulting. So how can I make as much money as my friends who are in banking or consulting? And I was in this entrepreneurship class and venture capitalist complimented me on my presentation skills. And everybody was like, you're a hell of a salesman. And.

I realized I hated working in sales after doing it, but I went to meet this young guy. I think he was like 25 years old. Sun Microsystems had this program for young salespeople called the Bob Program, which is the best of the best. And to this day, the thing that he said to me always just reminds me of how my life turns out. And he said, I bet you have your whole life planned out, don't you? And he was like, none of it is going to go according to plan.

Tim Klein

Exactly. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's this it's this very Western idea of like a linear, you know, upward trajectory where it's like the corporate ladder, it's everywhere. And when you when you it's embedded into so much of our language in education, you know, we say you're on track to graduate, that is linear language, you drop out, that is linear language, right? This obsession with learning loss and catching up.

You know, it just embeds this idea that is this straight path that we're supposed to be taking. And there's this idea that, you know, if you ask a young person, what are you supposed to do? I'm supposed to get great grades, get into a great college, go get my business degree or my finance degree, go get the job at Goldman Sachs, get my house and be happy, right? And yeah, what we found is that, you know, those paths are always other people's paths. They're never your own path.

And then if you are off the path or not going as fast as you're supposed to, then by definition you're lost, right? Or you're losing. And it puts this immense, immense pressure on young people to confine themselves to very rigid definitions of success. And we actually see this all the time, I think in law degrees or pre-med or anything, why do people wanna become doctors? Because...

it is one of the few professions where there is a very clear path forward. You know, and so a big part of, but any adult knows, you like, you ask, it's not just you, Srini Rao, it's any adult, if you ask them, well, like, was your path straight? Were you on the linear path? No, it wasn't, but we're creating this system in which students are on these paths. And I think what's happening too, the education systems are incredibly linear, right? High school, incredibly linear. College,

linear and then they graduate and they go into this big messy open ended adventure and without that rigid structure they don't know what to do and that's where we're seeing this navigation crisis that Bell and I talk about.

Srini Rao

Mm hmm. Let's talk about the value of higher education, because I think that you had some really interesting points on the value of going to college. And you talk about brand capital. And I wanted to bring back a clip from an old episode with Scott Galway, where he talks about this whole idea of brands and colleges.

Srini Rao

So, I mean, I don't know how you feel about that, but I can tell you, I wouldn't get into Berkeley today.

Tim Klein

No, I wouldn't get into anywhere. Yeah, I wouldn't get into any of the schools. And I think Professor Galloway is completely right where he's talking about, we've created this notion of higher education that the value is scarcity. And it's basically like, if you can get into the school, that signals something about your pedigree or your work ethic or your determination. And then that's going to signal to an employer.

Well, if you got into Berkeley today, you must be this super hard worker, and so we are going to give you this job. And I'm not going to sit here and say, brand, well, that's what we call brand capital, right? And there is value in brand capital, 100%. And just, if you can just say, I went to this school or whatever, people do, it's a bias where they are going to assume a halo effect around you. I would argue, just like Galloway does, that,

the value of brand capital has been wildly over-exaggerated. And so we talk about there's actually, when you look at the actual value of higher education, it's this blend of brand capital, social capital, and human capital. And so social capital is just the value when you step onto a college campus, you know, you go to Boston College, you're going with 12,000 other undergraduates, you're stepping into this incredibly rich,

network of people and the value is in the information, the expertise, the resources, the opportunity, the information that resides within that network of people right there. And so the research is very, very clear that the more friends students have on campus, the more they engage with their faculty members, the more mentors they have on campus, just literally the more people they connect with, they're more likely to say that their college was worth the price of admission.

They're more likely to find a job after college. They're more likely to be finding purpose in their work. And so it's really about, that's a huge value add there. And I can show you all the science and research showing that, but for all your listeners, just think, when you look back on your college experience, if you went, and you say, hey, was it worth it? Or what were the most formative moments? It usually comes down to people, right? And so that's not going anywhere. And so...

Tim Klein

We see these alternate to college programs popping up, these certification programs, where you're gonna get these technical skills. And I just worry about those because they're not giving the students who need that social capital, especially low income students who have a, you know, they don't have a lot of social capital. These credential programs or fully online programs aren't giving them that social capital that we know is needed.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Wow. I feel like I could talk to you all day about this. I feel like, you know, you're kind of basically giving us a roadmap for both the future of education and the future of life. You know, this is something I want to wrap with two final questions and this is just a random one. So Jane McGonigal, who's a futurist, recently wrote this book called Imaginable, which was all about sort of, you know, imagining up, you know, future scenarios that seem, you know, ridiculous or unlikely today. And

you know, she has these different exercises and she's like, what do we take for granted today that seems that will seem ridiculous a few years from now. And so I started writing this post titled why nobody will spend why it will make any sense for us to spend 12 years in our primary education in the future. And because like I look and maybe I'm out of my mind, you're an educator, but I'm like, do we really need to spend 12 years on our primary education? Like you could easily combine what you learn in kindergarten into first grade in one year.

and ninth and 10th grade into two. Then again, like I said, I'm speaking for my own biases, but that's because I'm impatient and I was just like, this all takes way too long.

Tim Klein

Yeah, I mean, I think you saying it takes way too long just speaks to it because it doesn't feel personally relevant, right, where it's like, you know, and so, you know, I think our goal, you definitely do need foundational, there's like a foundational skillset that you need in education that takes some time, but I think what Bell and I are trying to do is create more space for introspection. And like, what if the purpose of education was to help

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tim Klein

young people find their purpose. Like, what would it look like if literally our goal upon graduation was helping students to figure out not only what direction do I wanna go in, but more importantly, why is it important for them to go into that direction? So instead of checking off the box to say, you did calculus two, you got a five on your AP US history, that they're checking off these boxes. What if the purpose was to help them figure it out for themselves, what they're trying to do?

education would look dramatically different than it does today. And so that's kind of, yeah, that's kind of how I see the purpose of education going, especially higher education as well.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, this has been absolutely incredible. Like I expected it to be just based on having read the book. So as you know, from having listened to the show, I have one last question for you. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Tim Klein

Yeah, I think what we talk about a lot is being unmistakable is being unmistakably you. And so the idea of purpose, doing something that's purposely meaningful and contributing to the world beyond the self, that definition of purpose is literally different for every single person on Earth based on their own lived experiences and their culture and their community. So being unmistakable is doing the mental lifting to understand what do you stand for, what your strengths are, what skills do you want to develop?

and it's having the courage to pursue those things in your life. And so I think people will understand what purpose is and purpose is unmistakable. So yeah.

Srini Rao )

Oh, amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your wisdom, your stories and your insights with listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else you guys are up to?

Tim Klein

Yeah, and I appreciate, yeah, so the book comes out August 2nd, and you can find out about Bella's eye work at howtonavigate.com. And yeah, we're putting out, you know, we're working with our purpose labs and we're putting out validated assessments and evidence-based tools that high schoolers, parents, colleges, organizations can be using to integrate and infuse the language of purpose into their work. So if you're interested in learning more, howtonavigate.com is going to have a bunch of resources for you.

Srini Rao

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.