Blowing Up Your Life

Have you ever had a flash of insight that hit you when you least expected it? How did it change your life? Psychologist Anthony Klotz studies the "jolts" that shake us out of our routines, and how these moments can help us make more intentional decisions about the people we want to become. Then, psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis returns to the show to answer your questions about a very specific kind of jolt: creative breakthroughs.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The poet Robert Frost wrote about two roads diverging in a yellow wood, a moment when a traveler must choose a path, not knowing where either one leads.

• 0:15Shankar Vedantam?

  In the poem, the traveler is indecisive, first looking down one path and then another. The last lines of that poem have become some of the most famous lines in American poetry. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

• 0:35Shankar Vedantam?

  Perhaps you've had moments when you confronted a similar fork in the road. Should you stay in the city you're living in or move? Should you stay with the person you're with or leave? Should you stick with the job you have or look for a new one?

• 0:52Shankar Vedantam?

  Many of us peer down the different paths before us, trying to figure out which one will make us happy. But like that traveler in the woods, we find there isn't enough evidence one way or the other. We go weeks, months, or years, paralyzed by indecision.

• 1:13Shankar Vedantam?

  And then, something happens. Maybe it's something big. We get a serious medical diagnosis, or someone we love dies. Or maybe it's something small. You get a traffic ticket, or someone looks at you funny.

• 1:28Shankar Vedantam?

  And all of a sudden, your dilemma is over. You know which way to go. You know which path to choose.

• 1:38Shankar Vedantam?

  Today on the show, and in a companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine the unexpected experiences that give us clarity. We look at how and why they are so powerful, and we explore techniques to make the best use of these moments.

• 1:55Shankar Vedantam?

  Stepping into the future and leaving the past behind. This week, on Hidden Brain.

• 2:07Shankar Vedantam?

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• 2:30Shankar Vedantam?

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• 3:01Speaker 01

  Hey, Richmond. Mark Smith, Midas Richmond. 2026, we have been doing what we do for 29 years. Total car care, total community care. In 2026, we are donating $365,000. $1,000 a day to the nonprofits we've historically supported. Gooch and Care, Shalom Farms, St. Joseph's Villa, Ask, the Colonial Heights Food Pantry, everybody we've helped over the years. These are important things making a big impact in our society right now. Total car care, total community care. That is Midas of Richmond.

• 3:35Shankar Vedantam?

  All of our lives are made up by a series of moments. Most of them pass by without our notice. We are busy, or we are on autopilot, or we are paying attention to something else. But all of us also have moments that stand out. At these times, you can suddenly see your own life clearly. You know what to do going forward. At University College London, psychologist Anthony Klotz studies these moments. He's spent years examining how they inform what we do and how they can reveal whom we want to become. Anthony Klotz, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:12Shankar Vedantam?

  Anthony, I want to start with an experience that you had all the way back in high school. You worked part-time at a lumberyard with a friend. What was the work like?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was on the evenings and weekends of my senior year of high school. I worked in a lumberyard where customers would come in and ask for their 2x4s to be cut to certain lengths, or their plywood to be cut in certain shapes. And it was my job to help them get what they needed for whatever home improvement task they were taking on.

• 4:49Shankar Vedantam?

  So I understand that you and a friend were doing this work together. Was it a good work environment? What was the boss like?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  It was a really fun work environment. And I did work there with my good friend. And that made the hours pass quickly, along with the work. Our boss, as he probably needed to be, managing young students in a lumberyard, was pretty strict and stern. But that didn't really bother us. It was a good work environment. I enjoyed it.

• 5:23Shankar Vedantam?

  So at one point over the summer, both you and your friend needed some time off. And that led to something very interesting. Tell me the story of what happened.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so both my friend and I got called into the office one day by the boss. And he informed us that we had both requested vacation at the same time. And he said, "One of you has to work here. You can't both take vacation at the same time." But we explained we both had these separate family events that we needed to attend. And so both of us sat there in an impasse, saying, "We both need to take this time off."

• 5:59Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering how you heard this request from your boss that either you or your friend had to work. How did that come across to you, Anthony?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  It was somewhat surprising. I mean, I sort of empathized with him. He's trying to cover the shifts that are available, and we're two of the main workers. But at the same time, I could tell that we both had events. We weren't going to move. And so in my head, as it was happening, I was wondering sort of how this was going to play out, both with him and my friend.

• 6:27Shankar Vedantam?

  How did it turn out?

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Well, neither of us budged. And our boss sort of got frustrated. And eventually, he accused or said, "I think the two of you planned this together." Like, "You're going somewhere to goof off," or something like that. And at that moment, it sort of flipped, because it seemed like maybe he was accusing us of lying, or there was some trust breakdown here. So there was this awkward silence. And then, almost at the same time, my friend and I said, "I quit."

• 6:58Speaker 02

  And we took off our hard hats and unclipped our measuring tape and handed it to our boss and said, "That's it. We're done."

• 7:13Shankar Vedantam?

  It's almost like one of those Hollywood moments, right? When the worker is really frustrated and basically flings their pass down at the boss and walks out the door.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. I mean, the stakes weren't incredibly high, because this was a high school job. But nonetheless, it did have a little bit of a Hollywood quality to it.

• 7:37Shankar Vedantam?

  So many years later, Anthony, you were working for the food company, General Mills. For listeners who are not familiar with the company, describe the range of things the company does and what your role was at the company.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a food manufacturing and marketing company. Most people know it best because of the cereals that they make, like Cheerios. But they also own a number of other food brands. Old El Paso, and Betty Crocker, and so forth. And so I worked in food manufacturing. And so I worked in a variety of different food manufacturing plants that made different products.

• 8:11Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that at one point, your job was to make sure there were enough ingredients at each of the plants to make products like Lucky Charms and Cheerios. And I'm guessing that one of the essential ingredients for these plants to function was flour, and probably a lot of it.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly right. My role for a while, in my very first job out of school, was to be inbound planner for a cereal plant. And the main ingredient in cereal is flour. And so as an inbound planner, my number one job is to not run out of flour.

• 8:51Shankar Vedantam?

  So something happened in the course of this job that in some ways was very consequential for your life. Tell me what happened.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I had gotten my degree in logistics. And so this was a logistics planning job. And I even I even grew up in a family business in the field of logistics. And so I thought myself a pretty good planner. But when it turned out I was actually in this role, I tried to run inventories at a very tight level. And it turns out if you run inventories tight and you run short on one, you have to get a replacement for it pretty quickly. But one ingredient that's hard to replace quickly is flour, because it comes by a slow rail car.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  And so while I was running inventories tight, there was a rail car delay. And the plant had to shut down because I ran it out of flour.

• 9:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Wait, the whole plant had to shut down?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yes, so we're talking tens of thousands of dollars in cost because of my inventory management practices. I mean, the main feeling that I had was embarrassment and shame over, you know, there were a lot of people counting on this plant for livelihood and a lot of people counting on it for their breakfast. And so it was a pretty big early career failure. And of course, I worried that it was going to have a permanent impact on my career success. But then, once I moved past those emotions, what really took over was this period of questioning. Is logistics what I want to do with my career? Am I actually good at this?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I ended up switching. And by switching over from logistics to operations at that early career stage, it really changed what my next few jobs were going to be. And so instead of going to Minneapolis, where, by the way, my wife had been accepted into grad school and we sort of planned to move and live there for a long time, ended up taking a transfer to Lodi, California, to another manufacturing plant. And then after that, another manufacturing plant. So it really, really diverted the professional course of my career as well as the personal course of our lives as well.

• 11:09Shankar Vedantam?

  So Anthony, your experience at the lumberyard and at General Mills can show how a single moment, whether that's a mistake or a conversation, can get us out of the usual way we run our lives, which is most commonly on autopilot. I want to talk about how sometimes these moments that give us clarity can grow out of very small thoughts and feelings. You like to tell the story about a famous leader in the world of English soccer. Set it up for me. Who was this leader and what was his public profile?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Jürgen Klopp was the manager of Liverpool Football Club and was arguably one of the greatest managers, not only in the Premier League, but in all of football. And he was coming off of several successful seasons. And back in November of 2024, Liverpool was at the top of the Premier League standings. And Jürgen made a decision publicly that really shocked the football world. He said that he was going to step down as head coach of Liverpool at the end of the season.

• 12:12Shankar Vedantam?

  So behind the scenes, something had shifted for Jürgen Klopp. He said that, "I am not sure I am here then anymore." That's how he reported it later on. What did he mean by that?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So what nobody on the outside could see was that Jürgen had attended a team meeting of all the leaders of the team a few weeks prior. And in that meeting, they were discussing plans for the upcoming summer. What players to acquire, what players to let go. And as they were having this conversation about the future of the team, he had this thought pop into his head. "I'm not sure if I'm going to be here then anymore." And that that thought that seemed to come out of nowhere in his head surprised him. Why would I have that thought? So instead of just tossing that thought aside, because he's in the midst of a very high-pressure season in a very high-power, visible position,

• 13:08Speaker 02

  he sat with that thought for a while and said, "Why did I have that?" And as a result of that reflection, he came to two conclusions. The first conclusion was that his energy was not being replenished as quickly as it was being drained. And so while he had plenty of energy in the moment, he could foresee a time in the future when that wasn't the case anymore. And the second thing that he realized was that he wanted to spend some time being, quote, "a normal person for a while" instead of one of the most visible figures in the world of football.

• 13:47Shankar Vedantam?

  How did he act on these thoughts, Anthony?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  He acted on these thoughts in what I feel is a very thoughtful manner. So he kept them to himself and to his inner circle. And then, from what I understand, he shared it with the club. And they strategized the best way for him to depart in a way that causes minimal disruption to the club. How can we best do that? And so the way that the announcement of his resignation happened was through a video that the club put out. So it was the organization and him working together to communicate, here's what's happening, here's why it's happening. And he did it in somewhat of a fireside chat manner that really came across as genuine and humane.

• 14:38Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to play a little clip of how he explained his decision to his fans.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  I love absolutely everything about this club. I love everything about the city. I love everything about our supporters. I love the team, love the staff, love everything. But I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again. And the least thing I owe you is the truth.

• 15:09Shankar Vedantam?

  What was their reaction to his announcement, Anthony?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  The reaction was clearly surprise. And for those of us who cheer for other teams other than Liverpool, their reaction was relief, like, this amazing leader is going to step down and give the rest of our teams, the rest of our clubs, a chance. But I can say, although there was surprise, there wasn't a wave of animosity or betrayal among the fan base because of how he handled it, because he handled it so professionally and expressing so much gratitude as he did it.

• 15:49Shankar Vedantam?

  So in time, Anthony, you decided to study these moments when we reach a realization or have an epiphany. What was it that drew you to these turning points?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  It was actually when I was in graduate school and I spent a week studying what we know about why employees quit their jobs. And I was thinking back to the times that I had quit my job or that I had seen others quit their jobs or when employees had quit when I was managing. And what an emotional experience it was. And I was intrigued by two things, really. First was this set of literature that surprised me and said, "Often quitting doesn't result from this slow, rational decision-making process. About half the time, it results from these one-off events that make a stop-and- rethink work." The other thing that struck me about this literature was most of it was focused on the decision to quit,

• 16:44Speaker 02

  not what people do after they decide to quit or stay. And because, you know, I had had some interesting resignation experiences, what I really wanted to study was not just why people quit, but how they do once they actually decide to do so.

• 17:02Shankar Vedantam?

  You call these moments jolts, as in these experiences jolt us out of our regular lives?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they go by a couple of names in the literature. One of them is jolts. One of them is shocks or career shocks. But they mean the same thing. There are these moments that knock us out of autopilot and cause us to rethink what's going on in our work lives.

• 17:28Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, how jolts can point us toward the lives we want to lead and the people we want to become. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 17:49Speaker 04

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• 18:19Speaker 05

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• 18:49Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We all experience unexpected moments in our lives, moments we didn't ask for and might not have chosen. A setback at work, a difficult conversation with a friend, a sudden realization of our own mortality. Most of the time, we treat disruptions in our lives as disruptions, things to get past quickly. But sometimes, these disruptions can force us to step back and reassess. Psychologist Anthony Clot studies how and why these moments have a big impact on our choices, our careers, and even our identities. He says that if we learn to pay more attention to them, they can help us create lives that

• 19:32Shankar Vedantam?

  feel more intentional and better aligned with what we truly want. Anthony, you've talked about how unexpected moments can force us to rethink our priorities. One example you point to comes from the actor Chris Hemsworth. For listeners who are not plugged into Hollywood, describe the famous role he's played as Thor, God of Thunder.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  So in these movies, well, he plays a god, Thor, with nearly unlimited power. And so, you know, it's a very strength-forward role. But what I think why fans really like Thor and the actor behind the character is because he has a sense of humor and a sense of self-awareness. And so often, despite his power and his seriousness, a lot of the laughs in these Avenger movies come from times when Thor is on screen and something funny is happening, whether he knows it or not. And so I think that's why he's in a lot of people's hearts. Hello? I accept your surrender.

• 20:35Shankar Vedantam?

  So at one point in his career, he received some surprising health information. Describe for me the context and what he learned, Anthony.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Hemsworth hosts a show called Limitless. And in this show, he puts himself through all of these physical and psychological tests to learn about human health and longevity and well-being. And in one episode, he took a DNA test, and he found out that in his DNA were a few genes that are linked with an increased potential for him to have Alzheimer's disease. And that really caught his attention, obviously. And he described it as, this is my greatest fear, because he knew it ran in his family. But at the same time, he described it as a blessing, because he said, I'm learning this information while I'm still young enough that I can make changes.

• 21:26Shankar Vedantam?

  How did the discovery affect the way he thought about his work and his life?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  One of the reflections that he had as a result of this discovery was that he was spending more time on work and less time with his family than he wanted to. It was out of balance. And so that was one of the main takeaways, was like, if I have these genes that could cause changes to my mind earlier than I would like them to, I need to spend more time with my family now, and perhaps a little bit less time working, and perhaps a little more time on work that I actually care about. So it's a jolt where, you know, it instantly took him to thinking about his relationship with work and not necessarily overhauling it, but saying, what are some tweaks that

• 22:12Speaker 02

  I can make to that relationship in order to bring it more in line with what I want out of life?

• 22:24Shankar Vedantam?

  You say that this idea of the jolt is similar to what the psychologist Dan McAdams refers to as nuclear events, where, as he puts it, the me experienced a rather sudden or decided transformation.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I really like how that term, nuclear events, and how he describes them. He talks about these, like, scenes that stand out in bold print in our lives. And these could be positive or negative. It could be like a lucky break, or a failure, or a fall from grace. But yeah, one defining characteristic is that it does transform us often from being really self-focused to being a little bit more other-focused as well.

• 23:03Shankar Vedantam?

  One of the things that you and others have noticed is that a jolt in one domain of our life can affect what we do in other domains of our life. And Chris Hemsworth, in some ways, is an example of that.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. As his story shows, personal events outside of work can make us stop and rethink about our lives inside of work. And the inverse is true as well. Events that happen to us at work can make us rethink what's going on outside of it.

• 23:31Shankar Vedantam?

  And I suppose all of us have had the experience of having a very difficult day at work and then coming back to our families and finding that we are not behaving the way with our families that we might want to behave because we're so stressed out about what happened at work.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yes. Sadly, we've all been there, right? And the research backs this up, that on days where we experience negative events at work, especially mistreatment, we're more burnt out at the end of the day, and that burnout comes home with us. And we end up being not as good of partners. We express more anger. We tend to be a little bit more withdrawn, and we tend to engage in more fights with family and friends outside of work.

• 24:11Shankar Vedantam?

  You also tell the story of Pat Tillman. I'm wondering if you can go back to the year 2000 and tell me who Pat Tillman was and what was happening in his life?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in 2000, Pat Tillman was the starting safety for the Arizona Cardinals NFL football team. And he was arguably the best, if not one of the best safeties in the league, which is a position that, you know, a lot of people work really hard to get to, right? A professional athlete level.

• 24:42Shankar Vedantam?

  So in the following year, just after the start of the new NFL season, terrorists attacked the United States. This was the September 11 attacks. What effect did it have on Pat Tillman, Anthony?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when 9/11 happened, he talked about how, even though he didn't know anyone directly impacted by what happened in New York and elsewhere that day, it made him rethink what he was doing, and it made him realize how insignificant playing football was. And he said he thought about how good we have it in this country, and that he hasn't really done anything to earn that. And so it really caused him to rethink what he was doing in his work life.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  I've always had a great deal of feeling for the flag, but even someone who considers themselves that way, you just don't think about it all the time. You don't realize what it gives. You don't realize how great a life we have over here. Even as athletes, we moan every now and again about this or that. And if we ever just, you know, times like this, you stop and think about just how, not only how good we have it, but what kind of a system we live under, what freedoms were allowed. And that wasn't built overnight, and it's kind of, the flag is a symbol of all that, a symbol of, you know, my great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, and a lot of my family has given up, you know, has gone and fought in wars. And I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  And so I have a great deal of respect for those that have and what the flag stands for.

• 26:16Shankar Vedantam?

  Tell me the rest of that story, Anthony. How did Pat Tillman take this jolt and change his life?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  So he finished out his contractual obligation to play that year. But after that year, he left the NFL, and he joined the Army.

• 26:40Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, this was a significant decision. It received a lot of attention at the time, not least because of the fact that he was walking away from something like $4 million a year, which was his salary playing for the Arizona Cardinals.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's absolutely striking to see somebody who's not only earning $4 million a year, but also who has spent their whole life working toward that goal of reaching that level, a level that, again, many people aspire to get to. And so to walk away from that in service to a different or higher calling, yeah, was striking and obviously inspirational for a lot of people.

• 27:24Shankar Vedantam?

  So Pat Tillman signs up for the Army. Tell me what happens next, Anthony.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yes, he signed up for the Army and became an Army Ranger and did what he intended to do, serve his country. But at the same time, tragically, he ended up dying in combat in Afghanistan.

• 27:43Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering what you make of a story like this. At some level, it's a tragic story, but it's also, in many ways, an inspirational story.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yes, both of those things come to mind when I think of the Pat Tillman story. But the main thing I think about is inspirational. Someone who gave up on, you know, what a lot of us would aspire to in terms of worldly possessions, millions of dollars, in order to make the world a better place as he saw it. He was asking those big questions and then having the courage to actually follow through on the answer, even though it meant him giving up a career of fame and lots of money.

• 28:29Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, what to do the next time a jolt appears in your life. Also, in our companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we're going to talk about how to recognize the signs that it might be time to leave a job and why so many people who do quit regret not quitting sooner. We'll explore when it makes sense to quit and also how to do it properly.

• 28:53Shankar Vedantam?

  If you're a subscriber, that episode is available to you right now in this podcast feed. It's titled, "I Quit." If you're not yet a subscriber, please sign up at support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, please go to apple.co/hiddenbrain. You'll instantly have access to all our subscriber-only content. And again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co/hiddenbrain. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 29:34Speaker 05

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• 30:00Speaker 05

  Welcome to Science of Perception Box.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Perception Box. Perception Box. One's own perception of consciousness. The Perception Box. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a perception box? You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us, yet we often don't even recognize it's there. Your face is a mask, and you're behind this mask. Science of Perception Box.

• 30:25Shankar Vedantam?

  Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:33Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Have you had unexpected moments when you saw your life with a greater clarity than you ever had before? Did one of these moments prompt you to make dramatic changes in your life? If you have a personal story you would be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at [email protected] using the subject line, "jolted." Again, that's [email protected].

• 31:16Shankar Vedantam?

  When unexpected moments shake up our lives, they often stir up strong emotions. We might feel angry, afraid, or excited. These reactions can be powerful. They can push us to take action we've been avoiding. But psychologist Anthony Clartz says that if we respond to these moments purely on emotion, we can sometimes make choices that backfire.

• 31:39Shankar Vedantam?

  Anthony is the author of the book, "Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters."

• 31:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Anthony, you've talked about how jolts can stir up strong emotions. Sometimes those emotions are so intense that people act on them instantly. When your boss at the lumberyard expressed distrust in you, both you and your friend quit on the spot. So researchers call this impulsive quitting. Do most people feel good about their decision to quit when they do it impulsively, Anthony?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  So we don't have a lot of research on exactly how people feel, but most of the time, unless you're in a situation where something really egregious happens, people end up experiencing some regret after impulsive quitting. So that's not to say that there's never a time for it, but it is to say, a lot of the time, it does result in regret.

• 32:33Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, there's something profoundly satisfying, of course, about saying, "I quit," and walking out the door.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, most of the time in our relationship with organizations, they have the power. I mean, we need a paycheck, and they're the ones providing it. And so this is what makes quitting, and especially impulsively quitting, so attractive. It's this really empowering moment where the company doesn't have the power anymore. They kind of need you as a worker, and you're walking away from them. So I think almost all of us have had fantasies before, multiple times over, when something bad happens to us at work, impulsively quitting.

• 33:17Shankar Vedantam?

  And does the research say anything about why it is that people come to regret impulsive quitting, to the extent that it's studied people who've made these impulsive decisions?

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, the regret really doesn't necessarily stem from walking away from the prior job. Usually, when you impulsively quit, you have a pretty good reason that you're doing it. Often, the regret comes from, "I probably should have taken my time and figured out what I'm going to do next." Because if you're not careful, you impulsively quit, and then you put yourself in a position where I need another job. And so you go out on the job market, need a job quickly, take that next job, and find yourself in the same situation that you were already in, just with a different company. So that's mainly where that source of regret comes from, not necessarily from impulsively quitting, but from the situation that impulsively quitting puts you in.

• 34:14Shankar Vedantam?

  You say that quitting is often glorified as a solution to our unhappiness. How so, Anthony?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's glorified in the media. We see lots of wonderful movie scenes, whether it's in Office Space, or Eat, Pray, Love, or Jerry Maguire, that shows a dramatic quitting scene. Pop singers sing about it. There was a song, I think, last year or the year before by Beyoncé, where she talks about being frustrated with her job and quitting. And so it is glorified. And especially in the wake of the pandemic, when there was a wave of resignations, people increasingly went online and shared stories of their quitting and wrote about their quitting.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And I do think it's a very empowering story, that so much of our lives, we maybe work in situations that we don't want to work in. And so walking away from that is something that we like to hear those stories about. Even if we can't quit, we can see other people doing it and say, "I'm not alone in feeling like I want to walk off the job right now. This is a normal human experience." And so, I mean, keep in mind, quitting is a topic that you can't necessarily talk about at work. It's a somewhat sensitive topic.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  So when you see it in movies, when you hear about it in a song, when you see it online, it really does connect you with this universal feeling, this universal impulse among workers, that when the going gets tough, quitting can be a great option.

• 35:56Shankar Vedantam?

  And I suppose that when you see someone post something on social media saying that they walked off the job, and you see that that post received a ton of likes, you can get the sense that maybe everyone except you is, in fact, quitting their jobs.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that's the downside and the danger of how much content there is about quitting, is that it is actually a fairly rare event in the course of our careers. There are lots of surveys that come out that show that some large percentage, or the majority of individuals, intend to quit their job over the next year. But in reality, only a fairly small fraction of those individuals actually turn those intentions into reality. But if you look online, you can get the feeling, "Everybody's quitting except me."

• 36:49Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, of course, it's worth pointing out that being able to quit and walk off a job is, in and of itself, a privilege. Not everyone is able to do it. But you also point out that if it's a mistake to react impulsively to a jolt, the other mistake you can make is to ignore it altogether. That doesn't make sense either.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's this middle ground that I encourage people to move into. We're going to experience these different types of jolts many times over the course of our career. And most of the time, quitting will not be an option for most of us. And so it's tempting just to take that jolt and set it aside or put it out of mind, completely ignore it. But in doing so, we're missing an opportunity to potentially improve our relationship with work and fix a problem with it.

• 37:43Shankar Vedantam?

  So you have a number of suggestions on how people should think about their intentions to quit and whether it's the right thing to do. When someone experiences a jolt, you advise them, for example, to both zoom in and zoom out. What do you mean by those terms?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I encourage people to really think through their job from a few different angles. So in terms of zooming in and zooming out, we can think of our job in two different ways, or as researchers say, at two different levels of construal. So we can think about it from the very low level of construal, a very concrete way of thinking about our jobs. What do we do in our day-to-day work lives? And so I encourage people to zoom in and say, do I enjoy this job on a day-to-day basis? And when you're thinking about that, there's really two big buckets that you can think about. Do I enjoy my work tasks? And do I enjoy the people with whom I'm working on a day-to-day basis? And then we can zoom out to this high level of construal and think more abstractly about our jobs over the long term.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  So over the arc of my career, my life, in terms of what I want to accomplish, is this job moving me more towards those goals? Or is it pulling me further away from them? So at a high level, where is this job taking me in terms of the purpose and meaning or the goals I have for my life?

• 39:01Shankar Vedantam?

  You say that there are different ways to respond to a setback at work, and one is to follow the lead of Bob Iger at Disney. Tell me that story, Anthony.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so fairly early in his career, Bob Iger was an executive at ABC Sports. And this was back in the heyday of network sports programs. And so you can imagine, you know, he talks about flights on the Concorde and champagne and designer suits and unlimited expense budgets, these sorts of things. And he really enjoyed it. But then ABC, as a company, was bought up by this Warren Buffett-backed radio conglomerate. And this radio conglomerate, Cap Cities, was known for running a very frugal operation. And so you can imagine this was quite the jolt, realizing that your work lifestyle

• 39:56Speaker 02

  and the way you were working was going to come to an abrupt change because your flashy network company has been bought up by a company with a bunch of radio stations. So Bob was tempted to leave. And he was tempted to leave also by what's called a collateral jolt. A number of his close coworkers were leaving. They were leaving to go join this flashy sports agency so they could essentially continue the work that they were doing, you know, getting paid a lot, working with athletes and so forth, rather than stick around. And Bob decided, yeah, I want to do the same thing. I'm going to join them. So he went to HR and informed HR, I'm going to leave. And HR said, why don't you take some time to think about that? First, there's some contractual things to work through, but more importantly than that,

• 40:41Speaker 02

  you might have a pretty bright future with this company, even though it's quite different from the place that you came from. And so Bob slowed down. He went home and talked it over with his partner and came to the conclusion, I've made a pretty good career here at this company, and just because it's changing hands doesn't mean I need to stop that. And so he stayed with what became Cap Cities, which was later bought by Disney, and over the course of his career, became CEO and chairman at Disney and actually ended up, you know, doing two spells at that role of CEO and chairman. So regardless of how you think about his leadership style, I think the story in terms

• 41:25Speaker 02

  of careers is sometimes the smartest response to jolts that leads to the most career success is actually doing nothing, is actually staying put in the wake of a jolt when you're tempted to bolt.

• 41:38Shankar Vedantam?

  And of course, that makes sense when you consider the fact that in the course of a career, we're all going to experience setbacks and challenges. And if we respond to each of them by deciding we're going to quit, we're not going to stay in any job for very long.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. It'll be a career filled with changing jobs, which isn't necessarily bad. But again, I mentioned earlier, changing jobs often comes with some regret, and it comes with a lot of uncertainty. And so having a career full of that can be a pretty risky career strategy.

• 42:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, carrying on and sticking with what you're doing can sometimes be really difficult. You tell the story of your friend Jenny and what happened to her in her workplace. Tell me that story, Anthony.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  So Jenny works in a hospital, and she worked in an area of the hospital where there were several desks in the same room, where they were all completing the same tasks. And she worked with a toxic coworker. And she found her well-being and her work satisfaction continually decreasing as she worked with this coworker. But she felt like she could put up with it, even though her mental well-being was suffering as a result of this. But one day, she walked into that office, and before she even said anything, her coworker started, not necessarily insulting her, but causing some problems. And Jenny thought, what am I doing here?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Where the second I walk in the office, this toxic person is already creating negativity for me. And so she knew, as a result, after that one moment, I had to do something about it. And so she looked around the hospital to see if there was an empty office anywhere. And she found one. And so then she went to her boss and said, look, here's an interpersonal situation that we're having. She didn't throw the other person under the bus. She said, there's just this incompatibility here. I found this other office. Can I move to it? And her boss said, sure. And so she got her stuff, and she moved to the other office. And then after a couple of weeks of working in that office, she realized, like, I can

• 44:02Speaker 02

  actually divide our work tasks such that I don't even have to interact with my old coworker very much at all. And so it's kind of a win, really, for both of those coworkers, that Jenny is now in an office on the other side of the hospital doing her work tasks, and her job satisfaction is through the roof. She loves it. And it was all a result of her boss just saying yes to a couple of creative suggestions she had about, you know, moving across the hospital and divvying up tasks.

• 44:30Shankar Vedantam?

  So this is an example of someone who didn't just stay the course and say, you know, I'm going to keep my head down and keep doing what I'm doing, but someone who said, there's a problem, I'm not going to quit, but I'm going to speak up about it.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Jenny realized that simply doing nothing wasn't sustainable. And so I have to do something, and so I have to be proactive about this and try to find the solution to the jolt myself.

• 44:58Shankar Vedantam?

  You offer suggestions to people on how they can speak up at work. You have ideas on what could make that more effective or less effective. What ideas would you have if someone decides they're not going to quit, they're going to stay in the job, they're going to speak up and maybe have a conversation with their boss? How should they go about doing that?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is not easy to do. Speaking up to power can be quite challenging. And this isn't a situation where you say to your boss, I'm thinking about quitting or anything like that. Essentially, a jolt has revealed some problem in your relationship with your job, and you think that it might be fixable. And so you're going to bring up a problem with your boss. But there are some tips here. When it comes to speaking up to power, there's a few ways you can increase the odds of it being successful, like it was in Jenny's case. So the first one is make sure you don't just have a problem, you have a solution to the problem. Many managers like this somewhat tired phrase of, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  In this case, that phrase holds up. You should have a solution. And here's the deal. In terms of the solution you have to the problem, it can't only benefit you. Like, you need to be a bit of a salesperson here and say, this solution not only benefits me, but it also benefits you or the customers or other coworkers or the company's bottom line somehow. So try to come up with a solution in a case that doesn't only benefit you. And then, you know, the last one is, especially as Americans, but others as well, sometimes like to deliver tough messages sandwiched in between two positive messages. The research shows that this is really ineffective when it comes to voice and challenging.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  So you may be tempted to say some nice things about your boss and then slip in the, like, here's the real problem with my work. That's not effective at all. And then finally, I mean, if you're in the unfortunate situation of having a fairly domineering boss, research shows that this is especially tough to bring up problems. And so it's often better to phrase it in the form of a question than any sort of demand or suggestion. Like, maybe this is a thought that we could have me work in this different side of the hospital. But hopefully, most of us are in a better situation than that.

• 47:36Shankar Vedantam?

  You've pointed out that one of the advantages of speaking up is that even if nothing changes and we eventually decide to leave, we can walk away knowing that at least we tried. How does using our voice protect us from the kind of what-if thinking that often leads to regret, Anthony?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  I often heard this and continue to hear this a lot when it comes to exit interviews, where an employee says, I'm quitting because of these three reasons. And the company says, if you would have brought these up, we could have fixed these. The nice thing about speaking up is you get rid of these what-if scenarios and you find out what is. So if you're approaching quitting time, if you think, I'm probably going to quit this job because of these two reasons, what's the harm in bringing up those two reasons and suggesting a solution to them? At least then you'll walk away knowing, I tried to fix this and they weren't going to budge on these issues. And that will reduce any regret that you might experience in the future.

• 48:47Shankar Vedantam?

  A reminder, have you had unexpected moments when you saw your life with a greater clarity than you ever had before? Did one of those moments prompt you to make dramatic changes in your life? If you have a personal story you would be willing to share with a Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at [email protected]. Use the subject line, "jolted." Again, that's [email protected].

• 49:26Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering whether you can think of any times in your life when you have been jolted and you have followed one of these paths, Anthony?

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in my own career in life, I've had jolts where I've followed all of these paths. So there was one academic conference in particular, where I went to that conference and I found out over the course of one day, through three different interactions, that three different current coworkers of mine were on the job market looking for another job. All three of these people were my close friends. And so I experienced a pretty big, what I call collateral jolt, that day, where I thought to myself, three of my good friends at work are looking to leave. And if I stick around, what type of a department is that

• 50:16Speaker 02

  going to be? And how much work am I going to have to take on? And why aren't I thinking about leaving too? And so I ended up going and doing an interview at that other institution and accepting a job there. And the irony of it is my three coworkers who were looking to move ended up staying, but I ended up leaving. And so that's a moment I think back on as one of the more jolting days in my life, for sure.

• 50:42Shankar Vedantam?

  And looking back, do you feel like you made the right call, Anthony?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. And, you know, making that move to the different institution allowed me to do things in my career that I wanted to do, that I wouldn't have ever been able to do. But that's not to say, you know, if I would have stayed put and instead spoken up and asked for a raise, let's say, like, look, everybody else is looking for a job except me, I should get a raise. Who knows? Maybe they would have, you know, given me a raise and some other perks, and I would have been happy on that path, too. And so I think that's important to realize, is that there isn't always like one clear right and one clear wrong path when we experience these jolts. Often, both will keep us on the path

• 51:25Speaker 02

  to the good life. We just need to make a decision and then move on with our careers.

• 51:38Shankar Vedantam?

  Anthony Klatsch is the author of "Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters." Anthony, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  It's been my absolute pleasure.

• 51:56Shankar Vedantam?

  Making our way through life jolting moments can be difficult. It's destabilizing when the ground shifts under our feet. And sometimes, a big jolt can lead to a series of smaller jolts, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

• 52:12Shankar Vedantam?

  A listener named Eileen experienced this five years into a happy relationship. Her partner wanted her to move with him to a property that he owned in another state. Eileen was reluctant because she loved her home. It had been in her family for four generations, but she decided to make the move.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  Because the move made sense on paper, and through the overseeing guidance and support of my therapist of many years, I eventually agreed to the move with a handful of conditions he agreed to meet first. I made it clear that I wasn't going to micromanage these demands, trusting him to get them done. The night before our big move, with everything in my house packed up, moving truck loaded and in the driveway, we were happily eating dinner at a restaurant when, mid chew, it was like a bolt of lightning entered the top of my head and surged through my body with a voice I heard clearly say, "He didn't do what he promised." I immediately said to him, "You didn't do X, did you?"

• 53:18Speaker 04

  We didn't speak another word that night, and in the morning, the silence continued, but we each drove away in separate vehicles from my property to his. Eight hours later, literally the moment I crossed the threshold into my new life and home, I began a future of unparalleled dysfunction and anxiety.

• 53:46Shankar Vedantam?

  Eileen says she stayed in the relationship for three and a half years. When she decided to end things, she was 62 years old, without a source of income or anywhere to live.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  When I finally pulled the plug on the relationship, the bottom had completely fallen out of my once peaceful and happy life. Now, two years later, I am still dusting myself off, struggling to completely reinvent myself and survive.

• 54:20Shankar Vedantam?

  She realized that the night before the move, she'd had an intuition that something was wrong. Why hadn't she paid more attention to that bolt of lightning?

• 54:29Speaker 04

  My muse made an appearance and tried to get my attention, but it was inconvenient for me to break my commitment or to break the momentum of my plans, and I didn't take her warning. It is not an obvious happy ending, but I have learned from it.

• 54:51Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, more jolts of lightning. We examine the power of the unconscious mind to reveal the path forward. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 56:14Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Sometimes, there's nothing more terrifying than a blank page, an empty canvas.

• 56:25Shankar Vedantam?

  The act of creating something new isn't easy. That's the case whether you're trying to write a novel or figure out what to make for dinner. When we get stuck, we usually respond by pushing ourselves harder. But there are many times when pushing harder does not produce results.

• 56:46Shankar Vedantam?

  At those times, we may throw in the towel, we take a walk, or lie down for a nap. And suddenly, out of the blue, an idea comes to us. We figure out the sentence to start the novel, or a key ingredient around which to base the meal.

• 57:08Shankar Vedantam?

  Why do our brains work like this? And how can we become better at cultivating our inner muse? We talked about all this recently with psychologist Arp Dikstehaus. He's the author of Inspiration: Where the Best Ideas Come From. Arp returns to the show today to respond to listeners' questions and comments about these positive jolts. Arp Dikstehaus, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

• 57:33Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 57:34Shankar Vedantam?

  So, Arp, many of us assume that when we work hard on a problem that we're facing at work or in our personal lives, we're going to solve that problem. But of course, that's not always the case. Why is it that pressing harder does not always produce breakthroughs?

• 57:49Speaker 06

  Well, there's various reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is that you tend to get stuck in one direction and you lose your flexibility. And the one direction you get stuck in is not always the one that will help you to solve the problem. And if you put it aside for a while, then your unconscious will start to work on it in a completely different, much more creative way. And that often leads to a solution. You know, if you think about something too hard, it's like a very bright but narrow light shining on something. And what you often need is, um, is, is not so much a bright light, but a light that, you know, that meanders, that goes in all kinds of directions.

• 58:31Speaker 06

  That also puts light on things that you normally don't shed light on. So, um, you have to let your unconscious do the job in, in, in these cases.

• 58:42Shankar Vedantam?

  We received many listener stories of inspiration in response to our earlier conversation, Ap. Here's one from Chris in Arkansas.

• 58:49Speaker 07

  I'm a career automobile technician. And at times it's really challenging to make certain repairs, particularly on the electrical and electronic high-tech systems on automobiles. That's compounded by the fact that during the workday, there's a lot of pressure for production, getting things done in a timely manner. So it's not uncommon for me to sleep on a problem that I was encountering during the day and wake up in the middle of the night having dreamed the solution to the problem. And I've learned from talking to colleagues, it's not just me. Some of my colleagues have experienced this phenomenon as well. Occasionally I'll have to wake up and write something down,

• 59:34Speaker 07

  but more often than not, I'll remember it. I'll wake up in the morning, I'll go back to work and I will have my solution or, or at least a strategy to arrive at a solution, ready to go.

• 59:46Shankar Vedantam?

  So, Ap, as many listeners pointed out, there is a very important role that sleep plays in helping them arrive at moments of inspiration. What is the role of sleep in, in these eureka moments?

• 59:58Speaker 06

  This is, this is truly a wonderful example of, of some of the phenomena I describe in my book. Well, the, the role of sleep is, is getting more and more important. The more research we do, and, and we aren't there yet, but what we know now is that especially during REM sleep, the, the sleep that produces the dreams, there's all kinds of cognitive processes playing in our brain that have to do with memory, with, with making new associations. Yeah, fostering creativity. It's, it's, so, so, yeah, we know quite specifically that during REM sleep, which you, which you engage in about five or six times a night, sometimes for 10, 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes a little longer, half an hour.

• 1:00:43Speaker 06

  These are, these are the most important periods.

• 1:00:47Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, educators have told us for a very long time that students who pull all-nighters, you know, they, they stay up all night to study, they're not doing themselves any favors when there is an important test the next morning. Because of course, sleep plays an important role in consolidating learning. And based on what you're saying, you know, students might end up being less creative on the morning of the test if they spend the previous night staying up to cram.

• 1:01:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, memory consolidation is one of the first things that people discovered as it comes to what, what sleep is actually doing for us. So, learning in the evening and then have a good night's sleep is way more productive than learning during the night. There's also experiments showing that if you, if you have people learn something and then one group goes to sleep for six or eight hours and the other group has to stay awake, the first group is performing much better in all kinds of memory tests. And the second thing, of course, is that if you don't sleep, you're tired. It's as simple as that. And, and creativity also needs, needs a well-rested mind. So you're actually, you're not doing yourself a favor in two different ways. First, you're too tired and second, you, you don't use these wonderful mechanisms that, that sleep provides you with.

• 1:01:59Shankar Vedantam?

  Listener Ilana wrote in with a question about the types of problems that can be solved by unconscious thought processes involving inspiration. She writes, "I couldn't understand what types of problems can be solved with the help of the subconscious and which cannot." What do you think, Ap? Are the benefits of unconscious inspiration bounded to certain kinds of problems?

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  That's, that's really an excellent question. Yeah, they are, in that if you think about something very focused and consciously, it's better for some problems or some decisions maybe that you have to make. And the unconscious is the sort, or the subconscious, as she calls it, is better for other things. Your unconscious is especially good when it comes to problems that are huge, when it involves a, a large amounts of information. You know, where you have the feeling you don't even know where to start. And when it, when a lot of the information that you have to use is more subjective, you know, also when it comes to making a decision, when, when the information is more emotional. In terms of decision-making, you could make a distinction.

• 1:03:03Speaker 06

  If you, if you, if you buy, if you want to buy something where the, the different aspects are really technical, like, you know, buying a new washing machine, it's perfectly reasonable to, to do this in a very conscious, rational manner. You know, you can take a piece of paper, a pen, and pluses and minuses, and, and pros and cons, and, and that's all fine. But, but everybody would agree with me that once a decision becomes a way, way more complex and also more subjective, like buying a house, where also some emotional aspects play a role, you have to also make room for your own unconscious. And if you focus on, on it only consciously, in a very narrow way,

• 1:03:45Speaker 06

  when buying a house, you're probably gonna use the wrong criteria in the end.

• 1:03:50Shankar Vedantam?

  Many of us have had the experience of feeling inspiration bubbling up when we're young and learning new things. Listener Tracy had a question about whether that process slows down as we age.

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  It seems that when I was younger, I had many moments of inspiration. In fact, I called my business News Marketing and Management because I felt inspired often. I made jewelry, I did all kinds of creative things. And as I've gotten older, I've continued creative pursuits, but more in my part-time, in my off-time than during my working hours. I'm wondering if, as we get older, if inspiration comes less and less often? Or if maybe we are in more of a fixed mindset

• 1:04:42Speaker 06

  and unwilling or unable to be curious? That's it. Thank you for taking my question.

• 1:04:52Shankar Vedantam?

  What do you think of Tracy's question, Ap?

• 1:04:54Speaker 06

  There's this old classic psychology study where people devised a test battery to measure creativity. And it turned out that the question, "What can you do with a paper clip?" Very simple question, was very central in that, in that test battery. And then the researchers doing that experiment, they looked at the answers people gave and they, they, you know, they made a distinction between people that were very, very good and they called them highly creative. And, and it turns out, among young children, almost everybody scored very highly on creativity. Much, they did way, way better than, than the adults. And that led to the development of a theory that there's really two, two kinds of thinking.

• 1:05:39Speaker 06

  One is divergent thinking, that is the wild associative creative thinking. And the other is convergent thinking. That's the sort of the, the voice in your head saying things like, "Oh, but is this really necessary? Oh, is this possible? Isn't this too expensive?" You know, this is the... You could say the divergent thinking is the gas pedal in the car and convergent thinking is the brake. Now, it turns out that divergent thinking is something you're basically born with. It's in you as a child. It's, it's, it's very active as, as a child. And convergent thinking is something you, you learn over life. And that makes you less creative when you, when you grow older,

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  or at least it feels like you're less creative or not, not, not as often inspired. It's because the convergent thinking kicks in more and more often and oft, and, and usually also way too early in the process. And, and being creative and being inspired, one way to, to put it is trying to find that child, you know, in yourself. You know, go for that divergent thinking and forget about convergent thinking.

• 1:06:48Shankar Vedantam?

  In, in some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that, of course, both are important, to use your analogy of the car. You know, a car with just a gas pedal is a dangerous car. A car with just a brake doesn't go anywhere. The question is how to find a balance between those two things. And what I hear you saying is that many older people have come to use the brakes so often that they've forgotten to use the gas pedal.

• 1:07:07Speaker 06

  Exactly. They may use the gas pedal, but it's immediately inhibited, yeah. And we have to learn to not use the brake too often and to tell ourselves, you know, maybe next week, but this week, you know, I want to do something else and forget about the brakes. Yes, maybe it's, it's a little dangerous, but that's, that's part of creativity too sometimes.

• 1:07:31Shankar Vedantam?

  One way to see the world from a fresh perspective at any age is to have an encounter with art of some kind, a painting or a song or a dance performance. You like to say that art begets art. What do you mean by this, Ap?

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  Yes, the art begets art. The overarching sort of theory, philosophical theory in, in psychology and neuroscience these days is that your brain is basically a prediction machine. What we are doing with our brains is we continuously update a prediction of what is going to happen in the near future and, and also in a somewhat more distant future. We, we're trying to predict things. You know, if you want to be creative, you have to almost like, like challenge that prediction machine. You have to show it things that it doesn't predict. It makes your brain more flexible. It leads to new associations. And how do you do that? Well, there's various things to do it. One is indeed art, you know, other artists challenging your prediction machine.

• 1:08:27Speaker 06

  It's confronting yourself with something that you don't expect. Another good way is, you know, to, to go and travel to very distant cultures. Or to talk to very, very inspiring people, you know. But yes, art, art begets art. Art is something that challenges your prediction machine and it, and that causes creativity.

• 1:08:55Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, the relationship between positive thinking and inspiration. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:09:15Speaker 05

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• 1:10:16Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. How often has someone told you to sleep on it when you have a problem you couldn't solve? Did it work?

• 1:10:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Today, we're hearing about stories of inspiration and talking with Aap Daxterhaus. He's a psychologist and author of the book, Inspiration: Where the Best Ideas Come From.

• 1:10:42Shankar Vedantam?

  Aap, here's a story of inspiration that we received from a listener named Bill in Pennsylvania. He says that as a sophomore in high school in 1979, he got told off by his band teacher, Mr. Price, for surreptitiously reading during band practice. He writes, "Fast forward 40 years to 2019. I am presently a machine learning researcher for Lockheed Martin. Early in the year, my manager asked if I was interested in pursuing the Lockheed Martin Fellow's career path. This is a rigorous series of technical and professional milestones, each lasting two to three years. At this time, my career was doing well, and I was very busy with both my work and home life. I knew that going down the Fellow's track would be very difficult. I told my manager I would give it some thought,

• 1:11:27Shankar Vedantam?

  but in the back of my mind, I was really hedging against it. The day after telling my manager I'd think about it, I went to sleep, and I had the most vivid dream, reliving that exact scenario from 40 years in the past. I had my book. I was in band class. I was going to sit behind the trumpets, and Mr. Price came charging up the band risers, asking me what the hell I was doing. But here's where everything in the dream changed, and my unconscious took over. The background faded away. The music stopped playing. And Mr. Price looked at me, saying, 'Bill, you only get one shot at this. Never waste an opportunity. You will never know what would have happened unless you try it.' And I woke up. I remembered the dream perfectly,

• 1:12:11Shankar Vedantam?

  writing it down because it was so shocking. Somehow, my unconscious mind, through Mr. Price, was telling me that I should really take the leap, do the hard work, and go through the Lockheed Martin Technical Fellows process. The next day, I emailed my manager and told him I was ready to start the process."

• 1:12:29Shankar Vedantam?

  Aap, what do you make of Bill's story?

• 1:12:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a wonderful example of how such a clear form of inspiration from your unconscious, especially during sleep, is quite rare, but it's not unheard of. And this is a wonderful example. And it happened to me, actually, roughly a year ago, where I had a dream that in that dream, I felt the urge to write a children's book about the upcoming fascism in various countries around the world. When I woke up in the morning, I still remembered enough to actually make some notes. And now the book is actually at my publisher. It will appear in a couple of months.

• 1:13:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Wow.

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  They're wonderful examples of how important our unconscious mind is and how it can manifest itself even during REM sleep.

• 1:13:20Shankar Vedantam?

  It seems that inspiration comes to us most often when we're in a rather relaxed or even meditative state. You've actually conducted a study with Zen meditators, looking at how the practice of meditation affects the transfer of insight from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Tell me about the study and what you found out.

• 1:13:38Speaker 06

  What we did in that study was actually, it's quite straightforward. We asked people questions that could be answered with two, three, or four different answers, like, "Name one of the Beatles," or "Name one of the colors of the American flag." And before these questions, we subliminally presented on a computer screen, we presented one of the possible answers. And then you ask the question, and you see whether they actually use that unconsciously activated answer. And it turns out, after 20 minutes of Zen meditation, people actually do use these answers much more often than on the basis of chance and under normal conditions.

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  So without meditation beforehand, they don't use the answers. So it was one way in which we could show that active information in the unconscious is transferred to consciousness easier or better after a brief period of Zen meditation.

• 1:14:37Shankar Vedantam?

  And why do you think this is, Aap?

• 1:14:38Speaker 06

  If you look at classic meditation technique, most of them are really about concentration. What you are doing is trying to look deeper into your own mind. So almost in a literal sense, what you are doing is you increase the traffic between consciousness and the deeper unconscious regions of your mind. And that's indeed what we showed.

• 1:15:03Shankar Vedantam?

  So besides formal meditation, Aap, you say that the meditative state of mind that facilitates insight can come about in the course of daily life. In this regard, scientists sometimes talk about the three Bs. What are these three Bs?

• 1:15:18Speaker 06

  The classic three Bs are the bed, the bus, and the bath. And yeah, scientists jokingly said that these were the moments where the possibilities on having a really good idea, an insightful idea, inspiration, and also the last hour, half hour, before you really wake up and you're sort of in this half-sleep is also, for many people, a very productive moment. And in the car, or public transport, or train, or plane is also known to be a moment where people do get good ideas.

• 1:15:56Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to play you a message from a listener we received about the power of walking. This is listener Polly.

• 1:16:03Speaker 06

  I was ordained as an interfaith minister in New York and had taken a class on pilgrimages in seminary and decided to set forth from Saint Jean-Pierre-de-Port, France, over the border into Spain and walk the 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago French Route on my way to Santiago, Spain, which took me almost 41 days. And I decided to hike this route in silence and by myself for those 40 days as kind of an homage to my own creative process, what I wanted to do next in my life, and just wanted that time.

• 1:16:48Speaker 06

  I didn't really know what to expect. But when I started walking and was about 20 days in with an average walking distance of 15 miles a day, I started to notice my subconscious and my conscious mind became very cohesive. And I started to have visualizations and really was in a place that I had never experienced before.

• 1:17:15Shankar Vedantam?

  Polly goes on to say that it was during a sunrise walk on this journey that she had an epiphany, and it led her to create a nonprofit organization. So, Aap, talk about why walking seems to wake up something in the unconscious minds of so many people.

• 1:17:30Speaker 06

  Again, this is really a wonderful story. And when I studied the working habits of all kinds of geniuses in the past, or scientists, but also all kinds of artists, there are quite a number of commonalities between all these people. One of them is that they are passionate, and they work hard. But these things you would expect. But one other commonality is they're all walkers. They make their daily walk, sometimes two, three hours, sometimes shorter, but they all make their daily walks. This goes one step further than merely taking a one- or two-hour walk. But even if you just walk for one or two hours, what you experience, it's like the boundaries between consciousness

• 1:18:13Speaker 06

  and your unconscious are slowly fading, and they become, as she said, more cohesive as long as you really concentrate on yourself. You know, if you do this more often or a very prolonged time, these boundaries fade even more, and you increase the chance that indeed your unconscious comes up with even a life-changing idea of what to do.

• 1:18:50Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, fostering your own founts of inspiration. We'll talk about the relationship between setting goals and experiencing aha moments. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone. It's Stavros Halakis, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, Stavvy's World. Each week, we're joined by great guests like Josh Safdie, Eric Andre, Caleb Heron, and more. It's sort of an interview show, but really, we're just messing around, making each other laugh, and hopefully making you laugh while you're washing the dishes or grocery shopping or on a long drive. Plus, I take listener calls where we have honest conversations about dating, life, and everything in between. Imagine if your therapist was a vulgar degenerate whose office was in a Greek diner. No scripts, no polish, and absolutely no holding back. Listen to Stavvy's World wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:19:51Speaker 07

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• 1:20:03Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We're talking with psychologist Aap Dychstohaus. He's the author of Inspiration: Where the Best Ideas Come From. Aap, we received a message from a listener named Ruann, who is an expert on the HPV vaccine. The human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer and a host of other health problems. One day, a colleague asked her how she would design a study to answer the question of whether a single dose of the vaccine would be as effective as two or three doses. Here she is.

• 1:20:36Speaker 06

  I had been studying HPV at that time for eight years and had read every paper and understood it deeply because it was the subject of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford. And when she asked me that question, I immediately came to mind the trial design that would lead to the WHO changing its guidelines and recommending single-dose HPV vaccination. We conducted the trial in a record 18 months, including during the pandemic, ran perfectly on time, presented the data. And since that day, millions of girls who have not otherwise been vaccinated have received the HPV vaccine.

• 1:21:18Speaker 06

  And with India and China adopting single-dose vaccination, we are on track to vaccinate 90% of girls and prevent cervical cancer in 90% of those young women as they age to mid-adulthood. And that is thrilling. And it was thanks to the creativity, the deep learning and the moment of inspiration that we were able to solve this question. Thanks so much for a fantastic podcast.

• 1:21:49Shankar Vedantam?

  So, Aap, I find Ruann's story so wonderful, but it makes me wonder the extent to which deep background knowledge is a prerequisite for inspiration?

• 1:21:59Speaker 06

  Yes, most of the time it is. If you want to solve a scientific problem, of course, you need the background knowledge. And what she was talking about is highly specific and perhaps only a few people could have solved it in the first place. This is true not for all things, but definitely for most things.

• 1:22:19Speaker 06

  A good idea for a new novel will probably only come to somebody who writes novels. You know, it's not some random process whereby people on the street will also get these huge ideas. And the second reason is that motivation is incredibly important. You have to really want it for it to happen.

• 1:22:39Shankar Vedantam?

  Let's talk a moment about the relationship between goals and inspiration. It might not be intuitive, but you say that to create the conditions that generate insight, we can begin by setting the right kind of goal, one that's big and highly motivating. What do you mean by that, Aap?

• 1:22:56Speaker 06

  Inspiration favors the people who really want to solve something or make something or create something. And the stronger the goal is, the more brain capacity you're actually using for pursuing that goal. That's also the reason why some of the more extreme geniuses in our past were highly monomaniac. You know, Newton died when he was 84 years old, but he died a virgin. He never made room in his life for something like love. Now, I wouldn't recommend it, but that's what he did. And there are a lot of examples of people who achieved way more than, let's say, normal people, but at the same time were very monomaniac, simply because their brains were hijacked

• 1:23:40Speaker 06

  by their incredibly big, strong goal.

• 1:23:45Shankar Vedantam?

  You also suggest that when our brains are hijacked in this way, we are more likely to have faith in our intuitions?

• 1:23:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, that turns out to be true.

• 1:23:55Speaker 06

  There's various ways to test it, yeah. People who really know what they want have a stronger intuition and also more faith in their own intuition. It's not so strange, if you think about it. You know, what can your intuition do for you if you don't know what you want to do? Like, you're walking in a strange city. Your intuition can't tell you to go left or right if you don't even know where to go. And this is maybe a simple example, but this is true in life in general. Intuition works better for people who, yeah, who are motivated, who set strong goals.

• 1:24:30Shankar Vedantam?

  I mean, at a very basic level, you're walking through the streets of an unfamiliar city, but you know you're hungry. You're looking for a place to eat. And now, perhaps your nose is more sensitive to the smells and odors that are coming from various restaurants that prompt you to say, "Okay, maybe I should go left instead of right."

• 1:24:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Or maybe your ears too. You know, you think, "I go left" because you hear a little bit more noise from that side and you think the chances that I stumble upon a street with a couple of restaurants is bigger. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 1:25:01Shankar Vedantam?

  So, Aap, we're living in a very data-driven time in a variety of professional and academic fields. Quantitative analysis is often seen as more reliable and insightful. We received a message about this from listener Nikki.

• 1:25:16Speaker 06

  My biggest frustration is that when I come up with the insights and share them with other people at work, the people I speak with are quite skeptical about anything that doesn't come from methodical, analytical work where I have facts and figures and data and metrics. And so, any insights that I have that I know are true aren't trusted or believed. And they say things like, "Oh, yeah, you say that's your intuition, but we need facts and figures." So I would be interested to hear what you think of that. Thank you very much for everything you do.

• 1:25:58Shankar Vedantam?

  Aap, what do you think is the right balance between data and intuition? And do you think we're living in a time that, in some ways, undervalues intuition?

• 1:26:06Speaker 06

  Yes, I think we're living in a time that undervalues intuition, although I would also say that maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, it was actually worse. I think I give a lot of, you know, talks to companies and government organizations. And my feeling is that there's actually a little more room for intuition than in the past. But the right balance purely depends on the kind of problem and the kind of decisions you are talking about. Again, if you're buying a new washing machine, the technical aspects and the numbers and the figures are probably the only thing that should count. You know, who cares about what a washing machine looked like? But when you buy a house, it's more complex. There's more emotionally charged information that you have to take into account.

• 1:26:52Speaker 06

  If you make huge personal decisions between your current job, for instance, or a job offer from somewhere else, or when it comes to things that have to do with love, you know, romantic love, you're not going to make a pro and con list. And that's hard to verbalize, and you can't quantify it in terms of, you know, numbers. But it is incredibly important. So the right balance purely depends on the kind of decision people are making. But often, the wrong balance is where they don't take intuition seriously and only want to base their decisions on facts and figures. That's very often, that's not a very good idea.

• 1:27:33Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, I remember speaking many years ago with Danny Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics. And he told me about a very interesting story in his younger days when he was helping an organization make decisions. And the organization was primarily relying on intuition and often making mistakes. You know, relying on intuition to make judgments, and those judgments would turn out to be wrong. So he came up with a much more methodical way of collecting information, collecting data, understanding the data. But then he had a really important insight, which is that after you collect all of this data, the right thing to do is to actually shut the book on all of the data that you've collected and then make the decision intuitively. And the point that he was making

• 1:28:18Shankar Vedantam?

  was that intuition in itself is neither good nor bad. It can produce bad results. It can produce good results. But when intuition is informed by learning and by discipline and by data, at that point, you're turbocharging intuition. And I'm wondering what you make of that, Aap, and if that's a way, in some ways, of squaring the tension that perhaps has run through our conversation between data and intuition?

• 1:28:40Speaker 06

  I have to say, I completely agree. Intuition that is not at all informed is pretty much useless. And intuition by people who have a lot of experience can be incredibly useful. If there's a house on fire, the question is, can I still go inside to rescue something or will the house collapse? My intuition is useless. But, you know, a firefighter's intuition who's been doing this job for 35 years is probably incredibly reliable and is the best device you can get. But, yeah, when it comes to making an important decision, I completely agree with Kahneman. In my own work, we provided people with information pertaining to a decision,

• 1:29:24Speaker 06

  like choose between four different departments. And we give them a lot and a lot of information. And then we tell them to sit on it for a while, sleep on it, almost, sometimes literally sleep on it. And then the following morning, follow your intuition. You don't have to explain to me why you think this is the best apartment. You know, follow your guts. And if these steps are met, so first all this information, then a period of unconscious thought, then a quick intuitive judgment, that's indeed the best way to make a decision, yeah.

• 1:29:57Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering where you find your inspiration these days, Aap. Do you have regular go-to places where you end up feeling inspired?

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  It's interesting. In the book, I describe the various phases that you have to stimulate your brain and do things that are a little bit weird, challenge your prediction machine. And then you have to engage in a more quiet period where you let your unconscious mull over things. What I tend to do is I travel sometimes, especially, I especially like to go to big cities. And they're always very inspiring. But I spend most of my time now living in a rather small, medieval, beautiful village. But it's relatively quiet. So I travel and I go to big cities for my inspiration. And then I go back home to actually do the work

• 1:30:49Speaker 06

  and let the unconscious mull over things. And that's, for me, that's a kind of a rhythm.

• 1:31:19Shankar Vedantam?

  Psychologist Aap Dijkstrahouse is the author of Inspiration: Where the Best Ideas Come From. Aap, thank you so much for joining me again today on Hidden Brain. Thank you.

• 1:31:31Shankar Vedantam?

  We also heard today from psychologist Anthony Klotz. He's the author of Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters.

• 1:31:48Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Powell, Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.

• 1:32:08Shankar Vedantam?

  If you know someone who's in the midst of a life jolt, or who could use some help cultivating their own inspiration, please share today's episode with them. You might just give them the tools to make a big change, or find their own eureka moment. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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