87 The Truth About Intelligence and the Many Paths To Greatness with Scott Barry Kaufman

"I think educators have a misguided view of how we realize potential and what these tests are actually measuring." - Scott Barry Kaufman Please come visit us, find the show resources and connect with the School of Greatness: www.lewishowes.com/87 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 87 with Scott Barry Kaufman.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone? Thanks so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness Podcast. I'm your host, Lewis Howes, and I'm thrilled you're joining me today. And I've got Mr. Scott Barry Kaufman on, who is the author of a book called Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined: The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness. And just that title alone made me intrigued to learn about what the many paths to greatness are, since this is the School of Greatness Podcast, right? So Scott is an interesting guy, and he regularly gives keynotes and workshops on the development of intelligence, creativity,

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  and human potential. He's also the scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He also got his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Yale University in 2009, and got his master's degree in experimental psychology from Cambridge University in 2005. So he's a very accomplished individual, done a lot of research on the many paths to greatness. So I'm very pumped to dive into this. And he talks about some of the challenges that we face, or some students face growing up, some children face growing up in school.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  And how they're labeled with a certain dyslexia or ADHD or autism, how these students are labeled based on their IQ in school. And he talks about how broken he feels like this is, and actually how some of these students who are labeled with learning disorders are actually some of the most incredible entrepreneurs and most successful athletes and artists and designers and all these other things out there because they use their imagination and their creativity in such ways that the classroom kind of stifles and brings down in certain ways.

• 2:38Lewis Howes?

  So I really connected with Scott and with this message and with the book and what he talks about, just because I had such a big learning disability growing up and I'll mention that here in just a second. But I'm very excited to bring him on. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with Scott Barry Kaufman.

• 3:09Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We got a new guest on today. His name is Scott Barry Kaufman. What's up Scott?

• 3:17Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Hey, how's it going?

• 3:18Lewis Howes?

  Going well, man. And I'm glad we finally got to connect. It's been a few months. I actually found out about you, I think a couple of years ago. I think you were writing something about greatness or something. And I was like, oh, I want to learn about more about this guy. So we finally connected. We just realized we have like a thousand mutual friends. And so I'm glad you're on the show and here to provide your wisdom to the world. So, thank you very much.

• 3:44Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  And the topic I want to talk about today is greatness, obviously. It's what I talk about a lot. But you've got a book that was very interesting to me when I read the cover. And it says, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness. And you are a

• 4:08Lewis Howes?

  Psychology professor, but also just a researcher and you you study a lot uh more than I've ever studied in my life. And you research a lot. So you've got like these this data that backs up what I try to just talk about. Uh from my own experience and from other people's experience, but you've got like real research, real data that backs up. Everything that we're about to cover here, which I find fascinating. So I'm excited to dive into what you've learned over the years.

• 4:34Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, me too. And a lot of this stuff has also been afforded by my personal experiences and lots of things that I went through. Have definitely influenced uh the the research that I do.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  Now, why did you want to research this topic in the first place?

• 4:48Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, man, you know, I've I've always been obsessed with questions like what? Who what what does it take to get to the highest levels of achievement? What are? Why do people differ from each other? What to, you know, I remember like being really young and always wondering like, uh, so I was in, I was not in the gifted classrooms. Um, I had a, I had an auditory learning disability when I was really young. I remember always wondering, what do the gifted kids have that I don't? And um, and I think I used to do like, um, I was just, I was like, I really want to be able to study this someday, you know? I want to know what it, what is it to these these people that that reach highest levels of greatness? Like, what is it? What are the ingredients? And I feel like I've learned so much through my own personal experiments and and as well as experiments on others.

• 5:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I I read that about you in your in your cover of the book where you're talking about, talking about that and we have that similarity. I was, I was always in the special needs class. I remember I went to, when I was in elementary school. I was always in like the extra study hall class with like four other kids and, you know. I was like the only average kid. Everyone else was in a wheelchair, right? Or it was like, it was like something like that. I was always like the kid who just couldn't learn anything. And then I went to a private boarding school when I was in eighth grade. And I remember they tested, they tested all these different things uh when I was there. And I had a second grade reading level when I went to eighth grade. I remember this. I couldn't really read ever.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  And it was, I I've all, I still have challenges with spelling. The one class that I actually focused on in high school. Was typing. I remember I was like, I think this computer thing is going to be like important one day. And I was only typing with two fingers at the time. So I was like committed to doing every class, like learning it, how to type properly. And now I can type probably like ninety words a minute.

• 6:37Scott Barry Kaufman?

  That's the thing. That's the thing is that people compensate so much through setbacks and um especially being told like or having low expectations. Not not all people rise to that occasion. A lot of people can really cause them to uh to go further and further behind, but there's some people where that kind of stuff definitely fuels them to kind of want to prove other people wrong and they end up fifty steps ahead.

• 6:59Lewis Howes?

  Dude, it was the it was the worst. School was the worst for me. I remember so I had a second grade reading level, so they put me in like these advanced or these reading classes to kind of catch me up and these spelling classes like I could I still have trouble spelling today. And I the simplest words I spell like letters backwards for some reason. One of my friends was like he he thinks I'm dyslexic and I don't even know if that's true or not, but you know, I wouldn't be surprised.

• 7:24Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Just say just like conceptualize that as creativity.

• 7:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, right?

• 7:28Scott Barry Kaufman?

  There's no there's no need for a label at your age.

• 7:30Lewis Howes?

  There you go. There you go. So I and it's uh it's interesting because in in private school, I went to this private boarding school and I don't know if they do this in public schools or not, but when I went in high school to this private school. You the grade card after every semester, they would they would rank us how where we stood in the class based on our GPA and I was always in the bottom five. So we had we only had like a couple hundred students in my my grade, but it was I was always in the bottom five and I always saw that number and a couple times I was like second to last and it was just the worst feeling knowing that no matter how much I studied, no matter how many advanced classes or tutors I had, like I couldn't comprehend the information. It was so challenging for me to read and

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  remember what I just read a paragraph before and like tie it into the next story. And it's always been a challenge for me. So this is really interesting to like dive into this information to realize that like, hey, I'm not an idiot. I'm not stupid. I wasn't stupid growing up. I just learned differently and I had other talents. And that's what I want to talk about here, which I'm really excited that you wrote this book.

• 8:34Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, let's talk about this.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  And um what is the you know, so I'm excited to to hear about why you're inspired to write about, but what is the key to understanding the development of greatness? That's something.

• 8:45Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Well, I'm not sure that that asking that what is the key is is the best uh the best way to develop greatness. I think the best way is to recognize there are multiple paths to greatness and that's kind of one of the big uh Points I wanted to make in that book is that every person can need to find out for themselves what their unique value is in this world and what what unique package of personal characteristics, including their motivations, their their their cognitive abilities, like are you a very verbal person, are you not, are you a visual spatial person, like, and figuring out what kind of environments and niches would be best for you. But what I what I've discovered in looking at people who really reach those highest levels,

• 9:26Scott Barry Kaufman?

  they didn't necessarily have all those stereotypical markers that we use to predict potential when you're young. And this includes, you know, I studied, I wrote this article recently about what predicts MBA success, for instance. And people would be surprised to know that like so many of the things that talent scouts go through and do are just not predicting greatness whatsoever within within those sports domains. That we looked at, this, the researchers looked at this, you know, the MBA combined, you know how they do this, they have all these prospective MBA players like show, test for their agility, test for their height, you know, their general athletic, yeah, the combine. So it finds out that's completely non predictive.

• 10:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:11Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Of of of it's it's like a really worthless thing.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  It shows their athleticism, but it doesn't show their teamwork, their leadership, their emotional intelligence, their ability to bounce back, all those things, right?

• 10:21Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Exactly, mental toughness, all the things that really are the most important things for differentiating those at the very top versus those that aren't, yeah, that's right.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  Right. Well, you know, everyone talks about, at least when I was growing up, in school, everyone was talking about IQ. And can you talk about what is IQ, just so people that don't know? What does it stand for? What's its purpose? And is it even effective? Because it kind of sounds a little bit about what you just talked about.

• 10:48Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, so if we could fast forward like fif- ten years from now and have this conversation, I would say IQ stands for imagination quotient, because that's what I'm working towards in my own.

• 10:58Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 10:59Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, that's like what the imagination is too, is trying to do is come up with a a whole new test. But we live right now, 2014, the IQ, everyone knows intelligence quotient, it's supposed to be this measure of your general cognitive ability. Think of it just like you go. And you do the physical fitness tests, you know, you have to like run with the eraser back and forth, or you have to do a chin press up, or they run five hundred meters, et cetera, et cetera, and you can take an average of all those physical fitness tests that most of us had to take in high school. And I bet, I bet you kicked ass on that, right?

• 11:34Lewis Howes?

  I do pretty well.

• 11:35Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, you did do that, that one. Yes, the physical fitness, and you get like a rough idea of someone's general physical fitness.

• 11:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:43Scott Barry Kaufman?

  By the way, I went to high school with Kobe Bryant, and I did better with him, better than him on the, um, the eraser one. I got the like, the, the all A, one there like thing for the, so that's like my one thing.

• 11:51Lewis Howes?

  One thing, yeah.

• 11:52Scott Barry Kaufman?

  No, well, within that sports domain. It kicks my ass and everything else.

• 11:57Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 11:58Scott Barry Kaufman?

  But anyway, yeah, so you get like this general rough index, and so same kind of logic is used with IQ tests, is that we make people like, maybe like, what's your vocabulary? What's your, you know, mentally rotate objects in your mind? Um, put these blocks together, or what's, you know, what's pattern comes next? And then you just take the average, and that's supposed to index your general intellectual functioning. But as you know, with, with general physical fitness as well, is that some of the greatest athletes have a lot of, they've developed very, very specific adaptations to that specific sport that make them stand out. It's not the general fitness that necessarily matters the most, but, um, that specific skill set and expertise that you've mastered.

• 12:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure. So, do you think it's effective then, or is it pretty much worthless?

• 12:44Scott Barry Kaufman?

  I don't, so I'm not anti-IQ, I'm not like trying to say they're worthless.

• 12:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:49Scott Barry Kaufman?

  But I think the way that they are used in the school system.

• 12:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Um, to, to hinder opportunity, we are effectively, um, letting way too many students fall between the cracks.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 13:01Scott Barry Kaufman?

  You know, for instance, then I can give you so many examples, so you're learning disabilities, kids with dyslexia, um, uh, uh...

• 13:08Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Schizophrenia, behavioral disorders, et cetera. There's so many multitude of reasons that could cause someone to do poorly in a little testing session with like a psychologist. We have to focus and a psychologist saying, what's the one correct answer? You know, and all these conditions, they're so anxiety provoking. Um, there's so many reasons why you could score low in this kind of environment. And then the, the school concludes, oh, well, this student is not doing well in school because of their well intelligence. What I've been trying to challenge, I'm not trying to say that those tests are useless or that are not important information, but I'm actually trying to, I, I would really like to change, like, what is the first thing that we think of when a school, when a student is well achieving? And it's not, let's pull out the IQ battery and see if they're stupid, if that explains it.

• 13:50Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Instead, I want to look at so many other factors first, like engagement, uh, effort, um, environmental support, uh, family background, like, what are these students' priorities? And, you know, like, is the student live in an environment where everyone's getting killed all around them? You know, like, that seems, surviving seems to be more important than doing well on an IQ test.

• 14:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:09Scott Barry Kaufman?

  You know, for that person. There's just so many, like, people, I think educators, um, lots of them, just have such a misguided view of how, how we realize potential and, um, and, and what those tests actually are measuring.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay. And I, I don't know if this queues into my next question, but on page sixty-one, sixty-two, you talk about the neurodiversity movement. Um, can you talk about what, what that is?

• 14:33Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, absolutely. So people, you know, with all sorts of, um, uh, different ways of thinking, um, and I, I include people like dyslexia and that and people, um, so we could just take dyslexia as one example, or autism, right? Autism is another one. People who, whose, whose brains are wired in a way that causes them to maybe have some difficulties in one thing, but it often, there's usually hidden gifts to that. So what, what we know in the, in the dyslexia literature is a lot of entrepreneurs, especially those who create their own businesses, um, have a hot overrepresentation of dyslexia. They've, they've learned to compensate maybe for their, um, their difficulties in, in the written word with, you know, with, with, with personal skills.

• 15:18Scott Barry Kaufman?

  With um with doing with action and they also people just tend to have advantages when it comes to uh mentally visualizing things. You know, and you could see how that'd be really important for sports as well, right? Like you're trying to have to like mentally visualize the next um steps you're gonna go through, mental rehearsal it's called. Um so there's lots of benefits in that. So and you look at you go you go through like all these kinds of things that have been traditionally labeled as. You know, learning disabilities or mental illness, you go to autism, um you see people autism are overrepresented in lots of technical um. They have very good attention to detail, they tend they're very good at pattern spotting patterns and things. And so what this neurodiversity movement is all about is that a lot of these people who have been labeled in a very negative way like.

• 16:02Scott Barry Kaufman?

  You know, they're that you have autism and it's like framed in this kind of negative aspect. Um it it they're just like fed up with um with being treated as though that's the totality of who they are. And what they can do in life and they're and and actually um there's a lot of research suggesting that if you look at this person in different contexts. And that's something that really interested me is like what are we capable of doing like there's some contexts when I where I look totally stupid. And um and um like no social skills, like you stick me in like a really loud thumping like dance club. Or whatever and I'm like really not that smooth.

• 16:40Scott Barry Kaufman?

  But you know, like if I'm in my element, if I'm in a conference, I could have a conference, you know, or something like that where like I feel comfortable around people that I then then. On my more natural social skills come out and and that's just an example, but people um you know, context really matters.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You know what you're just saying really speaks loudly to me about being able to mentally visualize in sports. That's. That's kind of what I felt like I was able to do all the time is see what was gonna happen, see what I wanted to create. Uh visualize the whole game in my head before the game started and really see the outcome and then also. Having a you know, a creative mind and and as an entrepreneur, I feel like I was so frustrated growing up and I don't know if anyone else listening. Felt frustrated in school and has seen it as an opportunity for something else where they'd be in. Business or you know, social skills. I really had to develop being able to connect with people because I didn't feel like my intelligence was

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  strong enough to actually, you know, getting anything done through books or through, you know, book smart things. So for me, it was all about connecting with people, being engaging, having a big heart, opening my myself, listening and creating that type of connection with people as opposed to, you know, sitting down and writing, writing papers or doing research or something like that because I was not, I just couldn't focus. I couldn't even like comprehend it.

• 18:00Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Well, that's actually a really good example, the whole focusing thing. So ADHD is another big one that um, people fundamental misunderstanding about ADHD and and why context matters. So a lot of students uh, very, they're actually really creative students and they just want to do a project or they want to express themselves, but instead they get the label ADHD because they have trouble concentrating in the classroom. But research shows that students with eight with these attentional deficits, quote, I'm putting like quotes in the air right now, quote, attention deficits in the classroom. If you get them absorbed in something that's personally meaningful to them, they actually are better at concentrating than everyone else on this planet.

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Scott Barry Kaufman?

  So, so there's another case where like, if you look at someone in one narrow context, you can conclude that person can't concentrate or shit. And then you put them in a, in a situation where they are in the flow state, um, which is something I study a lot in the field of positive psychology. And suddenly they have a better ability to get your flow.

• 18:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, just to give, go back to my example, like, you know, I couldn't wait till practice started at three thirty every day after school is done. Like I just couldn't wait. Because I knew then I'd be able to focus all my energy and attention and I was in the flow and in the zone and like, I could, I was listening to the coaches, I was taking the feedback, I was applying what I learned like instantaneously. And I bet if there was a great student who wasn't as great as an athlete, if you put them in the context of a sports practice, maybe they want to be able to focus. Maybe they'd be have ADHD in that context.

• 19:26Scott Barry Kaufman?

  That's right.

• 19:27Lewis Howes?

  So it's, it's interesting that we judge and put this criteria based on just the classroom. And then make them, you know, seem like a bad uh, child if they can't focus in the classroom or a bad student. And really they could be a great student in a different context, like music or sports or language or something, you know?

• 19:45Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Exactly right.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Well, I like that. Everything you're saying is speaking clearly, loud and clearly to me right now, so.

• 19:50Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Great.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  You talk about studies that show intrinsic motivation and how it decreases steadily, starting from about third grade, and you talk about this on page ninety-eight on the book. And again, this book is heavily, uh, there's a lot of research in this book, so, uh, you might want to do some skimming and checking out the, uh, the, the intro first and kind of checking that through chapter by chapter, then reading it all out. I want sitting, just for me, it was a challenge, but it was lots of great information.

• 20:19Scott Barry Kaufman?

  No, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. I, you know, I had to get that, there's, you know, I had to get that, that book out of my system and I had to get all the research out there, but I'm actually really excited about, uh, the new book I'm working on, which is coming out the end of next year, which is written with a journalist, uh, Carolyn Gregoire of the Huffington Post, and it's gonna be about creativity, but it's gonna be written very much more for a, a general audience.

• 20:42Lewis Howes?

  I like that, yeah.

• 20:42Scott Barry Kaufman?

  So, um, yeah.

• 20:44Lewis Howes?

  I like it. But you talked about on page ninety, ninety-eight.

• 20:46Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Intrinsic motivation, right?

• 20:48Lewis Howes?

  Intrinsic motivation decreases steadily after third grade, so can you explain what is intrinsic motivation and why this happens, um, and how to stop the decrease?

• 20:58Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Well, I wish I knew, um, we need to like change the whole educational system, basically, if we wanna stop that, but the thing that's interesting to me is when you look at little kids, they come in, we come into this world naturally motivated with, to understand the world around us for curiosity. We are wired to assimilate knowledge about this world, and we really actually want to. It's not something that we have to be told to do. But it's funny, the second we start enforcing that it's a requirement, we lose interest in do, in doing that. Uh, we, we, we kind of have it like backwards in terms of what, um, we, just how much control we really need to have over students in order to, um, to have them have intrinsic joy in the

• 21:43Scott Barry Kaufman?

  learning process. And you do see the steady decline after third grade in that intrinsic sort of, I would love to learn for the sake of learning. Um intrinsic motivation and you see this increase in extrinsic motivation and um I'm doing this for for rewards, you know, then that's that's when that's when time in our life when parents are telling us, you know, you do well in school, honey, I'll give you like a lollipop or whatever. You're like, oh, I really want that lollipop.

• 22:10Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 22:10Scott Barry Kaufman?

  You know, whatever. And so it's a really shift shifts. But it's funny because like parents and teachers, as well meaning as they are, they really are getting in the way of um of that intrinsic joint learning process. It gets it it's it it it gets worse and worse. It steadily gets worse. By the time we graduate high school and 12th grade, like virtually every student is like, I hate learning.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah. College, I remember college, like, the only reason I went to college was to be able to play sports and I could not wait to be done. It's not like I ever studied.

• 22:41Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Which sports did you play in college?

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  I played a lot, football, basketball.

• 22:45Scott Barry Kaufman?

  All right.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  And track, yeah. And it was like, you know, I wanted to be interested in learning, but it was like there was nothing that I was interested in college and learning. There was maybe one or two classes on leadership or sports psychology that I was like, okay, this is cool. And now it's like I can't wait to learn more and more now that I'm out of the school setting. It's like, yeah, I want to learn this. I'm reading these books. That's why I'm doing the podcast to interview people because I'm like, I want to learn from everyone else who's way smarter than me and take it all in. But it's in a different context and a different setting.

• 23:13Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely. You've you've returned to H5 in a good way.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 23:17Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. Okay. Um, so we lose the excitement of life basically because we're forced to.

• 23:26Scott Barry Kaufman?

  I don't know about life, that's too bad. We we learn the will to live. We learn the will to live after five.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we we we lose the excitement of learning.

• 23:35Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Uh, because we're forced to is what you're saying. It's because we're putting this structure that doesn't allow for really creative learning.

• 23:42Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Totally. And there's more to the story. Um, in in that same chapter, I talk, actually that chapter is called passion. And intrinsic motivation is different than passion. So what I talk about later in that chapter is how if we, the difference, so the difference between just being like motivated intrinsically, like, oh, I really am motivated to learn that. And I love to learn that is that you've integrated it into your identity. It's not just like I play basketball. It's like I am a basketball player. And everything you do, like, once, once you make that commitment of I am a basketball player, like, everything you do in life feeds into that. The learning is not like an effort. Anything that seems relevant at all to that, you immediately assimilate.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:26Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And, and it doesn't, through this flow process, not necessarily effort. And so that's what, that's what harmonious passion is. Harmonious, well, that's what passion is, is integrating it into your identity. But then you can integrate this activity and identity in a health, healthy, helpful way, or a very obsessive way. So obsessive passion is when you've, you've just, you, you, you have to do it at all costs. And if, and you've tied your entire ego up into this one activity so much, and you just constantly persevere. But that can lead to burnout and well, well-being, well-being. People who are harmoniously passionate, it's called harmoniously passionate about their activity, they feel, actually feel good about themselves when they're engaging. It's, it's, it's a core part of their identity, but they feel as though their, their self

• 25:11Scott Barry Kaufman?

  is becoming more complex, like, they're, they're growing and learning and every, and other sides of them, it's, it, it reaches out to other sides of their self, making them a more authentic, complex human being. And that, in a lot of ways, is the greatest feeling any of us could ever have on this planet, in addition to maybe positive relationships with others.

• 25:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You mentioned studies that show that inspiration is not just an elusive and divine gift. Can you explain this idea that inspiration can be captured and manipulated?

• 25:47Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Sure, yeah, so there are researchers who have started to take this very elusive idea of inspiration. You know, the Greek thought that like you breathe, you breathe the muses into it, us, right? And it was a very like, um, very divine sort of connotation, inspiration. But what you can do is you can take people and, um, and have them go about their day. And you can have people like page people every now and then and, and, and measure how inspired they are in that moment. When you've randomly beeped them with on their pager or whatever, or on their iPhone. And then you can have them take various tests to see, um, what, what caused that inspiration. And so in a lot of ways, like looking at before and after pictures, you know, what, what do people look like before they're inspired?

• 26:32Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And what do they look like after they're inspired by something? And through all this research, they found that inspiration has some very specific characteristics. Like inspired people all seem to, um, there's some very strong commonalities. So one is, is inspirations to be spontaneous. It's something that you, you encounter a certain stimuli or something in the world and, and you're like, boom, that's, that's it. I see new possibilities for my future. I see, I have a vision for my future that I didn't have before. I'm, I'm going beyond myself. You also have this approach motivation where you suddenly, um, your, your body and mind, everything goes, wants to go towards that vision in your head. At, at all costs, whatever the obstacles.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Yup.

• 27:15Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And, um, and it's sort of this like trans, just transcendence aspect where you, you've definitely, a lot of the self-serving concerns you used to have, um, don't matter as much anymore and, and things take on new meaning. Um, and the things that are the best predictive of inspiration are things like open to experience, like being open-minded to your environment, your experiences and, and all, and engaging yourself in lots of different, um, things and that, and challenges that you wouldn't normally. Put yourself in those situations. And and inspiration changes your not just those things I was talking about, also it increases your flow in an activity. And lots of lots of good, lots of good things.

• 27:56Scott Barry Kaufman?

  When I become convinced, you know, the the Edison thing, like, what is it greatness is like 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:05Scott Barry Kaufman?

  It's actually bullshit.

• 28:08Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Like, we did, like, we've done the studies, okay? And it's wrong. Actually, inspiration is far, far, far, far a greater predictor of creativity. Patent inventions, they looked at inventors and patents and everything, it's far, far better predictor than effort.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:27Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Isn't that, isn't that interesting?

• 28:28Lewis Howes?

  Say it one more time.

• 28:29Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, yes, inspiration is a better predictor than than effort. When it comes to the creativity, effort and inspiration predict different things. So effort predicts like technical merit and, you know, getting completion, getting things done. But inspiration is far, far better predictor of actual like creative ideas and genius level ideas and and moving things forward for a field. Yeah, so it really, that that is a crucial understudied, underappreciated variable, I think.

• 29:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting, interesting. You have this page, on page, what is this, 295, where you talk about.

• 29:12Scott Barry Kaufman?

  We're moving right along.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  We are moving along, man, yeah. You've got this definition of some intelligence. And talking, as we're talking about intelligence a little bit, all these different people who who have given their definition of intelligence, this cool illustration that I thought was pretty interesting, some of the great minds that we've, you know, had in the world. And I was just curious, what's your definition of intelligence?

• 29:39Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, boy. Well, you know, this is something that part of my dream, one of my dreams was to redefine intelligence. Ever since I was a little kid, I was like, we really need a more expansive definition. If you look at the way intelligence has been defined over the past hundred years by various researchers, something that seems to lie at the core of it is adaptation to your environment. Like, can you adapt to the environment? The thing that, the thing, though, is how do we measure it? Well, IQ tests. Well, how is IQ tests really measuring your, is it your adaptation to a very specific, narrow environment? Like, abstract puzzles and things like that. But it's not, not really measuring your ability to actually adapt and change.

• 30:20Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And, and I think strategies, your ability to devise alternative routes to getting to the same path. I think that counts as intelligence. But I also think we need to take into account, in addition to ability, we need to take into account personal goals. Like, looking at the context of what, what is that person's goals? Like, if, if someone does not care about doing well in a physics, physics class, and they are failing physics class, and we call them stupid just based on that information alone, I don't think we're getting a good assessment of their intelligence at all. And also, engagement, engagement process, I felt was lacking from any current theory of intelligence. So, you, you'll have how I didn't actually tell you exactly what intelligence is. I'm sort of saying, like, these are the characteristics that take.

• 31:05Scott Barry Kaufman?

  I, I defined it in the book as the dynamic interplay of ability and engagement in the pursuit of personal goals, and I called it my theory of personal intelligence.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I like that.

• 31:15Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, really? Awesome.

• 31:17Lewis Howes?

  I do like that, yeah. That's interesting.

• 31:18Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, Lewis Howes likes my theory.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. That's interesting way of looking at it.

• 31:22Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Thanks. Yeah, I just felt like, from a practical point of view, intelligence really should be a personal thing.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  So, say it one more time, your definition.

• 31:31Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, the dynamic interplay of ability and engagement in the pursuit of personal goals. So, ability and engagement, as far as I'm concerned, are never inseparable. You know, um, our, our ability and our, our skills, you can look at as our skills grows, depending on how engaged we are in what we're doing, how much effort we put in, how much time and care we take to develop those skills. So they're inseparable. So that's why I say dynamic interplay, they're always working together and they're always changing each other. They're mutually reinforcing.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 32:02Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And then i- in the pursuit of personal goals. So i- if you really wanna see what someone is capable of intellectually and creatively, I'm saying at the very least, give them a long period of time to engage in something that's personally meaningful to them and develop and master those skills. If you don't do that, I would say, don't even start trying to measure their intelligence.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, cuz you give them something that they don't care about, it's gonna be hard to measure.

• 32:27Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely.

• 32:27Lewis Howes?

  They're not putting their, they're not putting their full energy, their full effort, their full flow state into that understanding and learning and, and skill set. Therefore, you're not gonna get their best performance.

• 32:36Scott Barry Kaufman?

  So that, you say that as though like, yeah, duh. And the thing is, you get it, but you'd be shocked at the current education system we have, the public policies that are in place. Everything is designed to um, do basically um, the opposite, to, to uh, to, to lower student engagement, to prejudge ultimate potential without giving people the resources or the opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. I can go down the list, it's like a laundry list of the opposite of things we should do to actually get the best in- intellect and creativity out of people.

• 33:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's a challenge though, you know. I don't know if there's any perfect system or any perfect system that we could create because obviously, there's gotta be some type of structure in learning for kids growing up.

• 33:20Scott Barry Kaufman?

  You don't believe in anarchy?

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's gotta be a better way, or there's gotta be a way we can prove this, obviously. And uh, hopefully whoever figures this out, you know, I'm gonna be sending my kids to that type of school, uh, with that type of learning. But, you know, even, even the new way, there's not gonna be a perfect structure. Some kids are gonna be struggling somewhere or some way, I'm assuming. So that's the challenge is like, how do we figure out a solution that works for everyone? That's a win-win for everyone.

• 33:48Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Totally. I, I actually do work with an educational reform movement, I think has, is going in the right direction.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  What are they doing?

• 33:55Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, so they're called the Future Project and what they've done is they've hired a full-time position in the school called the Dream Director. It's like not your guidance counselor who will say be realistic if you have a dream, but the Dream Director is someone you go to and you're like, I would like to cure cancer, I would like to be in the NBA, whatever, whatever the goal is, no matter how high in the sky or how small. And the purpose of the Dream Director is to help them take whatever steps necessary to start getting closer to that goal. So they pair them up with a mentor from the community, they work on a significant project, they meet once a week. This can start freshman year and go all the way through up to, you know, graduation.

• 34:33Scott Barry Kaufman?

  And the thing that I've, that I've noticed about a lot of these kids, they come with like low self-esteem and like maybe they're failing, there's classes and things. And the thing is like, you don't, they don't have to like cure cancer in, in high school, like that's okay. Like you don't have to accomplish that dream and the point is you believe in that child, that you believe in that person, that, um, that dream is worth taking seriously. You just take the dream seriously and you tell, teach them the skill set of what it takes to really enact goals. These are the skill sets that I, this is the kind of education I envision, is one where we equip people to learn how to fish, right? You know, that old expression, you know?

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  I like that, I really like that approach and because, you know, the student is going to figure out whether the, the dream is actually possible or if they can see it as a possibility at some point in their life along the journey. If they have a mentor in fifth grade who's an NBA player and you're playing basketball and you're having this passion for it, that's what you really want to do. You know, once you get to high school, you start playing more, you're going to see like, okay, can I compete? Am I the best or am I horrible? And is it something I'm still passionate about every day, even when I suck? So you're, the student I would think would be able to be self, uh, You know, well, I don't even know what the word is, but

• 35:51Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Self determination.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  I guess, yeah, to be able to figure out for themselves if if yes, I want to continue this, or if no, I'm going to go on a new path. And at least I've learned the skills of what it needs to do to achieve my, my dream and my goals. By taking this process on this one dream. So I think that's, that's a really cool process. I mean, that's what I teach all of my um, students is like, if you want to achieve something, if you want to be great at anything, you've got to have a mentor who's the best at it already. Or one of the best that you can learn from and pick up those skills that no one else can teach you. Uh, by yourself or by yourself. So that's definitely a cool, and that's called the future project?

• 36:30Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, it's called the future project.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Is there a website or?

• 36:33Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely. Yeah. Thefutureproject.org.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 36:36Scott Barry Kaufman?

  But that's it. And there's lots of videos and stories about, about these huge transformations. You know, you really hit the nail on the head. You're like, let the students figure out for themselves that's something they want to do. I mean, the whole point is we shouldn't be prejudging potential, especially before age 18. You know, we should, we should, that's the thing that just, we just shouldn't be in the business of doing that. Yet, education is in the business of doing that. Like with, with college applications, you know.

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  So crazy. So crazy.

• 37:03Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Lewis Howes?

  Um.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  Man, it's like, yeah, I could talk about that for a while. Um. I love the sentence in page 247 that you have. It says, "We are all capable of extraordinary performance. The key is finding the mode of expression that allows you to create your own symphony." And I just thought that was such an, a great way of saying it, that we're all capable of extraordinary performance. The key is finding our own mode of expression that allows us to create our own symphony. So and this is tying it all in to kind of what you've been talking about, which is not forcing it doing something that you don't like, or the mode of expression that doesn't work for you. But finding something that you're so driven and passionate about.

• 37:49Lewis Howes?

  And you're capable of, you know, getting into the flow. The only way to create extraordinary performance in my mind is to step out of your, your mind, step out of your ego, step out of your image, conversations, your survival, um, uh, strategies and step into flow, which is obviously what you've been studying for a while as well. And I don't know if you would piggyback that or not, but I think that the only way to create any extraordinary performance is to be in flow.

• 38:18Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely. You know, I my money's on flow over, you know, a lot of people talk about deliberate practice, you know, and the book, you know.

• 38:27Lewis Howes?

  Talent is overrated. Does he talk about that?

• 38:30Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, and outliers, you know, Michael Baddeley's outliers. And Kalender's Erickson has done a whole spent his whole career studying deliberate practice, which is very deliberate mode of practice where you're learning from your mistakes, getting feedback from mentors and pushing yourself in a very intentional deliberate way. But the interesting thing is that that my colleagues have have done like a summary of across various different sports, various different domains, like in business and sports and music and education. And they found that deliberate practice actually explains a much smaller amount of the differences in altered performance than than people tend to think. People would be shocked by just how more

• 39:14Scott Barry Kaufman?

  important other forms of practice like like flow and and play, you know, I think play gets a bad rap, you know, and and I'm going to Lego in a couple of weeks in Denmark and I'm gonna be giving a talk on the importance of play and child development and creativity. And it's just hugely, I think it's just as important as deliberate practice, you know?

• 39:36Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think play and flow go together. I don't think you

• 39:39Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, they do.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  You can't you can't be in flow unless you're letting go of the conversation of the end result. I think when we think about what are people, how are people judging me and my performance? How are how are people thinking about me? What am I saying? What am I doing? How do I look? We're not, we're not playing. And then we're not in flow. But when we're just out of our minds and in in and out of our bodies, you know, where we're feeling everything and then we're letting go of the minds and what we're thinking and we're playing, we're just having fun and we're not worried about what it looks like or who's watching or what they're thinking, that's when we step in flow and such a powerful, moving, and

• 40:23Lewis Howes?

  it's the most inspiring thing when you see it in other people. You're like, wow, that person is having fun. They don't care. They're just like outrageously expressive and out of their body, right? It's such a cool experience to witness and to do yourself when you're in it.

• 40:39Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely. You know, there's some fields where you you can wear the full more on your sleeve than others like dance. You know, we're like, wow, present full, but it's still, you know, the same technology have science and sports and whatever it is.

• 40:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, math, everything. Yeah.

• 40:54Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Absolutely.

• 40:55Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy. So this was cool. I mean, so much of this book really resonates with me, and I think it's just because a lot of it is answers the, you know, the questions I had growing up and the questions that I have now and everything about learning and about why it was so challenging for me and why I've been able to adapt in other areas and be successful in some areas and not as successful in other areas. So it's, you know, the perfect book for me to like justify where where I've come from, where I'm at now. Um, and you talk about,

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  let me, tell me if you remember this. I don't know if you remember this part in the book, but you say, uh, the question is what lies at the heart of the highest creative achievers and you give three uh, keys as the answer and they all work with me. I'm like, yeah, that's, that's what I do. So I don't know if you remember these three keys, but I can read them off if you don't.

• 41:52Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, please read them.

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  Okay, you said the, so you said there's, there's a three keys that lies at the heart of the highest creative achievers. So the most creative people in the world who have achieved the most, the three things they have is drive, persistence and love. And I don't remember if you.

• 42:09Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Did I say that in the, in the book, I'm gifted?

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

  I'm pretty sure you did. I can, I don't know the page number here, but, uh, I have it here. Maybe it's, maybe it's not in the book and I got it somewhere else from you. But yeah, three things of the highest creative achievers is drive, persistence and love.

• 42:25Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's the, uh, it's definitely the triumphant trio.

• 42:29Lewis Howes?

  Triumph trio.

• 42:31Scott Barry Kaufman?

  I mean, it really is. Like you, you look over and over again and even look at, um, there's the famous studies by, uh, Bloom in nineteen fifty published this book on prodigies and, um, these kids that by before the age of twelve, like why were they like at professional level? How did that happen? And he, he found lots of things that looked like talent, um, were things that these kids spent, um, even the first 10 years of their life, um, you know, intensely driven, um, persistent, um, and, um, passionate.

• 43:04Scott Barry Kaufman?

  About about those things and the and parents and teachers just kept throwing more and more resources at them because they showed these things at an early age. But the thing I want to emphasize in this book is that this is a process that can be set off at any time in your life. I've written stuff about late bloomers and just because it's not, I don't see life as a zero sum game, just because you may not have displayed those those skills or those passions when you're really, really young and and gone up that curve, doesn't mean that when you're at any age, there's no limit, that you can get find something that inspires you and sets off that learning curve. And that's something that I really wanted to emphasize in my book.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  I like it. I like it. Well, Scott, I could talk about this for a long time and I want to, I want to actually bring you back on at some point and really dive into the topic of flow, if that's what you've been studying for a while as well, because I'm fascinated with this. I'm actually doing a workshop in Los Angeles next month, a free workshop called Step Into The Flow.

• 44:08Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh, nice.

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  Where I have been, I've been, you know, I believe I've been diving into flow a lot in my life in the sports world and in the business world and when I'm speaking on stage, but I've never been able to capture how to translate it into exercises that people can take on for themselves to step into at any moment in their life, whether it's going into a job interview or giving a presentation or doing a sales pitch or anything. So I'm working on developing these exercises that people can apply at any time to step into the flow for themselves. And so I'm experimenting with it. That's why I'm doing a free workshop just to kind of experiment. So I'd love to, I'd love to talk to you more because I would love to learn more from your, you know, research and tap into your incredibly creative mind.

• 44:51Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Well, thanks, but it sounds like I have a lot I could learn from you.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  Well, I would love to, you know, couple with your research of what you're, what you're learning and figure out ways to create exercises for people to do it, not analyze it and think it, but actually, okay, now what can I do from what we've learned in your research, I think could be really powerful.

• 45:12Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Thanks, that's really important stuff.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, so before I ask you the final question,

• 45:18Lewis Howes?

  make sure everyone go to scottberrykaufman.com. I'll have it all linked up on the show notes. I'll tell you what the link is here in the outro in just a second. The book is called Ungifted: Intelligence Redefines the Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness, not just one path, but the many paths to greatness. You've also got a couple of other books, right Scott? And you write for Psychology Today and a few different other magazines.

• 45:43Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Actually, I moved recently over to Scientific American. My blog is called Beautiful Minds at Scientific American.

• 45:49Lewis Howes?

  Nice, Beautiful Minds, okay, cool. You've written for Psychology Today and a number of other places, right?

• 45:54Scott Barry Kaufman?

  That's right, absolutely.

• 45:55Lewis Howes?

  So, and you're still a professor at New York, is that right?

• 45:58Scott Barry Kaufman?

  No, so actually, I started this new job at University of Pennsylvania.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 46:03Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Now, and I'm a scientific director of the Imagination Institute.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, I love it, I love it. And yeah, learn more about Scott over at scottberrykaufman.com. I appreciate it, and the final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 46:18Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Oh no, what a great, well, that's a great question, but...

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  It's what I ask all my guests at the end of the show, so this is perfect for you, since your book is on this.

• 46:27Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Sure, you know, I think, so at a very like statistical level, greatness is being able to do, to have some sort of accomplishment, do something that is the very, very highest end of that bell curve, like top 1% of doing something. And it could be anything, it could be like, but you know, it could be any sort of mastery skillset. But I think there is a difference between expertise and greatness, so I don't think it's just that. So that's one thing, is being able to do, have a skillset that puts you very high on that curve. But I also would define greatness as the second component, ability to actually, not just the ability to have that skillset, but to do something that moves that field in a direction that no one has ever seen before.

• 47:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love it. Scott Berry Kaufman, thanks so much, man, for coming on, I appreciate you and the research you're doing, the studies you're doing to forward education and the growth of humanity, really. So thank you so much for everything, and I can't wait to have you back on sometime soon about your next book and talking about flow.

• 47:32Scott Barry Kaufman?

  Thanks, Louis, I really appreciate being on the show.

• 47:46Lewis Howes?

  There you have it guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to go check out all the show notes over at lewishouse.com/87 to learn more about Scott, to learn more about his books on greatness, and to get links to his social media, to his website, and all the other cool stuff that he's got going on. Make sure to check it out. Share this with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook, Google+. And post a picture on Instagram where you are listening to the show. Just tag @lewishouse or #schoolofgreatness. And you guys know what time it is, it's time to go out there and do something great.