whipped cream and nuts on top somebody go grab a marasino cherry i'm angela duckworth i'm stephen

and you're listening to no stupid questions today on the show why should you exert yourself

if you can get other people to do the work for you. You're a bad, bad person.

I'm a terrible person.

Also, Stephen shares a special moment of appreciation.

I like team Duckner, Dubworth.

Angela, I want to ask a question related to something we discussed not long ago on this very show.

We were talking about meetings, how bad they often are, how so many meetings are dominated by noisy people.

We talked about the, quote, right size of a given meeting.

But one thing we didn't get to is the idea that meetings can be good for what

economists call free riders, meaning you go along for the ride while someone else is doing the work.

Yeah. So let's say you and I and six other people are in a brainstorming meeting. And I know that

you, Angie, have a lot of great ideas. So I can just sit back and think about what I'm

going to have for dinner that night. Now, I've since learned that psychologists have a phrase

for this too. It's called social loafing. I like that phrase even more than free riding.

If I can find a way to free ride in social loaf at the same time, that's my perfect day.

But I do want to ask you, what exactly is social loafing?

Is it as wonderful as it sounds? And should I be doing even more of it?

Social living is when you have a group task, more than one person trying to accomplish anything, really,

like tugging a rope in a tug of war but also brainstorming ideas for the next product

in a meeting anything where there's a task that needs to be accomplished by a group of people

the idea of social loafing is that as an individual I will work a little less hard or sometimes a

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