Accomplishment and Happiness (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker)

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2024

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We push ourselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement.

Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside.

Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake.

Shermer and Gopnik discuss:

mastering the secrets of stage magic (Gopnik's son worked with David Blaine and Jamy Ian Swiss)
accomplishment in music
family and mentors
the concept of the 10,000-hour rule vs. natural talent
Adam's new book All That Happiness Is, which offers timeless wisdom against the grain.

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1986. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon and The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery.

Sponor: brilliant.org/skeptic

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Showe. This episode is brought to you by Brilliant. The learning platform designed to be
0:30.0	uniquely effective in teaching you to learn by doing, not just watching mindless
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1:18.6	able to do it myself. So check it out, take a break from watching those videos on Tik-Tock and Instagram and
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1:55.0	Pleasure to be with you, Michael. I've been a fan of Skeptic, the magazine and the movement
	...

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