This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Nearly all of us are asked this question very early in our lives.

In the mid-1920s, a young man who went by the name of Fred had a clear answer.

He wanted to be a writer.

He hoped to live among other writers and artists in Paris or Greenwich Village. So Fred

went to college to study literature. He read voraciously and began writing short stories.

But like so many writers before him and after him, Fred found literary success elusive. In November 1927, he read an article by H.G. Wells in the New York Times Sunday magazine.

The article asked the reader to consider who had made a bigger contribution to civilization,

the playwright George Bernard Shaw or the Russian neurologist and physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

Fred thought about it and decided the answer was clear.

It was the Russian scientist.

He set aside his writing aspirations to enter a PhD program at Harvard where he trained as a psychologist.

He spent the next 40 years studying human behavior instead of writing stories about it.

In that time Burris Frederick Skinner, better known as B.F. Skinner, became one of the most influential psychologists in the world.

His work has greatly shaped our modern understanding of human behavior.

Not all of us become groundbreaking scientists, but nearly all of us have had the experience of traveling down one road only to realize

It is not the road for us.

Today we kick off a new series we're calling Innovation 2.0. We'll explore the

science of creativity and how organizations and

find your sense of direction

this week on Hidden Brain. When it comes to pursuing our goals, the path seems straightforward.

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