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Choiceology with Katy Milkman

Your Own Advice: With Guests Angela Duckworth, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler & Mike Mangini

Choiceology with Katy Milkman

Charles Schwab

Investing, Social Sciences, Behavioral Economics, Science, Society & Culture, Decision Making, Charles Schwab, Dan Heath, Business, Katy Milkman

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Say you have a colleague who is struggling to complete a project at work. You might offer them some tips and tricks based on your own experience with similar projects. And it’s reasonable to expect those tips might be helpful to your colleague. But what if it turned out that the act of giving that advice might provide a measurable benefit to you as well? In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at how giving advice can benefit the giver—as much or even more than the person receiving the advice. We begin the episode with Mike Mangini. Mike is a talented drummer, best known in the world of progressive rock. He has toured and recorded with numerous artists, including Steve Vai and Extreme. He also spent many years teaching drums privately and at the Berklee College of Music. It was in the process of teaching that he developed a system to codify his approach to playing drums. That system helped Mike navigate an intense audition for one of the biggest progressive rock bands in the world. From the heady world of arena rock, we move to more practical examples of the power of giving advice. You’ll hear several people offering advice on a number of challenges—and then hear them realize the usefulness of their own advice in real time. Next, Katy speaks with both Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Angela Duckworth about the science behind advice giving. Lauren had the initial insight into this phenomenon. She and Angela, her doctoral adviser, ran a large-scale field experiment, along with Katy and Dena M. Gromet. The study demonstrates the measurable power of the advice-giving effect. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler is a postdoctoral fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Angela Duckworth is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Picture the Empire Strikes Back.

0:15.0

Luke Skywalker is training in the humid swamps of the planet Dagoba with Yoda, the tiny green 900-year year old Jedi master.

0:25.0

As the scene unfolds, Yoda offers several purls of Jedi wisdom to Luke.

0:31.0

He prods Luke to clear his mind of questions.

0:34.0

Tels him that he must unlearn what he has learned.

0:38.0

That he must do or do not, there is no try.

0:42.0

Sure, some of the advice is very. or do not, there is no try.

0:43.7

Sure, some of the advice is vague and grammatically problematic,

0:47.5

and Luke seems reluctant to follow every suggestion.

0:50.9

But I want to pose a question that you might not be expecting.

0:54.0

What does Yoda get out of this arrangement?

0:57.0

It's a common trope in movies,

1:01.0

The Master and the Student, The Karate Kid and Mr. Miyagi, Professor

1:06.1

Dumbledore in Harry Potter, Gandoff in Bilboobagans. In these fictional

1:11.2

examples, we all assume that the value of the advice is always greater for the student.

1:16.0

But in real life, is this always the case?

1:20.0

In this episode of Choiceology, we'll talk about a newly discovered benefit of giving advice,

1:26.0

a phenomenon that could be useful for anyone working towards a challenging goal,

1:30.3

whether that's a high school student trying to improve her grades or a rock drummer doing the audition of a lifetime.

1:37.0

I'm Katie Milkman and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.

1:48.0

It's a show about the psychology and economics behind the decisions people make.

1:52.3

We bring you true stories involving high stakes choices,

...

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