Angela Duckworth: The Gritty Road to Growth

Guy Kawasaki:
Hello again. It's Guy Kawasaki, and you're listening to the Remarkable People podcast. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Today we have for her second time the extraordinary Angela Duckworth.
The last time we had her on, I interviewed her about her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. It was a New York Times number one bestseller. She is in a way, the mother of grit. Angela is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She's also the CEO of Character Lab, and she has won a MacArthur Award in 2013 for her contribution to the concepts of self-control and grit.
If all of this wasn't enough, Angela is also the co-host of a podcast called No Stupid Questions. It's a great podcast. You should listen to it. When a podcaster tells you to listen to somebody else's podcast, there's no higher form of praise.
Anyway, I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. Let's give it up for Angela Duckworth. Angela, you're in rare company, because only you, Bob Cialdini, Jane Goodall and Julia Cameron have repeated on this podcast. I want you to know that.
Angela Duckworth:
What? Oh my gosh. A little pressure there for me. All right. I'll try not to screw up. That's impressive. The other people are impressive.
Guy Kawasaki:
We save this honor for MacArthur Fellows.
Angela Duckworth:
I think you're just waiting to get the other guests back, is my alternative explanation.
Guy Kawasaki:
First of all, I want to catch up a little. Is Lucy still playing the viola?
Angela Duckworth:
Oh my gosh. Has it been that long since we spoke?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Angela Duckworth:
Because no. Lucy, my younger daughter, is no longer playing the viola, and hasn't played the viola, gosh, I don't know how long it's been then since we talked. For a while, right? Because she's twenty now, and she's in college. She hasn't been playing the viola for a while.
Guy Kawasaki:
When she quit viola, did she pass the hard thing rule, or did she just bag it?
Angela Duckworth:
I had been, improbably, the outspoken advocate for quitting viola for not weeks or months, really for years. I think I have backup on this. You could ask other people in our family. You could ask Lucy. I was the one who said, “I think you should quit viola. I think you should do a different hard thing.”
Guy, you're referring to the hard thing rule. Which our family, we raised our kids with this rule that everybody had to do a hard thing. A hard thing was defined as something that took true practice, according to the kind of, the practice that I researched the experts were doing.
It was a rule that also said that you weren't allowed to quit the hard thing in the middle of your commitment. That didn't mean you could never quit it. It just meant that you can't quit in the middle of track season. Right? Or if you've paid for twenty lessons of viola, you can't quit in the middle of your commitment to your teacher.
The last part of the hard thing rule was that nobody got to choose your hard thing but yourself. I thought this brought together everything I knew as a psychologist, and I was trying to figure out as a mother, of all the things that go into somebody developing a passion.
I was very certain that my daughter Lucy was not developing a passion for viola. Because she never talked about it outside of her required practice. She never read about it. She didn't want to go to concerts.
She wasn't even watching YouTube videos of people playing the viola. It was as certain as anything I knew that she probably shouldn't be doing that as her hard thing. I told her that over and over again. I'm not saying that she finally listened, but she did finally quit.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm having an out-of-body experience, Angela. The mother of grit told her daughter to quit. That's the headline. Oh my God.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah, I know. Doesn't that sound crazy? Grit shaming or something, or quit shame. I don't know what it is. But I think one of the intuitions I had then, that has only become stronger since then, because of scientific research that's been published, but also just the more I reflect on it.
The essence of grit is not never quitting anything. Right? It's true that there's one item on the grit scale questionnaire I use in most of my research on grit. This question says, "I finish whatever I begin." To score on the grit scale, you would have to be five out of five on I finish whatever I begin.
I think that item gets at something very important. I own up fully to, if I could go back in time, I just would've argued more loudly and more vigorously to quit earlier, because I think Lucy quit viola years later. It's not that I think kids should quit everything. It's not that I don't believe in practice.
It's not even that I don't believe in music. It's just that when you learn to do things that are hard, I do think you learn to fulfill your commitments, and to do something that's not immediately gratifying. I think it's a lesson that we have to learn. It's a lesson that I would rather young people learn earlier than later.
To do something where, in the moment of the practice, in the moment of doing the scales, in the moment of revising a sentence, there's a thousand things that you could do that are easier and more fun. So I think it's an important thing to do a hard thing.
But I think one of the most important things you have to do, especially as a young person, but probably all of life, is to figure out whether it's the right hard thing for you. The word for this in scientific research is called sampling. Eventually, you do want to become a specialist of a kind. To become really great at anything, you have to specialize.
But what research is finding, and I even had this intuition before the research that's come out in the last few years, and would've been too late for my kids, because Lucy's now twenty. But even then, I had the intuition that scientists have since affirmed.
Which is that sampling is a necessary prerequisite to specializing for almost every expert. Not all. There are definitely the David Beckhams. I don't know how much sampling David Beckham did before he committed to playing football/soccer, depending on what continent you're in.
But most professional athletes who are truly world-class, and for example, Nobel laureate scientists, if you look back into their childhoods, and you ask the question, "How did they spend time when they were young?" When they were young, they were not specialists. They were actually sampling a variety of things. We could have a conversation about why that's so important. But absolutely, I encouraged Lucy to quit viola, and to start another hard thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So now your daughters are in their twenties. Are they basically grit monsters? Are they just, put anything in front of them and they're going to take that hill?
Angela Duckworth:
It's dangerous to talk about daughters who are twenty-two and twenty, because they're old enough to hear and they're young enough to care. But at the risk of being overly candid, so Lucy and Amanda, Lucy's twenty, Amanda's twenty-two. Are they hardworking?
Yes, they are hardworking. Do they quit commitments in the middle? No, they do not quit commitments in the middle. I don't know that either of them, however, have the kind of fierce ambition that Jason, my husband, and I had when we were twenty-two or twenty.
I mean, we were really driven, maybe in a way that was less healthy. We spent less time with our friends than they spend with their friends. For me, I think I was sleeping probably four hours a night. Then all the other hours, like all the other twenty hours a day, seven days a week, I was basically being productive in one way or another. I don't think that would be a true statement of my daughters.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. I feel the same way. That each generation gets lazier and lazier, and I'm third generation.
Angela Duckworth:
I know you're supposed to be asking me about my family, but now I'm just curious. How has it been for you?
Guy Kawasaki:
My grandfather and grandmother's side, they came to pick sugar cane. My father was a fireman. My mother was a housewife. I am who I am in tech. My kids, I don't see them working as hard as I remember, but that could be selective memory.
Angela Duckworth:
But it also could be regression to the mean. Statistically, the more you are an outlier, the less likely it is that your kids will be just like you. Exactly, just statistics, right?
Guy Kawasaki:
Thank God.
Angela Duckworth:
For some things, you'd be like, "Wow, there's hope. Right? Maybe you won't be as screwed up as I am." Because it also works on the other end of the distribution. Outliers of any kind get closer to the mean the next time you roll the dice. I remember being in a meeting. It was still in graduate school.
I remember I can picture the conference room. It was this windowless conference room, that somebody had the good sense to paint the ugliest peach color you can imagine. Anyway, we had all of our scientific meetings in there. It was probably good for concentration, because there was nothing else to do other than listen to the speaker.
The speaker was Ed Diener, who was, and maybe always will be, he's now passed, the reigning monarch in the study of happiness. He really founded the field of wellbeing. He was holding forth, and it was a scientific talk on a number of topics that I cannot remember. But one thing I will never forget was, he looked at everybody in this room.
It was a room of very eminent academics. I think it was a conference of some kind that happened to be held with that particular talk, that I was able to attend. He said, "None of your kids are likely to be as successful as you are. By the way, if you're extremely happily married, they're unlikely to be as happily married as you are. If you're really good-looking, they're unlikely."
I'm like, "And by the way, nobody really needed that to be told to them, because it's a basic fact of statistics." And they all knew it, but just to be told, it was startling. So, yeah. Maybe it's not that every generation is lazier than the one that came before.
But maybe the more we are something, gritty or extroverted or whatever, maybe our kids are just unlikely to be like that, because you've rolled the die. When you throw the cards up in the air, if you started out with a royal flush, and you pick up five cards, they're probably not going to be a royal flush.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you feel better or worse about it?
Angela Duckworth:
That sounds incredibly denigrating. I feel like that sounds terrible. "I'm a royal flush, and my kids are not." I'm not at all hinting that. By the way, when I look at my kids and how they're living their life, I was not a tiger mom. I have no regrets about that. I think that in so many ways my kids are making wiser choices than I did.
Certainly, my husband would say the same. Were we wrong to spend so much time working? When we go to our reunions, we hardly know anyone. I'll speak for myself. My husband may be a little bit more socially successful.
But when I go back to my reunions for college, I hardly know anyone. The only people I know are ex-boyfriends, because I had a number of those, but I don't really have a lot of friends from college. It's my fault.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. This interview is not turning out how I thought it would.
Angela Duckworth:
I'm probably taking you off track.
Guy Kawasaki:
No, that's okay. What's your current thinking about the roles of talent, grit and luck in success?
Angela Duckworth:
I think there's something on that list that I think I would add, unless you want to call it luck. I started off thinking only about talent and grit. I started off only by thinking, there's how fast you get good at something. Let's call that talent. Then there's how long you work at it. Let's call that grit.
I started out thinking it's a kind of tortoise and the hare story. What I'm going to do in my life and in my research is shine a light on effort, and how important it is. And how it's easy to find the hares, but it's really important to follow the tortoises.
Then clearly the fact that there's other things than talent and grit, that began to shape my perspective. But I don't know if it's just luck, because it depends on what you mean by luck. So first let me ask you, when I say, "Yeah, there's also luck," what immediately springs to your mind? You've thought about success a lot as well.
Guy Kawasaki:
If I look at my own life, so I'm lucky to fundamentally be healthy. I'm lucky that I was born in Hawaii multiracial. I was lucky that my parents appreciated education and made sacrifices for me. I was lucky that I met someone at Stanford who hired me at Apple. I didn't earn any of that. I just showed up and it happened.
Angela Duckworth:
Whereas say, grit and talent, you could say they're part of you. So there's a distinction between luck and things that are you.
Guy Kawasaki:
Those are not me. Those are luck, in my mind. Yes.
Angela Duckworth:
Exactly. I'm saying that luck is what's not you, right?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Angela Duckworth:
What you can't take credit for in any way.
Guy Kawasaki:
Right.
Angela Duckworth:
Because they happen to you. If you define luck broadly that way, then I don't need a fourth thing, and three is a better number than four for a list. But I'm only thinking about those things these days, actually. It's not because I've decided that effort doesn't matter. It's not that I've changed my mind, and I think talent is everything.
But I think these things that you would say are not you, but they shaped who you are. They broadened your horizons, and for some people narrowed their horizons. I wrote this book, Grit, I don't know, nearly a decade ago. I wrote that book very much motivated by my father's story. My father played such an outsize role in shaping my identity.
He gave me an obsession with excellence and achievement. And he probably gave me a kind of, I don't know, like a sort of, "I'll show you," sense. Because I kept trying to prove him wrong, too, because my dad loved talent. But then since writing the book, I've been spending more time with my mom. My mom, I never really paid much attention to growing up.
They both immigrated from China. My father seemed to me like the ambitious and gritty person, who made a career at DuPont and was a very successful scientist. He never won the Nobel Prize, but there are lots of innovations in car paint that my dad can put his name next to.
My mom was the devoted wife. She was the soul of generosity and affection. But I never thought of my mother as ambitious, and I never thought of my mother as gritty. I only recently got to understand my mom's full story. My mom came to this country in her early twenties. She couldn't speak a word of English. She had come via Taiwan, but originally she was born in China.
She came here as the very first person in her family. So she was not joining brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins. She knew nobody. She came here because she had an ambitious dream. She wanted to become an artist, and she didn't think she could do that in Taiwan or China.
So she enrolled in this art academy in Philadelphia, the Academy of Fine Arts. She ate, drank and slept art. She had all the sort of ups and downs that anyone does. Being told by her professor that she's merely copying other people's work, and that she needs to find her own style.
But the reason I never knew this story is that by the time I was born, I was the third of three children, my mother had transformed into an entirely different person. At that point, there was no talk about art. She never even asked to go to a museum, much less have her own room to paint.
The misunderstanding that I had was that my mom lacked grit. But really, I think my mom lacked luck. She didn't have an advocate, a coach, a group of like-minded artists who wanted to talk about art after work and compare notes and show each other their work.
Most of all, she didn't have a partner. My father, who was a great person in many ways, was an absolute failure, I think, in the respect of supporting my mother's ambition.
She said that sometimes she would, early in her marriage, paint something and hang it up in the kitchen by the dining table, where my father would sit every breakfast and every dinner. Months would go by before he might even notice there was a new painting up.
So really I think, what I'm thinking about these days are all the things that are not directly that person's grit or that person's talent that enable them to do things. Or in some cases, like my mom's, hinder them from realizing their ambitions.
Guy Kawasaki:
I love when we go into stuff like this, because I bet you never discuss stuff like this on your podcast, or when you're interviewed.
Angela Duckworth:
No. This is like to the bone.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's take this as a given. That these things you don't control, are not part of you, are a big factor. But what's the practical implication of that? Because get lucky is not a strategy either, so what do you do with this knowledge?
Angela Duckworth:
I think one of the reasons why we don't think about these things, especially when I say we, I think really hardworking, ambitious people often think about overcoming the poor odds they've been given. They think about the situation sometimes as the thing that you can't really change, but you are going to overcome it.
Because one thing you can change is your own attitude, your own effort, your own will. Right? I think that's half right, or I could just say I think that's not quite right. That's the kind of obvious thing about the situation. There are many factors. My mom couldn't directly change my father's attitude towards art, towards the right of a woman to have ambition in a marriage. She couldn't directly change those things.
Oftentimes, hardworking, ambitious, gritty people think about the situation as something merely to be overcome through personal will. I think that's why we like poems, "I am the captain of my fate. I am the master of my soul." But the reason I think that's a grave mistake is that you asked the right question, which is, "What are we going to do?"
I think there are things that we can do, sometimes and in some ways to actually change our situations. So instead of thinking of the situation as that which we cannot change. And there's so many quotes on this, Guy, from every religious tradition, from every philosophical tradition. You can't change the situation, but you can change how you react to it.
I think that's not true. Sometimes you can change the situation. In my mother's case, I'll tell you what she did very recently. My father died during the pandemic. It was at the end of a very long illness. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but he died. When he died, my mother was, I'll say emancipated from this role that she had.
That in some ways she was born into, given her upbringing and the way her mother talked to her. But my mother was liberated to do whatever she wanted. She lived in this, and still does, live in this senior community that had everything up to the most skilled nursing care. That's why they were there, because of my father's illness. My mother was still in independent living, because she's as spry as a fox.
So she walks down to the manager's office, it's called the Quadrangle. She says, "I'd like to rent another unit." They ask her, "What's wrong with her unit? It's got good sunlight. It's quiet." She says, "Oh, I want to keep my unit. I just want to have a whole other apartment." Still more confusion. Why would you need two? They've never had a resident in history ask to own two separate units and pay rent on two separate units.
She says, "Oh, because I'm an artist. And I need a place to paint, and I need a place to mess up and not worry that it's a mess." When she told me this story, I immediately thought of Virginia Woolf, of one's own, and this idea that a writer or an artist or a maker of any kind.
I went back and reread because I read that when I was in high school. I went back and reread the passage that gave this book its name. Virginia Woolf said that when you have an idea, it's like a fish. The fish is darting here and there through the water, and you're trying to catch the fish. Maybe you'll catch it, and maybe you won't catch it.
But one way never to catch it is to be interrupted, because the doorbell rings, or you have to make your husband breakfast, or you have to rub his back, or you have to clean the dishes from dinner. And then you come back, and you're looking for your idea, and it's gone. My mom had a situation that was not ideal. She's now eighty-nine, about to turn ninety. But in her late eighties, decides to change her situation.
She didn't say, "Oh, the situation is something you could never change." She said, "I have agency. Let me create opportunity for myself." So now my mom has two units at the Quadrangle. One of them she lives in, and the other one is her art studio. She's painting. She's never been more prolific. She just had an art show in Tennessee. She just flew back, got back at 2:00 in the morning actually today.
I think that is a kind of parable, for me anyway. It says to me both that we should have humility, when we see somebody who is or isn't obviously ambitious. Before we pass judgment, we should think, what is the role of the situation here? How much has this person been supported or hindered in their dreams?
Then the second lesson of this parable, I think it goes along with humility, is hope. Which is that it's never too late to try to change your situation when you can. So my mom to me is belatedly, and that's my fault, not hers, teaching me these important lessons.
They are not really lessons about will, and what you should do to overcome the situation only through your own changing the things inside you. They really are about changing what's outside you. This is what I'm thinking about, Guy. This is literally what I'm thinking about, when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, and every moment in between.
Guy Kawasaki:
Angela, I can tell you, that may be the best story we have ever heard on this podcast. Seriously, no bullshit.
Angela Duckworth:
My mother's story? I mean, my mother's the nicest and kindest person I have ever met. So if she has the best story you've ever heard, it would only be appropriate. Guy, to be at the age that I am, and to realize that, oh my God, I've lived more than half a century without really paying attention to my mother and my mother's story.
What a hero, right? My whole life, if you ask me, "Who in this family has ambition? Who in this family cares about excellence? Who has a dream? Who's willing to work and do anything, sacrifice anything?" I would've said my father.
I wouldn't have even been able to tell you that my mom sailed across an ocean, not knowing anyone, learning a new language, being so lonely. She told me how hard it was to be totally alone in this country.
She painted this painting, that I have in my house. It's my most prized possession. If there's ever a fire, it will be the one thing that I take with me. It's this painting of an ocean, and there's a big rock in the middle. It's like an island made out of rock. In the distance, you can see these little white sailboats.
She painted that painting when she was twenty-four years old, and she told me the story of that painting. She said, "Well I was here in Philadelphia. I knew no one. My professor had just told me, 'Theresa, you can't copy everybody else's style. You have to find your own art. That's what it is to be an artist. So if you really have this dream, that's what you have to do.'"
She went home, and she decided to come back to the studio and paint a picture of this mountain island. It was a symbol of everything she had left behind. It was a symbol of stability, of family, of friendship, of knowing the language, of fitting in, of belonging.
She painted that painting because, it was a painting to show that she was willing to sacrifice all of that for her dream of becoming an artist. I'm embarrassed to say, Guy, that I've had that painting for many more years than I knew that story, because I never asked. I never even thought to ask my mother about who she really was, and who she wants to be.
Guy Kawasaki:
We are so freaking deep.
Angela Duckworth:
I'm sure this is not at all what you want to talk about, because I haven't really told people about what I'm speaking about right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
No. Actually this is beyond my wildest expectations. We've got to lighten up for a while, because my head is going to explode. I have to say that I love your new show about No Stupid Questions. So can we veer off into that?
Angela Duckworth:
Totally.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Angela Duckworth:
A little levity.
Guy Kawasaki:
First of all, just fundamentally, how do you come up with the questions that you decide to answer on the show?
Angela Duckworth:
No Stupid Questions is a show on the Freakonomics Radio platform. I started it with Stephen Dubner, oh gosh, maybe three and a half years ago. We had the idea that there are no stupid questions. There probably are a few stupid questions. But questions are just things that you don't know.
There's this definition of curiosity that I love. Scientists who study curiosity often say, "It's simply wanting to know." That's what a question is, anyway. It's the formulation of something that you want to know. Stephen and I would come up with questions. And then we would ask the people who listened to No Stupid Questions what questions were on their mind, what they were curious about.
Now I have a new co-host. His name is Mike Maughan. He's like you. He's from tech. So he's interested in human nature, like you, but he comes from a tech background. Every week, we have a question that is either from a listener. I think that's about half of the questions. We just get these emails, and we read through them.
There actually are no stupid questions, but the question has to be one where there's something to say from a behavioral science perspective. Otherwise, I'm not especially helpful. So we pick half the questions from that. Then I would say the other half of the questions just come from things that I'm thinking about, or Mike's thinking about.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so that's how you get the questions. Now, what's the process to answer the questions?
Angela Duckworth:
There is a little of a conceit, if you will. It's not that I have a spontaneous conversation. Nothing's rehearsed and nothing is scripted, but I think about the question for a week or so in advance. We decide, "Oh, let's take these questions." Then on my side anyway, I think Mike probably does the same, but he does it without science.
He looks at stuff, and I don't know, he reads things in the newspaper, he thinks about stories. For me, if anybody asks me any question, I look at scientific research. Really almost any question anybody asks me, my first instinct is to ask, "What research has been done?"
So I make sure that I've put in my working memory things that I think are important to say, and then we really do just have a conversation. We cover the things that I think are important, the things that he thinks are important. Did you ever listen to Click and Clack? The two guys.
Guy Kawasaki:
From Boston. Yeah.
Angela Duckworth:
Were they from MIT? Yeah. They had those great Boston accents. The Tappet Brothers, I think they were called. Anyway, they would have that show, where they would talk about a car problem every time. It was Car Talk, right? They would just answer the question about somebody's carburetor, but also they would digress, so that was a little bit the model.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, but getting even more tactical. When you say you want to seek the answer to this question, and you look at all the research, exactly how do you do that? Do you use Google Scholar, or do you go to the Journal of Applied Psychology? What do you use?
Angela Duckworth:
That is a good journal, Guy, by the way, the Journal of Applied Psychology. Okay. This is the way I would go about research. So this is I think the advice I would give to my graduate students. But humans can do this if they want to know the answer to a question, and they want to know what the science is.
So I do go to Google Scholar. By the way, ChatGPT is quite good, and I use that as well. I think everybody should use ChatGPT every day. I try to discipline myself because it's like physical therapy. I just feel like I should do it every day, and make sure I'm keeping my ChatGPT muscles toned.
But I first go to Google Scholar, because when you enter anything into Google Scholar, so say you say, income and happiness, right? Like perennial question, "If I get richer, will I be happier?" You just put income and happiness into the search bar for Google Scholar.
What you'll get is a rank ordered list of scientific publications, with some algorithm on the backend, that's pretty damn good. Because they give you the most highly cited, but it's not exactly in order of citations, like the most prominent regarded journals, like the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Whatever they're doing on the backend to give you that, I will tell you, because I can search for things that I really know well, and I would give roughly the same rank ordering. So if you look at the first ten or twenty references when you do a Google Scholar search for anything. You have a medical problem; you have a problem you need to solve at work.
Oh, you don't have a behavioral scientist or another scientist on lookup? Just put it into Google Scholar. So I go to Google Scholar. And I do ask ChatGPT, which I think what this new generative AI is so very good at, and the reason why it's a good adjunct to doing Google searches, but you know more about this than I do, I'm sure, is that it is really able to synthesize.
So instead of just getting the top ten or twenty hits, it's looking at all the hits, and then it's putting it all together for you. So I triangulate between those things. I think for any topic, and I don't know what you think, because you've done a lot more interviewing, and a lot more thinking about like how to get smart about a topic I think fast.
But for me in science, there's always between three and five key people. I say this to my doctoral students. If you can find the three to five key people, and then just follow the breadcrumb trail of the things that they've done.
And I would read their work in reverse chronological order. So once you do the Google Scholar search and you're like, "Oh, I see this name a lot, and this article is really good," then find that person. Go to their profile and read in reverse chronological order.
In other words, read their most recent stuff first, and give it the most weight. Because if they changed their mind in 1985, you don't really need to know what came before 1985. You can get pretty smart on a topic very fast.
Guy Kawasaki:
I just want you to know that you, Katy Milkman, Bob Cialdini and Brené Brown are probably my three to five key people that I follow. Okay?
Angela Duckworth:
Your Mount Rushmore? I don't want to put myself up there. I think you've named, and I include Brené Brown on this. She's not exactly in my social network, because she's not primarily dedicated to publishing academic research. But I would count her actually as a world-class psychologist. I think her training is more like sociology or whatever.
But sometimes I read things, and sometimes they're like poets or novelists or CEOs. Sometimes I hear or read something, and I think, that person is a world-class psychologist. I often am talking to a high school track coach. I'm thinking of one in particular. His name is Kirk. When I talk to that person or I'm thinking of an eighth grade teacher named Alhassan. They are world-class psychologists.
So I have my own little Mount Rushmore also. But I think Peter Drucker said at the end, not at the very end, maybe toward the end of his career as a management guru. Peter Drucker said something like, "The challenge of our time is not a technological challenge, and it's certainly not an industrial or a manufacturing challenge. The challenge that faces humanity is to understand itself. Human nature is the next frontier."
If you just look at our physical health, and the climate, and how we're getting along these days, and war and voting and politics and education. I just can't see how Peter Drucker could have been more right. We have to understand human behavior and emotion and thinking, now more than ever. I think that is exactly the challenge of the twenty-first century.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. I love that you love Peter Drucker. Because Peter Drucker said something like, "The task of a company is to create customers." I have held that in my brain since I read that, all about creating customers.
Angela Duckworth:
What does that mean, by the way? What does that mean to create customers? As opposed to what?
Guy Kawasaki:
As opposed to make money, as opposed to create jobs, as opposed to foster innovation. The way you create customers could involve any of those, but the goal is to create a customer where there was no customer before.
Angela Duckworth:
I would say that I love Peter Drucker, but maybe I can't say I'm a Peter Drucker aficionado, because I didn't know that. Then again, I never had to read Peter Drucker to run anything. I was actually reading him for his insights into humans.
Guy Kawasaki:
You should read The Effective Executive.
Angela Duckworth:
Is that his best work?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, best work. Yeah. So now, let me ask you. When you first come up with this question, how often does your intuition prove to be right versus wrong?
Angela Duckworth:
It's such an excellent question. I think I only have half an answer. The answer that I'll give you is, I'm not often surprised by what I find when I look at something. But the reason why I think that's half an answer is that I am most certainly committing confirmation bias. Right? When somebody asks us anything, we have an idea, we have an intuition.
The problem about human cognition is that we then search for all the reasons why we're right. That's called confirmation bias, and I think I'm guilty of that. So many people are familiar with Danny Kahneman's work. If you're going to have a Mount Rushmore, by the way, you have to have Danny Kahneman on it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Angela Duckworth:
Do you not have Danny Kahneman on your Mount Rushmore?
Guy Kawasaki:
University of Chicago.
Angela Duckworth:
No. Princeton. You know who's at the University of Chicago? I think you're thinking of Richard Thaler. They're very good friends.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, okay.
Angela Duckworth:
And they're both credited with birthing behavioral economics. But Danny Kahneman spent the last decades of his career at Princeton. And he's still alive, by the way. So he's like a living legend. He pioneered this field where, "Oh, there's this bias and there's that bias, and here's another one and yet another."
But one of the things that I think Danny would readily and loudly not only admit to, but want to shout out to everyone, is that all these biases that exist, anchoring bias, et cetera, they're there for a reason. You think about them as mistakes, but they're these rules of thumb that mostly work, and sometimes don't.
And I'm not saying there's not a problem with always looking for reasons why you're right. It's a problem in hiring. It's a problem in decision making. You don't want to run a business and be prone to confirmation bias all the time. But it's also helpful, I think. For me, I do have this very simple framework that I've learned in psychology. That I'm probably confirming all the time, and I can tell you what it is.
But without that framework, I think I would be like flotsam and jetsam on a very tumultuous ocean. I'd be like, "I don't know." Somebody would ask me a question about what they should do with their kid, who feels anxious because she said something that she hopes her friend doesn't hear. If I didn't have a framework where I was like, "Let me go and confirm this with my framework," I would be like, "I don't know. I have no idea." So I'm probably engaging in confirmation bias, but that's maybe not entirely a bad thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait. What's the framework?
Angela Duckworth:
So the framework is, I'll use the term that Stephen Dubner used to use. He was like, "Oh, the three box frame." I was like, "Oh, yes, the three boxes." He calls it like the three boxes model. It's that when you try to understand anything, so say your daughter is anxious, or you're anxious.
You're ruminating about some negative feedback. For me, I got some negative reviews on this course that I just taught at Wharton. I got positive reviews too. But of course, I'm only thinking about the negative reviews.
So I'm ruminating, right? I'm trying to understand the rumination. I'm trying to also maybe change the fact that I'm ruminating. So that's box number three. That's one of three boxes, and that is how I'm responding right now. I'm feeling anxious, a little bit embarrassed, maybe preoccupied.
Okay. If I want to understand box number three, and even change box number three, all I have to do is reverse engineer the boxes that came before, and there's only two others.
So what's box number two? Box number two are these, what clinical psychologists often call the automatic thoughts. So before I have the feeling of embarrassment or anxiety or shame or regret, or happiness, joy, fill in the blank, and even before I do anything, there's always this box that comes before.
And that is this very quick thought of, what's going on. Sometimes, we're conscious of these thoughts, but very often you're not conscious. That is why a lot of therapy is the assistance of another individual to help you realize what those fleeting, automatic, but very powerful thoughts are. That lead you to then feel anxious, that lead you to then feel pride, or to make a decision in one way or the other.
So those are your thoughts, automatic thoughts. Again, not always conscious, very often not conscious. Then box number one is the objective situation, that gave rise to the thoughts, that gives rise to the response. So it's situation, thought, response. It's a three box model for all the things that human beings do, for good or for ill.
The reason why I find this to be very helpful is that, first of all, three is a very good number. Because it's small, and people can remember it. But it gives you three points of entry for changing things. What most people try to do is they just try to change box number three directly. "Well, I'm feeling anxious. I should stop feeling anxious." "Oh, I'm ruminating. I should stop ruminating." "Oh, I keep eating too much. I should stop eating too much."
They attack box number three directly using willpower. Then what they fail to think about is how to attack earlier. I read parts of The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. One of the major things that this great strategist said is, "If you're trying to defeat the enemy, the worst thing to do is to just fight them in hand-to-hand combat. You have to think about things more strategically."
So more strategically, you could work on box number two. You could change how you think about things. That's a lot of therapy. Reframing things, putting things into perspective. Taking some distance from things that might seem catastrophic, because you're losing perspective.
I think that's very important. I'm a big fan of therapy, and I'm a big fan of my therapist, whose name is Dee, and I love her. But what I'm increasingly thinking about these days, and trying to write a book about. Partly because of the things that my mother had to go through, and how she changed her situation. But box number one solutions.
Like when you are unhappy, or your weight isn't what your weight should be. Or you're not as productive as you want to be, and you're procrastinating. Instead of trying to attack box number three directly, which generally doesn't work. I will tell you as a behavioral scientist, willpower eventually fails.
And instead of just working on box number two. "Oh, maybe I can reframe things. Maybe if I think about things differently, I won't procrastinate." What about changing box number one? One very specific example, I have not yet met a young person who has a healthy relationship with their phone.
What would you do? I'm not going to advocate using willpower to resist Instagram, or being on TikTok at all hours of the night. I'm also thinking that just box number two isn't the only thing. Oh, reframe this. Think about your phone as something which is not only good, but also bad.
But just put your phone in a different room. If you literally put your phone in a different room, I do this in my classes. I'm like, "Put it somewhere where you literally can't see it, and it's not directly in arm's reach. You have to bend over and unzip something." I think those box number one solutions are sometimes the least obvious, and the most effective.
Guy Kawasaki:
This is the purview of Tiny Habits, right?
Angela Duckworth:
Oh, is that BJ Fogg?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. BJ Fogg. Stanford University, now Maui. Yeah. Okay.
Angela Duckworth:
Oh, he moved to Hawaii. I don't know BJ Fogg. Yeah. I think honestly, Arianna Huffington, I think a lot of people have had this intuition that if you want to change your habits, you should make changes to the cues in your situation. I'm not taking any claim of originality.
I think Balanchine, the great choreographer, said, "There are no new dances. There are only dances that we forget, and then remember." I don't think anything I've said is genius or original.
When someone asks me a question in psychology, I think I always go back to these three boxes, and I'm like, "Okay." Usually, they're trying to understand box number three. Then I'm like, "What was box number two, and what's box number one?" I think that's probably converging with probably what a lot of other people you've talked to say.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now on your podcast, what happens if the research that you do is conflicting? There's no clear right answer. One respective scientist says one thing, and the other one says the opposite, and the two are in direct opposition. You can't say one is a kook and one isn't. What do you do when there's a tie?
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah, and you literally can't say. It's not just I can't say because it would be impolitic. When things are in conflict in the scientific literature, who am I to judge? I'll give you an example of this. There is an author and a scientist who studies generations, like the millennials versus the Gen Zers, et cetera, et cetera.
Her name is Jean Twenge, and she's a very prolific writer and oft quoted thinker. She really does believe that there are generational differences. She has a really provocative thesis, by the way, which is that if there's one singular force that has changed culture, and therefore changed the way we think and act and feel as individuals, it's technology. Anyway, that's Jean Twenge in one corner.
In the other corner are people who are critics. They have methodological concerns, and they have their own studies, and they will sometimes come to different conclusions. On our podcast, on No Stupid Questions, I try to represent both sides. I think it's almost always the case that both sides have some thing that is true, that they are strenuously advocating for.
When I believe that one side has a lot more evidence, I'm not shy about offering my personal opinion, but that's just an opinion of one person. But one of the things I think that's misunderstood about science is that, when scientists say, they say it in a chorus, and it's fact etched in granite. But the whole endeavor of science is to keep discovering more, which means that almost certainly the things that we say today are wrong.
The whole beauty of the scientific engine is that it's continually updating and revising. So things that we thought were true about DNA aren't quite the same as we know. We all thought Darwin was right, and his rival Lamarck, who said that giraffes have longer necks because they've stretched their necks, and then they have a baby giraffe, and the next giraffe has a slightly longer neck.
We thought, "Oh, Lamarck was wrong. How stupid. And Darwin was right." That, no, that's not true. It's just through genes, and the genes just get selected through natural selection. The taller giraffes survive, and they have more babies. So we're like, "Oh, Darwin."
What is true now with epigenetics, Lamarck wasn't totally wrong. It turns out that if you experience famine, there are changes in sometimes the DNA, but certainly the things that go with the DNA that make it express.
So he wasn't entirely wrong. So we're continually revising. I think that the world is ready for a more complicated version of science. If I think back to the last twenty years, The New York Times changed.
Now they actually have scientists saying things, and research. But the next twenty years will be like, people are going to be sophisticated enough to understand when things are not settled, and that there are two sides or more to a question.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. One of the great examples of this is when Tony Fauci at the start of the pandemic says not to wear a mask, I don't know, because there's a shortage of masks. Then two years later, he says everybody should wear a mask. Then people point out, "Tony, you said we shouldn't wear a mask two years ago. You don't know what the hell you're talking about." Right?
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. This term flip-flopper, right? I think that's the highest compliment you could give to a scientist, is that they're flip-flopper. The highest compliment you could give is somebody who would say, "Hey. I said this before." By the way, we were just talking about confirmation bias. You know how rare the person is who can say, "Oh, you know what? I was wrong." You know who says that more than anyone?
He's on my Mount Rushmore, Danny Kahneman. Danny Kahneman says, "I was wrong," out loud and in writing more often than any person I have met. There is no greater thinker than Danny Kahneman, hands down. That's an excellent example. Right? You could say, "Oh, we can't trust Tony Fauci. Because one day he said this, and the next day." No. There's humility in that person, and also there's curiosity, and he's getting a better answer.
Guy Kawasaki:
It seems to me that when people say they don't know something, it gives them greater credibility when they say they do know something, right?
Angela Duckworth:
I think, and I'm not sure, so I should say, I think there's research affirming exactly what you said. That when people are like, "I don't know. Here's what I think, or here's what I do know, but I mostly don't know. I have to look that up." But I think people have the opposite intuition, that you don't want to show any weakness. You don't want to show any hesitation. You don't want to show any uncertainty. But I think you're right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, if Angela Duckworth thinks I'm right, I can take that to the bank.
Angela Duckworth:
I don't know. You'll probably get two cents for it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so now can we have a little speed round? The reason why I want to have this speed round is not only because I want to hear the answer, but I want to illustrate to all of you listeners why you should listen to Angela's podcast. It should be near the top of your list of podcasts, maybe tied. Wait, wait, don't tell me.
Okay. We did some research about the most recent questions you've asked or answered on your podcast. To give the readers a taste for the kind of questions you ask, and the kind of questions you answer. You don't need to spend fifteen minutes on all of these. Just give us the quick gist. Okay?
Angela Duckworth:
The one-liner?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes, the one-liner. Okay. Why is it so hard to make decisions?
Angela Duckworth:
I can't do this, Guy. This is too hard. You're talking to me, and I was like, "Wait. No, I can't do this." You know why?
Guy Kawasaki:
Why?
Angela Duckworth:
It's unsatisfying, but there are too many thoughts in my head. They don't fit in a line, and one-liners don't have semicolons. So I'll feel like I'm giving you shitty answers. That's the problem. How about this? I'll pass, and then let's see if there's any that I feel like I could give you.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why is astrology so popular?
Angela Duckworth:
Hah. Because it gives you answers for questions that you have, and it makes you feel like the answers are right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. What is the point of IQ testing?
Angela Duckworth:
I don't think there is much point to IQ testing.
Guy Kawasaki:
What is important in your choice of words?
Angela Duckworth:
I think the answer is that words and language are actually changing. So any time somebody says something, and it really annoys you because you think they've said it incorrectly. "Me and my friend went to the mall, and I literally jumped out of my skin when I saw my friend from fourth grade."
For me, oh my gosh, that drives me crazy. But, "Me and my friend went to the mall, and I literally jumped out of my skin," is how young people talk. One of the things that's true about language, because it's living, is guess who makes the new rules? Young people.
So however teenagers are talking now is how we're all going to be talking in forty years. So, "Me and my friend went to the mall, and I literally jumped out of my skin," will soon be correct.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. God help us.
Angela Duckworth:
I know.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Angela Duckworth:
We might not be alive to appreciate it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is it harder to make friends as an adult?
Angela Duckworth:
Yes, it is, but there are ways to do it. The number one thing I would say that people mistake about friendship is that friendship is just like exercise, or learning to play the violin. It's time on task. The number one mistake I think people make is that they just don't invest enough time. They don't make it a ritual.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Is marriage worth it?
Angela Duckworth:
Yes. I think it is worth it. And if you had allowed me a semicolon, yes, marriage really is a lifelong commitment. And I do think there are different kinds of marriages. People sometimes are married to a best friend. But I believe in lifelong commitments. Lifelong commitments will never go out of style, and marriage itself is a great version of a lifelong commitment.
Guy Kawasaki:
Are we getting lonelier?
Angela Duckworth:
Everyone thinks that we are, but the unequivocal data is that we are spending more time alone. So we are getting aloner, but there's mixed results on whether we're truly getting lonelier. That's more to say about that, but we are definitely spending more time alone.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. The last one, would we be happier if we were more creative?
Angela Duckworth:
Pretty much, yes. Creativity and happiness are related positively, not negatively. A lot of people think that unhappy people are more creative, but there's no real research suggesting that's true. And in addition to happiness making you more creative, being creative looks like it might make you happier too.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Julia Cameron will be happy about that answer too. Just FYI. Julia Cameron has been on my podcast four times, so you have a goal.
Angela Duckworth:
Whoa. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
We'll bring you back for your new book, so that'll be three.
Angela Duckworth:
Wait, can you tell me who she is? Because I'm ignorant and I don't know.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, Julia Cameron wrote The Artist's Way.
Angela Duckworth:
Oh, I haven't read that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, you should read that. Yeah.
Angela Duckworth:
Should I write that down, with The Effective Executive?
Guy Kawasaki:
Or you can just listen to the podcast we released today. It's her fourth time. Okay?
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. I don't know what you call it after a three-peat. It's a four-peat.
Guy Kawasaki:
She would absolutely do back flips over the story of your mother, the one you told earlier. She would love that.
Angela Duckworth:
I will buy her book. I think she will love it if I listen to your podcast with her, and buy her book. Do you think?
Guy Kawasaki:
I would love the former. She would love the latter.
Angela Duckworth:
She would love the latter. This is a way to make both of you happy. No. I'll buy a copy for me, and I'll buy a copy for my mom.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Yes.
Angela Duckworth:
I was thinking about having a family book club. You know what I mean? I think that would be fun.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now I'm just going to rattle off some questions I hope you consider for your podcast, and we'll call it a day. Okay? You don't even have to write them down. Maybe none of them pass the test.
Angela Duckworth:
Okay, good. I'll just listen then.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think in the year 2024, you should answer questions that are at least related to politics, to help people make decisions. I would argue you may have a moral obligation to do that, but I digress. Now, I suppose you could start something simple like, what was the cause of the Civil War? Because at least one person needs that question answered, but I digress. Here's some questions.
Angela Duckworth:
Yes. We won't name names, of course.
Guy Kawasaki:
No, no. It would be like Halley's Comet. Anyway, so here's some questions. As an active political wonk, I love politics. I would love to get the combined brain power of the two of you to answer. Okay, you ready?
Angela Duckworth:
I'm ready.
Guy Kawasaki:
Does gerrymandering really work in the intended make my party win? Second question, is Zoom and all the other virtual conferencing, is it a net positive or a net negative? Because in my podcast, Tom Peters and Julia Cameron both said it's a net positive. It's not nearly as destructive and inefficient as people say. Third question, or whatever number.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah, I think you're on three.
Guy Kawasaki:
Does plagiarism truly represent a threat to society? Next question, does the electoral college system work as intended, or, I mean does it work at all really? Next one, does DEI programs improve a company? Next one, is there a correlation between wealth and wisdom? I'm not seeing any evidence of that, just to tell you the truth.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. I was going to say, I bet you have a hypothesis about that. You could have asked, are they inversely correlated?
Guy Kawasaki:
I think it tops out around five million, and after that it degrades. But anyway. I have an agenda here, but I think you should answer the question, do you think that anyone can become remarkable? As you may guess, you know how I feel, but I would really like to hear, do you think anybody can become remarkable?
Angela Duckworth:
I know the one word answer, but can you give me the three sentence answer?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, to go back to the start of our interview. There are at least three factors, which is talent, grit and luck.
Angela Duckworth:
Luck.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say that, based on 200 guests, some of the most remarkable people who have been on our podcast are people who have been imprisoned for twenty-two years for a murder charge, or they were homeless, or they were smuggled across the border as a baby.
My inclination is anybody become remarkable. It's not something that's genetics. It's a real combination of luck and perseverance, more than anything.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. You won't be surprised that I agree with you. I was writing in my journal, because it's the beginning of a new year, and I'm thinking about what I want to do. When I think about the people who are most inspiring to me, they're not even my peers.
They're not even people who are doing what I do, but just doing it better. They're not celebrities. They're like high school football coaches. And I'm not like glorifying having a job that you don't get a lot of attention for.
It's just that, when I read about certain people, who are just doing what they do for reasons that are truly sincere and deep. And they're trying to do it really well and be decent people, and care about character more than reputation.
And help as many people as they can help in their craft. Like they cultivate their garden, and they try to do it very well, and they're not looking for fame, and they're not looking for fortune. They're not choosing a path that's going to lead to the most prizes. I have to say, I'm genuinely inspired. I wrote in my journal this morning for a long time, instead of doing work.
I was like, "Oh, I could work, or I could write in my journal about what I want." I was like, "I'm just going to write in my journal." I think those people really are remarkable, the people that we probably already know.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. I will tell you that in our book, we bend over backwards saying that you don't need to be Jane Goodall or Steve Jobs to be remarkable. You can change just one life, and be remarkable. One more plug for Julia Cameron. I'll give you the gist of her main concepts.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. This is in The Artist's Way?
Guy Kawasaki:
Believe it or not, concept number one is, every day you write in your morning journal. It has to be long hand. It's on paper. You cannot type it out. Every morning, you write in your daily journal. It's the first thing you do.
The second thing is, she believes in walks. This is a walk not with your phone, not with your dog, not with your spouse. It is just you walking. The third concept is the concept of artist dates. Where you take yourself on a date to go surfing, or you take yourself on a date to go visit the zoo. You have this joyous thing that you do by yourself.
Angela Duckworth:
Huh. Oh, so it's a date with yourself.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. It's a date with yourself.
Angela Duckworth:
Hmm, interesting.
Guy Kawasaki:
It could be going to your favorite bookstore, or it could be going to listen to someone play the viola.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. So these are three things, and you do them all by yourself, right? You write in your journal in the morning.
Guy Kawasaki:
Basically.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah. Go on a walk without even a podcast in your ear.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Angela Duckworth:
Then you take these artist dates.
Guy Kawasaki:
Angela.
Angela Duckworth:
I love it.
Guy Kawasaki:
I just love interviewing you.
Angela Duckworth:
I'm definitely going to do the first two things. I'm definitely going to do the first thing. I'm going to do the daily, the morning journal. I'll have to think about the last one, and I'm not sure about the second one.
Guy Kawasaki:
Her most recent book, she adds a fourth thing, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I want you to be curious and figure it out. Her book came out just now, and it's her fourth thing. It took thirty years for her to write this book.
I asked her, "Why did it take thirty years to write this?" She said, "Because I thought people would think I'm too woo-woo." Which that definitely draws a smile to my face.
Angela Duckworth:
Oh, now I really want to know. You definitely whet my appetite. I love it. When I say that I'm ignorant, because I don't know. I was certainly ignorant of her. It's not a name I know, but I know it now, Julia Cameron. Right?
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm a Julia Cameron evangelist. Yes.
Angela Duckworth:
You are a Julia Cameron evangelist. That could be your new title. I think the reason why people like you so much is that you really are an evangelist, but you're not an evangelist for yourself. I think that's the secret. It's like, oh, how to be an evangelist for Julia Cameron. You know?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, or Angela Duckworth.
Angela Duckworth:
Exactly, and I'm not kidding. I was like, you know what? That is really profound. I am going to think about that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Angela Duckworth:
By the way, you sent me headphones, but then I was like, "Oh, I'm coming to Baker." So then I kept them, in case you want me to send them back to you.
Guy Kawasaki:
No.
Angela Duckworth:
I was like, you might need to give those to people who are recording from home.
Guy Kawasaki:
No. We give every speaker new ones. I have to admit that one of the reasons why we send a free headset to every guest is not just that we want high audio quality, but in a sense it's a signal, right? It's like we are probably the only podcast team that sends you a headset, because we are so attentive to detail, and we want such a high quality product, and this is proof.
Angela Duckworth:
Right. Then it's also, it's a gift, right? It's a gift. It's generous.
Guy Kawasaki:
There's no denying that Madisun and I are generous people. But truthfully, the reasons why we give our guests a headset is because we want a very high quality recording for you, our listeners. I also believe that by giving them that headset, we are signaling to them that we really care about quality. I dare say it's probably true that no other podcast that you listen to sends every guest a headset.
Anyway, I digress. That was Angela Duckworth, for the second time. I have to tell you that I was not at all prepared for that story about her mom and getting that second room to create an art studio, and just blossoming at eighty-nine. That is one of the best stories ever on the Remarkable People podcast.
By the way, Madisun and I have written a book called, Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. The book is divided into three sections, growth, grit and grace. Growth, as you might suspect, features Carol Dweck. Grit, as you might suspect, features Angela Duckworth. Please check it out, Think Remarkable.
Now, my thanks to the Remarkable People podcast team. That would be Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez on sound design. Tessa Nuismer on research. Madisun Nuismer, producer and co-author. And Luis Magaña, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates. We are the Remarkable People team. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Mahalo and aloha.