How Adam Grant uses data and intuition to make life decisions | from WorkLife with Molly Graham

Summary

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Podcast Summary: How Adam Grant Uses Data and Intuition to Make Life Decisions

Podcast: ReThinking
Host: TED (Molly Graham interviewing Adam Grant)
Episode Date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode marks the handoff of the “Work Life” podcast from Adam Grant to its new host, Molly Graham. In a role-reversal interview, Molly digs into Adam’s personal process for making major career and life decisions—revealing how the acclaimed organizational psychologist balances rigorous data with personal intuition, runs small “experiments,” leans into discomfort, and redefines what meaningful success means to him. The conversation explores frameworks for making big choices, why impact is hard to measure, and what drives each host as they stand at the crossroads of change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Adam Grant’s Framework for Major Life and Work Decisions

(Start: 05:07)

• Layers of Decision-Making:
  Adam explains how his process evolved from intrinsic motivation to a four-part framework:

  1. Does the topic genuinely interest me?
  2. Does it matter to the world—will it improve lives?
  3. Do I have a unique perspective or contribution to make?
  4. Is it timely and timeless? (Relevant now, but also enduring)

  “If everyone on earth understood this topic better, how much better would their lives be, and how much better would the world be?”
  —Adam Grant (08:02)

• Origin Story:
  He shares how his students urged him to write his own book instead of co-authoring, leading to his debut, “Give and Take.”

  “They essentially held me hostage and said, if you do not write your own book, we’re not letting you leave.”
  —Adam Grant (06:21)

2. Choosing His Next Book: “Vibe”

(09:35)

• Adam describes how his upcoming book “Vibe” on connection emerged:

  • Sparked by an unexpected onstage chemistry with Jennifer Garner during a book tour event.
  • Realized the undervalued science of “chemistry” and deep human connection.
  • Topic is both timely (rising loneliness) and timeless (universal need for connection).

  “I basically spent the next seven or eight months digging through the science, building a framework and then it clicked. And I said, there is a book here, it’s called Vibe.”
  —Adam Grant (11:52)

3. The “When Harry Met Sally” Approach to Decisions

(15:03)

• Adam uses the film’s famous line to describe his approach:

  “When you know what you want for the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
  —Adam Grant (15:34)

  • Often dives in as soon as he senses a calling—sometimes even “precrastinating.”

  • Shared the story of writing an entire book draft before the proposal, learning the value of patience.

    “It was so trash that my agent told me to throw away about 102,000 of the 103,000 words and start over. Because, quote, ‘even your academic colleagues won’t find this interesting.’”
    —Adam Grant (17:00)

4. Experimenting with “Provisional Selves”

(19:37–21:27)

• Adam credits Herminia Ibarra’s concept of “trying on provisional selves”—test-driving different roles to see what fits.

  • Ran “mini-experiments” in consulting, management, research, and teaching before choosing organizational psychology.

    “I did that with each of the careers I was considering... doing all these mini experiments along the way.”
    —Adam Grant (20:03)

5. Data vs. Intuition in Important Decisions

(19:09, 38:52)

• Adam points out that for big life choices, perfect data rarely exists; intuition and incremental testing matter.

• Both Adam and Molly agree their most meaningful professional feedback comes not from numbers, but from personal messages and stories.

  “The things that count most are the hardest to count. So I’m not going to worry about it too much.”
  —Adam Grant (37:31)

  “You can spend a lot of time focusing on numbers, and that just is the wrong definition of success.”
  —Molly Graham (38:38)

6. Seeking Discomfort as a Growth Strategy

(24:01)

• Adam has trained himself to run toward discomfort, not away:

  • Early experiences with public speaking and diving taught him that what feels awkward now is often where the most growth happens.
  • Learning to associate discomfort with reward and transformation.

  “As I got rewarded for doing that, the act of seeking discomfort started to take on secondary reward properties.”
  —Adam Grant (25:22)

7. The Origins of “Work Life” and Embracing Messy Growth

(27:17)

• Work Life began after a public disagreement between Adam and Brené Brown—TED suggested Adam start a podcast to model dialogue, not just give monologues.

• The next iteration, with Molly as host, promises to be “messier and more frequent”—embracing real stories and the emotional realities of work decisions.

  “I want to bring some of that mess to Work Life… mess is definitely part of life and also just who I am.”
  —Molly Graham (44:13)

8. Defining Success, Impact, and the “Why We Do It” Folder

(36:11–40:09)

• Adam re-examines what “success” means:

  • It’s about lives enriched, not numbers amassed.
  • Most impact isn’t quantifiable; meaningful notes from listeners/readers are cherished as proof of making a difference.
  • Adam keeps a “Why We Do It” (WWDI) folder—a habit he shares with students to remind them of the deeper purpose.

  “Oftentimes, when I get a really meaningful note… I will forward a note occasionally and just at the top, ‘WWDI’—it stands for Why We Do It. This is why we do it.”
  —Adam Grant (39:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Creating Value:

  “A motivating job isn’t one that makes you look important. It’s the one that makes you feel alive. Meaningful work isn’t about impressing others, it’s about expressing your values.”
  —Adam Grant (31:38, via Molly quoting his social media)

• On Learning Through Experience vs. Data:

  “You can give me all the data in the world that says the stove is hot, and I still might need to touch the stove just to learn.”
  —Molly Graham (42:43)
  “I don’t even need a stove to exist. If I see the data…”
  —Adam Grant (42:51)

• On the Next Chapter:

  “I don’t know who I’m going to be in a year. I’m excited to find out. That mantra puts you on the precipice of growth.”
  —Adam Grant (45:08)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Adam’s decision framework: 05:07–09:35
• Choosing the next book (‘Vibe’): 09:53–12:46
• ‘When Harry Met Sally’ decision style: 15:03–17:02
• Provisional selves & mini-experiments: 19:09–22:01
• Data vs. intuition in big decisions: 19:09, 38:52
• Dealing with discomfort: 24:01–25:50
• Work Life’s messy new direction: 27:17, 44:13–44:47
• Redefining success & ‘Why We Do It’: 36:11–40:09, 39:08
• Closing reflections/new vision: 41:05–45:20

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

The episode is candid, reflective, and infused with humor and human vulnerability. Both speakers balance intellectual rigor with honesty about uncertainty, mess, and the emotional sides of work and growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Even the most data-driven experts rely deeply on self-questioning and small, intuitive experiments when data runs out.
• Seeking discomfort, running personal “trials,” and learning from failure drive deeper growth than perfect plans.
• The impact that matters—changing lives, fostering connection—is hard to measure but vital to “why we do it.”
• As Work Life enters a new chapter, expect more stories from the messy middle and honest explorations of what work really feels like.

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For anyone who hasn’t listened:
This conversation is packed with insights about how to make big decisions when answers aren’t clear; how to calibrate purpose, data, and gut instincts; and how the best definitions of success and impact are personal, evolving, and both immeasurable and essential.

Transcript

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[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. I love data, but when making big decisions in your career and your life, you don't always have data. So today I'm sharing a special conversation I had on my former show, Work Life with its new host company and community builder, Molly Graham. I joined her to break down how I use data and intuition to make my biggest life choices. You can find more episodes of Work Life with Molly Graham wherever you listen to podcasts. Now onto the episode. Hey, Work Lifers, it's Adam Graham. I'm excited to do this. Today we're actually handing off Work Life to a new host, Molly Graham, who is a tech superstar. And I thought I would take today as a chance to get inside her head and figure out what motivates her. How does she work? What's she going to teach us? And as she hosts this show. So, Molly Graham, welcome to Work Life.

[Molly Graham]

Thanks, Adam. But just so you know, I'm actually interviewing you today.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, what? Yeah, wait, I'm sorry, I thought this was still my show.

[Molly Graham]

Nope, it's my show now. So we get to interview you. Okay, here we go. Hi, Adam. Welcome to the new Work Life Foreign. Hi, everyone. I'm Molly Graham and I'm taking over as the host of this show. For the past eight years, Adam Grant has built Work Life into one of the most thoughtful explorations of how we work, using research and psychology to help us understand our careers, our teams, and ourselves. I've learned a lot from it, and I know many of you have too Now I want to take you on the next step of that journey because most of what I know about work, I learned the hard way in my career. I've led teams, scaled companies, and built things that worked and things that really didn't. Over time, I've come to believe that what's most useful to people in the middle of mess is hearing how someone else navigated it, stories about what it felt like, what someone else learned through mistakes or successes. And that's what this show is going to be. Each week, I'll talk to people who have led teams, made hard calls, and navigated their own careers through moments of uncertainty to understand what actually happened, what it felt like, and what they learned. We'll talk about the moments that no one puts on LinkedIn, the quiet doubts, the trade offs, the career decisions that don't have obvious answers, the big mistakes, which, by the way, I've made most of more than once. So to start this all off, I wanted to turn the mic on someone that we all know and admire, Adam Grant. But instead of asking him about his research, I want to flip the script a little bit. Adam has spent his career giving all of us tools to make better decisions. So I was curious, how does he make decisions in his own life? How does a researcher whose work life centers on science and data handle decisions when there isn't a clear answer? Because I believe most of the important choices in our careers don't come with perfect data. So we're going to start this season by exploring that tension. How do you decide what to work on? How do you know when it's time to change? And how do you evolve your identity over time? Hi, Adam. Welcome to the new work life.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, am I a guest? I thought I was the host.

[Molly Graham]

Listen, I get it. Does it feel a little weird?

[Adam Grant]

Definitely. I feel like somebody just moved into my house and is sitting on my furniture.

[Molly Graham]

We rearranged my furniture.

[Adam Grant]

I'm really glad it's you.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, same. Well, thanks for helping me learn how to do this.

[Adam Grant]

I've done nothing.

[Molly Graham]

Well, you've spent the last seven years, right? Yeah. Teaching everyone so much about work and, and how to feel more sane and more clear in what we do. And I think everyone is so grateful for that. But I am curious, like, do you have, like a north star or a compass when you think about what you do?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I do. It's probably different for different kinds of projects. I think it's clearest for book writing because I think that's. That's the biggest commitment of anything. I take on. And it's also the process that I've learned the most about over the years since I've been doing it the longest, at least of all my public facing roles that I do.

[Molly Graham]

Well. I'm curious, like, how do you make decisions about the next book?

[Adam Grant]

Well, let's. Let's go back to the beginning. So 2011, I got tenure, and all of a sudden, I had all this freedom. I didn't know what to do with it. And one of my favorite colleagues, Barry Schwartz, sent me a note a couple weeks later and said, I'm thinking about writing a book about motivation and incentives, and I wonder if you might want to co author it. Molly. I was fired up. I love the paradox of choice. Barry is a great thinker. He's been a wonderful mentor and teacher and collaborator, and I thought I would learn a ton and it would also be a meaningful way to have an impact. And I went to meet with my undergrads who were in what we call the impact lab, and I told them, hey, I figured out what I want to do post tenure. I'm going to write a book with Barry Schwartz. They were having none of it. They hated the idea. Nothing against Barry. They're huge Barry Schwartz fans. They hated the idea of me writing a book with someone else instead of putting my own ideas in the world first. And they essentially held me hostage and said, if you do not write your own book, we're not letting you leave.

[Molly Graham]

Meaning literally, hostage in the room.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, yeah. They said, until. I mean, it was actually. It was a really good early moment of my students inviting me to think again. They said, you need to change your mind on this, and the lab meeting is not over until you commit to us that you're gonna write your own book. That became my first book. Give and take. I wrote it really just saying this is what I know the most about and I'm most fascinated by. And I thought that was enough, and it was for a first book. But over time, I've learned my own intrinsic motivation is not enough. Because I think there's an infinite number of topics I'm curious about. And I'm fascinated by pretty much everything when it comes to human behavior and psychology. So I could write a book about anything. So I've added a couple other lenses that I think are really important. The second is not just, is this interesting to me, but does it matter to the world? And I try to ask myself the question of, if everyone on earth understood this topic better, how much better would their lives be, and how much Better would the world be? So stop there. And I think we've got a worthwhile topic. We have an interesting, important issue to take on that is also not enough because there are too many of those books. And also I don't know if I have anything to add. So the most important question that I ask to filter through all the options at that point is, where do I have a unique contribution to make? Where do I have a lens, a framework, a body of evidence, or a worldview that will change the way that people see this topic? And I really stopped there, up through Think Again. Then I realized there's a fourth question I need to ask too interesting to me. Is it important to others? Do I have something unique to say? And now what I'm asking that I didn't used to ask is, is it timely and timeless? I don't want to be like the news that's in one ear today and out the other ear tomorrow. And I don't want to work on issues that are only of the moment. I want to work on things that are part of the human condition. And in an ideal world, what I write about would be as relevant in a century or a millennium as it is now. And that, to me, is a test of real consequence, of significance. But there are a lot of timeless issues that are also pressing. And there are some timeless issues that are just not a big deal right now. And so I'm trying to take on, of all the time, timeless questions that I care about the most timely ones to make sure that I'm addressing what are our biggest challenges right now. And I think that's one of the reasons that Think Again has resonated more than any book I've written, because it happened to come out in the middle of a pandemic when everyone was rethinking everything. And I didn't anticipate that I wrote it before the pandemic started, but I realized I could be more thoughtful and intentional about that.

[Molly Graham]

First of all, I love that answer because it actually is. It's a framework, but it's a set of questions that you ask yourself. And you talked about two of your earlier books, but you also just announced a new book, vibe, about connection. Can you just tell me how you got to that topic, given that framework?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. So it had been about two years since I released a book, and I think it's a mistake to write a book every year or two because it's just not possible to have that many big thoughts that are also carefully researched. So I think every three to Five years is ideal for being able to take a step back and asking what's a big problem that I could dive into and then come out with a completely different way of understanding that. So I think the seeds of Vibe were planted. When I was on tour for my previous book, Hidden Potential, it was fall 2023 and I was on my way to LA where Rainn Wilson from the Office was going to be hosting my book event. And the night before he texted me and he said, I'm really sorry, I have Covid I can't come. I was like, what do I do? So I made a list of everyone I knew in LA who might not be a total disappointment standing in for Rainn Wilson, and also was great on stage. And I sent a Hail Mary email to Jennifer Garner, who I'd met once by Zoom a few years earlier. And she responded right away and said, I got you. Tell me the time and place and I'm there. And she started reading the book in the car on the way there and I had no idea how that was gonna go. We walked into the green room afterward and all my friends and family who were there told me that our chemistry was amazing. First of all, I think I peaked. I never expected to have chemistry with Jennifer Garner. Secondly. Secondly, I just was struck by the fact that I really hadn't thought about how to build chemistry. And I thought that was interesting. And Molly, that was such a surprise to me as an introvert who grew up painfully shy, really failing to make friends and build relationships. And I thought, maybe I've learned something and maybe there's something to teach here. And I basically spent the next seven or eight months digging through the science, building a framework and then it clicked. And I said, there is a book here, it's called Vibe.

[Molly Graham]

I love it. So it sounds like part of what it felt like for you was that this is obviously valuable, can teach people something. Everyone in the world could benefit from it. It's timeless because connection is something that people are always going to care about, but also timely because I know people are feeling more alone and more disconnected than they ever have before. Does that sound right?

[Adam Grant]

I mean, you could be a book

[Molly Graham]

publicist if you want to my next career, obviously.

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[Molly Graham]

Okay, so I have a question for you. Years ago, you on a podcast said that you have a When Harry Met Sally philosophy for how you make decisions about your career. Do you remember that?

[Adam Grant]

I don't remember saying that on a podcast, but I said it to my students last year.

[Molly Graham]

You did?

[Adam Grant]

I got the blankest stairs and I realized, what do you mean they haven't seen Harry Met Sally? What?

[Molly Graham]

What?

[Adam Grant]

So I had to explain it. Look, there's a scene where Billy Crystal says when you know what you want for the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. And I have approached a lot of my career decisions that way where as soon as I have a vision or a passion or an idea of what my purpose might be like, I want to dive in headfirst. And I can't wait to get started.

[Molly Graham]

Interesting. So it's about as soon as you

[Adam Grant]

know you gotta go Sometimes I. I go as I'm starting to know.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, I find this so fascinating, but will you just give me some examples of like. Well, maybe that last thing of like when you start. Almost started before you knew.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, okay. I mean, give and take is a. Is an easy example. I'll give you some non book examples too. But when. So once my students convinced me I should write a book, I literally that night reached out to everyone I know who'd written a book and asked them for advice. I had calls with probably, I don't know, 15 or 16 people. I then got introduced to a bunch of literary agents. I picked an agent and then I decided, okay, I need to start writing. And my agent said, write a book proposal. And I was so fired up about my vision, Molly, that in two months that I was supposed to be writing the proposal, I wrote the whole book. And it was trash. It was so trash that my agent told me to throw away about 102,000 of the 103,000 words and start over. Because, quote, even your academic colleagues won't find this interesting.

[Molly Graham]

The highest compliment.

[Adam Grant]

Yes, thank you, Richard, for that. I needed. It led to a much less terrible book, but that was a dive in headfirst moment of. It was one of probably my peak moments of precrastination rather than procrastination. And it was definitely one of the moments where I realized I needed to get better at patience and not. Not diving in headfirst the moment I have an idea. And I only found out much later when, when Jihe Shin and I did research on procrastination, that there's a plunging in bias where if you rush ahead with your first idea, instead of waiting for your best idea, you do less creative work. I think career wise, just in terms of becoming an organizational psychologist. Molly. I had the worst career indecision of anyone I knew in college. I was agonizing sophomore year about having no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And a lot of my roommates just go be a college student, enjoy it. I'm like, no, no, I need to know. I need to know the thing. And I think it's in part because growing up, my parents were both really passionate people, but their passion was mostly for their hobbies, and neither of them love their jobs. And it just, it's. It felt like a travesty to me that people would spend the majority of their waking hours doing something they didn't find that motivating or meaningful. And I guess for that reason, work has always. It's loomed large in my life. So I spent a big chunk of college trying to figure it out. And mostly just it was a lot of trial and error, thinking like a scientist, crossing things out that were not a fit for my values, my interests, my skills. And then I had a few professors who changed the way I saw the world. And I said, okay, I want to be an organizational psychologist. So what do I do? I immediately start working on applications to grad school. One of my mentors tried to convince me to apply for fellowships and go abroad. Nope. I am all in on organizational psychology. This is happening now.

[Molly Graham]

This is so interesting, Adam, just because, like, well, what you're known for is sort of being. Bringing data and research to decision making, right? Like that. Helping people be grounded in all this research. And I think if I had to guess, you know, not having heard everything you just said, I would have guessed. Oh, you're very deliberate about decisions. But it actually sounds like the way you make decisions is almost the opposite. Like, it's intuitive and emotional.

[Adam Grant]

I wouldn't go that far, but it does sound like that as you play it back to me. I think what's different? I think what's different about it is we are talking about a class of decisions that are really hard to gather data for. And I think the closest thing that I've had to data when it comes to career is doing what Herminia Ibarra called trying on provisional selves. So I love this Ibarra idea from her research. It's the idea that basically you could think about new jobs, new careers, as clothing that you try on to see if it fits you or not. And I did that with each of the careers that I was considering. I thought I might want to be a management consultant. I went through case interviews, and I found that being in a case competition was much more interesting than actually doing the consulting work, for me, at least. And so, you know, kind of crossed that out. I thought I might want to be a manager. I led an advertising team. I was supposed to be managing a budget. I spent all my time thinking about how could I have done a better job hiring and designing meaningful work and motivating my team and retaining. And that was like, I. I ruled out that job, but I kind of ruled in org psych as part of doing that. I wasn't sure if I'd want to be a professor or not. So I started testing. I joined two different research labs. I did an undergrad thesis. I found out that I really loved digging into the data, wasn't sure how I'd feel about public speaking. I started volunteering to give guest lectures so that I could try it out. So I'm doing all these mini experiments along the way.

[Molly Graham]

And.

[Adam Grant]

And as my passion and purpose grow, that's when I dive in. I don't wake up one morning and say, I'm going to be a professor. I'm in. Right. It was actually three years of all these little tests and pilots that converged in one direction that led me to say, yeah, that's it. And, you know, with first book, with Give and take, same thing. I knew that was the book because I'd spent the last decade studying the topic. And I guess there's a lot of deliberation before the process of the dive.

[Molly Graham]

Of the dive.

[Adam Grant]

It's interesting because it's deliberate. And then dive.

[Molly Graham]

I like it. This is going to be your book in the future. So it does sound like you have almost like a set of tools that help you make these decisions because you mentioned values. You mentioned a series of questions that you ask yourself. And you're also mentioning, which I think is super smart. And I really resonate with like, kind of running a series of tests with your time, like, basically, like being like, oh, I'm curious about this. Let me try it. Even if it means I find out I'm not meant to be a management consultant, which, by the way, the idea of you being a management consultant is actually both terrifying and exciting.

[Adam Grant]

It's a horrible, horrible fit for me because I don't want to dive into the weeds of your organization. I don't want to give you advice after spending months on site. What I want to do is I want to bring you the best randomized controlled experiments and longitudinal studies and say, here's what the data show. Use that as a mirror. Hold it up to your organization and figure out where there are natural opportunities to apply the data. Take a look at where the data are incomplete.

[Molly Graham]

Take a look.

[Adam Grant]

And if you really want a partner, let's design a study that can generate knowledge that we can share broadly. I don't want to disappear into your organization looking at your, like your idiosyncratic manufacturing process or supply chain or service model. What I want to do is figure out what are you doing that everybody else could benefit from.

[Molly Graham]

So interesting. So tell me a little bit. One thing I've noticed about you is that you seem like you seek discomfort. Like you seem like when you're like, I don't know how to do this, or I'm don't like this, or I'm uncomfortable With this, that instead of running away from that, you run towards it.

[Adam Grant]

I've learned to.

[Molly Graham]

Why?

[Adam Grant]

Because I have repeatedly found throughout my life that when I take what makes me uncomfortable head on and engage with it and embrace it, that I grow more and faster than if I don't. And I love to learn, I love to get better. And if I were to try to unpack the psychology of this, I think what happened to me at some point, I think this happened when I went from shy introvert to magician on stage doing tricks. And it happened when I went from afraid of heights to like doing flips and twists off a 3 meter springboard and even sometimes leaping off a 10 meter platform as a diver. And in both cases, I got positive reinforcement for confronting my fears. And not just my fears, but also just the feeling of awkwardness and pushing through that. And as I got rewarded for doing that, the act of seeking discomfort started to take on secondary reward properties. This is something I'll borrow from Robert Eisenberger, a psychologist who has this great theory of learned industriousness, and he applies it to effort. And he says, look, one of the reasons why praising kids is important is if you give them positive feedback repeatedly for trying hard, then over time they start to associate the feeling of hard work with feeling good as opposed to feeling bad. And that's one way to nurture conscientiousness and grit. And I think the same thing happened to me with seeking discomfort. It's like, oh, put myself in these uncomfortable situations, getting on stage and getting up on a diving board, and I got rewarded for doing that. So discomfort doesn't have to feel bad. It's actually a good thing.

[Molly Graham]

It's interesting because at some point, I think on work life, you actually told a story about hating public speaking or being scared of it.

[Adam Grant]

It was awful.

[Molly Graham]

First of all, I find that so fascinating because you now live such a public life. You just pushed yourself into that because the discomfort taught you there would be something good on the other side.

[Adam Grant]

A little bit. I think I pushed myself into it originally because I watched Brian Little, my personality psychology professor and thesis advisor. I watched him give the most captivating lectures I'd ever seen. And I knew the impact they had on me. But not just on me, a psychology geek, but my computer science and math major roommates, who before Brian Little, did not care at all about psychology and thought I was wasting my time. This major and after him, would come to me with questions and I was like, that's magic. That is literal magic. It's better than any magic trick I ever learned to do. And, you know, he changed the way I saw the world. He enriched my life in more ways than I can count and continues to enrich my life. And I wanted to pay that forward. And in order to pay that forward, I had to figure out how to teach a class and then how to

[Molly Graham]

give a speech and then how to host a podcast.

[Adam Grant]

That, too. That one came a little later.

[Molly Graham]

But, yes, I know. We'll tell. I want you to tell this story because you told me when you and I chatted that work life started because of the disagreement, the public disagreement that you and Brene had. So will you just tell the story of how you started your first podcast?

[Adam Grant]

It did. Yeah. So we. We talked about this in the opening episode of the Curiosity Shop. Brene and I had a public fight about authenticity when I quoted her out of context, inadvertently, and then she smacked it down, and I didn't know what to do. So I reached out to the TED team and I said, hey, two of your speakers are having this conflict. TED Talks are amazing monologues. Do you ever have dialogues at ted? Have you thought about doing that? And the response I got was, we don't think that's our thing, but we think that that would work really well on a podcast. And we're thinking about doing our first original podcast. That's. That's something different from TED Talks Daily. Do you want to talk about that, Molly? I think I'd listened to two podcasts at that point. 2. I had binged serial, and I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell on Revisionist History, and that was it. I don't think I'd listened to another podcast, but I loved both of those shows, and I thought, okay, this could be an interesting experiment. I don't know how to do audio that seems like an increasingly meaningful medium to be sharing knowledge and teaching and engaging people. And maybe. Maybe if I do this effectively instead of every other form of teaching I do, where I get to go and learn something and then I share it on the back end, maybe instead of learning from me, you can learn with me in real time and experience the aha moments. And that was the original vision for work life. And the thought was that Brene and I were going to have a debate about authenticity, and we didn't, because we didn't talk for four years. And I went off and did work life. And then we reconciled and built a meaningful enough vibe that Brene was the first guest when we launched Rethinking as the second show.

[Molly Graham]

I know I was wondering if you had invited her on Work Life or as part of that, but it makes sense and now you two tried and failed. Well, you have a show that's basically about dialogue, discourse and to some extent reconciliations. So it's full circle.

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[Molly Graham]

Okay, so I'm gonna read you something that you put on social media at some point. You're not supposed to remember it, but it's actually a quote that I really love and I have now ripped out of your hands and reused multiple times. So you said an easy way to pick the wrong career is to put your image above your interests and identity. A motivating job isn't one that makes you look important. It's the one that makes you feel alive. Meaningful work isn't about impressing others, it's about expressing your values. So, Adam Grant, I am curious, what makes you feel most alive in your work?

[Adam Grant]

Oh, I think it's writing a book. I think it's the one thing I do that covers peak passion and joy and also the ideal amount of meaning. I think there's something really special about sitting down and saying, okay, I'm going to spend a couple years really trying to explore this and then have something worth sharing at the end of it. And what I love about books, which are different from podcasts and articles, and pretty much everything I've. I've ever created otherwise is they last. I don't know if the pen is mightier than the sword, but I do believe the ink lasts longer. And the way that I see that is I was just on stage yesterday and the first question from the audience was somebody asking about give and take. That book is 13 years old. 13. I don't get asked about articles I wrote 13 days ago. So I think I find the most meaning from book writing. I think that's for my public facing work. I think for the more traditional job that I have. My favorite thing is teaching incredible students. When an undergrad or an MBA student comes into class and just lights up, it reminds me that helping other people feel alive is one of the things that makes me feel alive. And igniting a fire in a student to go and want to be a better leader or to choose a different career, that seems like one of the most meaningful contributions I can make face to face.

[Molly Graham]

I'm trying to draw the thread between the two. So is that what book writing is for you, Is sort of this long term timeless, to use your word, durable impact on people?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. Book writing is where I think I make the most unique contribution that is not limited in scope. I don't think there's anything more meaningful than teaching. But I can only teach so many students. And I think when I sit down and write a book, it gives me a chance to do the best learning and teaching that I'm capable of at scale.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, you sort of see it as teaching like Professor Dom on a much larger stage.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, of course. And sometimes it's flattened into 2D. But one thing I never expected was to have for people to have parasocial relationships with me. And I guess that's something you ask for when you create a podcast or when you give TED talks or when you write books. But it wasn't even on my radar as something that could happen. In fact, my publisher fought me, telling me I had to be on social media and I had to have my picture on the book jacket. I didn't want to do those things. I thought, okay, I want to be a vehicle or a vessel for these ideas, but it's not about me. And lo and behold, that doesn't prevent people from being curious about me and my stories and my experiences. And I do understand. I should have known, right? Because I've always felt like I have a relationship with the authors that I read and you know, particularly nonfiction. And so I just, I didn't anticipate it. And that. That has been very strange. I don't love that part of the job at all, but feels like a necessary evil.

[Molly Graham]

Totally. So it's super interesting because I think you do so much public work now and you know, books are obviously a center for you, but even those have numbers associated with them and. And I think social media is even worse than that. Right? It can be how many people like to post or whatever. Like how do you think about success? Like, how do you actually. What matters to you? And I'm also curious how that's changed over time.

[Adam Grant]

I think if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have said success is not the number of likes you collect, it's the number of lives you enrich. And I don't quite agree with that anymore. I think it's mostly true, but I think the number is a problem. If I write a book that sells 3 million copies as opposed to 1 million copies, or if an episode gets a couple million downloads as opposed to a couple hundred thousand downloads, that's not impact to me. That's just eyeballs and ears. And we don't know what did that mean to somebody. What matters to me is did this reach you? Did it change you? Did it challenge you? Did it spark thoughtful disagreement? Did it add something of value to your life? And I don't have a good way to measure that. I don't think we do in most important jobs. It means a lot to me when somebody writes a comment on social media or sends a note and says, this affected me. I think my favorite ones are the. I had an incredible teacher who challenged me to think again and I decided to see if you would record a little audio message for them. And that's really meaningful. But all of those one off examples don't give me any sense of what was the best and highest use of my time. And so all I try to do then is say, look, I think the impact I care most about is not quantifiable. I think that's true for most of us in work and in our lives too. The things that count most are the hardest to count. So I'm not going to worry about it too much.

[Molly Graham]

Again, just so fascinating for someone that is so data driven and so much relies on data by the way, everything you just said is true for me, too. I have been thinking a lot about it ever since everybody asked me to do Work Life, because I think it. You can spend a lot of time focusing on numbers, and that just is sort of the wrong definition of success. And actually, like, mine is also, like, when people email me and say, this changed something for me, or this mattered to me, which it can be one email. And then I'm like, okay, that was. That was worth it. But it's really interesting to hear you say that since you have these very large platforms now, that it's still just the little emails and the meaningful notes.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. I have a folder and a little, I guess, habit with some of our PhD students. I think of them as. It's a WWDI folder.

[Molly Graham]

What would.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, no, that's what it sounds like. Right. So wwdi, It's a folder. And oftentimes when I get a really meaningful note. Look, it's hard to be a PhD student. You are toiling on a research project for months, years, sometimes decades. You don't know if it's going to see the light of day, and you're really removed from the impact of your work. And so I think some of these reader notes are. They're among the most meaningful ways to say, hey, the knowledge that we disseminate matters. The ideas that we test, they do have an impact on people. And so I will forward a note occasionally. And just at the top, wwdi. It stands for why we do it. This is why we do it. To know that there are people out there having this reaction. I don't need to know how many there are, but the fact that there is one, it's just a reminder.

[Molly Graham]

This is why we do it. We're gonna go make the why we do it folder. I like that. It's a good idea. Okay, Adam, just because I know you gotta go.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I want to do my old job a little bit here.

[Molly Graham]

Well, I was going to say. Anything else you want to say?

[Adam Grant]

So, yeah, I want to ask you, what's your vision for work life? Why did you want to be the new host? And how do you want the show to be different?

[Molly Graham]

I think you and I do pretty similar work. I love helping people feel less alone and more confident at work. And I think a lot of what I do is spend time talking about the human side of work, which I think we don't often talk quite enough about the messy emotions and all that that go along with every decision or experience. Or change that you have to go through. And so I really love, like, helping people feel a little more seen in that experience of work.

[Adam Grant]

Wait a minute. So work. Work Life 2.0 is going to be less loneliness, more confidence.

[Molly Graham]

Yes, exactly. Less loneliness, more confidence. That's the goal for everyone. I think the personal answer is that I love doing things that scare the shit out of me. It's like my comfort.

[Adam Grant]

Talk about discomfort seeking.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, I. I mean, I definitely got addicted to. I was at Facebook because we were just constantly on a learning curve that was so steep that you were, like, falling off of it. And I. I love learning curves like that. I get bored really easily. It's actually a huge flaw. And so I really love. I always say I only take jobs I'm highly unqualified for. So welcome.

[Adam Grant]

Take that, imposter syndrome.

[Molly Graham]

Yep. Yep, There we go. So when I got asked if I would be interested in taking over this show, my first reaction was, that sounds terrify. And I don't know if I can do that. I think I won't be good at it. I'm definitely not Adam Grant. Like, what? And so then I was like, or. Or unfortunately. But, like, that was. It was, like, immediate. I mean, I think I said yes. Four minutes later. I was like, I have to do it because I'm scared, and I'm genuinely overwhelmed. And, you know, part of that, for me is just, like, learning. Like, I am really just so energized by what I'm going to get to learn, both in making a show. Right. I don't know how to. I don't know how to be a podcast host. I don't know how to do all of this, but also from all the people I'm going to. To talk to. Like, that, for me, is actually how I learn. In some ways, you and I have a lot in common, and we're also opposites because I am an experiential learner. Like, I. You can give me all the data in the world that says the stove is hot, and I still might need to touch the stove just to learn. So I really, like.

[Adam Grant]

I don't even. I don't need a stove to exist. If I see the data.

[Molly Graham]

I know this is where you and I are different, but it's also. You and Brene talked about this. You and her are different that way, too. And it's. I think that, like, the combination is prob. Probably one of the more powerful things. But, yeah, for me, I love learning from other people's experience. I love learning from other People's stories. I carry them with me. And so what I want to do with this show is bring those stories to life for people and give them access to some of the folks that I've gotten to learn from and some new folks that I'm going to get to learn from, like you, and help them hear those stories and then make sense of them in their own lives.

[Adam Grant]

That sounds very fun. Okay, so how does that then change the show? Let me ask you more specifically.

[Molly Graham]

Okay.

[Adam Grant]

Tell me the biggest thing you think Work Life failed at and I failed at and how you're going to fix it.

[Molly Graham]

Adam, I don't think you failed at anything. But, you know, and I think. I think you said this.

[Adam Grant]

I've got a list.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, I want to hear. I'll hear your list. I think it's so interesting that you said you'd listen to two podcasts before Work Life, and one of them was Serial, because I always think that Work Life is, like, serial, but about work. Like, it was so highly produced and beautiful and, like, these just crafted narratives. And I think that's. That was, like, an amazing gift. And I know that it limited what the show was able to do just because it was so hard to produce. I also am just, like, messier than you, so I want to bring some of that mess to Work Life. I don't know that that's a good thing or a bad thing, but mess is definitely part of, I don't know, life and also just who I am. So I think, you know, the show is going to be more frequent, obviously, and less beautifully crafted and probably a little. Probably a little messier. Adam.

[Adam Grant]

Good. I look forward to that.

[Molly Graham]

We'll see. Adam, we're going to learn together, for sure. I've already learned so much, both from you and also just from starting to make the show that I'm really excited. Like, I don't know if you know that feeling, but where you're like, I have no idea who I'm going to be and what I'm going to know in, like, nine months or a year, but I'm. I'm excited to find out.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, I love. I love that framing. I don't know who I'm going to be in a year. I'm excited to find out. That is. I mean, that's. That mantra puts you on the precipice of growth.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, exactly. It's the, you know, that sense of, like, discomfort which you talked about. For me, it's terror. It's terror. But, yeah, that's all my experiences in life and career have just taught me that. Like that when you lean into that. Exactly what you said. When you lean into that, that's when you get the kind of growth that you can't design. Do you know what I mean?

[Adam Grant]

I do. Okay. So if there are ways I can be helpful, please, please count on me to support you and work life and the ambition of the show. That's yours. However I can, I'm going to take

[Molly Graham]

you up on that. Thank you so much for doing this, Adam, for helping me, being my first guest and launching the new version of worklife with me. I'm really grateful, honored.

[Adam Grant]

I can't wait to hear it. I'm really excited to listen to it and learn to embrace more mess in your hands. Thank you, Molly.

[Molly Graham]

Okay, everyone, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Adam Grant. We're going to have new episodes every week, and sometimes I'm going to come in at the end just to let you know what I learned during the conversation. And I just want to say from my conversation with Adam, one of the most interesting things that I took away was even for someone that has built his whole career around data and research that, you know, always talks about the fact that data and research should win over everything else. He uses intuition to make decisions in his career. He collects what data he can, but at the end of the day, there is some amount of gut and just trusting himself in terms of how he decides what's next. And the other thing I really took away was just that there's some versions of success that are really hard to measure and you have to figure out what it means for you. And I loved Adam's why we do it folder, and I'm gonna go make one for myself. So talk to you all next week. I'm Molly Graham, and this is the new worklace. Work Life is a production of Ted and Pushkin industries. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter and Leah Rose. Mixing by Hansdale She. Ted's executive producer is Daniela Ballarazo. Constanza Gallardo is the executive producer for Pushkin. Special thanks to Roxanne. Hi Lash. Valentina bohanini, Lainey lott, Tansika Suungmanivong and Ashley Murphy. If you like the show and want more, come join the discussion on my substack lessons. I'm Molly Graham. Thanks for listening.

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