NYT Bestseller!! Charles Duhigg, SUPERCOMMUNICATORS: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
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[0:31]Charles DuHig is back on Momstone Have Time to Read Books with his best-selling new book,
[0:37]Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.
[0:42]By the way, this is literally all over the place I've been traveling a lot for my book tour,
[0:46]and everywhere I go, there are end caps full of his book, and this is taking off in such a huge way,
[0:52]and I'm so excited for Charles because we went to college and business school together FYI.
[0:58]Okay, Charles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of the Power of Habit,
[1:03]which spent over three years on the New York Times bestseller lists. His second book,
[1:07]Smarter Faster Better, was also a New York Times bestseller.
[1:11]Now, we're talking about his latest book, Super Communicators. Charles currently writes for the
[1:16]New Yorker magazine. Welcome Charles, thanks so much for coming back on Momstone Have Time to Read
[1:21]Books this time to discuss Super Communicators. Congrats. Thank you for having me.
[1:27]Charles, you were one of my very first guests, one of the small group of authors I knew when I
[1:32]started this podcast, so thank you. And since then, how many episodes have you done since then?
[1:37]1800. 1800, that is a lot of episodes. Oh my gosh, congratulations.
[1:43]A lot of authors. Yeah, it's been fun, but thank you for setting me on the path.
[1:48]Of course, of course. You probably don't remember this, but you were like the first
[1:51]person who's on the podcast and you were like, you know, I just, I take books apart and I look
[1:55]at the structure and I go back and forth and I was like, he does? Like, I don't do that with
[1:59]books. And I'm like, okay, and I'm taking it apart and I'm looking at the structure.
[2:06]It can kind of undermine the fun of reading a little bit. I'm actually reading on James right
[2:11]now. Which it's amazing. It is so good. And it's one of those books that's so good that you
[2:17]actually don't want to pay attention to the structure as you're reading it. Because it's just so
[2:22]well done in the in the structure is so subtle that it actually kind of distracts you from the book
[2:27]to so so I try and toggle back and forth. Okay. Well, that's a good ad for James, which was on my
[2:34]TBR anyway. But anyway, okay, super communicators. Tell everybody what the book is about in a super
[2:40]way. So it's about the science of conversation and connection. And the best way to explain what a super
[2:46]communicator is is to I'll ask you a question. If you were having a bad day and you came home
[2:51]and you knew that there was someone you called them, they would just make you feel better.
[2:56]Do you know who that person is? Like who does the person pop into your mind who you would
[2:59]telephone? It is. He does. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask you it is? My husband. I would call my husband.
[3:04]Yeah. Okay. So for you, Kyle is a super communicator and you're super communicator back to him.
[3:10]Right. You guys know how to talk to each other and you know, you know the right questions to ask.
[3:15]How to say things so that the other person can really hear it. You know how to prove that you're
[3:19]listening to each other. And many people listening have a person like that in their life. And
[3:24]we're also super communicators at one time or another. We all know what to say to a friend to make
[3:28]them feel better. We all know sometimes how to walk into that meeting and pitch our idea in a way
[3:33]that everyone signs up. But there's some people who can do this consistently. Some people who can
[3:37]connect with almost anyone. And when I first started writing this book, I assumed it was because
[3:41]they were super charming or extraverts. But what the research in the data shows is
[3:47]being a super communicator is just a set of skills. And it's skills that anyone can learn.
[3:52]And then once we know them and make them into habits, we can do this anytime we need to.
[3:58]Look at that. And you brought it all back to your first book.
[4:00]So there's a couple of them. So the first one is super communicators tend to ask 10 to 20 times
[4:21]as many questions as the average person. And a lot of those questions are questions designed to
[4:27]invite you in. Like, yeah, would you think about that? Or would you say next? But some of them
[4:31]are what are known as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks about our
[4:35]values or beliefs or our experiences, which can sound kind of intimidating. But it's actually
[4:39]simpler than it sounds like, for instance, if I bumped into, if I didn't know you and I bumped into
[4:45]and I learned that you'd been to business school, instead of saying, oh, what business school did you
[4:49]go to? I would say, oh, what made you decide to go to business school? Like, what was that like?
[4:56]Right, because then what I'm really asking you is, tell me something about how you see the world.
[5:00]Tell me something about how the experiences you've had have shaped who you are. And that doesn't
[5:05]feel overly personal or overly intimate, but it invites you to tell me something meaningful.
[5:11]And that helps me figure out what kind of conversations happen. So that's the first big skill
[5:15]is asking questions. Okay. Keep going. Okay, keep going. I'll keep going. I'll keep going.
[5:20]ask you a question. No, no, no, this is great. So tell me more about that.
[5:25]One of the things that's really important about what we've learned in the last decade is,
[5:29]I started writing this book because in part, I got into this bad habit with my wife Liz,
[5:33]and we've been married for 20 years, but I would come home from work and I'd be having a
[5:37]bad day and I would complain about my day. And she would offer me this really good advice,
[5:40]like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and she gets home a little bit better.
[5:44]And I, of course, instead of hearing her advice, I would get even more upset. And I would say,
[5:48]why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be on my side. She'd get upset because
[5:52]it was attacking her for giving me good advice. And so I went to researchers and I asked them,
[5:56]what's going on here? What this pattern happens in every relationship, right? Sometimes the
[6:00]roles are switched. And what the researchers said is they said, well, we're living through this
[6:04]golden age of understanding communication for really the first time because of advances in
[6:08]neural imaging and data collection. And they said, one of the big things that we're learning
[6:13]is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? We're talking about
[6:16]our day or we're talking about my book or I'm asking about your kids. But actually, every conversation,
[6:21]every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And those different kinds of
[6:26]conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. So disease, practical conversations,
[6:30]where we're making plans or solving problems together. Then there's emotional conversations,
[6:35]right? Where I tell you what I'm feeling. And I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want
[6:39]you to empathize. And then finally, there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to
[6:44]each other and the social identities that are important to us. And they said, if you're not having
[6:47]the same kind of conversation at the same time, it's very hard to hear each other. For instance,
[6:51]when you were coming home, you were having an emotional conversation. You are using the deep
[6:55]interior structures of your brain. And your wife responded with a practical discussion. She was
[7:00]using the prefrontal cortex. And as a result, it's hard to connect because what happens when we
[7:05]communicate is that our thinking becomes similar. Our brains begin to look similar,
[7:09]they'll look alike. And so this is known as the matching principle. This is the second thing
[7:15]that super communicators do really well. They pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening
[7:20]and then they lean into match others or invite others to match back, right? And it's pretty
[7:25]easy not to do this because oftentimes, you know, you're waiting for a meeting to start and you
[7:30]turn to someone and you say, how is your weekend? And they say, oh, it's great. I want to see my kids
[7:34]graduation. And the easiest thing to do is to say like, oh, congratulations, that's great. Okay,
[7:37]let's get down to the agenda. But this person just said something a little emotional, right?
[7:42]They're talking about their kid and how great it was. And so leaning and matching them would
[7:49]mean saying like, oh, that's amazing. What did it feel like to watch your kid walking across that
[7:53]stage? And perhaps even to share about yourself because I'm worried, you know, my kids are still
[7:58]in high school, but I'm worried about them leaving the home. Like, it makes me both proud and a
[8:02]little anxious. Now suddenly, we're actually connecting with each other, which I imagine is
[8:09]something that you do very well. Having listened to the podcast, I know that it's something that's
[8:13]very natural to you. But let me, let me ask you, does this, does this resonate with you? Like,
[8:18]are these things that you feel like you see in your own conversations? Yes, I think that it's
[8:24]really important to listen and ask lots of questions, but not to be caught up with what you're
[8:30]about to ask. Like, to I think to have a good conversation, like, you can't have your own agenda.
[8:35]Right. I think that's what you're saying too with just like following the lead of the person
[8:39]talking, right? Like, where are they going to take this? And I don't know where this conversation
[8:44]is going. But I'm going to see what you want to talk about. And then I'm going to go there.
[8:46]And sometimes people I feel like give you little crumbs, little clues, like they mentioned the
[8:51]word grief or something. Oh, I wrote this short story once about grief. And I'm like,
[8:54]okay, she wouldn't mention that. She didn't want to talk about it. Okay, what was your experience
[8:58]and then next, you know, she's crying. Right. That's exactly right. So I don't know.
[9:03]And I think listening for that being sensitive to listen for those little crumbs,
[9:06]those little hits, because we tell each other what kind of conversation we want to have
[9:11]all the time. And it's just a question of whether the other person's listening.
[9:15]And one of the things I loved about what you just said is sort of the following the lead,
[9:19]what's great about a conversation is that it's not so much that you're setting the pace,
[9:24]or you're setting the topic, or I'm setting the pace, or I'm setting the topic,
[9:27]it's actually something we're doing together. Right. You bring up an idea and I build on your
[9:31]idea and then you build on what I said. It's this shared leadership. And that's what comes from
[9:36]matching. Yes. And remind me, remind me how old your kids are. My twins are almost 17 and then
[9:43]10 and nine. Okay. So you're probably in the same place I am, which is 12 and 15. And there's
[9:50]definitely periods where they come home from school and I'm like, how is your day? Good. Did you
[9:55]learn anything today? No. Do you have any homework? No.
[10:00]It gets all these one word answers.
[10:01]And so what I tried, what I started trying to do
[10:04]is ask these deep questions
[10:06]to see if I can draw them out.
[10:07]So now when my youngest comes home
[10:09]and I know that he's hung out with his friend Simon,
[10:12]I say like, oh, you know, what do you,
[10:13]it seems like you really admire Simon.
[10:15]Like what do you like about him?
[10:16]What do you think is admirable about him?
[10:18]And then suddenly this kid kind of opens up
[10:20]and he starts telling me these stories
[10:21]that Simon wrote his bike off the roof onto the road.
[10:25]And that was really courageous.
[10:27]And I was like, that's interesting
[10:29]that you call it courageous.
[10:30]Is there other examples of a ridge
[10:32]that are less dangerous?
[10:34]And then it turns out to be like,
[10:35]honey, he's never hanging out with Simon again.
[10:37]Yeah, exactly, exactly.
[10:39]But then it turns out that Simon can talk to girls.
[10:42]That's why my son thinks that he's so courageous.
[10:46]And that gets us into like, how do you talk to girls?
[10:48]And why do you want to talk to girls?
[10:50]So it's like a rich conversation.
[10:52]And the reason why is because I didn't ask about the effects
[10:56]of his life, I asked him about how he feels about his life.
[11:00]And that's really important.
[11:01]That's what a deep question does
[11:02]is it asks people how they feel about their life
[11:05]in a way that invites them to say something real
[11:08]and invites them to be an expert
[11:10]because we're all an expert in our own experiences
[11:12]and our own emotions.
[11:13]And Charles, how do you feel about this book?
[11:16]It's going on being such a hit.
[11:19]How do you feel?
[11:19]I've done you for a long time.
[11:21]And I'm so excited for you
[11:23]and how your career has just continued to grow.
[11:27]And you're such a superstar.
[11:28]Like how do you feel about that?
[11:30]Oh, thank you.
[11:32]So in fact, I will tell you an email that I just got.
[11:35]I just got an email from a reader.
[11:36]And he said, I want to start off by saying,
[11:38]I'm awestruck and thankful that you exist.
[11:41]You listen to a podcast and you read the book.
[11:45]And he said, he and his wife have both dealt
[11:48]with mental health disorders.
[11:50]And they have real problems having talking to each other.
[11:54]And then he finishes by saying,
[11:55]thank you so much again for doing what you do.
[11:57]You are saving lives and marriages.
[11:59]And as you know, this is like the best feeling ever, right?
[12:03]We spend so long writing these books.
[12:05]You know, it took me about three years to write this one.
[12:08]I know that you spend forever on yours as well.
[12:11]And there's part of your brain that's wondering,
[12:13]like is anyone ever going to read this?
[12:16]And then to have people say not only that they read it,
[12:18]but that it's helped them.
[12:20]It's so, so I feel incredibly blessed.
[12:23]I just feel very lucky that people are finding the book
[12:27]and that it's meaningful to them.
[12:29]And hopeful that it helps us get to know each other
[12:33]a little bit better as a nation and a planet.
[12:36]So it sounds like from the beginning,
[12:38]you came at this from a personal relationship standpoint
[12:41]and then kind of expanded to all of communication
[12:44]and the theories and the science.
[12:46]How has it affected your marriage,
[12:47]learning all of these things?
[12:49]So Liz and I do a lot of things now
[12:51]that I think are really, are very healthy.
[12:53]So when I come home and I'm having a bad day
[12:55]and I'm complaining, she'll often say,
[12:57]okay, do you want me to solve this problem for you?
[12:59]Or do you want, do you just need to complain?
[13:01]Like you're just trying to get this off your chest.
[13:03]And of course it's super relieving to hear someone say that, right?
[13:06]Like you're like, oh, you know what?
[13:07]Actually, this isn't a big deal.
[13:09]I just want to complain and wind to you.
[13:10]So just listen to me wine.
[13:13]But the other thing that's happened is, you know,
[13:15]there's this concept of reciprocal vulnerability.
[13:17]This is something another thing
[13:18]that super communicators do really well.
[13:20]In addition to asking questions,
[13:23]they often answer their own question in a meaningful way.
[13:27]You know, like, oh, you went to business school
[13:29]for this reason because you went to business school
[13:30]because, you know, you had a friend to have done it.
[13:33]That's interesting.
[13:34]I went to law school because I saw my dad as a lawyer
[13:36]and I wanted to be like him.
[13:39]So when we answer our own deep questions
[13:42]and we are, we share something meaningful in return.
[13:45]We achieve this reciprocation.
[13:47]It brings us together.
[13:48]We're actually hardwired to trust and like people more
[13:51]who reciprocate our vulnerability.
[13:53]I've tried to do that much more actively
[13:55]as a result of reading this book.
[13:56]You know, I think that particularly as a journalist
[13:59]and you can kind of take this remove, right?
[14:02]You can ask questions, but you don't have to answer them
[14:04]yourself.
[14:05]But now I have conversations with people.
[14:07]I usually try and say something real and meaningful
[14:10]and personal very quickly or early in the conversation.
[14:13]Just to let people know it's okay to do that with me, right?
[14:17]That there's a little bit of intimacy here
[14:18]that we can both lean into if we want to.
[14:21]But that is only not everybody wants that.
[14:25]I mean, you want that because you're a really nice person
[14:27]and you're interested in other people,
[14:29]but not everybody who wants to communicate well
[14:32]is doing it for the sake of like ability
[14:35]or doing it for the sake of actually legitimately
[14:38]getting to know other people.
[14:40]Yeah, no, it's definitely in there are times
[14:42]when we say we want to have a conversation
[14:44]and we don't actually want to,
[14:45]like when I tell my kids,
[14:46]I want to have a conversation about your rooms.
[14:48]I don't actually want to have a conversation
[14:50]about the rooms.
[14:51]I want them to go clean the rooms.
[14:52]And you're exactly right, you know, these are tools
[14:55]and like an axe is a tool and you can use it
[14:57]to build a house or to chop someone's head off
[14:59]that it really has to do with the intent
[15:01]of the person's carrying it.
[15:03]That being said, one of the things that comes through
[15:05]in the research really clearly is as humans,
[15:08]we have this hair trigger in our brain
[15:10]to detect inauthenticity.
[15:13]Right, we've all been to the party
[15:14]where someone says, where'd you go on vacation?
[15:16]And we know immediately,
[15:17]they don't care where we go on vacation.
[15:18]They just want to tell us where they went on vacation
[15:20]and a brag about this yacht.
[15:22]We can pick up on that really quickly
[15:24]and even if you use these tools in the kind of inauthentic way,
[15:28]they tend not to work very well
[15:30]and they certainly don't work for a very long period of time.
[15:34]Now most of the time we're at a party
[15:35]and you know, we're like,
[15:36]okay, you're a jerk, I'm gonna walk away
[15:37]like it's not a big deal or I'm buying a car
[15:39]and I assume that the salesman's gonna kind of try
[15:42]and manipulate me.
[15:43]But when you think about your relationship
[15:45]with your husband or your kids
[15:46]or your close friends
[15:48]and I think about the same thing,
[15:50]one of the things that comes across really strongly
[15:53]is the reason we trust them is because they are authentic.
[15:56]And sometimes that authenticity is saying
[15:58]that they're not paying attention to you, right?
[16:00]It's saying like, look, I've got something else going on.
[16:02]I love hearing about your day
[16:03]but I'm just not gonna pay that much attention right now.
[16:06]But that's a form of authenticity.
[16:08]And that authenticity is at the core
[16:10]of how we connect with other people.
[16:13]But it's also something we're really good at detecting.
[16:16]So what about the people who feel quite guarded
[16:20]or who are afraid to put themselves out there
[16:22]or share their own emotions for whatever the reason?
[16:25]So I think what often happens when we see that
[16:28]is that people will say things like,
[16:31]I get really anxious about conversations,
[16:33]I get anxious about what I'm supposed to say.
[16:35]And there's been a number of studies
[16:36]trying to figure out how to help this.
[16:38]And one of my favorites is from Harvard Business School,
[16:41]from HBS, and the professors,
[16:44]what the professors did is they told all the students
[16:45]in the class, okay, you're gonna go have a conversation
[16:47]with a stranger in five minutes.
[16:50]And this is like the most anxiety-producing thing
[16:52]you can tell someone they're gonna do.
[16:53]You're gonna go, you're gonna have to go have
[16:54]a 15 minute conversation with a stranger.
[16:56]They said, but before you do it,
[16:57]what we want you to do is we want you to write down
[17:00]three topics you might discuss.
[17:02]Take seven seconds to do this.
[17:03]So could it be anything from like,
[17:05]did you see that movie?
[17:06]What are you doing this weekend, you know, nonsense things?
[17:09]And so students did this and they said, okay,
[17:11]here's your assignment, go talk to the stranger.
[17:13]And afterwards they asked the students,
[17:15]did those topics you wrote down,
[17:16]did they ever come up in the students?
[17:18]For the most part said, no,
[17:20]I wrote that topic down and it never came up
[17:22]in the conversation.
[17:23]But I felt so much more confident
[17:26]and so much less anxious during the conversation
[17:30]because I know I had these things in my back pocket,
[17:32]because I knew I had something to fall back on.
[17:35]And I think that this suggests something that happens,
[17:38]which is when we are anxious about having a conversation,
[17:42]when we are anxious about saying something vulnerable
[17:46]of being guarded, it's because we anticipate
[17:51]that the awkwardness or the pain of it
[17:53]is going to be bigger than it actually is, right?
[17:57]There's an experiment done by this kind of Nicholas Appley
[17:59]that I do whenever I give speeches.
[18:01]He's at the University of Chicago,
[18:03]where basically I tell these 1,000 people
[18:06]sitting in a conference hall,
[18:08]turn to the person next to you, a stranger
[18:10]and ask and answer one question.
[18:12]And the question is, when is the last time you cried
[18:14]in front of another person?
[18:16]And when I asked them, are you guys a enthusiastic about this?
[18:19]Nobody raises their hand, right?
[18:20]Nobody wants, nobody's coming to this conference
[18:22]to like have a therapy session and talk about when they cried.
[18:25]And then we do it, we do it, we do the experiment.
[18:27]And afterwards everyone loves it
[18:30]because they just had a real conversation.
[18:31]They just met someone, they got to know them a little bit.
[18:33]It's interesting.
[18:35]And so one of the problems that we have
[18:37]when we are feeling guarded,
[18:38]when we're feeling uncertain of ourselves,
[18:41]is that we are over anticipating
[18:43]that the downside of this conversation
[18:46]and in truth, the upside is almost exclusively what happens.
[18:52]And everyone listening kind of knows that, right?
[18:54]They've all had that conversation that they put off
[18:57]and they dreaded and they avoided and then they had it.
[18:59]And they're like, I'm so glad I finally did that.
[19:01]I'm so good to get that off my chest.
[19:02]I know it's so much better than I expect.
[19:05]Almost all conversations go better than we expect.
[19:08]We just have to have them.
[19:10]Of course, one of the problems
[19:11]is people aren't even having conversations.
[19:13]They're just texting one sentence and like emojis
[19:16]and they're not even engaging with each other at all.
[19:19]That's true.
[19:20]Although what's interesting is if you ever get a chance,
[19:22]ask your kids to show you messages that they've sent
[19:26]their friends that are all emojis
[19:27]and ask them to explain what they were saying.
[19:31]And what you'll find is that for these,
[19:33]for basically teenagers and younger,
[19:36]emojis are a form of emotional communication,
[19:39]which is not really how we use them, right?
[19:41]Because we didn't grow up with them.
[19:43]And so there is a kind of richness
[19:47]to conversations that can happen over a digital plane
[19:51]for people who are comfortable in that plane
[19:54]and comfortable in that channel.
[19:56]And this is actually a pattern from history.
[19:58]So in the first telephones first.
[20:00]popular about a hundred years ago. There were all these studies saying that people will never be
[20:04]able to have real conversations over a phone because they can't see each other. And if they can't
[20:08]see each other, they can't really communicate. And what's interesting is that at the time they were
[20:12]right, the early transcripts of telephone conversations show that people basically used it as like a
[20:18]telegraph. They would use it to send grocery orders to each other stock orders. And of course,
[20:24]by the time you and I and everyone listening is in middle school, we could talk for like seven
[20:28]hours a night on the telephone, right? It was meaningful conversations that were lives.
[20:33]The same thing is happening right now with digital communication. For us, we tend to look at it and we
[20:38]tend to think, this isn't real conversation. This isn't meaningful. But for our kids who are investing
[20:48]in that form of communication, it does feel real. And that doesn't mean phones are great, right? Like if
[20:52]you're just watching TikTok, if you're not conversing, but you're just passively receiving, it still
[20:57]can be toxic. But there is grounds for hope when it comes to our kids' communication skills,
[21:03]even if they might sometimes look different than ours. Did my daughter put you up to this?
[21:09]She just wants screen time relax. She just said another 15 minutes a day and she'll be a great
[21:15]consumer community here. We need another one called just like good enough communicate like so
[21:21]communicators. Yeah, for parents. Oh my gosh. Well, you've referenced like 800 studies already
[21:30]that you've read for this book. How much research went into this and how did you feel about what
[21:37]you learned? It was a tremendous. I mean, every time I this is my third book. And in some ways,
[21:44]I'm always envious of people who are writing fiction because it seems like it seems like you
[21:49]get to sit in a room and make things up and I have to go find some. And at the same time,
[21:52]I think to myself, could I make things up? And the answer is no, I could not make things up. I'm not
[21:56]creative enough. Yeah, so it took about three years of full-time work. So, you know, I'm a writer
[22:02]at the New Yorker, but I basically don't write there when I'm writing a book. And so I spent three
[22:07]years working on it. And it's just a tremendous amount of making phone calls. I think I talked over
[22:11]like a thousand people or so. And you just kind of go through. It's the only way that I've been
[22:18]able to figure out to do reporting that works for me. And it's not, it's not efficient.
[22:24]But I think it ends up working out. And if it doesn't, I don't know how to do it otherwise. So,
[22:28]they'll probably just continue doing it this way. I mean, you've had a lot of positive
[22:32]reinforcement. I feel like you should stay down the path. I luckily, luckily, as long as
[22:37]people keep sending me emails saying that it's working for them, I'll continue doing it.
[22:42]Did I ask you, like, how, when you, your last novel that came out, how long did you spend writing
[22:48]that? Not that long, actually. But I sold it on proposal and I had a deadline. So, I did it in about
[22:55]nine months. Gotcha. But I imagine that was a pretty full nine months, like that you were thinking about
[22:59]it all the time. I should have been. I'm not a good test case. I will say my memoir, they came before
[23:07]it on and off was working on it for like 20 years. I will say, even though I didn't write that,
[23:11]it came out of failed novels and all the rest. So, I like to think that it's a version of
[23:15]all the other failures that came before it. But this, this one was pretty quick for blank and then
[23:20]I'm writing another book now and I have even less time to finish it. I'm like, I don't know.
[23:25]I don't know. I don't know. That's a bad thing. I was reading this interview with Alex Garland,
[23:29]the guy who just made civil war. And he said that his scripts fall into two categories.
[23:34]He either writes them in 10 days or he writes them in two years. And the 10 day ones are better
[23:42]than the two year ones. And I have a hypothesis. I'll see if this is true for you. I think
[23:47]I think what that reflects is that you've actually spent years thinking about what you want the
[23:52]book to say. And now you can just say it. Whereas with nonfiction, I spent a lot of time
[23:58]trying to figure out what I want to say in the first place. And so the writing part of it is
[24:03]actually probably the smallest part of writing these books. It's the reporting and the thinking
[24:08]that's the biggest part. Well, I do all that beforehand. I have like a detailed 60 page outline.
[24:12]So I just need to get the work. Yeah. Yeah. I just need the words. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great.
[24:18]Yeah. So have you landed on your next topic yet for? I have no. I have not. I've been promoting this.
[24:24]The super communicators came out about two months ago and I've been promoting nonstop.
[24:28]And at some point, I need to like figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
[24:32]And as you know, like the thing is you get so wrapped up in your current project and then
[24:36]getting this book over the finish line. And then suddenly suddenly you're like, you're like, Oh,
[24:40]now I don't have, I don't have anything to do today. And you realize you haven't thought about
[24:44]the next 20 years. So that's what I got to figure out now. And I know we talked briefly before
[24:53]the book came out about the promotion of it, any gems that you've learned along the way,
[24:57]anything change in the last book or. Yeah. So the thing in I'd be curious, I'd be curious
[25:03]your reactions on this. And if you've had this in experience. So I basically decided to focus on
[25:08]podcasts like I felt like podcasts was a place. And we sort of set up a process. And I was I recorded
[25:15]70 podcasts before the book came out. And they was all dropped in like the two weeks after publication
[25:19]and we're still continuing to basically record podcasts. And I think it works. But I think what's
[25:25]happened, what I've noticed from like when I wrote the power of habit to today,
[25:29]when I wrote the power of habit, I basically wrote and didn't excerpt in the New York Times
[25:33]magazine. And that's all it took like from there, everything unrolled. Now, like everything is
[25:38]so Balkanized, right? Everybody listens to different shows. Everybody watches different shows and
[25:44]reads different things. You really have to be out there on everything just to have people hear
[25:50]about your book once. And so that's I think it's kind of a sad commentary. I think on what's going
[25:57]on right now in the media sphere. But I think it also means that there's an opportunity for those of us
[26:02]who care deeply in life this stuff to try and and take advantage of that to make this to make
[26:08]this a career as opposed to like a side hustle, right? I think writing books is really a career.
[26:14]And that that's good. Yeah. That's good. But you're absolutely right. I mean, the whole thing
[26:18]is so fragmented. It's impossible. Sometimes it feels impossible. Yeah. And I like
[26:24]you looked it into being a joy. And that was good. Yeah. Exactly. Well, thank you for that.
[26:28]Yes. And also, I wanted to thank you because you were one of the first people to recommend
[26:33]Pink to me for this scholarship that we set up for booksellers who were writers. And it came
[26:38]it came into fruition. It like exists. And now I think like I think something like 67 booksellers
[26:46]and comicsellers applied to get a scholarship in order to like finish their book. So it's
[26:52]awesome. Yeah. I love those guys. Thank you for introducing me to their wonderful. That's great.
[26:58]Oh my gosh. Amazing. Well, any last minute advice for aspiring authors or perhaps people who
[27:04]would like it to be a career, as you say? Yeah. So I mean, the best advice I can give, I think is
[27:12]and I think most people know this, but it still is good to hear it. The first
[27:15]track of everything sucks. Like it can be so dispiriting to be a writer because our taste is so
[27:24]much better than our clumsy fingers at first. And now that I've done three books and I've been
[27:30]lucky enough to their all bestsellers, I feel like I've been through this enough that I can say
[27:35]even when you write it and it sucks. That isn't cause for despair because it's going to get better.
[27:43]Like it's, it's, it nothing gets good until the third or fourth or fifth pass. You know,
[27:48]they have Scott Fitzgerald had this quote. He said, yeah, I'm a really bad writer, but I'm an amazing
[27:52]self editor. And I feel the same way about myself. And so for anyone who's listening,
[27:57]I think the key is like it's easy to get down on ourselves. But if you just put your butt in the
[28:03]chair and you just work it over and over and over again, you get better and it gets better. Amazing.
[28:10]Well, Charles, thank you so much. I feel like actually, and maybe you've already done this,
[28:14]you should be giving this to everybody or having them buy it at HBS for the first year.
[28:18]It's required reading because that, you know, in authentic manufactured conversation style
[28:26]definitely snuck its way into to a lot of our social engagement, I think, particularly after
[28:32]this year. So they could use some help, but it's not everybody. Yeah, it could be helpful. But
[28:38]anyway, it's so great that you are helping so many people in so many different ways. And it's
[28:42]just really awesome. So congratulations. Thank you so much. I feel the same about you. It's so,
[28:47]it's such a, it's such a pleasure and a blessing to be able to catch up with you ever so often.
[28:51]So thank you for having me. You too. Just keep writing books and we can keep this up. Okay, we'll do.
[28:56]See you in a couple years. Bye, Charles. Thanks, Vie.
[29:02]Bye. Thanks for listening. Two moms don't have time to read books. If you love it,
[29:08]please leave a review and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.