Work Hard or Hardly Work "Shtick to Business" Mini-series - Dr. Peter McGraw

Episode 405, Dr. Peter McGraw

Dr. Peter McGraw

Dr. Peter McGraw is a behavioral economist and global expert in the scientific study of humor. He directs The Humor Research Lab (HuRL), hosts the podcast I’M NOT JOKING, and is the co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. Peter’s work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, NPR, and CNN. He’s a sought-after speaker and professor who teaches MBA courses at the University of Colorado Boulder, University of California San Diego, and London Business School. A TV show based on his life is currently in development.

Below is an auto-generated script from the interview:

Jess: This is part three of our Shtick to Business miniseries with dr. Peter McGraw, author of the book, Shtick to Business. And, if you didn't catch the first two parts, please go back and check those out. on this one, I'd really love to talk about this idea of work hard or hardly work. Can you talk about that in comedy and entrepreneurship and, and other places you see it applying?

[00:00:20] Dr. Peter: Yeah. So, the book sort of, split into two parts. So the first half of the book is very focused on sort of marketing and management, entrepreneurship, kind of building a business in some way, the ideas around that sort of translating the practices and perspectives of the world's funniest people into these big action.

[00:00:40] Oh, I try to make them as actionable as possible lessons. The second half of the book is more about professional development, career development, thinking about how to work  and so work hard and hard or hardly work comes from, when I saw as a puzzle in the sort of life hacking thing. So you, you talk about how your, your podcast is, is like Tim Ferriss, but not as good, , which I enjoy the comedy associated with that.

[00:01:12] But you know, if you, if you listened to the Tim Ferriss of the world and the Jocko, Willink nix, and, you know, basically any of these, these folks who are focused on that kind of stuff, you seem to get a mixed message, which is people talk about the grind, you know, your Jocko, you know, the grind up at 4:30 AM every day, putting in the hours and all that kind of stuff.

[00:01:32] And then there's, others who talk about the value of being bored, the value of taking walks and, you know, napping underneath the tree and, you know, and so on. And what I, realized was, there's two ways to look at it that first of all, that, neither of those is right nor wrong.

[00:01:53] Right there. There it is. Is there some people who need to grind more? They need to spend less time napping and more time putting in the hours to develop their skills. And then there's some people I'm guessing you and I are like these people who need some more naps, they need to kind of release more. And the cheat code so to speak is to do both of those things within a single day.

[00:02:23] Right. And so,  I, I'll step back for a second. And so I learned this from my, my comic friends, but this holds true for anybody really in any sort of creative endeavor, but I'll use Jerry Seinfeld as a, as a case study if I may. So when, when Jerry and Larry David were working on Seinfeld, this is easy to forget, but, but this was the biggest show on television for a while.

[00:02:48] And it basically made. Jerry a billionaire, you know, that plus, you know, his touring and, and all that kind of stuff. But, but the show has, and the show has made even more money in syndication than it did when it was first being released. But what these guys recognized was the most important thing to a good show was the script.

[00:03:11] But the script had to not just be funny, it had to be whole areas. And so when they were finalizing a script, They would lock themselves in the office and they would, they could not be disturbed under any circumstances. Right. So they didn't make costume decisions or set decisions, or even casting decisions.

[00:03:33] They just worked on the script. The only person who had access to them was an administrative assistant that they would, they'd bring out the paper, you know, the, the script with all the scribbles and stuff, and she would sit and type it up. And every so often she'd come across a point and she would laugh out loud.

[00:03:51] And that's the only thing that they would allow to disturb them. They would burst out of the office to find out what she was laughing about. So these guys understood the value of protecting their creative time. And so, so part of the work hard side of things is this notion of you create a sacred, sacred time sacred space.

[00:04:12]if you need to be disconnected to be away from it all, to allow you to concentrate, like concentrating is a very difficult thing to do in a world, you know, for example of constantly buzzing smartphones. So to revisit, to revisit session one, you know, we sometimes want to be less, less connected, you know, in that sense.

[00:04:33] And so figuring out how do you, what is your most creative work? What is your most rewarding work and how do you protect that time? So protect is the first step. The second one is this idea of grinding, of working hard. And that is that what comics will do is they'll work on their material, not in big batches, 14 hours in one day, but rather two hours a day for seven days.

[00:05:02] And so when, when Jerry Seinfeld is working on a new, special, or a new tour, as he's developing that material, he gets out one of these old school. You know, those desk calendars, you know, the old school desk calendar, he'll hang it on the wall. And every day he works on his jokes, whether it be writing jokes, we're practicing, you know, going to a small comedy club and trying them out.

[00:05:24] He'll put an X through that day. What the end of three days. He has a chain. And then he has this saying, don't break the chain. So he works a little bit on his craft every single day with, you know, largely without breaks. But the thing he also does, and this is especially the case. I mean, he's been doing it since the seventies, but he attributes much of the success to Seinfeld and especially the management of Seinfeld is.

[00:05:58] Seinfeld meditates. So while everybody else was eating lunch on the set, he would do 20 minutes of meditation. He would disconnect and give himself a break from this work. now meditation doesn't have to be the release that you're looking for. It could be like your Charles Schultz and you would work, you know, sort of eight to four, writing your, Oh, excuse me drawing peanuts. But then at four o'clock, he'd pick his kids up and, you know, make them dinner and hang out with the family and so on. And so this idea of you work hard and then you hardly work. You take a break, like a real break from it. What too many of us do is we sort of half work and half not work.

[00:06:45] We sort of work and then we check Instagram and then we, you know, we work and then we kind of wander down the hall and chit chat with a colleague and so on versus this sort of barbell sort of approach that's there. and comedians do this they just happen, They, you know, they happen to be very good at being lazy.

[00:07:05] What we often don't see is they're hidden away working on their crafts, you know, in this sort of daily process, at least the ones who are successful, it's, it's almost impossible to be successful in comedy without taking this sort of craftsperson perspective.

[00:07:23] Jess: you know? Everybody's familiar with the 80 20 principle and prayed as law, whatever you want to call it.

[00:07:29] My favorite author on that subject is Richard Kosch.

[00:07:32] Jess: his book, the 80 20 principle, I feel like is the best one out there on this. but the, the, the one. Thought that it makes me think about is, actually putting stuff into application, like, you know, maybe Cal Newport and he's got his book deep work about setting stuff aside, you know, it's been really helpful when I've been able to time block and turn my phone off, not, not connect my computer to internet and like get rid of those temptations.

[00:07:56] Right. but, There's this great book called Autopilot by Andrew smart, about the accidental, accidental discovery of the default mode network in the brain, which shows like when we're not involved in conscious activity, that

[00:08:10] Jess: FMRI machines show there's a different part of our brain that lights up.

[00:08:13] And it's basically the Scientifics scientific explanation. Why sleeping on it helps us come up with better ideas and going on a walk, meditating, whatever these things are, where, He basically shows it's a disadvantage to work hard too long because the other half of your brain doesn't get a chance to light up and connect all the dots of everything you've been doing.

[00:08:33]and it it's helped me like, you know, turn off my audio books when I'm driving places somewhere just to my default mode network, turn on. Right. And it's interesting the thoughts that will come to me if I can do that. And I guess my question for you is. Besides intentionally pursuing a program where I've got a system that works for me instead of me working for me.

[00:08:53] So I don't have to grind constantly. Right. Cause I've intentionally pursued a system instead of just trading my hours at all times. What about, like I'll read the book, I'll do it for awhile. And then I get out of the habit and I'm busy from the minute I checked my phone in the morning until I set my charge, my phone in at night.

[00:09:11] Like I'm kind of constantly buzzing, constantly checking on this kind of answering that. Any thoughts for like, it is my temptation to overground. How, how I can pull back on that.

[00:09:24] Dr. Peter: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think, as I said, you know, people have one of one or the other problem, they don't grind enough or they don't, they don't take enough breaks.

[00:09:32] And then they, they wear themselves out. Or they, as, as you were talking about is they, they're less efficient, you know, that they, that you miss opportunities. So I think I'm a big believer in habits. So, you know, the, you know, if you get on YouTube, There's all these like willpower kinds of motivational videos and so on.

[00:09:57] And, I just don't think that willpower is the solution to our kinds of problems. The solution to our kind of problems is to develop habits or, you know, systems is, you know, as, as Scott Adams says, you says, have systems not goals. I like that a lot. And so the idea is, is that. I think there's sort of two ways to do this.

[00:10:18] The first one is to, to convince yourself and all the data suggests this to be the case of the value, the great value of being released from your work. The number one is that it's good for your health. You know, that, that when you are healthy and you're strong and you're well rested, by the way, one is you can fight COVID.

[00:10:43] Better than if you're not, you know, I mean, no, one's talking about how immune systems are the true heroes, of, of, 2020. And you know, and so not only is it you're going to be on this planet for longer, but you're going to feel better, you know? I mean, you're just going to have more positive emotion and so on.

[00:11:03] The next thing is so, so it's just like, I always ask my students is your health really? Number one? You know, is your health really number one? And the issue is like, when you're, when you're 26, you can cut corners. But when you start hitting middle age, you know, you start sacrificing sleep for productivity.

[00:11:23] And that has a real effect in the moment and in the longterm. So you make your, if you make your health number one, that gives you the license to take your nap, to take your walk. To, to go to bed at a reasonable hour and so on. the second thing is, and know, by the way, that's really good for everyone else in your life.

[00:11:48] Like you're a better person, the healthier you are. You're going to be a better partner, a better father, a better mother, a better whatever, you know, whatever it is, leader. the next thing is, is this idea that you've just talked about, which is it's counterintuitive, is that you could do better work by not working, but you give yourself a chance to kind of process ideas and so on.

[00:12:15] But what ends up happening is like there's only limited hours in the day, right? So you've talked about the 80 20 stuff is you just have to get very comfortable, not getting everything done. As long as you get the most important stuff done. You know, and, and again, you've got to disappoint people. This is a world that we live in.

[00:12:35] You can't make everyone happy, you know? And so, I don't know. I think as Paul Graham said this, this was a powerful thing. Paul said, email allows anyone in the world to put an item on your, to do list. I think it was him who said that when I heard that I was suddenly like, I think I can delete some emails now, you know, like I think it's okay.

[00:13:00] I'm not doing any harm by deleting this email, but I'm, I'm making my life better. And I'm like making the life better of the people who are counting on me in this sense. And so, so I think it's this sort of combination of I'm going to be a better human, a better everything to everyone else. The healthier.

[00:13:19] And better rested and stronger. I am. I'm actually going to be more creative. I may not be more productive, but I'm going to be more creative. And the thing about creativity is it creates non-linearity right. Productivity is linear, but creativity is, can be exponential. and then the other thing is like, again, we're getting back to, to the previous session where we talked about how this goes against our monkey mind, how it goes against human domestication.

[00:13:47] Which is that we want to try to make everyone happy, but if we try to make everyone happy, we make no one happy.

[00:13:55] Jess: Yeah. I feel like there's so much packed in there.

[00:13:58] Dr. Peter: Sorry.

[00:13:59] Jess: No, I kind of love it.

[00:14:00] I think, you know, the habits thing is good. my brother got a dog and he started having to go on dog walks. And it was really great, you know, cause it was like this like

[00:14:16] Jess: thing, he felt bad ignoring instead of just saying he was ignoring his own health or something, you know?

[00:14:20] So we just got two weeks ago, we got a black lab puppy for that,

[00:14:24] Jess: for me, for that reason. And like this time it was going to be my pet instead of the kids pet, you know what I mean? So that I could, maybe more consistently carve out that time and realizing that that, cause I know that that's going to be a realistic program for me.

[00:14:40]versus telling myself, Oh, I'll slow down. I'll make time. You know what I mean? I probably need to do more around these habits or systems too. I need to do more around them. That makes it harder to give into the temptation of just working my life away and not having a life.

[00:14:59] Dr. Peter: You know, this is weird.

[00:15:00] I just thought of this and I can't believe, I didn't think about it for the book, which is, I talk about creating sacred time. Protected time for your creative work, you know, so that's why I never schedule a dental appointment during this time. I don't, I don't schedule podcasts. I mean, I think we had a back and forth about the timing of this podcast where I said, can we push it a little later?

[00:15:23] Can we push it a little later? I've got my writing time in the morning. Right? So that, so this was like, You, you bumped up against my sacred time and I pushed back on it gently cause I wanted to do this, but I, but I, you know, if you had said it has to be at 7:00 AM, I might have said no to this. You know, it just, you know, again, because not only is it, is it violating these rules, but it's also discombobulating for me now because it's such a habit.

[00:15:52] You could apply the same principle to the release. Right. So Charles Schultz naturally had this because he had a family. And so he started drawing when the kids went off to school and he, and he stopped drawing when the kids came back from soccer practice or whatever it is. And so then, and then that became his, you know, kind of a ritual ritualized thing.

[00:16:15] So I think maybe a place to start is you just schedule. That release time, whatever it is whenever you want it to be and you stick to it. And I will tell you, Jess, it's going to be uncomfortable at first because you're going to feel all these opportunity costs and all this kind of thing. But the beautiful thing about habits is if you keep doing it, you keep doing it.

[00:16:42] You keep doing it. Eventually it's going to be discombobulating to not do it. And I have to say. It's it's the issue. It's not that the creative work is more important than the release or that the release is more important than the creative work it's together that are important. You know? So the, so the two of them together is way more important than any one of them is on its own.

[00:17:08] It's exponential.

[00:17:10] Jess: No, it's that makes a ton of sense. Well, listen. I know this one's a little shorter. I think that's fine, but let's, let's wrap up this principal here and invite everybody to tune into a part four of our stick to business mini series. Petermcgraw.org. get your copy of Shtick to Business on audible.com or amazon.com.

[00:17:29] And, hopefully we catch you on the next one here.

[00:17:32] Dr. Peter: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks Jess.