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Life is hard. Let me just try to scratch my way forward.
I'm Angela Duckworth.
I'm Steven Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.
Today on the show, is enthusiasm the real secret to success?
I'm hearing zest. I'm hearing flow.
I feel like I'm tasting a wine now.
They're hints of oak.
Angela, I have a question that's both a problem and a solution.
A puzzle wrapped in enigma covered with mystery.
So I've been preparing for a golf competition.
It's coming up in California.
There is a thing in golf called a pro am, which is attached to a professional tournament.
The day or two or three days before it, there is a competition where one pro will play with a few amateurs.
And the one I'm playing in is a little bit different.
And it's a collegiate challenge where there are college players.
So there will be a foursome with the best college player from a given program, a pro that they'll be matched up with, and then two alumni of that institution.
I'm playing as an alum with a Columbia golfer and another Columbia alum and a pro.
And my performance matters almost zero unless we win, which would give some scholarship money to the college.
The chances of winning are very slim, but I want to do well.
You're competitive.
I guess I am competitive.
And also I'm competitive with myself.
I like improving. Competitive doesn't necessarily mean beating other people, but you're a striver.
So I've been trying to prepare for this match, both physically, which is hard in New York City because it's cold, you can't get outside and play, and prepare mentally.
So mentally, one thing I'm really focused on is not choking.
To do so, I've been reading a book by Gary Player, who's one of the best golfers in history.
He's in his mid 80s now.
And this book he wrote some years ago is called quite directly, Don't Choke, a champion's guide to winning under pressure.
So I've been reading this, and I can't say that I've learned all that much about choking.
The book is not really about choking.
It's more of a manual for how Gary Player approached the game generally.
He was known for being very strong mentally and for pursuing physical fitness at a much higher level than any one of his era.
So he writes about these aspects of his game.
He would practice and practice and practice.
He'd get up at five in the morning in a strange town to go find a gym to lift weights.
He accepted and really wrestled with the mental challenges and wrestled with choking.
Like Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, right?
Like the mental game in addition to the game game.
Exactly. But here's what really struck me.
It wasn't about choking.
What struck me is that in all these avenues that he's pursuing, the training, the strategy, the physical fitness, there was one word that came up over and over and over again that seemed to underlie everything Gary Player did.
And that word is enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm. And it surprised me because that's not a word that we typically think about in terms of a championship ingredient.
He acknowledges that he's always been one of the most enthusiastic people alive.
And his argument is that's what has allowed him to work so hard and succeed.
So my question for you is this.
Do you agree that enthusiasm is a foundational ingredient of success?
And if you do, what's your best advice to increase one's enthusiasm, especially if it's not as naturally sky high as Gary Players or maybe even yours?
I love this question, but I wonder whether Gary Player means enthusiasm as in energy.
He's just like a bunny rabbit, doesn't sleep a lot.
Is that the gift that he's talking about?
I would say no. I think his enthusiasm is defined at here.
I'll read you a little bit.
Please. I had brainwashed myself to be enthusiastic about everything good in my game and to keep building my own confidence.
That enthusiasm is what carried me from the golf course to the gym to keep working hard at getting better.
Focus 100 % on what you are busy with.
Immerse yourself in it and do it with enthusiasm.
Okay, so now it's not just that he has like superhuman energy, because by the way, that has also been posited by some to be a predictor of success.
Like Teddy Roosevelt famously, prodigious amounts of energy, but that's not what Gary Player is talking about.
When he talks about enthusiasm, does he mean that 100 % or close to that of whatever energy you do have is directed like a laser beam on what you're doing?
I mean, if you imagine that a person, this is not easy to imagine, but imagine that a person is a set of arrows.
A person is a set of arrows.
I know, it's a bit of a stretch, but stay with me.
So when you have goal conflict, it's like we have an arrow pulling you in one direction, we have an arrow pulling you in another direction.
It's like, I kind of want to eat the hug and does.
I kind of really feel like I am gonna get sick and then regret that.
That's conflict. I think that dilutes your focus.
I think what Gary Player is talking about is like all your arrows are pointing the same direction as what you're doing.
In other words, like I'm putting.
I'm not thinking about dinner.
I'm not thinking about other people watching me, but I'm just putting.
Is that what he means?
I think the way he defines it, enthusiasm is a mental construct that allows him to focus his mind and body on the goal at hand, even when he doesn't feel like it.
Oh, like willpower.
Well, when I think about willpower, I think that's a little bit closer to a form of martyrdom.
In other words, it's maybe the unsmiling version of enthusiasm.
I think of enthusiasm as the happy version of willpower.
Like, yeah, I can't wait to get on with this task.
Once I'm onto this task, I cannot wait to engage with it every moment that I'm in it and focus on it.
And furthermore, as soon as I'm done with this task, I can't wait to get onto the next task.
And that you could call willpower, but the way he describes it, it's a very exuberant form of willpower.
Is there a word from psychology that's close?
What about vitality?
There are scientists who study vitality, or sometimes it's called zest.
If I were interviewing Gary, I would ask him to complete the zest scale.
It's not called the zest test.
That would make so much more sense.
That would be so good.
Maybe the best zest test.
And also there'd be an east version and then there would be a west version of the best zest test.
Yes, that's right. Okay, so this is actually one of 24 tests in the via, which is the values and action inventory.
These are 24 strengths of character that cultures around the world seem to find admirable.
And so it's like self -control and humility and sense of humor, appreciation of beauty.
So I'm gonna ask you to stand in for Gary Player.
And I'm gonna ask you to answer on a scale from one to five where five is very much like Gary and one is very much unlike Gary.
Got it. Here you go.
I want to fully participate in life, not just view it from the sidelines.
Five and a half. I love what I do.
Five and a half. I look forward to each new day.
1600. Wow, you really are zesty.
Not so good with number scales, but very zesty.
Yeah, I have lots of energy.
Yeah, five. Until you hear from me again, it's five.
Just assume it's five to five and a half.
But keep going. I can hardly wait to see what life has in store for me in the weeks and years ahead.
Five. I'm gonna read you two more.
I awaken with a sense of excitement about the day's possibilities.
Five. People describe me as full of zest.
Yeah, I have to say it's really boring being this enthusiastic.
Kind of one note there, but I do think when Gary Player says enthusiasm, I'm hearing notes of zest.
I'm also hearing notes of flow.
Flow is like complete attentional absorption in the task at hand.
Like when I am doing it, I am only doing this.
And I think that what zest and flow have in common is when you are in the flow state, it is zest like in that you feel really alive.
Did you ever watch Dear Basketball, the animated short that Kobe Bryant, I think he wrote it.
I did not. I haven't even heard of it.
And now I feel lesser for not having heard of it.
Oh, it's so good. It's his story about growing up as a little boy and then falling in love with basketball.
And it's kind of like a love letter to basketball.
And then of course, Kobe Bryant died tragically not long after winning the Oscar for that.
One of the lines that I'll never forget is like, he says, you made me feel so alive.
That is exactly how high performers describe being in the flow state.
It's like, you are kind of like 20 % more alive.
So I'm hearing zest, I'm hearing flow.
I feel like I'm tasting a wine now.
They're hints of oak.
I think it's probably both of those in part because when people are really great at what they do, they probably have, especially for a physical sport, a ton of energy and that energy gets directed.
I mean, think about a really powerful laser, right?
What a laser beam is is when all the waves of light are like focused, Gary Player probably had a lot of focus, a lot of zest and the ability to concentrate his attention and achieve the flow state.
And that's a pretty happy way to live life.
And you can you talk for a moment about what may be a very fine line between enthusiasm as Gary Player writes about it and obsession because it would also be easy to call him obsessed with golf, but obsession carries a pejorative layer, which I think we would use if he had not been successful, but because he
was very successful, we tend to dismiss that association with obsession even if he clearly was.
So are those two sides of the same coin?
Are they the same side of a coin?
There is a researcher I admire a lot.
His name is Robert Valerand and I apologize.
It's French, so you know, Robert Valerand.
But anyway, Robert Valerand studies obsession and he studies passion.
He would argue that a passion can be obsessive or can be harmonious.
And an obsessive passion is one where it's involuntary.
It's also externally motivated as opposed to internally motivated.
So you feel a little bit like the object of the sentence instead of the subject of the sentence.
The flip side of that is harmonious passion.
And that's where you feel like it's integrated into your life.
It's something that you're pursuing for intrinsic reasons, not extrinsic reasons.
And generally what Valerand finds is that harmonious passion is good and correlates with good stuff, including the kind of practice that makes people better, like deliberate practice, et cetera.
An obsessive passion tends to be not as strongly correlated and in some cases negatively correlated with positive outcomes.
I think the lesson is that it's not enough to say like, oh, complete absorption and what you're doing.
There can be a sort of wrong way to do that, which is to get yourself into things where it begins to feel involuntary.
And when I think of the gritty people that I study, the gritty high performers, they are obsessed, but it is a voluntary obsession.
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen wonders if there's a life hack that can make him zestier.
All I have to do is be like him and I too will become a championship golfer.
Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Lululemon.
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Lululemon's new campaign features OBJ and DK Metcalf in their buttery soft, breathable, restorative wear designed to keep up or kick back with you.
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Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about enthusiasm, let's hear some of your thoughts on the topic.
We asked listeners to send us voice memos about the zestiest people in history.
Here's what you said.
Hello NSQ, this is Andrew.
I'm currently in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and because of all the French influence here, I'm reminded of my favorite historical figure, Napoleon Bonaparte.
He was a man of seemingly endless energy.
He was a polymath. Pretty much good at everything.
So if you're talking about vitality and zeal, I can't think of anybody that matches that description better than Napoleon.
People talk a lot about his conquests, but he was very well liked in France and he died young at the age of 51, but he lived more than anybody.
When I think of zest, I immediately think of Dolly Parton.
She's a true Renaissance woman that has found success in multiple industries.
She's a musician, an actress, a business owner, and a philanthropist.
I mean, it's possible to write an entire book about her accomplishments, but she has such a dynamic, lively presence and I hope to have even a small percentage of her zeal for life.
When I think of the zestiest people throughout history, I think SpongeBob SquarePants.
Anyone who goes to work every day with a smile on his face, especially when it's flipping burgers, I mean, Krabby Patties, that's a zesty person.
Anyone whose favorite activity is catching jellyfish, that's a zesty person.
Anyone who can play his nose like the flute, that's a zesty person.
He also lives in a pineapple, which is a pretty zesty thing to do.
That was, respectively, Andrew Douglas, Shay Anderson, and Alex Barbag, thanks to them and to everyone who sent us their thoughts.
Now, back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about how to harness Gary Player's unique enthusiasm.
So, Gary Player, the way he defines it, enthusiasm is a force and he actually describes it as ingrained, a hereditary trait, which I have a hard time believing that's true.
I'm curious to know if you know anything about that.
I think everything's hereditary.
Well, everything's some portion hereditary.
Exactly. I don't think there's anything that doesn't have some genetic influence.
So here's an interesting conflict or potential conflict.
In the case of this one particular person, Gary Player, he grew up in South Africa.
He had a hard and relatively low -income childhood.
He's white, so he had that going for him in that country at that time, but he had a lot of struggles.
His mother died when he was very young.
His father did hard physical manual labor.
He worked in a gold mine, and he had kind of a hard scrabble life.
Do you think that his high enthusiasm level, which he professes to have had from childhood, in a case like that is a coping mechanism to some degree, or do you think it really was a trait that he just owned?
I said that I think everything has some genetic influence, and I stand by that.
At the same time, you could argue that everything is shaped by the environment, and those aren't contradictory statements because they're both true.
There's a theory of personality that I like a lot, and it sounds kind of Freudian almost, but I'm thinking of Tim Beck, the great psychotherapist.
He said that personality is an adaptation to the environment that you develop and then basically is rewarded, and then you lean more into it.
Say, for example, you're a very anxious person.
Well, that's an adaptation to an environment that you perceive as threatening, so you start to think about the future.
You try to avoid bad futures and carefully rethink all your decisions, and so forth.
That's maybe an anxious personality type, but he would say it's an adaptation, and I think he would say that when it becomes dysfunctional, when it's not serving you or it's too rigid, then it's a maladaptation, and then you go into the realm of psychopathology, but all personality, including healthy
personalities, are just adaptations to experience.
So maybe Gary Player had a kind of unstable childhood or adversity that enthusiasm ended up being a kind of coping mechanism or an adaptation that served him.
Freud had the same view.
Freud thought of almost all behavior as being coping mechanisms.
So anyway, I think it could be that childhood experiences made him more enthusiastic.
But my natural intuition would suggest that the opposite would have happened, that with all those difficulties, one would rather than promote this self -belief and I can get to the next stage, one would say, wow, life is hard.
Let me just try to scratch my way forward as opposed to setting a very high goal.
Now, he might be a terrible example, Gary Player, because he's plainly an outlier.
He's literally one of the best golfers in history, and he came from a place where very little conspired to make him that.
Jack Nicholas, one of the other greatest golfers, he grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Columbus, Ohio, belonged to a country club, played golf and other sports.
The path was kind of paved for him.
Arnold Palmer, another of the greatest golfers, I believe his dad was the pro or ran, again, a golf club.
So it was a different trajectory for him, and all of this may be post -hoc reasoning to help explain why this outlier did so well, but I'm still just incredibly attracted to this notion of, if nothing else, his belief that enthusiasm is at the root of all his success, and therefore, he's become an evangelist
for all of us to, quote, be more enthusiastic.
And I have no idea if that's a good idea or not, because if enthusiasm, as he describes it, is largely hereditary, well, I can't change my genes.
If enthusiasm is the product of your own individual life, well, I can't live the life he's lived and so on.
But I guess what I really would like to know from you is, are there any empirical findings suggesting that there are ways to increase one's blank?
Call it enthusiasm, call it zest, et cetera.
Even though probably Gary did, I'm guessing, inherit genes that inclined him that way, there is one thing I think we can do that would incline us to have more zest and more flow, and that is to find things that fit.
So there's a lot of research on how our interests can either fit well with what we're doing or misfit.
Like, I read a whole book on resilience yesterday.
I was on cloud nine, I was like, this is amazing, I love this book, I don't wanna go to the bathroom, I don't wanna answer the phone, all I wanna do is read this book.
I think I was in the flow state.
If you made me read about Russia, like, I don't know anything about Russia.
I didn't know that Russia was threatening to invade Ukraine.
I'm like, really? Where's Ukraine?
So fit is necessary to generate zest?
It's so important. And you can say like, I don't have the God -given gift of flow or zest, but the more you can make your environment fit your personality.
Like Tim Beck said that personality is an adaptation to our environment, but also if we can find environments that are well -suited for our personalities, then we've got something close to flow.
I really wanna know whether zest is contagious.
Because if we think about leadership, whether leadership is in a corporate setting, political setting, in a family setting and so on, we do rely a lot on transmission of values and transmission of mood.
We model behavior. And so I'm curious if I want to be zestier or have more vitality or enthusiasm, whatever we're calling it, is one way to gain more simply by being more selective in the people and circumstances?
Like hang out with enthusiastic people?
Let me find the zesty people.
I think so. And that's because there's research on emotional contagion.
I'm thinking about Sigal Barsed, who's a...
