[MUSIC PLAYING] ADI IGNATIUS: Hi, I am Adi
Ignatius, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review,
and welcome to HBR Quarantined. This is episode 2 of our show,
which streams live on LinkedIn each Monday at 12 noon
Eastern standard time, and is then available
on HBR's LinkedIn page and on our YouTube channel. My co-host on the
show is Josh Macht, who is my longtime
friend and colleague who heads product innovation at
Harvard Business Publishing. We created this show to connect
with the millions of you who are stuck at home. We try to tee up questions
about work, about resilience, and about what's next
in the world of business as we continue to confront
the global COVID-19 pandemic. So this is week eight in working
from home for the two of us. We have a guest today who
we'll go to in a second, Angela Duckworth, who is a
professor of psychology at the University
of Pennsylvania and author of the
bestselling book Grit: The Power of Passion
and Perseverance. But before we go to Angela-- oh, and by the way, we're
going to interview her. We're also going to give
anyone who's watching a chance to ask questions as well. So put your questions
in the comment box, we'll try to get to
as many as possible. But Josh, before we do that,
I want to ask you, week eight, how resilient are you feeling? To be honest-- well,
just [INAUDIBLE],, I've always viewed you as the
only extrovert in our company, so I was particularly worried
that you would be the first one to crack out there. JOSHUA MACHT: I don't
know that I've cracked. I mean, I'm really looking
forward to today's conversation for sure. Last week was feeling the slog. And then of course, here
in New England at least, the weather started to
change, Adi, and it just-- it's sort of amazing
and a little scary. I saw on Instagram that someone
said that Americans have grown bored with COVID, so it's over. And that kind of scared me. Going out, you really
saw a lot of people. But that aside,
there's definitely something about the
weather that's helped. So I was feeling it last week. I don't know-- where's
your mood right now? ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, I
mean, I feel like my life is sort of a cycle of
sleep, and then waking. And I know that's the
normal cycle of life, but there's something that
seems tyrannical in that rhythm right now. I guess because it's just
thing after thing after thing. I did play tennis the other
day, and I wore a surgical glove on my left hand. And it made me think
of my uncle, who was a surgeon out in California,
and also a tennis player. And I'd always
imagined him as a kid wearing his scrubs and
his surgeon's gloves, so trying to do a little
bit to not get so crazy. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. The tennis helps. I played a little bit of tennis
this weekend with my daughter, and that felt like a little-- almost normal. A little bit. ADI IGNATIUS: Well, and I have
to say, episode 1 I thought went well. Judging from the response of my
family members and your family members, I think our fake TV
show was actually a big hit. JOSHUA MACHT: I know. I [INAUDIBLE] family members. I don't know, I think they
made all the positive comments for sure. But you know what,
Adi, I have to ask you, because they have asked
me, and a lot of people have asked, what is the deal
with the wallpaper behind you? The people want to know! ADI IGNATIUS: Ah, the wallpaper. So OK, little story. Remember when everybody was
buying toilet paper and paper towels? We were late, and
the only thing that was available at that
point was wallpaper. So we put it everywhere. It's on our walls. It's in our bathroom. Two of our kids are
wrapped up in it. The dog, of course. So-- No, the wallpaper-- so
I'm dining out on the fact that HBR interviewed
Tory Burch recently, and I had the wallpaper
in the background, and she stopped
and said, you know, that's really good
wallpaper, so. JOSHUA MACHT: Oh, no. Oh, no. Now you're insufferable. That's not-- ADI IGNATIUS: I'm insufferable
about my wallpaper. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah, that's not-- OK. ADI IGNATIUS: All
right, so we're going to be talking
about resilience today, and perseverance and grit. And so we're going to show you
our weekly TikTok clip that will maybe get at the idea
of the challenge of trying to stay resilient while
working from home. Engineer Dave, roll that clip. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] [MUSIC - A-HA, "TAKE ON ME"] [DOG BARKING] [END PLAYBACK] So that is HBR has a TikTok
page, has a TikTok account. That's our own
Paige Cohen, who is trying to show how she's trying
to make it through her week eight. So-- JOSHUA MACHT: We had to
look around and see-- when that dog yipping,
I had to see if my dog-- I had like
post-traumatic stress-- I was like, is that my dog? Thankfully, it wasn't, though. ADI IGNATIUS: So week eight,
you haven't eaten the dog. That's good. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] ADI IGNATIUS: You
haven't cracked. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. No, I haven't. I'm showing grit
and determination. ADI IGNATIUS: All right, so
let's bring in our guest. So as I said, our guest
today is Angela Duckworth. She's a professor of
psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, author
of the book Grit: The Power of Passion
and Perseverance. It's a hugely successful book. It's sold hundreds of
thousands of copies. She has a TED talk that's
been viewed 20 million times. So let's just jump right in. Angela, thank you
for being here. And I guess my
first question is, how are you holding
up personally, and are you as gritty
as you thought you were? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: [CHUCKLING] Thank you for having me. I'm holding up OK. My lifestyle hasn't changed
all that much, honestly. I'm used to rolling
around in my pajamas slash yoga wear
slash athleisure, and reading all day,
taking Zoom calls. That's me personally. Obviously, the world
is falling apart in pretty much every dimension,
so that's not lost on me. But I can't say that
I'm personally suffering as much as most people. JOSHUA MACHT: Oh, that's good. That's really good. But I'm curious, Angela,
because there's no question that I think a lot
of people-- well, there's just a slew of
mental health issues that are obviously coming up
for folks that we read about, and I think we all feel. I'm curious from
your point of view, the whole notion
of perseverance, which is core to your ideas. How are you rethinking
that in light of what we're living through right now? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: It's
a timely question. I don't know that the current
crisis makes me rethink things in a fundamental way. I think the psychology
of resilience, and how the body and
mind deal with adversity, the principles that not only
myself, but lots of scientists have been working on
for years, I think are-- they're playing out the
way we think they would. So when you experience an
adversity, a challenge that's threatening-- so not a good
thing, but a bad thing that's new that could do you harm,
you have a kind of response which is partly your body. We all feel stressed. You can feel it-- your sleep is disrupted. In acute periods, it's like
you can feel muscular tension. Your heart rate
might be elevated. Your mind gets
focused on threats. You keep thinking about them. That's actually, I think,
the thing to know-- and maybe here's where
psychological science can help. This is not a bad
response to adversity. It's part of resilience
is to actually have all of those reactions. I think what's important
is, how do you manage them? In a way, how do
you optimize them? And also, how do you
make sure that you learn something in all this? I think that's the
other big lesson, is that if you don't learn
something in this crisis, then you weren't
paying attention. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. For sure. It's exhausting too,
having all those emotions. ANGELA DUCKWORTH:
It is exhausting. Especially, though,
I think if you have this secondary response,
which is, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be having
those emotions, or I don't want to
feel these emotions. I think, actually, you
double the work when you layer upon the
stress response like a meta response, which
is that you're not supposed to have the stress response. You're supposed to have the
stress-- you are supposed to be stressed right now. If you're not stressed,
you're not alive. JOSHUA MACHT: [CHUCKLES] ADI IGNATIUS: So your whole
story is about resilience. Your whole research
is about resilience. I want to-- I mean, this is a big moment. This isn't a minor
setback that a few of us are facing that we'll
bounce back from. This is a kind of "once
every century" sort of event. You think of world wars, you
think of depressions, you think of pandemics, things
that shape entire generations. So I guess based on your
research and your understanding of human nature and our
ability to bounce back, how is COVID-19 likely to
shape the generation that's coming of age now in terms
of their expectations and their resilience? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: You
know, I just finished teaching a class for
undergraduates called Grit Lab, which I launched
this semester not knowing, by the way, of
course, that we were going to be in the
middle of a pandemic in the middle of my class. But I said to my own students,
you're living through history. And there's an opportunity
here, if you think about stories that you want to tell
your grandchildren, about the pandemic of 2020
and how you managed it. You might tell a
story that begins with like, well, at first, I
was just totally sideswiped. I couldn't get my life together. All my routines fell-- I wasn't myself. I'm not proud of that. But here's what I'm really proud
of, which is how I responded, and how I learned and
grew through these weeks. And I think that's actually
what Victor Frankl, who of course wrote Man's
Search for Meaning about his experience
in concentration camps, said that this is
one of the major ways that we achieve meaning in life,
is our response to adversity. And that turns this
narrative into an opportunity to demonstrate and
to develop character. JOSHUA MACHT: Hm. That's interesting. So Angela, I wonder if you
want to talk about or follow this woman who all of a
sudden became a Twitter sensation, because she
basically went online and said, I've had enough. I'm not going to be
homeschooling or teaching my first grader these
math worksheets. And all of a sudden, it erupts. Now-- so she quits. She essentially-- it seems to be
saying not what you're saying, She says, I'm not
doing it anymore, and the world applauds. Interesting coda is that
she ends up later that day announcing that she
is at Guggenheim for a book on resilience. But I'm just curious, what
about that emotion of wait, no, no more? How do you fit that
into the narrative here? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: You know,
when a working professional-- in this case, a very
accomplished scientist-- says, no, I am not going to be
spending six hours a day sitting next to my first grader
on video calls in distance learning, you could say that's
a failure of resilience. I don't think it is. And I think to understand
why some things look like they are failures
but they're not, you have to understand
the nature of goals. What a goal is is nothing
more and nothing less than a desired future state. And these can be really
specific, trivial goals, like I have a goal of being
on this video conversation because it's important
to me to communicate a little bit about my science. When I said that
goal, like it's a goal to be on this
video conversation, and then I said "because"
it's important to me to communicate about the
psychology of resilience, that's a higher-level goal. And human beings have goals
that are nested in hierarchies. You can imagine
visually a pyramid. And I don't know this
scientist personally, but I imagine that there
is a higher-level goal that is more important than be on
this video first grade class. Maybe the higher-level
goal is, make sure my kid develops
into a great person. And when you understand
that people have hierarchies of goals, then
you can understand that when they disengage
or quit on a goal, it may be because there's
a higher-level goal that is better served by
some alternative means. So maybe she's letting her
kid do something else that's better with their time. And maybe she has even
higher-level goals, like keep my family
and my sanity intact. And anyway, I could
discern a little bit of that in what I saw from
this narrative on Twitter. And I think when we understand
that goals are hierarchical, it also gives us
permission to disengage from goals that are not serving
our higher-level purpose. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. I can tell what you're saying. A little bit liberating,
and it feels like that's what she tapped into. The freedom-- ANGELA DUCKWORTH: I think so. JOSHUA MACHT: And everyone
collectively wanted to say, enough with this. Let's focus on what
really matters. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Exactly. And when you phrase like
what really matters, you're implicitly talking
about the higher-level goals, so I completely agree with that. ADI IGNATIUS: Now, before
I ask my discussion, I want to remind the people
who are viewing that you can raise your own questions
about grit, and perseverance, and anything else
in the comment box. And if you just
joined us, we are here with Angela Duckworth,
who is the Character Lab CEO, and the author of
the bestselling book Grit. So Angela, so Josh
and I went online and took your grit scale quiz. I scored a 3.3. Josh scored a 4.4. JOSHUA MACHT: Yes! ADI IGNATIUS: Is he
1.1 better than me? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Well, let
me ask you a question, Adi. What were the items on
the grit scale where you think that it docked your
score, that you didn't quite-- quote unquote-- do
as grittily as Josh? ADI IGNATIUS: Well,
it's interesting. I took it right after that to
see if it was easy to game, and I got a 5.0. So turned out yes. If you, for some reason,
want to game the grit scale-- ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Please
don't use this in HR. Go on, yeah. ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah,
do not use this-- yes. JOSHUA MACHT: Or you
didn't want to beat me. OK. ADI IGNATIUS: So I did
actually technically beat Josh. And frankly, it was
pretty gritty of me to go back and take
it a second time. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: It is. It is. I commend you. JOSHUA MACHT: True [INAUDIBLE]. ADI IGNATIUS: I think it was-- I think I was acknowledging
that maybe I'll sometimes change perspective. I think it was something like
that that docked me those points that Josh-- who
was lying, probably, when he took the test-- didn't really admit to. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: So I'll let
you in on a little secret. It's not a secret, but
it may not be well-known. So I developed the grit scale
in my first year, I think, of graduate school. And the questions on the grit
scale that are about passion are the product of a
first-year graduate student. So what I was
really trying to get at was having some consistent
higher-level goal, or focus, that gives meaning and purpose
to everything else you do. So for example,
I'm a psychologist, and I have experienced
the entire pandemic as a psychologist. Everything to me,
I'm interpreting, trying to understand
what people are really motivated by, how our attention
might be biased, et cetera. And that is what I
was trying to get at with the passion subscale. Not that you aren't
flexible in your thinking, but more that you have
some kind of throughline to what interests you, to
what you're committed to. So now understanding
that, Adi, that was the spirit of the
questions, which I may not have worded the best way. Do you feel like you have
that consistency of passion, that you love what you
do, and that in a way, you can see the world through
this lens that is somewhat consistent over time? ADI IGNATIUS: When I find
it, you can't take me off it. When I find something
and I am devoted to it, you cannot take me off it. It just bothered me that
there was some writing that Josh was 1.1-- ANGELA DUCKWORTH: [CHUCKLES] [INTERPOSING VOICES] JOSHUA MACHT: We know I'm
just [INAUDIBLE] for everyone on this, but I'll tell you. So Audi and I have been
playing tennis forever. And it's amazing. And we're pretty evenly
matched, but we're competitive-- as you can
see-- about everything, including the grit scale. And if he ever goes
down by a game or two, this guy has like a
crazy determination. Like I can't-- it's just
the will, and you feel it. So there's definitely-- ADI IGNATIUS: I've
coined a term for it. I call it grit. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Well, I think
it is part of grit, absolutely. By the way, we're
talking about resilience. That's completely appropriate
given the pandemic. But there is another
half of grit, which is this passion piece. Loving what you do is not
the same thing as resilience. Being so captivated by it
that you think about it after 5:00, and before 9:00, and
on the weekends, and the like. So that's not just
resilience, when I say grit. But let's talk about this
response that you have. I actually think the phrase
that comes to my mind is it's the "I'll
show you" response. It's like, when somebody
tells you that you can't win, or that you shouldn't
apply for this thing, or the odds are against
you, or you lose the mat, it's this kind of
fiery, fists clenched, "I'll show you"
response that I-- I mean, I remember reading
Michelle Obama's biography-- autobiography, I guess--
her memoir recently, and she had the "I'll
show you" response. I was like, yeah! Go, girl! There's so many grit
paragons for whom that is a visceral, reflexive
response to being told, you can't do this. ADI IGNATIUS: Mm-hm. So we've got some questions
coming in from the audience, so I'm going to just go
to some of those now. There are a bunch. So here's Katie from New
York, who is asking Angela, how do you keep going
when you feel like you have exhausted your resilience? How do you pick it up? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: I
think this question is related to the
experience of burnout that honestly, I
think most of us have experienced in some
way, shape, or form. Maybe not for an
extended period of time. But the phrase
"burnout" actually is really illuminating
as to what it is, really, because the
experience of burnout is this feeling like you have
given 11 out of 10, if you will, and that you're
getting back very little, so you can't keep going. And it is characterized
by a state of exhaustion, a sense of helplessness. And then also sometimes
this feeling of being-- it's called depersonalized, like
not connected to the people that you usually
feel connected to. In your work, in particular. And my suggestion is, first of
all, burnout is a real thing. It's not a figment
of your imagination. Like I said, most of us
have experienced this. And then if you understand
that the experience comes from some perception that
you're giving it everything and you're getting
back almost nothing, then you have to change
either the numerator or the denominator there. You might actually
have to work less. You might have to
actually give less. Or you might need to have
some way to get back more. So I'll stop there because I
know there are other questions, but I think burnout is real. I think that it's the
understanding in your head that you're giving
everything, you're not getting back very much. And you got to change either
how much you're giving, or how much you're getting back. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah,
that's a real feeling of diminishing returns that I
think a lot of people get to. And you're right, taking
the foot off the gas and just finding ways to
shift into something else, I think that's
really good advice. ANGELA DUCKWORTH:
And if life really is a marathon-- which I think
it is-- and not a sprint, then that's what the
highest performers do. They're not grinding 24/7. They don't overtrain. ADI IGNATIUS: So
we have a question from Ramola in Johannesburg. The question is, how
can I discuss resilience with my team virtually,
given the circumstances? But I to expand that a little. You wrote an article,
Angela, in 2018 for Harvard Business
Review with Tom Lee called "Organizational Grit." So maybe maybe the
question to take is, what's the
secret to creating a culture in which an
institution collectively has this sense of
drive and perseverance? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: When I
wrote that article with-- full disclosure, my cousin Tom,
who made me write the article, because he's-- ADI IGNATIUS: Yes, we knew. ANGELA DUCKWORTH:
He was like, you're going to write this article,
and I'm your cousin, so you're going to say yes. But it was a lot of fun. And it helped me
articulate what I think is true, which
is that if you look at a gritty individual,
they have a very aerodynamic hierarchy of goals. What they do during the
day, these low-level goals, they match up really nicely
with mid-level goals, and an ultimate top-level--
like I know what I'm doing. It's all part of an aligned
goal hierarchy where like, this is who I am. Now, that's also true
at the macro level when you think of
an organization. A great organization--
whether it's a private sector company, or
a nonprofit, or a government-- they have a clarity about
what their mission is. And this is why
I think companies have mission statements. And then they have
strategic plans that get you to that mission. And then they have
tactical objectives, like KPIs, et cetera. And I think if you want
to maintain or even build that kind of clarity
during a crisis, like COVID-- I know you've recently
spoken to Tory Burch, and I remember having
a conversation with her about grit a couple years ago. And I asked, how
often as a leader do you have to remind people
of what the mission is, and how the strategy
lines up to the mission, and how the KPIs line up to the
stra-- she's like, every day? Every few hours? So I think maybe one
of the big lessons is that in addition to
being a great role model, in addition to having that
clarity in the first place, really appreciating
that, in a way, motivation for an organization
is like a half-filled helium balloon. You got to keep batting
it back up in the air. Don't be so naive as to
think that, well, you had the annual meeting, or you
even had the weekly phone call. I think people need constant
reminding of how their part fits into the greater whole. JOSHUA MACHT: Right. Yep. ADI IGNATIUS: Now,
here's a question. This is, I guess, a
pushback a little bit. This is from Tina from
Melville, New York, who asks, isn't it healthy not to
be gritty all the time? That perhaps balance is the
key to a healthy and wholesome life? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: So
I'm going to agree that balance is the key to
a happy and wholesome life. I think if you-- I'm going to give
you my response, but you're also probably
going to roll your eyes. So my response is
that I don't think grit is grinding all the time. I hope I'm gritty, I try to
be gritty, and I like grit. So what do I do? I slept late today. I went for a run yesterday--
socially distanced with a mask on and all that. But I don't think that-- the
word "grit" sounds masochistic. But really, all it
is is trying to be committed to things in the long
run, and to work towards them. But if it really
is a long run, that means that there's
got to be balance, there's got to be
forgiveness, there's gotta be
self-compassion, there's got to be sleeping
late occasionally. And I think that's the message. So the John Wayne,
kind of true grit, it's not about
punishing yourself. It's maybe not the
right-sounding word. JOSHUA MACHT: But
one thing it also is about, as you say, having
direction, and purpose, and knowing where you're going. I just find right now,
with so much uncertainty, and you've got to believe we've
all have a lot of anxiety-- or at least some low
level of anxiety-- how do you create that
direction and purpose when you're thinking,
where does all this go? ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Yeah. I'm going to-- before I give
you a solution, let me just say, that feeling of
like, whoa, like I-- for so many people also, given
the current economic situation, what they do for a living,
like they literally can't do. So yesterday, I was talking to
a restauranteur in Philadelphia named Marc Vetri. He's on the board
of my nonprofit. And for somebody for whom
their top-level goal is to help the world through food,
or run the world's greatest restaurant, you
really want to stop and just say like, hey, that
must be really difficult. It's different for professors,
or writers, or journalists, who can kind of pivot
in a less dramatic way and still be useful. So I want to just
pause and say, I think it's really hard
to have a top-level goal and then not be able to
work toward it in the way that you're used to. And then the next
thing I'll say, after fully acknowledging
how challenging that is-- especially for really
gritty people-- I think that if you ask
the question like, OK, given the uncertainty, given
that we don't know what the end date is for all
this, if I really think about my top-level
goal, it's probably something very abstract. And that's generally true. So for my top-level goal,
it's use psychological science to help kids thrive. I had lots of random
assignment studies that were supposed to
launch this spring. None of them happened because
kids are not in school, and schools have better things
to do other than mess with me and my logistics for research. So the question is, OK, if
that's my top-level goal and my immediate
strategy is thwarted, then how creative can I be? And that's part
of the reason why I'm doing video conversations
like this-- and frankly, a lot with parents
and teachers-- because I'm trying to
find alternative means. And honestly, some
restauranteurs are doing similar things. They're trying to help
the world through food, and they can't do it through
their in-person restaurant. So not only are
they doing take-out, they're cooking and
feeding health workers, or they're doing
videos on Facebook to teach people how to cook. So I would say that
having real clarity about the abstract mission
statement for your life is empowering, because even
in a time like this where 9 out of 10 doors
are closed to you, there might be one
that you didn't even think of before that
enables you to keep working toward that mission. JOSHUA MACHT: Mm-hm. ADI IGNATIUS: So I want
to go to another question that the audience has raised. This is from
[INAUDIBLE] from London. And really, it's going back
to the topic of children. How do we make sure
our kids develop grit? There's some kids who are born-- just the moment they're born,
it's clear who they are, and what they want to do,
and what their passions are. And there are others who
are late bloomers, or who are hardworking and
smart, but don't have that sort of passion
thing to drive them that you talk about. So how do we help our
kids find all of that? ANGELA DUCKWORTH:
Well, one thing I will just say about
kids and how they-- sometimes I used to
joke with my husband, they just hatch, and you're
like, wow, who are you? And they do seem to come
with their own set of goals and preferences. But it's not strictly true. Actually, if you look at
the development of interests and ability, it's a process. And nobody's really
born wanting to be-- even Kobe Bryant wasn't
born to play basketball. It evolved very quickly. So how, as a parent, do
you support this process? I think there's two
things I would say. First is that it's
really important, I think, to be observant of
what your kids are attracted to, and to nurture those interests. And I think for
those listeners who are privileged and able to
afford their kids of lots of-- that's great, and
it's certainly not true of most kids
and most families. But yeah, if you
notice, as I did, that my daughter Lucy,
when she was younger, she just was weirdly
reading cookbooks. And that's kind of weird, right? Why are you really a
cookbook when you're eight? And she'd have all these
YouTube videos up on the iPad after I got it back,
and they would be like, how to make unicorn
cupcakes, et cetera. As a parent, you observe that,
and then you encourage it, and you create opportunities
for them to get-- go deeper. But the second thing
I would just say is that the whole
experience of childhood is basically a trial
and error discovery and development of interests. So one thing I see privileged
parents do too much is kind of narrow the corridor. It's like, oh, you played
soccer for three years, and now I've got the whole
rest of your life mapped out, and it's all soccer. And really, what kids
need is the freedom to be able to detach from
things, and they're like, oh, I don't want
to bake anymore. I want to do soccer. It's like, I don't want
to do soccer anymore. I'm going to try writing. And I think this experience
of trial and error sampling should help kids actually
eventually specialize. But in science, we would call it
sampling before specialization. And when you look
developmentally at world-class
performers, they tend to have sampled before
they specialized. ADI IGNATIUS: So
we're going to go into our weekly segment called
"Here Today or Here to Stay?" And Angela, you can play
along if you want to. But really, just to talk
about a phenomenon that has dominated our lives in
these past couple of months, is it just temporary, is
it going to stick around? So all right, so
Zoom connections. We're all on Zoom, or
Webex, or whatever platform, talking to friends,
talking to family, talking remotely to the office. We have our nightly quarantine-y
calls with our loved ones. So the question is, is
that here to stay or not? I'm guessing maybe not. It's wonderful. It's also exhausting. And it's particularly exhausting
at the end of a long day. We've learned scientifically,
it is actually exhausting. That when you're physically
with people, you can look away, and there are various
body language paradigms you can adopt. You are sort of required
to look right at the camera to show that you're
paying attention here. It is literally exhausting. So I have a feeling as nice as
this has been, as nice as it's been that we've had a way to
connect during the quarantine, I think this is
not here to stay. Josh? JOSHUA MACHT: So I think-- I mean, I kind of get what
you're saying, but I think-- at least what I'm
finding is that it is nice to be connected
to people in ways that I hadn't been in the past. So I get what you're saying. If I'm able to see and spend
more time with my mother in person, maybe
then you don't need as many Zoom calls or FaceTime. But I feel like wanting to
keep those connections is going to be really, really important. And I think using that
technology is actually going to stick around more than
we might imagine right now. ADI IGNATIUS: Angela, hear
today or here to stay? JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah, tiebreaker. ANGELA DUCKWORTH:
I think it's here to stay maybe more for work. And then I would
imagine we're going to go back to wanting to
actually touch, and hug, and clink glasses
with people socially. So I think the Zoom cocktail
party is not going to last, but I think the Zoom conference
meeting with your colleagues in Louisiana will stay. JOSHUA MACHT: Well, so you did
a really good job of agreeing with both of us, I think. [CHUCKLING] And of course, [INAUDIBLE]
but we can't live with that. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Oh,
was this just a binary-- like you have to choose
one or the other? Oh, it's that kind of thing? Then I'm going to say that
it won't last forever. ADI IGNATIUS: Well, well,
well, there you have it. JOSHUA MACHT: Well, [INAUDIBLE]
is not as greedy as I am, so I think [INAUDIBLE]
feel better, and I think the
audience [INAUDIBLE].. ADI IGNATIUS: So
Angela Duckworth, thank you for being with us. ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Thank you. ADI IGNATIUS: This is
episode 2 of HBR Quarantined. Josh, you want to take it out? JOSHUA MACHT: Sure. I want to say thank you
so much to our guest, and to Adi, and
to all the people who make this show possible. Scott LaPierre, our senior
producer, Dave Di Julio, our broadcast, director
Karen [INAUDIBLE],, Enrico Cripps, our design, and
Kelsey Gripenstraw and Emily [INAUDIBLE] for
audience engagement. Our co-producers Andy
Robinson, Ellie Honan, Dustin [INAUDIBLE],,
and of course, our great theme music from
Holy Fang Studios and Oliver Ignatius. I also want to say, please
come back next week. We're going to have
Arianna Huffington on. We're going to have a
wide-ranging conversation, probably a lot about sleep. I've seen somewhere
someone said that if you are having a good
night's sleep now, you're probably a sociopath. I don't know if
that's exactly true. We'll probably ask her that. We're going to ask her about
all those wacky dreams you're having too. At least I want to
push you on that one. So really looking forward to it. I hope you enjoyed this show. Looking forward to
seeing you all next week. ADI IGNATIUS: See you next week. [MUSIC PLAYING] JOSHUA MACHT: So
now can she tell us who actually is grittier? It was obviously me. ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah,
but I think she conceded that since you can
game the test, it's really not-- really doesn't say everything
about the character of a person. Pretty clear about that. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. ADI IGNATIUS: I don't know. That was good, though. I thought she was fantastic. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah,
she was amazing. It was really good. DAVE DI JULIO: It really was. JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. We didn't get to talk as much
with you, Dave, this week. DAVE DI JULIO: I know. I kind of miss my little-- well,
at least we're still on, so. Yeah, I was going to
say, happy Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you. ADI IGNATIUS: You
know, my wife is running at the stairs saying,
you know you're still on. And-- DAVE DI JULIO: I know,
it's just like everybody-- yes, we're still on. ADI IGNATIUS: This is our
special behind-the-scenes coverage for people who cannot
get enough of our fake TV show. DAVE DI JULIO: Like
Ellie keeps on saying, still live, still live. Yes, Ellie. This is on purpose. SCOTT LAPIERRE: It's by
design, actually, yeah. We're that good. JOSHUA MACHT: This
is our overtime, if you still have questions. DAVE DI JULIO: Yeah. It actually happened last week. It was a mistake-- I didn't end the
broadcast, which is crazy. I never make mistakes. But I didn't end it, but we got
a great response from people saying, oh, it's kind of nice
to see the folks after the fact. So we are purposely
keeping this live. It's not a mistake,
folks, so stop texting me. My phone is going crazy. ADI IGNATIUS: But I do urge
people, if you're still on, send us your ideas for who
we should have in the future. Send us your comments on what
you think about the show, what you think about
our guests, and we will read all of your comments
and take them to heart. We probably-- JOSHUA MACHT: Do we
go off half a reel? ADI IGNATIUS: What? Yeah, I think we may actually
have to say a real goodbye. JOSHUA MACHT: Real goodbye. Not the-- DAVE DI JULIO: How about
we do a real goodbye, and I'll do Oliver's
music when-- ADI IGNATIUS: Could
we get Oliver's music? JOSHUA MACHT: Yeah. ADI IGNATIUS: If
you're wondering, Oliver Ignatius is my son,
and he wrote the music, and he is a musician
and engineer, so let's roll it one more time. DAVE DI JULIO: All right. So long, guys. See you next week. JOSHUA MACHT: See you, everyone. ADI IGNATIUS: All right.
