Thinking Big with Sheena Iyengar, Business School Professor + Author

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Speaker 1: Hi.

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Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

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Speaker 3: And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

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Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura, and in this episode, I am going to be interviewing Sheena Ayengar, who is a professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Business. She is the author of two books, one called The Art of Choosing, which a number of people have seen her pretty famous Ted talk on that topic. She's also the author of a new book called Think Bigger. So, Sarah, are you thinking bigger these days?

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Speaker 4: I don't know. I started looking.

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Speaker 3: I haven't read her book yet, although I am actually super intrigued by it, and so I was looking at Amazon reviews as one does, and I was slightly intimidated by the idea of thinking bigger. Like sometimes I find that a phrase like that sounds like it applies to specifically an entrepreneur who is going to grow their business and like get billions from some venture capitalists and ultimately like go public, like and I don't really.

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Speaker 4: Have aspirations of that. I don't even know if you do.

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Speaker 3: So I'm like, is this one of those books that like sounds really cool, but like won't really apply to me. But then when I was reading the reviews, I didn't really get that sense. So I'm really really curious to hear this interview and to delve Moore into what she's doing, because I think it's a fascinating topic of how one might think bigger, even in unconventional ways.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, I mean because it's about innovation in general, which again it's not innovation is not like huge company doing something or even just you know, Leonardo da Vinci coming up the helicopters in the fourteen hundreds. It's more how do you solve problems? And part of that is even learning to phrase things as problems and you encounter as a situation and you break it down into a series of problems that you then you're asking questions and coming up with solving that, and I think, you know, she has come up with some pretty systematic ways to do this, and one fascinating thing about how she comes to this, as we talk about in the interview, she has been blind since childhood. And if you think about navigating life, like building a career at raising a family while blind, there are a series of problems that you then need to solve that you know many of us don't necessarily even think about. But a question of like how do I go on a vacation if you like to travel solo, for instance, or you know, how do I go bike riding? We talk about that, And so she's had to navigate the world through this lens of constantly breaking things down into smaller questions. And it turns out that the that's a really cool way to think about any problem.

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Speaker 3: That's super cool. There was a classmate of Mina Williams who was blind. She was super smart, and I remember you could get like a job reading textbooks out loud. I think they were specifically for her. And I actually did that job for about five minutes. But then I found out that it's really hard because you know, if you mess up, you kind of have to like start over, and it turned out not to be the job for me.

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Speaker 4: But yeah, she was pretty inspiring just to go to college.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, it's like recording audiobooks. It turns out to be exactly like recording audiobooks, something that we've had to do in the past. But anyway, it's a great interview. I really enjoyed talking to Sina. So let's go ahead with a Angar about thinking bigger, the art of choosing, and all sorts of other wonderful things. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Sena Angar to the program. I'm interviewing her today. Sarah can't be with us, but Sheena, could you say hello and introduce yourself to our listeners.

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Speaker 5: Hi, my name is Sheena Ian and I am a faculty member at the Columbia Business School and I'm glad to be here today.

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Speaker 1: Wonderful And you are also the mother of a teenage son, is that correct?

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Speaker 5: Well, he's going to turn.

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Speaker 4: Eighteen just a few weeks.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and he's been wanting me to give him freedom for all these years, and now I'm noticing he's getting a little afraid.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, it's quite a stage. Is he finishing high school this year?

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Speaker 5: Yep, and he just accepted college, so he's riding high a little.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Well, at least you guys have cleared that hurdle. You've gotten through this. We can all congratulate you on that.

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Speaker 5: Thank you.

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Speaker 1: And there are many fascinating things about your life that you know we're going to discuss in your books, the art of choosing and the new one Think Bigger, but also something that's really relevant as we're talking about all of this. You have been blind since childhood? Correct?

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Speaker 4: Yes, well, well what age was it.

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Speaker 5: Yes, I was born with a rare form of rett Nightis pigmentosa, so I was born legally blind. I did have vision, and I kept losing it. It was like a gradual deterioration. And you know, people seem to think that there's like a big moment. I wouldn't say that. It was you know, certain moments I realized, oh, I couldn't read anymore. Another moment I realized I was really banging into way too much stuff and I needed a dog. And another moment I realized someone said, well, why are you sitting in the dark? And then I realized, oh, I guess the light isn't on anymore. I guess I can't see light anymore.

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Speaker 1: So it's really I mean, it's a gradual thing. There's not one moment where you are yes, especial.

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Speaker 5: One day and I couldn't see yeah.

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Speaker 1: No, So it was a progression through all of this and as you were adjusting. But I mean, I've heard you talk in other interviews about how being blind and also your background as an Indian American or I guess Indian Canadian. You were born in Toronto, right, Yes, I was born there. Yes, Okay, well Indian Canadian or American, which everyone influenced your initial interest in choice as a topic. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you came to that research interest.

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Speaker 5: Well as an Indian American actually was raised seek My parents were very traditional Seeks. I was always aware that there was two very different narratives around family life and values, and many of those had to do a choice. You know, as a Seekh girl, there were lots of things you were supposed to do because you were quite religious, and there were lots of rituals that you had to follow and things that were just so different from American culture, Like you know, my parents met each other on their wedding night. It was an arranged marriage. Usually, you know, kids do the careers that their parents advise, and so there was this juxtaposition of an American culture where you were supposed to sort of choose everything for yourself, and an Indian culture or the culture I had at home. It it seemed like there was a lot more influence and input of parents and God, and I suppose that got me very interested at some level and choice, particularly because I'm trying to figure out which one I want to be. And then the other thing I think that influenced my interest in choice was the fact that I was blind, and you know, people were always afraid of me getting hurt or me not being able to do anything. And it wasn't a matter of American culture or Indian culture. Everybody was petrified. And so it became a quest to understand, well, what choices did I really have and what things were people taking away from me, or choices were people taking away from me out of fear which I really actually could do. So maybe they thought I had a limitation, but I really didn't. And if I couldn't do it, well, was there a way to solve the problem and create that possibility for me. And I think that was just something that I began to sort of zero in on at a very young age, even before I understood the word choice.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have a very popular Ted talk on this topic on choice, and if people haven't listened to it, you should. You start with a hilarious anecdote about being in Japan and a restaurant absolutely refusing to serve you sugar with your green tea, that that was a simply unacceptable choice in Japanese culture, whereas in America, like you ask for sugar with whatever drink you want, you know they'll give it to you. But you've done some interesting research that people maybe are less satisfied when they have a larger number of choices. I think you recall reading one of your experiments with maybe samples in a grocery store Jam. Yes, Yeah, can you talk a little bit about that one.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, So I did a study it's called the Jam Study. Essentially what I did was like it was a store that offered people a lot of variety, which at that time was rare, although today it's fairly common. And we set up a display, a tasting booth, right near the entrance of the store with either six different flavors of jam or twenty four. And it was a very simple study. We first just looked at in which case were people more likely to stop and sample some jam, and second in which case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam? And it turned out more people stopped when there were twenty four on display sixty percent versus forty percent when there was six on display. But when it came down to buying behavior, of the people who stopped when they were twenty four on display, only three percent of them bought a jar of jam, whereas of the people who stopped when there was six on display, thirty percent of them bought a jar of jam. Now that was the first documentation that although people are more attracted to a larger number of options, when it comes down to making a choice, they're more likely to make a choice when they have less than when they have more.

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Speaker 1: So that is fascinating, especially as I mean, I can see the parallels right now with like online dating, so as more of our dating. You know, I'm married, but many people listening to this maybe in the dating market for instance, you know, it's like infinite choice out there on dating profile, and then you know, are people then less likely to actually make a choice, like make a permanent commitment to someone if they have all that option Do you think there's a parallel there.

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Speaker 5: Well, in my own work with speed dating events, I ran the first speed dating studies which Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his book Blink, and in my own work there I found quite definitively that the more choices people have were the more dates they have, the more their preferences keep shifting, so they forget kind of what they're looking for in the process. You certainly hear that a lot anecdotally with the whole swipe culture on Tinder in general. The observation is that people are less satisfied with the average date the more dates they go on, even though they have more options there. Now, whether it's leading to a change in commitment, it's.

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Speaker 4: Hard for me to know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it doesn't seem likely that we're going to go more with the sheik model of your parents meeting each other on their wedding day. But you know, maybe there's a happy medium somewhere in the middle.

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Speaker 5: What about love is blind?

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Speaker 1: I don't know that's true. Well, there you go all right, well on that, We're going to take a quick ad break and I'll do We'll be right back with more from Sena Anger. So I am here with Sena Anger, who is talking all things choice and thinking Bigger. And so, Sena, you mentioned that growing up blind people were often limiting choices just because I mean, they were petrified that you were going to hurt yourself or something like that would happen, which was quite a thing to be keeping in mind when I'm reading through Think Bigger. And one of the first things you're talking about is bike riding. So all right, so let's let's talk about bike riding and how you navigate that.

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Speaker 5: Oh well, I have a tandem bike, okay, all right, Yeah, so I don't sit in the front.

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Speaker 1: Okay, okay, few because.

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Speaker 5: I'd love it if there was a moment when I could finally sit in the front. So if they could actually develop technology for that that I could sit in the front, I would be very happy.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, making sure now I have.

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Speaker 5: To sit them back. So I have a tandem bike, and I live right across the streets in the river, and me and so my my favorite buddy to go biking with which was the one I had in mind when I wrote that in the book was Juliana and Juliana and I. We get up really early. We start at the northern part of Manhattan and we bike along the river all the way to the tip, and we're trying to get to Lady Liberty before the sunrise comes up.

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Speaker 1: Awesome, that sounds amazing. And we'll get back to Lady Liberty because she plays into the story of how we think about innovation and new things. But with that, I want to talk about some other, you know, problem solving. You mentioned as well that like your life has been a lot of extra problem solving because there are things you want to do and then it's not necessarily always obvious, which plays into how you think about, you know, structuring questions and solving problems. In particular, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about traveling, because you have been all over the world. So if you, you know, think of a destination you want to go to, so how do you go through navigating planning a trip there?

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Speaker 5: Wow, that's an interesting question. I once was very depressed over a romantic fallout and I said to my assistant, you know, where do you think I could go. That would be NonStop flight in europecause I was in London at the time, I've just finished teaching that I could be on a beach. And I discovered it was Sardinia. Okay, yeah, I knew nothing about this place. Okay, I knew instinctively that you had to find a hotel that was small, and I knew I had to call them and tell them I was blind, to make sure that they wouldn't freak out when I got there. And so I found a hotel. It was a boutique hotel. It was all the water, and they were happy to have me come. And I just went and I met you know, I remember I was sitting next to somebody on the plane and he became a friend. In fact, we're still friends. Got to the hotel. I had a beautiful room that was on the water, and I said, you know, I want to swim in the ocean. And so I said, so how about if I pay the lifeguard off hours so that he could watch her, I wouldn't go too far, right, And sure enough I did that. So I swam twice a day. I hired somebody in the hotel, someone's kid, someone who worked there, as a kid for an hour to show me around the town. And that was it. I had a great time. One of my favorite trips ever. I always love Sardinia.

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Speaker 1: It's an amazing place, it sounds like, but yeah, it's just that series of figuring out, well, what is the problem. You know, I want to swim? How do I make sure that I can do it safely? Who can help me with it? And so the sort of structured approach, And that's somewhat what you have your students go through.

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Speaker 5: That is exactly right, all right, So.

00:16:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that. What is this process that then, you know, you teach your students about innovation and problem solving, you know.

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Speaker 5: And the approach I teach them is I have them use I have them come up with an entrepreneurial idea. Not because I'm necessarily trying to make the all entrepreneurs. I just figured that's a hard enough platform, so to learn the technique on that, because then you can do it on anything. But in fact, you can use think bigger, whether you're trying to you know, plan my trip to Sardinia, whether you're trying to figure out how to manage this process of having your kid apply to colleges, which.

00:17:23
Speaker 4: By the way, was quite a process, I'm sure.

00:17:27
Speaker 5: Or whether it is managing your career and your household, or whether it is yeah, coming out with an entrepreneurial problem. So essentially, I would say there's three really important parts to it. One is what exactly is the problem I'm trying to solve. So, for example, with the travel thing I just said, I wouldn't just say, well, how does a blind person go on a trip? Nobody knows how to solve that one. Two big it's how do I navigate gate a successful few days in a hotel on a beach in Europe where I can't speak the language. And now you can break it down and think about, okay, so what do I need to be able to do. I can take that same approach whether it's my kid applying to college, break it down, or whether it's how do I create a business that does X? Whatever X is. I'll take one of my student groups reduce stress amongst teenagers, for example. So the first thing is defining the problem. The second thing is once I've defined the problem, now I ask myself, do I know of things that have worked to solve this piece of my problem that I've either done before or I've seen somebody else do. So I'm drawing from my experience. And then the same second thing I'm doing as I'm searching is who else has had to deal with a similar sort of problem? Right, so I do learn from other people who can't drive, how do they navigate going to a destination which normally people would drive around in? How do other people navigate when they are limited in their language, skills, et cetera. Right, so I can still steal information and knowledge from other groups, and I take all that information and now I have the pieces to work with as I am trying to come up with solutions. And third, you have to be willing to just take all these pieces and just try out many, many, many different combinations, because many times we trip ourselves up because we'll come up with one idea and then we hold to insteadfast. No, you've got to have an open mind and then keep trying out different variations of it, to tinker with it to get it right.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and bringing it back to the Statue of Liberty, you know, you write and think bigger about how the sculptor was pulling stuff from all over the place. I mean, he wants to create something. But he's taking the scale from one place, he's taking the image from something else. That might be his mother's face that's on there. I mean, it's just he borrowed from all over the map. It's not you know, it's seldom the flash of lightning that something just comes to us.

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Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Absolutely, it looks like a flash of lightning when you put it together.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it wasn't. It wasn't just an apple falling on your head. And I mean, I think a lot of our listeners have you know, like, yeah, innovation sounds great. My boss would like me to be more innovative. And then what winds up happening at a lot of companies is like, Okay, we're gonna get ten of us in a room and we're gonna brainstarre ideas. So what's wrong with the ten people in the room for ninety minutes coming up with ideas? Why is that not as fruitful as people might hope.

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Speaker 5: So if you bring ten people in the room together, if it's just a manner of information sharing that's actually productive. I mean, provided it's a culture in which people trust each other and are willing to share information, that can actually be productive. Where it's unproductive is you get ten people in the room. I say we got this big problem. I need ideas. They're just going to go with redundant ideas top of mind ideas. They need time to actually think about it, to actually come up with stuff. So usually what will happen in a brainstorming session is the first person speaks and everybody just riffs off of that for.

00:21:48
Speaker 1: The entire next ninety minutes exactly. So you know, let's say we have an idea, though you say, it's important to get feedback on it, but not just the sort of like do you like it kind of feedback. What are some more useful questions you can ask if you are trying to get people to give you feedback on your idea, what.

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Speaker 5: You really need is a third eye. We really need to see how other people see it. Now, As a mom, I can tell you that, despite the fact that our children can be really annoying, one of the benefits you have from them before they finally learn to behave themselves is they give you their uncensored opinion that's really.

00:22:35
Speaker 1: Boring, don't like that outfit? Yes exactly, I'll.

00:22:42
Speaker 5: Ever forget like that's really boring? The first time I did my ted doctor, my child listens to it like I'm going back to my show.

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Speaker 4: Oh hey, thanks yeah.

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Speaker 5: Or I wore a dress which I thought had to be amazing. He goes, Mom, look like a human rainbow. Okay, Now, short of having your children, and you know, and obviously they have their own biases, so I wouldn't rely solely on them. As honest as they will be. Is you really need to get what are other people seeing? So, oh, maybe the quickest way to describe it to you is to give you an exercise I just recently did, and that's a cute exercise. It's not a profound exercise, but it's a cute exercise that can at least show you the method. So to warm up my students on the third eye, I have them do this little exercise. And you could, by the way, do it at the dinner table or at a cocktail party.

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Speaker 4: It's kind of fun.

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Speaker 5: I'll give you a minute to come up with a word. It's a new word that doesn't exist in the English language. So you come up with a word, and you come up with a definition, you know, like schmooth. And I come up with that word, and I define it in my head, and I won't define it free rate, and then I'll write it down. And then what I'll do is I'll have the students go up to ten different people in the class and they give them the word smooth, and then you'll say, well, that reminds me of a schmoozer. Okay, So get ten other people to tell you how they would define the word, and you never tell them how you defined it. So at the end you have your definition plus ten other definitions for the word you just came up with. What did you do there? You learned how other people would see that word, what interpretations came to their minds. In the process, you're understanding what other people see, and that enables you to both iterate on your word and iterate on your definition, so that you create a word and definition which has alignment between what you would see and what others would see.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: So seeing the third ey is how other people would see something.

00:25:02
Speaker 5: You want to create alignment between what the idea that exists in your mind and how others interpret it.

00:25:10
Speaker 1: Okay, So I wanted to talk a little bit about your you know, academic career here and combining that with parenthood. What stage of your academic career. Were you in when your when your son was born?

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Speaker 5: My son was born just as I got tenure.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: Okay, did you wait to get tenures for having him? Or was that?

00:25:32
Speaker 5: Well? I was trying to get pregnant for good three or four years. I had just given up, thinking that, let me just put in my tenure packet and then I'll worry about it. And then suddenly I got pregnant.

00:25:46
Speaker 1: Well, many things to celebrate at once, right.

00:25:50
Speaker 5: I got pregnant as I was putting together my tenure podcast.

00:25:54
Speaker 1: Okay, I gotcha.

00:25:54
Speaker 5: I wasn't that thrilled about that part.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: But if you, I mean, you have like your graduate student and or you know the people you're mentoring, what advice do you give them in terms of if they were trying to think about how to plot out an academic career and having their children, understanding that in many cases we cannot plan these things. But as you're thinking about it, what are some things to keep in mind?

00:26:19
Speaker 5: You have to be really really organized, and you have to really know your priorities. I mean, I think part of why I always say you have to be choosy about choosing is because you really can't do it. All, and you really are going to.

00:26:31
Speaker 1: Have to figure out what your priorities are.

00:26:33
Speaker 5: So every day you have to think through which choices are really worth making if you're going to be able to men juggle everything.

00:26:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you say being really organized, I mean, what does that actually mean to be organized?

00:26:49
Speaker 5: I mean mine, I guess my life's pretty organized. I also I delegate a lot. That's the other thing that's really important. I mean, I would say for me anyway, having a career and a kid, and I'm also divorced, having my mom nearby was super important. I also understood just as he was born, I needed a nanny that wasn't just going to help raise him. That was going to be my helper. It's going to be my support system. And in fact, his nanny was like a second mom to him and still is. I mean, she raised him and I kept her in the house. She was like our nanny, housekeeper, everything until he was twelve, and then she got married and she still comes around anytime. You know, I'm a big believer that having multiple people there to help raise your kid is only good for the kid. The child doesn't have to be purely raised by just mom and dad. I don't lose anything by having other people. If anything, I gained by having other people involved. There are some things that the nanny get away with getting him to do that I just can't When his hair looks like a mess. I could say whatever I want and going anywhere. When the nanny walks in the door, suld you say, E done, you need to get a haircut. We're going and get a haircut. Yeah, And he doesn't have the heart to say no.

00:28:19
Speaker 1: So it's like lots of different people have their have their opinions, and he's managing, managing all of you to figure it out. And I mean, congrats again on having gone through the college admissions process with him. Then I'm curious, given that you are thinking about the problem solving process with that, what questions should people be asking and what problems should they actually be solving with the college admission process. Where do you think people kind of go awry with that?

00:28:48
Speaker 5: Oh, the whole thing is a miss. I mean, I don't know how that works in other schools, but as a kid going to a private school here in Manhattan, it's a mess. So first off, they are expecting them to know what they will want and what are looking for in a college as if they have any idea them, they're expecting them to know which college is they have a better shot at, and to trust some algorithm for telling them which colleges they have a better shot at, so that they only apply to those, and it takes the fun out of what it means to apply to college. So if I were doing it again, I would restructure the whole process. I think the first question you have to help you have to get kids excited first. This is a new thing they're going to be able to do in their life. So I know, you don't know what you want to be after you finish college, but try to come up with different versions of yourself so that they're at least imagining. Let them imagine first the different possibilities of who they could be. So they first have to get excited so that they understand that there is something in it for them and that it's in their interest to think about what they want. Then you've got to expose them to the different kinds of options. Like right now, what do most kids do and their parents do? We go straight to these rankings, as if the rankings really tell us which one's a better fit for us. Or I mean it's it's a competition on stuff that may or may not have much relevance to your specific details. So I think it's about, Okay, what is the life like and the curricu and education like of somebody who say, goes to a small college, and somebody who goes to a large state college, and then somebody who goes to one of these IVY leagues. We act as if it's the schools that are highly ranked that you know are the best, and there's no subjectivity around that. The reality is that there really is a fit and they really are they have different trade offs. So I think if young people had a chance to talk to somebody from a state school versus an IVY league, versus a small college versus some other kind of institution, at least they begin to see what the trade offs are so they can begin to say, okay, well I would rather go to this kind of school for this reason. So I do think that right now what's happening everybody is applying to the same schools based on rank, and then they feel the entire process is completely unfair and it's not based on merit, And to be fair, I don't think it is based on merit, because it can't be if you have sixty thousand people apply to Columbia, how are they possibly going to make this merit based when they're accepting four percent?

00:31:56
Speaker 1: It's pretty random. In the end, I think.

00:32:00
Speaker 5: It's got to be that you the chooser or the applier, as a mix of institutions that you're applying to based on what you want to get out of it, and it's like daity and then you find the one that fits.

00:32:19
Speaker 1: Well and with so many choices, unfortunately, maybe we're gonna be less satisfied with our choice. But that's something you could tell us about too. So she know, we always end the best of both worlds with a love of the week, So this could be anything that you are enjoying this week, you know, movie, TV, show, song book, just random gadget. Who knows I can go first, so give you a minute to think about it. I'm going to actually do a shout out to Ted Talks. So I watched yours again as I was preparing for this, and I think it is such I mean, I know there's the whole thing about Ted and whatever, but having people distill what they do into twelve to eighteen minutes. It's a useful exercise for anyone, Like, even if you are never going to give a TED talk in your life, to be able to sum up what you do in that amount of time and make it interesting to someone can force you to get at like the core of it and how you would explain to someone. And so you know, I wound up watching like ten others while I was over at the website because they're pretty cool. So how about you, what is exciting for you this week? Well?

00:33:28
Speaker 5: I had this really interesting experience just a couple of days ago. I was invited to give a talk in Washington, D C. And it was for a Think Bigger and I didn't know anything about it. It was busy and so I didn't look it up. And I arrived at this mansion and DuPont Circle called Whitmore House. Never heard of it. And I get there and I walk in any other all there's this co greeting committee and it turns out that it was created for women.

00:34:00
Speaker 1: It was a.

00:34:00
Speaker 5: Women's empowerment home, interesting for the Women's democracy movement. And on the first floor was the room where Eleanor Roosevelt used to do her radio shows.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: Oh wow.

00:34:14
Speaker 5: By the way, Eleanor Roosevelt is my favorite first lady. She really was a source of inspiration. She's a woman who really believed on empowerment. She said, I will solve problems, don't matter what role you've put me in. She was a real go getter. And then the room in which I gave my talk was in the room they called the first Lady's room, and literally there was a portrait of every first lady. So of course I got my picture in front of Michelle Obama too.

00:34:48
Speaker 1: You gotta cheer you, I get your Eleanor Roosevelt sidt you'r Michelle Obama's sat exactly.

00:34:54
Speaker 5: It was kind of cool though also like every it was about one hundred and fifty people in the room. But and I had my assistant go around the room and describe to me what like Martha Washington looked like. I had no idea that she had all white hair, and it was kind of cool.

00:35:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and I love that so and shed you just ask her to tell me what you're seeing and you get the whole picture that way. Yes, absolutely, all right, Well, Sina, thank you so much for joining us. If people want to learn more about you and your work, and your books. Is there somewhere they can come find more.

00:35:29
Speaker 5: I'm a regular poster on LinkedIn, Wonderful and Instagram, so they can definitely follow me there, and you can buy the book on my web page if you want to go there, or on Amazon wonderful.

00:35:42
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, you know, we really appreciate it.

00:35:44
Speaker 5: Thank you.

00:35:46
Speaker 1: Well, that was great. I always love hearing about her work. I've you know, watched her Ted Talk years ago, read The Art of Choosing years ago, so I was really thrilled to get to actually interview her. So that was that was pretty cool for me. So, Sarah, you got our question for this week.

00:36:01
Speaker 3: Yes, this came to me through my blog a post about screens. But then the person was asking specifically about kids and spoiler alert, We're going to be doing a really fun screen series featuring a guest for one of the episodes, so I'm super excited about that. But I figured, honestly, these topics are all in our minds. I don't think we could talk about them too much, honestly. So the question was about kids and phones, and I think she was asking, you know, if I was thinking about getting phones for my kids yet, because her kids are similar age to mind and asking for them and Laura, So, how old were your kids when you've caught them phones? And how much do you monitor their use in terms of amount and in terms of content.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, so our family rule, we have a family role at the moment that you get a phone when you are eleven, and it's not carved in stone. But that is certainly something that I've then been able to say when children are under eleven, that you need to wait for that point, and with most of our kids, that corresponds fairly well with when you start middle school, which it actually at that point turns out to be helpful to be able to reach a child independently of other adults in their lives. So you know, they start doing stuff with friends that there might not be adult supervision constantly, they start making their own choices of whether they are staying after school for activities as opposed to it needing to be decided far ahead of time. They might need a ride or you know, if they take the activity bus. Want to let me know that, you know, so there's just we're going to overnight camps and things like that. So just you know, it's helpful to be able to reach the child at that point in a way that sort of under that age is less of a thing, right, Like, somebody's with your eight year old most of the time, so you don't have to reach them. I think eleven is starting to be at the point where you can have more rational discussions about online use and what is appropriate. We limit the hours the children have access to their electronics obviously school. High schoolers are allowed to have access to their electronics like during the day if you know, obviously not in class, but you know, in the halls or at lunch or whatever. Middle schoolers are not it has to be away for the day, so they don't have it during school, but you know, and then we take it away at night, so the phones sleep and Michael and my room they charge there overnight and then the kids can get them in the morning. So yeah, that's that's kind of our rule. I don't and I don't want to say this like publicly, my kids listen to this that I don't monitor too closely. I think I'm fine if they think I do. Weirdly enough, we have it set so that I mean, my iPad is Ruth's iPad is tied to my phone, so she can get my texts sometimes, so it's more bean that I've had to censor myself versus other them censoring themselves. But in general, we try to just have discussions about what is appropriate in terms of communicating with people, the kind of texts you can send to people. We have seen examples of inappropriate like more just you know, mean or something like that, or talking about other people from other children that you know. Then they see the text and need to have a conversation about it. And it's also just about physically sort of being around them, like it's harder for them to access stuff that they shouldn't. If mom and dad are, you know, you're not off on your own for hours where nobody's checking in on you. So I think that's another thing that you know, we try to do as well.

00:39:54
Speaker 3: Totally makes sense. I have a question, which is the rules about the high schoolers having their phone but not in class, the middle schoolers having it tucked away all day. I assume, like in a backpack pocket or something. Are those school rules or your rules?

00:40:07
Speaker 1: Those aren't my rules, Those seem to be the school's rules. Because I think during the day something came up and I got an email from a teacher, because I don't think Ruth was able to access her phone during the day, so although I assume if by the time she's asking the tea, the teacher probably would have given her permission to said it. But whatever, they reach this solution, and that is fine. I don't know. I've in general, I think you have to also know your kids, and you want to build up a relationship where you trust them and that they also feel that they can come to you if there's something that is bothering you, or if they see something you know that somebody else is doing that's inappropriate, or if they access content that turns out to be scary to them, or something that they don't think that they should have seen. Like, you want them to be able to talk to you, and that's not a function of whether they have a phone or not. That's about your relationship with your kids. So I mean, like anything, phones enable some stuff and you have to have conversations that you wouldn't have had without phones, like about what kind of pictures can you take given that they're out there forever or whatever like that's but it's still all about how you communicate with your kids, you know. So that's my philosophy.

00:41:30
Speaker 3: I don't think we'll have any trouble doing a multi series about this because I feel like there is so much more to say about this topic. So I guess we'll just end it there for now. But yeah, I think it's super fascinating and just important to think about. And you think there'd be a lot I mean, I guess there's a lot of conversations about it.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: But well, how about you? When are you? When are your children? I mean, because your children don't have phones, but they do have other means of communication then.

00:41:59
Speaker 4: But not with them on the outside.

00:42:01
Speaker 3: So my kids have iPads and so they can text their friends, like on weekends when we don't generally allow iPad use on the weekdays unless someone's homesick or something like that. It's more for the weekends and they can play games and text their friends. They don't do social media. Annell I think, at least at this point in her life, kind of maybe I've brainwashed her a little bit. I don't know, is not a huge fan of social media, and there's not a lot of pressure to do that yet. If anything, there's more just like texting or like group FaceTime chats and stuff like that some of her friends have phones, but some of them don't, including some middle schoolers.

00:42:40
Speaker 4: And our school is really small and.

00:42:42
Speaker 3: Probably a little bit more of a sheltered experience because honestly, like her middle school classroom is like ten steps away from her fourth and fifth grade classroom, and she's going to be picked up with my other kids. There aren't a lot of there's a few sports and stuff like that, but she'll have a Chromebook, so she'll probably be able to text that way if she needed to school next year. So we're not planning on a phone as of now. And she has a really close friend who's in sixth grade at the same school who currently doesn't have one and has been fine. And I really respect this girl's parents, and like, I can see that it can be done, and she seems very well adjusted and happy and in lots of activities. So I think we're going to put it off for a little longer than is average, certainly not forever. I'm thinking maybe it'll be like a seventh or eighth grade thing. And again, we're not going from like zero to sixty because she does have an iPad, she'll have a chromebook. Like, it's not like she won't have any absorability to communicate or anything like that. It just I want to make it a little less accessible for a little while longer. But yeah, lots of fodder for future episodes.

00:43:42
Speaker 4: I know what I was going to say.

00:43:43
Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of sources come at it from like either extreme and so I think this will be useful because I think both of us exists somewhere in the messy middle.

00:43:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean there was this whole push of like, wait until eighth or whatever, and there's no data saying eighth grade is right. I mean, it's just that it And that's what really bugs me about a lot of this discussion is it's not there isn't like a lot of longitudinal data precisely because this stuff hasn't been around that long, so you have no idea, right, and so people are just asserting stuff. But it's like I said, I think you have to know your kid, and they're your family and they're your circumstances. And if you need to get your kid a phone before they're eleven, like you're not gonna get shade from me. I mean, that's your family, your decision, and if you have it in a way that's healthy. That's great.

00:44:30
Speaker 3: So and there may be like logistical reasons that it makes sense. And I totally get that we happen to be set up in such a way that it's probably not, but I can absolutely envision like even certain activities if Annabel chose to do them, would probably push me towards being like, well, you're gonna be there, like unpredictable endings, You're gonna to be picked.

00:44:52
Speaker 4: Up, like, let's let's go forward with it.

00:44:53
Speaker 1: So we'll see, all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. I was interviewing Shina Ayengar. We just had a little discussion of screen time a taste of what's to come. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:45:07
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.

00:45:08
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:45:15
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.