00;00;00;20 - 00;00;24;10
Geoff Nielson
Hey, everyone! We've got a really special episode for you today. I had a chance to sit down with seven times New York Times best selling author Dan Pink at Info Tech Live in Las Vegas to talk about the future of work and what's coming next. If you don't know Dan, he's written two number one bestsellers. Drive and To Sell Is Human and a whole pile of others on human psychology and motivation in the context of business.
00;00;24;12 - 00;00;40;17
Geoff Nielson
He's got a whole pile of other accolades I won't list here, but you can look him up if you're interested. If you don't know Info Tech Live, it's a big awesome conference or even it's sort of an anti conference for I.T leaders. Anyway, the next one is in Vegas in June. There's still complimentary tickets, so check that out if you're interested in the description.
00;00;40;23 - 00;00;56;29
Geoff Nielson
Love to see you there. But back to my conversation with Dan Pink. As I mentioned, he was doing a keynote on the future of work. And I have the opportunity to interview him right after. Now, what made it extra fun is that like most keynote speakers. Dan, did he share his presentation in advance? And it was all new material.
00;00;57;04 - 00;01;14;27
Geoff Nielson
So while he was talking, I was holed up at the back of the conference frantically taking notes on his talk. And what I wanted to ask him, and got back to our studio just in time to start the interview. My favorite part of Dan's presentation on what comes next was his courage in saying, I don't know. And if someone tells you they do, they're lying.
00;01;14;29 - 00;01;34;07
Geoff Nielson
He said that there's too much that's changed, too much uncertainty, and now isn't the time to philosophize. It's to get out there and just try things anyway, to really cool conversation. Check it out, let me know what you think and if you like it, don't forget to like and subscribe. Check it out.
00;01;34;09 - 00;01;35;17
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Daniel, thanks so much for being here.
00;01;35;18 - 00;01;36;26
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Thanks for having me, Jeff.
00;01;36;28 - 00;01;50;03
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
I loved first off, I have to say I loved the presentation. A lot to think about, a lot to digest, and lots of just you know, moving pieces that, you know, kind of draw you in. You know, one of the things that, you know, you got me thinking about was you talked about, you know, this great sort.
00;01;50;03 - 00;01;51;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Happening right now.
00;01;51;08 - 00;01;55;02
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
That this time of uncertainty and what that means, you want to maybe just start by talking a little.
00;01;55;04 - 00;02;17;25
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. Yeah, I think that. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I've detected just from from talking to people out there in the world, and just from from following the news, is this sense that things are kind of upside down, right? Things are uncertain that the the floor on which we're standing is kind of wobbly and, and I and my theory of the case is that what's happening right now is a sorting out process.
00;02;17;25 - 00;02;34;22
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Right. And what we're sorting out are some fundamental questions about work. So among the things that I, I think we're sorting out are pretty important things. Like what do we do together? What do we do separately. Where do we collaborate? Where do we do things individually? I don't think we have a very, precise notion of that, perhaps even bigger.
00;02;34;25 - 00;02;55;00
Daniel Pink at LIVE
What do we do synchronously? What do we do asynchronously? Right. For me, we're overindex on synchronous. We think that everybody has to be together on Microsoft Teams or Zoom all the time. Yeah. When in fact there's some very good evidence, like in brainstorming, that some kind of more deliberate hybrid is better, where you go off and generate ideas on your own, and then you come together synchronously to do things.
00;02;55;02 - 00;03;15;05
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I think we have some big questions about what are offices for the what are they look like? Who goes there? What is the physical architecture of them? Where are they located? I think we have in some ways, existential questions about what are companies. Right. And so and, and you know, as much as we want to understand the budget, we want to know the answer to these questions.
00;03;15;05 - 00;03;24;08
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I don't think we I don't think we will. I think we have to kind of navigate our way to them. We have to do stuff and try stuff. And by doing stuff and trying stuff, we'll be able to find the answer.
00;03;24;10 - 00;03;37;29
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. And it's funny you say that because, you know, you ask these big questions and you put up your hand and said, I don't know the answers, but as you talk through your presentation, it kind of felt like you do know some of the answers. And I was, you know, I was getting some really interesting insights from that.
00;03;38;01 - 00;03;59;12
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
To me, one of the themes of your presentation was the notion of meaningful. Right, and how we can do meaningful work. And, you know, I kind of sense that one of the drivers of why we're missing that is because in this, you know, great sort and trying things, nobody seems to know anymore, like what's meaningful and like, let's just try things and see what sticks.
00;03;59;12 - 00;04;12;06
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. And so there's been this, you know, kind of epidemic of just, maybe do this. We don't know, you know, so how do we as leaders or as individuals, how do we fight back against that and focus on the meaning?
00;04;12;08 - 00;04;28;23
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Well, I mean, I think that people, know I mean, meeting is an elusive concept for sure. Okay. So. So I don't think we can. I don't think it meaning is like, we don't know the meaning of our work or the meaning of our lives in the way that we know the square root of one quarter or.
00;04;28;23 - 00;04;47;13
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Okay, so, but, but I think that we can we can approach it. And when we have some evidence about what kind of what are the conditions in which people can approach that? I thing number one is, is having an organization that is not only great, but that is actually good, that is doing something valuable. Autonomy is a big part of a search for meaning.
00;04;47;18 - 00;05;08;29
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Like, I can't tell you. Here's what you here's here's exactly what you need to do to find your meaning. If you just follow me. Exactly. You're going to you're going to you're going to find meaning. And I think it does require though, some experimentation as well. And so, but also I think a lot of us have come face to face because of Covid, because of other things with darker things like mortality.
00;05;09;01 - 00;05;23;00
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And, and, and I think it's actually very healthy. The thing is, is that we're not going to know the answer in any, in any clear way. But if you think of it as making slow and steady progress toward making things more meaningful, then I think it's actually quite a group that organizations and for individuals.
00;05;23;06 - 00;05;29;13
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. And it sounds like some of the tactics you put up there are actually tools we can use to to potentially, you know, seek out that meeting. I mean.
00;05;29;13 - 00;05;47;16
Daniel Pink at LIVE
One of the things I talked about is, is the importance of making progress right each day. And I do think that when you, when you, when you make progress each day or when you see the progress you're making that can confer some sense of meaning that that people derive meaning from simply some meaning, at least from simply moving forward on something that is significant or important.
00;05;47;19 - 00;05;48;09
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah.
00;05;48;12 - 00;06;03;17
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah. You said something that I picked up on that I really liked a little bit later in your presentation about, you know, modeling some of these uncomfortable behaviors as leaders. Can you, can you talk a little bit more about that, and maybe the role that leaders have in instilling some of these values and practices?
00;06;03;20 - 00;06;20;24
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah, I mean, I sort of feel silly saying it because it seems to me so obvious. And it's certainly obvious to anybody who's been a parent. Yeah. And that essentially, if you're a parent, your kids barely listen to you. Right? I think it might be kids. Kids listen a lot less than parents think, and they watch a lot more than parents do.
00;06;20;24 - 00;06;39;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
They listen a lot less than what you say, and they watch a lot more of what you do. And so, so modeling the behavior that you see is a is a wise strategy, right? This is not a revelation. All right. But it's sometimes absent in in I'm a leader. So I'll give you some examples of it. So if you think about something like mistakes.
00;06;39;09 - 00;07;02;28
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. Or even regrets or something like that, I think it's very healthy for leaders to tell the other team and say, here's a regret that I have, or here's a mistake that I made in here's what I learned from it, and here's what I'm going to do about it. And the fear that many people have is that by revealing that mistake or revealing that vulnerability, or by revealing that error or regret, people will think less of you.
00;07;03;00 - 00;07;24;24
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And we have some pretty good evidence that that's wrong, that people actually think more. Right. It's backwards. And then and as a consequence of that, people feel safe to talk about some of their mistakes. And when we talk about our mistakes, when we derive lessons from them, everybody becomes better. So I think that's one area. I mentioned the importance of taking breaks and putting breaks as part of our performance.
00;07;24;26 - 00;07;42;08
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And, you know, we can exhort that all we want, we can, we can I can show you all the charts and graphs and the data about that, but the people downstream and organizations are not going to be taking regular breaks unless the boss is taking breaks. Right? But wife takes a breaks. If she models it, then you have a fighting chance, right?
00;07;42;10 - 00;07;58;05
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Did you, you know, as you were researching this or, you know, talking to leaders about it, you know, to what degree, if at all, did did burnout come into play in this? Because, you know, I at least anecdotally, you know, since we've done this kind of great moves out of the office, like burnout seems to be something we're hearing more about.
00;07;58;05 - 00;08;19;28
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah, I think that it's I think that burnout is it's tough. Burnout has many, many parents. Right. Are better metaphor. We're not burnout grows from from many, many rows. Yeah. So I think that some of it has to do I think there's a little bit evidence that parents are more burnout than people who aren't parents. And part of that is a structural problem, right?
00;08;20;00 - 00;08;38;06
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Especially in the US, maybe a little less so in Canada, where we don't have the mechanisms in place for child care. So people, you know, parents are Surgeon general. The US just issued a report talking about how incredibly stressed out parents are. That okay. And so I think that that I think so you have the cohort of people who are in the workplace in our parents.
00;08;38;08 - 00;09;00;11
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I think they're innately stressed out. And I think some of it has to do with some structural problems. Sure. So that's that that's that's one thing. Organizations are pretty lean, especially compared to 20 years ago. Yeah. And so if you were to if we were to go to this crowd right here, Jeff. Yeah. And say, how many of you in your organizations are trying to do more with less?
00;09;00;13 - 00;09;01;27
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I think 100% every.
00;09;02;00 - 00;09;02;19
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Every hand in the room.
00;09;02;19 - 00;09;27;09
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Goes exactly, exactly. So, people, I have a sense of doing more with less. I think the stress, just general uncertainty, whether it's political uncertainty, whether it is, technological uncertainty with I think that all these things collect and people are burning out, which is one reason why we need to have regular systematic breaks. But I think it could be ultimately be a structural issues deeper down.
00;09;27;14 - 00;09;46;28
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. Right. It makes sense. You know, as, as we think about that, you know, the breaks thing, you know, keeps coming back to me. And I love that. And I love, you know, there's sort of another theme, I guess, of, like, it doesn't always have to be more with less, right? We sort of have to give ourselves permission to work at kind of a cadence that, you know, that works for us.
00;09;47;00 - 00;10;02;27
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
With, with the breaks piece specifically. I mean, a light bulb kind of went off for me because it was it was there that you made me start thinking about the value of the office, because at the office, you know, I feel like people naturally take more breaks because there's other people there.
00;10;02;27 - 00;10;04;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Go out for coffee.
00;10;04;07 - 00;10;16;28
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So, so I mean, from your perspective, you talked about it a little bit, but you know, I know you're uncomfortable answering like, you know, what is what is the value of the office holistically. But, you know, I'd I'd love to hear more about that.
00;10;16;29 - 00;10;37;04
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I'm, I'm for, my, my my view is that, I don't think we're going to get to a world where most organizations are going to be, mostly remote. Right? Think so? Right. I don't I don't think that's how human beings are constituted. Yeah. That's sad. I don't think we're going to get to a world where everybody is doing heads down work at a cubicle by themselves.
00;10;37;06 - 00;10;54;15
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And what we're going to my view is that, and I think we're heading there, I think where we're we could be there in spite of some of the things that companies are doing to, quote unquote, crack down on remote workers. Yeah, I think we're actually essentially entering a world of what, permanent hybrid, right. Where we're going to spend and we're sorting that out.
00;10;54;17 - 00;10;55;15
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah.
00;10;55;17 - 00;11;10;29
Daniel Pink at LIVE
What kind of work is better done at home by yourself? What kind of work is better done in an office with other people? Right. We're going to we're going to sort that out. And I actually think that in a, in a couple of years, we want to call it hybrid. Right? Just like that's work. That's work.
00;11;11;04 - 00;11;30;20
Daniel Pink at LIVE
But that's what, that's what we're, we're throwing out. So I don't I, I'm not I don't think that fully remote for everybody all the time is necessarily that great of it. Great of a deal. Right. I think we have some evidence of that in, I think there are, there are some new studies out showing that remote work is great for productivity.
00;11;30;22 - 00;11;32;15
Daniel Pink at LIVE
It's less great for creativity.
00;11;32;17 - 00;11;33;05
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right.
00;11;33;08 - 00;11;51;05
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And so we want to be productive, but we also want to be creative. And I think in many cases, we're creative when we're face to face in person with other people. Right. And you don't want to sacrifice that. Right. So, so I, you know, but again, you know, I, you know, you're an interior architect who knows a little bit about business.
00;11;51;07 - 00;12;13;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
You should be cleaning up, right? Because we need to rethink what an office is. Right? And my hunch is that, like, in many cases, the legacy offices are going to do a slow job and a bad job of retrofitting that. But someone out there is going to start an enterprise and say, welcome to our office, and you're going to like what?
00;12;13;04 - 00;12;23;06
Daniel Pink at LIVE
This looks like a nightclub. Yeah, you know what? This looks like a lot, you know, and I think that we're going to understand what an office is, but someone's going to invent it, and the rest of us are going to go and put in offices.
00;12;23;07 - 00;12;49;04
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. Because a lot of, you know, a lot of right now, the pull back to return the work, I mean, you return to office, I should say. I mean, you had the quote up there. It's like dropping the hammer, right? Like the the language and the approach. Like it's almost the exact opposite of what you're describing. So, you know, is there a right way or I mean, is there a wrong way, like how you talk about how versus why, like what does that look like?
00;12;49;07 - 00;13;09;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I mean, I don't I think it's going to vary from place to place. I think that the ideal as a general principle, but with all kinds of tinkering at the margins and for specific use cases, is a couple of days in the office and a few days in the office, in a few days at, at home. Right. Some amount of autonomy about people choosing those days, but not full, right?
00;13;09;04 - 00;13;30;28
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Right. Because, because you want people in the office at the same time. So I've totally like these, these ICU arrangements where it's like, you have to be in the office Tuesday and Wednesday and the other day do whatever you want. Yeah, that seems to be perfectly fine now, with the hope that what we do on Tuesday and Wednesday is something different from what I is not simply sitting at my computer by myself.
00;13;30;29 - 00;13;56;04
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right? Right now. I mean, it makes complete sense. And I mean, you know, related to that, I'm we're coming out of a period of being, you know, probably over indexed on remote. Right. And we've come from a place where, you know, we're just looking at screens all day, right? And we didn't even notice it. But, you know, are you seeing are you fearing about, you know, individual kind of impacts of, you know, oh, all my meetings are now not physically with people.
00;13;56;04 - 00;13;57;29
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
They're looking at a screen. Is that impacting.
00;13;57;29 - 00;14;17;02
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Us? I think so. I mean, I think that I don't know for sure, but I think that you got, you know, your intuition is spot on. I share it about, about breaks in. So if you're just hopping from screen meeting to screen meeting. Yeah, it's not even like being in office where maybe you're at your meetings in a different conference room, right?
00;14;17;04 - 00;14;38;08
Daniel Pink at LIVE
You have to get up and walk. Yeah. And then maybe you see Fred in the hallway. Yeah. Or whatever. You know, that's not even that's not even half. So I, I don't think that it is monumentally healthy for most of us to be looking at screens the entire day. Right. That said, we're going to be looking at screens a lot of the day, no matter where we are.
00;14;38;15 - 00;15;03;00
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right? Right. That makes sense. I want to talk briefly about, your final point, which is all about, you know, the power of regret, right? And about, you know, you know, if I can paraphrase, like, taking chances, right? Making sure we're taking chances, you know, that the data set was really interesting, and it kind of changes with age, you know, how do we make sure that, like, what does that look like in practice for us as individuals?
00;15;03;00 - 00;15;09;14
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
How do we, you know, how do we take those chances? And especially, I guess, like at work, what does that maybe look like.
00;15;09;15 - 00;15;28;12
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. So so I don't know. So the, the the takeaway is that when you look at people's regrets and one of the big regrets they have or regrets the boldness. Yeah. If only had taken the chance. And then when you look at, even a broader array of research, it's, it shows that regrets of inaction easily outnumber regrets of action.
00;15;28;15 - 00;15;47;09
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I think that's a lesson for us, right? The lesson isn't always take risks. Surely that's the lesson. I think the lesson is to recognize that in some ways, the way we're set up, particularly at work, is a think about our dial. Right. It's we need to turn it up a few notches. We don't need to go take all the rest.
00;15;47;09 - 00;16;17;13
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Sure. But I think that our forecasts of what is risky and what is not. Yeah, a little distorted, not totally distorted, but it's a little too it's a little too risk averse. And you just want to actually correct for that one click, two clicks in the other in the other direction. So there's a famous Steven Levin paper where, you know, if you're that, that, that people ended up being happy with decisions that were made on a coin flip and in many cases, right, because they did something.
00;16;17;16 - 00;16;51;00
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And so I changed my view on this somewhat in that I become more and more convinced that acting is a form of thinking, as I don't want to get completely. Yeah. And metaphysical and you. But I think that acting is a when we do stuff and we think and we were and I think in some cases particularly white collar work where again, this too much, too much, emphasis on planning and analysis and all that.
00;16;51;00 - 00;17;05;24
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. That's important. I just think I just want to recalibrate the dials into a little bit, a little less kind of strategy and analysis and a little bit more just kind of acting. Yeah. Because I think that when you, when you act, you learn faster.
00;17;05;24 - 00;17;24;20
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right? Right. And I love that in your presentation as well about, you know, we're in this period of great sorting. We need to we need to act right. That that needs to be the priority. Is that, you know, as we think about new technologies in the changing world, does that become the new normal? Is that okay? Well, you know, give it 18 months and then we go back.
00;17;24;20 - 00;17;24;24
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
What?
00;17;24;26 - 00;17;42;29
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I don't know, it's a good question. I think there's a chance we could go back to a little bit less of the acting our way into knowing, right, that. But on the other hand, if you just look at this, the relentlessness of stuff changing. Yeah, even in the last 20 years, do you realize, like smartphones are not 20 years old yet?
00;17;43;03 - 00;18;08;09
Daniel Pink at LIVE
You know, it's kind of amazing. Wow. Now, you know, there are, you know, many of those people and that many of the people in this room went to university without using the internet. Right. And and so now we have, in the space of this preposterously short amount of time, you know, and the last thing or the last thing since 2004, we have these smartphones and these the cascade of things that they give us.
00;18;08;16 - 00;18;32;00
Daniel Pink at LIVE
We have social media and the cascade of most terrible things that, that, that, that gave us, we have essentially eliminated the barriers to entry for creating stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty amazing, like 20 years ago, you might have needed a video. I mean, you guys have a nice video here, but 20 years ago, that would have been mandatory, right?
00;18;32;00 - 00;18;55;23
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And now you got people generating millions and millions of views in their videos from their phone. So yeah. So so we have, you know, we have smartphones and social media and essentially zero barriers to entry for for creating stuff. Okay. That's pretty crazy. Oh and by the way hey I yeah like comes along right. And throws everything up in the air.
00;18;55;25 - 00;19;01;06
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. So I would like for things to be a little bit more mellow for I.
00;19;01;11 - 00;19;02;18
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
A I'm maybe not.
00;19;02;20 - 00;19;08;16
Daniel Pink at LIVE
We're here, we're we're here, we're here in Vegas. Yeah. I had to, like, put my chips on staying mellow.
00;19;08;19 - 00;19;10;10
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah. Course.
00;19;10;12 - 00;19;14;19
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Remaining tumultuous. I think I'm going to put my chips on remaining tomorrow.
00;19;14;24 - 00;19;31;21
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Right. Or at least not going back to the level of mellowness. Maybe of, you know, years past. If there's anything now that you think we're going to look back on in a few years, either as like individuals or as organizations and say, no, what? What now? Do we have wrong that we have an opportunity to fix?
00;19;31;23 - 00;19;59;11
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I mean, I think a lot of those are at the level of not so much lower level of organizations. But because at the level of, of society, I think that are, Maybe our grandchildren and my great grandchildren will be shocked and appalled that we let human beings drive cars. Right? Yeah. When they're, you know, tens of thousands of deaths every year because of this.
00;19;59;11 - 00;20;22;24
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I mean, it's lots of benefits to young kids, to be clear. That's part of it. I think some of it is that the idea that, in the States and other places, we let, we, we have people who live in poverty and as incredible in this incredible wealth. And one of the great things that happened in the world is you have literally, in the last 50 years, you've had billions of people leave poverty, right?
00;20;22;26 - 00;20;39;16
Daniel Pink at LIVE
And yet still in these in wealthy countries like the United States, we still have people living in, we still have people living in, we still have people living in poverty. I think that we will look back on our grandchildren with it back and say, wait a second, you made people go to this office or away from the house every single day, not just some days.
00;20;39;16 - 00;20;55;15
Daniel Pink at LIVE
What did you do there? Oh, we just sat around and didn't work by ourselves. Why? I think that it's it's a it's I think it's a great way. I think your question is a great question. I think it's a great thinking, Bill, for sure. You know, I think it's a great subject for, a breakout or an office like that.
00;20;55;15 - 00;21;02;16
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Like, what, 50 years? Now we're going to look back on and say, right how it was going on here. Yeah, yeah. What do you think?
00;21;02;19 - 00;21;22;00
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Well, what you know, I mean, I think I, I think you covered a bunch of it around like the, like, like the office stuff, the, you know, what we expect from people and just the pace. I like to me, a lot of these, these topics we're having around, like, you know, burnout and that the more is more like, as you said, like we're we're sorting it all out now.
00;21;22;00 - 00;21;30;02
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
But I think at some point the pressure has to come down a little bit, right? Yeah. I don't, I don't know, I like to think so. And I was going to ask you along those lines, but I think.
00;21;30;09 - 00;21;49;04
Daniel Pink at LIVE
There's another thing here. Is that what I think one of the things we're realizing, the same way that we look back on, say, the jobs, 100 years ago or 100. Yeah, it was like nasty and brutish and, and, and I think we're going to look back on some white collar jobs, right? Like some white collar jobs are really not that fun.
00;21;49;04 - 00;21;49;29
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah, they're kind of.
00;21;49;29 - 00;21;51;07
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Why would you make a person do that?
00;21;51;08 - 00;21;51;26
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Exactly.
00;21;51;27 - 00;22;05;16
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, along those lines with AI, with the advent of kind of technology and how it's, you know, shaping society, are you, would you say you're an optimist in that sense about where we're going, a pessimist or somewhere in the middle?
00;22;05;18 - 00;22;30;19
Daniel Pink at LIVE
I'm, if if optimism is a ten. Yeah. And pessimism. And so if human annihilation is a one. Yeah. Certainly say you could if you, if you, if you give an AI utopias ten. Yeah. And yeah. Even annihilation is a one. I'm probably I'm pretty left out probably seven. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm pretty optimistic about it.
00;22;30;19 - 00;22;31;23
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Yeah.
00;22;31;26 - 00;22;55;01
Daniel Pink at LIVE
In the same way that if you think about how transformative, the internet has been or just simply being connected all the time, the idea that people are it has all kinds of downsides, but the idea that people are able to find stuff and find communities, find information, you know, with a few swipes of their fingers, that's kind of amazing.
00;22;55;02 - 00;23;21;14
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. The, I think there's a leveling of the playing field big time that we can in have, with people with in terms of access to information, in terms of access to creative tools. So I, you know, I, you know, here's the thing. My, my view is that the I like the ice steered toward optimism more optimism than pessimism.
00;23;21;14 - 00;23;47;20
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Bright future. Not because I'm an innately sunny person, but because that's been the pattern. Right? Right. You know, and so I did this thing years ago when I was with that, looking at I bought on eBay. Wouldn't exist in the past, like 30 years. Wow. I we're on eBay, a bunch of books, and who works that forecast?
00;23;47;22 - 00;24;08;11
Daniel Pink at LIVE
What, like, was going to be like in the year 2000? These are things from the 50s and 60s. One of the things going to be like in the year 2000, and I ended up not writing about it, and but one of the things that was interesting is that the, the group, basically 50% were probably wild eyed, utopian.
00;24;08;12 - 00;24;13;10
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah. Like, no more pollution, no more environmental problems.
00;24;13;10 - 00;24;14;07
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Poverty's gone.
00;24;14;07 - 00;24;37;09
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Poverty's gone. People are going to be working three hours a week. They're having lives of leisure. Yeah, right. The other one is like, oh, we're going to we're going to have this ravage planet. We have people walking around in these. Yeah, all tribes battle each other for survival. And that was a 40% and 10% were like, that's probably going to be a little bit.
00;24;37;09 - 00;24;37;15
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah.
00;24;37;15 - 00;24;38;16
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
About 20% better.
00;24;38;16 - 00;24;55;11
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Than it is. Right? It's going to be a little better than it was. And it's like, okay, I'm, I'm with that. It's like, yeah, I think if you were to if we were to do a repeat on this, this, conversation in five years, I would say, I think we would say, yeah, it's a little better. Yeah, it's a little bit not perfect, but it's a little better.
00;24;55;14 - 00;24;56;03
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Yeah.
00;24;56;05 - 00;25;01;24
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Wonderful. Daniel, it was so great speaking with you. I love the presentation. Thanks so much for a fascinating conversation.
00;25;01;25 - 00;25;03;04
Daniel Pink at LIVE
Thanks for having me.
00;25;03;07 - 00;25;03;19
Geoff Nielson at LIVE
Awesome.
Geoff Nielson and Daniel Pink
