117: Dan Heath | Bright Spots as a Superpower

Dan Heath is the co-author, with his brother Chip, of four New York Times bestsellers: Decisive, Switch, Made to Stick, and The Power of Moments. Their books have sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 33 languages.

Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. Previously, Dan worked as a researcher and case writer for Harvard Business School. In the late 1990s, Dan co-founded a publishing company called Thinkwell, which produces online college textbooks featuring video lectures from the country’s top professors. And one proud geeky moment for Dan was his victory in the 2005 New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, beating out 13,000 other entrants.

Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We’re prone to focus on weakness and shortcomings. Almost 2/3 of emotion words are negative. When we write in journals, we tend to focus on what’s not working. But focusing on our bright spots can be superpower.
• We naturally assume that when there are problems we should spend our time focusing on the problems. But an alternative approach is to focus on strengths…the bright spots.
• It’s so easy to think, “What’s the problem and how do we fix it?” But another mode of inquiry that is every bit as powerful but rarely asked is “What's working today and how can we do more of that?”
• "Again and again in life you’re going to encounter situations with mixed signals. Our natural tendency is to dwell on what's not working, what's broken. But I want you to be the person that says 'Hang on a second, let's flip this and look at the other side of the spectrum. What are the bright spots?'”
• Dan is a serial procrastinator. But by focusing on his bright spots, analyzing when he was at his best, he realized that to be most productive he needed to spend his mornings writing in coffee shops.
• “One company in particular added an increment of about 9 digits of revenue just by studying their own best work.”

 

Follow Dan:

Website: https://heathbrothers.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-heath-aa5a63147/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatitsliketobepodcast/

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