186. Do You Need a Routine? | No Stupid Questions

Key Takeaway

Build routines around the few things you most want to protect—relationships, health, focused work—but hold them loosely. Today, choose one existing cue you already perform, such as brushing your teeth or finishing lunch, and attach a tiny beneficial action to it. Then add flexibility: aim for a weekly or biweekly target rather than treating a missed day as failure. Consistency reduces decision fatigue; flexibility keeps the routine workable in real life.

Episode Overview

Angela Duckworth and Mike Munger examine when routines improve productivity, relationships, health, and creativity—and when they become restrictive. They distinguish habits from routines and plans, argue that predictable structure frees cognitive bandwidth, and explore research suggesting that flexible routines can endure better than rigid ones.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 186. Do You Need a Routine? | No Stupid Questions from Freakonomics Radio. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

gosh I hope this isn't too personal I'm Angela Duckworth I'm Mike m and you're listening to no stupid questions today on the show how important are routines they need to live a chaotic life with no rules no plans Angela today I think we have a really fun question but I'm even more excited because it's from a really fun person okay D tell this is a question that was sent in from my brother Peter Perfect Peter right he's the neurosurgeon yes I love that you call him Perfect Peter I do think he's incredible I think he's the smartest of All My Siblings I'll give him that I can't wait to hear what the other siblings think I think they'd all acknowledge it okay what does Perfect Peter want to know okay so Peter's asking a question he says how important is routine in life to what extent does sticking closely to routine help someone be or feel more productive happier Etc versus limit them or perhaps better phrased when is routine helpful and when can it be harmful interesting I am guessing that Perfect Peter has lots of routines just a wild guess he absolutely does he continues his question with this I can see how at times being too focused on routine causes one to feel like their life is overly regimented and doesn't allow for enough free flow and spontaneity while at other times routine can be an essential element of goal attainment and accomplishment so he says Angela and Mike how should we think about routine and incorporate or not incorporate routine into our lives I think it's a great question yeah I mean have you heard the phrase firm opinions loosely held yes well I I wonder if like firm op opinions loosely held there are times when routine can guide our lives but shouldn't control it and I have a good friend who he's one of those people with what I would call firm routines loosely held so every Friday for example at 2: p.m.

he stops and gets together with a few friends and they debrief on their week and kind of make their transition into the weekend but it's both this productive element and this signaling of friendship that we're transitioning into a different space and he has so many of these types of just routines but it's not so firmly held that he won't do anything else they're not so firmly held that like if he were on a plane at 2:00 on a Friday he'd be freaking out because he couldn't do that right and I thought to myself so much of life is really busy all the time and you get ripped from one place to another it's really beautiful to have a few of these I'll call them quasi non-ego abl in terms of routine that say this is how I'm going to approach my life to make sure I get these things into it that are important to me you know routine isn't studied as much in psychology as habit there's so much um I want to say hype about habit only because that sounds good and it's alliterative like there's so much talk about habit there's so many books about habit habits are really when your brain is on autopilot in fact my my favorite habit neuroscientist Colin camer at Caltech uses the phrase neural autopilot and there is an entirely separate part of your brain and sometimes people say this kind of thing like oh there's a part of your brain that you know fill in the blank in this case there really is what is called The Habit system and it's a different part of the brain that you use when you do something which is so automatic you've done it so many times and it's been so consistently the right thing to do that you really don't have to think so stopping at a red light you know red light hit the brakes that's the kind of thing that people talk about when they talk about neural autopilot and I think that these routines that we're talking about here like oh on Fridays I do this you're not completely using cruise control but there is some kind of default nature to it you know the reason why we have any of these things like true habits where your brain is really on autopilot to routines where you're sort of like kind of awake but there's a strong default to even a plan all of these are on a Continuum of how much did I know in advance what I was going to do and not have to think about it too much to on the other hand like wow I have to use all of the cognitive bandwidth I have to figure out what I'm going to do and I'll just say that the human brain is a miracle but it's very small and human beings have had to do smart things with this little few pounds of cranial material and one of the reasons why human beings are so smart is because we have this ability to put some things on autopilot or near autopilot or I already planned this yesterday you know if you wake up and you have already planned what your day is going to be like the day before that frees up a lot of cognitive bandwidth to like now negotiate what's happening people who wake up and they're just making every single decision like reactively they just are not living a very efficient life so I'm a big fan of habits like pure habits and also I'm a big fan of routines let me jump in then for a second what are some routines that you have in your life that have helped you maybe free up cognitive bandwidth for other things kind of on the regular I call three girlfriends three different days of the week Sue is on Saturdays Michelle's on Sundays and Shani is on Wednesdays that is amazing we talk and we run at the same time or I should say jog at least for me it's a routine I would say because it's not like I start to do this automatically without any intentionality like there's a Google calendar invite it often needs to be moved a little bit like one person needs to start a little earlier like I have to switch the day but anyway I have that routine I think it is the one thing I have done as a friend that has been a real GameChanger like I would not say that I'm the best I never remember anyone's birthday I'm not the most thoughtful human I have to say the routine of weekly calls has not only preserved these three friendships but actually made them so much richer than they were before we started this which is I don't know like 10 years ago or something that's incredible and forgive me I'm going to use the term I shouldn't but is this a form of habit stacking what did you learn about habit stacking Katie Milkman oh right A lot of people call it habit piggybacking and my collaborator and friend Katie Milkman will talk about it also James Clear who wrote Atomic habits which I just want to go on record as saying it's a pretty gush darn good book he's not a professor or psychologist but he's incredibly intuitive so maybe I should call him a psychologist but habit stacking or habit piggybacking is great advice for anybody who's going to try to develop a routine or a pure habit so gosh I hope this isn't too personal but you know what in the world of podcasting you can always edit things out so I was at the gynecologist I feel like if I finish my sentence Mike's going to get up and leave but anyway no I just feel like every story that starts with I probably shouldn't say this is either going to be really good or really bad like there's no there's no in between nothing else in the middle there I mean I'll say this I was at the gynecologist and I'm a woman of a certain age so I'm in menopause we think and one of the things that happens at this time of life Mike is that you basically you know have a hard time not peeing on yourself you get told a joke somebody bumps you you get surprised you do an aerobics class and like all of a sudden you have a problem because you're not 17 anymore and these kagle muscles that are in the pelvic floor aren't working so well so basically every woman of my age I think has been told at some point that you should do these very simple kle exercises it's free it's invisible and every woman that I know of my age doesn't do them so what my gynecologist said to me is that I should essentially have it stack she was like for example you could stack it onto like something like a queue like when you're watching TV and there's a commercial right but I think the most common example that's given is that brushing teeth is something that most people do twice a day and that means you have two opportunities to Habit stack or I might say thinking about Peter routine stack it doesn't have to be like a purely automatic habit but even something where like okay I will give you a less embarrassing example perhaps I habit stacked doing my physical therapy routine during my toothbrushing so I have lunges and squats and they're all doable exercises while you're holding a toothbrush in your right hand and so that has become my routine and actually it's like you said it's a strong opinion loosely held in the sense that you know if I'm like doing something unusual like I have to brush my teeth in the shower because I'm late I don't also try to do my physical therapy there because that could be dangerous so anyway my point is if you think about trying to establish a new routine or a new habit well something to hook on to it's really hard so first of all I try I won't claim that I do this all the time but when I brush my teeth I try to do walls sits yes at the same time I'm doing it wait when you say try does that is that means that I don't do it all the time I did not do it this morning yeah walls sets are so hard I did brush my teeth I did not do wallets let's clarify you know a lot of people are under the misunderstanding that if you do something like a million times it becomes a habit but that's actually not how the Habit system works we only migrate things from what's sometimes called the goal system in the brain which is something that takes a lot of intentionality in the moment you know you're thinking you're maybe simulating options you're deciding we move from the goal system to The Habit system when a behavior is repeated and it's rewarded so I have to ask you when you finish brushing your teeth and doing these walls sits do you feel rewarded well I I think like all exercise nobody wants to do it in the moment but you're always grateful that you did and when are you grateful like right away do you feel rewarded right then yeah yes I do so if you feel really good right away I have some hope that this might become a habit I think one of the challenges is that wallets are painful so when I say that habits are behaviors that are repeated and rewarded one of the things going against you in this case Mike and one thing that might keep it a routine and never a full-fledged habit is the pain of doing it right like if you had another exercise by the way that was maybe less good for you but was less painful I'm guess that you would have a greater chance of keeping up the routine and even that routine becoming a habit let me take it this way then here's another one where I do feel deeply rewarded but would still call it a routine there's this man named Jesse ller and he's written some books about life with a seal David Goggins is this Navy SEAL who is super wellknown so he had David gogins before David goggin was well known come live with him at his house and train him okay but one of the things that he does and he didn't make any of this up but he's kind of the one who's the biggest evangelizer of it he talks about every year having a year defining event so you can always look back and say in 2024 I did this in 2023 I did this and then he also says I plan six mini Adventures so every other month I know that I'm going to have a mini adventure and that's something to look forward to and I am excited about that so I love the idea of year defining event I think it's really important and I love the idea of six Many Adventures and you plan it in advance right it's not just that every year he looks back and he picks one thing as a year defining event oh yeah yeah yeah which again on this Continuum from Pure Habit to like wow I have to think about everything in the moment I would call this a plan so there's a spectrum of how much the thing is already for gone or automatic for sure so if you're going to have your year defining event and I try to do that have your six mini Adventures I I tried to plan all those out as well then I want to have what I call my 365 moments of awe ah this is daily then this is my daily thing where no matter how busy life is or crazy life is or challenging the day I challenge myself to have at least one moment and that can just be 30 seconds so can I have an example of an annual life defining experience well year def I'm not going to call it life defining okay right year yeah that's like lower the stakes a little bit so 2022 for me the year defining event was killamanjaro hiking out killamanjaro last year my year defining event I'm only doing one in my life for other people this is one of their Many Adventures it was doing a marathon that will always be my year of the marathon oh my gosh I forgot you ran a marathon you know I'm going to go ahead and say I finished a marathon in 2023 there were Parts where I hobbled and waddled but yes I finished a marathon okay and then what would be an example of a mini Adventure so a mini adventure for example I'm going down to the Indian Welles tennis tournament for a weekend or I have a couple of friends that we get together for a surfing trip every year I should clarify they surf and I sit on a surfboard in the water and Miss every wave I have seen you in a photo in a wet suit holding a board it turns out you do not have to be able to get up on said board to take a picture with it that is true and you were on the sand so yes yes yes you've never seen a video of me surfing these were just props okay so um what's an example of an everyday so I will just say yesterday was a crazy day and I just walked outside for 1 minute and looked up at the mountains so this doesn't have to be planned in advance but maybe like a daily practice of gratitude maybe you could call it a moment of gratitude I also try to do that so maybe the moment of a is the same thing but I treat them separately right here here's what I say Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on the importance of routines do you find them particularly helpful do you find them restrictive to you or or how does your current routine affect your productivity in your mood record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to us at nsqf freakonomics.com and maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show and if you like the show and want to support it the best thing you can do is tell a friend about it you can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app still to come on no stupid questions is having a solid morning routine crucial for leading a productive life for a time I thought every productive person has a morning routine but let me tell you how was wrong about that now back to Mike and Angela's conversation about routines so a lot of people when they talk about routines talk about their morning routines yes and I'll just share one that I found from a a video that Tony Robbins did that I actually really love and so he basically talked about how he starts his morning with three minutes of a breathing exercise 3 minutes of gratitude 3 minutes of prayer and then 3 minutes of what he I think calls prioritization and he says here are the three things that I need to accomplish today regardless of whatever else comes into my life or or time Etc and and I love that idea of a morning routine you know I love morning routines too and for a time I thought every productive person has a morning routine but let me tell you how I was wrong about that I still think that most productive people have a morning routine I me by the way you could have like an afternoon routine or an evening routine and some people do but there's something about the morning I think because it's tabul La rasa right like you can wake up and there aren't already a lot of competing things so morning routines do as a rule I think end up being in the toolbox of very productive people but let me tell you not everyone so Katie Milkman aforementioned friend collaborator behavioral scientist and I were hosting Cass sunstein who was the co-author of nudge the famous book that kind of launched behavioral economics into the popular Consciousness and also under Obama he was like the nudge Zar and actually helped establish the first team to get governments to use nudges to make the world better but Cass is actually not an economist or behavioral scientist he's a lawyer he's a a law professor his current appointment is at Harvard and Cass is truly the most productive writer that I know by a long shot we joke that he gets on a plane flies across the country and gets off the plane and has another book I've quite literally lost count of his books but I think it's well over 50 now oh wow I know I was like oh Cass do you have a book coming out and he was like oh which one I was like what um so I had to ask him cuz we were doing this conversation I was like Cass I got to know what's your morning routine so he thought for a moment he's like well um I guess I get up around well whenever the dogs get me out of bed and then he he s of like staring off into space as he was like recreating this so it's obviously not something where he was like okay here here's my morning routine I have calibrated this over the years he was like oh guess after I walk the dogs well then I get back into bed I'm like wow this is not sounding like a productive morning routine this not sounding like David Goggins I was like okay and then what he's like I don't know I guess I get up I like coffee um and then I said Cass what do you eat cuz I'm thinking now we're going to get somewhere right he's going to have some high protein you know invigor he's like I had like a donut I don't know maybe I like donuts and then I you know usually want to start writing and I was like okay so I will say that some people have very regimented morning routines for some people it is bordering on a habit because it's so automatic and then I guess there's Cass sunstein who gets woken up by his dogs because his dogs need to go to the bathroom and then is kind of like vaulted into his life if I might venture a guess which is unfounded cuz I have to ask Cass I think one of the reasons why he doesn't need a routine as much as other people is that he is really driven to write like in an intrinsic way a lot of writers including me need these like crutches and supports like a calendar where you can X off the day like okay you know I want to keep my streak I think Cass is so driven to write that he doesn't need any of these external supports to just do it it's really interesting that you say that because I was reading this review of Mason Curry's book daily rituals how artists work H I read his books both of them then you're going to know more about this I've only read exerpts but I thought it was really interesting how he talked about this idea that maybe doesn't apply as much to cast but like you're saying many writers need and it's this idea that order and routine is what allows for creativity and daring yeah and New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote this great opinion piece inspired by Mason Curry's work he says quote children need emotional and physical order so they can go off and explore a parent's main job is to provide daily predictability and emotional security then he continues communities need order to thrive and cooperate since when there's chaos and disorder there's distrust and withdrawal the main job of local leaders is to provide basic infrastructure and security roads police honest judges orderly schools Etc so that your community can Thrive he made the same argument about what people who are in creative Fields need in order to actually be creative so it's almost this reverse understanding of what you think you think a creative person is just free flowy and go with whatever but yeah they need to live a chaotic life with no rules no plans no routines and no habits right like that could be the mental image of an artist right but but I loved kind of his thing I don't know if you've ever read the book evicted I have not evicted I think is a a fascinating and heartbreaking exploration into poverty in the United States and how not having a stable housing situation not knowing that there's a place that you can come home to every day really disrupts the development of children because they're constantly in Flex whether that's not knowing where they're going to live or going into an UNH house situation etc etc and the massive negative ramifications that has on people's development their grades their emotional security Etc children need this emotional and physical order so they can explore it kind of this idea that C's talking about here creatives need this order and routine so that they can actually be creative Etc I think he has an intuition that is Now supported and I say now because I think this is very recent research so just the other day I'm reading this article it's called what's next advances and challenges in understanding how environmental predictability shapes the development of cognitive control and what these Scholars argue is that when a child is growing up if they grow up in a relatively not entirely but relatively predictable orderly world like breakfast happens in the morning not sometimes you get breakfast and sometimes you go hungry you know adults in your life say things like after you do your chores then we'll have some time to read that is a kind of world that is very different from a child growing up where like you do your chores and then your parents aren't even there anymore like where' they go like they left the house right right so what they claim is very bold and that is that across species actually a predictable world is essential for the development of cognitive control and that is this ability to regulate your thoughts and your actions cognitive control is a little bit like the CEO of your brain but the idea is that it needs to have a predictable environment to develop properly the reason why this is so interesting is that it not only dovetails with what Mason Curry is observing about artists but also parenting researchers since forever have been saying that when you observe parents who have the healthiest and happiest kids and by the way also the kids who are the most ethical I mean all these things go together oh so it's like all the above it's not just physical health and happiness right you know parenting is hard but the one thing I will say is that the things that you want a child to be are all correlated and consistency in parenting this is something I wasn't that great at but I tried I knew the research when I was in graduate school as you know my one daughter was in the womb the other daughter was just in her toddlerhood and I knew that consistency mattered so I knew they needed to have regularity in when meal times were also in discipline I knew that I was supposed to be consistent okay I was not so great at that but I think in many other ways there was really a kind of orderly predictability and and one theory behind this is that if you grow up in a world like that you have the incentive to develop a great prefrontal cortex lots of cognitive control do lots of planning and so if you grow up in chaos you have an incentive to be an impulsive reactive in the moment I guess I'll do this because it feels good so I think it's a very deep idea and I don't think anybody is saying you should be so regimented that if you don't have breakfast exactly at 8 the world has come to an end but I do think it's like you said is paradoxal away right like these are the kids who end up being risk-taking and creative and able to deal with uncertainty because they've grown up with a lot of certainty right you actually can't jump that high off of a sand Foundation versus a really solid one you know I mean we've been kind of extolling routines as awesome and I do think they are I do think productive people have morning routines on average maybe not cast sunstein and I I think children need much more consistency than they're getting in some cases but as somebody who has studied the downside of routine and habit I guess I should probably put a word in for why sometimes people resist these rules if you will right so let's talk about flexibility because I think that is actually the cost if you will if the routine is too tightly held and by the way this is the cost of habit also right so pure habits where you're truly on autopilot have a lack of flexibility to them that is sometimes not good that is why the brain is very conservative about what it puts on autopilot that's why you not only have to repeat a behavior like brushing your teeth or doing wall squats or whatever but it has to be basically immediately rewarded you know I mentioned this Caltech neuroscientist Colin cam he says really what put something on autopilot is what he calls prediction error the prediction error is the difference between how rewarding you think something is going to be and then how it turns out so the prediction error can be really high if you're like I thought that cheese steak was going to be amazing and oh my gosh I got food poisoning right so it could be close to zero in the case of by the way like junk food and going to fast food restaurants you know the prediction error is close to zero because those products are so consistent oh you just know exactly what you're going to get right colum I believe that is one of the reasons why they are so habit forming and then it becomes like again on the continuum you stop paying attention to it you do it without a lot of intentionality but one of the costs of that of course is like maybe you're inflexibly doing something that's wrong or that's bad I mean obviously junk food has its own whole Pandora's box of bad things but I guess what I say is this I think flexibility is a cost of routine so let me tell you about a study that I did with Katie Milkman and also uh her PhD student whose name is Anish Ry he's now a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and and we wanted to ask the question what is this trade-off between flexibility on one hand and routine or kind of um I know what I'm going to do in advance right where do we draw that line and so what Anish did was he partnered with this organization called crisis text line it's this nonprofit where if you are having a crisis like you're having maybe even Suicidal Thoughts that you actually can text a certain number and then a volunteer on the other end and will text you back and you have a conversation for people of a certain generation they're more comfortable actually with texting when they're in distress oh than having a phone call conversation you're saying than having a phone call especially with a stranger so we knew that this nonprofit crisis text line needed their volunteers to log 200 hours of volunteering over the course of I think it was a year and we randomly assigned people to either have just like could you do some hours every week so that you could get to 200 hours right so that was the control condition then there was a condition that was the under end continue was like can you volunteer 4 hours every week so that was a very granular subgoal condition and then there was a condition that we designed that we thought was going to benefit from the granularity of the goal but also have a built in little bit of flexibility so in this case instead of 4 hours every week we thought okay let's ask this group of people to think about volunteering 8 hours every 2 weeks okay so now we're giving them you know like there's a little latitude oh this week is really hard for me and essentially what we found is that both of the goal setting conditions they actually increased volunteering by roughly 8% over just the first 12we period even of this time but we also found that the flexible condition 8 hours every two weeks seem to have more enduring benefits really as we looked at the data over time I love that idea that the flexibility cuz obviously everyone's lives go a little bit differently so Angela we have talked about the benefits of routine the benefits of flexibility and the challenges of routine what would you say you want to change about your own routines or maybe advice you'd want to give me about routines so this question that Perfect Peter your neuros surgeon brother asked is bringing to mind just like one last study that ends up being I think advice so this study was done by Sydney Scott and Eleanor Williams they're at washu in St Louis and it's about how people when they think about their own life pretty much want flexibility and they don't want routines and they don't want the rigidity of deciding in advance right but when they are asked for advice for other people that they care about they are much more likely to choose this kind of rigid plan routine option and what Sydney and Eleanor conclude is that when you're thinking about other people you use your head and when you think about yourself you use your gut right or your heart I was going to say heart but you're going to go with gut yeah yeah yeah you know like oh what feels right for me but when you're thinking about your friend you're sort of really thinking you're like what would be the best thing and I think the advice then is that if there really is a benefit to routine then maybe what we should do is think of our own life sometimes as if we're planning for someone else I think this is just a great life hack many Business Leaders do this when they have to make business decisions like if it weren't me but if it were my best friend making this business decision right if it weren't me ordering lunch right now but like actually somebody I really care about my best friend my significant other whatever what would I order for them what would I have them do in the morning because I think it's true that sometimes we would make a better decision that way so I think my closing advice is like yeah there are tradeoffs but routines are awesome and there are ways to develop strong routines but to Loosely hold them right to build in some flexibility as well and if you have a problem with any of this pretend that you're deciding on all this for another person who's not you I love that concept though of making sure that you you have this almost third-party view into your life and look I think that my life has been so much richer when I have tried to incorporate routines into it and I think that there are so many ways that routine breeds intentionality in life and I will say I will go forward now with that advice and when I'm about to make these decisions on routine think about my best friend or as you call him Perfect Peter you know Mike one of the new routines in my life that I have really appreciated it's having conversations with you oh my gosh ditto and now here's a fact check of today's conversation Angela uses the example of Performing pelvic floor strengthening exercises while watching television to illustrate the benefits of habit stacking she notes that as people age the kegle muscles that support pelvic floor organs may stop functioning as well there is in in fact no such thing as Kagel muscles the pelvic floor consists of the lvat Ani which wraps around the pelvis and the coxas located in the back of the pelvis Kegel exercises were first described in 1948 by American gynecologist Arnold Kagel as a way to prevent incontinence the exercises are often recommended for Women's Health as Angela mentions but they can also be beneficial for men especially those who've had their prostate surgically removed or who have conditions like diabetes or an overactive flatter that's it for the fact check before we wrap Today's Show let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on closure hi Angela and Mike I wanted to say that what really resonated with me was the fact that psychologically we need closure and yet there are all sorts of Tik tocks and Instagram reals from certified therapists and influencers and all sorts of people who claim that you don't need to get closure from someone when you get ghosted or someone breaks up with you and so I think this episode is really important in helping shape that conversation around how you can create closure for yourself or maybe why we do really owe each other explanations for things and it's not needy and it's not too much to ask why something happened maybe this kind of content can help us improve our relationships with each other in this very digital and somewh unaccountable World hi my name's Rachel when we moved to a new city several years ago we enrolled our son in a new daycare and through this daycare we made uh friends with another young family and we all got along so well our kids played together really well they were best buddies and then suddenly in the fall of 2020 they stopped all communication with us they ignored our texts they ignored Instagram messages but we saw they were still hanging out with other people anyway I think about the abrupt cessation of this friendship every couple of days and I wonder if I'd had closure with the termination of this friendship that I would not be brooding on it so frequently hi Angela and Mike this is Steve from Chicago and your show about closure reminded me of one of the best and worst events in my life in college I received a bouquet of flowers in the dorm and not a few cheap carnations but rather large and beautiful and probably expensive Arrangement and the card only said hey you're kind of cute I asked around I looked around put an ad in the school paper but I never found out who sent them to me and even after more than 30 years I can still look back on that moment with great joy but also a little bit of sadness for what might have been that was respectively Kelsey Simpkins Rachel Hampton and Steve Turner thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us and remember we'd love to hear about your relationship with routines send a voice memo to nsqf freecomic and you might hear your voice on the show hi everyone Angela here I want to tell you about a special project Mike and I are working on we're planning a series of episodes of no stupid questions about personal in anticipation of the first episode we have a really fun quiz we're excited to share to check it out and to learn more about your personality go to freakonomics.com bigf take the big five inventory and get an immediate personality profile your results will remain completely Anonymous and if you have a question about personality feel free to email us at nsqf freecomicsonline.to thanks and see you next week coming up next week on no stupid questions are you motivated by fear I'm sitting there and I can't move I can hardly breathe people are trying to talk to me and I'm like don't don't talk I can't cognitively function that's next week on no stupid questions is part of the fre economics radio network which also includes fre economics radio people I mostly admire and the econ comics of everyday things all our shows are produced by Stitcher and renb radio the senior producer of the show is me Rebecca Lee Douglas and L bouic is our production associate this episode was mixed by Greg riffen our theme song was composed by Louis Gara you can follow us on Twitter at nsq show and on Facebook at nsq show if you have a question for a future episode please email it to nsq freakonomics.com to learn more or to read episode transcripts visit freakonomics.com nsq thanks for listening enthusiastic woo now they're going to put that at the end I hate that the Freakonomics radio network the Hidden Side 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