Two Daniel Pink blogs

Friday on Office Hours: Why do some kids succeed and others fail?

That’s the question at the center of a fascinating new book by New York Times Magazine and This American Life contributor Paul Tough. It’s called How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (Buy it at Amazon, BN.com, or IndieBound). And Tough will be talking about it, and taking your questions, on the Friday edition of Office Hours, our monthly radio-ish program that we call “Car Talk . . . for the human engine.”
The book takes on what Tough calls the “cognitive hypothesis,” the idea that success hinges on mental processing speed and traditional brainpower. Instead, citing lots of interesting research, Tough shows that “non-cognitive skills” – perseverance, optimism, self-control, and so on – are actually what matter most.
To listen to an interview with Tough – and to ask him any question at all about kids, education, or your own career – tune in this Friday September 14 at 1pm, EDT.
Just dial (703) 344-2171 x203373 at the appointed hour to listen live and participate in a lively back-to-school conversation about preparing our kids and ourselves for the future.
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September 10th, 2012

Obama and Romney in a word

In a survey last week, the Pew Research Center asked a question whose form I’ve come to find interesting and useful: “What one word best describes Barack Obama/Mitt Romney/Joe Biden/Paul Ryan?” (As it happens, in my upcoming book, I use this type of question to show what people really think of sales.)
The answers to these questions are revealing in a way that other types of polling often are not. For instance, a quick look at the responses for Obama (below) and Romney (below that) reveals the amount of vitriol coursing through the election of 2012. ”Socialist,” “loser,” and “sh**” for the incumbent; “liar,” “jerk,” and “crook” for the challenger. And the responses for Biden and Ryan show that the former has an image problem and the latter, at least in my opinion, has gotten an easy ride so far in the campaign.

Prediction: The one-word method will become more prevalent, especially as data meisters collect truckloads of linguistic information from social networks.

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