“The goal is there to serve two purposes. One so that you start investing in your career and two so that you bring your future self forward so you are not just investing in activities that serve you for the present day.” – Dr Grace Lordan

We all have big dreams for the future, but to achieve our goals we have to start with small steps. Dr Grace Lordan is an Associate Professor in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and an expert advisor to the UK government as a member of the skills and productivity board. Grace has recently released her book ‘Think Big: Take Smalls Steps and Build The Future You Want’, an evidence based guide that looks at how your small actions today will determine your future self and draws on behavioural science to offer every day, actionable solutions that will move you towards your goals.

In the conversation Ali takes a deep dive into Grace’s book covering tonnes of behavioural science concepts including how our emotions influence decision making, the relationship between gender and risk aversion and why we procrastinate and fear of failure. You’ll leave the episode with a better understanding of why people stumble in their career journeys, why others succeed and some practical advice to set you off on your think big journey.

✨ Words of Wisdom

“If you’re engaged in tasks that you enjoy you’re going to be more successful” – Dr Grace Lordan

“Whether you’re focused on your health or your career it’s those small actions that you take today will determine yourself in 2 year 3 years 4 years time, and by throwing out that idea that you’re going to reinvent yourself in 30days…” – Dr Grace Lordan

“Every Sunday reflect on how the week previous went and look to see if there are new opportunities that you can be pivoting your goal for” – Dr Grace Lordan

“I see the think big part of the book as giving people a direction so they can set off on a journey and they start walking and more interesting things might come along but they make a conscious decision to follow those interesting things’ – Dr Grace Lordan

“Just pick something and start moving towards it. It’s much easier to change direction when you’re moving forward rather than when you’re stationary” – Ali Abdaal

“For people who do not know what they want to do, I would avoid committing to a 4 year degree or an expensive masters programme and really use the resources out there which are either cheap or free” – Dr Grace Lordan

“I encourage people to be experimental, they might hear me ay something but they should actually say, “may be grace knows something about what she is talking about, but grace doesn’t know me, the only person that knows me is me”…” – Dr Grace Lordan

“I think one of the problems with people in society today is that we think good leaders shouldn’t change their minds…” – Dr Grace Lordan

“There are 2 types of people there are people with an internal locus of control who believe that everything is within their own control, so when negative events happen to them they take control of the situation and they try to move forward in a way so try to find a side door and another entrance. Then there are people with an external locus of control who believe that everything happens to them, it’s at the hands of other people or the universe”. – Dr Grace Lordan