15. How Much of Your Life Do You Actually Control?

That wasn't so much a question as a kind of cranky old man observation, so decrankify me. I wanna be cranky with you, if that's okay. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Steven Dubner. And you're listening to no stupid questions. Today on the show.

How much of your life is in your control? My teacher's unfair, they're always picking on me and I get all these marks on my record and then I can't go on the field trip. Also Why do we procrastinate and how can we stop? I don't wanna do that. Really, really don't wanna do that.

Angela, my question for you today is I think really hard, but perhaps important enough to wrestle with. Are you up for it? Of course. Okay. This question arose when I was reading Maria Kanakova's new book, The Biggest Bluff. So Maria, like you has a PhD in psychology, but she's not an academic, she's a writer. And this book is about her quest to become a professional poker player, starting from scratch. So we made a free economics radio episode about her book that was called How to Make Your Own Luck. And really what Maria is wrestling with throughout that book

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