Derek Sivers on Living a Happier Life, Saying No, Prioritizing Goals and More

00:00:00.000 | "If I think I want to be on a beach in Thailand right now, well, why do I think that?

00:00:05.600 | What do I really want? What do I expect will happen when I get there?

00:00:09.120 | Why is it that I need a beach in Thailand? Could it be a beach anywhere?

00:00:12.400 | Is it just the quiet that I want?"

00:00:15.280 | You may keep asking yourself these questions and get to the actual answer, which is

00:00:25.440 | that "Yeah, my home is too noisy. I hate all the clamoring here. I live right above a train

00:00:31.680 | station or something, and it's too noisy in my home. Really, what I'm pursuing is the silence."

00:00:37.280 | "Well, do you need to go to Thailand to get silence? Is that the sustainable solution to that?"

00:00:42.800 | "No, maybe I need to soundproof my office."

00:00:45.200 | And you might come to like, "Yeah, actually, I don't need Thailand,

00:00:49.360 | but the money it would take to go to Thailand, I could soundproof my office.

00:00:53.520 | And I really do like living here in Toronto or wherever it is.

00:00:56.800 | And so, in fact, I'm going to stay here, not go to Thailand and soundproof my office.

00:01:02.880 | Yes, that's what I really want."

00:01:04.480 | You know, so if you keep digging into yourself,

00:01:07.760 | you might come out with a solution that suits your problem better.

00:01:13.840 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:01:17.200 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:01:19.680 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and today I'm talking to one of my favorite authors, Derek Sivers.

00:01:23.920 | He has a seemingly unlimited arsenal of incredible life advice

00:01:27.520 | that comes from one of the most unconventional paths I've ever come across.

00:01:31.200 | He started his career as a professional musician

00:01:33.600 | and ended up joining the circus for 10 years until he started CD Baby,

00:01:38.240 | which became the largest seller of independent music on the web

00:01:41.680 | in the early 2000s with over $100 million in sales.

00:01:45.440 | In 2008, he sold the company, giving away most of the proceeds to charity,

00:01:49.760 | and has been focused on creating and learning ever since.

00:01:53.120 | We're all fortunate for that path because of the amazing writing he's done since then.

00:01:57.520 | So today, I'm going to try to give you a glimpse at that wisdom

00:02:00.160 | as it relates to decision-making, aligning your actions with your personal values,

00:02:04.640 | living a more satisfying and happy life, creating meaningful experiences, and a lot more.

00:02:09.920 | We'll even talk about why Derek thinks traveling with children

00:02:12.800 | is easier than almost any other parent I've met.

00:02:15.760 | It's a lot to cover, and I really hope you enjoy this episode.

00:02:18.720 | So let's jump in.

00:02:19.520 | Derek, thanks for being here.

00:02:27.040 | Thanks, Chris.

00:02:27.680 | From the outside looking in, when I read everything you write,

00:02:31.040 | I'm like, "This guy has it all figured out."

00:02:32.960 | And for every aspect of life, I'm always like, "Oh, there's probably a post Derek wrote.

00:02:36.800 | I could just search up about this thing I'm trying to make a decision or be a better parent."

00:02:40.800 | Do you feel like you have everything figured out?

00:02:42.800 | I'm an explorer.

00:02:45.760 | So at any given moment, I might have figured out right now,

00:02:55.680 | or I might have figured out yesterday's exploration and what I want to do about it,

00:03:00.960 | but then give it a few days and I'm off to somewhere new.

00:03:03.920 | I want to make a bit of a theme of this because I think the average person listening

00:03:09.600 | isn't comfortable with that level of exploration in their life.

00:03:13.040 | How do you get comfortable saying, "Well, maybe I don't have to have this job.

00:03:17.280 | Maybe I don't have to live in this place,"

00:03:19.120 | and reframing it around what you want to do in the moment or what you should be doing?

00:03:23.120 | Is there a thing, maybe a happiness that you use to guide your exploration?

00:03:32.320 | Intellectual interest, but also I'm usually led by whatever it feels I'm lacking now.

00:03:42.160 | This sounds weird to put that so bluntly, but say you might be living in the middle of a city

00:03:53.120 | and you're too hectic and you're too booked up and you've got too many things going on

00:03:57.840 | and you think, "If only I could go live in the middle of nowhere in the country,"

00:04:02.640 | and so you do that.

00:04:03.680 | You make some changes in your life.

00:04:05.280 | You make your job remote or whatever it may be,

00:04:08.160 | and then you move off to the middle of nowhere and you get there and you go, "I've done it,"

00:04:14.880 | and after a week or a month you go, "Yeah, I miss a little commotion,"

00:04:20.560 | so you start pursuing something to put a little commotion back in your life.

00:04:25.760 | I think we're often driven by what we feel that we're lacking right now,

00:04:29.600 | and so I do that too.

00:04:30.640 | It's like the pendulum swinging.

00:04:33.760 | The pendulum goes too far off to one end and it kind of goes,

00:04:36.880 | "Oh, I wish I had a little gravity bringing me back to the center,"

00:04:39.840 | and so the pendulum swings back to the center,

00:04:42.080 | but then it keeps swinging to the other end and it goes,

00:04:44.080 | "Oh, yeah, I wish I had something bringing me back there again,"

00:04:47.680 | so that's probably driving a lot of my pursuits,

00:04:54.240 | but let's say that combined with the intellectual curiosity drives to just try something new.

00:05:03.760 | - Now, if we rewind, you said the person living in the city feels overwhelmed,

00:05:07.120 | so they move to the middle of nowhere.

00:05:09.760 | I imagine that most of those people are actually not going to do the move.

00:05:13.440 | I think most of the people probably get stuck in a situation

00:05:16.640 | saying, "I'm living in the city. Everything's overwhelming,

00:05:20.960 | and wouldn't it be nice to go just disconnect for a month,

00:05:26.800 | but I just can't do that,"

00:05:29.440 | so I want to rewind to that narrative and say,

00:05:33.360 | how have you been the kind of person that's been able to do that

00:05:38.080 | when so many people six months later are still saying,

00:05:42.000 | "I'm still in the city. I'm still overwhelmed.

00:05:44.480 | I'm still frustrated in my job."

00:05:46.720 | Is there some thing that you've unlocked that allows you to do what so many people can't?

00:05:52.240 | - I think I've always, always pursued that, even since I was a teenager.

00:05:56.640 | Now, hold on. You said one key thing in there.

00:06:01.920 | You said three months later or six months later.

00:06:05.520 | It might take a couple years.

00:06:09.600 | When I was 25, I was a touring musician playing the college market in the Northeast,

00:06:15.680 | and I decided to move to Woodstock, New York.

00:06:21.600 | I did it, actually, like the little scenario I just described.

00:06:26.640 | I'd had enough of New York City.

00:06:27.920 | I'd been living right in the middle of New York City for five years, six years,

00:06:33.280 | and I was just like, "I've had enough. I want to move to Woodstock, New York.

00:06:36.240 | I think that's my place," and so I just did it.

00:06:40.400 | I just drove up there one day.

00:06:42.240 | I went straight to the Century 21 real estate office, and I said, "Show me what you got.

00:06:46.480 | I want to live here now," and she showed me something,

00:06:49.360 | and I was like, "I could afford it," so I said, "Okay, I'll take it,"

00:06:52.400 | and got rid of my life in Queens, New York, and moved to Woodstock, New York.

00:07:00.960 | About a month later, I was at a gig in Rhode Island somewhere,

00:07:05.680 | and Renee, this redhead who had hired me for the gig, I had known her from before.

00:07:13.600 | She had hired me two years earlier, and she said, "Oh, my God, good to see you again.

00:07:18.640 | How's it going?"

00:07:19.280 | and I said, "Well, I just moved to Woodstock," and she goes, "Get out. No way. Derek,

00:07:26.640 | oh, my God, that's amazing," and I said, "What? Why are you?"

00:07:32.400 | She's like, "Derek, don't you remember? You told me this."

00:07:35.840 | I said, "No, I just moved last week."

00:07:38.400 | She goes, "Yeah, two years ago, you told me you wanted to move to Woodstock."

00:07:42.320 | I said, "I did? I don't even remember wanting to move there two years ago."

00:07:48.080 | She goes, "Yeah, oh, my God, two years ago, you told me you wanted to move to Woodstock.

00:07:51.920 | You did it. That's amazing."

00:07:53.280 | I went, "Oh, wow. Wow. I guess I've been wanting this a long time."

00:07:57.360 | So sometimes I think it goes like that, that it might take a couple years for your

00:08:05.040 | intention to turn into reality.

00:08:07.440 | Maybe just accepting that everything doesn't have to move as fast as we expect it to,

00:08:15.120 | especially in a professional setting.

00:08:17.200 | I know you are well-known for saying that you try not to just give your first answer

00:08:22.240 | if someone asks you a question, not to just quick, immediately react.

00:08:24.880 | I think maybe we live in a world where that's kind of not the way we default operate.

00:08:31.280 | So if I'm overwhelmed and I feel like I need to move,

00:08:34.320 | I don't think, "How could I slowly transition my life to be able to move in a year or two?"

00:08:39.680 | I think, "Could I move tomorrow? No, I could never move."

00:08:45.680 | Okay. But there are some things in life where doing it tomorrow is the right choice.

00:08:51.920 | So here's a more recent example, and I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but

00:08:59.360 | I'm living here in New Zealand now, and I was missing social interactions.

00:09:06.800 | New Zealand's quite isolated, and I used to attend a lot of conferences,

00:09:12.400 | like whether it was a TED conference or music conferences or tech conferences,

00:09:17.200 | and I kind of miss having a bunch of new random people in my life.

00:09:21.280 | I kind of miss that thing where you'd go to a conference and meet like 50 people in two days.

00:09:26.480 | And because I missed that, I was like, "I'm going to make that happen.

00:09:32.320 | I'm going to go just do that myself."

00:09:33.840 | So I booked a trip to India, specifically Chennai and Bangalore,

00:09:41.200 | two cities where I know there are a lot of people in my database that I've never met face-to-face.

00:09:45.280 | And I sent an email saying, "All right, I'm coming to Chennai and Bangalore for 10 days.

00:09:50.080 | Who should I meet?"

00:09:50.720 | And used a little scheduling program, and I booked in like nine meetings per day

00:09:57.040 | with strangers for six days straight, met with about 55 people.

00:10:02.160 | And I just got back a couple of days ago, and it was intense and wonderful.

00:10:09.040 | And I came back and I was telling a friend about it.

00:10:11.760 | And she said the same thing that you said.

00:10:13.760 | I was like, "God, you just kind of have an idea, and then you just go make it happen.

00:10:18.560 | That's amazing."

00:10:19.280 | And yeah, that was a sweet compliment from an old friend.

00:10:24.720 | And it was kind of funny to hear you just say a version of that right now.

00:10:27.680 | So I guess this is something like my moving to Woodstock example,

00:10:31.920 | that I think I've just made it a priority.

00:10:34.320 | Also, maybe I've always kept my life quite light,

00:10:39.520 | meaning I try not to get into situations that bind me to a place.

00:10:45.040 | I try not to own much stuff.

00:10:48.960 | So it's just dead easy for me to move.

00:10:50.720 | I can pack up my whole house and move in a day, you know?

00:10:52.880 | Yeah, I think I've just tried it.

00:10:56.720 | That's just been a priority for me.

00:10:58.240 | But that's not to say that everybody should be like that.

00:11:01.520 | Some people get deep, deep joy out of having a home with their sofa that they love,

00:11:10.160 | and their piano, and their things.

00:11:11.680 | And it would be hard for them to move.

00:11:14.000 | But that's fine, because they get deep joy out of having that deep sense of home,

00:11:18.800 | and all of these belongings that belonged to their grandparents, and all of that.

00:11:23.360 | So I'm not saying everybody should be nomadic.

00:11:25.840 | But when you're asking, "How have I done that?"

00:11:28.960 | That's my answer.

00:11:30.880 | But actually, I'll go back and say,

00:11:33.040 | what you did with India was something that I think some people might think,

00:11:37.680 | "Gosh, I really miss all these people.

00:11:39.760 | I live in a place that's kind of remote.

00:11:41.440 | I don't see a lot of people.

00:11:42.320 | I'm pretty nomadic-capable, and I don't own a lot of things.

00:11:46.560 | Maybe I should move somewhere."

00:11:48.160 | And you said, "No, maybe I'll just take a trip to get that kind of fix, if you will."

00:11:52.320 | So I want to go and talk a little bit about how you think about making decisions.

00:11:57.520 | The decision in someone's mind might be,

00:11:59.200 | "Oh, I'm not able to do what I want.

00:12:01.360 | Obviously, I need to move somewhere where I can have more of a balance,

00:12:05.680 | let the pendulum go back in the middle."

00:12:07.280 | And you said, "Well, maybe there's an alternative.

00:12:09.360 | Maybe I could go get this deep, intense fix for 10 days that'll hopefully give you

00:12:16.000 | a little high of human interaction for a period to come and sustain you."

00:12:21.680 | When you approach decision-making, it sounds like you don't just look at,

00:12:26.320 | "What's the assumed default option of what I could do?"

00:12:29.440 | You try to really make sure you're casting a wide net at ways to experience things.

00:12:33.200 | Yes.

00:12:34.240 | You've written about this.

00:12:36.560 | I can't remember the URL.

00:12:38.080 | I don't either right now.

00:12:38.880 | But it's one of my favorite things, is to be reflective and ask yourself what you really want.

00:12:45.680 | And not just limit yourself to a few options from what you see other people doing,

00:12:50.640 | but to really kind of dig deep and go, "Okay, what do I really want?"

00:12:55.840 | And why do I want that?

00:12:57.760 | What's the real point of that?

00:13:00.320 | So if I think I want to be on a beach in Thailand right now,

00:13:05.280 | well, why do I think that?

00:13:06.560 | What do I expect will happen when I get there?

00:13:09.440 | Why is it that I need a beach in Thailand?

00:13:11.760 | Could it be a beach anywhere?

00:13:12.880 | Is it just the quiet that I want?

00:13:15.680 | And you may keep asking yourself these questions and get to the actual answer, which is,

00:13:24.800 | "Yeah, my home is too noisy.

00:13:29.600 | I hate all the clamoring here.

00:13:30.880 | I live right above a train station or something, and it's too noisy in my home.

00:13:35.200 | Really, what I'm pursuing is the silence."

00:13:38.320 | Well, do you need to go to Thailand to get silence?

00:13:41.120 | Is that the sustainable solution to that?

00:13:43.840 | "No, maybe I need to soundproof my office."

00:13:46.240 | And you might come to like, "Yeah, actually, I don't need Thailand.

00:13:50.400 | But the money it would take to go to Thailand, I could soundproof my office.

00:13:54.560 | And I really do like living here in Toronto or wherever it is.

00:13:57.840 | And so, in fact, I'm going to stay here, not go to Thailand, and soundproof my office.

00:14:03.920 | Yes, that's what I really want."

00:14:05.520 | You know, so if you keep digging into yourself,

00:14:08.800 | you might come out with a solution that suits your problem better.

00:14:15.360 | Is there something you do, maybe it's natural for you, I have to assume it is,

00:14:19.600 | where someone asks you a question or you have an idea,

00:14:23.280 | and you're able to force yourself to pause and think before kind of going all in on this thing.

00:14:29.600 | Someone says, "Oh, do you want to go here?"

00:14:30.960 | And you're like, "And my default is, do I want to do this thing or not?"

00:14:34.960 | Not, "Oh, what are these other options?"

00:14:38.000 | Someone asks a question, "My default is, do I know the answer or not?

00:14:41.760 | And if I think I know it, let's answer it right away."

00:14:44.400 | I don't have the natural instinct to pause and think before.

00:14:49.440 | And I'm curious, is there something that you've trained yourself to do?

00:14:53.680 | Is it natural?

00:14:54.800 | Have you thought about how people who maybe don't have that instinct could adopt it?

00:15:00.720 | I think it would be beneficial to me, which is why I'm asking.

00:15:03.280 | I journal like crazy.

00:15:07.120 | I journal so much.

00:15:12.880 | And unlike the other things where I say, "Hey, you know, not everybody has to do this.

00:15:16.400 | Everybody has to do this.

00:15:17.520 | Everybody should do this."

00:15:19.440 | It helps so much to pause.

00:15:24.240 | And it doesn't even matter what pen, paper, text file, Google Docs, doesn't matter.

00:15:30.320 | Something where you can stop every day and ask yourself these reflective questions.

00:15:40.320 | Ask yourself questions like, "Why am I doing this?

00:15:43.600 | And what am I really after?

00:15:45.200 | What's the point of that?"

00:15:48.480 | And then you should doubt yourself.

00:15:51.440 | You should doubt the answers you give yourself.

00:15:54.320 | So even if you say, "Why do I want this?

00:15:59.360 | Because I've always wanted to go to Thailand."

00:16:01.280 | Challenge yourself, right?

00:16:03.680 | "Really?

00:16:04.000 | Have I always wanted to go to Thailand?

00:16:05.840 | Really?

00:16:06.320 | Always?

00:16:06.800 | Why do I think that Thailand is the answer?"

00:16:10.080 | Push back on your own answers.

00:16:11.760 | And it can take just an hour of your day.

00:16:17.360 | And it is so, so useful to...

00:16:21.120 | And if you say that I don't have an hour in the day, well, the hell you don't.

00:16:25.040 | Turn off other things and do this.

00:16:28.320 | Because where it takes you makes all the difference in the world.

00:16:33.520 | And are there prompts that you use?

00:16:35.760 | Or is it just whatever's happening in the day?

00:16:37.840 | Yeah, whatever's happening.

00:16:40.560 | Yeah, they're not like generic prompts that I'm going to, you know,

00:16:43.360 | "Hey, everybody, write down these five questions to ask yourself every day."

00:16:46.160 | No, it's not like that.

00:16:46.880 | It's just based on whatever your situation is in the moment.

00:16:50.560 | Generally, I think use it to clarify your thinking and to think of other options.

00:16:57.360 | Like you said, if you think you have no choice, you're always wrong.

00:17:01.680 | There's always another choice.

00:17:03.120 | If you think you've only got two choices, well, those aren't options.

00:17:07.040 | That's a dilemma.

00:17:08.480 | If you think you only have two choices, you still haven't thought enough.

00:17:13.600 | You have to keep thinking of other options.

00:17:15.600 | You know, you can always add some crazy ones in there.

00:17:18.320 | Like, okay, option number three, I quit everything and join a monastery.

00:17:22.960 | Okay, option number four, I go down to my local park and I lay on the bench and I don't leave.

00:17:28.320 | I become homeless.

00:17:29.280 | Okay, well, now you've added two more options that you don't like.

00:17:31.600 | Okay, you can always keep going and then get more creative.

00:17:35.600 | Do the brainstorming approach where you're deliberately thinking of out-of-the-box,

00:17:42.160 | crazy solutions for your situation.

00:17:44.480 | But just keep going until you've got like 10 or 20 options.

00:17:48.240 | And many of my best ideas in life, the ones that I've been the happiest with,

00:17:52.720 | the choices I've made have come from this pushing myself to further solutions, right?

00:18:00.960 | It's like, it was actually like solution number 18 that got me the most excited.

00:18:06.880 | And that's the one I pursued.

00:18:08.160 | Is there an example of, I thought I was going to do this,

00:18:11.600 | and this new thing came out that I never was thinking about originally?

00:18:15.600 | Oof, yeah.

00:18:17.680 | What's an example?

00:18:20.160 | Well, like actually that trip to India that I just took.

00:18:22.800 | That was like, that came far down the list.

00:18:27.920 | At first it was like, I think I need to go to the TED conference again,

00:18:32.240 | which I haven't been to in 10 years.

00:18:33.760 | Then I was like, well, I think I just need to go to any conference.

00:18:37.280 | And then it was like, I think I need, what about a local

00:18:41.440 | class here in Wellington, New Zealand, where I live?

00:18:44.720 | Maybe I can find like a philosophy course here so I can meet other interesting people

00:18:51.920 | that are into this kind of stuff I'm into.

00:18:57.040 | Um, and then it was like, oh, I could go traveling.

00:19:00.080 | I could go travel Europe.

00:19:01.200 | And, and I just kept going.

00:19:03.040 | And then, yeah, way down the list was like, I could go to India.

00:19:07.600 | That was like, oh, India.

00:19:09.360 | Yes.

00:19:10.800 | Oh my God, I haven't been to India in 12 years.

00:19:12.640 | I know so many people in India.

00:19:14.560 | And through a weird like thing that I married a woman from India.

00:19:18.320 | I actually, I'm a citizen of India.

00:19:19.840 | I have the legal right to live in India for the rest of my life.

00:19:22.160 | I was like, ooh, see, this one works for me on many levels because

00:19:26.160 | this wouldn't just be a travel.

00:19:28.240 | This wouldn't just be a trip.

00:19:29.200 | This is like an investment into my future.

00:19:30.960 | Like it's likely I will live there someday.

00:19:32.880 | And so getting to know it better now, meeting people now would be an investment

00:19:39.040 | into future long-term friendships, not just a quick, you know, romp at a conference.

00:19:43.920 | Um, so yeah, that came way down the list.

00:19:47.920 | And that's one example.

00:19:48.880 | And I was, yeah, again, I just got back from this trip.

00:19:51.280 | So it's on my mind right now.

00:19:52.480 | But I met so many interesting people there and, uh, had so many fascinating conversations.

00:19:59.760 | It was just what I needed.

00:20:01.520 | And yeah, that, that solution did, did not come until I had really

00:20:05.440 | spent an hour in my journal thinking of different solutions.

00:20:08.720 | I love it.

00:20:09.760 | I'm going to propose for people who might be like me thinking, gosh, journaling.

00:20:13.280 | I want to try, but I'm not sure what.

00:20:16.400 | Take a, what I hear is take some decision you're thinking about making

00:20:20.880 | and maybe just spend an hour by yourself with a notebook, a pen, not a computer.

00:20:26.240 | And just kind of think of different ways that you could have a different outcome.

00:20:29.920 | Like brain, instead of journaling, I'm going to call it brainstorming.

00:20:32.800 | Cause I think we might be more familiar with how to start doing that.

00:20:36.640 | But at the end of the day, it's just writing things down and thinking about them.

00:20:39.440 | So you can, you can call it whatever you want.

00:20:41.600 | Um, but I like this idea.

00:20:43.440 | Um, and so, I don't know, I'm, I'm not a disciplined, I'm not a disciplined journaling

00:20:49.920 | person, but I feel like I'm going to try to take your advice after this.

00:20:54.080 | And at least commit to it.

00:20:55.600 | I'm not disciplined either about it.

00:20:58.160 | It is absolutely not a discipline to me.

00:21:01.760 | It's just sanity.

00:21:02.880 | It's like, I've been doing this since I was a teenager and I'm 53 now.

00:21:07.200 | So almost every day I hit some point where I need to clarify my thoughts on something.

00:21:13.760 | What might even be about somebody like somebody's

00:21:18.240 | pissed you off and you find that you're all upset and you need to kind of stop and clarify

00:21:23.040 | your thoughts instead of just sitting there and feeling angry and like, wait, why am I

00:21:26.320 | feeling angry?

00:21:27.200 | What's this really about?

00:21:28.160 | And so instead of just sitting there on your sofa stewing, it just like open your thing,

00:21:36.640 | whatever it is, your paper notebook, or your, in my case, I just use a plain text file.

00:21:41.200 | I just open up a plain text file and I just start typing.

00:21:43.600 | There's no discipline to it at all.

00:21:45.840 | It's just like, what the hell?

00:21:47.680 | I am so angry right now.

00:21:48.960 | Why am I angry?

00:21:50.000 | You know, because this person did that thing.

00:21:53.600 | Well, so what?

00:21:54.320 | Why does that matter?

00:21:55.360 | Well, because this, and I'll just kind of have this dialogue with myself, like I said,

00:21:59.920 | like kind of challenging and pushing back.

00:22:01.760 | I hear that.

00:22:03.360 | I don't know much about this, but I've heard that this is similar to something called cognitive

00:22:08.880 | behavioral therapy, and it is known to be one of the few things that works for people

00:22:17.920 | with depression or anxiety or other major life problems.

00:22:22.400 | Cognitive behavioral therapy works wonders.

00:22:24.560 | I heard that a couple of times.

00:22:27.040 | And when I just looked into what it is, it sounds like it's what I've been doing in my

00:22:31.360 | journal since I was a teenager.

00:22:32.720 | So I could say it in my very undisciplined way that it's worked wonders for me.

00:22:41.520 | And most of the major life decisions that I've made have come from that process.

00:22:48.080 | It sounds a little bit also like rubber duck debugging.

00:22:52.560 | I don't know if you're familiar as a way to make decisions.

00:22:56.560 | Just, you know, I think you wrote a post about getting mentors advice without actually ever

00:23:01.920 | speaking with them.

00:23:02.720 | Which we just tell the listeners quickly.

00:23:06.560 | So the rubber ducking comes from first.

00:23:09.280 | It's from back in the day when people had those big monitors, the big CRT monitors on

00:23:14.320 | their desktop computers that you can actually put something on top.

00:23:17.680 | Yeah, where you could put things on top.

00:23:19.280 | And so computer programmers started a habit of putting a little rubber duck on top of

00:23:25.840 | their monitor.

00:23:26.880 | And whenever they were trying to get work through a programming problem where they're

00:23:31.120 | stuck, there's like, okay, tell the duck.

00:23:33.920 | And so you'd say to the duck, like, like, like the reason I'm stuck is because I can't

00:23:40.240 | figure out this.

00:23:40.720 | Well, then why can't you figure out that?

00:23:42.560 | Because what I'm trying to get is the instances table to match with the something table.

00:23:48.560 | Well, why can't you do that?

00:23:49.840 | Because it's, and so, yeah, explain it to the rubber duck and it'll help you clarify

00:23:53.520 | your thoughts.

00:23:54.400 | Yeah.

00:23:54.640 | So that's definitely what I'm doing in my journal.

00:24:00.160 | Then changing the subject, you said the mentors that, yeah, I often, when journaling, I'll

00:24:08.320 | ask myself, like, what would Seth Godin say?

00:24:12.160 | Like, he's a hero of mine and he's such a wise guy beyond his marketing that he talks

00:24:19.200 | about.

00:24:19.440 | He's just wise in general.

00:24:20.560 | Like his approach to life is very thoughtful and measured.

00:24:24.000 | And he's a friend that I could call, but before calling him, I asked myself, if I were to

00:24:31.440 | call Seth right now, what would he probably say?

00:24:34.400 | Like, I know what he would say.

00:24:36.880 | He would say this.

00:24:37.680 | And I'd like write that.

00:24:38.480 | And then that ends up helping me get to a good solution for myself without ever having

00:24:44.320 | to bother Seth Godin.

00:24:45.680 | So, yeah, I wrote a post about that, like how to ask your mentors for help or something

00:24:50.480 | like that.

00:24:50.800 | And I just basically described this process, like ask yourself what the mentors would say.

00:24:54.960 | - Yeah, I love it.

00:24:56.000 | I'll try to find all the links to everything we talk about, put it in the show notes so

00:24:59.360 | people can find it.

00:25:00.160 | It's something, I met someone once and I offered to help them with a challenge.

00:25:06.720 | And they said, no, no, no, I don't want your help yet.

00:25:08.960 | I need to spend, I have a rule.

00:25:10.800 | I try to spend 15 minutes at least on my own trying to solve something before I ask for

00:25:14.960 | anyone to spend their time to help me out.

00:25:17.040 | Oh, wow.

00:25:18.160 | This person is, to use one of your phrases, this person is saying, making it easy for

00:25:23.120 | me to say no on my own.

00:25:25.920 | And so it's something I've tried to do in my own life is I feel like plenty of us are

00:25:31.760 | overwhelmed.

00:25:32.320 | We have lots of stuff going on and we could talk in a bit about how to slow down and say

00:25:37.520 | no and only focus on the things you care about.

00:25:39.840 | But one way that I can kind of contribute to the problem or relieving the problem is

00:25:45.200 | just trying not to ask everyone to help me out until I've tried to do some work on my

00:25:49.360 | own.

00:25:49.600 | And my snarky reply to close friends and family members for years was always the let me Google

00:25:55.920 | that for you site if you've ever been there, which was someone text you and they're like,

00:26:00.240 | do you know a good Italian restaurant in Dallas?

00:26:02.640 | And I'm like, yeah, Italian restaurant.

00:26:05.120 | Like you could just search for these things.

00:26:06.720 | And I've never even been to Dallas.

00:26:08.800 | And so now I'm hoping that the world will slowly adopt a practice of trying to do a

00:26:15.600 | little bit of homework before asking people because it's easy for me to text back my sister

00:26:22.000 | or my mom.

00:26:22.480 | Hey, why don't you do a Google search before asking?

00:26:24.880 | It's much harder to text a stranger, a business acquaintance back and be like, hey, could

00:26:28.800 | you actually just try before emailing me?

00:26:32.000 | But there are a couple of things we talked about that I want to loop back to.

00:26:36.400 | So it's gonna be a bit of a zigzag conversation.

00:26:38.960 | Journaling allows you to come up with lots of options.

00:26:42.880 | You talked about decision making.

00:26:45.040 | If there's one option, it's not true.

00:26:47.120 | If there's two, it's a dilemma.

00:26:48.320 | But you want to get to a place where there's a lot.

00:26:50.160 | One of the challenges I have, and I think a lot of people listening have, is actually

00:26:54.320 | on the other direction, which is getting into this analysis paralysis.

00:26:57.920 | So a few weeks ago, I did an episode about insurance, and I went down this crazy rabbit

00:27:03.920 | hole of how do I get the best homeowners and auto and umbrella policies for my life, which

00:27:10.880 | led to, "Oh, there's all these carriers.

00:27:12.400 | I should go get a quote from all of them.

00:27:14.000 | And I should analyze all these details."

00:27:15.680 | And believe me, I did not have a dilemma or A or B.

00:27:20.480 | It was like, there weren't enough letters in the alphabet to define the options that

00:27:25.360 | I had.

00:27:25.920 | And then you're like, "Oh, well, if I go with this one, it's a little bit more expensive."

00:27:29.760 | But if our SUV breaks down, they guarantee that I could rent an SUV instead of just an

00:27:37.280 | economy car.

00:27:37.840 | But this other one offers this other feature.

00:27:39.760 | And for me, it was a struggle.

00:27:41.840 | I searched to see if you'd written about this, because I was like, "Ah, I know someone who

00:27:46.240 | might have some advice."

00:27:46.960 | Then I tried to think about what would Derek say, and I couldn't really come up with it.

00:27:50.160 | So I'll just ask you, what do you think going the other direction with decision making?

00:27:54.160 | How do people, or how would you suggest people think about making decisions when there are

00:27:59.520 | too many options and they're struggling?

00:28:01.600 | For me, one option usually leaps out as the one that makes me feel the best.

00:28:14.560 | And it's not always rational, and that's okay.

00:28:18.800 | And then if it doesn't, I just pick one that seems to rationally work.

00:28:27.600 | And then it's a mindset that picking anything is better than picking nothing, if it's something

00:28:37.920 | that you have to pick.

00:28:39.280 | Okay, so wait, what do I mean by that?

00:28:41.280 | There's a great value in launching, for example.

00:28:47.680 | I've met some people that have been working on their book for so long without launching

00:28:53.200 | it, without calling it complete, that they're reaping none of the benefits of having the

00:29:00.000 | book out there in the public, right?

00:29:02.240 | So at some point with anything you're creating, whether it's a blog post or a decision, you

00:29:08.240 | realize, "All right, well, I just have to finish this thing.

00:29:12.720 | I have to finish this choice.

00:29:14.480 | I have to finish this article that I'm working on."

00:29:18.480 | And once you put great value onto finishing or deciding, then what you do is you just

00:29:26.400 | get into a different mindset about the benefit of putting it out there, the benefit of finishing.

00:29:33.360 | Like, say, you can make any choice great just through just deciding to make the best of

00:29:44.720 | it.

00:29:44.960 | Okay, but wait, sorry, that answer was a little mushy.

00:29:49.680 | I think, can I take a stab at the answer that I think, I'm going to interpret what you said,

00:29:56.000 | you tell me whether you want to go this path, but I want to, I have an idea of interpreting

00:29:59.760 | what you said, which I actually think would have made what I did much easier.

00:30:05.440 | So I can turn your feedback into very concrete tactic, which was related to this insurance

00:30:13.120 | thing, I'm looking back and I'm thinking there were two moments where I could have done what

00:30:17.680 | you suggested that would have made it a lot faster, and I probably would have felt a lot

00:30:21.760 | better.

00:30:22.080 | One was for some reason, and I can't really explain why, maybe it's the positive reviews,

00:30:28.000 | maybe it's the word of mouth, the consumer reports rating, just felt like USAA as an

00:30:32.480 | insurance carrier was where I kind of just wanted to end up.

00:30:36.080 | You know, you're always like, every time I was about to hit the recalculate button, I

00:30:39.600 | was like, "Come on, just be really competitive so I could just be done with this."

00:30:43.440 | So one answer was, if you have that feeling, just own it and be like, "Yeah, it might be

00:30:47.920 | a little more expensive, let's move forward."

00:30:49.680 | That was one.

00:30:50.320 | The alternative version, let's say you don't have that, is, well, right now, the problem

00:30:56.400 | was that we were using one carrier and they just couldn't continue to insure the house

00:31:01.360 | because the house had kind of appreciated and it wasn't a good fit.

00:31:04.000 | So we needed to move carriers.

00:31:05.440 | Instead of making it about the big decision of we have to have a new insurance carrier,

00:31:11.120 | so this is not a, "Do I need this or not?"

00:31:13.840 | We absolutely need this.

00:31:14.800 | But instead of trying to find the best possible thing, I could have picked the first carrier

00:31:20.480 | that could do what we needed and put that policy into place, be done with the policy

00:31:25.360 | that I have now that I know is not good, and then decided, "Okay, is it worth continuing

00:31:31.760 | to evaluate the landscape?"

00:31:33.600 | Because what I was doing was I actually had two problems.

00:31:36.480 | I have something that doesn't work and I need something that works, and I'm also interested

00:31:42.720 | in finding the best thing.

00:31:43.760 | And because I was solving them both at the same time, I was actually delaying getting

00:31:50.960 | the thing in place that I needed to do more urgently.

00:31:53.040 | And if I had just picked anything, it might have been more expensive, but I would have

00:31:56.720 | been done with problem A, and I probably could have said, "Is it really worth trying to

00:32:00.880 | solve problem B right now?"

00:32:02.400 | But when I put the two problems together, I made it seem like they were equally as important.

00:32:07.600 | So if you could just pick something, decide whether you actually pick anything that is

00:32:12.640 | good, and then decide whether you want to go on the quest for great or go on to another

00:32:17.120 | quest for good in your life.

00:32:18.480 | I don't know.

00:32:19.360 | That's me trying to philosophize your feedback, but I could have completely butchered it.

00:32:23.600 | No, you nailed it.

00:32:25.440 | That was wonderful.

00:32:27.600 | All right, Chris, I've got three topics you just brought up.

00:32:32.320 | Okay.

00:32:33.680 | I'm going to name them first so we can remember to come back to them.

00:32:37.120 | Number one, the coin toss.

00:32:38.560 | Number two, the paradox of choice.

00:32:42.000 | Number three, theory versus practice.

00:32:46.320 | Okay, coin toss.

00:32:49.200 | The reason to flip a coin when you're making a decision is not to let the heads or the

00:32:56.000 | tails actually decide it.

00:32:57.280 | It's to notice how you feel when the coin is in the air.

00:33:01.680 | Like you just said about USAA.

00:33:05.520 | If you were to do the coin toss with USAA, you would have been like, "Oh, please land

00:33:10.880 | on USAA."

00:33:11.600 | And as soon as you notice that feeling in yourself, it's like, "Okay, I think I've

00:33:15.920 | just decided."

00:33:16.720 | It isn't actually the coin that decides.

00:33:19.040 | It's the pressure of that like, "Oh, God, here it comes.

00:33:23.360 | Here's the final decision."

00:33:24.720 | And then you notice which one you're actually leaning towards.

00:33:28.480 | Okay.

00:33:29.680 | And that is to be valued because emotions matter.

00:33:33.200 | I've sometimes chosen, say, like the more expensive internet service provider because

00:33:41.040 | I think they're more ethical or they're cooler.

00:33:43.280 | And I just feel better about giving my money to that company, even though it's more

00:33:47.840 | expensive than the other choice.

00:33:49.520 | I'm like thinking with the coin toss, I'm like, I want to create this rule around it

00:33:53.360 | where I have to commit to the decision of whatever lands on the coin toss unless I stop

00:33:59.600 | it midair and decide.

00:34:00.720 | So it's like, you know, I could flip the coin and if my gut says what it is, I can

00:34:05.440 | grab it out of midair and say, "Done.

00:34:07.120 | I don't have to abide by the rule.

00:34:08.400 | I've decided."

00:34:09.120 | So I'm trying to find a fun way to kind of make the coin toss not something.

00:34:14.400 | I wonder if it loses its value if you don't commit to it being a decider.

00:34:21.440 | I just say, "Let's flip a coin and see how my gut feels."

00:34:23.920 | I feel like I might the first few times, maybe it'll work.

00:34:26.880 | By the end, I'm like, "Oh, now I just know I'm just flipping a coin."

00:34:29.440 | And so I'm trying to think of ways to make the coin toss higher stakes.

00:34:34.080 | So it forces that kind of deep-rooted gut instinct out faster.

00:34:38.720 | It's a fun idea.

00:34:39.440 | I disagree.

00:34:40.480 | I think you should always go ultimately with the one that makes you feel the best.

00:34:44.560 | Like we, I think feelings, yeah, your emotions matter.

00:34:48.720 | Your feelings matter.

00:34:49.440 | You need to feel good about the choices you've made in life.

00:34:51.920 | You can't find yourself working at a job and every day for eight hours a day going

00:34:58.080 | somewhere where you're like, "Yeah, it's the right choice."

00:35:01.520 | The coin said, "Here I am.

00:35:05.680 | Damn it."

00:35:08.480 | So you've got to feel good about your choices, even if it maybe wasn't the right.

00:35:14.720 | You could add rational reasons later, but the feelings are harder to adapt.

00:35:20.480 | Although, you know, sometimes it's the reverse.

00:35:22.000 | Sometimes you make a choice because it's the right thing.

00:35:24.800 | Okay, wait.

00:35:25.360 | Okay, so Paradox of Choice.

00:35:26.640 | There's a wonderful book about this thing.

00:35:31.520 | You said that you were looking to my site to see if I'd written about this.

00:35:35.360 | You need to look to the book called Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z.

00:35:42.960 | Brilliant masterpiece of a book about exactly this, about having too many options and what

00:35:50.880 | do you do.

00:35:51.280 | And the gist, if you had to narrow the book down to a few sentences, is that when we consider

00:36:01.200 | every option, we may technically make a better choice, but we will feel worse about it because

00:36:08.960 | we're too aware of all of the other choices we could have made.

00:36:12.880 | So the advice, and let me pause to say the advice, which is coming from a PhD psychologist

00:36:23.680 | who has been studying the science of decision-making for many, many, many years, the advice, after

00:36:31.360 | all of his studies and research into the subject, is that we should choose to satisfice, not

00:36:37.920 | maximize.

00:36:38.960 | He said people, when they're making decisions, are either satisficing or maximizing.

00:36:44.880 | So maximizing is what you were just doing with the insurance where you dive deep down

00:36:48.080 | the rabbit hole and you look deeply into every option and you really kind of kill yourself

00:36:54.800 | over it and you maximize to make the best possible decision.

00:36:59.520 | Satisficing is, in short, it's saying good enough.

00:37:04.240 | It's like, I need a new insurance policy.

00:37:06.080 | I'm going to give myself one hour to pick a new one.

00:37:08.640 | You look at some options, you're like, okay, I'm picking this.

00:37:11.840 | Good enough.

00:37:13.040 | So what he said is that people who satisfy feel much better about the decision they make

00:37:19.680 | psychologically, the way our brains work.

00:37:24.800 | We feel better when we just make a decision, stick with it, and don't try to make the best

00:37:30.000 | possible decision.

00:37:30.800 | What about people who love, like get intense joy out of that process?

00:37:36.880 | Because I think that's the crazy thing is when I was going through this, my wife was

00:37:41.600 | like, "You have a lot of stuff to do.

00:37:42.960 | Why are you still researching insurance?"

00:37:45.200 | And I was like, "I don't know.

00:37:46.080 | I built a new table.

00:37:47.120 | I built a new comparison matrix."

00:37:49.360 | And I was loving it.

00:37:50.960 | And what was going through my head wasn't the $500 a year I'd save.

00:37:55.600 | And I don't even know if it was the joy of knowing I made the best outcome.

00:38:00.720 | But I really just, you mentioned earlier, following your kind of intellectual curiosity.

00:38:07.120 | And I was just generally very excited to understand the nuance of this whole space.

00:38:13.360 | I get a lot of joy knowing that someone could ask me about it.

00:38:17.520 | I could give them a recommendation.

00:38:19.040 | And I'm very jealous when someone says, "Hey, I'm thinking about this thing."

00:38:23.680 | And I'm like, "Oh, I did all this research.

00:38:25.120 | This is what I said."

00:38:25.680 | And they're like, "Great, I'll do that."

00:38:26.560 | I'm like, "That's all you need?

00:38:28.000 | You just needed me to talk for one sentence and now you're done and you made a decision?"

00:38:31.920 | And I'm very jealous of those people, but I do enjoy it.

00:38:35.680 | So it's not totally wasted time if you enjoy the process, fair?

00:38:40.640 | Yeah, see, it's funny.

00:38:42.480 | You're talking about something different that I think was not included in that book,

00:38:47.200 | which is the benefit of kind of you taking one for the team in a way.

00:38:52.880 | Like you doing the hard work so that others don't have to.

00:38:57.200 | And getting like a deeper kind of community joy from how much you're sharing.

00:39:04.160 | Like, yeah, it's wonderful that people like you do all the hard work like that every now

00:39:12.400 | and then and dive down those rabbit holes.

00:39:14.160 | So people like the rest of us can just say, "I need new..."

00:39:17.760 | Well, Chris already figured it out.

00:39:18.960 | So hold on, let me just see.

00:39:20.240 | All right, Chris chose this.

00:39:21.600 | All right, I'm just choosing that.

00:39:22.720 | There, problem done.

00:39:23.600 | It's like, because you maximized, we can satisfy.

00:39:27.280 | You know, we can say, "All right, I'll let him choose."

00:39:29.200 | I do that so many times in life with, say, what did you say?

00:39:34.320 | The best Italian restaurant in Dallas?

00:39:36.160 | That I'll just look.

00:39:38.880 | Okay, what did somebody else say?

00:39:40.400 | Oh, look, somebody's done an article about the seven best Italian restaurants in Dallas.

00:39:45.120 | Which do they choose?

00:39:45.760 | All right, I'm just going to go to that one then.

00:39:47.040 | Problem solved.

00:39:48.320 | When I moved to Los Angeles years ago, I'd never really been to Los Angeles.

00:39:55.360 | But my girlfriend at the time had just signed up for film school down there.

00:39:59.600 | I was like, "I'm going to go with her."

00:40:00.720 | So I emailed 10 people I knew that lived in LA.

00:40:05.200 | And I said, "Hey, what neighborhood should I live in?"

00:40:08.560 | And everybody had different answers.

00:40:11.360 | But Santa Monica was on nine out of the 10 people's lists.

00:40:15.040 | They'd say, "Oh, you know, Palisades, whatever, Pasadena, Santa Monica."

00:40:19.760 | Somebody else would say Venice, Santa Monica, Century City.

00:40:24.160 | But Santa Monica was on everybody's list.

00:40:25.680 | So I didn't even look at any other options.

00:40:27.600 | I just went straight to Santa Monica,

00:40:29.440 | went to the real estate office there and just said, "What do you got?"

00:40:32.720 | And I didn't look anywhere else because I deferred to my friend's choices.

00:40:37.520 | So yeah, other people did the hard work of living there for years

00:40:40.720 | and discovering every neighborhood and learning the hard way.

00:40:43.040 | I just took the benefit of their work.

00:40:45.280 | So yes, you diving down your rabbit hole

00:40:47.680 | and benefiting the rest of the world by doing so is great.

00:40:52.800 | And I love just using other people's work for that.

00:40:54.800 | But also you were having fun.

00:40:57.520 | You say that you were sweating it, but part of you was just enjoying it.

00:41:02.560 | You're like, "This is fascinating.

00:41:04.240 | Oh my God, look at all these different options.

00:41:06.000 | I'm going to make a grid.

00:41:07.120 | This is giving me some kind of joy to lay out all my options in a spreadsheet

00:41:12.080 | and find out about this.

00:41:13.440 | And wow, this is fascinating."

00:41:14.960 | This one won't give you an SUV replacement.

00:41:18.400 | They'll just give you a car.

00:41:19.840 | This one won't do this.

00:41:20.880 | Wow, there are so many parameters here I hadn't noticed before.

00:41:24.560 | So computer programmers do this a lot, of course,

00:41:27.360 | when you're looking for a tech solution to something.

00:41:31.680 | And you look out to the world of open source software and you're like,

00:41:35.840 | "Okay, oh my God, there are nine different calendar apps that I could use.

00:41:42.400 | Okay, let me dive into the pros and cons of each one."

00:41:46.160 | And you might find this less popular one that serves your needs exactly.

00:41:51.120 | But boy, it was kind of interesting to learn about all the different features

00:41:54.320 | that you hadn't even considered in these.

00:41:55.840 | And we might just enjoy that process.

00:42:00.080 | And somebody might say it's a stupid use of your time,

00:42:04.720 | but if you're finding it fascinating,

00:42:06.800 | well, then you're kind of like choosing this over watching a movie, right?

00:42:12.000 | Like other people would just sit there and stare at a TV screen.

00:42:14.960 | You're engaging with the world and getting entertainment out of doing this.

00:42:19.760 | And lastly, my example that I got made fun of a lot for was

00:42:23.840 | when I was running my company, CD Baby, for 10 years.

00:42:30.160 | I was the 100% owner.

00:42:32.560 | I was the CEO.

00:42:33.680 | And yet, whenever we needed a new computer for the office,

00:42:39.600 | which happened about 50 times.

00:42:40.960 | I had 85 employees and we had about 50 computers in the office.

00:42:44.480 | I would build the computer myself.

00:42:46.560 | I would go down to the electronics store, get the motherboard,

00:42:50.240 | pick out the CPU, the graphics card, the hard drive,

00:42:53.520 | the case, the power supply.

00:42:58.560 | And I would thoroughly enjoy being in the office at night

00:43:03.200 | after everybody had left, building a computer while listening to music.

00:43:07.840 | And once it was all put together, I would install Linux onto it and get it working.

00:43:11.920 | And then the morning I'd set it up for, you know, at somebody's desk.

00:43:15.360 | And like, ah, that was fun.

00:43:17.760 | And somebody teased me years later, saying sarcastically, like,

00:43:22.480 | yeah, that was a good use of the CEO's time.

00:43:25.440 | And I said, it fucking was.

00:43:28.000 | It was a great use of my time because I loved doing it.

00:43:31.360 | Like, I wouldn't want to outsource that joy to somebody else.

00:43:35.120 | Like, I really loved those evenings at the office, putting a computer together.

00:43:38.960 | I find it very peaceful.

00:43:40.720 | Some people do crossword puzzles for that same joy, right?

00:43:43.920 | You don't outsource the crossword puzzle to have somebody else solve it for you.

00:43:48.400 | You do it yourself because you enjoy it.

00:43:49.920 | Yeah, I think I think it's a message that we probably haven't

00:43:54.000 | shared enough in this show is that if you really enjoy that process,

00:43:58.880 | sometimes it's stressful.

00:44:00.000 | Don't you know, I've had moments where I'm like

00:44:01.760 | an hour into comparing the distribution of one to five ratings on Korean restaurants in L.A.

00:44:08.400 | And like, they're all going to like anyone I could have just picked.

00:44:11.440 | I should have stopped and flipped a coin.

00:44:13.520 | It wouldn't have mattered.

00:44:14.320 | And sometimes I think it's too much.

00:44:16.800 | But there are times where it's really enjoyable.

00:44:18.720 | And even when it's a lot, it can be fun.

00:44:22.160 | And I like the fact that you've been able to prioritize pursuing things that make you happy

00:44:27.360 | and that you enjoy and stimulate you intellectually.

00:44:30.480 | And I think we probably don't do that enough as an average person in society.

00:44:34.720 | Yeah.

00:44:35.840 | Hey, wait, Chris.

00:44:36.640 | So remember when I named those three things, the coin toss, the paradox of choice?

00:44:40.080 | There was a third one.

00:44:41.200 | Theory versus practice.

00:44:42.640 | We haven't done that yet.

00:44:44.080 | So many times I've found myself in my journal thinking, maybe this, maybe that.

00:44:52.160 | And you realize there's so many things in life that in theory sound good,

00:44:59.600 | but in practice are not or vice versa.

00:45:03.200 | And so I've learned the hard way that you have to just try these things.

00:45:06.960 | You have to just go do it.

00:45:08.880 | And it even comes with choices like yours about insurance.

00:45:12.560 | Like I'm really glad that you gave that example of like,

00:45:15.760 | maybe I'll just pick one now just to get out of my situation.

00:45:20.320 | And then if I don't like it, I'll change again.

00:45:24.720 | That to me is a beautiful little example of

00:45:27.440 | trying something in practice instead of just in theory.

00:45:31.280 | So there have been major life decisions I've made, like moving here to New Zealand.

00:45:38.640 | That came from this similar kind of dilemma.

00:45:40.560 | I was sitting in Singapore with my ex who said, I hate it here.

00:45:45.920 | And I was like, okay, so where else can we go?

00:45:49.760 | New Zealand seems nice.

00:45:50.640 | We've never actually lived there, but it seems like a nice place to be.

00:45:54.240 | Like, let's try it.

00:45:55.520 | Like, we'll never know what New Zealand is like unless we just try it.

00:46:00.160 | And it took a few months of paperwork to become a resident

00:46:03.360 | in order to stay long enough to really try living here.

00:46:06.160 | But you have to do these things in practice,

00:46:09.760 | not just in theory, just to see what it's really like.

00:46:12.400 | With the understanding that I'm still just trying it.

00:46:15.600 | This isn't like a final, final decision.

00:46:17.920 | This is still just, I'm going to try this option,

00:46:20.480 | but I need to try it in practice, not just in theory.

00:46:24.720 | Has that changed?

00:46:26.720 | You talk about moving and living different places.

00:46:29.200 | You have a family or you have a child.

00:46:31.120 | How does that affect your ability to live this kind of nomadic lifestyle

00:46:36.080 | or put these theories into practice or has it not?

00:46:39.840 | We let the tangent go earlier.

00:46:43.520 | But you said something about, you know,

00:46:44.800 | the fact that I went to India for only 10 days instead of deciding to move there.

00:46:48.960 | Dude, if my kid wasn't in school in New Zealand right now,

00:46:54.000 | and if his mother didn't work for the New Zealand government and needs to be here,

00:46:57.840 | I would be living in India right now.

00:46:59.360 | I loved that trip so much.

00:47:01.680 | I just wanted to cancel my return flight home.

00:47:03.680 | I met so many wonderful people there.

00:47:06.080 | It was one of those moments in my life,

00:47:08.240 | and I've had a few of these, where you go somewhere

00:47:11.040 | and it's just like everything in you is just a yes.

00:47:14.720 | You're like, oh my God, yes, this is where I need to be.

00:47:17.040 | And so a few times in my life, I've done this,

00:47:20.240 | where I just was visiting somewhere and I just canceled my return flight and stayed.

00:47:26.640 | I was living in Santa Monica, California,

00:47:29.520 | when I went to New York City for a friend's wedding.

00:47:32.560 | And it was a three-day trip.

00:47:34.400 | And I went there with just basically, you know,

00:47:36.800 | three days of clothes, attended the wedding.

00:47:39.040 | But just something about, like, getting out of the train in Penn Station

00:47:42.720 | and walking out into Manhattan and being like,

00:47:44.640 | "Rrrr, the energy of the place."

00:47:46.000 | I was just like, "Oh, hell yeah, this is what I need right now."

00:47:49.440 | I was like, I could fly back to Santa Monica to get my clothes,

00:47:54.000 | but that would put a lot of pollution into the air.

00:47:56.720 | And I think my clothes aren't even worth that much.

00:47:59.680 | So I just canceled my return flight and bought some new clothes and stayed.

00:48:02.880 | And I lived in New York for a year.

00:48:04.240 | And so, yeah, I just had that moment last week in India of just like,

00:48:07.840 | "Damn, I just want to stay here. This is where I need to be now."

00:48:11.520 | But yeah, I've got a kid who's 11 and in school now,

00:48:14.880 | and his mom works for the government and here we are.

00:48:18.560 | So instead, I'm just going to use that restriction in my life,

00:48:23.840 | that creative restriction to work within that.

00:48:26.560 | So I'll just go visit more often.

00:48:28.000 | So I want to come back to parenting at some point.

00:48:31.280 | I have a lot of these tangents.

00:48:32.720 | You said something earlier about heroes,

00:48:34.320 | and I know you have some perspective on how thinking about heroes

00:48:37.920 | can be valuable to thinking about what you want to do.

00:48:40.560 | Maybe we could touch on that a little,

00:48:43.360 | because I think it kind of ties together.

00:48:46.000 | Who are we? What do we care about?

00:48:48.160 | What do we want to do with our lives and our careers?

00:48:51.920 | How do you think about that?

00:48:55.040 | I mean, you're in a place where you've both had success.

00:48:58.960 | It's given you a lot of creative flexibility with work and life and where you live.

00:49:02.880 | Maybe not everyone has that.

00:49:05.120 | Maybe people need to work towards that.

00:49:06.720 | But you've been fortunate to find the thing you love doing.

00:49:10.960 | And I don't think it was the thing you always thought.

00:49:12.880 | You've said that you feel like you most associate with a writer.

00:49:16.240 | Now, but I don't think it started like that.

00:49:18.080 | You didn't know that for many years.

00:49:20.880 | How did you come to that?

00:49:22.320 | And how might you have come to that sooner with the wisdom you have now?

00:49:26.880 | Well, it's funny.

00:49:27.440 | People sometimes say, "Oh, well, dude, you're lucky.

00:49:32.240 | You can just get up and go."

00:49:33.520 | I'm like, but that's not luck.

00:49:35.760 | That was the life I'm living is the culmination

00:49:39.280 | of like 180 little decisions along the way since I was a teenager.

00:49:44.640 | Like at every little point, starting from when I was like 17 years old,

00:49:49.440 | I over and over again made the choice that gave me more freedom

00:49:53.280 | because I knew this was important to me.

00:49:55.760 | So even if I was, say, like offered a job that was going to pay more,

00:50:00.400 | but give me less freedom, I said, "No, I chose the choice with more freedom,

00:50:08.560 | even though it paid less money.

00:50:12.080 | I chose the romantic partner that also wanted to travel the world

00:50:18.160 | instead of getting romantically tangled with somebody

00:50:21.360 | who is bound to living next door to her parents.

00:50:24.080 | I chose the, even when I set up my company,

00:50:29.360 | the way that I set up like the organization and how it was run.

00:50:31.840 | I chose the choice that would give me more freedom.

00:50:34.400 | And God, so many things, even like when I decided to sell my company,

00:50:39.600 | my number one criteria was like, "This is going to be a cash sale.

00:50:44.800 | You're going to pay me for this, and then I'm gone.

00:50:46.560 | I'm not going to consult with you.

00:50:47.840 | I'm not going to stay around because I want the freedom."

00:50:51.760 | Everything along the way, every choice I made was to get me to this point.

00:50:58.640 | And so when somebody goes like, "Oh, you're just lucky."

00:51:01.600 | I'm like, "No, this was very deliberate."

00:51:07.200 | In fact, let's rewind even further.

00:51:09.360 | A friend gave me a really good example of this when he said he doesn't believe in luck.

00:51:18.560 | And I said, "Yeah, says the guy that was lucky to be born in a first world country

00:51:25.200 | because he was born in America."

00:51:26.480 | I said, "Yeah, easy for the American to say he doesn't believe in luck, right?

00:51:29.600 | Tell that to somebody in South Sudan."

00:51:31.200 | And he's just like, "Dude," he said,

00:51:34.720 | "I was born in America because my grandparents left everything they know in Poland

00:51:41.440 | and got on a ship for four months and sailed all the way to this country where they didn't

00:51:47.680 | speak the language.

00:51:48.880 | And it was incredibly hard, but they did it because they felt that that would give their

00:51:52.160 | children a better future.

00:51:54.080 | And then even their children were like, you know, children of Polish immigrants that lived

00:52:02.240 | in a bad neighborhood.

00:52:04.080 | But worked really hard to save their money and spend nothing on pleasures so that they

00:52:11.120 | could save it for their kids.

00:52:12.400 | And then, yes, I grew up in Chicago or whatever with a nice life, but it took two generations."

00:52:19.920 | He said, "So I think that's insulting to call that luck."

00:52:23.040 | He said, "My nice life is the result of like, you know, 80 years of sacrifice."

00:52:31.680 | And I was like, "OK, all right, very good point."

00:52:34.800 | You know, so I still believe in luck like crazy.

00:52:40.800 | I still think that most of my success was luck, but a lot of little decisions that you

00:52:50.240 | make on a day-to-day level can have huge impacts on the direction of the rest of your life.

00:52:55.920 | Sorry, I think I got off on that.

00:52:59.200 | No, I mean, you knew freedom was something you wanted to optimize for over years.

00:53:04.080 | I meet lots of people that maybe don't know that thing.

00:53:08.720 | You know, the job comes, it offers to pay them more.

00:53:10.800 | It doesn't have the flexibility to travel.

00:53:12.480 | They don't know what they want in life.

00:53:14.720 | Is the answer to always optimize for freedom because it gives you more options in the future?

00:53:20.560 | Or is there a time where more financial resources can add more value?

00:53:26.480 | Or is there a framework you have for thinking about what do I want right now in my life?

00:53:33.040 | What do I look up to?

00:53:33.920 | Who do I want to be?

00:53:35.360 | Right.

00:53:36.320 | Like we said at the very beginning, sometimes you need to ask yourself, "What is my life

00:53:41.280 | lacking right now?"

00:53:42.160 | And I need to steer that direction to get my balance back.

00:53:45.760 | But more often it helps to look at the common thread in your life so far.

00:53:55.120 | Like your life choices so far, in reality, what has been something that through all the

00:54:02.400 | choices has made you the happiest?

00:54:04.160 | And maybe it's money.

00:54:07.440 | Maybe it's choosing the option that binds you tighter to people.

00:54:16.240 | Like maybe you're one of those lucky people that at the age of 19 found the love of your

00:54:21.520 | life and ever since then, like your friends had crazy dating adventures, but you've been

00:54:28.240 | happy to be with one person since the age of 19.

00:54:31.120 | And you know that that like, that's given you such a deep happiness in life that can't

00:54:37.120 | compare to all these little digital nomads bragging about their freedom.

00:54:41.120 | And they're just like, "Yeah, but guess what?

00:54:42.640 | I've got something better than that."

00:54:44.080 | You know, you need to just look back at your life to notice what's made, what continuously

00:54:49.840 | makes you the happiest and use that when making your future decisions as well.

00:54:54.880 | So yeah, maybe for me, it was freedom, but for somebody else, it might be money.

00:55:01.840 | They might say, "You know what?

00:55:03.040 | The kind of life I want, I really want a swimming pool and I really want a Ferrari and I really

00:55:09.920 | want three houses."

00:55:11.840 | It's like, all right, then you, for what you really want, especially if that's in practice,

00:55:17.920 | not just in theory, if you've actually rented a Ferrari for a week and you know that owning

00:55:23.760 | that Ferrari will make you so much happier, if you know that in practice, not just in

00:55:28.240 | theory, then all right, you know, this is going to help shape your decisions that you

00:55:32.960 | need to go for the option that pays more versus the freedom option.

00:55:38.160 | You shouldn't be a digital nomad if a Ferrari is super important to you because it's harder

00:55:43.920 | to bring that Ferrari to Thailand and Columbia.

00:55:48.560 | So no, I think it's not everybody should choose what I've chosen.

00:55:53.440 | That would be stupid.

00:55:54.800 | You should choose what you've noticed in practice makes you the happiest.

00:56:00.080 | Yeah, and I think for anyone who doesn't know Derek's full story, you had the option when

00:56:06.960 | you sold your company to take all the money and live the life of Ferraris and swimming

00:56:11.040 | pools and wanted to kind of take that off the table as a future path that you could

00:56:16.800 | even be tempted by and gave it all away.

00:56:19.040 | So I thought that was kind of an ultimate hack in my mind of, you know, you didn't want

00:56:24.160 | the chance to ever be kind of turned towards a life that you weren't actually interested

00:56:29.600 | in.

00:56:29.760 | You just gave it away.

00:56:31.040 | Yeah, I just, I noticed from the past that I'm, I'm, I knew that that choice would make

00:56:38.320 | me happier.

00:56:38.880 | It was really obvious when I was looking at all the different options of what to do when

00:56:41.760 | selling my company.

00:56:42.640 | And when I looked at the option of giving the money away, but in a way where I do continue

00:56:49.920 | to get a trickle paid out to me for the rest of my life, that, that option made me way

00:56:55.680 | happier because that made it.

00:56:57.920 | So I couldn't get into this scenario where I had $20 million just sitting in a bank to

00:57:01.760 | do something stupid with.

00:57:02.720 | I didn't want that option.

00:57:03.920 | I knew that that option would make me unhappy because that's too much money, but you know,

00:57:10.640 | having half a million in the bank, that makes me happy.

00:57:14.000 | That gives me freedom.

00:57:14.960 | But that's not too much.

00:57:17.920 | It's not stupid money.

00:57:19.200 | It's just very nice.

00:57:20.560 | And you mentioned to look back at, at who you've been and what you've done.

00:57:24.320 | There's something that I took away from you that I think has been really valuable is not

00:57:29.360 | just looking at the thoughts and the opinions you've had, but what you've done, like looking

00:57:33.600 | at your actual actions and that, you know, you've said, I think that your actions actually

00:57:38.640 | reveal your values.

00:57:39.920 | So, so maybe, maybe we could talk about this just for a minute is, you know, it's interesting.

00:57:44.560 | Some people I know say, I'm the person that does this, but if you're not actually doing

00:57:48.480 | it, are you really that person?

00:57:50.480 | Right.

00:57:50.980 | God, thanks for, you know, it's funny.

00:57:53.440 | I need to read that post again.

00:57:55.920 | I had almost forgotten about that one.

00:57:57.600 | I'll tell the little tale quickly.

00:58:01.520 | The article is at S-I-V-E dot R-S slash A-R-V, A-R-V meaning actions reveal values.

00:58:09.360 | So I remember that short URL I gave it and I should revisit it now.

00:58:13.440 | Almost forgotten.

00:58:14.080 | So the story is, I was talking to an old friend of mine and I had been putting off starting

00:58:24.000 | this company called Muckwork.

00:58:26.000 | I had this idea, like literally the day after I sold Seedy Baby, I had this idea for my

00:58:32.160 | next company called Muckwork and I got four months into it and then I paused to go explore

00:58:38.880 | the world instead.

00:58:39.680 | And here we are 10 years later and I said to my friend, I really want to do Muckwork.

00:58:45.680 | I really want to make this happen.

00:58:47.280 | And my friend goes, no, you don't.

00:58:49.520 | What do you mean?

00:58:52.560 | No, I don't.

00:58:53.280 | I'm telling you.

00:58:53.920 | Yes, I do.

00:58:54.480 | And he goes, no, you don't.

00:58:55.920 | I said, dude, you can't just tell me I don't.

00:58:58.080 | I'm telling you, I really want to do this.

00:59:00.160 | And he said, no, you don't.

00:59:01.680 | You don't really want to do this.

00:59:02.800 | If you really wanted to do this, you would have made it happen right now.

00:59:05.520 | He said, you keep putting it off, which to me makes it clear that you don't really want

00:59:11.680 | this thing because otherwise you would have just done it.

00:59:14.480 | You wouldn't be saying I want to do it.

00:59:16.320 | You would do it if you really wanted to do it.

00:59:18.160 | Oh, wow.

00:59:20.320 | He said, yeah, your actions reveal your values.

00:59:23.600 | And that's been so, so useful to me.

00:59:28.960 | Wow.

00:59:29.440 | Yeah, actually, Chris, thanks for bringing this up, because that is kind of in theory

00:59:33.680 | versus in practice.

00:59:34.800 | Revealed, put into action, right?

00:59:39.440 | It's don't think about what you want in theory.

00:59:42.560 | Look at what you've chosen in the past or look at what your actions have revealed your

00:59:48.000 | values to be.

00:59:48.720 | Yeah, I've been ever since I read that post, I've just been reflecting it.

00:59:52.640 | I've been sharing it with people.

00:59:54.240 | Someone I talked to was like, I really want to lose weight.

00:59:56.640 | I really have wanted to lose weight for the last two years.

00:59:58.640 | I'm like, do you know how?

01:00:00.640 | And they're like, yeah, I know I need to exercise.

01:00:02.320 | And it's like, well, I don't think you really want to, which is fine.

01:00:06.640 | I'm not trying to cast judgment.

01:00:08.000 | I'm just saying, you know how to do something.

01:00:10.160 | You say you really want to do it.

01:00:11.280 | You haven't done it.

01:00:12.160 | Maybe you don't want to do it.

01:00:13.200 | And that's OK.

01:00:13.840 | And so it's made me reflect on my own life.

01:00:18.080 | Oh, if I say I really want to do this, I should either do it or stop saying it.

01:00:21.840 | Like, there's no point in continuing to say you want to do something if you're not

01:00:25.440 | willing to do it.

01:00:26.240 | And and that simple phrase of, you know, your actions revealing your values has made it

01:00:32.000 | easy for me to make one of two decisions either.

01:00:34.800 | Yes, let's do it or let's stop.

01:00:38.000 | And let's not not kind of put it at the top of the priority list and just continue to

01:00:42.720 | push it down.

01:00:43.280 | So that's been really helpful.

01:00:45.360 | Thank you.

01:00:46.880 | Yeah, you know, I'm just thinking about how you could use that to do tests of something

01:00:52.400 | you think you want.

01:00:53.280 | See if you actually want it in practice.

01:00:56.640 | Like if somebody says, I really want to lose weight, it's like, all right, well, let's

01:01:01.120 | spend at least one week where you eat nothing but protein twice a day and that's all you

01:01:07.040 | eat.

01:01:07.360 | You know, let's make sure that that's what you really want.

01:01:09.760 | Or I really want a Ferrari.

01:01:12.960 | OK, well, rent one, rent one for a week and see if it really makes you so much happier

01:01:19.520 | or I want to be a minimalist like, all right, well, leave everything behind and go spend

01:01:25.600 | a year living in Lithuania with nothing and see if you like it in practice, not just in

01:01:34.400 | theory.

01:01:35.120 | And yeah, you got to try these things.

01:01:38.560 | And it's sometimes it reveals itself to be a lot easier.

01:01:42.640 | So thinking about.

01:01:43.840 | It's really hard starting this podcast for me was one where I was like, I always wanted

01:01:49.040 | to do something, I tried to blog, I tried a newsletter and I never really found the

01:01:54.320 | thing.

01:01:54.960 | And once I put the podcast out, there's oh, it's actually it's not as hard as I had

01:02:01.120 | thought.

01:02:01.680 | So but it wasn't until I realized that if I didn't do it, then I didn't really want to

01:02:06.400 | do it in the first place.

01:02:07.280 | So why not just force yourself to try and say, oh, it's actually, you know, I'm more

01:02:11.600 | capable of doing this, it's easier, it's, you know, so for me, I think it's just that

01:02:16.240 | framework has helped make it easier for me to do things that probably would have been

01:02:19.680 | harder before thinking that with that perspective.

01:02:23.200 | And then I think there are two things that are to come back to on parenting and travel.

01:02:30.320 | But there's one, there's two things that we haven't hit on that I think are really

01:02:35.600 | important lessons.

01:02:36.240 | One, you've written an entire book that I would encourage people to read about, you

01:02:41.040 | know, when when to say yes and no.

01:02:43.040 | And I think someone might look at the title, which is hell, yeah, or no and say, oh, you

01:02:46.720 | should always either be fervently excited or say no to everything.

01:02:50.560 | I actually know that your perspective is, it really depends on where you are in life.

01:02:54.800 | And if you are very overwhelmed with things, a philosophy of hell, yeah, now, or no, is

01:03:01.520 | great.

01:03:02.160 | But if you're earlier in your career, maybe you just say yes to everything.

01:03:05.680 | And I've written posts in the past about earlier in my career, why saying yes is just

01:03:09.680 | this magical thing that opens all these doors and lets you have new experiences.

01:03:14.160 | Is there is there any kind of clarifying things you want to say on the on the kind of

01:03:19.680 | spectrum of say no to lots of things versus say yes to everything that might help people

01:03:25.280 | overwhelmed right now?

01:03:27.120 | I'm really glad that you said that.

01:03:30.320 | In fact, you might be the first person that's ever introduced that book by also giving that

01:03:36.080 | clarifier right away.

01:03:37.440 | Because, yeah, you're right.

01:03:38.320 | Almost everybody looks at that and says, yeah, man, hell yeah, I know.

01:03:42.400 | I'm just going to follow that from now on.

01:03:44.640 | And I get these emails from people that are like straight out of college going, yeah,

01:03:47.840 | thanks for saying that, man.

01:03:49.040 | I'm just saying no to everything I don't feel hell yeah about.

01:03:52.720 | I'm like, wait a second.

01:03:53.760 | Hold on.

01:03:54.320 | Like it's it's a tool for a specific situation.

01:03:58.400 | You know, it's in the toolbox.

01:04:01.520 | It's that really unique wrench in case you need to get into the hole and do a Phillips

01:04:07.040 | head screw.

01:04:08.400 | Um, in general, I think it's better to switch strategies for your correct situation.

01:04:18.240 | So, yeah, straight out of college or if you're young and you're safe, you're you want more

01:04:24.880 | opportunities than you have right now.

01:04:26.480 | You want more success than you have right now.

01:04:28.880 | Um, yeah, very often the best solution is to go say yes to everything.

01:04:33.280 | Go like take on as much as you can take on.

01:04:37.040 | Try it all.

01:04:37.840 | Overcommit yourself and say yes to everything because it's a little bit like lottery tickets,

01:04:44.720 | right?

01:04:44.960 | Like you never know which of these 12 things you're doing at once is going to reward you.

01:04:52.000 | And then when one of those 12 things you're doing simultaneously rewards you, then you

01:04:59.360 | can like double down on that.

01:05:00.880 | Get rid of the other 11 and throw everything you've got into this one thing.

01:05:06.480 | And then if like that's when you should raise the bar because hell, yeah, I know basically

01:05:12.880 | just means that it just means raise the bar all the way for what you'll accept.

01:05:17.280 | So you want to do that if you're overwhelmed with opportunities and everybody wants a piece

01:05:22.400 | of you and you've got so much success coming your way, then that's when you need hell,

01:05:28.640 | yeah, or no.

01:05:29.360 | As a reminder to raise the bar, uh, to let go of these other options because you've got

01:05:34.640 | so much going on, um, so yeah.

01:05:37.200 | So thanks for mentioning that, uh, that it's the very first sentence of the article, but

01:05:42.640 | it often gets lost in that point.

01:05:44.000 | It could also apply to just so much going on in life, right?

01:05:47.520 | You have two young kids, you have a job, you have a family and you kind of never, it wasn't

01:05:54.640 | that there were new business opportunities or financial opportunities.

01:05:57.280 | It's just life got so busy that to maintain sanity, you have to raise the bar.

01:06:02.000 | And I found that as a, you know, 20 something single person, you know, people say, Hey,

01:06:07.600 | you want to go to this thing?

01:06:08.400 | Yeah, I want to go to this thing.

01:06:09.360 | Yeah, I want to do this.

01:06:10.400 | It's easy.

01:06:11.360 | And then now, you know, we have two kids, we can't, my wife and I can't go out to every

01:06:17.440 | dinner.

01:06:17.760 | We can't go to every concert.

01:06:19.600 | Some of our friends without children are like, Oh, do you guys want to go to, you know, Belize

01:06:25.360 | for the weekend?

01:06:26.000 | We're like, no, that's not a thing we can just do on a whim.

01:06:29.040 | Uh, and we've created an intentional life that we're happy with, but it just means we

01:06:33.040 | can't do those things.

01:06:34.000 | And so I think right now, this year is a little bit more of the year of the hell yeah or no

01:06:39.760 | than the say yes to everything.

01:06:41.360 | But it's not necessarily because of opportunity.

01:06:44.240 | It's just because the overwhelming nature of life with young children.

01:06:47.440 | Yeah.

01:06:48.560 | And thanks for mentioning that because I, sometimes I think in terms of like business

01:06:54.160 | career choices with hell yeah or no, but you're right.

01:06:56.880 | It's when you've got a kid, um, that's a, you've, that's a big, big, like that's your

01:07:04.640 | hell yeah, or your kids.

01:07:06.160 | Um, and so that helps you say no to everything else and it helps to remember that you'd be

01:07:12.640 | better off putting more attention into your kids instead of spreading yourself thin with

01:07:20.640 | other things like that.

01:07:22.000 | In fact, that's sorry, I, I feel like I've unfairly mentioned moving too much in this

01:07:28.640 | conversation, but I was living in Singapore when my kid was born and Singapore is a very

01:07:37.360 | exciting, distracted place or distracting place.

01:07:41.360 | Um, I knew a lot of people there.

01:07:43.200 | I was super social there.

01:07:44.320 | There's so much going on.

01:07:46.160 | And even its location within Asia, it's just a short hop to so many interesting places.

01:07:50.720 | And I noticed that the first few months of my kid's life, um, I was too distracted and

01:07:56.560 | I was being pulled different directions.

01:07:57.920 | So a big part of the choice to move to the middle of nowhere in New Zealand was to create

01:08:05.200 | an environment where I've just by a side effect of my location, I've said no to everything

01:08:12.560 | else.

01:08:13.120 | So from age for my kid, from age zero to 10, uh, here in New Zealand, I was basically a

01:08:18.880 | full-time dad.

01:08:19.760 | I was in the middle of an Island in the Pacific ocean, uh, where just everything else in life

01:08:26.800 | became a no, uh, because I'm just, I'm here with my kid and this is my hell.

01:08:31.200 | Yeah.

01:08:31.700 | So I want to get to children, but I have one quick question, which is, can you talk about

01:08:37.200 | the same?

01:08:37.680 | No part, because I think it's very easy for a lot of people to say, this is the hell.

01:08:42.160 | Yeah.

01:08:42.480 | Thing.

01:08:43.040 | And then they get an email from someone's like, Hey, I'd love to pick your brain about

01:08:45.920 | this thing.

01:08:46.480 | Uh, you know, do you want to grab a coffee?

01:08:48.320 | And I think saying no is something people find very hard and they almost feel like I'm

01:08:54.480 | going to look bad by saying no, it's going to make me, you know, people are going to

01:08:58.640 | think that I don't care.

01:08:59.600 | And you've said a few things that have given me perspective there.

01:09:03.840 | And so that I think it would just be helpful for people to understand why saying no might

01:09:08.080 | be, you know, in some weird way, polite or, or, or a better way to do it.

01:09:12.160 | My number one tip is write a form letter, take 20 minutes and write a very nice generic.

01:09:20.800 | Uh, no.

01:09:23.360 | With a little elaboration, like, Hey, I'm so sorry.

01:09:28.720 | I'm completely focused on what I'm doing right now.

01:09:31.760 | Uh, my new book isn't finished yet and I need to put everything I've got into finishing

01:09:36.480 | this.

01:09:37.440 | I hope you'll understand, uh, this isn't a permanent no, maybe at some point in the

01:09:42.400 | future.

01:09:42.800 | Uh, I really appreciate that you thought of me for this.

01:09:47.760 | I'm honored that you invited me, whatever, like take 20 minutes and write a nice, uh,

01:09:54.320 | form letter, uh, response, and then keep it handy in, in a word file or a text file or

01:10:02.000 | whatever you use so that it might even be five times a day when you get people wanting

01:10:07.680 | to pick your brain or come to this thing, or, Hey dude, you got a minute to jump on

01:10:13.280 | a zoom call.

01:10:14.000 | Uh, you could just, you know, copy paste, select all tab control V send.

01:10:20.640 | Um, I do my form letter so many times a day.

01:10:25.520 | I just have a generic no.

01:10:27.120 | And what's nice is that, uh, people respond to it every now and then going, wow, that's

01:10:32.640 | the nicest no I've ever received.

01:10:35.200 | And dude, you're actually kind of inspiring how, uh, yeah, you just, you're keeping your

01:10:39.600 | head down in your work, man.

01:10:40.640 | I should be more like that.

01:10:41.920 | Like you think people are going to be mad, but actually people often get inspired by

01:10:46.880 | how you say no to their random things.

01:10:49.520 | Yeah.

01:10:50.560 | The other, I wouldn't necessarily put this in a form letter, but I heard you say once

01:10:54.160 | that, you know, you say no, so that you leave your calendar open to say yes.

01:11:00.560 | And, and if, if someone's calendar is always full, it's almost like, oh man, this person

01:11:05.280 | isn't leaving enough time for, for exciting things.

01:11:08.160 | When I just said that, like for 10 years, I was basically a full-time dad, dude, for

01:11:13.120 | 10 years, I didn't even have a calendar.

01:11:16.640 | Like I didn't, there was like literally nothing on my calendar.

01:11:21.760 | I mean, maybe like once a year we would take a flight to go see his parents or grandparents,

01:11:27.280 | but, um, yeah, for 10 years, I had nothing on my calendar app.

01:11:32.400 | And when somebody would want to schedule, they're like, Hey, can I call you next Thursday

01:11:36.480 | at three?

01:11:36.880 | I'd go, eh, I'm not going to like bust open the calendar app.

01:11:42.560 | You'll be like the only thing in 2018 on my entire calendar for the year.

01:11:46.640 | Like, no, just, just call whenever you want to call, just call.

01:11:49.200 | I'm not going to schedule.

01:11:50.720 | I don't do scheduling.

01:11:51.920 | I mean, now I do.

01:11:54.240 | I'm just, you know, my kid's 11 now and he's playing with friends.

01:11:57.200 | He doesn't need me around so much.

01:11:59.440 | So I'm not as much of a full-time dad as I was the last 10 years.

01:12:02.320 | But yeah, for 10 years, that was fun to, um, to, to just say no to all of it.

01:12:08.400 | And, uh, and to have this completely empty calendar is such a good feeling to wake up.

01:12:12.880 | God, that's one of my deepest joys to wake up every day or to wake up any day and have

01:12:18.080 | nothing on my calendar for that whole day.

01:12:20.640 | Like the whole day is mine.

01:12:22.560 | It's such a nice feeling.

01:12:23.680 | Let's talk about some of the perspective you had for parenting, because I think right before

01:12:29.360 | we jumped in, I was sharing your post about parenting with my wife and we were both like,

01:12:34.320 | wow, because a lot, you know, you kind of talk in it and I'll put it in the show notes.

01:12:38.080 | You can talk about it as much as you want.

01:12:39.520 | It's not very long, but how it seems like sometimes by focusing so much on your child,

01:12:46.320 | you're just completely selfless and you're, you're just, it can feel like work.

01:12:50.720 | But if you, you present it in a perspective, that's like, oh, by doing these things that

01:12:55.840 | many of us wish that we could do more for, or with our children, you're actually doing

01:13:02.000 | things that will help you.

01:13:03.520 | And that perspective, I think makes the task of, you know, I know plenty of people like,

01:13:09.040 | oh, my partner's gone.

01:13:10.400 | And I've got, you know, I've got, I'm on childcare duty for the whole day.

01:13:14.240 | And I think there's a different perspective of ways that you could enrich your own life,

01:13:19.840 | not just by spending time with someone, but by teaching lessons and acting a different

01:13:24.320 | way.

01:13:24.560 | I'm curious how you thought of that, how long it took you to come to those realizations.

01:13:28.960 | And yeah, whenever I was on daddy duty, because his mom and I always split it 50/50, you know,

01:13:34.880 | every day or every week, we'd make sure that it was always 50/50.

01:13:39.360 | We didn't have a nanny or anything like that.

01:13:41.680 | It was always just the two of us and didn't, and we'd live, you know, far, far away from

01:13:45.120 | family.

01:13:45.440 | So there was nobody else to help.

01:13:46.640 | So it was either her on duty or me on duty.

01:13:49.600 | And so whenever it was my time, she, okay.

01:13:52.080 | So she had her own way, right?

01:13:53.040 | So she, she likes watching things and she likes being inside.

01:13:57.520 | Like that's how she grew up.

01:13:58.400 | She's more indoorsy.

01:13:59.840 | So then I found it my duty whenever I was on daddy duty to, uh, to take him out, no

01:14:07.440 | matter what the weather, even if it's raining.

01:14:09.520 | Uh, that was like my number one thing.

01:14:11.200 | Like, let's just get out.

01:14:12.880 | And so to satisfy my own curiosity, I would pick somewhere on the map that we had never

01:14:19.760 | been.

01:14:20.000 | I'd like, look at the map, but I'd see this green patch.

01:14:22.800 | I'm like, I don't know what's there.

01:14:24.320 | Like today we're going there.

01:14:25.600 | And so we would go to that green patch, get out of the car and just kind of like hang

01:14:30.960 | out there for the day.

01:14:32.240 | And we would spend like, you know, two hours, six hours in this green patch I'd never been

01:14:38.400 | to.

01:14:39.040 | And so I got to know my city really, really well.

01:14:42.720 | Uh, or I got to know the area really, really well by, um, by doing that.

01:14:48.400 | And now let's say like, if it's really bad weather, there's some days where I'd say

01:14:53.360 | like, all right, let's watch a movie.

01:14:56.400 | But instead of just picking the dumbest, you know, hotel Transylvania three kind of

01:15:03.280 | entertainment, um, I'd go in, like, I do a little work to like, find some like beautifully

01:15:10.560 | award, uh, some beautiful award winning animated movie from somewhere, ideally in another

01:15:17.200 | language or another culture that I would find really interesting.

01:15:19.680 | And I'd find this kind of like, I don't know, this, uh, this German animated thing and

01:15:26.800 | subtitles.

01:15:27.520 | And so my kid who doesn't read is just watching this in German, but I'm like, cool.

01:15:31.200 | The German language is getting into his ears a little bit today.

01:15:33.600 | And I'm watching, uh, an animated movie that I find interesting, not just like the

01:15:39.280 | common, the lowest common denominator kind of.

01:15:41.920 | So I would make choices like that to, um, to enrich his experience by often going somewhere

01:15:49.760 | new, watching something new.

01:15:51.360 | Um, sometimes we just listen to music.

01:15:53.440 | We'd kind of like cuddle and listen to say like Indian classical music while, uh, making

01:16:00.240 | Lego.

01:16:01.120 | Yeah, actually that was a good way.

01:16:02.160 | It's he, he calls it Lego music, Indian classical music.

01:16:05.040 | He considers Lego music because I just thought like, all right, as long as we're just making

01:16:08.960 | Lego, um, yeah, let's, let's open his ears a bit and put on a different kind of music.

01:16:13.840 | Uh, and it had like speakers in the living room, so he could really kind of hear it,

01:16:19.200 | not just coming out of a teeny little, you know, one inch speaker.

01:16:22.800 | Um, so yeah, choices like that, I just found to me made being a full-time dad.

01:16:30.320 | It made it a joy, uh, because I would keep choosing these decisions that were good for

01:16:36.560 | both of us.

01:16:37.120 | And I think one of the big ones that you've read about is travel.

01:16:40.960 | And you wrote a post that says travels best with young children.

01:16:45.200 | I was telling my wife about it.

01:16:46.240 | She's like, how old are this guy?

01:16:48.320 | I don't think I said young.

01:16:50.080 | I said, he wrote this great post about travel with children.

01:16:52.080 | He's like, yeah, but are they 15?

01:16:53.760 | Like, like, so I think there's this idea of traveling with young children being horrible

01:16:59.600 | and it being the worst experience.

01:17:01.280 | And you write the exact opposite.

01:17:04.960 | And I've gotten so many emails from listeners saying, oh, can you talk more about travel

01:17:08.640 | with children and how to make it enjoyable?

01:17:10.480 | And, you know, and I would, as early as this morning, someone emailed me saying, I'm going

01:17:16.240 | on this trip.

01:17:16.960 | I can't remember where they're going.

01:17:17.920 | She's like, I have a six-year-old and a one-year-old and we're nervous.

01:17:20.160 | How do you have a good trip traveling with children?

01:17:22.160 | Very few people I know have a perspective of positive experience.

01:17:27.040 | So I'd love to kind of wind, wrap up a little bit and talk about that because we talk about

01:17:32.880 | travel a lot on this show and so many people are interested.

01:17:36.160 | How do you travel with your child and have a great experience when doing it?

01:17:41.440 | And what advice do you have for people about to go on a trip with their children?

01:17:45.040 | All right.

01:17:45.360 | I love this subject.

01:17:46.160 | I mean, I wrote that post because I got so frustrated at people acting like it was just

01:17:51.520 | a truism, like traveling with kids is hard.

01:17:54.480 | Or once you have kids, you can't travel anymore.

01:17:57.600 | I was like, damn, like the difference between in theory and in practice, some people just

01:18:04.160 | decide in advance in theory, well, can't travel anymore.

01:18:07.600 | Got kids now.

01:18:08.560 | Just going to have to stay put.

01:18:10.720 | No more dreaming for me.

01:18:14.240 | But in practice, it's wonderful.

01:18:17.280 | I mean, maybe you need to just change your mindset about it in advance.

01:18:21.760 | But I just find that for one, you don't need to pack hardly anything because anywhere you

01:18:30.080 | go has stuff for kids.

01:18:31.840 | I started traveling with our kid when he was three months old and in diapers.

01:18:38.800 | And you realize you don't need to pack 50 diapers.

01:18:42.000 | You need to pack like six diapers, maybe to get you through the first day, because anywhere

01:18:47.200 | you're going to go has diapers.

01:18:48.720 | You don't need to pack toys because anywhere you go is going to have toys.

01:18:55.280 | And if he's really stuck for entertainment and really needs a physical thing beyond just

01:19:03.920 | the one or two things that you bring with, then there are new physical things wherever

01:19:09.440 | you go, and I don't mean like things to buy.

01:19:12.000 | It may just be like random items found in the grass or on the street corner can be fascinating.

01:19:22.160 | God, he got so much joy out of this like rusty spring he found once in the gutter.

01:19:28.400 | Forget, we went to Wales and he found this rusty spring in the gutter that he just held

01:19:33.920 | onto for a week and just loved this spring.

01:19:38.240 | And that was like his favorite toy for the whole week while we were traveling in England

01:19:41.440 | that he found literally in the gutter in Wales.

01:19:44.720 | So, OK, so you don't need to pack much.

01:19:48.800 | That's a big one.

01:19:50.160 | As long as you leave early, like, don't forget that the airport itself is a fascinating

01:19:59.840 | destination for kids.

01:20:01.680 | Like, oh, my God, it might as well practically be Disneyland.

01:20:05.120 | There is so much there.

01:20:06.960 | So you get to the airport way early, like four hours early.

01:20:11.040 | There's no rush.

01:20:12.160 | There's no stress because your kids love to explore the airport.

01:20:18.320 | Even when he's just a little choo-choo crawling baby, he loved the attention from so many

01:20:24.800 | strangers.

01:20:25.360 | Like suddenly there's like hundreds of faces looking at him and he'd be like, you know,

01:20:30.880 | like so many strangers want to play with him.

01:20:33.200 | He loved hanging out at the airport.

01:20:36.800 | So then the flight itself, my number one advice for kids under the age of two or three is

01:20:44.160 | I know this is going to sound radical, but I actually got this from a great book called

01:20:47.600 | Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina.

01:20:49.600 | University of Washington neuroscientist has been studying brain development in babies

01:20:57.840 | for years.

01:20:58.800 | And his number one bit of advice.

01:21:01.120 | Well, sorry, number two bit of advice.

01:21:02.480 | Number one bit of advice was help your kids feel safe.

01:21:05.200 | Like number one, kids need to feel safe.

01:21:07.040 | So they can flourish.

01:21:08.960 | But number two was, he said, no screens before the age of two.

01:21:13.440 | And in fact, the longer they can go without screens in front of them, the better.

01:21:18.080 | But he said, like, absolutely do not let your kid stare at a screen before the age of two.

01:21:24.000 | So I heeded his advice and we wouldn't let, we had no screens of the house, no iPads,

01:21:31.360 | no movies, whatever, before the age of two, but the one exception is when we would get

01:21:36.560 | on a flight.

01:21:37.200 | And because he had had no screens at all in his life, you wonder how to keep a kid still

01:21:45.600 | in the seat.

01:21:46.400 | If you like it, let them watch the screen.

01:21:48.080 | Suddenly he was just hypnotized and he would be absolutely still on a flight to the point

01:21:55.360 | where many different times when the flight was done, we'd be getting up, exiting the

01:22:00.640 | plane and somebody in front of us or behind us would go, whoa, there was a kid here that

01:22:05.360 | whole time.

01:22:06.320 | And they didn't even know because their kid was so hypnotized by the screen.

01:22:09.760 | So I don't know, that was a good hack.

01:22:11.840 | And hey, that's why we're here, right?

01:22:13.520 | All the hacks.

01:22:14.160 | So yeah.

01:22:16.880 | And then when you get to a place, you don't try to force your kid into your adult schedule.

01:22:25.760 | You don't say, all right, we're going to Paris.

01:22:27.920 | We're going to see the Louvre.

01:22:28.720 | We're going to see the Eiffel Tower.

01:22:29.760 | We're going to look at the Arc de Triomphe at one o'clock and we're going to get it.

01:22:32.160 | You just let go of all that.

01:22:34.240 | Traveling with kids is so nice to just get to a destination and let go of your expectations

01:22:42.400 | to basically let your kid and circumstance lead the way.

01:22:46.960 | So you're just going to get there and then you just go out into the world with your kid

01:22:51.120 | and let them explore and let them lead the way.

01:22:53.680 | Isn't that a Whitney Houston song?

01:22:59.360 | Yeah, you just let them lead and be on their schedule.

01:23:02.160 | And what I love about that is then you get to experience this place through your kid's

01:23:08.560 | eyes, right?

01:23:09.840 | So I remember taking my kid to Thailand when he was like six months old.

01:23:13.760 | And yeah, he was a crawling baby.

01:23:18.080 | He wasn't even walking.

01:23:19.040 | He was just crawling.

01:23:19.920 | And we would just go someplace like a temple that was gorgeous with the big golden stupas.

01:23:27.760 | And just let him crawl around.

01:23:31.440 | And he would just be crawling around this temple and everybody's giving him attention.

01:23:34.240 | He'd play with strangers, a monk, a Buddhist monk picks him up and holds him and he's loving

01:23:39.360 | this attention and people take his picture and he crawls around the whole time.

01:23:42.080 | We're just laid back, kind of like enjoying the temple and our baby crawling around.

01:23:47.840 | And same thing with like just going out to a park and he's seeing different things.

01:23:54.240 | He sees monkeys.

01:23:55.360 | Oh my God.

01:23:57.280 | You know, like it's all so easy when you let your kid lead the way.

01:24:03.840 | Yeah, locals connect with you more.

01:24:08.560 | Everybody wants to come up and interact with the baby.

01:24:10.800 | So all these locals that you like don't speak English and we can't communicate through language,

01:24:16.000 | but you know, the sweet old ladies come up and just they want to play with your baby.

01:24:20.480 | And I just, I absolutely love it.

01:24:24.240 | I just thought, I kind of don't want to travel without my kid.

01:24:27.360 | I think traveling with my kid at any age, and even now, like he just turned 11.

01:24:31.440 | I just took him to Japan for two weeks.

01:24:34.640 | His mom had to work, so it was just me and him.

01:24:36.400 | And it was amazing to go see Japan through his eyes.

01:24:40.160 | I've been to Japan a few times in my life, but like I kept myself out of it.

01:24:44.320 | I just booked a few, like I just took us to Kanazawa on the West Coast.

01:24:50.240 | We just stayed there for four days and down to Kyoto for four days.

01:24:54.080 | Then up to Tokyo for four days, stopped at one hot springs resort town on the way

01:24:59.360 | so I could experience like a real hot springs resort.

01:25:02.720 | And other than that, like just day to day, we'd like, we'd wake up and I'd say,

01:25:05.920 | "All right, dude, what do you want to do?

01:25:07.840 | You lead, I'll follow you."

01:25:10.640 | And it was so unexpected.

01:25:14.480 | I thought he'd be overwhelmed by Tokyo, but he loved it.

01:25:18.880 | In fact, sometimes when I was kind of tired, he's like, "Let's go out again."

01:25:22.400 | He said, "Let's go down this alley."

01:25:23.840 | And I just let him lead the way.

01:25:24.880 | He's like, "Let's go see what's upstairs."

01:25:27.040 | All right, sure.

01:25:28.320 | And it was great.

01:25:30.720 | It introduced so much randomness.

01:25:32.240 | He chose things I wouldn't have chosen.

01:25:34.240 | And yeah, he's like my favorite travel partner and has been since he was born.

01:25:41.440 | So yeah, I think travel with kids is easy and wonderful.

01:25:47.200 | We went to London and Paris in December with two kids, six months and two and a half.

01:25:52.960 | We didn't try to cram in the Louvre.

01:25:54.720 | Fortunately, we picked places that, at least in Paris's case, we'd both been to before.

01:25:59.680 | I think one of the challenges that I'm curious to hear your perspective on was,

01:26:05.200 | maybe this gets better after multiple times.

01:26:08.880 | This is our first kind of trip to a city with kids.

01:26:13.280 | A part of it was like, "Oh, we're so used to how much we try to accomplish on a trip."

01:26:17.680 | With children, you just have to cut your expectations way back.

01:26:20.720 | And so I think if we wanted to have an enjoyable trip each day,

01:26:25.760 | the goal was, "What's the one thing we're going to do today?"

01:26:28.880 | Our list pre-kids was like, "Here's the eight things we'll do."

01:26:34.640 | Now it's one.

01:26:35.360 | And I wonder now if we went back and had...

01:26:39.200 | I think we weren't going in with eight.

01:26:40.960 | Maybe we had two and we realized one was more sustainable.

01:26:44.000 | But if you go all the way, halfway across the world,

01:26:47.360 | not everyone has months at a time.

01:26:50.240 | So let's say you're there for a week, and you're only doing one thing a day.

01:26:54.080 | You might feel like you didn't get as much value out of the trip

01:26:57.920 | because you spent all this money to travel and stay and eat,

01:27:01.440 | but you didn't get to do that much.

01:27:02.800 | I have a feeling that you have a way to rephrase the perspective

01:27:09.440 | that will make anyone listening realize that

01:27:12.960 | they got just as much of a trip, even though it was different.

01:27:15.360 | But I feel like the way you'll say it

01:27:17.840 | will give people that feeling far greater than the way I would.

01:27:21.280 | So I'm curious how you would kind of rebut the idea

01:27:24.960 | that if you're not doing a lot

01:27:26.560 | because you can't have as much on your agenda,

01:27:28.960 | you're not going to have the kind of trip that will make it worth it.

01:27:32.720 | I figure that if I've decided I want to go to Paris,

01:27:36.320 | and I've got that specific example too,

01:27:38.640 | I'm just choosing the "where".

01:27:40.720 | I'm just saying, "We're going to Paris."

01:27:43.440 | And I'll say, "Okay."

01:27:45.280 | And so I took us to Paris.

01:27:47.520 | And once we got out of the train station at the Gare du Nord,

01:27:53.280 | is that it? The north one, I think?

01:27:54.720 | I just let him choose.

01:27:58.560 | I was like, "Well, we're in Paris now.

01:28:00.960 | Which way do you want to go?"

01:28:02.160 | And he was like, "Go that way."

01:28:05.760 | I said, "Okay."

01:28:06.400 | And I just followed him.

01:28:08.720 | And I'm so glad I did because at every turn,

01:28:13.200 | he just decided where he wanted to go.

01:28:14.560 | He led the way.

01:28:15.600 | And at one point, he found this huge cardboard box

01:28:18.480 | that was as big as he is.

01:28:19.920 | And he's like, "Dad, check out this box."

01:28:23.920 | And he got inside this cardboard box.

01:28:25.840 | And for the next half an hour,

01:28:27.520 | he walked the streets of Paris inside a big cardboard box.

01:28:32.320 | And I got such joy out of that.

01:28:34.080 | I made a little phone movie of it,

01:28:37.840 | of the streets of Paris, in a busy center part of town,

01:28:43.360 | with him taking up the whole sidewalk,

01:28:45.440 | walking inside this big cardboard box,

01:28:47.200 | and everybody doing these double takes, like, "What the hell?"

01:28:49.520 | And me just cracking up at the juxtaposition of,

01:28:54.880 | not only is my kid taking up the sidewalk,

01:28:57.760 | walking in a huge cardboard box, but, "OMFG, Paris."

01:29:01.040 | "OMFG, Paris."

01:29:02.640 | Like, to be doing this in Paris.

01:29:04.400 | And oh my God, there's the Eiffel Tower in the background,

01:29:06.800 | as my kid is walking in a cardboard box.

01:29:10.400 | And then, at some point, he sees a huge staircase.

01:29:13.680 | It's starting to get dark.

01:29:14.880 | It's dusk.

01:29:15.920 | And he's like, "Whoa."

01:29:18.800 | He said, "Look at all those stairs."

01:29:20.000 | He said, "Let's go this way."

01:29:20.800 | I said, "All right."

01:29:21.840 | He's out of the box at this point.

01:29:23.280 | And we go up and up and up and up and up these steps.

01:29:29.360 | And we get to the top, and we take this turn.

01:29:32.560 | And it's like, "Oh, one of the most top five beautiful things

01:29:36.640 | I've ever seen in my life."

01:29:37.840 | He accidentally led us to Sacré-Cœur, the big giant cathedral,

01:29:43.760 | which, just because it was dusk, was being lit up by floodlights,

01:29:47.600 | but the sky was dark blue.

01:29:49.520 | And it's at the top of the stairs, but you don't expect it.

01:29:52.800 | You turn up the stairs, and suddenly, it's just staring at you.

01:29:56.000 | And it's like, "Oh my God, it looks so surreal."

01:29:59.440 | And it was one of my favorite things on that whole trip,

01:30:02.560 | was us accidentally discovering Sacré-Cœur,

01:30:05.360 | which I had only seen in postcards or photos at that point.

01:30:09.200 | I'd never seen it in person.

01:30:10.480 | And it was only because he led the way.

01:30:12.960 | I don't think, like, that wasn't on my itinerary,

01:30:16.480 | and I wouldn't have put it on my itinerary.

01:30:18.720 | I didn't even really know what it was called.

01:30:21.440 | I had just seen pictures of it before.

01:30:22.640 | But yeah, letting your kids lead the way

01:30:26.720 | makes them happy,

01:30:28.240 | and it leads to so many wonderful random encounters.

01:30:31.600 | - Yeah, I think it's just about reframing what makes a good trip, right?

01:30:37.040 | In another year, or, you know, in an earlier life,

01:30:40.720 | a great trip to Paris might have involved

01:30:43.040 | ticking off a few restaurants your friends had recommended,

01:30:46.080 | seeing a few museums.

01:30:47.520 | And as you were talking, what really clicked for me

01:30:51.360 | was I thought, "Okay, well, if we're not going to go do all those things,

01:30:54.640 | and we're just going to kind of walk around,

01:30:56.800 | then we could just do that here.

01:30:59.440 | Why do we need to go all the way to Paris?"

01:31:00.960 | But there's something about being in Paris, doing that,

01:31:05.200 | that makes the memories different.

01:31:06.800 | And the memories are why you're doing it in the first place.

01:31:10.800 | So I want to challenge myself on the next trip

01:31:14.160 | to just kind of let go, do whatever, see where it goes,

01:31:18.880 | and see if we have just a totally different type of memory

01:31:22.720 | that's equally or potentially even better than we used to.

01:31:25.600 | It's just uncomfortable, right?

01:31:28.480 | Because it's not a type of thing I'm familiar with,

01:31:31.120 | because that's not how we would travel pre-kid.

01:31:33.200 | So we found the travel logistics to not be as overwhelming

01:31:38.160 | as much as the trying to find the balance between,

01:31:41.760 | I don't know, my wife and I, when we're in new cities,

01:31:44.240 | we're like, "Let's go find a cool bar and have a good cocktail."

01:31:48.000 | Or, "Let's go eat whatever the local food is."

01:31:50.800 | And so it's like, "All right, well, we gotta get to this restaurant."

01:31:53.200 | But in London, nothing opens early enough to eat before kids' nap time.

01:31:58.160 | But if we reframed it and just said,

01:32:01.600 | "We're not going to have the trip we wanted to have

01:32:03.760 | when we were 10 years younger.

01:32:05.280 | We're going to have a different style trip

01:32:06.720 | where our children experience things,

01:32:08.720 | and we get to watch that unfold."

01:32:11.520 | I think it would have been different.

01:32:12.560 | And I think we maybe had the wrong expectations.

01:32:14.480 | We still had a great trip,

01:32:15.440 | but I think we could have had a better trip.

01:32:17.280 | I find it really important.

01:32:21.760 | This is just my values.

01:32:23.520 | Nobody listening has to adopt my values.

01:32:26.640 | But a lot of the reason I was traveling

01:32:29.600 | was for him as much as me,

01:32:33.040 | because I wanted him to know that Paris is a place

01:32:37.600 | that he's been and has a connection to.

01:32:42.240 | So when you say, "Why not just stay home?"

01:32:46.960 | Yeah, the trip was for him as much as me.

01:32:50.000 | He can identify so many countries on a map now at age 11,

01:32:54.960 | and he's got a little connection to so many of them,

01:32:58.320 | even some that he hasn't been to.

01:32:59.520 | But I want him to feel a connection to the world.

01:33:02.160 | So yeah, when somebody says "France,"

01:33:07.040 | he's like, "Oh yeah, I've been there."

01:33:08.480 | And if somebody says "Spain," he's like, "Oh yeah, I've been there."

01:33:11.600 | I wanted that for his self-identity.

01:33:14.240 | I want him to feel that the world is his home,

01:33:16.400 | not just this one country where we're in right now,

01:33:19.360 | but all of it.

01:33:21.920 | The more of it, the better.

01:33:22.880 | So I generally would take him on trips to places we've never been,

01:33:26.320 | let him lead the way.

01:33:28.240 | He gets to feel this sense of autonomy.

01:33:31.520 | You never have to worry about him being happy,

01:33:33.840 | because if your kid is leading the way,

01:33:35.920 | I wouldn't know how to do it with two kids.

01:33:37.120 | I don't know.

01:33:38.800 | But if your kid's leading the way,

01:33:41.680 | then he's happy and you get the randomness.

01:33:45.200 | But it's more about just your kid feeling a connection

01:33:47.920 | to this place on Earth.

01:33:49.920 | That was most important to me.

01:33:51.440 | I didn't really care what we did in the place.

01:33:54.400 | But the reason I gasped while you were saying that

01:33:57.920 | is, Chris,

01:33:59.440 | satisficing and maximizing.

01:34:02.560 | It comes back full circle to earlier in the conversation

01:34:06.640 | of you just described a way of travel that was trying to maximize.

01:34:11.840 | You're like, all right, we've got 72 hours in Paris.

01:34:15.440 | We are going to go to the best restaurants,

01:34:17.040 | the best sites, the best museum.

01:34:18.400 | That's maximizing.

01:34:20.720 | And I think that's the wrong strategy.

01:34:24.880 | I think satisficing is the correct strategy for travel with kids.

01:34:28.960 | You're just like, all right,

01:34:29.600 | I'm just going to book us a trip to Paris,

01:34:32.480 | and we're going to get off,

01:34:33.920 | and we're going to spend a few days in Paris.

01:34:35.360 | I don't know what's going to happen while we're there.

01:34:36.960 | We'll see what happens.

01:34:38.880 | But we're going to spend three days in Paris with no expectations.

01:34:41.440 | That's probably a better recipe for happiness.

01:34:44.800 | Yeah, I think it's my eternal struggle is to satisfy.

01:34:48.880 | But I will continue to try to make gains towards more satisficing,

01:34:54.720 | especially in areas.

01:34:55.680 | You should read that book.

01:34:56.000 | Yeah, I haven't.

01:34:56.640 | Sorry, you should read Hyperoxygen.

01:34:58.400 | It's going to stack up a bunch of reasons why you should.

01:35:00.560 | Cool.

01:35:01.200 | I try not to be distracted and write things down.

01:35:03.360 | But every now and then in a conversation,

01:35:05.040 | I'm like, well, that that that deserves to be written down.

01:35:07.360 | OK, so there's two final things.

01:35:10.960 | One is around satisfying.

01:35:14.240 | There is a story of I've somehow managed to hear you tell twice.

01:35:18.320 | I picked random things, and sometimes I read it,

01:35:20.400 | and sometimes I'm like, oh, let's just play.

01:35:21.840 | And, you know, on your site, you read some of your posts and.

01:35:25.840 | It let it's a perspective that sometimes taking a different path,

01:35:32.400 | taking the the not the not perfect, optimal maximizing path

01:35:37.120 | might actually not result in as worse of an outcome as you see.

01:35:41.200 | So one of the reasons I think a lot of us maximize is that we're like,

01:35:43.600 | we want the best, we want the optimal outcome.

01:35:45.520 | And if you don't get it, you know, we in our minds,

01:35:48.400 | it feels like you'll be spending so much more money,

01:35:50.320 | but it might actually only be ten dollars.

01:35:51.760 | Could you talk about this bike ride where you stop to slow down?

01:35:56.960 | Because I think it's a good way to wrap up the conversation,

01:36:01.600 | because sometimes just taking a different path,

01:36:04.800 | it doesn't actually mean that you're getting a much worse outcome

01:36:08.480 | in terms of, in your case, how long it took.

01:36:10.800 | OK, so the first the story and then how it ties back into what we've been talking about.

01:36:16.800 | Because the stories about what happened and then the how it ties back in is

01:36:22.800 | is about the psychological experience in your mind, not just the physical experience.

01:36:28.800 | OK, so the the story of what actually happened is when I was living

01:36:32.000 | in Santa Monica, California, on the beach,

01:36:34.000 | there is a bike path that goes through the sand there.

01:36:39.360 | And it's I think it's 15 miles or something like that.

01:36:42.320 | And for exercise, almost every day, I would at some point stop what I was doing

01:36:48.800 | and I'd get on my bike and I would do that bike path as fast as I could.

01:36:53.600 | Like, you know, really like head down and kind of, you know,

01:36:57.760 | pushing as hard as I could to do this in the name of exercise.

01:37:00.800 | Like, I'm going to do this track and I would do the 15 miles back and forth.

01:37:05.280 | And again, sorry, I don't remember if it was exactly 15 miles.

01:37:08.000 | But I do remember that that after the first or second time,

01:37:13.120 | the time it would take me was almost always exactly 43 minutes.

01:37:19.520 | If it was a really windy day, maybe a little more,

01:37:22.320 | but almost never less than 43 minutes.

01:37:24.480 | So 43 minutes every time.

01:37:27.760 | But after doing this for a few months, I realized I was getting less motivated to do it.

01:37:33.600 | It's like, oh, it's not so much fun.

01:37:35.520 | This kind of I always get really red faced.

01:37:39.120 | It would take me like an hour to cool down afterwards.

01:37:41.200 | I'd have to take like a cold shower.

01:37:42.640 | And even then I would like continue sweating even after a cold shower, you know.

01:37:46.160 | So so one day I was just like, I just need to chill.

01:37:52.000 | I'm just going to relax and do the same ride, but at like half my normal pace.

01:37:58.880 | So I get on my bike and I'm just like,

01:38:01.040 | just going like a granny, you know, sitting more upright,

01:38:06.960 | you know, looking around and I was just like on my same path.

01:38:10.320 | But this time I was looking and there were dolphins jumping in the ocean that day.

01:38:13.440 | I was like, wow, dolphins.

01:38:15.440 | That's so badass.

01:38:16.320 | I grew up in Chicago.

01:38:17.600 | I'm looking at dolphins.

01:38:20.960 | And and yes, in the Marina Del Rey, I went under Marina Del Rey.

01:38:27.920 | There were a whole bunch of pelicans that were perching on the the breakwater thing.

01:38:34.720 | And at one point when I rode my bike near them, the pelicans all went.

01:38:37.760 | I was like, whoa, pelicans.

01:38:40.960 | And then like one of them shit in my mouth.

01:38:43.920 | And I was like, there was like the taste of like digested oyster shells.

01:38:49.760 | So that was a really unique experience.

01:38:51.520 | And so then I get back to my starting point where I would always time myself.

01:38:58.240 | And I looked at my watch and it had been 45 minutes.

01:39:03.120 | I was like, wait a minute.

01:39:05.200 | No way.

01:39:05.920 | Like I'm usually doing it in 43 minutes.

01:39:09.040 | I thought it would be like an hour and a half.

01:39:11.120 | I felt like I was going half speed.

01:39:13.120 | But I guess just because of the strength of my legs or whatever,

01:39:16.800 | I was going about the same pace, even though it felt like half the effort.

01:39:22.240 | So that just blew my mind.

01:39:24.800 | And yeah, I double checked.

01:39:27.280 | Yeah, 45 minutes.

01:39:28.320 | Oh, my God.

01:39:29.040 | So like that became a metaphor for how you can just relax and put in so much less effort

01:39:36.960 | and get almost the same result objectively.

01:39:42.720 | But psychologically, you feel so much better about it.

01:39:47.520 | So yeah, full circle to what we're talking about, whether it's travel or decision making.

01:39:56.720 | To me, the psychological experience matters more than anything.

01:40:04.160 | So yes, I could force my kid to go to the eight things I want to see in Paris

01:40:11.360 | and force him to sit next to me at a fancy restaurant that he doesn't like

01:40:15.440 | because dammit, it says that this has the best creme brulee in Paris.

01:40:21.600 | And I could make him do this.

01:40:23.680 | And objectively, I could say that that might cram in more experiences

01:40:30.160 | and technically make a better holiday.

01:40:32.480 | But guess what?

01:40:33.040 | The psychological experience of it would be worse

01:40:37.520 | than if I just book the flight, get there and just let my kid lead the way.

01:40:42.240 | I might see less stuff, but the psychological experience of it will be better.

01:40:47.760 | So yeah, I think I definitely value and prioritize

01:40:54.160 | the psychological, the inner experience of something.

01:40:58.240 | To me, you kind of satisfy the bike ride,

01:41:01.200 | which is you didn't try to get the ultimate maximum output from riding it.

01:41:05.760 | And in return, you actually got the maximum output you did.

01:41:08.960 | You actually were able to get 80 percent,

01:41:11.520 | you know, not even 99 percent of the the output in terms of pure,

01:41:16.800 | you know, physical output.

01:41:17.760 | But then you also got to enjoy the bike ride and all that.

01:41:20.000 | And to the Paris example, the funniest part is.

01:41:23.120 | To the average untrained American palate,

01:41:26.640 | I am fairly confident that the average creme brulee in Paris

01:41:30.240 | is going to be better than any creme brulee you've had.

01:41:32.960 | So, you know, does it need to be the best croissant or the best creme brulee?

01:41:37.200 | And I say this as someone who just recently searched for,

01:41:40.800 | oh, let's go to this bakery.

01:41:42.080 | They have the best this, you know, we did have one terrible croissant in Paris.

01:41:46.400 | But for the most part, the random croissant at any bakery is so good

01:41:50.320 | that I would tell you, even though I find it hard to take my own advice,

01:41:56.160 | that if you just don't track to the best one in the world,

01:42:01.040 | just track to a good one and like, enjoy that.

01:42:04.400 | And it will probably be a better experience than schlepping the whole family on the metro

01:42:10.320 | to go seven stops at, you know, early in the morning.

01:42:13.440 | So you don't have to wait too long of a line.

01:42:15.440 | And I say this as as advice.

01:42:17.440 | It's hard for me to take myself.

01:42:18.880 | But hopefully the pain I've endured to say it could save people some misery.

01:42:24.080 | Yeah, I have internalized satisficing so much that when I go to a restaurant

01:42:30.880 | and I don't even really care what restaurant I go to.

01:42:32.880 | I don't even maximize that.

01:42:35.040 | Whatever's nearby, it's fine.

01:42:37.360 | I'm sure it's fine.

01:42:38.080 | You know, as long as it doesn't completely suck.

01:42:42.080 | You know, if I see the one with the little flies and the broken fluorescent light.

01:42:45.600 | All right, maybe not that one.

01:42:46.960 | Maybe that one across the street instead.

01:42:48.800 | I can walk into almost any restaurant and my friends tease me for this.

01:42:52.560 | Here's how I order at the menu.

01:42:55.840 | I flip open the menu and basically the first thing I see in the first three seconds,

01:43:00.720 | I'm like, I just closed the menu.

01:43:01.920 | Like, that's what I'm having.

01:43:02.960 | And they're just like, you didn't look at everything.

01:43:04.800 | I'm like, I don't need to look at everything.

01:43:07.040 | I'm just going to eat something and it's going to be fine.

01:43:09.680 | Like, I don't even need to order the best thing on the menu.

01:43:12.080 | Just whatever.

01:43:12.800 | Or if I don't even feel like looking at the menu and the waiter comes by early.

01:43:16.800 | I'll just say, what's your best thing?

01:43:18.880 | Or what, you know, what do you recommend?

01:43:20.560 | What's your most popular dish?

01:43:21.680 | And I'll say, oh, the whatever, the chili.

01:43:24.560 | Like, yeah, give me that then.

01:43:26.240 | Like, I don't even look at the menu sometimes.

01:43:28.720 | I really, really deeply internalized the lessons from the Paradox of Choice book.

01:43:34.800 | Well, I'm going to recommend everyone check out both the writings you've had,

01:43:39.280 | the books you've written and that book.

01:43:40.720 | The one thing, I haven't done this as frequently as I wanted to,

01:43:45.360 | but I ask people because everyone here likes to travel.

01:43:48.240 | Is there a place, and I'm hoping that you use somewhere in New Zealand,

01:43:52.640 | since I've been dying for an excuse to go, that you're familiar with enough.

01:43:57.680 | Feel free to choose anywhere in the world that if someone were heading there,

01:44:00.560 | you'd recommend a couple of things.

01:44:02.960 | We don't need to give them eight things per day on an itinerary,

01:44:06.720 | but a couple of places that are your favorite anywhere in the world.

01:44:10.240 | Well, the first thing, let me start with a do not do in New Zealand.

01:44:15.120 | If you come to New Zealand, do not spend a single minute in any city.

01:44:22.240 | New Zealand is not Europe.

01:44:24.960 | In Europe, the cities contain the culture of the place.

01:44:28.800 | In New Zealand, the cities are just dumb generic cities.

01:44:32.480 | There is nothing special about any city in New Zealand.

01:44:34.960 | Everything that's wonderful about New Zealand is contained

01:44:38.720 | in the rural nature countryside or in the cute, small little towns.

01:44:44.320 | What you must do when you come to New Zealand is just rent a car,

01:44:50.160 | whether you rent a car at the Auckland airport and drive south

01:44:53.840 | or connect to Christchurch and just rent a car at the Christchurch airport and drive west.

01:44:58.240 | Just drive away from the city.

01:45:01.360 | Don't spend a single minute in any city in New Zealand.

01:45:04.000 | Okay, so that's number one.

01:45:06.320 | What to do?

01:45:11.920 | Honestly, I'm just going to leave this open.

01:45:16.880 | I think the best thing to do then is rent a car,

01:45:20.800 | install the booking.com app on your phone because every single motel in New Zealand,

01:45:27.600 | and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of these cute little motels,

01:45:31.760 | they're all on this app and it will show you your immediate availability.

01:45:34.960 | So you can just be impulsive.

01:45:37.440 | You don't even need to book everything in advance.

01:45:39.040 | You can just go on a drive and see what looks appealing and say like,

01:45:44.720 | "What's that over there? Let's just go there."

01:45:46.240 | And then when it's getting late afternoon

01:45:48.560 | and you're feeling like it's time to pick where you're going to stay,

01:45:50.880 | you just open the app with the GPS and it says like,

01:45:52.960 | "Okay, here's the six motels in your area that have availability."

01:45:55.840 | And you just pick one and they're all good.

01:45:57.760 | My favourite road trips in New Zealand have been through this method with no plan.

01:46:05.040 | I just go to a certain direction and the whole country is so safe

01:46:11.440 | and the people are so nice and there are plenty of motels.

01:46:16.800 | And yeah, that's more than telling you one destination to go to.

01:46:21.280 | It's that.

01:46:22.320 | But okay, but lastly, if I had to pick just one,

01:46:25.200 | if you've got little kids, one hour north of Wellington,

01:46:29.600 | there is a very special place called Staglands, S-T-A-G-L-A-N-D-S.

01:46:37.680 | It is an open petting zoo kind of thing.

01:46:41.920 | The animals are not in cages, they're just roaming around.

01:46:45.200 | And all of the animals will eat out of your hand.

01:46:47.920 | And you can just go up to whether it's deer or birds or peacocks, geese, little pigs.

01:46:58.800 | Yeah, everything will eat out of your hand and you just pet them

01:47:03.680 | and you're just surrounded in this wonderful valley full of animals.

01:47:10.560 | And especially if you get to go on a weekday, you'll be one of the only people there.

01:47:14.560 | It's just it's a really, really, really special place.

01:47:17.280 | So there's my secret hidden recommendation.

01:47:20.640 | But actually, you know what?

01:47:22.080 | Anybody, if you're coming to New Zealand, email me and I'll give you more examples.

01:47:25.440 | Go to my website, click contact and there's my email address.

01:47:29.600 | I really enjoy my open inbox.

01:47:31.520 | And the reason I do interviews like this is because of the people I meet,

01:47:35.840 | the people who listen to these things.

01:47:37.600 | And come on, if you've heard my voice for an hour and a half,

01:47:40.320 | send me an email, say hello, introduce yourself.

01:47:43.680 | And if you're coming to New Zealand, definitely let me know.

01:47:46.480 | And I'll give you more detailed tips because I've been here for 10 years now.

01:47:50.160 | And I know most of the secret places.

01:47:52.960 | It's on our list.

01:47:54.880 | We have kids, stag lands will be on the list as well.

01:47:58.240 | This has been so much fun.

01:48:00.000 | I'm sure we could go longer, but I would love to wrap up and just say,

01:48:04.000 | is there any final place you'd like people to check out

01:48:06.880 | or anywhere you'd like to send them before we go?

01:48:09.360 | Oh, you don't mean physical place it?

01:48:11.680 | Oh, no, no.

01:48:12.240 | I just mean, I know you're not promoting a new thing, but.

01:48:17.200 | No, I'm never promoting.

01:48:18.800 | I'm post agenda.

01:48:19.840 | Anybody actually just, I really like hearing from strangers.

01:48:24.880 | I really enjoy it when people introduce themselves.

01:48:27.120 | It's like a deepest sense of joy to me to know people from around the world.

01:48:32.080 | So yeah, any fans of Chris's all the hacks, go send me an email,

01:48:36.720 | go to my website, S-I-V-E dot R-S.

01:48:39.440 | And you don't even have to ask me a question, just introduce yourself and say hi.

01:48:43.280 | Well, I know you enjoy email and you respond because that's how this all started.

01:48:46.640 | So I'm so glad we got to do it.

01:48:48.960 | Thank you so much for being here.

Derek Sivers on Living a Happier Life, Saying No, Prioritizing Goals and More

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