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00:01:34.640 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading
00:01:44.920 | your life, money, and travel, all while spending less and saving more.
00:01:49.040 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you on my
00:01:52.480 | journey to find all the hacks.
00:01:54.600 | Now, in today's world, we are constantly surrounded by photos, videos,
00:01:59.400 | and more of all the amazing things everyone else is doing.
00:02:02.520 | And I'd be surprised if you don't often feel the FOMO that comes with it.
00:02:06.280 | I know I do.
00:02:07.000 | And if you're an optimizer like me, you might also find yourself facing a fair
00:02:11.720 | amount of FOBO as well, which is a new term I learned from today's guests
00:02:16.160 | and sort of like FOMO's cousin.
00:02:17.920 | It's the fear of a better option.
00:02:20.760 | And it often manifests itself for me as analysis paralysis, and it can take a
00:02:25.600 | toll on even the smallest decisions.
00:02:28.200 | So that's why I am so excited to be talking with Patrick McGinnis, because
00:02:33.440 | in 2004, he actually first coined the terms FOMO and FOBO.
00:02:38.600 | Since then, he's been featured in the New York Times, Politico, and more.
00:02:42.880 | He's given a popular TED talk on decision-making.
00:02:45.920 | He's written two bestselling books, The 10% Entrepreneur, Live Your
00:02:50.320 | Startup Dream Without Quitting Your Day Job, and most recently, Fear of Missing
00:02:54.320 | Out, Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice.
00:02:58.240 | Finally, he's the host of the hit podcast, FOMO Sapiens, where I will
00:03:03.440 | be joining him next week as a guest.
00:03:05.360 | In our conversation, we'll talk about the history of FOMO, ways to overcome
00:03:10.440 | the toll it can have on our lives.
00:03:12.240 | We'll talk about FOBO and hear Patrick's framework to vastly
00:03:16.040 | improve your decision-making.
00:03:17.720 | And finally, he'll share some of his favorite life hacks.
00:03:20.480 | One quick thing before we get started.
00:03:22.800 | I'm considering working with a few sponsors to support the show.
00:03:26.080 | They'll only be brands I believe in, and you'll be able to fast forward
00:03:29.480 | the ads if you're not interested.
00:03:31.040 | But I just want to let you know in advance, and hopefully you understand,
00:03:34.440 | that it's all in service of continuing to deliver an amazing show to you each week.
00:03:39.280 | All right, so let's jump in.
00:03:41.480 | Patrick, thanks for being here.
00:03:47.040 | It's my pleasure.
00:03:47.800 | How are you?
00:03:48.360 | You know, I fractured my foot last night on the dance floor at a
00:03:52.200 | wedding, which was not fun.
00:03:53.600 | Um, but you know, I'm here.
00:03:55.800 | If you're going to break your foot, that's a good reason to do it.
00:03:59.200 | You know what I mean?
00:04:00.080 | It's either going to be athletics or dancing.
00:04:02.400 | Those are the only two excuses.
00:04:03.840 | Yeah.
00:04:05.600 | Although at the hospital, I was telling people, I was like,
00:04:07.520 | "Oh, they're hedges."
00:04:08.320 | I was like, "Dancing."
00:04:08.960 | They're like, "Oh, are you a professional dancer?"
00:04:10.240 | It's like, "No, I was at a dance.
00:04:11.560 | I was at a wedding.
00:04:12.360 | We were drinking.
00:04:13.520 | The floor was slippery."
00:04:15.240 | Anyways, so you've got a word in the dictionary.
00:04:18.080 | I never even thought to put that on my bucket list.
00:04:20.880 | And now I'm a little jealous.
00:04:22.160 | Did you ever imagine FOMO becoming such a major part of our culture
00:04:26.440 | when you first coined the term?
00:04:27.840 | I did not.
00:04:29.080 | In fact, I wrote this article back in 2004, and I put it in the humor section
00:04:36.840 | of our school newspaper over at Harvard Business School, which, I mean, the fact
00:04:41.520 | I was writing for the newspaper at a business school tells you that I was
00:04:44.800 | not the usual person, I guess.
00:04:46.760 | Yeah.
00:04:47.720 | And how long did it take before you realized that you'd created this thing
00:04:53.440 | that you'd be hearing every day in the media and just in casual conversation?
00:04:57.720 | Yeah.
00:04:58.400 | So I did a forensic analysis, actually.
00:05:00.280 | I actually hired a person, a web forensic expert to try to understand what the
00:05:08.760 | heck happened, because I missed out on this whole thing.
00:05:11.840 | I was not aware of FOMO's prominence, actually, until a
00:05:16.080 | reporter called me one day.
00:05:17.200 | And he said, "You invented the word FOMO."
00:05:19.840 | And I said, "Yeah, that's true.
00:05:21.280 | Why do you care?"
00:05:22.840 | And he said, "Well, it's in the dictionary."
00:05:24.280 | And I was like, "What?"
00:05:25.160 | This was in 2014, 10 years after I wrote that article.
00:05:28.680 | And so when I got more involved and was working on a book about the topic, I
00:05:32.720 | decided to really get into it and try to figure out what happened and what I was
00:05:36.080 | able to reconstruct through my own research and then the work of the forensic
00:05:39.080 | person, is that my article came out in 2004.
00:05:43.320 | It was the first time it was used anywhere in an article called McGinnis'
00:05:46.680 | Two Foes, Social Theory at Harvard Business School.
00:05:49.400 | And then it stayed on in the school because it became very popular and it
00:05:53.760 | became a term that was used there.
00:05:55.400 | And then it spread to other MBA programs.
00:05:57.200 | And in 2007, three years later, Business Week wrote an article about FOMO at
00:06:01.440 | business schools.
00:06:02.120 | And so that was kind of a moment and it's sort of popularity spreading.
00:06:06.640 | And then in 2009, a woman called Katrina Thake, who is the founder of Flickr,
00:06:12.200 | wrote a blog post about it in reference to South by Southwest.
00:06:15.240 | And sometimes people credit her with being the creator of FOMO.
00:06:17.840 | And you know, it's just the internet doesn't lie.
00:06:20.840 | She used the term and popularized it for sure, but it was not her creation.
00:06:24.720 | And then from there, it really took off and it was admitted to the dictionary in
00:06:28.120 | 2013.
00:06:28.760 | Wow.
00:06:29.960 | And what was the premise of the original article?
00:06:32.440 | So the article was, it's actually, I think it's a funny article still.
00:06:36.560 | I like when I read it, I'm always like, I'm pleased that I wrote it.
00:06:39.800 | I was like, wow, he's a much better writer than I think I imagined at the time.
00:06:42.960 | But it's this satirical piece about the day in the life of a typical student in
00:06:51.040 | an MBA program and how they struggle to do all of these things.
00:06:56.120 | And I actually give somebody's calendar, sort of like at six o'clock you go to
00:06:59.440 | drinks with friends at six 45, you go stop by a lecture at six, you know, for
00:07:03.880 | seven minutes to say hello to this one girl you met, then five minutes later,
00:07:07.400 | you're off to dinner.
00:07:08.200 | And then, you know, I sort of take you through and then there are four birthday
00:07:11.000 | parties and you know, you're out until three.
00:07:13.360 | And so it's sort of, because that was the life that we led.
00:07:15.760 | And I always, I'm from a small town in Maine called Sanford, Maine.
00:07:19.360 | It's really simple.
00:07:20.800 | People don't live that way.
00:07:22.480 | It's a kind of place where you do like one thing a day.
00:07:24.360 | And then to find myself in this really uber social environment, which was very
00:07:28.280 | much fueled by the fact that we had just come out of nine 11 and people were sort
00:07:31.240 | of like, you know, realize the fragility of life and how you have to live life to
00:07:35.080 | the fullest because it was so different than the life I had known before.
00:07:40.440 | I decided I had to write an article about it because it was this, you know, I
00:07:43.680 | started using this word FOMO and I was like, I got to write about this cause
00:07:45.960 | it's like, I'm going to leave this place and go back to the normal world.
00:07:49.000 | And I'm not going to have this craziness in my life anymore.
00:07:51.440 | Of course, now we all have FOMO because of social media.
00:07:55.960 | And funny enough, when I wrote that article, Mark Zuckerberg was a mile away
00:08:00.080 | from me on the other side of the Charles river inventing the first version of
00:08:04.000 | Facebook.
00:08:04.600 | And I credit sort of him and Facebook and social media with making FOMO much more
00:08:09.240 | than a sort of high class problem, but something that all of us feel.
00:08:11.960 | Yeah.
00:08:13.240 | And, and just so we're all on the same page, you know, as the, as the term
00:08:17.080 | creator, do you have a definition that you prefer for FOMO?
00:08:20.480 | I'm sure there are many in different dictionaries.
00:08:22.480 | It's a great question.
00:08:24.000 | I, nobody's ever asked me that before.
00:08:25.440 | And it's true.
00:08:26.480 | So when I decided to write this book, I did a ton of research because I'm not a
00:08:31.600 | psychologist, nor did I ever claim to be a psychologist, but psychologists love to
00:08:36.240 | write about FOMO.
00:08:36.920 | And there have been so many journal articles, like it's quite amazing to me.
00:08:40.720 | Then you have a bunch of PhDs writing articles about FOMO.
00:08:44.480 | It's just mind blowing.
00:08:46.080 | And so I read all of them and I realized that there was no consistency in how the
00:08:51.600 | academic world and the clinical psychology world was defining FOMO.
00:08:55.440 | And then I read all of the dictionary versions, obviously, and the urban
00:08:58.640 | dictionary definition as well, which is, you know, one of the first times it was
00:09:02.360 | written about actually in about 2007, I believe.
00:09:05.040 | And I realized that it was all over the map.
00:09:07.560 | And so I formulated a definition that is my standard definition.
00:09:10.680 | And the definition is this.
00:09:12.360 | FOMO is an anxiety often fueled by social media based on the perception that other
00:09:19.600 | people are having more beneficial experiences than you.
00:09:22.120 | And it is a fear of being excluded from a beneficial collective experience.
00:09:27.360 | And you said a perception.
00:09:29.560 | So obviously it doesn't have to be reality to be FOMO.
00:09:32.760 | Exactly.
00:09:33.880 | So that's where the rubber hits the road in terms of the pathology of this whole
00:09:38.200 | thing is its perception.
00:09:40.200 | So you see something and that's why social media is so insidious.
00:09:44.360 | You see something, it looks amazing, but we all know that it's filtered
00:09:49.480 | and that it's a moment in time and that the things that were being served up,
00:09:53.880 | especially on Instagram, for example, are they do not correspond to reality, but
00:09:57.760 | we don't think critically about that.
00:09:59.120 | And so you see something that isn't even real, but it provokes feelings of
00:10:03.280 | inadequacy and of anxiety and stress.
00:10:07.080 | And so you're spending a lot of energy focused on something that's not even
00:10:10.800 | possible.
00:10:11.840 | And that's where the perception comes in.
00:10:13.280 | I often, you know, the way I think about it is perception is often deception.
00:10:16.680 | I have to think most people know this, right?
00:10:19.440 | Most people, if you ask them consciously are like, yeah, of course, I'm only
00:10:23.160 | seeing the best of this.
00:10:24.280 | I'm seeing my friend with three kids on a vacation and they're all smiling and
00:10:28.160 | having fun and a vacation with three kids might have those moments, but it
00:10:31.480 | certainly has other moments as well.
00:10:33.200 | Is there a reason that people are just kind of unable to process that reality
00:10:38.840 | when they see these images, when they hear about these things?
00:10:42.200 | And is there a way that they can avoid it?
00:10:45.880 | There is.
00:10:46.640 | And, you know, I think the reality is that people know, but these companies
00:10:52.800 | that make social media networks and other things, and not just social media, of
00:10:57.480 | course, it can be in things you see on television or things you hear about in
00:11:01.200 | the real world.
00:11:01.760 | But focusing particularly on social media is these companies are extremely
00:11:06.240 | sophisticated and they are creating habit forming applications that are designed to
00:11:12.720 | manipulate you.
00:11:13.440 | You know, this is like, this is all, you know, the attention economy, as it's
00:11:18.120 | been referred to, it's all about stealing your attention and presenting you with
00:11:21.280 | things that manipulate you.
00:11:22.400 | So, you know, it's not your fault.
00:11:23.960 | It's not like we're all idiots.
00:11:25.440 | It's that the system as it's been created is so powerful and so well done.
00:11:29.480 | Now, what I tend to think and what I recommend people to do and what I do for
00:11:33.800 | myself, because I know highly susceptible, I'm the first FOMO sapiens, right?
00:11:38.560 | I am the creator of FOMO.
00:11:40.880 | I feel FOMO like cripplingly and I've had to really learn how to manage that.
00:11:44.840 | And so what I have done is I'm very mindful about when I use social media, how
00:11:49.800 | it makes me feel.
00:11:50.560 | And for example, say I'm following some person on Facebook or something and they
00:11:55.880 | put a post up, it makes me feel inadequate or it makes me want to devalue what I
00:12:00.760 | have in my own life.
00:12:01.640 | I unfollow that person.
00:12:03.480 | If I'm using Instagram and it makes me feel stressed, I close it down.
00:12:08.640 | I think that's the critical thing is understand why you're opening that app,
00:12:12.080 | understand what you're getting from it and understand the unintended
00:12:16.520 | consequences of the use of that app.
00:12:18.440 | And if you do that, it's great because it's kind of like eating food, right?
00:12:22.480 | Like if you eat something, you just stuff it in your mouth and it doesn't make you
00:12:26.840 | feel good.
00:12:27.280 | You're not going to eat more of it.
00:12:28.280 | So why would you do the same thing with social media?
00:12:31.760 | Yeah.
00:12:32.160 | I mean, if you want to get to the end of the feed, do you want to finish the
00:12:34.440 | plate?
00:12:34.880 | You know, I grew up in a clean plate club household.
00:12:38.000 | So, you know, even if you don't like it, I feel like I have this burning desire to
00:12:41.640 | finish a meal without, without any control.
00:12:44.440 | And so does that mean that you, are you someone who doesn't sleep with the phone
00:12:49.040 | on the side of the bed or do you treat your phone differently in your household
00:12:52.880 | to try to avoid some of these things?
00:12:54.480 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:55.560 | It's such a good question because I remember I read some stat, um, when I was
00:13:01.480 | researching and the number of people who sleep with their, their phone by the bed
00:13:06.480 | is, it's, it's mind blowing.
00:13:08.040 | It's North of 80% might be North of 90%, um, these days.
00:13:12.320 | And I remember, I, I mean, I, we all know these people, maybe it's you who's
00:13:16.400 | listening, who sleep with their phone under the pillow.
00:13:19.000 | Do you do that?
00:13:20.200 | No, no.
00:13:21.920 | I keep, I mean, I do keep it near the bed.
00:13:23.720 | So here's the thing, not, not good, but about the phone, right?
00:13:27.760 | So the phone, they're smart.
00:13:30.240 | Like it's, again, it's like really well-designed kind of stuff.
00:13:32.400 | Like the phone manufacturers and designers put an alarm clock on the
00:13:37.040 | phone and that's the Trojan horse.
00:13:39.240 | Cause you're like, it's very reliable.
00:13:41.720 | And so you want to have the phone near you.
00:13:43.840 | So you have the alarm clock.
00:13:44.720 | That's why a lot of people started the culture of bringing
00:13:47.880 | the phone into the bedroom.
00:13:48.640 | And once you do that, then you've let it into your personal
00:13:52.000 | space and then you're done.
00:13:52.920 | And so what I learned, I used to do that myself.
00:13:55.840 | And then I decided a number of years ago to leave it in the other room.
00:14:00.400 | And I found it had a tremendous benefit for me.
00:14:02.600 | And then I was given this phone bed.
00:14:04.800 | Ariana Huffington actually makes these phone beds.
00:14:07.160 | Like you tuck your phone into a little bed at the end of the day.
00:14:10.360 | It's really cute actually.
00:14:11.520 | And so she gave me one of those.
00:14:13.560 | So I use that now for my phone.
00:14:15.200 | Are there other habits to adopt that help lighten?
00:14:20.680 | I guess now that I have a noun for it, since FOMO is an
00:14:22.840 | anxiety to lighten that anxiety.
00:14:24.480 | Yeah.
00:14:25.960 | So a couple of things that I would recommend people to do.
00:14:28.640 | Number one is you need to monitor your phone use and all of our phones have
00:14:33.200 | these digital wellness suites now that are built into them.
00:14:35.640 | And so I take a good look every week at how I'm spending my time online.
00:14:40.120 | It's just helpful to be mindful of like, Oh my goodness.
00:14:42.920 | Why did I spend 43 minutes a day on Instagram?
00:14:46.880 | Like, what did that give me and why did I pick that up?
00:14:49.080 | So just thinking about the root cause of why you engage in social media,
00:14:51.920 | it's really important to do.
00:14:53.200 | Another thing that I recommend people to do is if you find that you're
00:14:57.680 | unable to control your use of a certain site, like there's a site called
00:15:02.840 | political wire that is very addictive and I love it, but it makes me feel bad.
00:15:07.560 | So I have a rule that I'm only allowed to look at that site when I'm at a
00:15:10.520 | desktop and not on my phone.
00:15:12.640 | And that really helps me to cut down on my usage.
00:15:14.560 | It's just like a rule I have.
00:15:15.400 | I'm not allowed to look at Twitter either on my phone and I don't do that.
00:15:18.080 | And when I slip up, I noticed that my quality of life goes down dramatically.
00:15:22.480 | And then there are some other hacks that I don't have any
00:15:26.600 | distractive apps on my front page.
00:15:28.200 | I have to go into a folder to find them.
00:15:30.040 | And so I create sort of a barrier and that makes it a bit hard to use them.
00:15:34.520 | And the other thing that some people do, which I have not chosen to do,
00:15:37.360 | but some find helpful is to put your phone in grayscale.
00:15:41.240 | And I'm actually going to try, I have a little hack I'm going to try now.
00:15:44.280 | I'm announcing this to the world today on your show.
00:15:46.560 | I'm going to buy the iPhone mini because it is my view that if you have a smaller
00:15:51.560 | phone, you are less likely to want to pick it up all the time and look at stuff
00:15:55.520 | because it's just, let's, you know, it's less of a in your face kind of thing.
00:15:58.960 | Like the bigger the screen, the more the temptation is to watch a video
00:16:01.640 | and you know, all that sort of stuff.
00:16:02.520 | I don't want, I want less fun in my life, a lot more.
00:16:04.680 | And so I'm going to get a smaller phone.
00:16:06.360 | I like that.
00:16:07.200 | I mean, you could go all the way back and get a, an old like Motorola
00:16:10.840 | razor that can't do anything.
00:16:12.560 | I'm not interested in that.
00:16:13.840 | It's a fascinating concept because I, I know people who have done that.
00:16:17.320 | My view with all of this stuff is it's not about abstinence.
00:16:21.720 | It's about sort of having a healthy diet.
00:16:24.920 | Like if you're trying to lose weight and you just don't eat anything for days and
00:16:29.040 | days, that's not sustainable.
00:16:31.160 | It's not healthy.
00:16:32.400 | And also it's not fun.
00:16:33.400 | Right.
00:16:34.320 | And so I would much more be interested in changing my diet to something that I can,
00:16:39.800 | you know, learn to enjoy.
00:16:41.120 | Like I used to be, I lost like 50 pounds in high school.
00:16:43.520 | I used to eat bacon double cheeseburgers every Friday night and a Boston cream pie.
00:16:47.600 | I mean, that was what I thought I liked.
00:16:50.280 | And nowadays I have a much healthier diet and I enjoy that and I don't want Boston
00:16:54.680 | green pie actually.
00:16:55.640 | Like if you gave me Boston green pie, I would say I'm good.
00:16:58.200 | Right.
00:16:58.680 | And so I think it has to be that with the way that we think about how we engage with
00:17:03.280 | technology.
00:17:03.720 | Yeah.
00:17:04.040 | It seems like with every business you get to a certain size and the cracks start to
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00:17:10.760 | Things that you used to do in a day are taking a week and you have too many manual
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00:20:10.680 | Now we talked a lot about technology.
00:20:14.280 | You did a lot of research for the book.
00:20:16.160 | Is this a new phenomenon, right?
00:20:18.400 | You talked about it before there was social media.
00:20:21.320 | How do you think the concept of FOMO has evolved?
00:20:24.720 | So FOMO is part of the experience of being a human.
00:20:29.240 | It goes back to the earliest humans.
00:20:31.640 | And I did a bunch of research on sort of evolutionary biology.
00:20:34.640 | The fact that the earliest humans were keenly aware of what they needed and what
00:20:40.640 | they didn't have in order to survive.
00:20:42.920 | So, you know, they ran with the pack.
00:20:45.040 | You know, you stayed in the group because if you weren't in the group, you didn't
00:20:48.480 | get the information about where the best water was, where the best food was, where
00:20:52.760 | you should do your migratory pattern, where there's good shelter, and also you're
00:20:57.000 | more vulnerable to attack.
00:20:58.360 | And in fact, if you've ever been to Africa and seen the migration of the wildebeest,
00:21:01.800 | or just Google it if you haven't had a shot to go there, because it's really
00:21:04.360 | quite incredible, the wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti and they stick in a
00:21:11.680 | herd and it's called a swarm migration because if one gets separated, then it'll
00:21:16.320 | get attacked and the predators will eat them.
00:21:18.760 | But if they stick together, maybe they get one, but they don't kill them all off.
00:21:22.400 | And so it's part of their evolutionary biology to stick with the crap.
00:21:25.960 | So it was part of how we survived physically.
00:21:30.360 | It has evolved into something much more emotional over time.
00:21:34.080 | And one of the cool things that I realized in my research, this is like one of the
00:21:38.120 | most crazy things that ever happened to me in my life, which is that the term
00:21:42.360 | keeping up with the Joneses, that is sort of analog FOMO.
00:21:45.840 | It was a comic strip from a hundred years ago in the New York Globe newspaper about
00:21:51.680 | this family that lived next to this Jones family.
00:21:54.200 | And they were trying to keep up with them all the time.
00:21:55.840 | And it was like, you know, Oh, Mr.
00:21:57.840 | Jones is like wearing a red tie, dad, you got to get a red tie.
00:22:01.440 | And it's not like the most humorous thing I've ever read, but the name of the
00:22:04.880 | family that's feeling all this FOMO is the McGinnis family.
00:22:09.000 | So I have a fictional ancestor who invented FOMO.
00:22:12.960 | Somebody wrote that in a paper actually, and they tied him to me, which was, I
00:22:17.960 | couldn't believe it.
00:22:18.600 | I still kind of blows my mind, but I guess the point of all that is that it is
00:22:22.800 | something that we've always had.
00:22:24.040 | The difference is that we think about core drivers of FOMO, you know, it's things
00:22:28.920 | like information, the quantity of information you're receiving, right?
00:22:32.000 | So that you have more data points.
00:22:33.720 | It's the ability to compare yourself with others.
00:22:36.160 | The more interconnected we are, the more we can see what other people are doing.
00:22:39.200 | And so over time, just the amount of people that are in your daily sort of
00:22:44.960 | experience has gone through the roof, especially with social media.
00:22:48.320 | And so, you know, if you were living a hundred years ago in my hometown in Maine,
00:22:54.640 | you didn't really know what was going on outside of there.
00:22:57.240 | You were served up very specific elements of FOMO, like a cigarette commercial or
00:23:01.080 | something where celebrities are like smoking so beautiful, like, isn't this
00:23:04.240 | great?
00:23:04.560 | Like we love cigarettes and maybe you were susceptible, but now it's like
00:23:07.400 | everything you do, you're being served up this content.
00:23:10.320 | You said something earlier about the abundance of information.
00:23:13.640 | And it reminded me that your original article was actually about two things.
00:23:18.560 | It wasn't just FOMO.
00:23:19.800 | It was this thing, FOBO, which since getting to know you, I learned as a thing.
00:23:24.080 | And I actually think could possibly, and I'm curious your perspective, be an even
00:23:30.040 | more difficult or bigger strain on people's days, especially when it comes to
00:23:35.520 | work and not just social life.
00:23:37.640 | How do you compare the two and especially the relative impact they have on society
00:23:43.520 | and people's lives?
00:23:44.280 | So FOBO stands for fear of a better option.
00:23:47.680 | And it's the idea that when you have to make a decision and you have perfectly
00:23:51.800 | acceptable things in front of you, that you are sort of holding out for the
00:23:55.880 | riskless option, like the perfect thing.
00:23:58.400 | And so you're like, well, you know, I'm just going to wait until it's so clear
00:24:03.560 | to me that this thing is the right decision.
00:24:05.320 | And so people, you know, sort of delay and it's really, it's an affliction of
00:24:09.760 | abundance in an affluent society where you have everything you need, then you
00:24:15.280 | can get stuck in this place.
00:24:16.280 | Like if you don't have options, whether it's food, if you don't have sufficient
00:24:20.040 | food, you're not going to be like, well, let's see, I don't know what to have
00:24:22.520 | today.
00:24:22.720 | You're going to be like, I'm going to eat whatever I can get.
00:24:25.040 | Right.
00:24:26.200 | If you live in a place where the economy is terrible and there's no jobs, you're
00:24:30.880 | not going to be like interviewing for 17 jobs and waiting for the, it's just,
00:24:34.040 | you're not going to do that.
00:24:34.960 | And so I think it's much more damaging than FOMO for the simple reason that FOMO
00:24:39.840 | does have positive aspects.
00:24:41.560 | FOMO can be a tremendous and powerful motivator of human behavior if used in
00:24:47.000 | the right ways.
00:24:47.520 | Um, FOBO is just bad because you don't decide on things and you are once again,
00:24:54.880 | the sort of mired in the perception that there's something better that's going to
00:24:58.320 | come for you.
00:24:58.800 | And as you wait for that perfect thing, the exceptional options that you have in
00:25:03.000 | front of you right now may disappear and you'll end up with nothing.
00:25:05.720 | And so I always think of FOMO like drinking wine, a little wine is great,
00:25:09.720 | loosens you up, maybe try something new dance on that dance floor.
00:25:13.080 | Don't break your foot too much wine.
00:25:15.800 | You know, you're not going to feel good the next day.
00:25:17.480 | FOMO is like smoking cigarettes, bad for you, bad for everybody around you feels
00:25:21.840 | good, sure, but nothing good for you.
00:25:24.880 | And is FOMO directly linked or maybe even a synonym to analysis paralysis or how do
00:25:31.200 | you, are those similar?
00:25:32.720 | They are.
00:25:33.760 | So the paradox of choice, which if any of you read it by Barry Schwartz is a
00:25:38.320 | fantastic book.
00:25:39.480 | I love it.
00:25:40.040 | And I didn't read that book until actually, I think I read it.
00:25:43.080 | His book came out in 2004.
00:25:46.000 | So I'm not claiming that I invented the paradox of choice.
00:25:48.600 | He clearly did.
00:25:49.440 | He's been doing that his whole career, but I think that they have a lot of things in
00:25:52.480 | common, the idea that the more choice we have, the less happy we are is very much
00:25:58.280 | in the realm of the FOMO sort of situation.
00:26:00.800 | Yeah.
00:26:01.360 | So I have a lot of FOMO issues and my wife and I used to struggle trying to figure out
00:26:06.440 | where we'd go for dinner.
00:26:07.360 | And my solution, which I'm sure is not the best solution was I printed off a list of
00:26:12.760 | like 12 cuisines and we would just pass it between each other and we each had to
00:26:16.240 | cross one off.
00:26:17.000 | Uh, and then finally we'd get to the end and we were like, okay, tonight we're
00:26:20.400 | having Indian food.
00:26:21.440 | And I feel like when I go to a restaurant, I'm in a similar mindset where sometimes if
00:26:25.560 | it's like a single use menu, I ask for a pen and I start crossing things off until I
00:26:30.080 | try to land on something.
00:26:31.280 | And rationally, I'm like, you know what, if I just looked at what I thought were the
00:26:35.680 | top three things and just picked one, I would probably enjoy this dinner experience
00:26:39.800 | better because I didn't spend my whole time stressing out about what to pick.
00:26:43.360 | But I have this burning desire that I think, you know, unfortunately is coupled very
00:26:48.200 | heavily with my optimization personality and probably why I started this podcast.
00:26:52.600 | But to get the most optimal outcome, to save the most money, to have the best
00:26:56.880 | experience.
00:26:57.680 | And there are probably circumstances where that matters and some that aren't and
00:27:01.880 | circumstances where it doesn't matter at all.
00:27:03.280 | How can you help me?
00:27:04.560 | Okay, this is really good.
00:27:06.280 | And by the way, I love that we're having this conversation because optimization is a
00:27:12.720 | good thing, but it can be incredibly crippling.
00:27:15.880 | And I am also an optimizer.
00:27:20.160 | I also have a crazy amount of FOBO, like that's the reason I came up with the word
00:27:24.680 | because I was like, that is me.
00:27:26.160 | And I have seen, though, when FOBO gets out of control and it gets really messed up, it
00:27:33.840 | can ruin people's lives.
00:27:34.920 | And I'm happy to tell you some stories about what I've seen.
00:27:37.440 | But here's the thing, and I did a TED video about this, a TED talk video about my
00:27:43.080 | decision-making methodology that I've been using now for my entire adult life.
00:27:47.120 | When I make decisions, I classify them into three areas, three buckets, high
00:27:53.080 | stakes, low stakes, and no stakes.
00:27:55.160 | High stakes decisions are ones that need real due diligence and real work and a
00:28:01.040 | structured process.
00:28:01.920 | You know, it's like, where should I go to college?
00:28:03.720 | Should I change a job?
00:28:04.960 | Things like that.
00:28:05.520 | You know, low stakes decisions are things that require some judgment, but I won't
00:28:11.480 | remember really having decided about these things in about a month's time.
00:28:15.960 | So it's things like, which printer should I buy?
00:28:18.200 | Right?
00:28:18.600 | Which hotel should I stay at?
00:28:20.960 | Stuff like that.
00:28:21.560 | So, you know, it's like, there is some money involved, there's an investment, you
00:28:24.960 | want to work well, but, you know, you don't need to like spend your whole life
00:28:29.480 | making a decision.
00:28:30.520 | And then there's what's called no stakes decisions.
00:28:33.000 | Those are things that you literally won't remember having decided in three days.
00:28:36.480 | Like, could you tell me what you had for dinner three nights ago in your
00:28:38.800 | decision-making process?
00:28:40.360 | Could you do it?
00:28:40.840 | Probably not.
00:28:41.800 | There you go.
00:28:42.400 | Okay.
00:28:42.920 | So when you have a no stakes decision and I used to be that guy, I'd go to a
00:28:48.520 | restaurant.
00:28:49.080 | I mean, you know how New Yorkers are too.
00:28:50.600 | Everybody's like, well, they try to customize their order in every way.
00:28:53.800 | Like, can I have a salad, but like hold the kale and also can you add back the
00:28:56.640 | kale and all that sort of stuff.
00:28:58.160 | When I have a no stakes decision, I simply outsource.
00:29:00.880 | I, when I go to a restaurant, I will say, you know, I don't eat this and this, but
00:29:06.720 | I eat everything else.
00:29:07.440 | You decide what we're going to have.
00:29:09.800 | You know, if I had a strong feeling about it, I would express that opinion.
00:29:12.520 | But if I'm in the Fobo space, then I take myself and the drama out of it.
00:29:17.320 | So that's how I deal with that.
00:29:19.000 | When it's a low stakes decision, which is something that has some relative
00:29:22.600 | importance, I outsource it to people.
00:29:26.080 | So I will say, you know, say I'm buying that printer.
00:29:30.160 | Like I have a friend who knows all about that stuff.
00:29:32.880 | I'll say to him, I want to buy a printer.
00:29:34.880 | I need basic functionality.
00:29:36.520 | I want it to be less than $300.
00:29:37.840 | What do you think?
00:29:38.560 | And this is the guy who sent you three links to Amazon, you know, and then
00:29:41.320 | basically decides for you because when you go on Amazon, there's like 973
00:29:45.600 | printers and they all look the same.
00:29:46.800 | So I just find a person who has some expertise and I outsource to them.
00:29:51.120 | It's kind of like having a travel agent.
00:29:52.880 | If you're doing travel, stuff like that.
00:29:54.320 | And then for the high stakes, I do it myself, but I, you know, I engage with
00:29:57.800 | other people and I have a whole structure process that I read about in the book.
00:30:00.280 | But that outsourcing piece and people notice it.
00:30:02.760 | It's funny.
00:30:03.120 | People are like, Patrick, you always go with the flow.
00:30:05.280 | You don't make decisions about these things.
00:30:06.800 | And I'm like, yeah, it's not that I'm not decisive.
00:30:08.840 | It's that I am freeing up my time and space and energy for things
00:30:12.960 | that matter, and these just don't.
00:30:14.240 | And if they did matter and I did have an opinion, I would know it and I
00:30:17.480 | would express that opinion, but I just don't care.
00:30:19.640 | Are there any other tactics if you're in that middle ground?
00:30:25.760 | I think the low stakes decisions seem like the toughest ones for me.
00:30:28.840 | You know, I'm thinking the hotel is a great example and I have the exact
00:30:34.280 | problem you're talking about where it's there are so many hotels and they're
00:30:39.280 | probably all fine above a certain category.
00:30:41.560 | And I could outsource that, but I still have this feeling of, gosh, the person
00:30:46.440 | I outsource this to, what if they didn't think about this?
00:30:49.320 | What if they didn't think about that?
00:30:50.400 | And it's still tough.
00:30:51.640 | Is there like what's level two remedy for people who find it very difficult
00:30:56.640 | to even outsource those decisions?
00:30:58.680 | Yeah, well, part of it is you need to sort of do the work of accepting the
00:31:04.800 | fact that you're being incredibly obstructionist to your own happiness.
00:31:08.440 | You really are.
00:31:09.800 | Because again, this is all perception.
00:31:11.640 | You go on a website, there's three hotels, you start worrying
00:31:15.560 | about all of these things.
00:31:16.560 | You have no idea whether even these things, like, even if you ask every
00:31:22.040 | question in the book, you would never really know until you got there.
00:31:24.920 | Right.
00:31:25.320 | So like you are creating a mental model that is flawed because you somehow
00:31:30.520 | assume that by doing additional research, you are somehow going to make a better
00:31:35.080 | decision.
00:31:35.520 | And what is interesting about that, and the research shows this, this is a
00:31:39.120 | really fascinating point from Barry Schwartz's book, is that people who,
00:31:43.440 | there's what's this terms that are called maximizer and satisficer.
00:31:46.760 | Maximizers are people who do all the research and they, you know, spend a
00:31:50.840 | crazy amount of time and energy to make the perfect decision.
00:31:54.600 | Satisficers are people like me who say, you know, it's good enough.
00:31:57.920 | Like once we get to good enough, I'm going to move on with my life because
00:32:00.400 | I got, I got stuff to do.
00:32:01.720 | In the end, maximizers actually make better decisions.
00:32:07.160 | They are able to, through their additional work, make a better decision.
00:32:11.560 | However, they are less happy with their decision because they spend so much
00:32:17.160 | time researching every aspect that they spend a lot of their time focusing on
00:32:20.960 | the other road they didn't take.
00:32:22.800 | And so a big part of why you're feeling FOBO is because you are feeling
00:32:26.800 | anticipated regret at what you didn't choose.
00:32:29.480 | And so, you know, I think that's where you start in terms of the work.
00:32:34.320 | And it's not like a hack per se, because it's more about being in the mindset
00:32:38.120 | to recognize, like, I am engaging in a type of behavior that is at the end of
00:32:44.200 | the day, extremely unproductive.
00:32:48.240 | And once you do that and you start to think like, will I even remember this?
00:32:54.160 | Then, you know, then you will be free.
00:32:56.720 | And the reality of decisions and the thing that people don't think about
00:32:59.960 | is decisions are like doors.
00:33:02.040 | If you never walked through the first door, you can't see what's inside the
00:33:05.600 | room and then go through the next door and so on and so forth in your life.
00:33:08.480 | With decisions, if you can't make a basic decision, you don't open the door to the
00:33:13.360 | next set of things you're going to have to deal with.
00:33:15.000 | And so that's really important.
00:33:17.560 | But I think, you know, in terms of like a specific thing with hotels, again, I
00:33:21.200 | think it's about trying to think of the people that you know or the sources that
00:33:25.280 | you know that are going to offer you the best advice and then going with them and
00:33:29.160 | recognizing that you are taking the thing about decision.
00:33:31.520 | Every decision is a risk.
00:33:32.680 | You are taking risks, but there is no perfect decision.
00:33:35.720 | It doesn't exist.
00:33:36.600 | And I think realizing that going in is really helpful.
00:33:40.160 | Yeah, that makes sense.
00:33:41.960 | You mentioned earlier one of the abundance of choice is in the job world.
00:33:47.880 | There's so many jobs and that is a high stakes decision.
00:33:50.400 | I think right now there are a lot of jobs.
00:33:54.880 | There's a lot of, you know, I've driven by, you know, at every level of the
00:33:58.840 | spectrum, there are people dying to get workers.
00:34:01.560 | And there's a thing going on right now, at least that I've read a little bit about
00:34:06.240 | the great resignation that all these people who have been locked up in the one
00:34:10.640 | job for the last year or two because it's been COVID and they haven't really made a
00:34:14.560 | lot of change, they're all going to go find something better.
00:34:18.040 | Is that something you think is driven by this kind of FOBO and FOMO all kind of
00:34:24.120 | meshed into one?
00:34:24.960 | Do you think this is a real thing?
00:34:26.800 | I've read that up to 40 percent of people are going to change jobs this next year.
00:34:31.800 | I'm curious to get your thoughts.
00:34:33.440 | I have been thinking a lot about the great resignation as well.
00:34:36.400 | In fact, I did a whole podcast episode on it because it is a fascinating trend.
00:34:42.080 | I think in the month of April alone, 4 million people quit their jobs.
00:34:45.920 | And I just see it in my, I'm sure you have friends too, like I have all these
00:34:49.160 | friends who are unemployed right now and they're like living their best life.
00:34:52.400 | And, you know, why do all unemployed people go to Joshua Tree?
00:34:55.120 | That's a mystery to me, but I've noticed it.
00:34:57.200 | And so maybe somebody can write us the answer.
00:35:00.560 | But, but it is, I think what's happening there is a couple of things.
00:35:05.360 | If I put on my sort of like demographics sociologist hat, number one is I think a
00:35:11.040 | lot, and there's a really good episode of this American life that actually looked
00:35:14.800 | at the great resignation.
00:35:15.960 | So I'm, I'm sort of taking a page out of their notes.
00:35:18.920 | People recognized during the last year and a half, if their company really, truly
00:35:27.280 | cared about them.
00:35:28.240 | And it just kind of reminds me in 2008, I was in the middle of the financial
00:35:32.520 | crisis and it was awful.
00:35:33.920 | I was at AIG and my whole career blew up.
00:35:35.880 | And what happened to me in that moment was I realized that my company didn't care
00:35:41.320 | about me at all.
00:35:42.080 | And it was incapable of caring for me for so many reasons.
00:35:46.000 | And I lost faith in the company and kind of in the corporate world in general.
00:35:50.000 | Like I was, I was like as good, I was like a, you know, like the way that
00:35:53.840 | somebody is like a good Catholic, I was like a good corporatist and I believed
00:35:56.720 | in the whole institution.
00:35:57.960 | And then I didn't anymore.
00:35:59.280 | And I thought it was deeply flawed and bad for me.
00:36:02.080 | And I think people feel that way about employers, the ones that didn't show,
00:36:06.240 | you know, much caring for them.
00:36:08.120 | I think people also recognize the fragility of life, much as I did after
00:36:11.840 | nine 11, when I went to business school and, you know, felt all the FOMO people,
00:36:16.040 | you know, we have been through such a deeply scarring experience as a society
00:36:20.840 | that people are just like, life's too short to put up with this malarkey.
00:36:24.920 | As like Joe Biden would say now, all of that aside, here's the problem.
00:36:32.400 | And this is where it gets nasty.
00:36:34.200 | Um, Chris, have you ever been unemployed for like a long period of time?
00:36:39.640 | Yes.
00:36:40.480 | I actually also 2008 got laid off, tried to find a bunch of different
00:36:44.880 | side hustles and part-time jobs.
00:36:47.600 | I wouldn't say I, I was like necessarily looking for a job, but I was not
00:36:52.240 | working for, for about a year.
00:36:54.240 | Yeah.
00:36:54.720 | So it's similar.
00:36:55.400 | Okay.
00:36:55.640 | So you'll, I think you'll appreciate this.
00:36:57.880 | I quit my job on wall street.
00:37:00.040 | I had saved like every dime I ever made.
00:37:02.960 | My parents were great in teaching me to save.
00:37:05.080 | So I had like years of runway.
00:37:08.000 | And so I felt like, I was like, well, this is going to be chill.
00:37:11.280 | I'm going to quit my job.
00:37:12.640 | I'm going to be chill.
00:37:13.600 | It's gonna be great.
00:37:14.120 | As I started spending my money that I had saved and watched my bank account go down.
00:37:20.560 | It's stressful.
00:37:22.160 | I felt bad.
00:37:23.200 | It's like, I don't want to, it's like, Oh, I don't want to have a muffin.
00:37:25.520 | That's a 350.
00:37:26.800 | Right.
00:37:27.600 | And so I realized that like, even if you saved living out of your savings is like,
00:37:33.480 | it's very scary and awful and you don't enjoy anything.
00:37:37.080 | And I was told that by a friend and I was like, that won't be me.
00:37:40.520 | And it was me.
00:37:41.120 | And so I found it really difficult.
00:37:43.320 | And so that was from the very privileged position of having savings.
00:37:48.480 | Like if you don't, then you're not, it's even worse.
00:37:51.600 | Right.
00:37:51.760 | And so what I fear for people, it's like when you quit your job, I remember I felt
00:37:56.320 | joy, like a deep and abiding joy every day.
00:37:58.960 | I'd wake up and I'd like, like, it was like out of like a animated movie, like a
00:38:02.080 | bird would land on my shoulder and I'd like sing to it.
00:38:04.160 | I was so happy.
00:38:04.880 | You know, like it was just, I was like, I feel so free.
00:38:07.320 | And that feelings, they last for a while, actually.
00:38:10.160 | They're shockingly powerful, but then eventually over time they fade because,
00:38:14.520 | you know, you get used to it like anything else.
00:38:16.760 | And then the fear and the insecurity and the, Oh my God, what I'm going to do?
00:38:20.560 | Am I going to find out, all that sort of stuff comes in.
00:38:22.000 | And that is what I fear for people who quit.
00:38:24.000 | And so what I encourage people to do rather than up and quit your job is find
00:38:30.000 | a way to, you know, if you want to try something new, if you're like, I always
00:38:33.960 | want to be a chef and right now I'm a programmer and instead of just quitting
00:38:38.120 | your job and going to cooking school, do some diligence into whether you even like
00:38:42.320 | you, this is FOMO, like perception or deception.
00:38:44.960 | Maybe you like cooking at home.
00:38:46.280 | Do you want to cook every day?
00:38:47.720 | 946 people come to your restaurant.
00:38:51.320 | Like a lot of the things that feel so attractive to us, if we actually dug into
00:38:55.280 | them, we would not enjoy professionally.
00:38:57.840 | And I remember reading this article in the New York times about this woman who was a
00:39:01.280 | lawyer, a corporate lawyer, and all she wanted to do was bake and she quit her job
00:39:05.240 | and opened a bakery.
00:39:05.960 | And you know what she realized?
00:39:06.920 | She hated it.
00:39:07.760 | And she would dream about being a lawyer again while she was baking her cookies.
00:39:11.680 | So you just want to know that.
00:39:13.280 | I think it's really, and if you are going to quit, have a very structured plan about
00:39:18.200 | how you're going to live and what you're going to spend money on and how you're
00:39:21.440 | going to sort of manage the finances.
00:39:22.840 | Because if you go in with a solid plan, I think you're much better positioned.
00:39:27.280 | Yeah, that makes total sense.
00:39:29.040 | And I've actually read that a massive number of kids nowadays say that they want
00:39:34.080 | to be entrepreneurs and you wrote a book about this 10% entrepreneur concept, which
00:39:39.400 | I think is fascinating because most people don't realize what it really takes until
00:39:44.640 | you experience it. And I know I kind of saw entrepreneurship with rose colored
00:39:48.560 | glasses before going full force into running a company and managing a team and
00:39:52.760 | trying to find customers and trying to make it work and ultimately realizing it
00:39:55.920 | didn't. Do you think that is a framework for people who have something they want to
00:40:01.880 | pursue, but feel they need to pursue it full time because that's just the norm?
00:40:07.360 | Is there a way to kind of overcome that feeling of, "Oh, I have to quit my job to
00:40:12.320 | go bake," but is there a way to just kind of adopt this 10% lifestyle easily or
00:40:17.880 | what's a process for doing that?
00:40:19.280 | So we're all sold this bill of goods that, you know, unless you're suffering and in
00:40:25.560 | pain as an entrepreneur, you can't succeed.
00:40:28.560 | And you see it all the time.
00:40:30.760 | Like there's a whole like entrepreneurship porn kind of industry, like grinding
00:40:37.840 | really hard. And people are realizing that's kind of all BS, but it is still like a
00:40:44.080 | cultural thing that unless you're bleeding, like somehow you didn't play hard
00:40:48.160 | enough. And that's just not me.
00:40:51.400 | And so when I left Wall Street, I was like, "Oh man, I should be an entrepreneur
00:40:57.160 | because it's the way to go." And I have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs, but
00:41:01.240 | I didn't have the guts to just jump into one thing, especially after the AIG
00:41:06.000 | debacle, I was like, "I will never, I want to be diversified.
00:41:08.560 | I want to have a much more portfolio approach." And, you know, as I started to do
00:41:15.040 | all these things on the side, I realized, actually, this is pretty amazing because
00:41:18.280 | you can have sort of like a steady income stream from stuff, but then you can kind
00:41:22.680 | of up, you know, sort of put 10% of your time, money and energy into very high risk
00:41:27.120 | things that, you know, potentially have high reward.
00:41:29.120 | And it's also a great way to try an idea.
00:41:32.160 | And then if you like that, you could then scale up, you know, you don't have to stay
00:41:35.120 | at 10%, you can go 50, a hundred.
00:41:36.480 | In fact, many of the people that I interviewed for my book started at 10%,
00:41:40.280 | figured out the idea of work, like, you know, they did their minimum viable
00:41:43.200 | product, they got some paying customers, and then they went to their company and
00:41:46.480 | said, "Hey, I have this startup, can I work one day a week on it, or can I work
00:41:50.800 | three days a week on it?" And, you know, companies need good people, so they were
00:41:54.720 | pretty amenable.
00:41:55.440 | And then over the course of a period of time, then they ended up going full time.
00:41:58.600 | So I think it's a really sensible thing to do.
00:42:01.560 | It also, the statistics show us there was a study out of University of Wisconsin
00:42:05.840 | that people who start something on the side and then go full time are 50% more
00:42:10.840 | likely to succeed than people who just jump in because they give themselves the
00:42:14.120 | runway to fail and make mistakes before they have to live off the business.
00:42:17.240 | So it makes a lot of sense.
00:42:19.440 | I mean, it doesn't work for every business model.
00:42:21.240 | If it's super capital intensive, like that's not going to make a lot of sense
00:42:24.240 | for you because you need to raise money and investors aren't going to back you if
00:42:26.880 | you're a part timer.
00:42:27.680 | But I think it's, it's really sensible.
00:42:29.800 | And the reality is that many businesses that we all know were started as 10%.
00:42:33.440 | You know, Apple was started as a 10%.
00:42:35.080 | Jobs in Wisconsin were working at HP and they started it in their cubicle.
00:42:39.520 | You know, the garage store is a lie.
00:42:41.240 | It's like, it was made up.
00:42:42.360 | And I think it's for, I've done it now for a really long time.
00:42:46.120 | I know many people who do it and I think it's an incredible way to, to make your
00:42:51.040 | career way more interesting.
00:42:52.200 | Yeah.
00:42:53.160 | Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact and trade coffee is a
00:42:59.400 | great addition to your new year routine.
00:43:01.680 | And I am so excited to be partnering with them today.
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00:43:44.760 | So jumpstart this year by signing up for a trade subscription.
00:43:48.280 | Right now, trade is offering a free bag with select subscription plans.
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00:44:03.960 | Do you all remember episode 122, when I spoke to chef David Chang about leveling
00:44:10.840 | up your cooking at home?
00:44:12.000 | If not, definitely go back and give it a listen.
00:44:14.480 | But one of his top hacks was using the microwave more.
00:44:17.880 | I'll admit I was a skeptic at first, but after getting a full set of microwave
00:44:22.720 | cookware from any day, I'm a total convert and I'm excited to partner with
00:44:26.760 | them for this episode.
00:44:27.720 | Any day is glass cookware specifically designed to make delicious food from
00:44:32.000 | scratch in the microwave.
00:44:33.440 | And honestly, using it feels like a kitchen cheat code because it speeds up
00:44:38.000 | and simplifies the process so much.
00:44:40.240 | The cookware is a hundred percent plastic free and you can cook, serve, store, and
00:44:45.000 | reheat all in the same dish that happens to be dishwasher, freezer, and oven safe
00:44:50.400 | too.
00:44:50.760 | And if you need a recipe suggestion to kick off your any day adventure, I highly
00:44:55.000 | recommend David Chang's salmon rice.
00:44:57.080 | It is so good.
00:44:58.480 | And if you haven't checked out the matte black IO collection they launched last
00:45:03.240 | year, you have to check it out.
00:45:05.040 | So to get 15% off our new favorite cookware, go to allthehacks.com/anyday.
00:45:11.760 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/anyday for 15% off.
00:45:17.200 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.
00:45:22.320 | Your support is what keeps this show going.
00:45:25.400 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to
00:45:30.560 | allthehacks.com/deals.
00:45:33.160 | So please consider supporting those who support us.
00:45:36.600 | Okay.
00:45:36.960 | So you've got hacks for FOMO.
00:45:38.240 | You've got hacks for manifesting entrepreneurship without having to quit
00:45:41.880 | your job.
00:45:42.640 | I know you'd emailed me and said, you've got lots of hacks.
00:45:45.960 | What else is in your arsenal of things people can use to improve life, improve
00:45:50.640 | work, or anything around that area?
00:45:52.960 | Yeah.
00:45:53.480 | So I have a funny hack.
00:45:55.080 | Well, I think it's funny.
00:45:56.120 | You might not, but I'm going to say it anyway, because it makes life just a
00:46:00.400 | little more interesting and fun.
00:46:02.000 | And I think it has some benefits.
00:46:03.360 | Whenever I go to a restaurant and I put my name down, I say, my name is Pierre.
00:46:07.920 | Now, can you guess why I do that?
00:46:09.600 | I don't know, because French people are great at food.
00:46:13.600 | Yeah.
00:46:14.000 | I just, I always think that like, if the, if my name is Pierre, they'll assume that I
00:46:17.000 | have higher standards than the average person and treat me better.
00:46:20.040 | And do you think it works?
00:46:22.560 | I do.
00:46:23.080 | I feel like I get tables much more quickly.
00:46:25.400 | The only downside of it is that nobody knows how to spell Pierre.
00:46:28.320 | They spell it P-I-E-R, Pierre.
00:46:31.520 | So that's kind of weird.
00:46:33.400 | But you know, it's not that offensive if your fake name is misspelled.
00:46:36.640 | Yeah.
00:46:37.560 | It's a, that, that's, that's one.
00:46:39.440 | Another one that I really love, this has actually been a transformative
00:46:43.480 | hack for me, is do you meditate?
00:46:45.800 | I, it's one of those things that I've seen value from and I've gone off and on, but
00:46:51.240 | I've never been able to make it a habit that kind of lasts.
00:46:55.000 | Why do you think?
00:46:56.200 | I think, I mean, I, I had Laura Vanderkam, who's written a lot about productivity,
00:47:01.040 | came on the podcast and kind of challenged the idea that you don't have time for
00:47:04.360 | something.
00:47:04.720 | It's like, no, you haven't prioritized it.
00:47:06.280 | So I can't say I don't have time for it, but I'd say I haven't continually
00:47:11.640 | prioritized it.
00:47:12.560 | And it's one of those things that I think it's hard to see the tangible immediate
00:47:18.240 | benefit, but it's easier to see the long-term benefit.
00:47:20.760 | So on any given day, it's like, well, if I don't do it today, like, you know, it's
00:47:25.320 | probably going to be fine.
00:47:26.120 | And then that just kind of snowballs into not doing it for weeks at a time.
00:47:29.840 | And, and then it kind of just stops being a routine.
00:47:32.040 | Totally.
00:47:32.680 | That's exactly right.
00:47:33.760 | That's exactly how I was.
00:47:35.240 | My brother has been meditating for like a really long time and I saw the effect on
00:47:43.000 | him.
00:47:43.200 | I was amazed at his resilience, his ability to deal with when bad things happen.
00:47:48.240 | Like he just was like, so, I don't know, like grounded and I wanted that and I
00:47:55.200 | couldn't get it.
00:47:55.840 | I tried, I even went to like this thing with him and I didn't like the style or
00:48:00.360 | the people.
00:48:00.800 | So it wasn't for me, but I would start going to classes and I realized like many
00:48:05.960 | other things in the world.
00:48:06.720 | Like there's no one way to do things.
00:48:08.120 | Like if somebody tells you you're meditating wrong, like they, they've missed
00:48:11.800 | the, there's not, it's not like that.
00:48:13.280 | There's many different ways to achieve that objective and many different styles
00:48:17.280 | of meditation.
00:48:17.800 | So I thought that was like a good thing to know, but still I couldn't do it.
00:48:22.280 | Like I would, you know, do it once a week or something.
00:48:24.480 | And then I recognized that I really needed it.
00:48:27.320 | And about three years ago I was at brunch with a friend of mine, this guy, Ajay
00:48:32.200 | Kishore, who was an entrepreneur and he and I were kind of new friends at the
00:48:36.440 | time and it was right at the end of the year.
00:48:38.680 | And he was like, what do you, do you have any New Year's resolutions?
00:48:41.720 | And I was like, no, I don't actually believe in New Year's resolutions.
00:48:44.360 | I think they're, they're not for me.
00:48:46.720 | And in fact, anytime I start something new in the beginning of the year, I
00:48:49.840 | started on the 2nd of January so that I've already broken my resolution, the
00:48:53.960 | little like, the little thing I do.
00:48:55.880 | I've done that since like I was a child, but I said, I really want to meditate.
00:49:00.400 | And he said, me too.
00:49:02.040 | And so what we did is we created an accountability pact.
00:49:07.320 | And every day for the last three years, I go on this app called Habit Share.
00:49:13.400 | It's like not, it's just, it's, I love the app.
00:49:16.120 | I have not, I should reach out to them actually.
00:49:17.680 | Cause like, it's not a fancy app.
00:49:19.160 | Like it is, it is so no frills, but you just go and you create a habit pact with
00:49:24.640 | somebody and you both sign up.
00:49:26.320 | And then every day when you check in that you've done the thing, it sends a
00:49:29.920 | notification to the other person.
00:49:31.120 | So I started that and I started at five minutes a day.
00:49:35.480 | So I didn't try to go hardcore.
00:49:37.120 | Five minutes a day.
00:49:38.360 | And then it was 5.10, 5.20, 5.30, so on up to 10 minutes, which is what I do today.
00:49:42.400 | And I have done that now.
00:49:45.000 | I have missed three days and the entire year so far.
00:49:50.120 | I didn't miss a day last year.
00:49:52.080 | I'm also very competitive.
00:49:53.240 | So I call it competitive meditation because it's sort of like, I mean, it's
00:49:57.480 | ridiculous, but it's true because I don't want to, I want to have my stats be
00:50:01.200 | perfect, but the, even though that's kind of whack and not in line with the spirit
00:50:06.200 | of why you meditate, I will say I do it every day and I think it's much more
00:50:10.680 | important to be every day than to worry about how long you did it for.
00:50:13.600 | I had this friend who started meditating and he was like, well, you don't, you
00:50:17.200 | know, you don't do it long enough.
00:50:18.160 | You have to do this much time.
00:50:19.400 | And I was like, okay.
00:50:21.240 | And then of course he doesn't meditate ever.
00:50:22.840 | He's completely fallen off the wagon because it wasn't sustainable.
00:50:25.720 | And I also plan it into my day.
00:50:27.520 | I have it on my calendar.
00:50:28.320 | I look in for a spot on my day and I know going into the day when I'm going to do
00:50:31.560 | it.
00:50:31.680 | So I encourage you, you, by the way, you can join my accountability group if you
00:50:35.800 | want, Chris, if you want to take it on, because it will, especially you, I can
00:50:41.080 | tell you would, you're not going to like be cool having crappy stats.
00:50:44.720 | And so you will make time for it.
00:50:47.600 | And it is amazing because at the end of the day, what it has done for me, and I'm
00:50:51.800 | not like some new agey guy, that's just not me.
00:50:53.960 | I'm just like a practical person, but it is really sapped me of my ability to
00:50:57.920 | freak out and get angry about anything.
00:51:00.080 | I just can't like, I have much more low key calm.
00:51:03.440 | I'm still outgoing and fun, but I just can't get mad at somebody.
00:51:07.840 | Like I don't freak out.
00:51:08.960 | So that's good.
00:51:11.280 | That's amazing.
00:51:11.880 | Yeah.
00:51:12.120 | It's funny.
00:51:12.480 | I was, I can actually see my Peloton in this room.
00:51:15.760 | And I was thinking about how the Peloton, the reason that I used it for so long.
00:51:21.560 | And now of course, I'm going to have to take a break here, was to be competitive
00:51:25.320 | with people.
00:51:25.880 | And I loved the feeling of texting someone after and being like, I just
00:51:30.840 | beat your record on that ride.
00:51:32.080 | And then I was like, oh man, Peloton actually does meditation.
00:51:34.960 | Why haven't they come up with their version of competitive meditation?
00:51:37.760 | But I feel like maybe it takes away the spirit, but if I need to use Habit
00:51:42.040 | Share, a competitive meditation sounds like a great way to get back into it.
00:51:46.120 | It is.
00:51:46.800 | You're very welcome.
00:51:48.600 | Anybody listening is welcome.
00:51:49.840 | If you reach out to me at Let's Connect with Patrick McGinnis, you can join my
00:51:52.280 | group, but if you join me and then you don't do it and you're always like
00:51:55.560 | missing it, I will kick you out because I'm not here to see bad stats.
00:52:01.000 | I want excellence.
00:52:02.160 | That's awesome.
00:52:03.720 | Any other final hacks?
00:52:06.560 | Oh man, well, this is not so much of a hack, but it's something that I did
00:52:09.680 | that really was a life changing as well for me that I would encourage everybody
00:52:13.560 | to do, which is get yourself a proper setup for your home office.
00:52:16.920 | Like I have been working for myself for a decade.
00:52:19.960 | I worked off of a laptop for like nine years.
00:52:22.440 | And then when I moved into this new place that I moved into this year, I got
00:52:26.120 | myself an extra large screen.
00:52:27.640 | I got the trackpad, the wireless one.
00:52:29.960 | I got the wireless keyboard.
00:52:31.280 | I got a really good webcam, much better than the one that's on my laptop.
00:52:35.480 | I got, you know, a nice light, a ring light, cause you know, it's 2021.
00:52:38.840 | So you want to look good.
00:52:40.200 | And I invested in all of that.
00:52:41.760 | And what it has done for me is radically improved my productivity.
00:52:45.920 | And also I enjoy sitting at that desk, you know, working off a laptop.
00:52:51.400 | And now when I do it, by the way, like I hate it.
00:52:53.480 | If I'm like at a coffee shop on my laptop, I'm like, how did
00:52:56.440 | I do this for so many years?
00:52:57.640 | And so it's just better for your health, but it also just makes your work better.
00:53:02.440 | And so I encourage people to make that investment.
00:53:05.200 | And by the way, I was actually, this was kind of crazy.
00:53:07.320 | It was so much cheaper than I could have ever thought to
00:53:09.880 | get all of this stuff together.
00:53:11.200 | You know, stuff is just really cheap now.
00:53:13.320 | And so it, you know, you're not going to break the bank to do it.
00:53:16.240 | Yeah.
00:53:17.040 | I have a setup and now I can't really work on a laptop, which actually is good.
00:53:22.160 | While I might not leave my phone out of the bedroom, I often never use my
00:53:25.880 | computer in the bedroom because I'm like, no, no, no, I want to work at my desk.
00:53:29.120 | I don't want to work on a laptop in the bed or on a couch.
00:53:31.600 | So I totally agree.
00:53:34.680 | I just think like, I'm like, I really want to look at Twitter.
00:53:37.560 | I'm going to sit at my desk.
00:53:38.960 | That's what I run over there.
00:53:40.720 | It's so sad.
00:53:41.680 | But I will say there are a lot of companies and, you know, they
00:53:46.360 | may or may not publish this.
00:53:47.720 | You may want to reach out.
00:53:48.800 | But I've heard of a lot of friends whose companies were willing to help pay for
00:53:53.560 | something to make their office setup good.
00:53:55.560 | So even if there's not a formal policy, I would reach out to your manager, your HR
00:54:00.240 | team and say, Hey, is there any room in the budget for me to upgrade my desk?
00:54:04.520 | Upgrade my chair, get a monitor, get a light.
00:54:06.600 | And I would, I would be surprised if most people couldn't get someone to pay for
00:54:11.080 | something to make their experience better, especially because a more productive
00:54:14.560 | employee is a better employee for the company as well.
00:54:17.040 | That's a smart idea.
00:54:18.040 | All right.
00:54:19.120 | This is awesome.
00:54:20.520 | Where, gosh, you have so many things going on.
00:54:23.000 | Where should people find everything you're working on right now?
00:54:26.160 | All right.
00:54:26.760 | So first of all, everybody, this is a momentous week in the history of
00:54:31.040 | podcasting because me and Chris are going on each other's shows to Chris kindly had
00:54:36.400 | me on his show and he is coming over to FOMO Sapiens, which is my show at
00:54:41.200 | FOMOSapiens.com.
00:54:42.160 | And so you can find that wherever you get podcasts and smash that subscribe
00:54:47.800 | button for all the goodies.
00:54:49.280 | That's number one.
00:54:50.680 | Number two, if you want to learn more about my work, you can also check out
00:54:54.200 | PatrickMcGinnis.com and I'm, you know, the links to all the socials.
00:54:57.640 | I have a really, um, I think it's pretty cool.
00:55:00.840 | Instagram at Patrick J.
00:55:01.960 | McGinnis.
00:55:02.480 | And as you, you've probably just heard a million times, I love Twitter.
00:55:05.920 | So I'm at PJ McGinnis.
00:55:06.960 | So all of those places.
00:55:07.960 | And, and you'll also be able to, if you're interested in 10% Entrepreneur, I've
00:55:11.400 | released an, um, an audio course, like in a podcast format with a company called
00:55:15.760 | Himalaya.
00:55:16.200 | So if you go to Himalaya.com/part-time, you can get a free trial subscription and
00:55:22.760 | check it out.
00:55:23.200 | Awesome.
00:55:24.280 | I will link to everything here that we talked about and some of the books you
00:55:27.840 | mentioned all in the show notes.
00:55:29.600 | Thank you so much for coming on.
00:55:31.040 | And, uh, I'm excited to swap sides and be on the other side of the table.
00:55:34.800 | Thank you so much.
00:55:36.240 | It is a pleasure being here.
00:55:37.320 | And yes, we will continue the conversation over a phone with Safekids.
00:55:40.560 | That was fantastic.
00:55:44.120 | I hope you all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and I'll make sure to
00:55:47.560 | put links to everything we discussed in the show notes.
00:55:50.120 | I'm about to kick off the process of finding the guests, scheduling, and
00:55:54.600 | recording the next few months of episodes.
00:55:56.760 | So if there's a topic or person you have in mind, please send me a note and I'll
00:56:00.480 | do my best to try to make it happen.
00:56:02.320 | My email is chris@allthehacks.com.
00:56:05.160 | You're also welcome to send any questions you have for me or any
00:56:08.800 | feedback you have on this show.
00:56:10.200 | I love getting all your emails and I'll do my best to respond to every single one.
00:56:14.480 | All right.
00:56:15.320 | Thank you so much for all your support.
00:56:17.400 | See you next week.
00:56:18.480 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.
00:56:36.840 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.
00:56:40.600 | It's called the personal finance podcast, and it's much more about building
00:56:44.800 | generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is
00:56:48.680 | about clipping coupons to save a dollar.
00:56:50.760 | It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in
00:56:54.880 | this world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what
00:56:58.280 | make this show so entertaining.
00:57:00.080 | I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022.
00:57:04.000 | But recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money
00:57:08.200 | stats that will blow your mind.
00:57:09.760 | And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not
00:57:13.880 | participating in their employer's retirement plan, and that's just one of
00:57:17.720 | the many fascinating stats he shared.
00:57:20.000 | The personal finance podcast has something for everyone.
00:57:22.920 | It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better
00:57:26.560 | with your money and grow your wealth.
00:57:28.160 | So I highly recommend you check it out.
00:57:30.320 | Just search for the personal finance podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or
00:57:34.720 | wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.