The Most Powerful Paradoxes of Life with Sahil Bloom

00:00:00.000 | This is like one of what I would consider the most significant lies we've all been told.

00:00:03.800 | I spend a lot of time thinking about problems.

00:00:06.000 | Paradoxes contain a lot of that.

00:00:07.660 | When you think about something that looks on the surface one way,

00:00:10.240 | but in reality, it's another way, that's fundamentally what we're talking about here.

00:00:13.700 | It's not about coming up with the right answer.

00:00:15.800 | It's about asking the right question and about struggling with it

00:00:18.660 | slightly better than you were previously.

00:00:20.740 | The advice paradox is the idea that we all get and receive a whole lot of advice.

00:00:26.800 | Most of it is complete garbage.

00:00:29.200 | So what you're left with is a worse idea of what the overall answer is.

00:00:33.960 | And so the real key then is let's talk about the opportunity paradox.

00:00:37.740 | The idea here with the opportunity paradox is you need to take on less to accomplish more.

00:00:43.200 | If you had to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next six months,

00:00:47.000 | what would you do and how would you do it?

00:00:49.560 | Zaho, thanks for being here.

00:00:51.000 | Glad to be back and in the new home studio even better.

00:00:55.500 | I know, we're building the sauna out front and the construction has been paused for two hours for us to record.

00:01:01.060 | Next time I come here, I expect to do a sauna episode, though.

00:01:04.300 | - Yeah, it's... - Sauna cold plunge?

00:01:06.360 | Yeah, one, two.

00:01:08.240 | Yeah, the company building the sauna, everyone will hear about it later.

00:01:12.900 | - It's called Haven Saunas. - Okay.

00:01:14.600 | And it's going to be really nice.

00:01:16.960 | - Yeah. - They're doing really great work.

00:01:19.240 | But next time we'll do it.

00:01:21.840 | It's always trouble to narrow down the scope of these conversations

00:01:24.700 | because you've written about so much and I'm an avid reader of yours.

00:01:30.340 | But I was thinking about the topic today and I thought,

00:01:33.600 | there is one topic that you've written about on Twitter

00:01:36.400 | that has actually led to tremendous amazement of a lunch with a billionaire.

00:01:41.040 | So maybe we just start with what is that topic and why should we talk about it?

00:01:45.740 | So I think what you're alluding to, because it's the only one, is the topic of paradoxes.

00:01:51.340 | And the funny story around all of this and the lunch with the billionaire story

00:01:55.340 | goes back to, let's see, November of 2021, I wrote my first...

00:02:02.140 | This was like a Twitter thread on the topic of paradoxes.

00:02:05.240 | So basically, a paradox is like a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement

00:02:10.840 | that once you actually dig into it and investigate it, may actually prove true.

00:02:15.140 | I wrote a sort of curation of like 20 of my favorite paradoxes

00:02:19.240 | that I feel like I've come across in my own life

00:02:21.000 | or that I've struggled with on a regular basis and shared it.

00:02:24.340 | And it went pretty viral at the time, probably had like 60 or so thousand likes,

00:02:29.840 | reached tons of people, etc. Went away.

00:02:32.240 | Just like most things do on Twitter, it's kind of an ephemeral platform.

00:02:36.140 | Once something has buzzed for 24 hours, it sort of disappears into the ether and it's gone forever.

00:02:41.340 | So fast forward to January 2023, I am in India visiting my grandmother.

00:02:46.500 | And I wake up in the morning to a bunch of texts from friends saying like,

00:02:50.540 | "Whoa, Bill Ackman shared your tweet thread."

00:02:54.140 | So I expect like, "Oh, it's some recent thing that I've written. That's cool."

00:02:57.240 | I pop it open and I look, and he has quote tweeted this thread from November 2021,

00:03:02.340 | saying, "A friend sent me this last week. It contains tons of wisdom. Everyone should read it."

00:03:08.140 | And so I'm like, you know, I'm the big like shoot your shot guy.

00:03:10.940 | I talk about that a lot. Closed mouths don't get fed is like one of my mantras on life.

00:03:15.240 | So I reply to his tweet and say, you know, "Thanks for sharing my work, Bill.

00:03:19.540 | We should get lunch in New York sometime on me."

00:03:22.240 | You know, kind of tongue-in-cheek like he's a billionaire. I'm obviously not. I'll pay for lunch.

00:03:26.940 | And he replies and says, "Would love to do that."

00:03:29.040 | And so we DM, coordinate, and I end up getting to have lunch with Bill Ackman

00:03:33.440 | as a result of this Twitter thread that I had written 18 months before, whatever it was.

00:03:38.440 | Unbelievable serendipity and also a perfect example of like the luck raiser,

00:03:42.140 | which I feel like we talked about on our last episode of expanding your luck surface area

00:03:46.840 | and how content is a great, great example of that.

00:03:49.640 | You put something out into the world and it's still creating lucky encounters for you 18 months into the future.

00:03:55.040 | Yeah, so I can't promise that anyone listening is going to be able to use this content

00:03:59.040 | to have lunch with a billionaire, but...

00:04:01.340 | Maybe.

00:04:01.940 | Maybe, but I can promise that the value you get from it's tremendous because I've gotten it.

00:04:07.240 | So what I thought we'd do, similar to the last time when we talked about raisers,

00:04:10.240 | was just kind of run through what I thought were some of my favorites.

00:04:13.540 | If I miss some, you can bring them up and I've kind of grouped them into a few categories.

00:04:17.840 | And so maybe talk really briefly why paradoxes, what attracted you to write about this?

00:04:22.540 | You kind of defined it briefly, but...

00:04:24.440 | Like for me, when I think about content more broadly and the content that I create,

00:04:29.340 | my whole goal is not to provide answers to questions for people.

00:04:35.140 | You know, I don't sit down and think that I am some unbelievably wise or intelligent person

00:04:39.640 | that has all the answers to how to live your life in a better way.

00:04:42.440 | What I do know is that I spend a lot of time thinking about problems

00:04:46.140 | and thinking about struggles that I've encountered in my own life

00:04:49.140 | and about tensions and balance points and all these different areas.

00:04:52.840 | Paradoxes contain a lot of that.

00:04:54.840 | Like when you think about, you know, something that looks on the surface one way,

00:04:58.640 | but in reality, it's another way, that's fundamentally what we're talking about here.

00:05:02.240 | And that's life.

00:05:03.240 | And so I thought the paradoxes piece and my writing on it was like a great encapsulation

00:05:08.740 | of how you actually encounter challenges and struggle in your own life.

00:05:13.540 | It's not about like coming up with the right answer.

00:05:16.340 | It's about asking the right question and about struggling with it

00:05:19.240 | slightly better than you were previously.

00:05:21.640 | And so that's like, that's always been my attempt with writing about it

00:05:24.440 | and hopefully what has come across and why it's resonated with people when I have.

00:05:29.140 | It's funny, I think when you just started saying that,

00:05:31.140 | it made me click why I appreciate your content so much.

00:05:34.940 | What I do is actually probably the exact opposite.

00:05:36.840 | I'm like, I am going to do all the research on all the cell phone plans in the country

00:05:41.240 | to except for Xfinity Mobile, which a few of you have reached out and said,

00:05:44.840 | sorry, I left it off the list.

00:05:46.640 | I guess that my hatred of Comcast kind of came to fruition with the goal of like,

00:05:50.640 | can I narrow down all the information so you can actually just make a decision?

00:05:54.940 | And I think your style of content is like,

00:05:56.840 | let me give you a bunch of information that you can use to think differently

00:05:59.840 | and maybe mine is that you can use to do differently.

00:06:02.640 | I mean your content, there's sort of like two areas, right?

00:06:05.540 | Like your content is answerable.

00:06:07.740 | Like there is a specific answer that you can research

00:06:10.540 | and give someone the best answer to definitively the type of questions you're wrestling with.

00:06:15.340 | The questions I'm wrestling with are like how to live your life better

00:06:19.240 | or you know, like how to live in a slightly healthier or wealthier way

00:06:22.740 | and there's no one-size-fits-all to that.

00:06:24.340 | I can research it all I want.

00:06:25.740 | You know, I can go talk to like 90-year-olds, 80-year-olds, like learn all that I can,

00:06:29.640 | but the reality is that everyone's life situation is different.

00:06:32.440 | Everyone's in a different season of their own life

00:06:35.440 | and so what the correct answer for you at age 20 when you're starting out

00:06:38.540 | is not the correct answer for you at age 40 or may not be

00:06:41.640 | and so my whole perspective is like I always need to navigate

00:06:46.440 | and avoid being like overly definitive and providing an answer

00:06:50.340 | and you know, reconcile the fact that I'm 32.

00:06:53.540 | Like I don't have all the answers.

00:06:54.840 | I'm not, you know, like a 95-year-old old wise monk living in the mountains of the Himalayas

00:07:00.040 | telling you that I've like learned the secret to life.

00:07:02.740 | What I do know is that I spend a whole lot of time thinking about these things

00:07:05.940 | and that I have a way where I can sort of disseminate them,

00:07:09.540 | you know, and hopefully like a clear and concise way

00:07:11.840 | that helps people navigate them in their own lives.

00:07:14.640 | Yeah, so at the risk of taking too much advice,

00:07:17.440 | let's jump into the paradoxes.

00:07:19.040 | Let's talk about the advice paradox because good transition.

00:07:21.940 | Yeah, I feel like advice isn't what it might seem.

00:07:24.640 | Yeah, I mean the advice paradox is the idea that,

00:07:30.140 | you know, we all get and receive a whole lot of advice over the course of our lives.

00:07:34.640 | Most of it is complete garbage

00:07:37.540 | and the more advice you take, the less well-informed you actually are

00:07:43.740 | and this is something that's counterintuitive.

00:07:45.640 | You think like, oh, I'm just starting out in my life.

00:07:47.640 | I need to go and get tons of advice from all these different people

00:07:50.240 | and the reality is that for them, most of their maps

00:07:54.240 | that they're going to provide you with, the advice that they provide you being the map,

00:07:57.840 | are not going to match the terrain of your life.

00:08:00.540 | Your life is fundamentally very different than whatever it is you're going to encounter.

00:08:05.140 | Nassim Taleb talks about this idea of like the noise bottleneck in some of his work,

00:08:10.140 | which basically says that you assume that by consuming more,

00:08:14.840 | you're going to get more signal as a result,

00:08:18.740 | but the reality is that by consuming more and in this case consuming more advice,

00:08:23.340 | the ratio of noise to signal actually increases over time

00:08:27.640 | and so what you're left with is a worse idea of what the overall answer is

00:08:32.640 | and I really feel that way with advice.

00:08:34.340 | When you go out and get too much advice, you get too many different perspectives,

00:08:37.940 | you actually leave feeling like, oh my God, I'm completely overwhelmed

00:08:41.440 | and I have no idea what the answer is to this problem

00:08:44.140 | and so the real key then is figuring out how to take some of the signal

00:08:49.440 | from what you get out in the world,

00:08:51.240 | sort of like narrow down to the things that are really high signal

00:08:53.840 | and the people that are really providing, you know, the tightest and crispest,

00:08:57.840 | crispest if that's a word, advice and leave all the noise,

00:09:02.340 | you know, get rid of all that other noise that might exist in the world.

00:09:05.540 | So is it more about seeking less advice

00:09:07.940 | or more about when you seek that advice knowing how to process what you learn?

00:09:11.940 | I think it's both.

00:09:12.840 | I think on the seeking less advice,

00:09:15.040 | that really comes from curating who you seek out for advice.

00:09:19.740 | Seeking advice from people who have really experienced

00:09:24.340 | the thing that you are going through

00:09:25.940 | or have navigated in the way that you want to navigate it

00:09:28.440 | and narrowing it down to just those people is really important

00:09:32.540 | and then realizing that no one has the ultimate answer for you.

00:09:35.640 | Like, you know, if I want to go start a business,

00:09:37.740 | I can't just go to Elon Musk and assume

00:09:40.140 | that he's going to have the perfect advice for me in my career where I am, right?

00:09:43.640 | Because survivorship bias plays a role, you know,

00:09:46.440 | like he might have just gotten lucky

00:09:48.640 | and he and you are very different people.

00:09:50.040 | Yeah, and you know, very, very different people

00:09:52.040 | and want different things and have different balance points in our life

00:09:54.640 | and there's so many differences

00:09:55.840 | and yet most people when they go to do that,

00:09:57.940 | they go read a bunch of books on business

00:10:00.040 | and say like, oh, well, you know,

00:10:03.740 | Elon Musk bet it all after he sold his,

00:10:06.240 | you know, shares in PayPal

00:10:08.640 | and put it like pushed all the chips back in the table

00:10:10.540 | and it worked out for him.

00:10:11.240 | Now, he's the richest man in the world.

00:10:12.340 | So I'm going to just keep betting it all

00:10:13.840 | and then you go bankrupt and you wonder why.

00:10:16.740 | So, you know, survivorship bias plays a real role

00:10:19.140 | in how advice is given.

00:10:20.640 | Like we take advice from the victors

00:10:22.740 | and that's a dangerous thing too.

00:10:24.440 | Yeah, it's funny because we're both working on books

00:10:27.940 | and mine is kind of at the highest level principles for better outcomes

00:10:32.840 | and the first one is that conventional wisdom sucks

00:10:35.840 | and I think when I think about the advice paradox,

00:10:38.040 | I think about conventional wisdom

00:10:39.940 | and I think the most common piece of conventional wisdom

00:10:43.240 | that I hear so many people talk about when it comes to money and wealth

00:10:46.440 | is that real estate is the best way to build wealth.

00:10:49.040 | I'm sure you've heard this.

00:10:50.240 | Maybe people in your family believe it

00:10:53.340 | and for me, it's like it is a way

00:10:56.140 | and it happened to have worked for someone

00:10:58.040 | and then they translate that it to being the best

00:11:01.240 | but who knows if they actually did the research ahead of time

00:11:03.240 | to pick that, you know, consciously

00:11:05.340 | or if it's just the thing that worked.

00:11:07.340 | Yeah, conventional wisdom is an interesting thing.

00:11:09.540 | It's sort of like all of these like,

00:11:12.340 | have you heard of Chesterton's fence?

00:11:14.140 | Like this idea that if you don't know why a fence is there,

00:11:19.140 | you should figure out why it's there before tearing it down.

00:11:22.740 | I think about that a lot with things like this

00:11:24.340 | because so like the example is like

00:11:26.240 | if there's this fence and you think it's really stupid

00:11:28.640 | that it's there and you go tear it down

00:11:30.840 | because you can't figure out why it's there.

00:11:32.440 | It might have been that it was holding back a whole bunch of wolves

00:11:35.140 | that you didn't know existed

00:11:36.640 | because the fence was holding it back

00:11:38.040 | and then you go tear it down

00:11:39.040 | and your whole town gets eaten by a bunch of wolves that are let in

00:11:42.640 | and so like with stuff like this, like with conventional wisdom,

00:11:45.640 | I just always seek to figure out,

00:11:47.640 | okay, why is it there?

00:11:49.840 | Like before saying that it doesn't work

00:11:51.940 | or that it's incorrect,

00:11:53.240 | I want to know like,

00:11:54.240 | well, what created the situation

00:11:55.840 | where that became conventional wisdom?

00:11:57.840 | So like before you dispel the notion,

00:12:00.140 | figure out why

00:12:01.140 | and then it might be that it was incorrect.

00:12:03.540 | You know, like with Chesterton's fence,

00:12:04.840 | the whole idea is like no one puts up a fence

00:12:07.540 | just for the fun of it.

00:12:08.840 | So they put it up for a reason.

00:12:10.240 | You need to figure out why before you go and tear it down.

00:12:13.240 | Yeah, it's funny.

00:12:13.740 | I chose conventional wisdom sucks.

00:12:15.340 | Not conventional wisdom is wrong intentionally

00:12:18.040 | because I'm like,

00:12:18.540 | it just sucks that people often give it

00:12:21.240 | as if it should apply to everyone.

00:12:23.340 | It's not that it's wrong.

00:12:24.240 | It's just that you might not be in the same situation

00:12:26.540 | as your parents were

00:12:28.040 | and so their advice might not apply.

00:12:29.540 | And most people blindly give it

00:12:31.940 | because it's repeated ad nauseum

00:12:33.440 | and so most people will continue to perpetuate

00:12:36.240 | whatever the conventional wisdom is

00:12:37.640 | because it's easy to do

00:12:39.040 | without actually having thought about it

00:12:40.840 | on a first principles basis.

00:12:42.440 | And so when you ask them like,

00:12:43.640 | well, why?

00:12:44.240 | Why should I own real estate

00:12:45.640 | and they go to start explaining it.

00:12:47.340 | It's like the Emperor has no clothes.

00:12:48.640 | There's nothing underneath the surface of that question

00:12:50.840 | when you ask them.

00:12:51.940 | Okay, so we're in the topic of life.

00:12:54.440 | Let's talk about the opportunity paradox,

00:12:56.340 | which funny enough as I read through

00:12:58.040 | you've written about paradoxes multiple times

00:12:59.840 | used to be called the say no paradox has evolved.

00:13:03.540 | Yeah, it's the evolution of a problem of my writing

00:13:07.640 | because I think the opportunity paradox

00:13:09.140 | has a better ring to it than say no.

00:13:11.940 | The idea here with the opportunity paradox

00:13:15.240 | is you need to take on less to accomplish more.

00:13:19.740 | So when I was young

00:13:21.140 | and probably when you were young

00:13:22.240 | probably a lot of your listeners

00:13:23.640 | you assume that you need to just take on

00:13:25.240 | every single thing

00:13:26.440 | if you want to accomplish great things.

00:13:28.040 | You need to just say yes to things

00:13:29.440 | over and over and over again.

00:13:30.840 | I think that is true to an extent early in your life

00:13:33.240 | because saying yes expands your luck surface area.

00:13:35.840 | You get exposed to different things out there.

00:13:38.540 | But at a certain point

00:13:39.840 | what you really need to do is take on less

00:13:41.740 | and you need to take on less but better

00:13:44.140 | to use the Greg McKeon thing from essentialism.

00:13:48.840 | And this is like a really core trait

00:13:50.940 | of how you actually go deeper,

00:13:52.240 | how you identify

00:13:53.140 | what are those asymmetric opportunities that exist

00:13:55.940 | and how you pursue those only.

00:13:58.740 | It almost reminds me there's another paradox.

00:14:00.740 | You have the boredom paradox,

00:14:01.740 | which I kind of feel like might fit into

00:14:04.640 | if you have extra time

00:14:06.740 | because you haven't filled your day.

00:14:08.340 | Would you say that these kind of pair well?

00:14:10.440 | Yeah, I think like around all of these

00:14:12.740 | it's sort of free time is a good thing.

00:14:15.440 | This is like one of what I would consider

00:14:17.140 | the most significant lies we've all been told

00:14:19.240 | which is that free time is bad.

00:14:21.940 | The reality in my mind is that free time

00:14:24.140 | is a call option on future interesting opportunities.

00:14:27.640 | What I mean by that

00:14:28.540 | is that when you have free time in your schedule

00:14:30.640 | you have the headspace

00:14:31.840 | and you have the actual time and bandwidth

00:14:34.040 | to go pursue the really high upside

00:14:36.340 | asymmetric opportunities that come into your life.

00:14:38.740 | If your day is just back-to-back meetings

00:14:41.340 | chock full from start to finish,

00:14:43.740 | where are you going to pursue the interesting thing

00:14:45.440 | that might come your way?

00:14:46.240 | You're just going to have to say no to it

00:14:47.440 | because you literally don't have time

00:14:49.240 | and you don't have the headspace to think about it.

00:14:50.840 | I think about that all the time.

00:14:51.840 | When I'm stressed

00:14:53.040 | because I'm running from thing to thing to thing

00:14:55.040 | my response when I see a text or an email

00:14:57.340 | that might offer me something

00:14:58.740 | or ask me to do something

00:15:00.040 | is like default no

00:15:01.240 | because I'm overwhelmed.

00:15:02.340 | I'm stressed and I just want to get things out of the way.

00:15:04.440 | So creating that

00:15:06.040 | like Arthur Brooks calls it

00:15:07.740 | like ventilating your schedule

00:15:09.340 | like breathing some air into your schedule

00:15:11.640 | is a great way to spark creativity

00:15:14.440 | so that you can actually go and identify

00:15:16.440 | what those asymmetric opportunities are.

00:15:18.740 | The things where

00:15:19.740 | you know one unit of input

00:15:21.140 | is creating 10, 100, 1000x units of output.

00:15:24.640 | Yeah, and if you don't have a thing

00:15:26.540 | to come back to boredom

00:15:28.140 | it's like actually being bored can be valuable.

00:15:31.040 | Yeah, I mean look at

00:15:32.240 | this is a silly example.

00:15:33.540 | Look at how Lionel Messi plays soccer.

00:15:36.240 | Watch him on a soccer field.

00:15:37.540 | This is one of the things that

00:15:38.540 | announcers have bemoaned about him

00:15:40.040 | throughout his career.

00:15:40.740 | He walks around the pitch all the time

00:15:43.240 | and to the untrained eye

00:15:45.140 | it looks like he's bored.

00:15:46.340 | I mean during the World Cup final

00:15:48.640 | he's like walking around

00:15:50.040 | in the latter seconds of that match

00:15:51.940 | just like sort of aimlessly

00:15:53.240 | looking around and walking around

00:15:55.140 | and then all of a sudden he

00:15:56.340 | bursts into action

00:15:57.640 | and deploys all of his energy

00:15:59.240 | into a single moment where he knows

00:16:01.340 | there isn't a 1000x upside potential

00:16:04.040 | in that moment

00:16:04.740 | and scores one of the game winning goals.

00:16:06.940 | And that is like the perfect example to me.

00:16:09.340 | You can be bored

00:16:10.540 | and then really deploy all of your energy

00:16:12.840 | into those 1000x opportunities

00:16:14.740 | that offer that asymmetric upside.

00:16:16.940 | Yeah, I think also watching Lionel Messi

00:16:20.540 | not moving around

00:16:22.140 | probably fits into the effort paradox as well

00:16:24.640 | because I think he knows what he's doing.

00:16:26.440 | Yes, he definitely knows.

00:16:27.840 | And maybe as we hit each one

00:16:29.640 | feel free to recap them.

00:16:31.140 | Yeah, he definitely knows what he's doing.

00:16:33.840 | You know the effort paradox

00:16:35.140 | athletes are the best with this one.

00:16:36.540 | So I totally agree with you.

00:16:37.540 | The effort paradox is the idea

00:16:39.040 | that you have to put in more effort

00:16:41.740 | in order for something to appear effortless.

00:16:44.840 | Like the idea that

00:16:46.740 | effortless elegant performances

00:16:48.940 | are really just the result

00:16:50.340 | of thousands and thousands of hours

00:16:52.340 | of effortful practice.

00:16:54.940 | Watching Roger Federer play tennis in his prime

00:16:57.740 | if you're a tennis fan

00:16:58.540 | is a perfect example of this.

00:16:59.740 | Like his strokes just look completely effortless

00:17:02.440 | but they're the result of

00:17:03.340 | thousands and thousands of hours

00:17:04.740 | of compounded, effortful practice.

00:17:08.040 | There's this phrase

00:17:10.740 | which I might butcher the pronunciation of

00:17:13.240 | sprezzatura

00:17:14.640 | which is an Italian phrase

00:17:16.040 | I think from like the 15th century

00:17:18.540 | a guy by the name of Baldassare Castiglione

00:17:22.140 | who wrote this book

00:17:23.240 | called The Book of the Courtier.

00:17:24.840 | And the whole book was about

00:17:26.140 | how to be an ideal courtier

00:17:28.040 | like a person of the court

00:17:29.440 | in these royal courts.

00:17:31.940 | And he basically said that people should

00:17:34.340 | an ideal courtier should walk with a sprezzatura

00:17:37.640 | which he defines as like a

00:17:39.340 | studied nonchalance

00:17:41.040 | meaning it appears effortless

00:17:44.240 | but there is a studied element to it.

00:17:45.940 | Like you've worked so hard

00:17:47.140 | to make something appear effortless

00:17:49.040 | in the way that you walk.

00:17:50.840 | And that is the goal

00:17:51.840 | that all of us are pursuing.

00:17:53.140 | That's like, you know,

00:17:53.840 | reaching that level of like unconscious

00:17:56.240 | competence in something

00:17:57.640 | where you can just do it

00:17:58.640 | and make it appear completely effortless

00:18:00.640 | to do the thing.

00:18:01.740 | That's kind of the pursuit that we're all on

00:18:03.640 | in whatever our field or craft is

00:18:05.340 | is to reach that level of elegance

00:18:07.140 | in the way that we move.

00:18:09.040 | Yeah, I was

00:18:10.540 | I mean, I don't know if you've seen Free Solo

00:18:12.240 | but my sport that I've done

00:18:13.240 | He's a perfect example of it.

00:18:14.440 | I've rock climbed for a long time

00:18:16.840 | and the ability to make rock climbing

00:18:19.440 | look natural is so much practice.

00:18:22.040 | And it's also a great sport

00:18:24.240 | to take someone who is very very in shape

00:18:27.440 | but has never been rock climbing

00:18:29.140 | if you want to feel good about yourself.

00:18:31.040 | So you're going to take me rock climbing sometime.

00:18:33.040 | I get invited to do a lot of rock climbing

00:18:34.940 | and I always hesitate

00:18:35.840 | because it scares me.

00:18:38.340 | But Alex Honnold is someone

00:18:39.540 | that I would love to meet someday

00:18:40.940 | because just like the way

00:18:42.040 | that his mind works around these things

00:18:43.640 | is just fascinating.

00:18:44.940 | It's yeah, a venture firm

00:18:47.240 | that I raised money from

00:18:48.740 | had a private event with Alex Honnold

00:18:50.240 | a couple weeks ago

00:18:51.040 | and it was really awesome

00:18:52.840 | to have like a small group

00:18:55.640 | non-recorded closed-door conversation.

00:18:58.340 | He is a fascinating individual.

00:19:00.140 | I mean the cinematography in that movie

00:19:02.940 | is otherworldly.

00:19:04.240 | I think it was Jimmy Lee

00:19:05.240 | or no, it's Jimmy Chin.

00:19:07.540 | Jimmy Chin is the guy that does it

00:19:09.940 | who's an unbelievable climber himself

00:19:12.140 | and for the whole team

00:19:13.040 | to be able to actually get those shots

00:19:14.440 | unbelievable climbers.

00:19:16.340 | But that movie is incredible.

00:19:18.140 | I just assume people have seen it

00:19:19.540 | but if you haven't strong strong drop everything.

00:19:22.340 | It's like a drop everything

00:19:23.340 | and watch that movie

00:19:24.240 | unless you're like terribly afraid of heights

00:19:26.040 | in which case you might get

00:19:27.840 | like kind of triggered by it.

00:19:29.540 | Yeah, I could see being yeah.

00:19:31.740 | I took a friend of mine rock climbing once

00:19:33.940 | just assuming this is I don't

00:19:36.040 | there's probably some pair about paradox

00:19:37.740 | or lesson in this.

00:19:38.940 | I assumed that he would know

00:19:41.840 | that climbing gear is safe,

00:19:43.640 | but he'd never been climbing.

00:19:44.740 | And so we were in Australia

00:19:46.440 | and we did a five pitch climb

00:19:48.440 | in the Blue Mountains,

00:19:49.140 | which is basically five pitch.

00:19:50.340 | Yeah, five pitches you climb up

00:19:52.740 | and then you pull your gear

00:19:53.840 | and your ropes and then you climb again.

00:19:55.640 | It's like five stages

00:19:56.940 | and this is where you're like setting your gear

00:19:59.340 | in the rock like you're taking a thing

00:20:01.640 | pushing it between a crack

00:20:02.840 | and trusting that it will hold you

00:20:04.640 | having done it myself.

00:20:05.640 | I'm like, yeah, that works my friend.

00:20:07.640 | I never rock climbed

00:20:08.440 | and we weren't doing necessarily a hard climb

00:20:10.240 | if we were in a gym,

00:20:11.240 | it would have been like a walk in the park

00:20:13.240 | for everyone,

00:20:14.140 | but we're like up on this wall

00:20:15.440 | and it never crossed my mind

00:20:16.840 | that he might not trust all of this stuff

00:20:19.640 | and I just remember by the end.

00:20:21.640 | He was I have a I had a GoPro on.

00:20:23.340 | He was just cursing me.

00:20:24.540 | He was so mad,

00:20:25.940 | but there's nothing he could do

00:20:26.840 | because we're having a wall.

00:20:28.140 | Yeah, there's just no option.

00:20:29.640 | I I mean, I'm kind of with your friend on this

00:20:31.840 | like on all of these things.

00:20:33.340 | I'm I'm not like a big risk taker in general.

00:20:36.740 | And so like when I have friends

00:20:38.340 | that do these kind of things,

00:20:40.340 | I'm like, dude, you have kids.

00:20:41.340 | Why are you doing that?

00:20:42.140 | Like, you know, like I've even scuba diving.

00:20:43.840 | I'm like, why are you scuba diving?

00:20:45.140 | Don't scuba dive.

00:20:45.940 | Just like go snorkeling.

00:20:47.240 | You're on the top of the water.

00:20:48.340 | You're totally fine.

00:20:49.140 | Like, do you really need to get

00:20:50.040 | into the fishes environment

00:20:51.640 | and like be down there in their house?

00:20:53.140 | Like they don't want you there either.

00:20:54.240 | Just chill on the top.

00:20:55.340 | You don't have like a pressurized tank

00:20:57.240 | of oxygen on your back.

00:20:58.540 | Like you're totally fine

00:20:59.640 | if something goes wrong.

00:21:00.740 | I never understood why people

00:21:02.140 | want to go do these things.

00:21:03.340 | Yeah, it's funny.

00:21:04.240 | I snorkeling scuba diving for me

00:21:06.040 | actually was one where I just feel like

00:21:07.940 | if you do it enough,

00:21:09.440 | I just kind of get bored with it.

00:21:11.140 | I guess it's like I've seen a lot of these things.

00:21:13.040 | So it's fallen off.

00:21:14.140 | Yeah, and then people go to you know,

00:21:15.540 | and then you're like,

00:21:16.140 | oh, well now I need to scuba dive

00:21:17.340 | in like shark chummed waters.

00:21:19.140 | Like so now I need to go do this.

00:21:20.440 | It's like, okay.

00:21:21.040 | Well, then if you go get bit by a shark,

00:21:23.040 | I'm not going to feel bad for you

00:21:24.240 | if you decided to go do that.

00:21:25.740 | I will put an endorsement in

00:21:27.440 | which you probably won't take.

00:21:28.940 | In Hawaii, there is

00:21:30.740 | Pelagic shark diving

00:21:31.940 | where it's just snorkeling with sharks.

00:21:34.540 | So you're kind of free diving

00:21:35.940 | and snorkeling in the sharks environment

00:21:38.140 | with a marine biologist

00:21:39.840 | who knows what they're doing.

00:21:40.940 | But it's like,

00:21:41.540 | what do you mean they know

00:21:42.340 | what they're doing?

00:21:43.340 | Like they're going to wrestle the shark

00:21:44.940 | if the shark comes.

00:21:46.040 | Like that makes no sense.

00:21:47.140 | Why?

00:21:47.440 | Like why?

00:21:47.940 | Why would you just to see a shark?

00:21:49.640 | I mean, it was

00:21:50.140 | it was actually really fascinating

00:21:51.440 | because it was it was kind of like

00:21:53.140 | go get a lesson about sharks

00:21:54.840 | and be in their environment.

00:21:56.740 | And I guess it's not control.

00:21:58.840 | Yeah, right.

00:21:59.340 | You're in the water with the shark.

00:22:00.640 | Like what do you do

00:22:01.240 | if the shark just comes at you?

00:22:02.540 | You just try to run away

00:22:03.840 | like you're swimming.

00:22:05.540 | She had like a pole.

00:22:07.340 | That's really going to stop a shark.

00:22:08.640 | That sounds great.

00:22:09.640 | I mean, it sounds like fun.

00:22:10.640 | There was one shark and she's like,

00:22:11.840 | well, there's one shark with a lazy eye.

00:22:13.640 | It's very docile.

00:22:14.840 | If it comes towards you,

00:22:15.740 | don't be too worried.

00:22:17.240 | And so it's a lazy eye.

00:22:19.140 | So this shark would swim near people

00:22:20.640 | and she just kind of like bop it on the nose

00:22:22.240 | and it would swim away.

00:22:23.040 | But I thought

00:22:24.040 | you probably won't take me up on it,

00:22:25.240 | but it's I believe it's on

00:22:27.240 | either the Big Island or now.

00:22:28.440 | I can't remember which island.

00:22:29.440 | I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:22:30.740 | But we did this shark.

00:22:31.740 | It was amazing.

00:22:32.440 | I'm just going to stick

00:22:33.140 | to watching National Geographic.

00:22:34.540 | I'm going to get my like

00:22:35.340 | Apple Vision plus immersive experience.

00:22:38.140 | It'll basically be like

00:22:39.340 | I was in the water with you guys,

00:22:40.940 | except without the,

00:22:42.140 | you know, shark potentially eating me.

00:22:43.740 | Yeah, OK, fair.

00:22:45.240 | OK, OK, let's let's get back on track.

00:22:47.440 | Let's go to the talking paradox.

00:22:51.140 | And and this was particular.

00:22:53.540 | I have a couple anecdotes

00:22:54.640 | here that came up recently.

00:22:55.840 | All right, go for it.

00:22:56.540 | Basic idea with the talking paradox

00:23:00.440 | is you actually in order to be heard more,

00:23:05.040 | like if you want your ideas to be heard,

00:23:07.340 | you should listen twice as much as you speak.

00:23:10.740 | And again, it's counter

00:23:12.940 | to what you would think,

00:23:13.740 | which is the more I talk,

00:23:15.740 | the more I push my ideas out there.

00:23:17.440 | If I'm in a room,

00:23:18.240 | I need to be the loudest one.

00:23:19.440 | I need to get my ideas heard

00:23:21.540 | completely counter to that.

00:23:23.140 | The people that you actually listen

00:23:24.940 | to the most are the people

00:23:26.040 | that listen a whole lot.

00:23:27.840 | And then when they do speak,

00:23:29.440 | it is incredibly pointed, interesting,

00:23:31.840 | insightful speaking.

00:23:34.440 | There's some quote.

00:23:35.640 | I'm going to forget who it is.

00:23:36.840 | Maybe it's Epictetus that it's like

00:23:39.140 | you have you have two ears

00:23:40.440 | and one mouth.

00:23:41.540 | You need to use them accordingly.

00:23:44.540 | And it's very true.

00:23:45.840 | And something that I think of a lot

00:23:47.640 | like in group events,

00:23:49.440 | at retreats, at different things

00:23:50.940 | that I go to the person

00:23:52.540 | that I inevitably leave

00:23:54.040 | being most impressed by

00:23:55.640 | is the person who said very few words.

00:23:58.140 | But when they did speak,

00:23:59.440 | it was unbelievably poignant.

00:24:01.740 | Yeah, there was a partner

00:24:02.740 | at Google Ventures, Joe Krause,

00:24:04.140 | who's one of the I guess

00:24:05.640 | I call him wisest people I know.

00:24:07.840 | And he had this thing

00:24:08.740 | where he didn't talk much.

00:24:09.940 | And then when he did right

00:24:11.140 | before, he'd kind of

00:24:11.840 | put his hands together like this

00:24:13.540 | and we'd all be sitting in the room.

00:24:14.940 | That's like a common thread, by the way.

00:24:16.440 | I feel like they always are like, OK,

00:24:18.540 | talking Yoda.

00:24:19.440 | And I just remember

00:24:20.040 | we're all sitting around the room

00:24:20.940 | and then all of a sudden

00:24:21.440 | you'd see Joe put his hands up

00:24:22.640 | and I would be like, quiet down

00:24:24.640 | and and listen intently.

00:24:26.640 | And I'm curious.

00:24:28.340 | I feel like this should be a goal for mine,

00:24:29.940 | I guess, being a podcaster

00:24:30.840 | makes it hard to be like,

00:24:31.640 | oh, I should talk less.

00:24:32.440 | But. Do you feel like you do this well?

00:24:36.540 | And if so.

00:24:38.740 | How much are you thinking

00:24:39.940 | about what you're saying?

00:24:40.940 | Because I feel like,

00:24:42.140 | you know, to go back to Arthur Brooks,

00:24:43.440 | he has this whole concept

00:24:44.340 | of crystallized intelligence.

00:24:45.540 | And as you, you know,

00:24:46.840 | grow in your professional life,

00:24:48.440 | you've built up

00:24:49.140 | such a wealth of knowledge.

00:24:50.440 | I feel like sometimes

00:24:51.940 | it can be easy

00:24:52.740 | to just speak off the cuff.

00:24:54.540 | Do you have any any tips

00:24:55.940 | for kind of restraining

00:24:57.540 | to really hone and focus

00:24:58.940 | when you kind of know the answer?

00:25:00.440 | But if you took a minute,

00:25:01.740 | you could piece together

00:25:02.640 | an even more profound response.

00:25:04.640 | To answer your first question,

00:25:06.040 | I think I'm improving at it,

00:25:07.940 | but it doesn't come natural to me.

00:25:10.040 | I'm a storyteller.

00:25:11.240 | Naturally, I love,

00:25:13.640 | you know, telling stories,

00:25:14.740 | embellishing story,

00:25:15.640 | like in locker rooms.

00:25:16.440 | Like that was always my thing.

00:25:17.440 | I was like always kind of

00:25:18.240 | the loud one in that way.

00:25:20.340 | And I need to force myself

00:25:22.440 | to go into, you know,

00:25:23.440 | what I call listen mode,

00:25:24.840 | which is like when you're around people,

00:25:26.440 | especially people that have

00:25:27.640 | different views than you.

00:25:29.440 | You really need to make an effort

00:25:30.540 | to listen twice as much as you speak.

00:25:33.040 | And it's really hard to do

00:25:34.040 | because when someone says something

00:25:35.040 | you don't agree with,

00:25:36.040 | your first reaction is like,

00:25:37.340 | let me jump in there and contest it.

00:25:38.740 | Let me tell you why you're wrong, etc.

00:25:41.140 | And you learn a whole lot more

00:25:42.340 | about the world, about yourself,

00:25:44.040 | about the other person

00:25:45.240 | by defaulting to listening

00:25:46.740 | in those situations

00:25:47.940 | because no one believes something

00:25:49.440 | for no reason.

00:25:50.440 | Like when someone has a belief,

00:25:51.740 | when someone has a perspective,

00:25:52.940 | when there's a fence sitting there,

00:25:54.340 | there's always a reason

00:25:55.340 | that the fence is there.

00:25:58.440 | So I think it's something that we all,

00:26:00.440 | you know, I definitely need to improve on.

00:26:01.940 | I think we all probably need to improve on.

00:26:06.040 | Your second question on like,

00:26:07.940 | you know, kind of ways and tips and heuristics.

00:26:11.740 | I think that it's just that.

00:26:12.940 | It's like when you're in a situation

00:26:15.040 | and you're listening,

00:26:16.240 | actually make sure you're listening to the person,

00:26:17.840 | not formulating your response in the moment.

00:26:20.140 | I think there's a point in time,

00:26:21.940 | you know, when you've kind of gotten

00:26:23.440 | the gist of what someone is saying,

00:26:25.140 | when you kind of turn to,

00:26:26.340 | okay, now I'm like, I'm listening,

00:26:28.040 | but I'm also creating the narrative

00:26:29.640 | of what I'm going to say in my mind.

00:26:31.840 | But it's usually later than you think.

00:26:33.440 | Most people, I think, stop listening

00:26:35.140 | very, very quickly in someone's dialogue.

00:26:36.940 | Like, even when we're having a podcast conversation,

00:26:39.240 | you notice, if you start becoming aware of it,

00:26:42.440 | at what point in the person speaking

00:26:44.440 | are you starting to think about

00:26:45.440 | what you're going to say next?

00:26:46.240 | Like you right now, you're probably thinking about like,

00:26:47.940 | okay, what am I going to say next?

00:26:49.340 | Because it's the natural way that a conversation goes.

00:26:51.840 | Learning to like uncomfortably push that back

00:26:54.640 | a little bit and listen a little bit longer,

00:26:57.240 | I find that you learn a lot more from the other person.

00:26:59.340 | And then as a result,

00:27:00.540 | you end up coming up with more insightful responses

00:27:02.640 | that sort of drive conversations forward.

00:27:05.240 | - Yeah, I just interviewed.

00:27:07.340 | It's funny 'cause I want to go back and listen to it.

00:27:09.440 | 'Cause sometimes when you're in the moment like this,

00:27:11.240 | I'm not always the best at listening

00:27:13.240 | 'cause I'm trying to plan the conversation

00:27:14.840 | and it's a little bit my responsibility and job even.

00:27:17.940 | But there's a Stanford professor, Matt Abrahams,

00:27:20.340 | who his episode will be coming out.

00:27:22.640 | By the time you hear this, you'll have heard it.

00:27:24.440 | But it comes out, I think next week.

00:27:27.040 | And he's written a bunch of books on impromptu speaking

00:27:29.940 | and how to become more natural at it.

00:27:32.040 | And by becoming more natural at it,

00:27:34.040 | you can feel more confident pushing back the point

00:27:37.340 | at which you start thinking of what you're gonna say.

00:27:39.140 | - That's interesting.

00:27:39.940 | I read an article recently

00:27:42.940 | on ways to become a better conversationalist,

00:27:46.340 | which I thought was really interesting

00:27:47.440 | because it's such an important trait,

00:27:49.940 | being a good conversationalist,

00:27:51.340 | that you don't really ever study,

00:27:53.440 | read about, think about.

00:27:55.040 | And it was written by an improv,

00:27:57.840 | like a person that is an expert at improv,

00:28:00.740 | which is an unbelievable skill.

00:28:02.140 | Like if you've never done it, gone to an improv class,

00:28:04.440 | et cetera, it's a great way to get better at public speaking,

00:28:07.040 | to get better at conversations, et cetera.

00:28:09.640 | And what he talks about, like his mental model,

00:28:11.840 | his framework for improving as a conversationalist,

00:28:15.640 | it's all about creating

00:28:17.440 | what he calls doorknobs in conversations.

00:28:20.140 | Like you say something that is a doorknob

00:28:22.540 | that someone else can open and walk through.

00:28:24.440 | Like you're not asking them necessarily a direct question,

00:28:27.340 | but you're making statements

00:28:28.440 | that are inviting someone to open the doorknob

00:28:31.240 | and walk through the door.

00:28:32.440 | You know, so like he, the article is great,

00:28:34.940 | we should link to it in the show notes,

00:28:36.140 | but it's got a whole bunch of like

00:28:37.340 | really interesting examples of that,

00:28:39.540 | like in an improv context of how you create a doorknob

00:28:42.240 | rather than just like making a statement

00:28:44.240 | or doing something that sort of like

00:28:45.740 | closes off a conversation.

00:28:47.740 | It's funny 'cause it might be the same person,

00:28:49.840 | I don't remember the name,

00:28:51.240 | but after I did this call with Matt,

00:28:54.740 | after I did this interview with Matt,

00:28:56.240 | he sent me a list and he was like,

00:28:57.140 | here are a few people that I think

00:28:57.940 | would be great for your show.

00:28:58.740 | And I was like, gosh, all of the topics

00:29:00.940 | and mainly 'cause they're mostly

00:29:02.240 | other Stanford professors in his department,

00:29:04.140 | where one of them was about improv,

00:29:06.040 | they were all kind of related to conversational skills.

00:29:08.940 | And I was like, gosh, I don't know if I'm gonna have

00:29:10.840 | four conversational skill episodes in a quarter,

00:29:14.240 | but I don't know, it's really important.

00:29:16.340 | So I'm like, I'm definitely gonna line 'em up.

00:29:17.840 | So keep an eye out for at least one more in the future.

00:29:21.340 | - Yeah, I do think, I mean improv,

00:29:23.240 | it's something I wish I had done at a younger age,

00:29:26.640 | like I wish I had done an improv class in college.

00:29:29.440 | So maybe this is very rare,

00:29:31.740 | but it was a required class in my middle school.

00:29:35.340 | So everyone in my middle school--

00:29:36.740 | - We had drama, actually we had to do drama.

00:29:38.640 | - Yeah, and I think maybe it was drama,

00:29:41.240 | but I remember playing like park bench.

00:29:43.740 | If you ever played park bench, the improv,

00:29:45.340 | like, I don't know what you even call, skit?

00:29:48.040 | I don't know, exercise?

00:29:49.840 | We would play it in school

00:29:51.540 | and you would have to kind of rehearse and,

00:29:53.340 | not you didn't rehearse 'cause it was improv,

00:29:54.740 | but like it was a thing that we would do in school.

00:29:57.940 | And I don't know, I feel like,

00:30:00.540 | I feel like this about a lot of education.

00:30:02.140 | There's all these things that I was exposed to

00:30:04.040 | in middle school, high school, elementary school,

00:30:06.040 | that looking back, I'm like,

00:30:07.740 | why didn't I like really appreciate what I was doing?

00:30:10.140 | At the time I was like, oh, this is silly.

00:30:11.640 | And now I'm like, oh, improv, I should've practiced more.

00:30:13.540 | - I mean, that was what I was gonna say is like,

00:30:16.240 | I think we had that too.

00:30:17.240 | We had drama and we had to do stuff like that.

00:30:19.440 | But I, and I'm sure all of my classmates,

00:30:22.740 | were at the time so insecure and so self-conscious

00:30:26.840 | that you basically don't take advantage of it.

00:30:28.640 | Like you're not actually building the skill

00:30:30.140 | 'cause you're so worried about other people judging you

00:30:32.240 | and laughing at you.

00:30:33.140 | You know, like I was probably like,

00:30:34.240 | I probably had a bunch of zits on my face

00:30:35.840 | and I was probably like, you know,

00:30:37.440 | trying to hide from some cute girl that was in the class.

00:30:39.640 | I didn't want to embarrass myself.

00:30:41.140 | And you know, you're like suffering

00:30:42.540 | from the ultimate spotlight effect at that age

00:30:44.540 | where you just assume that everyone is staring at you

00:30:46.640 | when in reality, everyone is just worried about themselves

00:30:49.240 | in that same moment.

00:30:50.240 | But like, I would love to go take an improv class now.

00:30:53.640 | Now I might think about doing it.

00:30:55.640 | Like I'm sure New York has some of the best

00:30:58.240 | improv classes in the world.

00:30:59.440 | I think it'd be really fun at this age

00:31:01.040 | where I'm like secure enough to not really care

00:31:03.440 | if I'm embarrassing and bad at it.

00:31:05.540 | - It'd be interesting even to just think about,

00:31:08.240 | like I went to a conference last week in Hawaii

00:31:12.240 | and it was atypical in that it was not

00:31:14.640 | your standard conference with keynotes

00:31:16.440 | and that kind of stuff.

00:31:17.440 | And their thing, which was,

00:31:19.440 | there's this thing called the game.

00:31:20.740 | And the best I'd describe it is like scavenger hunt

00:31:23.640 | meets escape room in groups of five.

00:31:26.140 | And, you know, you kind of get to know people

00:31:28.040 | and you do all these kind of mental challenging exercises,

00:31:30.540 | but it'd be interesting at the next kind of conference,

00:31:32.940 | summit, off-site mastermind, whatever you call it,

00:31:35.940 | to just have an improv person come and do a class.

00:31:38.640 | I don't know.

00:31:40.480 | I know you go to a lot of these events.

00:31:41.340 | You probably host some of them.

00:31:42.640 | That's maybe a really cool idea.

00:31:44.540 | - I like that a lot.

00:31:45.640 | - I expect an invite.

00:31:47.140 | - You're in.

00:31:48.540 | - Okay, so speaking of that conference I went to,

00:31:52.140 | let's talk about the productivity paradox

00:31:53.740 | because I thought a lot about this in a session I led.

00:31:56.940 | So this is all grounded in Parkinson's law,

00:31:59.240 | which is the idea that work expands

00:32:02.240 | to fill the time allotted for its completion.

00:32:04.640 | Basically, when you leave something open-ended

00:32:09.840 | and you have the whole day to do it,

00:32:11.140 | it'll take you the whole day to do it.

00:32:12.740 | And if you bucket it into a single hour,

00:32:14.640 | you'll find a way to get it done in a single hour.

00:32:17.040 | The most classic example of this

00:32:18.840 | in like our modern work context,

00:32:20.740 | I would say is like email.

00:32:22.240 | If you allow it to happen,

00:32:23.640 | you will spend the entire day emailing.

00:32:26.240 | I spent a lot of my life doing this.

00:32:27.540 | Like the early years of my career,

00:32:28.840 | email would just take the entire day.

00:32:31.240 | Or if you batch email into a single hour,

00:32:34.040 | and you're like,

00:32:34.880 | "I need to get through my entire inbox in this hour,"

00:32:36.540 | you will get that done.

00:32:38.240 | And so the productivity paradox

00:32:40.540 | is basically grounded in that exact idea.

00:32:44.240 | It's like less time,

00:32:47.140 | you become actually more productive

00:32:48.940 | when you can work less and actually get more done.

00:32:52.940 | - Yeah, there was a whole session at this conference.

00:32:54.540 | So it wasn't keynotes.

00:32:55.440 | It was kind of user-generated conversations,

00:32:57.140 | but about productivity, that was one.

00:32:59.140 | And then there was another one where someone was talking.

00:33:02.240 | I led this talk about the concept of die with zero,

00:33:05.540 | focusing on net fulfillment,

00:33:06.940 | how to prioritize things in your life.

00:33:08.940 | And someone said, "Oh, sometimes during the day,

00:33:11.140 | "if I need some creativity or I just need a break,

00:33:13.140 | "I'll just go mountain biking."

00:33:14.340 | And someone was like, "Well, how do you just take

00:33:15.240 | "two hours off in the middle of the day?"

00:33:16.740 | And we talked about, it turns out

00:33:18.740 | that if you take two hours out of your day,

00:33:20.640 | you can usually just get all the stuff done anyways.

00:33:23.640 | And so-- - I mean, Tim Ferriss,

00:33:24.940 | just to, sorry to interrupt you.

00:33:26.540 | I mean, Tim Ferriss, I would say, revolutionized this idea

00:33:30.940 | with 4-Hour Workweek, because he was the first person

00:33:33.640 | that just put on paper the idea of,

00:33:36.340 | if you could only work for an hour the entire week,

00:33:39.340 | what would you do?

00:33:40.340 | And how would you get it done?

00:33:41.740 | He has mastered the art of asking

00:33:43.940 | the seemingly absurd question

00:33:45.640 | that forces you to scrub away assumptions

00:33:48.540 | that you might've had about your work.

00:33:50.240 | And I actually went through that exercise.

00:33:52.240 | I really thought, okay, if I could only work

00:33:56.240 | for four hours a day, I used to work 12 hours a day

00:34:00.740 | at a minimum when I was working in private equity.

00:34:03.040 | If I could only work for two hours a day,

00:34:04.540 | if I could only work for four hours a day,

00:34:06.140 | what would I do?

00:34:07.040 | And how would I continue to make just as much,

00:34:08.840 | if not more money doing it?

00:34:11.140 | And what you realize is that you're spending time

00:34:13.640 | on a lot of things that you could either delegate,

00:34:15.640 | delete from your life, outsource, whatever,

00:34:18.340 | and really focus on the things

00:34:19.540 | that are really moving the needle.

00:34:21.140 | And that's what you would do if you only had two hours.

00:34:23.140 | Like, gun to your head,

00:34:24.140 | if you only had two hours, what would you do?

00:34:25.740 | He recently asked one that was,

00:34:28.840 | if you had to accomplish your 10-year goals

00:34:31.340 | in the next six months, what would you do?

00:34:34.240 | And how would you do it?

00:34:35.340 | And that's another one where it's like, okay,

00:34:37.740 | all of these assumptions I've had

00:34:39.040 | for the long-term nature of anything,

00:34:41.840 | how do I scrub those away?

00:34:42.940 | And just think about what would have to change in my life?

00:34:46.040 | What constraints would have to be removed?

00:34:47.540 | What environments would have to be changed

00:34:49.040 | for me to go unbelievable monk mode sprint

00:34:51.840 | on this given thing?

00:34:52.940 | I just think it's worthwhile

00:34:54.940 | to ask yourself those questions

00:34:56.440 | to continue improving the overall flow

00:34:58.540 | of what your life looks like.

00:35:00.040 | Yeah, you mentioned, Tim,

00:35:01.140 | I'll give a shout-out to an episode he recently did

00:35:03.340 | with Sam Korkos from Levels.

00:35:07.140 | He is the master delegator, optimizer, being efficient,

00:35:12.140 | I would argue that episode is like a masterclass

00:35:14.840 | in all productivity.

00:35:16.240 | Is that the guy that has his day scheduled

00:35:21.040 | down to the minute where it's like,

00:35:22.840 | you look at his schedule

00:35:23.840 | and it's from 6/17 to 6/22 brush teeth?

00:35:28.040 | I don't think he actually is that.

00:35:29.940 | I think he's more focused on how do I achieve this task?

00:35:34.940 | Where do I put it in the day?

00:35:35.940 | How many hours do I spend on it?

00:35:37.140 | How do I delegate it to someone else?

00:35:38.940 | What's a system for that?

00:35:40.140 | Lots of notion, lots of loom,

00:35:42.440 | uses maybe the most power user of loom

00:35:45.640 | in the world based on that episode.

00:35:47.840 | We'll link to that in the show notes.

00:35:49.340 | But on the note of moving fast,

00:35:51.040 | this monk mode, get everything done,

00:35:52.640 | I think the common assumption is,

00:35:54.240 | well, if you need to do that,

00:35:55.080 | you just need to not stop and just go.

00:35:57.740 | But you have the speed paradox,

00:35:58.840 | which says the opposite might be true.

00:36:00.540 | Yeah, I mean, the speed paradox

00:36:01.540 | actually goes hand in hand here,

00:36:03.140 | which is almost like a meta paradox

00:36:05.440 | of you would assume that it doesn't.

00:36:06.840 | The speed paradox is sometimes you have to slow down

00:36:09.740 | in order to speed up.

00:36:11.340 | You know, like move slow to move fast.

00:36:13.540 | And I think there's this common,

00:36:15.640 | I think it's like Navy SEALs maybe,

00:36:17.440 | it's a military phrase that's like

00:36:19.240 | slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

00:36:21.340 | And that's like where,

00:36:23.640 | kind of the ethos of this paradox.

00:36:26.140 | The basic idea here though,

00:36:27.540 | when you slow down,

00:36:28.940 | slowing down is what allows you to identify

00:36:31.540 | the high upside, high leverage opportunities

00:36:33.840 | that you should deploy your effort into.

00:36:36.340 | So like Lionel Messi,

00:36:37.840 | slowing down and walking around the pitch

00:36:39.640 | is what allows him to have the vision

00:36:41.740 | to see those moments

00:36:42.940 | where he should deploy all of his effort.

00:36:44.640 | If he was busy sprinting around

00:36:46.640 | in a million different directions,

00:36:47.840 | huffing and puffing

00:36:48.640 | at an 190 beat per minute heart rate,

00:36:51.040 | he wouldn't be able to identify those opportunities

00:36:53.740 | because his plane of vision

00:36:54.640 | would be shifting all over the place.

00:36:55.840 | His head would be bobbing all over the place.

00:36:57.340 | It would be really hard to see it.

00:36:59.440 | And so when you slow down,

00:37:00.940 | your vision gets really clear

00:37:02.640 | and you're able to actually identify

00:37:04.340 | where those things exist.

00:37:06.240 | Yeah, it's so fascinating.

00:37:07.240 | Speed is actually something

00:37:08.840 | I've been thinking a lot about,

00:37:10.240 | especially when I was running a company.

00:37:11.440 | It's like the name of the game

00:37:12.540 | in venture-backed startups

00:37:13.740 | is like move fast.

00:37:15.440 | And there's a guy named James Currier

00:37:17.240 | who has an investment fund called NFX,

00:37:20.640 | which I think is,

00:37:21.640 | he's one of the smartest people I know.

00:37:23.440 | And his blog is, you know,

00:37:25.540 | pure written gold, in my opinion,

00:37:27.740 | if you're running a company.

00:37:29.040 | And he gave this talk once

00:37:30.340 | and I'm so disappointed it wasn't recorded,

00:37:32.540 | but about speed.

00:37:33.840 | And there were a few things

00:37:35.540 | that he pointed out.

00:37:36.740 | A lot of it is fear.

00:37:38.640 | The reason that you sometimes

00:37:39.740 | can't move as fast as you want

00:37:40.940 | is that you're just not sure

00:37:42.540 | how it will work.

00:37:43.440 | And then once you get over that fear,

00:37:45.140 | things get unlocked.

00:37:46.040 | And I think Roger Bannister is like

00:37:47.740 | the example everyone always gives,

00:37:49.340 | which is no one ever ran a four-minute mile.

00:37:51.640 | 1954, Roger Bannister runs a four-minute mile.

00:37:54.540 | And I think within three months,

00:37:56.740 | eight more people could do it.

00:37:58.040 | It's like they didn't think it was possible.

00:38:00.040 | It just hadn't even crossed their mind.

00:38:01.240 | Was it fear?

00:38:01.840 | Was it something else?

00:38:03.040 | They just didn't believe it was possible.

00:38:05.540 | And one of his tips was simplify everything.

00:38:09.140 | And so in this slowing down phase

00:38:11.040 | before moving fast,

00:38:12.440 | and some of these examples

00:38:13.340 | are maybe business only,

00:38:15.240 | but he's like simplify every contract

00:38:17.340 | you use with a vendor.

00:38:18.340 | Like don't write custom things.

00:38:20.240 | Say this is what we're using.

00:38:21.840 | Budgeting.

00:38:22.340 | It's like create a simple budgeting process.

00:38:24.940 | But for health, an example I'll use,

00:38:27.640 | which I think slowing down to speed up

00:38:29.440 | is if you want to really focus on health,

00:38:32.340 | slow down, think how do I just

00:38:34.540 | make my meals very simple?

00:38:35.940 | How do I make it incredibly easy for me

00:38:38.740 | to not be unhealthy?

00:38:40.240 | And that takes some foresight,

00:38:41.540 | what you stock in your pantry,

00:38:42.740 | how you do your shopping,

00:38:43.640 | how you do your meal prep.

00:38:44.540 | But then it actually makes it really easy

00:38:46.540 | to quickly be on track with food goals.

00:38:49.240 | So there was just so much in that talk.

00:38:51.540 | If I could turn that into a podcast,

00:38:54.040 | I'm like I'm going through in my mind

00:38:55.940 | all the things that he talked about.

00:38:58.840 | The best example he gave,

00:38:59.840 | which was so fascinating about mindset,

00:39:01.740 | because he said mind is literally everything

00:39:03.740 | when it comes to moving fast.

00:39:04.740 | So if you need to slow down

00:39:05.740 | to recalibrate your mind,

00:39:07.540 | but he was working at a software company

00:39:08.640 | that made video games.

00:39:10.140 | And he had a team of 40,

00:39:12.540 | and they said it takes two years

00:39:14.140 | to make a video game.

00:39:14.740 | That was the operating assumption.

00:39:16.740 | And he said we're going to ship

00:39:18.740 | a video game in 21 days.

00:39:20.540 | And 38 of the 40 people were like no.

00:39:22.840 | And two of them were like we could try.

00:39:25.240 | And he was like great.

00:39:26.940 | This game looks great.

00:39:28.040 | I don't know.

00:39:28.340 | I think it was like a Facebook

00:39:29.440 | back in the day with Facebook games.

00:39:31.240 | They just copied someone else's game.

00:39:33.640 | But these two engineers

00:39:34.940 | and slowly over the 21 days people came on.

00:39:37.340 | They actually did it.

00:39:38.440 | And at the end,

00:39:39.740 | they were like we did this thing

00:39:41.540 | that everyone on the team

00:39:42.340 | thought would take two years.

00:39:43.040 | We did in 21 days.

00:39:44.240 | Now the funny part of the story

00:39:45.440 | is I believe they got a cease and desist

00:39:46.940 | like immediately after

00:39:48.640 | from the company they copied.

00:39:50.440 | But it didn't matter

00:39:51.540 | because as soon as he finished,

00:39:54.040 | they said great.

00:39:54.540 | We'll shut that game down.

00:39:55.540 | Now my entire team knows

00:39:56.640 | we can build a game in 21 days.

00:39:58.440 | We can go build our own original thing.

00:40:00.240 | We don't have to worry about that.

00:40:02.140 | But those 38 people thought it was impossible.

00:40:05.140 | And so sometimes

00:40:06.840 | you just have to like train yourself

00:40:08.840 | or test yourself

00:40:09.840 | or push past that point

00:40:11.140 | at which you don't believe it's possible.

00:40:12.840 | And that takes some slowing down

00:40:14.040 | and some forethought.

00:40:14.840 | So that's a great story.

00:40:16.040 | I have a lot of thoughts on speed

00:40:17.840 | and how valuable it can be

00:40:20.140 | and how just running straight into it

00:40:22.040 | might not be the best answer.

00:40:23.340 | Yeah, and it's a broader metaphor for life.

00:40:25.140 | Like, you know,

00:40:25.540 | there's the idea of work like a lion.

00:40:27.640 | Like sprint, rest, and repeat.

00:40:30.440 | And the rest is just as important as the sprint.

00:40:33.340 | And that's a piece that most people lose sight of

00:40:36.240 | is you have to have the rest

00:40:38.540 | in order for the sprint

00:40:39.640 | to be as efficient as possible.

00:40:41.040 | If you don't have the rest,

00:40:41.940 | then your sprint is going to be a jog.

00:40:43.740 | And most people

00:40:44.940 | and most work cultures

00:40:46.240 | default to a jog

00:40:47.640 | where you're just sort of like

00:40:48.640 | grazing throughout the day.

00:40:49.840 | Naval has talked about this.

00:40:51.440 | And it's really true.

00:40:52.340 | And so figuring out a way

00:40:53.840 | to align your overall life

00:40:55.840 | professionally, personally, health, physically,

00:40:58.440 | all of these different areas

00:40:59.840 | into much more of a sprint

00:41:01.440 | and then rest system

00:41:03.740 | is much more efficient

00:41:06.940 | for actually driving progress.

00:41:08.940 | And to go back,

00:41:09.540 | we started with the advice paradox.

00:41:11.240 | And yes, much advice might not be helpful,

00:41:14.840 | but for a lot of scenarios

00:41:17.340 | and things you want to sprint on,

00:41:18.440 | there are probably some people

00:41:20.140 | whose advice is very relevant.

00:41:22.040 | And so whether you're building something at a company

00:41:24.640 | or you're trying to dial in your health,

00:41:26.440 | not taking the time during that slowdown phase

00:41:29.340 | to seek out,

00:41:30.840 | "Okay, is there someone

00:41:31.840 | who's done a very similar thing?

00:41:33.140 | Is there a playbook for it?

00:41:34.440 | Is there an answer out there

00:41:35.740 | so I don't have to solve every problem myself?"

00:41:39.240 | is something that I like to do

00:41:40.840 | in that kind of slowdown before sprint mode.

00:41:43.640 | And so it could be as simple as,

00:41:46.340 | "Okay, if I just sprint into fitness,

00:41:50.440 | I don't even know what I would do right now."

00:41:51.640 | But if I paused and said,

00:41:52.740 | "Okay, is there someone

00:41:53.640 | who could design a workout regimen

00:41:55.240 | or someone who just has already designed one

00:41:56.740 | and published it on the internet

00:41:57.940 | or a friend that could just tell me something to do

00:42:00.440 | so that I didn't spend all this time

00:42:02.440 | swirling around what?"

00:42:04.440 | And so I think if you solve the what in advance

00:42:06.640 | during your wind down, kind of slowdown time,

00:42:09.340 | you can execute much, much faster.

00:42:11.740 | - Yeah, the flip side to it,

00:42:13.440 | which you need to be aware of,

00:42:15.040 | is that sometimes slowing down

00:42:17.240 | and doing all of that kind of research and evaluation

00:42:20.240 | is like procrastination in disguise,

00:42:22.940 | where like with fitness,

00:42:24.440 | you would say like, "Okay, well,

00:42:25.840 | let me slow down and figure out the right fitness

00:42:27.840 | and health regimen

00:42:28.740 | and I'm going to construct the best plan."

00:42:30.740 | And the reality is like,

00:42:32.540 | you know, it's like kind of like the midwit meme

00:42:34.540 | where like in the middle, they're like,

00:42:35.640 | "I'm going to, you know,

00:42:36.640 | develop a two-tiered functional strength training program

00:42:40.040 | that involves hypertrophy,"

00:42:41.340 | you know, like all these middling things.

00:42:43.040 | And then, you know, on the two ends of the midwit meme,

00:42:45.240 | it's like, "Move your body for 30 minutes a day."

00:42:47.840 | And you just do that.

00:42:50.940 | And so sometimes you just need to watch out

00:42:52.640 | for the fact that like,

00:42:53.640 | you're not slowing down as a means to procrastinate

00:42:56.340 | and like, "Oh, I need the perfect system."

00:42:57.940 | Well, you just need to start moving

00:42:59.440 | and you can figure it out as you go.

00:43:01.840 | And so balancing those,

00:43:03.040 | which again, are in like a little bit of tension,

00:43:06.140 | is an important thing.

00:43:07.440 | - Yeah, in this talk that we had

00:43:09.240 | about "Die With Zero" and focusing on fulfillment,

00:43:11.340 | it was interesting.

00:43:12.180 | There were kind of two camps

00:43:13.640 | and somehow the discussion came up

00:43:16.640 | of like taking a year off

00:43:17.940 | and traveling with your family.

00:43:19.740 | And two people had done this successfully.

00:43:22.540 | One of them went to Europe with their kids

00:43:24.840 | and the other one, I can't remember,

00:43:26.440 | took a sabbatical and did something.

00:43:28.140 | And then the other half of the room was like,

00:43:29.540 | "I don't know how to do that.

00:43:30.840 | Like, that seems impossible.

00:43:32.040 | I've tried."

00:43:33.340 | And what was interesting was

00:43:35.340 | we ended up having this long conversation

00:43:38.240 | about why people don't set personal goals and deadlines

00:43:42.340 | and structure their personal ambitions

00:43:44.940 | like they would professional.

00:43:46.940 | We've all, almost everyone listening,

00:43:48.740 | you and I, we've all been in a workplace

00:43:50.440 | where we're like, "Wow,

00:43:51.740 | here's a thing that needs to be delivered by a date.

00:43:54.040 | What are we gonna do?"

00:43:55.040 | Well, we're gonna make sure this gets done in the first week

00:43:57.340 | and then we're gonna delegate this thing

00:43:58.840 | and this person has four days to do it.

00:44:00.840 | And then we sit down with our family and we're like,

00:44:02.540 | "Well, we wanna go on a trip to Europe."

00:44:04.440 | It's like, "Cool, we'll talk about that next week."

00:44:06.640 | Like, you just don't set up these kind of milestones

00:44:09.340 | and structure and, you know,

00:44:11.040 | I won't go as far as to call them OKRs,

00:44:12.940 | but we just don't have a lot of process

00:44:14.240 | around our personal goals.

00:44:16.240 | And so I think it was an episode I did with Ben Nempton

00:44:20.140 | who has written this book called "The Bucket List Journal,"

00:44:22.340 | had this crazy bucket list story,

00:44:24.140 | really fascinating guy.

00:44:26.540 | And he was like, "People just need to set goals."

00:44:28.540 | Like, "What's the next step I'm gonna take

00:44:30.440 | towards this personal goal?"

00:44:32.340 | And so I think when it comes to procrastination,

00:44:35.240 | especially with health and personal stuff,

00:44:37.540 | you can slow down.

00:44:38.640 | Like, I'm all for slowing down,

00:44:40.040 | but to help yourself not get caught in that procrastination

00:44:43.840 | and never make progress, set a goal, set a deadline,

00:44:46.940 | which we never do personally.

00:44:48.140 | - Yeah, I mean, my book is going to have that incorporated

00:44:52.540 | as, like, in each of these domains.

00:44:53.940 | And my book is gonna be called "The Five Types of Wealth."

00:44:56.540 | It's going to track, you know, your life

00:44:58.340 | across what I view as the five types of wealth.

00:45:00.540 | And within each section, it's like,

00:45:02.340 | helps you actually identify what are your goals

00:45:04.440 | and what are your anti-goals around those,

00:45:06.840 | each type of wealth, so that you can go and do that.

00:45:09.240 | You can actually create a plan

00:45:10.440 | and actually make progress on these things.

00:45:12.540 | - Can I try to guess the five?

00:45:13.840 | - No, we don't wanna do it now.

00:45:14.940 | I don't wanna reveal all this before the book.

00:45:16.440 | - Okay, okay, okay, well,

00:45:19.640 | when it comes to making progress in life,

00:45:22.740 | we'll not talk about what types of wealth

00:45:25.140 | we wanna accumulate in our life,

00:45:26.940 | but there is a lot of distraction.

00:45:28.440 | And so I think you had two things

00:45:30.940 | that actually came up a little bit

00:45:32.140 | in that interview Tim did with Sam

00:45:34.340 | about things that can just get in the way of everything.

00:45:37.040 | So let's talk about social media and news.

00:45:39.240 | - Yeah, both near and dear to my heart

00:45:42.140 | for different reasons.

00:45:43.740 | So the social media paradox,

00:45:46.540 | or you could call it the connectedness paradox,

00:45:48.640 | is this idea that we are, or we have,

00:45:53.340 | more connectedness than ever before,

00:45:57.140 | and yet we feel less connected

00:45:59.140 | to those around us simultaneously.

00:46:01.340 | There was a viral video several years ago of Look Up.

00:46:06.840 | It's like people just looking down at their phones all day

00:46:09.040 | and looking down at screens,

00:46:10.240 | and they forget to look up at the people

00:46:11.740 | that are sitting right in front of them.

00:46:14.140 | And it's a really sad thing.

00:46:15.840 | If you go walk around in New York City,

00:46:18.240 | you're weird if you look at someone

00:46:19.840 | and smile and say hello.

00:46:21.040 | And if you think 20 years ago, that was what you did.

00:46:23.640 | You walked around, you tipped your hat at people.

00:46:25.640 | That was the way that people lived,

00:46:27.340 | and you actually interacted with people face-to-face.

00:46:29.240 | Today, a young person that's trying to date

00:46:31.840 | doesn't know how to go up to someone

00:46:33.140 | and talk to them in a bar, in a restaurant,

00:46:35.040 | or wherever they are.

00:46:35.860 | They know how to swipe on their phone

00:46:37.740 | in order to meet people.

00:46:40.640 | And I mean, it's a really, really powerful trend.

00:46:43.240 | And what I think is happening now

00:46:46.040 | is like the pendulum swings.

00:46:47.340 | And so you have this environment

00:46:49.140 | where everything is through your phones

00:46:51.840 | and through your interactions

00:46:52.840 | and digital, social media, et cetera.

00:46:54.940 | And you have this swing that sort of comes back

00:46:56.840 | towards in real life, real human connection.

00:47:00.940 | And it's interesting to watch,

00:47:01.940 | and it's interesting to observe,

00:47:03.140 | especially with the rise of AI.

00:47:05.440 | And so is the lesson,

00:47:08.140 | think about it differently or do it less?

00:47:11.240 | I think that the lesson is

00:47:12.440 | like put your damn phone down more often.

00:47:14.840 | And this is coming from someone who,

00:47:16.440 | for work, quote-unquote,

00:47:18.140 | has to spend a lot of time on social media.

00:47:19.840 | But I really need to make a concerted effort

00:47:21.940 | on a daily basis to put my phone down

00:47:24.040 | and to be present, in particular,

00:47:25.640 | with my wife and with my son.

00:47:27.540 | Because it's very easy when you are so connected there

00:47:29.940 | and when the dopamine drip is so clear

00:47:31.740 | that comes from those things,

00:47:33.240 | to just keep your phone on you and keep checking,

00:47:34.940 | keep pulling it out, keep looking at the thing.

00:47:37.440 | And that's what they're designed for.

00:47:38.840 | Like these social media platforms

00:47:40.940 | and social media is a drug.

00:47:42.640 | And it's a really effective drug

00:47:44.240 | because it continuously feeds you

00:47:45.640 | with these tiny little drips of dopamine

00:47:47.140 | that make you want to keep coming back.

00:47:48.940 | And we need to find a way to disconnect from that

00:47:51.640 | in order to connect with the people around us.

00:47:54.040 | - Have you ever experimented

00:47:55.340 | with just deleting the apps from your phone

00:47:57.040 | and only doing it on the computer?

00:47:58.940 | - I've tried.

00:47:59.780 | It never has made that much of a difference for me.

00:48:02.140 | Honestly, because a lot of my work is through my phone,

00:48:05.840 | I like being able to have access to it.

00:48:07.840 | I've tried all the different apps

00:48:10.340 | that kind of restrict your time.

00:48:11.740 | The iPhone now has a pretty good interface

00:48:14.240 | for restricting the amount of time

00:48:15.540 | you spend on an app during a day.

00:48:17.440 | It requires the discipline to actually stick to it

00:48:19.840 | when you've hit the total by earlier in the day

00:48:22.440 | to actually stick to it.

00:48:23.640 | But I've been able to create a system that works for me,

00:48:28.040 | which is basically like my phone gets put down

00:48:29.940 | at a certain time in the evening and that's it.

00:48:32.340 | It's down.

00:48:33.840 | - And what about news?

00:48:35.640 | - So the news paradox is the idea

00:48:37.840 | that the more news you consume,

00:48:39.840 | the less well-informed you are.

00:48:42.240 | This tends to be a somewhat controversial topic

00:48:45.040 | when you talk about it or share it.

00:48:46.740 | Typically, you get a lot of people

00:48:49.640 | that actually work in media

00:48:50.840 | just saying you're an idiot or that's incorrect.

00:48:52.940 | This goes back to the noise bottleneck

00:48:54.740 | that I talked about to Leb's idea at the beginning,

00:48:57.640 | that as you consume more and more news,

00:48:59.640 | you're actually getting a higher ratio of noise to signal.

00:49:02.740 | And so your overall understanding of the issue

00:49:05.640 | or of the world actually becomes worse

00:49:08.340 | despite the fact that you're consuming more,

00:49:10.040 | which you wouldn't expect.

00:49:12.040 | I have personally found

00:49:13.440 | that my life has improved dramatically

00:49:15.640 | since I've dramatically reduced the amount of news I consume.

00:49:19.540 | And I'm talking like,

00:49:21.240 | I cold turkey probably reduced my news consumption

00:49:23.940 | about like 95%, maybe like two years ago.

00:49:26.740 | And I feel happier.

00:49:29.740 | I like have heavily curated my news sources

00:49:31.940 | to where like I read one or two things

00:49:34.040 | and I just know that I understand

00:49:35.840 | at least like a foundational level about the world.

00:49:37.740 | If I wanna go deeper on an issue, I can do that.

00:49:41.140 | I know where to do it and how to do it,

00:49:43.340 | but I don't feel like I'm hit by the barrage

00:49:45.340 | of like breaking news, urgent, blah, blah, blah,

00:49:47.540 | whatever all the things are on a daily basis.

00:49:49.840 | And I actively avoid following and consuming

00:49:52.640 | from those accounts on Twitter

00:49:54.040 | or on any of the relevant platforms.

00:49:55.940 | - So how do you use that 5% that's left?

00:49:58.140 | - How do I use it?

00:49:58.980 | - Yeah, like if you say,

00:50:00.380 | well, now I've bound my news consumption to a small amount.

00:50:03.780 | Is it reading people who do a good job summarizing?

00:50:06.780 | Is it specific sources?

00:50:08.480 | - Yeah, I mean, like I think Axios does a great job

00:50:11.380 | as one of the platforms that is really good,

00:50:14.680 | but it's basically like one hit per day

00:50:16.480 | of like you're getting the basics

00:50:18.080 | of the things that are happening in the world

00:50:19.680 | and in any different arena you're interested in.

00:50:22.780 | And then from there, if you wanna go deeper on something,

00:50:24.580 | like if you think, you know,

00:50:26.380 | as the heuristic that I've seen that I think is useful,

00:50:28.280 | like is something going to be relevant a month from now?

00:50:30.380 | And if so, you should probably try to know more about it.

00:50:33.080 | Most of the news that we see on a daily basis

00:50:35.580 | is not relevant more than like an hour later.

00:50:38.180 | And everything is labeled as breaking news.

00:50:40.080 | Nothing is breaking news if everything is breaking news.

00:50:43.580 | And, you know, they use it to get clicks.

00:50:45.380 | I totally understand how media works.

00:50:46.880 | So I totally get it and I get the incentives.

00:50:48.780 | I get why, you know, they operate the way they do.

00:50:52.180 | I just don't wanna be hit by it and polluted by it

00:50:55.480 | in the way that I think.

00:50:56.480 | If I was going to like get, you know,

00:50:59.180 | crazy mentally connected to every single news story

00:51:01.880 | that came my way during the day,

00:51:02.880 | I would have no time to think about things

00:51:04.480 | that I actually care about.

00:51:05.780 | And so I just try to actively avoid it.

00:51:08.280 | - Yeah, I think news often also follows

00:51:10.980 | the productivity paradox.

00:51:12.880 | And, you know, you could learn, if you turned on CNN

00:51:17.880 | and not to knock any particular news channel,

00:51:20.680 | but you could watch a specific piece of content

00:51:24.980 | for three hours and you're not gonna get

00:51:27.280 | three hours of knowledge.

00:51:29.280 | I think sometimes I find myself catching myself thinking,

00:51:33.380 | "Oh, I'm gonna just consume this thing

00:51:34.980 | "that might take a long time."

00:51:36.380 | And then just pausing.

00:51:37.220 | I think one of the ones for me is,

00:51:38.880 | "Anytime Apple does a keynote."

00:51:40.580 | And yes, there's some excitement about it,

00:51:42.580 | but I find that I'm like, "Oh, I wanna watch the keynote."

00:51:44.680 | And I know it's gonna be an hour.

00:51:46.180 | I also know I could read the summary of the keynote

00:51:47.880 | at the end in 10 minutes or five minutes

00:51:50.680 | and I catch myself.

00:51:52.080 | And I feel like anytime you put the news on TV

00:51:55.080 | or you could just fall into this trap

00:51:58.080 | of somehow they can make a five minute piece expand

00:52:02.080 | and fill two hours and it can be mind-numbing.

00:52:05.980 | - I mean, this is the whole thing with CNBC.

00:52:07.880 | It's like financial news, right?

00:52:09.480 | Where no one is making a return by picking stocks.

00:52:13.680 | You know, like most hedge funds aren't making alpha

00:52:17.080 | and their entire job is to do that.

00:52:18.780 | So like you as a person sitting at home

00:52:21.080 | should probably not be spending your time picking stocks

00:52:23.580 | if that's not like your exclusive job

00:52:25.580 | and you're one of the best in the world at it.

00:52:26.880 | You probably shouldn't.

00:52:27.880 | It's not a great allocation of resources and time.

00:52:30.480 | And yet CNBC, the entire day, 24 hours a day

00:52:34.080 | has people jumping on, trotting up there

00:52:36.380 | and talking about stocks

00:52:37.580 | that they're interested in and stock picks.

00:52:40.180 | And there's this story that I've heard

00:52:42.780 | of like someone getting asked this,

00:52:44.080 | like, "How can you possibly do this?

00:52:45.880 | Like Kramer's on for all these hours.

00:52:47.280 | He has all these terrible stock picks."

00:52:48.880 | And you need to reframe it as it's entertainment.

00:52:51.380 | Like we have 24 hours of programming that we need to fill.

00:52:54.480 | And so we need entertaining people to be up there.

00:52:56.880 | And like a lot of news has become entertainment.

00:53:00.280 | It's no longer information.

00:53:01.580 | It's like, they're trying to hook you.

00:53:03.180 | They're trying to keep you there and keep you entertained.

00:53:05.380 | And what's entertaining, but like blaring,

00:53:07.680 | breaking news in all red, bold font,

00:53:10.480 | sitting across the page.

00:53:11.780 | It's not entertaining for them to talk about,

00:53:13.980 | you know, the new speed bumps that were put in in your city

00:53:16.780 | or, you know, the, you know,

00:53:19.080 | Girl Scout cookie campaign that's going on.

00:53:21.280 | What's entertaining for them

00:53:22.580 | and what keeps people there is fear.

00:53:24.380 | It's like, "Hey, so and so, these many people got killed.

00:53:27.080 | This terrorist attack happened, this thing."

00:53:28.880 | Like, that's what's keeping people there.

00:53:31.080 | And it makes you think that the entire world is that,

00:53:34.380 | is that's what's going on, right?

00:53:35.580 | There was this chart that was like

00:53:37.580 | comparing actual causes of death

00:53:39.780 | to causes of death talked about in the media side by side.

00:53:44.180 | And you look at it and like the actual causes of death

00:53:46.080 | was like heart disease, cancer,

00:53:47.580 | you know, like the actual things.

00:53:48.880 | And then when you look at the media one,

00:53:49.880 | it's like terrorism, you know, like crime, murders.

00:53:53.580 | Like that was what it was.

00:53:55.780 | It was like inverse.

00:53:56.780 | Like it was literally like, it was like a parody almost,

00:53:58.780 | but it was reality.

00:53:59.980 | And it's because what do they report on?

00:54:01.380 | It's the things that they think will get people to click

00:54:03.780 | and that will stick there.

00:54:04.680 | And that's fear.

00:54:06.180 | And if you want to live that way,

00:54:07.780 | that consume more of that.

00:54:10.080 | - Yeah, I don't imagine the evening news

00:54:11.480 | focused on heart disease would be that exciting

00:54:13.380 | for the average person.

00:54:14.180 | - There was this old movie, like way back in the day,

00:54:16.680 | I think it might've been a Michael Moore movie.

00:54:18.380 | Like, I feel like I saw it when I was 13 or 14.

00:54:20.680 | I think it was called "Bullying for Columbine"

00:54:23.180 | that, you know, politics aside on all of this stuff,

00:54:26.780 | like there was just an interesting juxtaposition

00:54:28.680 | that I remember he did in it

00:54:30.080 | of like showing the news in Canada

00:54:31.980 | and then showing the news in the US.

00:54:33.880 | And the Canadian one was like,

00:54:35.680 | it was looking at like speed bumps or something

00:54:37.280 | that got put like painted differently in town.

00:54:39.380 | And then it showed the US one,

00:54:40.380 | which was all shootings and crime and all this stuff.

00:54:42.480 | So it was interesting.

00:54:44.280 | - Yeah, I used to watch PBS News Hour

00:54:47.380 | because it was just like a much more practical source of news.

00:54:51.180 | And then I was like, oh,

00:54:52.180 | then they'd put all the news in a podcast for an hour.

00:54:54.580 | I don't know where it dropped off in my routine,

00:54:56.380 | but it wasn't replaced by other news.

00:54:57.980 | So I guess maybe that's a good thing.

00:54:59.180 | But it was like a good, quick,

00:55:01.680 | felt like it didn't go into the fear mongering.

00:55:05.580 | - The other thing is there's a lot of opinion

00:55:09.280 | and not a lot of fact in news these days

00:55:12.580 | because it's entertainment,

00:55:13.880 | because that's what drives clicks

00:55:15.280 | and that's what drives the business model.

00:55:18.080 | And that's challenging because like a lot of these,

00:55:20.780 | it seems like a lot of these news stories,

00:55:22.780 | they're changing minute to minute.

00:55:24.180 | Like if you go look at the headline on one of their webpages

00:55:27.280 | when something happens, it's one thing.

00:55:28.780 | You go back an hour later and the headline

00:55:30.580 | and the entire spin on it has changed

00:55:32.480 | because some new information surfaced, whatever it was.

00:55:35.280 | And so it's actually hard to know at any point in time,

00:55:37.980 | like, okay, what am I getting?

00:55:39.580 | Like, is this real or is this biased in some way?

00:55:42.380 | Has this been hit by like a bunch of filters

00:55:44.580 | and like hierarchies, whatever it is.

00:55:47.680 | It's hard to figure out like where can you actually count

00:55:49.780 | on the news source.

00:55:51.380 | - So maybe we'll close out and put this all in perspective

00:55:54.280 | with the death paradox.

00:55:56.280 | - Oh.

00:55:57.120 | - Just to take like a hard turn.

00:55:59.280 | - We're gonna end on a really bright, shiny,

00:56:01.480 | sunny rainbows note.

00:56:02.880 | - I think it kind of is.

00:56:04.480 | - I agree.

00:56:06.420 | So memento mori is this idea of knowing your mortality.

00:56:11.420 | It originates from, I think the Roman empire

00:56:17.120 | where the returning conquering hero

00:56:19.820 | after a military campaign would be paraded through the cities

00:56:23.820 | with adoring fans, cheering for them

00:56:25.820 | in this like golden chariot.

00:56:27.520 | And they would place a person behind the conquering hero,

00:56:31.220 | whispering in their ear, memento mori,

00:56:33.520 | which means like know your mortality.

00:56:35.520 | Remember that you are mortal.

00:56:37.620 | And the whole idea is that you have to know your death

00:56:40.420 | in order to live your life.

00:56:42.020 | The idea is like, if you aren't aware

00:56:45.220 | of your own mortality, you expose yourself

00:56:48.320 | to a terrible thing and to terrible life.

00:56:51.720 | So I think about this a lot.

00:56:52.920 | You know, there's these calendars that have become

00:56:54.620 | this like very viral trend of like,

00:56:57.020 | it's 52 rows across, like squares across,

00:57:00.020 | and there's 80 squares down.

00:57:01.320 | And the whole idea is that you shade one in

00:57:03.020 | every single week and you can actually see

00:57:05.020 | your own life sort of like going into black

00:57:08.220 | as you shade them in across your life.

00:57:11.320 | And for some people, that's really morbid.

00:57:13.720 | And for other people, it's really empowering

00:57:15.720 | to know that like every week matters.

00:57:17.920 | I mean, you can physically see the weeks going by

00:57:20.620 | in your life and that the weeks

00:57:21.920 | you're never going to get back,

00:57:23.620 | how precious time is with people.

00:57:26.820 | So it's something that I think about personally often,

00:57:29.920 | probably much more often now that I'm a father

00:57:31.920 | than before that.

00:57:33.920 | But something that I think everyone

00:57:35.520 | should reconcile a bit more in their life.

00:57:37.920 | - Yeah, I mean, when you were talking about news,

00:57:39.920 | it's like, "Oh, do I want to cut out an hour here, here?"

00:57:42.720 | I think when you start to really put into perspective

00:57:45.220 | how much time you have on this earth,

00:57:47.920 | is it 40,000 weeks or 4,000?

00:57:51.020 | - 4,000 weeks. - 4,000, I know, 40,000.

00:57:52.820 | - There's a great book, by the way.

00:57:53.820 | - Yeah, I don't know. - Oliver Berkman wrote

00:57:55.320 | "4,000 Weeks." - "4,000 Weeks."

00:57:56.620 | - It's an incredible book on all of this stuff.

00:57:58.420 | - Yeah, and it just makes me think,

00:57:59.820 | you know, "Die With Zero" was a, you know,

00:58:01.320 | they're all in the light of, we have this limited time,

00:58:04.120 | focus on how we use it, prioritize things that matter,

00:58:08.520 | don't let things that you don't care about fill your days.

00:58:12.120 | I feel like with that perspective,

00:58:14.620 | you could go back and think about a lot of these paradoxes

00:58:17.120 | and figure out the best way to apply them

00:58:19.620 | so that you're living a life that's truest to what you want,

00:58:22.820 | which unfortunately seems to be, not seems to be,

00:58:25.620 | is the most common regret most people have

00:58:28.720 | at the end of their life,

00:58:29.520 | is not living life true to what they want.

00:58:32.120 | - Yeah, not all time is created equal.

00:58:34.320 | I mean, you're like, you're in your 30s, I'm 32.

00:58:38.420 | This 10-year period relative to the 10-year period

00:58:41.620 | when I'm 80 is very, very different

00:58:43.820 | in terms of what I can do with my son,

00:58:46.120 | in terms of what I can do with my parents

00:58:47.720 | while they're still around, all of these different things.

00:58:49.520 | And so if you just wait, if you delay all satisfaction,

00:58:53.420 | if you continue to say, like,

00:58:54.820 | play the deferred happiness game of,

00:58:57.620 | "Oh, well, when I get to this much money

00:58:59.520 | "or when I get this promotion

00:59:00.820 | "or when I get whatever it is, then I'll be happy,"

00:59:04.120 | what you're gonna find is that you're gonna keep saying that

00:59:05.820 | until you die and until your kids are gone

00:59:09.720 | and they've moved off, they don't wanna hang out with you.

00:59:11.620 | And until your parents are gone

00:59:13.020 | and you're not able to hang out with them

00:59:14.520 | or spend time with them anymore.

00:59:16.920 | And that's a terrible thing.

00:59:18.020 | And it's really, really sad when that happens to people.

00:59:21.020 | - Yeah, so I didn't mean to bring us to this place

00:59:23.020 | of thinking about death before the end,

00:59:25.420 | after we talk about the news, talking about death,

00:59:27.820 | but I think it's really valuable

00:59:29.320 | to put everything in perspective.

00:59:31.020 | - I agree.

00:59:32.020 | - All right, I think, I mean, obviously,

00:59:33.620 | we'll put a link to the multiple paradoxes.

00:59:36.020 | I don't know how many there are in total

00:59:37.020 | 'cause you wrote one with 10, 15.

00:59:38.120 | - Eight million, I don't know.

00:59:39.120 | - One with 20, there were a lot,

00:59:40.420 | but I'll link to a few of them in the show notes.

00:59:42.120 | We didn't get to all of them,

00:59:43.720 | but I think we hit on the ones

00:59:44.920 | that I was most excited to talk about.

00:59:47.320 | - Yeah, this was awesome.

00:59:48.220 | Really, really fun discussion.

00:59:49.420 | - Yeah, thanks for being here in person.

00:59:51.420 | - Love doing it.

00:59:52.240 | - Next time we'll have to do it in the sauna.

00:59:54.120 | It'll be a different conversation.

00:59:54.940 | - We'll do sauna cold plunge

00:59:56.320 | and we'll see who can last longer in the cold plunge.

00:59:59.320 | - We'll see, I need some practice.

The Most Powerful Paradoxes of Life with Sahil Bloom

Chapters