How To Master Change: This One Idea Might Change Your Entire Life

00:00:00.000 | All right, so let's get into it a little bit.

00:00:01.440 | So we have master of change.

00:00:03.360 | Let's start with some motivating premise.

00:00:05.760 | So I want to talk about the narrative of stability.

00:00:09.920 | What is the narrative of stability?

00:00:12.920 | Why is it so popular in our culture?

00:00:15.840 | And why might that be a problem?

00:00:17.700 | - Well, I first had the idea to really wrestle

00:00:21.840 | with the idea of change early on in the pandemic,

00:00:26.060 | when every large publication was running stories

00:00:29.300 | about when we're going to get back to normal.

00:00:32.000 | And I remember thinking that I doubt we're ever

00:00:34.660 | going to get back to normal.

00:00:36.960 | And why is that even the goal to get back to normal?

00:00:40.300 | This was this enormous societal shift.

00:00:43.200 | And I started researching and realized that so much

00:00:46.920 | of our thinking on change traces itself back

00:00:50.460 | to this concept called homeostasis,

00:00:53.320 | which was developed in the mid 1800s.

00:00:57.000 | And it was a model to describe how the body responds

00:01:01.900 | to stressors.

00:01:03.320 | And homeostasis says that there is order and stability,

00:01:07.400 | then there's some sort of disorder event,

00:01:10.000 | and then a healthy system gets back to stability,

00:01:12.940 | gets back to stability.

00:01:14.640 | - And this was like the human body is what they were looking

00:01:16.600 | at as the example.

00:01:17.980 | - That's right.

00:01:18.820 | - Though this term then became more general, I suppose.

00:01:21.300 | Ecosystems could be homeostatic, mechanical systems.

00:01:25.900 | Google anything relating to change.

00:01:28.340 | I want to change my behavior, I want to quit smoking,

00:01:30.400 | I want to start exercising, I want to change a new job.

00:01:32.860 | And it's always about fighting your body's natural

00:01:35.400 | resistance to change, or fighting your mind's

00:01:37.260 | natural resistance to change.

00:01:39.100 | And homeostasis was the guiding intellectual theory

00:01:43.840 | under change for 150 years.

00:01:46.900 | But more recently, researchers, again, starting

00:01:50.740 | in the biology life sciences community,

00:01:53.540 | decided that while homeostasis represents change

00:01:56.660 | in a couple very narrow examples,

00:01:59.440 | broadly speaking, that's not actually

00:02:01.100 | what healthy systems do.

00:02:02.780 | - How interesting.

00:02:03.620 | - After disorder, healthy systems return to stability,

00:02:06.460 | but that stability is always somewhere new.

00:02:08.780 | So they don't go back to where they were,

00:02:10.500 | they strive for stability somewhere new.

00:02:12.140 | - So homeostasis, the original target,

00:02:16.020 | this was talking about the human body, I suppose,

00:02:18.380 | where you really do need to return to some sort of baseline

00:02:21.640 | because the states of heightened, I don't know,

00:02:24.460 | hormonal arousal or something like this.

00:02:25.920 | You couldn't be in that state all the time,

00:02:27.220 | you would have a stroke or a heart attack.

00:02:29.060 | But once they applied this term to other systems,

00:02:31.800 | that's where the mistake was.

00:02:32.880 | Actually, other systems don't return back

00:02:36.020 | to some sort of platonic baseline.

00:02:38.180 | So what you're saying, so the human body might do that

00:02:40.220 | from a biochemical perspective, but other systems

00:02:42.900 | that aren't just a human body don't necessarily.

00:02:46.100 | - That's right.

00:02:46.940 | And even the human body, so in very narrow examples,

00:02:50.080 | so the example of a fever.

00:02:52.200 | So you run it somewhere between 97 to 99 degrees,

00:02:56.820 | it's like the middle of the bell curve.

00:02:58.360 | And you have a fever and your temperature spikes to 101

00:03:00.560 | and then it gets back to where it was.

00:03:02.580 | That is homeostatic regulation working.

00:03:05.900 | However, you train your muscles and you break down tissue.

00:03:10.900 | That tissue repairs and it gets back to stability,

00:03:13.620 | but it becomes stronger, that stability is somewhere new.

00:03:16.380 | You go through psychological therapy

00:03:19.120 | and you break down old patterns and your brain rewires,

00:03:22.060 | but it ends up somewhere new.

00:03:23.820 | So even within the human body and the human brain,

00:03:27.100 | allostasis turns out to be a much more accurate

00:03:29.740 | representative model of change in 99% of cases.

00:03:32.980 | - Oh, interesting.

00:03:33.820 | So homeostasis was not just the body where it was accurate,

00:03:36.620 | but very specific systems in the body,

00:03:39.060 | like the core temperature.

00:03:41.060 | - That's right.

00:03:41.880 | - Yeah, interesting.

00:03:42.720 | - So the intellectual underpinnings of allostasis,

00:03:46.240 | like homeostasis, also come out of medicine.

00:03:49.180 | So the term was coined by a neuroscientist

00:03:52.060 | and it was kind of made its scientific debut

00:03:55.220 | in the late '80s and early '90s

00:03:57.340 | in many medical and scientific journals

00:04:00.700 | is a new way to conceptualize the brain.

00:04:03.660 | Because we used to think that the brain was more static

00:04:07.540 | and that when there was a change to the brain

00:04:09.160 | and it was disrupted, it had to go back to where it was.

00:04:12.080 | And now we know that the brain

00:04:13.500 | is constantly rewiring itself.

00:04:15.580 | The body, the immune system, it fights an illness, right?

00:04:18.820 | There's order, then there's this disorder event, an illness,

00:04:21.620 | and then it goes back to order,

00:04:22.980 | but that order's somewhere new with antibodies.

00:04:25.140 | - Right, and I know too much about the immune system

00:04:27.500 | because of COVID.

00:04:28.340 | And my audience knows about the rabbit hole I went down,

00:04:31.820 | so don't get me started about CD4

00:04:33.380 | versus CD8 T cell receptors.

00:04:35.260 | But yes, our immune system is different now

00:04:38.620 | than it was pre-COVID.

00:04:40.460 | It's different now than it was

00:04:41.460 | pre the last sickness we got from our kid,

00:04:43.340 | which was a week ago or something like that.

00:04:45.500 | - Right, so for the longest time,

00:04:47.780 | this is like to your original question,

00:04:50.020 | we've done a good job unpacking it.

00:04:51.860 | The model of change was a system has stability at X,

00:04:56.420 | there's some kind of disorder event, a change,

00:05:01.100 | and then the system gets back to stability at X.

00:05:03.940 | But what the research now shows

00:05:05.460 | is that a healthy, fluid, thriving system

00:05:08.300 | has stability at X, there's some sort of change.

00:05:11.920 | That system, after the change, craves stability,

00:05:14.980 | but that stability is at Y or Z.

00:05:16.900 | It's always at somewhere new.

00:05:18.700 | - Yeah, so there's a different whatever minimas or maximums

00:05:23.500 | in this landscape of configurations that have stability.

00:05:25.820 | So you get dislodged from one

00:05:28.020 | because of some sort of disruptive event,

00:05:29.980 | you're probably now much closer to a different configuration.

00:05:32.940 | The nearest optimal stable configuration

00:05:35.900 | could be quite different.

00:05:36.740 | - Exactly, and trying to go back to where you were

00:05:38.860 | often prolongs that distress

00:05:41.660 | instead of getting moving somewhere closer

00:05:43.740 | to where you now are.

00:05:44.740 | - So how much when it comes to human psychology,

00:05:46.900 | so now we're thinking about how you or I

00:05:48.380 | might think about ourselves and our narrative

00:05:51.500 | when there's a change,

00:05:53.080 | how much then is our dislike as humans of change

00:05:57.620 | and our need to return back,

00:05:58.940 | how much of that is some sort of cultural imbibing

00:06:03.300 | of this notion that was out there in the ether,

00:06:05.820 | and how much of this is also just the way

00:06:07.380 | we're wired as humans, that change represents,

00:06:09.800 | I don't know, danger and there's familiarity.

00:06:13.080 | What comes to play when it's our own psychology?

00:06:15.540 | - Yeah, it's a great question, Cal,

00:06:16.860 | and I think that the majority of this is actually cultural.

00:06:20.560 | And there's some interesting research that we can lean on

00:06:22.980 | because when you look at cross-cultural studies

00:06:25.420 | of how people respond to change,

00:06:27.700 | what you find is that in Eastern cultures

00:06:30.240 | where homeostasis isn't a known concept,

00:06:32.980 | people have much better relationships with change.

00:06:35.460 | They don't resist it, they don't deny it,

00:06:37.440 | they don't get scared by it, they actually embrace it.

00:06:40.020 | Something else that's really interesting

00:06:41.940 | is that homeostasis had us think of change

00:06:46.220 | as these acute events that happen to us.

00:06:49.580 | But when you step back and you think about it,

00:06:51.380 | all of life is change.

00:06:52.920 | Change is not an acute event, it is an ongoing process.

00:06:56.520 | Aging is change.

00:06:59.140 | Health is change.

00:07:01.160 | You think about an EKG, the last thing

00:07:03.240 | that you wanna see is a straight line.

00:07:04.560 | That is literally death.

00:07:06.200 | So we're constantly undergoing these cycles

00:07:08.400 | of order, disorder, and reorder,

00:07:10.480 | and I think the biggest mindset flip that we can make

00:07:13.360 | to have a much better relationship with change

00:07:15.020 | is to stop thinking about it as something

00:07:16.720 | that happens to us and start thinking about it

00:07:19.500 | as an ongoing conversation that we're always a part of.

00:07:22.500 | - Oh, that's interesting.

00:07:23.340 | The cross-cultural stuff is interesting too.

00:07:25.760 | So is it Western?

00:07:27.700 | - Correct.

00:07:28.540 | - Is it Western in general?

00:07:29.360 | Not just American, but sort of a Western culture thing.

00:07:32.280 | - Exactly.

00:07:33.120 | - I see, but is the fact that I haven't left

00:07:35.320 | the college campus since I turned 18

00:07:37.360 | a sign that I'm just hopelessly resistant to change?

00:07:42.000 | I will be a student for, I'm never gonna leave school.

00:07:44.680 | That's it, I never wanna change again.

00:07:46.740 | - Yes, and what I would argue is that the college campus

00:07:50.500 | has changed quite a bit in the last 30 years.

00:07:52.960 | - That's true, I try to avoid change.

00:07:55.360 | - And it came for you anyways.

00:07:56.440 | There's no escaping.

00:07:57.560 | - Yeah, it came for me anyways.

00:07:59.440 | Okay, that's very interesting.

00:08:00.400 | So you're saying there are changes that we're used to.

00:08:03.240 | We age, different things, we're used to it.

00:08:05.000 | My youngest kid, for example, today,

00:08:07.560 | I brought him to his last day of the preschool

00:08:09.940 | that all three of our kids went.

00:08:11.560 | So that's like eight years of having kids in this preschool.

00:08:13.680 | That's change, and that's gonna happen.

00:08:15.040 | Then they'll leave elementary school,

00:08:16.240 | and then they'll leave high school.

00:08:17.960 | But when it comes to certain types of events,

00:08:19.720 | we're just, for whatever reason,

00:08:21.840 | we categorize them as unacceptable,

00:08:25.060 | or change is not a response.

00:08:26.800 | I guess, what, like a job event, a health event,

00:08:30.360 | I don't know what type of things,

00:08:32.840 | what type of circumstances, but for whatever reason,

00:08:34.760 | there's a particular, what is the band,

00:08:36.160 | I guess I should say, what is the band of changes,

00:08:39.440 | the categories of changes that, at least in Western culture,

00:08:42.680 | we tend to think of as unbearable?

00:08:45.440 | - Yeah, I think that they tend to revolve

00:08:47.200 | around major life transitions.

00:08:49.000 | So relationships, jobs, health,

00:08:54.880 | those are probably the big categories.

00:08:57.440 | What's fascinating is that research shows

00:08:59.360 | that the average adult goes through 36

00:09:02.520 | major life transitions.

00:09:04.760 | And again, we think of change as like this abnormal event,

00:09:09.080 | yet we're experiencing a big change every two years.

00:09:12.680 | And common examples are you get married, you get divorced,

00:09:17.240 | you start a job, you end a job, you change jobs,

00:09:20.280 | you retire, your kids start school, your kids leave school,

00:09:23.640 | you're an empty nester, you relocate your geography,

00:09:26.100 | you publish a book, you have a book flop,

00:09:28.520 | all of these things.

00:09:30.240 | And what's interesting too is that it's not just bad change

00:09:34.520 | that throws us for a loop, it's all change.

00:09:36.360 | There's research that shows that after positive events,

00:09:39.360 | people often experience a lot of stress.

00:09:42.320 | - Yeah, that I know from experience.

00:09:45.360 | Yeah, something goes well, you're like, oh my God,

00:09:48.240 | so I have to do these other things now,

00:09:49.560 | or these expectations are higher.

00:09:52.720 | So you talked about, in the book,

00:09:54.120 | you talked about early on, you went through

00:09:57.800 | a bunch of these all at once, right around the time

00:10:00.840 | you were conceiving the book with your professional

00:10:03.440 | situation, your geographic location, et cetera.

00:10:06.360 | Maybe we should set the stage with that,

00:10:07.680 | because then we can use you as a case study

00:10:10.280 | once we get to the right way to think about change.

00:10:13.320 | - Yeah, so that's right.

00:10:15.480 | When I was in the process of coming up with this idea

00:10:19.000 | for the book and writing the book, COVID,

00:10:22.000 | which was a change that just about everyone

00:10:24.440 | experienced collectively, though many of us

00:10:27.200 | experienced it differently, so there was the pandemic.

00:10:29.960 | My family moved from Northern California

00:10:32.240 | to Asheville, North Carolina, a big, thriving

00:10:36.120 | West Coast city to a small, mid-Atlantic mountain town.

00:10:40.040 | I was basically, maybe told is too harsh,

00:10:46.480 | but a sport that had been a huge part of my identity,

00:10:50.000 | running, for the last 15 years.

00:10:52.400 | I was told I had a pretty serious condition in my calf

00:10:55.240 | that would probably be the end of my running career,

00:10:57.400 | and I would need major orthopedic surgery on my leg.

00:11:00.160 | Within the last five years, I had the birth

00:11:04.040 | of my first two children.

00:11:05.320 | A very painful family estrangement happened

00:11:09.520 | in my family of origin, and I had my first solo book

00:11:14.520 | that was published and did quite well,

00:11:17.880 | which allowed me to stop doing all of my contract work

00:11:22.680 | that I had been doing as a coach.

00:11:24.240 | So I started my own private community coaching practice,

00:11:26.920 | and this is all within five years,

00:11:29.560 | and if you take Theo, my oldest, out of it,

00:11:31.320 | this is all within two and a half years.

00:11:34.120 | - So you were thinking about exactly this topic,

00:11:37.120 | but was it chicken or egg?

00:11:38.520 | So was it all of these changes that got you thinking,

00:11:41.920 | how do we think about change?

00:11:43.400 | Why is this, I need to think about this,

00:11:45.080 | I need to up my game, or was it serendipitous?

00:11:47.800 | You were thinking about change,

00:11:49.120 | and then had an immediate opportunity

00:11:51.040 | to chest out your theories.

00:11:52.600 | - I mean, you know this as well as me, right?

00:11:54.400 | We write the books that we wanna read ourselves.

00:11:56.920 | So I think that it's a little bit of both,

00:12:00.480 | and what really captured it for me is,

00:12:04.040 | whether it's the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal

00:12:06.480 | or The Economist or The Atlantic,

00:12:08.120 | just during COVID, every week, I saw,

00:12:11.280 | when are sports gonna get back to normal?

00:12:13.140 | When is work gonna get back to normal?

00:12:15.520 | When is family holidays gonna get back to normal?

00:12:18.640 | And I'm thinking, like, never.

00:12:20.640 | Like, and why should we want to get back to normal?

00:12:23.320 | - Yeah, well, let me ask you about that,

00:12:25.240 | 'cause I don't know if this is an example,

00:12:27.240 | I think it's relevant to your theory,

00:12:28.640 | 'cause it's something I noticed

00:12:29.480 | about exactly that phenomenon.

00:12:30.800 | And I don't know if you or I have talked about this before,

00:12:32.520 | but I've certainly brought it up before.

00:12:34.320 | I noticed during that period of COVID,

00:12:36.520 | there was this split.

00:12:38.520 | So there were the people that,

00:12:39.560 | when are we gonna get back to normal,

00:12:40.400 | when are we gonna get back to normal?

00:12:41.800 | And things weren't going back to normal right away.

00:12:43.560 | And that led to certain sort of maladapted responses,

00:12:47.000 | so either that could lead to a retreat into substance abuse

00:12:51.320 | or into sort of weirdly, like, hardcore,

00:12:54.540 | everything is a microchip and a conspiracy,

00:12:57.040 | just trying to deal with that.

00:12:58.900 | There were certain groups I saw that really handled it well,

00:13:02.880 | and there was no big issue.

00:13:04.100 | And one group I saw that, for whatever reason,

00:13:05.760 | this is gonna sound random,

00:13:07.080 | was Navy SEALs who have podcasts.

00:13:10.480 | There was a few different Navy SEALs,

00:13:11.920 | either I know or I know of their podcasts.

00:13:14.360 | I'm thinking of, like, Mark Devine,

00:13:16.260 | I'm thinking of Jocko Willink, ex-Navy SEALs.

00:13:20.160 | And I remember listening to them in this period,

00:13:22.420 | and they're very chill,

00:13:24.720 | but also very just accepting of the circumstances.

00:13:27.160 | Okay, this is different, let's refactor.

00:13:30.600 | And I was wondering, maybe this was something

00:13:32.360 | that through that type of training,

00:13:34.920 | you get really used to the idea that, whatever,

00:13:36.800 | you're on an op and all sorts of stuff is gonna go wrong

00:13:39.320 | or not what you expected.

00:13:40.160 | Our whole training, if you're in the special forces,

00:13:43.040 | was, well, how do you adapt to the situation on the ground?

00:13:46.160 | You don't panic, you don't try to stop it.

00:13:48.800 | You're like, okay, let's just roll with it.

00:13:50.120 | Because I noticed that among that particular subset.

00:13:52.120 | I was like, wow, they're a good example for me

00:13:54.080 | because they were so chill.

00:13:55.280 | We don't know what's gonna change.

00:13:56.180 | So what we're gonna do is we're gonna pivot

00:13:57.100 | our business here, we'll do this, no factor.

00:13:59.800 | They always say no factor.

00:14:00.760 | No factor, we do this, we'll change, we'll roll.

00:14:03.440 | So I don't know, maybe what we're seeing there

00:14:04.780 | is an example of people just through happenstance

00:14:06.740 | of their particular profession,

00:14:08.400 | we're a little bit more comfortable with change

00:14:11.040 | than, let's say, the rest of us

00:14:12.240 | who work on laptops for a living.

00:14:14.100 | - Yeah, I mean, I don't listen to those podcasts

00:14:16.500 | too frequently, but I'd have to imagine

00:14:19.540 | that that is a highly adaptable environment to grow up in,

00:14:24.200 | being an elite Navy SEAL.

00:14:27.140 | The writer in me, because I'm not a tough guy

00:14:29.340 | elite Navy SEAL, would say it's also a beautiful metaphor

00:14:32.420 | because in the Navy, you're literally operating on water.

00:14:36.200 | And water is fluid, and water has the ability

00:14:41.200 | to flow around things instead of get stuck on them.

00:14:44.800 | So maybe it's just something about spending years and years

00:14:47.720 | on water where you don't have control

00:14:51.040 | and in a job where you have to be adaptable.

00:14:54.840 | And then something like COVID comes along

00:14:57.020 | and it's like, well, why shouldn't our generation

00:14:59.260 | have a big pandemic?

00:15:00.780 | - Yeah, yeah, and that seemed to be the big difference

00:15:02.920 | was whether your thought was this will go back

00:15:05.600 | to normal next week, it will, it has to,

00:15:07.960 | I'm just taking out that news, and the people that said,

00:15:09.880 | oh, this is a new configuration, how should we change?

00:15:13.640 | Or let's roll with the idea that this might take a long time

00:15:16.120 | or let's cover that option, you know, hey, this could be,

00:15:18.520 | we don't know, there's a real pragmatism or a real realism.

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00:17:41.560 | I also wanna talk about our good friends at ZocDoc.

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00:19:40.240 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep, .com.com/deep.

00:19:45.240 | If you can say it three times fast, I'll be impressed.

00:19:48.160 | But anyways, let's see how good that is

00:19:50.280 | by getting more towards the solution.

00:19:51.960 | So you have this phrase, rugged flexibility.

00:19:54.880 | So let's talk about that.

00:19:55.760 | What makes up rugged flexibility

00:19:57.480 | as the proper response to change?

00:20:01.360 | - Right, so rugged flexibility.

00:20:04.800 | You normally think of these two words,

00:20:08.000 | rugged and flexible, as opposites.

00:20:11.160 | So rugged is durable, potentially even rigid,

00:20:15.080 | and flexible is loose and it bends.

00:20:18.920 | And we like to think very this or that, linear.

00:20:23.280 | Yet when you combine these two terms,

00:20:25.880 | you get something that is durable

00:20:28.720 | through its ability to bend.

00:20:31.120 | - Interesting.

00:20:31.960 | - And that, in a nutshell, is rugged flexibility.

00:20:34.180 | Now, you look at change on the grandest scale,

00:20:39.180 | which is evolution, like the ongoing dance of life.

00:20:44.400 | And when you think about species that persist and endure,

00:20:48.900 | they have two core qualities.

00:20:52.440 | The first quality is they have some kind of identity

00:20:55.880 | that makes them what they are, that they hold onto,

00:20:58.520 | that does not change.

00:21:00.000 | Because if that thing changed,

00:21:01.480 | they would no longer be that species.

00:21:03.760 | They would evolve into something new.

00:21:05.840 | But outside of that core quality,

00:21:08.160 | they are so adaptable and flexible.

00:21:11.160 | So if they were just flexible

00:21:13.480 | and they didn't have the ruggedness,

00:21:14.840 | well then they would become

00:21:16.180 | something completely unrecognizable.

00:21:18.360 | If they were just rugged and rigid

00:21:19.920 | and didn't have the flexibility, they'd be selected out.

00:21:22.160 | - Right.

00:21:23.000 | - So that's how species respond to change over time.

00:21:25.320 | - It was like the finch's beak.

00:21:27.560 | - Exactly. - It gets longer,

00:21:28.600 | but it's still a finch.

00:21:29.720 | - Exactly.

00:21:30.680 | And you see this in organizational science.

00:21:32.760 | You see that the most successful companies,

00:21:35.040 | they have these core properties

00:21:36.200 | that make them what they are,

00:21:37.940 | yet they apply those properties

00:21:39.520 | and those qualities differently

00:21:40.620 | as the circumstances change.

00:21:41.680 | You see this in phenomenal athletes.

00:21:43.640 | Every athlete has to go through aging.

00:21:45.720 | The athletes that are really stubborn

00:21:47.720 | and don't try to change their style as they age,

00:21:50.200 | they play really poorly.

00:21:51.240 | They get evolutionarily selected out.

00:21:53.400 | - They're like baseball pitchers.

00:21:54.480 | - Yeah, but the athletes that are able to change

00:21:56.600 | how you pitch and to change your style of game

00:21:58.440 | or a basketball player that used to be really physical

00:22:00.560 | and get to the basket, learning how to play outside more,

00:22:03.160 | yet there's still these trademark things

00:22:04.760 | that make them who they are.

00:22:05.680 | So they marry this ruggedness with flexibility.

00:22:07.720 | - MJ's fading jump shot.

00:22:10.560 | - Yeah.

00:22:11.400 | - A little '90s reference here.

00:22:12.240 | - I mean, we could talk about '90s basketball forever,

00:22:14.760 | but there's so many examples.

00:22:16.320 | And then you think about high performers in knowledge work,

00:22:20.040 | and it's the same kind of thing.

00:22:21.560 | You have to be able to adapt

00:22:23.440 | and to be flexible in the midst of change.

00:22:26.000 | Now, I am equal parts philosophy and science

00:22:29.500 | when I write these books.

00:22:30.360 | So I'm gonna say this is like kind of

00:22:31.700 | the Brad Stahlberg philosophy that's forming on change.

00:22:34.480 | So then I go to the literature,

00:22:35.800 | and we say that homeostasis is rigid.

00:22:38.000 | It's all about getting back to normal.

00:22:39.880 | We know it doesn't work.

00:22:41.160 | I mentioned that the scientific community

00:22:43.360 | in the late '80s and early '90s

00:22:44.680 | switched to this model of change that they call allostasis.

00:22:48.240 | And what allostasis says is that, yes,

00:22:51.480 | living systems do crave stability,

00:22:53.680 | but that stability is a result

00:22:55.900 | of their being able to change.

00:22:58.220 | Allostasis literally comes from the Greek roots allo,

00:23:01.560 | which means variable, and stasis, which means stable.

00:23:04.980 | So you are stable through being variable.

00:23:09.040 | Peter Sterling, the scientist that coined this term,

00:23:11.520 | the term allostasis defines it as stability through change.

00:23:15.160 | And I think it's beautiful 'cause it has a double meaning.

00:23:17.360 | Yes, you can be stable through change,

00:23:19.520 | and the way to be stable through change

00:23:21.320 | is to some extent by changing.

00:23:23.200 | - So is it fair to say a disrupting event

00:23:27.440 | is going to change your configuration?

00:23:29.840 | And it could change it,

00:23:30.840 | I'm trying to be overly scientific here,

00:23:33.560 | and it could put you into an unstable configuration

00:23:36.360 | that's not sustainable.

00:23:37.440 | - And it hurts. - Yeah, and it hurts.

00:23:39.160 | - Emotionally, physically, socially, it's chaotic.

00:23:41.560 | - Yeah, and you can't stop that from happening.

00:23:43.480 | If you are a species or whatever, an entity,

00:23:47.200 | that can change, this gives you the ability

00:23:49.360 | to then move from that unstable configuration

00:23:52.180 | to a nearby stable configuration.

00:23:53.960 | So is that a way of capturing,

00:23:56.280 | you need the ability of change to have stability,

00:23:59.000 | because if you can't change,

00:24:00.560 | and you're just existing somewhere that's stable for now,

00:24:02.680 | you're gonna get knocked into something unstable anyways,

00:24:04.720 | and you need change to move.

00:24:06.200 | That's how you move from the unstable

00:24:08.320 | to something else stable,

00:24:09.280 | and it might be the nearest stable thing

00:24:11.000 | is not where you were before.

00:24:12.420 | - 100%, when you were saying that,

00:24:14.040 | the visual that came to my mind

00:24:15.560 | is you could picture us as people, as organizations,

00:24:19.000 | even as societies, stable points were a group of marbles

00:24:24.000 | that are all tightly together, and then change happens.

00:24:27.160 | Small change, it's a little pebble,

00:24:28.620 | the marbles kind of splay.

00:24:30.160 | Big change, it's like a rock, and the marbles go everywhere.

00:24:33.760 | If you try to get the marbles

00:24:35.080 | exactly the same way they were before,

00:24:37.360 | you're gonna run into all kinds of resistance,

00:24:39.380 | and it probably will be a very long, windy road

00:24:41.880 | to get there, and you probably will never get back

00:24:43.940 | to where you were.

00:24:45.060 | Whereas if you look out at the future, and you say,

00:24:46.880 | "Oh, it's not good to have these marbles everywhere.

00:24:49.280 | "They should be close together,

00:24:50.440 | "but the configuration is gonna be different

00:24:52.260 | "than it was before," that's allostasis in a nutshell.

00:24:55.400 | - So when we're talking about humans,

00:24:56.760 | what are we looking for when we say stability?

00:24:58.680 | Like what's the actual good here that we're seeking?

00:25:01.440 | - Ooh, that's a great question.

00:25:03.040 | I think that the good here that we're seeking

00:25:05.460 | is an ability to have some valid prediction

00:25:10.460 | on what is going to happen next.

00:25:14.300 | So you think about in a world where it's true chaos,

00:25:18.240 | and you have no idea what's gonna happen next,

00:25:20.740 | navigating that world would be impossible.

00:25:23.560 | So we are prediction machines, and we tend to feel good

00:25:26.760 | when we can predict what's next.

00:25:28.240 | That's why people like having routines,

00:25:29.800 | 'cause it makes it somewhat easy

00:25:31.120 | to predict what's happening next.

00:25:32.800 | Now rigidity becomes when you get so attached

00:25:35.600 | to those predictions that you can't go off course,

00:25:40.100 | even if there's a tornado coming, or a hurricane,

00:25:42.160 | or a monsoon, or whatever weather metaphor

00:25:43.720 | you wanna use.

00:25:44.920 | So stability is about having a sense

00:25:47.960 | of what's gonna come next,

00:25:48.940 | and being able to make that prediction

00:25:50.320 | so that you can live your life,

00:25:51.760 | but when unforeseen circumstances come,

00:25:54.200 | quickly change that prediction,

00:25:56.560 | and not freak out in its midst.

00:25:58.240 | - Interesting, so we wanna know,

00:25:59.400 | we want some familiarity with what's gonna come next.

00:26:01.860 | That's interesting, we're prediction, is this why--

00:26:03.440 | - We are prediction, so to me,

00:26:04.720 | this was the most interesting part,

00:26:06.160 | intellectually, of the book,

00:26:07.480 | was learning about what consciousness actually is,

00:26:11.280 | and how consciousness functions,

00:26:12.940 | and the brain is one big prediction machine,

00:26:15.680 | and when reality doesn't match our expectations,

00:26:18.580 | it throws us for a loop.

00:26:19.840 | So we have to be prediction machines.

00:26:21.240 | The metaphor, not the metaphor,

00:26:22.440 | the example I use in the book to make this clear,

00:26:24.640 | is imagine if every time you're walking down the tarmac

00:26:27.680 | to get on a plane, your brain didn't predict

00:26:30.220 | that it was gonna end in an airplane.

00:26:32.200 | Well, you never walk down the tarmac,

00:26:33.400 | 'cause you think, well, maybe I'm gonna fall off a cliff,

00:26:35.040 | maybe there's gonna be snakes there,

00:26:36.640 | but because we know airports,

00:26:38.240 | we have a mental model for it,

00:26:39.340 | we can predict that when I step off this tarmac,

00:26:41.580 | I'm gonna step onto an airplane.

00:26:43.240 | And we go through life making these predictions,

00:26:45.400 | and to me, what change ultimately is,

00:26:47.320 | is it's something that proves our prediction wrong.

00:26:50.400 | - Right, so when we successfully predict something,

00:26:53.880 | it feels good, or more importantly,

00:26:55.400 | when we fail to predict something, it sounds alarm bells,

00:26:58.800 | which is useful in the moment,

00:27:00.120 | when the Asheville Airport has a snake issue

00:27:02.440 | at the tarmac or whatever,

00:27:04.080 | but if you're constantly in that state,

00:27:06.480 | so if you constantly have alarm bells going off,

00:27:09.000 | that's unsustainable.

00:27:10.200 | You're exhausting your brain,

00:27:11.700 | which is why we crave stability,

00:27:13.580 | means we crave a place

00:27:14.420 | where mainly our predictions are right.

00:27:15.620 | - Yep, and to blow your mind for a second,

00:27:17.020 | I'm gonna bring it back to where we started in biology.

00:27:19.340 | This is exactly what the immune system does.

00:27:22.140 | So the immune system, there's a pathogen,

00:27:24.060 | it makes a prediction based on something it's seen before,

00:27:26.740 | and then it marshals a response to fight it.

00:27:28.880 | If the pathogen is new, it has no prediction for it,

00:27:32.100 | what happens?

00:27:32.940 | There's disorder, there's sickness,

00:27:34.540 | and if you're a strong, vibrant system,

00:27:36.180 | you build up immunity the next time it predicts right.

00:27:38.660 | What is an overreactive immune system?

00:27:40.800 | It's a disease, it's a disorder,

00:27:42.680 | and that is an immune system

00:27:44.400 | that never knows if there's snakes on the plane.

00:27:46.560 | So this is really a pretty universal principle.

00:27:49.340 | - Yeah, that's very interesting.

00:27:50.240 | So then let's overlay a little bit of ethics on this

00:27:53.360 | or what have you.

00:27:54.200 | So we know just fundamentally the human brain,

00:27:56.460 | putting aside any sort of values,

00:27:58.800 | the human brain wants predictability.

00:28:01.160 | It's stressful not to, we can't exist in that state.

00:28:03.680 | And that stability in some senses, it's predictable.

00:28:07.060 | Now can we measure the desirability

00:28:10.280 | of different stable conditions

00:28:11.640 | by how much does it align

00:28:13.320 | with the things we actually care about?

00:28:14.760 | So does the challenge now become,

00:28:16.560 | I wanna find stability,

00:28:18.380 | and among options that are stable,

00:28:20.680 | I would like to find an option if possible

00:28:22.960 | that reflects the things I actually care about.

00:28:26.320 | - Yeah, I think that this does switch to ethics

00:28:28.800 | and to psychology as well that would say

00:28:31.400 | that we are thriving when we are in a state of stability,

00:28:35.640 | not rigidity, but stability in a way that aligns

00:28:39.460 | with the things that we value in our lives.

00:28:41.220 | - So would you say, I'm summarizing things,

00:28:43.460 | but one way of thinking about rugged flexibility

00:28:45.780 | is you're able with some proficiency to,

00:28:49.380 | when disrupted from a moment of stability

00:28:52.540 | by outside events, to relatively proficiently

00:28:56.260 | find your way to new stability

00:28:59.700 | that still connects to your values.

00:29:01.580 | - Yeah, that's right.

00:29:02.420 | - And you're able to say this is the goal,

00:29:04.420 | is to spend as much of your life as possible

00:29:07.040 | on these types of peaks in the landscape of configuration.

00:29:10.400 | - So your values are the ruggedness,

00:29:12.860 | and then the flexibility is how you pursue those values

00:29:16.360 | based on changes around you in the environment.

00:29:19.000 | - This is useful.

00:29:19.840 | Okay, so yeah, think about the ruggedness here is--

00:29:21.840 | - Your values, what you stand for.

00:29:23.280 | - It's my family, it's my--

00:29:24.800 | - Whatever it is, your intellect,

00:29:26.000 | your creativity, your health,

00:29:27.880 | but the flexibility is how are you going to cultivate,

00:29:32.160 | nourish, spend time on those things

00:29:34.320 | in a world where everything is changing always,

00:29:36.740 | including you, you're gonna get old.

00:29:38.240 | How you think about your family is gonna change

00:29:39.920 | when your kids get old, when you get old,

00:29:41.300 | when your partner gets old.

00:29:42.200 | How you think about your health is gonna change.

00:29:43.840 | - Yeah.

00:29:45.380 | - The other metaphor I like to use,

00:29:46.840 | because I just, I think and write in metaphors,

00:29:48.560 | is that of a river.

00:29:50.060 | So a river is really, really fluid,

00:29:53.200 | and there's water, and there's this famous Heraclitus quote,

00:29:56.560 | "You can't step into the same river twice," right?

00:29:58.680 | The river is this perennial representation of change,

00:30:01.800 | which I think is beautiful.

00:30:03.100 | But if a river didn't have any banks,

00:30:05.720 | it would just be water, chaotic water.

00:30:08.360 | That is not beautiful.

00:30:09.760 | So what are the banks of the river?

00:30:11.760 | To me, those are like the rugged boundaries

00:30:13.960 | that are our core values.

00:30:15.280 | So I think of identity this way.

00:30:17.000 | I've got my core values,

00:30:18.800 | and those are the rugged boundaries of Brad Stahlberg.

00:30:21.400 | But I need to be flexible enough to be like the water

00:30:24.540 | that flows in between those boundaries

00:30:26.560 | to move this way and that

00:30:28.040 | as things around me and within me change.

00:30:30.040 | - What about fear in this picture?

00:30:31.760 | So maybe another thing that would draw you back

00:30:33.860 | towards the stability you knew before the disruption

00:30:37.620 | is the fear that you're not gonna be able

00:30:39.020 | to find a new stability.

00:30:40.860 | So like to make it concrete,

00:30:42.140 | let's say Georgetown starts listening to my podcast.

00:30:46.460 | What is this nonsense?

00:30:47.820 | All right, you're out of a job here.

00:30:49.180 | We don't want you at a university before.

00:30:51.260 | Rugged flexibility would say,

00:30:52.540 | I would need to find a different professional configuration

00:30:55.660 | that still was stable and valued,

00:30:57.660 | and would look different to what I was doing.

00:30:59.360 | But there's the fear of what if I'm not able

00:31:01.980 | to find something else?

00:31:02.820 | What if I was lucky to be on this mountain

00:31:04.660 | in the fitness landscape,

00:31:05.580 | but I don't have it in me to get back?

00:31:07.780 | How do you deal with the fear aspect?

00:31:09.580 | - I mean, the first thing I say is welcome to being a human.

00:31:12.460 | So there's nothing wrong with that.

00:31:13.300 | - I demand nothing bad or unknown ever happening.

00:31:15.780 | Come on, Brad, this is not too hard.

00:31:17.500 | - Yeah, so it's both sides of that coin.

00:31:19.520 | It's that like shit's gonna happen,

00:31:21.500 | and you're gonna face fear.

00:31:24.020 | That's completely normal.

00:31:25.100 | So I think the first thing is normalizing both those things,

00:31:28.660 | that stuff's gonna happen and not all changes are positive,

00:31:31.980 | and that it's completely normal to feel overwhelmed

00:31:34.300 | and to feel fear when you're in the midst of change.

00:31:36.620 | Now, what the research shows really clearly

00:31:39.820 | is trying to repress or suppress that fear

00:31:42.860 | or push it away never works.

00:31:44.860 | It just bubbles up and gets stronger and stronger.

00:31:47.360 | Stewing in that fear and falling into despair

00:31:50.180 | is also a really poor strategy.

00:31:52.220 | So taking small micro actions is the best way out of fear.

00:31:57.580 | Literally in our brain, what happens is the two networks,

00:32:01.420 | the network that's involved in a stress response and fear,

00:32:03.700 | and the network that's involved in moving towards a goal

00:32:05.820 | and taking productive actions,

00:32:07.480 | they operate on zero-sum systems.

00:32:09.260 | So they both can't be online at once.

00:32:11.500 | They call this the rage pathway,

00:32:13.220 | which then turns into the sadness pathway.

00:32:15.260 | This is fear, anxiety, and the seeking pathway,

00:32:18.820 | which is goal pursuit, and they fight for resources.

00:32:21.800 | So the best way out of fear is to start taking small actions

00:32:26.100 | to turn on your seeking pathway,

00:32:27.540 | which turns off your rage pathway.

00:32:29.420 | We also see this a ton in clinical situations.

00:32:32.260 | So the gold standard treatment for depression

00:32:33.860 | is behavioral activation,

00:32:35.060 | which literally is just start doing stuff.

00:32:37.500 | Because it's impossible for your brain

00:32:39.420 | to be in complete despair, I can't get out of bed,

00:32:42.620 | at the same time that your brain is functioning

00:32:44.780 | to help you do stuff.

00:32:45.820 | - That's interesting.

00:32:46.660 | So you're saying the magnitude of,

00:32:48.540 | let's say, the goal-seeking behavior you're doing,

00:32:50.840 | it doesn't have to be these steps I'm taking right now

00:32:54.660 | are very likely going to get me back

00:32:57.260 | to just as good of a job, or get rid of all of my,

00:33:00.020 | it'll solve all the problems 'cause I lost my job.

00:33:02.260 | That's not the goal.

00:33:03.420 | The goal is just activating a different network,

00:33:05.640 | because even if that network is activated

00:33:07.060 | with something small versus something big,

00:33:09.480 | the network is still going.

00:33:10.560 | And if that network's still going,

00:33:11.600 | the other more maladaptive network, the rage network,

00:33:14.500 | that network can't get, that's very interesting.

00:33:17.140 | So you start with something positive

00:33:20.420 | without worrying too much about,

00:33:22.860 | is this the exact right step?

00:33:25.260 | Is this step on its own,

00:33:27.580 | one step away from solving all my problems?

00:33:30.460 | That's not the goal.

00:33:31.340 | The goal is changing what part of your brain

00:33:33.260 | is actually turned on.

00:33:34.400 | - Exactly.

00:33:35.260 | - That is interesting.

00:33:36.100 | Okay, that's an interesting way of thinking about it.

00:33:37.340 | So the fear will happen, and that's fine.

00:33:39.780 | We throw some acceptance commitment therapy at this.

00:33:41.780 | - Yep. - Okay.

00:33:42.600 | - Yep. - All right, I have fear.

00:33:43.500 | That sucks.

00:33:44.320 | That's how it feels.

00:33:45.160 | All right, what next?

00:33:46.020 | Maybe I can't get that job back,

00:33:47.420 | or I can't get a job like that back,

00:33:48.980 | but I need to find something stable

00:33:51.140 | and something that reflects my values.

00:33:52.240 | So I guess that's what we're gonna do

00:33:54.940 | is start taking some steps towards that right now

00:33:56.940 | without dwelling on how you feel,

00:34:00.180 | without dwelling on the source of the feelings.

00:34:02.700 | Man, I'm never gonna get that Georgetown job back,

00:34:05.180 | and it's just never gonna be the same.

00:34:07.700 | You start taking the actions.

00:34:09.340 | - Yep, it's, well, here we are.

00:34:11.020 | This sucks.

00:34:12.600 | Man, I feel like crap.

00:34:14.060 | I'm terrified.

00:34:14.900 | Of course I am.

00:34:15.720 | I'm entering a period of disorder and instability,

00:34:19.120 | and yet I can take all those feelings and thoughts

00:34:22.060 | along for the ride,

00:34:23.340 | and I can just start taking these small actions

00:34:25.620 | in the direction of my values and see what opens up.

00:34:29.180 | Now, the other thing that can be really helpful

00:34:31.120 | in these circumstances is to borrow support,

00:34:35.900 | and that's like the really scientific way

00:34:37.800 | of saying lean into community or friends.

00:34:39.940 | In the initial allostatic model,

00:34:42.780 | when a system is overloaded

00:34:44.820 | with distress and disorganization,

00:34:46.860 | it often seeks to borrow support.

00:34:49.140 | So the way that you see this in the body

00:34:50.940 | is when one organ fails,

00:34:52.860 | oftentimes there has to be upregulation

00:34:54.900 | somewhere else in the body to make up for that.

00:34:57.260 | So when one person in a tribe fails,

00:34:59.260 | there has to be upregulation elsewhere in the tribe

00:35:01.620 | to make up for that failure

00:35:02.860 | while that person gets back to stability.

00:35:05.240 | So when you have instability in your own life

00:35:07.660 | in one area of your life,

00:35:09.060 | two strategies are really helpful.

00:35:10.700 | One, lean into areas elsewhere in your life

00:35:13.780 | where things might be going well

00:35:15.520 | just to get that brain out of despair mode,

00:35:18.880 | and then the second is lean into your community,

00:35:21.260 | lean into your friends for help and support.

00:35:23.740 | - Oh, that's very interesting.

00:35:24.580 | Okay, so then, yeah.

00:35:26.380 | - Well, I was just gonna say one more thing,

00:35:27.580 | and we'll probably go there

00:35:29.060 | because I know offline we talked about this part of the book,

00:35:31.160 | but I think that this is so important, too,

00:35:33.460 | to how we think about our sense of self and our identity

00:35:36.760 | and how important it is to have multiple hats

00:35:40.060 | that we can wear.

00:35:40.900 | It doesn't mean we need to wear them all at the same time,

00:35:43.180 | but to have multiple hats that we can put on

00:35:45.680 | so that if I have a book that flops,

00:35:49.100 | which inevitably will happen if I read enough books,

00:35:52.100 | I can then lean into my role as a coach,

00:35:55.060 | my role as a parent, my role as an athlete,

00:35:57.780 | or if my training at the gym goes to crap,

00:36:00.100 | I can then lean into my writing and my parenting.

00:36:03.140 | When my kids grow up and move out of the house,

00:36:05.240 | I can then lean into my training.

00:36:07.100 | So it's having enough hats or, you know,

00:36:11.100 | you don't have to put all your eggs in one basket,

00:36:12.620 | but you should have a couple baskets

00:36:13.980 | that you can put your eggs into.

00:36:15.260 | - Right, so this is what our common friend

00:36:17.820 | who we're actually coincidentally meeting,

00:36:20.420 | what, in like a half hour,

00:36:21.660 | Derek Thompson has this term, workism,

00:36:24.620 | which if I understand the definition properly

00:36:26.460 | is you get your full identity, let's say, out of your work.

00:36:29.300 | This is one of the hidden dangers of that

00:36:31.420 | is because what happens when your work goes bad?

00:36:33.700 | - Exactly, you're not rugged or flexible.

00:36:36.160 | - Yeah, it's like the stockbrokers in 1929.

00:36:38.400 | - Exactly.

00:36:39.240 | So I talk about in the book,

00:36:42.060 | like diversifying your sense of self.

00:36:44.180 | So Dave Epstein wrote this wonderful book called "Range",

00:36:46.420 | my guess is many of your listeners have read it.

00:36:48.620 | And it basically says it's really good to have range.

00:36:50.920 | Like this idea of specialization is an endpoint is good,

00:36:54.000 | but you wanna start by exploring

00:36:55.580 | all kinds of different activities.

00:36:57.380 | What I argue is that that same thing applies

00:36:59.260 | to your identity.

00:37:00.540 | So forget activities, it's really good to think of yourself

00:37:03.860 | in different ways.

00:37:05.180 | Because when these big disorder events,

00:37:07.460 | these big changes happen in our lives

00:37:09.420 | that affect us perhaps in one or two domains,

00:37:11.920 | it's nice to have another domain that we can lean on

00:37:15.400 | while we reorganize elsewhere.

00:37:17.000 | - The example that my audience knows well,

00:37:18.920 | because it's the one I talk about a lot,

00:37:20.620 | is my dual focus coming up on writing and academia.

00:37:25.620 | And both of those are brutal mistresses

00:37:29.400 | from a professional perspective.

00:37:31.160 | And I really did take advantage of the ability

00:37:34.140 | to lean from one to the others.

00:37:36.040 | Coming up in academia is very stressful.

00:37:38.320 | There's periods where your research program

00:37:41.680 | is not working, papers being rejected.

00:37:43.480 | I would lean into the writing.

00:37:44.920 | And then there's peers writing is very stressful too.

00:37:47.160 | It's a competitive market.

00:37:48.140 | And there's time where your books

00:37:49.160 | aren't doing what you want them to do.

00:37:50.560 | And I could lean into a professor

00:37:52.920 | and I have this paper over here is going well or some such.

00:37:56.120 | And I talk about that a lot on the show.

00:37:57.800 | I sit and have the terminology

00:37:59.520 | that is really an advanced allostatic strategy

00:38:02.840 | that I was deploying.

00:38:03.720 | What about the developing, I'm just thinking out loud now,

00:38:06.600 | developing new domains.

00:38:08.560 | I wonder if that's part, new domains of your identity.

00:38:11.160 | I mean, it seems in general,

00:38:12.000 | that's just a healthy exercise

00:38:13.680 | to make sure you have a diversity of identities.

00:38:16.120 | But is that also a part of change perhaps

00:38:18.880 | is I'm now at this stage of my life,

00:38:21.640 | maybe in response to a big change,

00:38:23.520 | I'm going to begin developing another hat to put on,

00:38:26.120 | another aspect of my identity.

00:38:27.600 | - Exactly, yep.

00:38:28.560 | And that's back to that stability somewhere new.

00:38:30.600 | So we like to have stable identities, right?

00:38:33.120 | When we don't have a stable narrative

00:38:35.400 | around a sense of self, we define that as psychosis.

00:38:38.740 | And that's like a really dangerous mental illness.

00:38:41.140 | So having no narrative or no cohesive sense of self is bad.

00:38:46.080 | Having way too rigid a sense of self, workism,

00:38:48.900 | I'm Cal Newport, all I do is write bestselling books,

00:38:51.180 | that makes you really fragile.

00:38:52.840 | So how do we have a good story,

00:38:55.560 | but also a story that's flexible

00:38:57.160 | and a story that we're continuing to write as we go?

00:39:00.020 | In these opportunities of disorder,

00:39:02.360 | when the chips are all over the table,

00:39:04.200 | we can bring them back together,

00:39:06.100 | maybe 90% of the way that they were before,

00:39:08.200 | but 10% has got to be different.

00:39:10.020 | - So when we go back to your two years

00:39:11.720 | of tumultuous change, it was all compressed.

00:39:14.100 | What were some of these ideas we just discussed

00:39:15.920 | that played out well in your own response to all the change?

00:39:20.920 | - So the first was to not try to get back

00:39:23.240 | to where I was in any of these domains.

00:39:26.160 | The second was not to compare my new reality

00:39:29.840 | to my old reality.

00:39:31.600 | And then the third was just get started

00:39:34.960 | and start taking these small actions in the new reality.

00:39:39.160 | And then I'd say the fourth was shifting identity.

00:39:41.920 | So my calf injury is probably the easiest to look at,

00:39:46.680 | 'cause it's the most extreme.

00:39:48.520 | I used to run marathons, I was pretty good,

00:39:50.920 | and can't run anymore.

00:39:52.200 | - And it's very sudden.

00:39:53.040 | It's, oh, by the way, you just learn you have--

00:39:55.800 | - It was a chronic condition, but I was fighting through it,

00:39:58.320 | and then it was like, yeah, this has gotten to the point

00:40:00.640 | where you're not gonna be able to run

00:40:02.280 | without your leg feeling like it's a balloon about to pop.

00:40:04.920 | - Right, 'cause you probably thought at first,

00:40:07.080 | we'll get past this.

00:40:08.080 | Like, this is something I need to solve.

00:40:09.160 | So there's this one moment where a doctor says,

00:40:11.600 | you're not gonna be running anymore.

00:40:12.680 | - Yeah, and it's like the third doctor,

00:40:13.840 | 'cause I'm a runner.

00:40:14.680 | So I'm like, eh, maybe that doctor's just wrong.

00:40:17.080 | So then it became very clear.

00:40:17.920 | I'm gonna need this pretty significant surgery on my calf,

00:40:21.000 | and I'm probably not gonna be able to run again.

00:40:23.080 | And that sucked, but I zoomed out,

00:40:25.200 | and I'm like, hold on, what's my value here?

00:40:28.200 | And my value is health and athleticism.

00:40:30.680 | And running is just one way to do it.

00:40:33.080 | So I shifted to powerlifting,

00:40:34.840 | completely different sport,

00:40:36.240 | like couldn't be more different.

00:40:37.960 | And I sucked at it when I first started.

00:40:39.520 | I had to get a coach, I had to relearn the form.

00:40:41.920 | I had to retrain my muscle fibers.

00:40:44.960 | Like, everything about it was different,

00:40:47.080 | but I didn't sit there and dwell on the fact for too long.

00:40:49.840 | I dwelled on it for a little that I couldn't run,

00:40:52.000 | and I said, my actual value here is health and athleticism,

00:40:55.080 | and running was a very narrow way to get it,

00:40:56.920 | and maybe I over-identified with myself as a runner.

00:40:59.400 | So let me shift, let me apply that value elsewhere,

00:41:02.140 | and then let me pursue an activity

00:41:04.480 | that my body will now allow me to do.

00:41:07.560 | Same thing with moving to Asheville.

00:41:09.000 | Asheville is lovely, and it's very different than Oakland.

00:41:11.960 | So rather than try to recreate Oakland and Asheville,

00:41:15.080 | and compare my Asheville friends to my Oakland friends,

00:41:17.680 | and my Asheville coffee shops to my Oakland coffee shops,

00:41:20.480 | I said, all right, like, it's not gonna be the same.

00:41:23.120 | It's not better, necessarily.

00:41:24.880 | It's not worse, necessarily.

00:41:26.120 | It's different.

00:41:27.060 | So let me start taking these small actions

00:41:28.920 | to rebuild stability here.

00:41:30.800 | And I think so often we latch onto the old,

00:41:33.520 | or we try to get back to the old,

00:41:35.320 | and instead of saying, like, the faster we can say,

00:41:37.360 | this is what's happening, I feel disordered,

00:41:40.840 | I have to recreate stability,

00:41:42.160 | and it's going to look different than it was before.

00:41:44.440 | - Well, I remember when you first moved to Asheville,

00:41:46.600 | one of the things you did was try to find

00:41:49.160 | what is unique about this place

00:41:51.040 | that maybe we didn't have in Oakland

00:41:52.600 | that you could lean into.

00:41:53.440 | So in particular, these mountain trails,

00:41:55.520 | and the ability to, pretty close from your house,

00:41:57.820 | to be in the woods, and lean into that,

00:42:00.960 | as opposed to having your favorite coffee shipped in,

00:42:04.920 | you know, FedExed hot from the place, or whatever.

00:42:08.160 | I remember that about you.

00:42:09.000 | Like, well, this is what I couldn't do in Oakland,

00:42:11.080 | I can do here.

00:42:12.260 | Let's do that every day.

00:42:13.600 | - Yep, exactly.

00:42:14.520 | And at first, it was a little bit discombobulating.

00:42:17.440 | I mean, I left behind two really close friends.

00:42:19.160 | I left behind a huge intellectual community

00:42:21.340 | between Stanford and Berkeley.

00:42:22.920 | And for a while, I'm like,

00:42:25.640 | ugh, I hope this was the right move.

00:42:27.720 | And now it's turned out to definitely be the right move.

00:42:30.880 | - You know, does it make you feel better?

00:42:31.800 | I won't mention, we won't mention any actual names,

00:42:34.160 | but a friend we have in common from Oakland

00:42:36.680 | has recently moved out of Oakland as well.

00:42:38.760 | So does that now make you feel better?

00:42:40.040 | That, okay, other people--

00:42:41.320 | - We'll have to talk offline,

00:42:42.240 | I don't know who you're talking about.

00:42:43.600 | - Oh, I can, yeah, I can.

00:42:45.560 | Think about people, I'm not gonna talk about online.

00:42:47.120 | Think about people we know in common in Oakland.

00:42:48.840 | - All right. - They're not there anymore.

00:42:50.240 | (both laughing)

00:42:51.360 | See, maybe that's not rugged flexibility,

00:42:53.180 | is trying to schadenfreude.

00:42:55.360 | Like, well, other people left too.

00:42:56.760 | So maybe it wasn't so.

00:42:58.600 | Trying to make the old point of stability bad,

00:43:01.520 | that's probably another maladapted response, right?

00:43:03.960 | Like, actually, that sucked.

00:43:05.720 | That old job was terrible.

00:43:07.200 | Oakland was for the birds, you know?

00:43:08.800 | - But then it's still living rent-free.

00:43:10.280 | - Their baseball team is leaving.

00:43:11.640 | - In your mind.

00:43:12.480 | And I wanna be clear,

00:43:13.520 | this gets back to good or bad change.

00:43:15.960 | We wanted to move to Asheville.

00:43:17.640 | This wasn't forced on us.

00:43:18.840 | This was a choice that we made.

00:43:20.040 | It was a good choice, and it was still hard.

00:43:22.360 | And I think that that's just how change works.

00:43:27.360 | - Yeah, and you have a AA baseball affiliate,

00:43:31.800 | while Oakland is losing their major league team.

00:43:34.680 | - So, no tourist.

00:43:35.800 | - Again, we go back.

00:43:36.640 | I'm reading a book.

00:43:37.480 | Jesse, my listeners know this, you don't.

00:43:39.760 | Jesse gave me a book about the tourists.

00:43:41.280 | So I'm actually reading. - Oh, really?

00:43:42.520 | - I'm reading a book right now about Asheville and the tourists,

00:43:46.240 | and it makes Asheville seem very nice.

00:43:47.600 | - Oh, Asheville's lovely.

00:43:48.440 | I mean, I think that if we could get the Newport clan

00:43:51.060 | down there for a long weekend,

00:43:53.480 | you might be moving to Asheville soon.

00:43:55.160 | - Yeah, we were gonna create our own

00:43:56.280 | center of power down there.

00:43:57.440 | - That's right.

00:43:58.280 | - I think we went into this last time you were on the show

00:43:59.760 | about how we were gonna start our own new--

00:44:02.360 | - New venture.

00:44:03.200 | - New venture, new world of riders.

00:44:04.600 | It was gonna be--

00:44:05.440 | - I really think we could.

00:44:06.260 | We were talking about this a little offline.

00:44:07.100 | There's just so much overlap,

00:44:07.940 | and there aren't too many people

00:44:08.920 | that are approaching these topics

00:44:10.220 | in the same way that we are.

00:44:11.840 | And we kind of informally team up.

00:44:13.720 | Not kind of.

00:44:14.560 | We do informally team up,

00:44:15.460 | and maybe one day I can convince you guys

00:44:17.160 | to come to Asheville, and we'll formally team up.

00:44:18.840 | - That's what we need.

00:44:19.680 | We need a bookstore with podcast studios

00:44:22.240 | and offices above it.

00:44:23.080 | - I already have the name.

00:44:23.900 | The Asheville Center for Deep Work

00:44:25.540 | and Sustainable Excellence.

00:44:27.220 | Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

00:44:28.380 | - I like that.

00:44:29.300 | And we could concentrate.

00:44:30.660 | We could power lift.

00:44:32.100 | We could have good coffee.

00:44:33.900 | - All the things.

00:44:34.740 | - All right, I think we are.

00:44:36.180 | So that'll be my new stability

00:44:38.500 | when I get canceled from Georgetown

00:44:41.020 | because of all the nonsense on this show,

00:44:43.980 | and I'm raging and not sure what to do.

00:44:46.100 | That will be the new stability.

00:44:47.180 | I'll say the key is obviously the next stable peak's

00:44:49.260 | gonna be moving to Asheville.

00:44:52.500 | - I'm here for it.

00:44:53.340 | - Yeah, I like it.

00:44:54.180 | I like it.

00:44:55.000 | So let's just talk.

00:44:56.700 | Whenever I have you here, I like to talk just generally

00:44:58.860 | 'cause we're both people who write a lot about work

00:45:02.300 | and meaning, and as you mentioned,

00:45:03.700 | in a way that not a lot of other people do.

00:45:05.300 | So what's your current thoughts today?

00:45:06.660 | You're more online than I am.

00:45:08.500 | What are the trends?

00:45:09.620 | What are trends going on right now?

00:45:10.940 | I'll make this more specific.

00:45:11.780 | What's a trend going on right now in the discourse?

00:45:16.460 | We talked about this offline, everyone,

00:45:17.620 | the word discourse, on work and meaning.

00:45:19.740 | What's a trend you like that you see going on?

00:45:21.220 | What's a trend you don't like?

00:45:23.740 | - A trend that I like on work and meaning

00:45:27.660 | that I see going on is,

00:45:31.260 | whew, there aren't too many.

00:45:34.100 | I think that the way--

00:45:35.380 | - That's meaningful, by the way.

00:45:36.380 | - Right.

00:45:37.220 | - That piece of the, so just to put a footnote on,

00:45:39.500 | the subtext here is maybe the online world

00:45:42.580 | is not having the best moment when it comes

00:45:45.220 | to discussing work and meaning.

00:45:46.740 | It's maybe too short form.

00:45:47.980 | - Yeah, I think it's just that.

00:45:49.820 | I think it's too short form,

00:45:51.340 | and I think that it is very easy online

00:45:55.060 | to get into these polarities of hustle culture,

00:45:58.940 | obsession, make $8 million and write threads all day

00:46:03.940 | versus screw work, down with the system,

00:46:09.140 | the anti-work Reddit thread, so on and so forth,

00:46:11.620 | and I think there's a vast chasm

00:46:13.060 | between those two polarities,

00:46:15.100 | and the online discourse just isn't built for it.

00:46:19.340 | I do think that if there's one positive trend,

00:46:22.500 | I think that there's been some decent wrestling

00:46:25.140 | with the pros and cons of working from home,

00:46:28.500 | and I think there's a lot of clowns

00:46:29.620 | on both sides of the argument,

00:46:30.780 | but I think most serious people have agreed

00:46:34.020 | that it's really hard to say which one is better

00:46:36.980 | because there are big benefits and big negatives to each.

00:46:41.980 | - Yeah, that's interesting, right, because--

00:46:44.300 | - 'Cause at first it was like, work from home's great.

00:46:45.940 | Everyone should work from home,

00:46:46.860 | and then some people were like,

00:46:48.700 | everyone has to be here FaceTime or else.

00:46:50.900 | - It became a flex, yeah. - Right, and now I think

00:46:53.020 | there's a very real recognition among some people

00:46:56.500 | that it's a lot easier to form psychological safety

00:47:00.180 | and trust in person.

00:47:01.940 | It's a lot easier and simpler to organize in person,

00:47:06.140 | but your talent pool, depending on where you are,

00:47:08.580 | shrinks a lot, and it becomes a lot harder

00:47:10.740 | for people that also want to be a primary parent,

00:47:13.620 | so there's these very real trade-offs,

00:47:16.020 | and I think going from good or bad to trade-offs

00:47:19.660 | is generally a step in the right direction on that topic,

00:47:23.020 | and I've seen some of that online.

00:47:24.340 | - I think that's a good point,

00:47:25.620 | 'cause I covered that quite a bit back in the day,

00:47:27.580 | and I think you're exactly right.

00:47:29.580 | So I did a lot of New Yorker work on remote work,

00:47:31.940 | and it did go through those shifts.

00:47:33.620 | At first it was a course because health reasons,

00:47:36.740 | and then there was sort of the flex

00:47:37.900 | of we're gonna be back,

00:47:39.220 | and then there was this weird moment

00:47:40.860 | where advocates of working from home said,

00:47:44.260 | let's attach this to all of these other political issues.

00:47:47.260 | The thought was like, why not?

00:47:49.420 | I mean, if we could somehow make it be, whatever,

00:47:52.660 | racist to not let us work from home or something,

00:47:54.820 | like sometimes that works, but it didn't, right?

00:47:56.340 | Because it was an uneasy fit,

00:47:58.900 | but then where it ended up is like what you're talking now

00:48:01.020 | is everyone is saying, yeah, this is kind of complicated.

00:48:04.660 | - Yeah, and I think that the people

00:48:07.500 | that are navigating it through the best

00:48:08.740 | are really nonjudgmental about it,

00:48:10.440 | because there is no morally right answer,

00:48:13.780 | and I don't think there's a right answer for performance.

00:48:15.700 | I think it depends on the industry,

00:48:17.740 | it depends on the stage of the company,

00:48:19.500 | and it oftentimes depends on the personalities

00:48:22.360 | of a leadership team.

00:48:23.200 | I think that's another great example

00:48:25.260 | of order, disorder, reorder somewhere new.

00:48:28.380 | So what ended up happening, I think,

00:48:30.180 | is that we had order, which was we all worked how we did,

00:48:32.380 | and then the pandemic came,

00:48:33.340 | and then work was blown up, disorder.

00:48:35.340 | And people are working from home,

00:48:37.120 | and there's no real norms around working from home.

00:48:39.900 | And not only are companies struggling,

00:48:41.860 | but people are struggling.

00:48:43.380 | Linguishing, quiet quitting, I think,

00:48:45.740 | is in large part the result of the complete blurring

00:48:48.740 | of boundaries between work and life,

00:48:50.860 | because everyone's working from home,

00:48:52.700 | the time and space markations that we used to have

00:48:56.020 | have gone to crap because you can't go out

00:48:57.820 | and travel on the weekends.

00:48:59.300 | So that was pure chaos,

00:49:01.260 | and now I think we're reorganizing

00:49:03.300 | with some hybrid model where work from home

00:49:06.580 | makes sense in some situations with certain constraints,

00:49:10.200 | and return to work makes sense with certain constraints.

00:49:12.980 | - Well, I'll tell you the solution,

00:49:14.100 | my current thought about what's gonna work here.

00:49:16.780 | This is where I landed after writing whatever,

00:49:19.700 | however many articles I wrote about this,

00:49:21.340 | is here's my pitch,

00:49:23.180 | you tell me if you believe this or not.

00:49:24.980 | Remote work can work very well,

00:49:30.260 | but it requires new structures of work.

00:49:33.300 | It requires actually, for it to work well and sustainably,

00:49:36.340 | it actually requires a restructuring of work

00:49:39.140 | in a way that actually is more consilient with remoteness.

00:49:42.860 | And so my argument for why there's this weird tension

00:49:45.980 | of both sides seem right, both sides seem wrong,

00:49:49.060 | is that we are correctly sensing

00:49:51.660 | there are huge advantages to a world of work

00:49:53.980 | where we don't all have to go to a building.

00:49:55.580 | We're also sensing simply taking what we did in the building

00:49:59.460 | and saying, "Let's just do that on Zoom,"

00:50:01.780 | doesn't, that's also terrible.

00:50:03.220 | And this is the source of this weird love-hate relationship

00:50:06.140 | people have when they remember that period

00:50:07.860 | of pure remote work.

00:50:08.700 | There's, "Man, I miss this.

00:50:10.740 | "Man, I hated that."

00:50:12.020 | And it was both at the same time.

00:50:13.340 | And so one of the more persuasive interviews I did

00:50:15.900 | during that period, I interviewed an entrepreneur

00:50:17.580 | who works in this space, and he had this whole theory

00:50:19.740 | of there is a group of startups

00:50:22.940 | that just happened to be starting up and incubating

00:50:26.020 | during the early pandemic,

00:50:27.220 | so they had to be remote from day one.

00:50:30.660 | Because they were building themselves from scratch

00:50:33.100 | in this temporary remote environment,

00:50:35.220 | they're gonna figure out completely different ways

00:50:37.940 | of structuring work and how we communicate and collaborate

00:50:41.060 | and how this works, because they're remote from day one.

00:50:42.820 | They're not trying to adapt from something

00:50:43.940 | they were doing before.

00:50:45.220 | And his theory, his name was Chris Hurd,

00:50:47.380 | his theory was they're gonna have an advantage,

00:50:50.020 | the company has to figure this out,

00:50:51.740 | they're gonna start doing better in their sector.

00:50:53.500 | So right now, these companies are quietly gathering up

00:50:56.580 | this accumulated advantage of having the lower overhead,

00:50:59.380 | of having the lower staffing costs,

00:51:00.700 | of having access to a bigger talent pool

00:51:02.780 | and doing it in a sustainable way.

00:51:04.180 | And his thought was eventually what's gonna happen

00:51:06.100 | is these companies will get big,

00:51:07.460 | what they're doing will get noticed.

00:51:09.340 | Private equities, now we're getting technical here,

00:51:11.500 | private equity firms are gonna start hiring away COOs

00:51:15.180 | from these companies to essentially inject

00:51:18.300 | that same new structure, remote-friendly structure of work

00:51:21.140 | into other businesses,

00:51:22.100 | because other businesses can have an advantage

00:51:24.260 | if they're properly doing remote work.

00:51:25.820 | And so he had this--

00:51:26.660 | - It's a brilliant theory.

00:51:27.980 | It's what private equity loves too,

00:51:29.540 | because it's like, how do you cut,

00:51:31.220 | even if you don't cut one person,

00:51:32.820 | all you do is cut your real estate,

00:51:34.580 | and that's 10% of most big city companies,

00:51:36.860 | 30% of overhead.

00:51:38.020 | - So then his theory was what you're gonna see is,

00:51:39.540 | which I think is what's playing out,

00:51:40.740 | and I was talking to him in 2021,

00:51:41.580 | he's like, "You're gonna see a return

00:51:43.380 | back towards the office.

00:51:44.420 | It won't go to where we were in 2019,

00:51:47.220 | but it's gonna be for a while,

00:51:49.040 | a steady trend of more and more in-person,

00:51:50.660 | which we are seeing."

00:51:52.420 | And then he said, "That's gonna stabilize for a while."

00:51:55.380 | And then once this cross-pollination of these ideas happens,

00:51:58.420 | five years after the pandemic,

00:51:59.740 | we're talking 2026, we're talking 2027,

00:52:02.060 | you're gonna start to see this big uptick in remote work,

00:52:05.080 | but it's not gonna be just Zoom all day.

00:52:07.580 | It'll be a whole other structure of work,

00:52:09.940 | of how we assign tasks, of communication,

00:52:12.860 | something that really works

00:52:14.140 | in a natively remote environment.

00:52:15.340 | So I like that theory.

00:52:16.340 | I mean, I'm in an industry that's never gonna be remote.

00:52:18.260 | I mean, I'm a teacher.

00:52:19.980 | But anyways, that's my theory,

00:52:21.780 | and I think it explains a lot of,

00:52:23.260 | but hey, I figured this out online.

00:52:25.540 | I wrote about this online, so I think you're right.

00:52:27.540 | This was a good example of online discourse.

00:52:29.740 | So we're gonna take another quick break here

00:52:32.860 | from our conversation to talk about

00:52:35.300 | a sponsor that helps make this show possible,

00:52:39.140 | and that is our friends at Blinkist.

00:52:42.440 | Blinkist is a subscription service, accessible via an app,

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00:53:32.180 | And when it comes time to buy a new book,

00:53:34.220 | instead of just grabbing a book off this list,

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00:53:38.460 | we will first listen to or read the Blink.

00:53:41.140 | Jesse likes to read 'em.

00:53:42.500 | I like to listen to the Blinks,

00:53:43.900 | the short summaries while I'm doing other work.

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00:54:00.420 | but I get the big ideas, let's move on.

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00:55:06.020 | I also wanna talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

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00:55:14.820 | If you aren't, this is a problem.

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00:55:20.660 | People can see what websites or services

00:55:23.140 | you're interacting with.

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00:55:26.580 | let's say in a coffee shop somewhere,

00:55:30.060 | anyone nearby can read your packets off of the radio waves

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00:55:48.620 | can see what websites is Cal going to,

00:55:52.060 | what services is he accessing?

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00:55:58.020 | A VPN gives you privacy.

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00:56:12.420 | where you tell the VPN server,

00:56:14.420 | this is the website I really wanna go to.

00:56:17.260 | This is the service I really wanna use.

00:56:19.620 | And the VPN server does that on your behalf,

00:56:22.860 | encrypts the response and sends it back to you.

00:56:25.820 | So now if I'm in the coffee shop

00:56:27.060 | trying to read your packets off the radio waves,

00:56:29.060 | what do I see?

00:56:30.600 | That you're talking to a VPN server.

00:56:32.240 | If I'm your internet service provider

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00:56:35.660 | and I'm rubbing my hands evilly,

00:56:37.180 | like, oh, I'm gonna sell all this information to marketers.

00:56:39.380 | What do I learn?

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00:56:44.140 | about who you're actually talking to

00:56:45.560 | or what you're actually doing.

00:56:47.980 | So you do need a VPN.

00:56:49.540 | If you're gonna get a VPN,

00:56:50.660 | I suggest the one that I use, which is ExpressVPN.

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00:57:33.420 | - Being spot on.

00:57:34.620 | In another like allostatic response to change,

00:57:39.280 | we're trying to go back to where we were,

00:57:42.420 | which is like everyone back in the office

00:57:44.500 | is kind of like resisting opportunities to move forward

00:57:47.460 | and to have stability somewhere new.

00:57:48.860 | And I think this mindset clearly applies there

00:57:52.900 | and like just taking these small steps, right?

00:57:54.580 | Like trying this one small thing,

00:57:57.100 | seeing how that works, adjusting as you go.

00:57:59.500 | I think the one other thing on this topic

00:58:01.380 | that I've seen already is how we think about hybrid work

00:58:06.380 | and whether that means one or two days in the office

00:58:10.700 | or one week a month or one week every two months

00:58:14.300 | or two days a month.

00:58:15.940 | I think that's gonna be really important.

00:58:18.020 | And I could see it larger companies

00:58:20.300 | work becoming more regional.

00:58:22.540 | So I think national is hard

00:58:24.140 | because then bringing people together is really expensive

00:58:26.180 | and you're asking people to travel across the country

00:58:28.340 | and connecting flights and time zones.

00:58:30.300 | But I think this regional model

00:58:31.700 | where maybe you are really good about organizing in person

00:58:35.500 | like two days a month,

00:58:37.140 | and then it's just a three hour train ride

00:58:39.500 | or a one hour flight for most people.

00:58:41.140 | - So New York to DC is a region.

00:58:43.100 | - Yeah.

00:58:43.940 | - LA to San Francisco.

00:58:45.500 | - Exactly.

00:58:46.320 | And I think that's where you can see places

00:58:47.580 | that used to just be in person now be like a hybrid model.

00:58:51.060 | - Yeah, well this entrepreneur Chris Hurd,

00:58:53.140 | one of the models he had in mind would be one

00:58:54.900 | where you basically gather people semi-regularly

00:58:58.820 | but not at a building you own.

00:59:00.500 | - Yep.

00:59:01.340 | - Not at a long-term lease that you're trying to maintain.

00:59:02.940 | - Yeah, at a hotel, in a resort.

00:59:03.780 | - It's a conference center at a hotel, yeah.

00:59:05.980 | - And when those things are planned,

00:59:07.260 | when those things are not planned well,

00:59:08.340 | they're a total waste of money.

00:59:09.380 | When those things are planned well,

00:59:10.500 | nothing is better for psychological safety

00:59:13.420 | and team building 'cause you're having fun,

00:59:15.540 | you're getting to know the humans.

00:59:16.860 | And what's also nice about that is when the whole purpose

00:59:19.460 | of that or at least the driving force is building teams,

00:59:22.780 | there's no pressure.

00:59:23.740 | Like you don't have to do the strategic plan

00:59:25.580 | because you're doing all that stuff remote.

00:59:27.420 | So when the whole purpose becomes let's facilitate

00:59:29.740 | team building and camaraderie,

00:59:31.220 | you can actually do that really well.

00:59:33.260 | So that's the model that I think is gonna happen.

00:59:35.020 | I'm biased because in all my working relationships,

00:59:37.920 | that's pretty much like the model that I have.

00:59:40.380 | Like I'll see people like you twice a year,

00:59:42.220 | we'll spend a day together, we'll have a great time

00:59:44.060 | and like that, I feel like one of my close friends,

00:59:46.260 | we're really close, even though we're not together

00:59:49.300 | most of the time.

00:59:50.220 | - Yeah, but if we didn't have the occasional,

00:59:53.100 | it does make a difference.

00:59:53.940 | - Oh, for sure, 'cause I know you.

00:59:55.420 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:59:56.260 | - I've been in your house.

00:59:57.080 | Like it really makes a difference, I think.

00:59:58.820 | So that's my take is it depends,

01:00:00.860 | but I think that that will end up in a creative middle.

01:00:03.500 | - So the other thing I always like to ask you about

01:00:05.060 | because you see more of this than I do

01:00:07.300 | 'cause I'm bad at the internet.

01:00:08.700 | What is the current state of the sort of hustle culture,

01:00:12.100 | productivity bro world?

01:00:14.900 | Has that been changing at all in recent years,

01:00:17.660 | maybe in response to like the anti-work movement

01:00:19.780 | or is that still just, here's my rented jet

01:00:22.460 | that I'm in front of.

01:00:23.660 | Now the main change being used chat GPT

01:00:26.820 | to make a million dollars a month.

01:00:28.100 | I mean, so what, tell me about that world

01:00:29.660 | 'cause I don't understand that world.

01:00:30.700 | Has it changed recently?

01:00:31.780 | - I think the way that it's changed is they've moved

01:00:34.660 | to become the best at rest and recovery.

01:00:37.040 | - They're optimizing.

01:00:39.140 | - They're optimizing.

01:00:40.620 | - I'm out resting you, I'm better at resting you.

01:00:42.920 | Someone told me that if I do a cold plunge,

01:00:45.440 | it's gonna help me recover.

01:00:47.080 | So instead of doing a cold plunge quietly on my own

01:00:50.800 | and doing it and not telling anyone and recovering,

01:00:54.040 | I'm gonna have a whole camera crew come to my house

01:00:56.740 | at 5.30 in the morning.

01:00:58.480 | I'm gonna wake up my wife and kids

01:00:59.920 | because the dogs are gonna bark

01:01:01.040 | when the camera crew's here.

01:01:02.440 | I'm gonna video myself in the cold plunge.

01:01:04.800 | I'm gonna flex as hard as I can

01:01:06.320 | and do nine takes for Instagram.

01:01:08.520 | - Pushups before.

01:01:09.680 | - All of that.

01:01:10.520 | - I learned, we watched a documentary.

01:01:11.360 | - And then, wait, let me finish.

01:01:12.400 | I'm gonna post my recovery on social media

01:01:16.960 | so that this thing that's supposed to be

01:01:18.500 | for decompression and recovery

01:01:19.880 | is now gonna be judged and commented on by the world

01:01:22.320 | and if it doesn't do well, I'll change my recovery

01:01:24.280 | until I find the fad that does do well.

01:01:25.800 | - And they'll be watching every reaction

01:01:29.920 | in a state of stressful anxiety as well,

01:01:33.360 | ironically, getting stressed out

01:01:35.640 | and anxious about their recovery.

01:01:36.680 | - Right, and I've kind of been hard on cold plunges

01:01:40.760 | and I talked about this on another podcast.

01:01:43.560 | I'm not anti-cold plunge, I'm anti-cold plunge culture.

01:01:47.200 | If you wanna take a cold plunge, great.

01:01:48.960 | If you're gonna take a cold plunge

01:01:50.280 | and then tell everyone that it makes you morally superior

01:01:52.720 | and that you're activating your brown fat thermogenesis

01:01:55.360 | and post 19 pictures of you cold plunging,

01:01:57.760 | like, that's A, bullshit,

01:01:59.520 | and B, save the nude pictures for yourself, man.

01:02:03.320 | - So what was it before the switch to rest and recovery?

01:02:05.640 | Was all the focus in this world on, what,

01:02:09.080 | muscle growth or something?

01:02:09.920 | Or what was the trend?

01:02:10.920 | - I think crypto.

01:02:12.000 | - Crypto.

01:02:12.840 | - Crypto was pretty big, right?

01:02:13.680 | Because it's this common cycle of,

01:02:16.240 | like, the facade of crushing it

01:02:19.200 | and underneath a lot of emptiness.

01:02:21.720 | And that can be psychological,

01:02:23.000 | but in the case of crypto, it was like,

01:02:25.280 | I guess it wasn't physical, it was digital.

01:02:26.840 | - I got yelled at so much

01:02:28.120 | because I would occasionally do segments on the show

01:02:31.360 | about crypto and I was not very kind about it

01:02:34.480 | because I taught a graduate seminar

01:02:36.200 | on the mathematics behind it and I understood it.

01:02:38.080 | And I said, this is not gonna be what they're saying.

01:02:40.440 | And you would think that I was coming on

01:02:42.680 | and saying baseball and Christianity needs to be banned.

01:02:47.680 | - Along with carbohydrates.

01:02:49.280 | - Along with carbohydrates.

01:02:50.560 | No, I think they would applaud me banning carbohydrates.

01:02:52.920 | - I will tell you this about crypto.

01:02:55.200 | I never understood the use case.

01:02:58.960 | Like, even the best use cases.

01:03:00.880 | - What's the problem?

01:03:01.800 | - People are like, well, you can transfer money

01:03:03.560 | and you can do it so quick.

01:03:04.560 | And I'm like, PayPal?

01:03:06.280 | Like, I just, and I'm sure there will be good use cases.

01:03:08.880 | - Or like banks can't trick you and like steal your money

01:03:12.200 | 'cause it's all up.

01:03:13.640 | But I'm like, when's the last time a bank--

01:03:14.480 | - A bank stole my money.

01:03:15.800 | - Yeah, when's the last time they were like,

01:03:17.040 | they stole your money when you tried

01:03:18.040 | to do a real estate transaction?

01:03:19.160 | Like, what's the problem that you're having?

01:03:20.200 | - So I've talked to some really smart VCs

01:03:22.080 | who believe that like crypto is a currency

01:03:24.400 | and solving all the world's problems was hype,

01:03:26.720 | but there are gonna be specific uses

01:03:28.880 | for this underlying blockchain technology,

01:03:31.320 | potentially in like electronic medical records,

01:03:33.720 | like not hype-y fields.

01:03:35.000 | - It's a distributed database.

01:03:36.360 | - But exactly, but they're gonna be like B2B,

01:03:39.360 | not to the public because like this whole use case

01:03:44.720 | of like transferring money and safer money,

01:03:46.800 | we already have a pretty good financial system.

01:03:49.520 | And we saw with crypto, well, what happens

01:03:51.240 | when you completely decentralize and deregulate?

01:03:53.120 | Everyone gets frauded.

01:03:54.440 | - Yeah, yeah, and right.

01:03:56.040 | And we know how to, we can have very reliable ledgers.

01:03:58.800 | I can just put up an open source free SQL database

01:04:02.640 | in the Amazon cloud, which will do all of that.

01:04:04.840 | And yes, it's possible that I could be tricking you

01:04:07.080 | and I've hacked a code or whatever,

01:04:09.680 | but it's not, they're replicating a function

01:04:12.360 | that already exists way less efficiently,

01:04:14.760 | but it does have a sort of techno-libertarian

01:04:18.480 | philosophical appeal that technically speaking,

01:04:20.560 | this is entirely decentralized.

01:04:21.520 | So it took an existing function

01:04:23.720 | and put a different philosophy behind it,

01:04:25.600 | but it didn't actually give new functions.

01:04:26.720 | You know, that's what's weird

01:04:27.720 | about our current techno moment with AI.

01:04:30.200 | And it's different than crypto, but the same in some ways.

01:04:33.120 | So there's two things going on.

01:04:34.920 | AI is very, it is very disruptive.

01:04:37.200 | So unlike crypto, it is very disruptive.

01:04:38.960 | - I agree.

01:04:39.800 | - But there is also the exact same YouTubers

01:04:43.640 | have gone all in on, you know,

01:04:46.400 | AI is either weeks away from launching the missiles

01:04:51.400 | or I'm never gonna have to work again

01:04:53.160 | once I get my automated, my auto GPT agent set up

01:04:56.040 | using link chain is going to do all my jobs for me

01:04:58.320 | or whatever.

01:04:59.160 | And so it's this weird world where we have

01:05:01.280 | that same hyper layer of hype,

01:05:04.040 | but it's on type of something that actually

01:05:05.480 | is worthy of hype.

01:05:07.200 | - Has more use cases than crypto.

01:05:09.080 | - But it's not the right type of hype, right?

01:05:10.840 | So then it's, and so I'm dealing with a lot of this now

01:05:12.960 | as I cover AI is I'm again,

01:05:14.680 | dealing with the same YouTube crowd

01:05:16.960 | that is, gets very mad at me if I'm not.

01:05:18.960 | - In either direction probably.

01:05:20.040 | - Either direction, yeah, it's interesting.

01:05:22.000 | But unlike crypto, it is really disruptive,

01:05:24.360 | but it's very confusing

01:05:25.360 | because we have this disruptive thing.

01:05:26.480 | Then we have these huge groups

01:05:28.000 | that have built their identity on this has to be

01:05:30.240 | the biggest disruption.

01:05:31.680 | And so if anything,

01:05:32.840 | and you also have a whole community of people

01:05:34.160 | who've built their thing on,

01:05:35.120 | it's not going to be a big deal.

01:05:36.240 | It's a really confusing world.

01:05:38.320 | It definitely makes me want to be less online.

01:05:39.840 | - Based on your wonderful New Yorker piece,

01:05:42.400 | the, my working theory on AI,

01:05:44.720 | and you think far more about this than me.

01:05:46.600 | So you could tell me if I'm wrong,

01:05:48.480 | is that AI will be extremely disruptive

01:05:52.720 | in areas where there is strong pattern recognition

01:05:56.920 | that are not complex.

01:05:58.160 | So things aren't changing.

01:05:59.640 | And there's a lot of precedent.

01:06:01.080 | So I think like first to third year associates at law firms,

01:06:05.920 | AI will eventually probably augment their job

01:06:08.240 | in really big ways.

01:06:10.200 | I'm not convinced that AI is going to churn out books

01:06:13.080 | like we write with novel knowledge.

01:06:15.520 | Now, what I am curious about,

01:06:16.920 | and maybe you could tell me this,

01:06:18.000 | 'cause I don't even have the thing on my phone.

01:06:20.520 | If I said, hey AI, here's a manuscript for my book,

01:06:26.000 | write it in the voice of George Saunders,

01:06:29.320 | Jenny O'Dell, and Cal Newport,

01:06:31.560 | combine their voices to create something new

01:06:33.400 | and rewrite my manuscript.

01:06:35.280 | Could it do that?

01:06:36.440 | - Well, and we should be careful not to open up the--

01:06:39.080 | - The AI, sorry.

01:06:39.920 | - Well, I'm not saying not to open up

01:06:41.160 | the third wall or whatever,

01:06:42.360 | but we should admit to the audience,

01:06:43.800 | we are recording this interview

01:06:45.600 | somewhat comfortably in advance.

01:06:46.960 | - That's true, things could change.

01:06:48.360 | - Yeah, and things are changing so fast

01:06:49.640 | that everything I'm saying here,

01:06:50.640 | if it feels like it's really out of sync with reality,

01:06:53.280 | 'cause we are recording this a little bit in advance,

01:06:55.160 | but early summer when we are recording this,

01:06:58.280 | I would say that's not the way people

01:07:00.600 | are thinking about AI for writing,

01:07:01.680 | because that context window's too big.

01:07:03.760 | It can't deal with 100,000 word manuscript,

01:07:05.880 | it can deal with a couple thousand words.

01:07:06.720 | - But is it a yet situation?

01:07:09.520 | - It's unclear, it's unclear.

01:07:11.320 | The performance seems to degrade

01:07:14.720 | as the token count in the context window gets larger,

01:07:17.440 | and that might be somewhat fundamental

01:07:18.760 | with large language models,

01:07:19.600 | which would make sense, right?

01:07:20.600 | I mean, it's a lot of texture giving it.

01:07:24.000 | And there is an issue with AI,

01:07:25.280 | these text-based language models,

01:07:27.200 | is we're kind of out of text to train them on.

01:07:29.520 | I mean, we're training these on basically all the text.

01:07:33.920 | - Right, and then it gets--

01:07:34.760 | - It's years of the internet,

01:07:35.600 | it's like all the books ever written.

01:07:36.680 | So it's not like we have a lot more training data,

01:07:39.960 | and it's already right now taking 30,000 GPUs,

01:07:44.240 | weeks of time to try to train these things.

01:07:45.880 | So it might just be fundamental,

01:07:47.600 | we're not gonna have a huge window.

01:07:48.640 | But the way people are using it to write is more iterative.

01:07:51.520 | So it'll be like, well, give me an outline

01:07:53.840 | for a book that would--

01:07:55.160 | - Yeah, but that's the,

01:07:56.120 | so my argument is you can't write a good book

01:07:58.400 | without doing the work of writing the outline yourself

01:08:01.920 | and getting it wrong nine times.

01:08:03.600 | - Yeah, I agree with that.

01:08:04.920 | I think where this is all gonna settle out,

01:08:06.540 | I think there will be,

01:08:07.640 | here's my, the article I'm working on at the time

01:08:10.160 | that we're talking about this,

01:08:11.000 | the conclusion I'm coming to,

01:08:12.200 | so this will be out by the time this interview is published.

01:08:15.440 | The conclusion I'm coming to is that,

01:08:17.160 | at least in the professional world,

01:08:18.440 | the impact, my best guess is it'll be

01:08:21.480 | somewhat comparable to the internet.

01:08:23.640 | - Yeah, which is huge.

01:08:24.640 | - Which was big.

01:08:25.480 | And it did touch almost every office job, right?

01:08:28.600 | - Yeah.

01:08:29.440 | - And let's say the internet plus networks in the office.

01:08:31.880 | It changed a lot of things.

01:08:33.560 | The actual interfaces you're dealing with were different.

01:08:36.120 | There's certain tools you're using a lot

01:08:38.200 | that didn't exist in 1994, like an email client.

01:08:41.040 | It didn't, however, have the effect,

01:08:43.480 | let's say on knowledge work

01:08:45.060 | that we had with the rise of industrialization

01:08:47.320 | where it reshaped the economy

01:08:49.020 | so that the countryside emptied out

01:08:51.240 | as people moved to the cities

01:08:53.120 | or let's say the labor optimization,

01:08:55.760 | industrialization happened more in the '60s, '70s,

01:08:58.000 | and '80s with outsourcing

01:08:59.120 | where whole cities kind of hollowed out

01:09:01.120 | as manufacturing went offshore and became more productive

01:09:04.560 | and it created these crises

01:09:06.680 | that we're still dealing with today

01:09:08.120 | with the opioid crisis, with the populism crisis.

01:09:11.200 | It really restructured the country.

01:09:13.140 | The internet didn't do that in work,

01:09:14.800 | but it did change.

01:09:16.340 | It created some new jobs, it got rid of some jobs.

01:09:18.000 | - Back to our allostasis in the marbles,

01:09:19.540 | what I'm hearing is that AI is going to take the marbles

01:09:22.700 | and disperse them and they're gonna come back together

01:09:26.000 | in potentially a very different way,

01:09:27.720 | but they're still gonna be on the same table.

01:09:29.720 | Whereas industrialization knocked the marbles off the table

01:09:33.320 | and then it took 45 years to build another table

01:09:36.880 | and then set them down on another table.

01:09:38.520 | - Yeah, and there's still people left on the ground.

01:09:40.440 | - Exactly.

01:09:41.280 | - I think that's exactly right.

01:09:43.320 | Obviously, going back to early in our conversation,

01:09:45.160 | the right thing to do here

01:09:46.560 | is just to see what Jocko Willink does with AI

01:09:49.480 | 'cause he's the Navy SEAL that is really good at adapting.

01:09:52.520 | So just whatever Jocko does,

01:09:55.020 | then that's my sage for all things AI.

01:09:58.780 | All right, well, we've gone far afield,

01:10:00.680 | but I always like when I have you here

01:10:02.140 | to shoot the breeze on online culture and what's going on.

01:10:05.800 | But Brad, it's always a pleasure.

01:10:06.940 | The book is "Master of Change."

01:10:08.780 | You know, I haven't read the subtitle yet.

01:10:10.120 | Let me give everyone the subtitle.

01:10:11.560 | "How to Excel When Everything is Changing, Including You."

01:10:16.020 | A subtitle I like, by the way.

01:10:17.520 | - Yeah, that subtitle, it's a funny story

01:10:19.740 | 'cause I know that you think about this a lot

01:10:21.660 | with your books.

01:10:22.920 | We really were struggling with the subtitle

01:10:25.520 | and I was on a call with my publishing team

01:10:28.240 | and one of the editors, my main editor,

01:10:32.440 | did a really good job and she's just like,

01:10:34.440 | "Just forget about everything that we've talked about.

01:10:37.280 | "Like, if you were to go up to a friend

01:10:39.240 | "and pitch them the book, the classic elevator pitch,

01:10:42.060 | "what would it be?"

01:10:42.900 | And it's not like I hadn't thought about this,

01:10:45.060 | but for whatever reason, I'm like,

01:10:46.980 | I would basically be like, "Look, dude," or,

01:10:49.380 | "Look, you think that you are you,

01:10:52.460 | "but you're always changing, yet you are you.

01:10:54.540 | "So how do you think about yourself

01:10:55.840 | "when everything's always changing, including you?"

01:10:57.960 | That's what this book's gonna help with.

01:10:59.640 | - Yeah. - And she's like,

01:11:00.580 | "There you go." - There you go.

01:11:01.420 | - That's the subtitle.

01:11:02.240 | Someone write that down.

01:11:03.160 | - I like it, I like it.

01:11:04.100 | So "Masters of Change," the subtitle is,

01:11:06.120 | "Hey, dude, you're always changing."

01:11:08.400 | - Well, it's not just, "Hey, dude."

01:11:09.560 | It could be, "Hey, sister."

01:11:10.960 | - It's gonna say, "Snap" in parentheses.

01:11:13.160 | - Yeah.

01:11:14.000 | - Yeah.

01:11:14.840 | - No, a little bit more refined.

01:11:17.700 | But yeah, I mean, that's the book.

01:11:19.480 | And I guess the you could be, as we talked about,

01:11:21.360 | applied broadly, it could be you as a person,

01:11:23.280 | but it could also be a family unit, an organization,

01:11:26.040 | or these big cultural changes.

01:11:28.440 | - Excellent, so what else should people know

01:11:30.040 | about finding Brad Stolberg?

01:11:31.560 | If they wanna know all things Brad, where should they look?

01:11:33.600 | - Yeah, the best places are my website,

01:11:37.520 | which is just my name, bradstolberg.com.

01:11:40.280 | And then I am on Instagram,

01:11:42.480 | probably more frequently than Twitter now.

01:11:44.480 | That was another topic that we didn't talk about,

01:11:46.160 | but Twitter changed quite a bit,

01:11:48.040 | and I changed where I am on the internet along with that.

01:11:51.580 | But also in the spirit of this conversation,

01:11:54.720 | the best way to go deep on my most recent thinking

01:11:57.240 | is spare yourself the social media and the internet

01:11:59.680 | and just read or listen to the book.

01:12:01.760 | - Right, so you're saying we don't need to see

01:12:03.680 | your Instagram stories about your cold plunge.

01:12:06.140 | We can just go straight to the book itself.

01:12:08.280 | - There you go.

01:12:09.120 | Don't worry, I don't cold plunge, but just read the book.

01:12:11.240 | Stay off Instagram so you don't see everyone else's stories

01:12:13.620 | about their cold plunge.

01:12:15.120 | - All right, Brad, thanks for coming.

01:12:16.240 | - All right, Cal, let's go cold plunge together.

01:12:19.000 | - All right, so there we have it.

01:12:19.920 | That was my conversation with Brad Stolberg.

01:12:24.800 | If you like that, please leave a review

01:12:27.080 | or subscribe to this podcast.

01:12:29.480 | That does really help us spread the word.

01:12:32.800 | And otherwise, that's all we have for today.

01:12:34.280 | So we will be back next week

01:12:36.680 | with a new episode of the podcast.

01:12:39.080 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:12:41.880 | Hey, it's Cal here.

01:12:44.200 | If you like this interview with Brad Stolberg,

01:12:46.600 | I think you'll also really like episode 253

01:12:51.440 | when I interview Laura Vanderkam

01:12:54.040 | about making the most out of your time.

01:12:56.680 | Check this out.

01:12:57.800 | This is more about what they did with the time

01:13:00.400 | that was outside of work is what impacted

01:13:02.920 | how they felt about their schedule.

01:13:04.680 | Not that in order to do salsa dancing,

01:13:07.880 | they were working on average three hours less

How To Master Change: This One Idea Might Change Your Entire Life | Cal Newport

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