Morgan Housel: Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.200 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.400 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.320 | My guest today is Morgan Hausel.

00:00:17.560 | Morgan Hausel is a partner at the Collaborative Fund

00:00:19.840 | and an expert in private wealth generation and management.

00:00:22.920 | He is also the author

00:00:24.220 | of the spectacularly best-selling book,

00:00:26.200 | "The Psychology of Money."

00:00:27.920 | And today we talk about the psychology of money.

00:00:30.520 | We talk about how money can change your psychology.

00:00:33.240 | We talk about how most people tend to lie at the extremes

00:00:35.960 | of either saving too much money or spending too much money.

00:00:39.400 | And we talk about how most people get it completely wrong

00:00:42.780 | when it comes to framing in our minds what money is,

00:00:45.720 | what its real value is,

00:00:47.160 | and its ability to generate happiness within us.

00:00:49.960 | And no, I am not going to tell you,

00:00:51.640 | and Morgan is not going to tell you,

00:00:53.440 | that beyond a certain dollar amount,

00:00:54.980 | you don't increase your happiness.

00:00:56.360 | Because as we all know, money cannot buy happiness,

00:01:00.120 | but it can buffer stress.

00:01:02.520 | We acknowledge that from the outset.

00:01:04.160 | And then Morgan goes on to explain

00:01:06.080 | that really what we're seeking

00:01:07.360 | when we talk about seeking wealth or money is freedom.

00:01:10.500 | Freedom is really about independence.

00:01:12.960 | And that if we are constantly in pursuit of wealth,

00:01:15.560 | well, then we are not truly free or independent.

00:01:18.600 | So today's discussion is as much about being happy,

00:01:21.280 | being free, feeling independent, feeling free of stress,

00:01:24.640 | as it is about this thing that we call money.

00:01:26.680 | So in other words, Morgan explains not just how to generate

00:01:29.260 | and manage monetary wealth, he explains that,

00:01:32.240 | but he also explains how to organize your life

00:01:35.920 | in and around this thing that we call career,

00:01:38.260 | the pursuit of wealth, and happiness.

00:01:40.880 | And I can think of few topics as important

00:01:43.000 | as today's topic.

00:01:44.160 | I read Morgan's book, "The Psychology of Money,"

00:01:46.140 | and I loved it.

00:01:47.060 | I also loved today's discussion

00:01:48.880 | because I'm certain that after it's done,

00:01:50.920 | you will realize that you've probably been thinking

00:01:53.380 | about wealth and money incorrectly in a number of ways,

00:01:56.880 | and you've probably been pursuing it incorrectly

00:01:59.160 | in a number of ways.

00:02:00.000 | But by asking yourself certain probe questions

00:02:02.980 | that Morgan raises today and answering those questions,

00:02:06.060 | you can arrive in a place where your relationship to money

00:02:08.880 | and your pursuit of it really clearly matches

00:02:11.900 | your particular goals.

00:02:13.600 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:16.480 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:19.200 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:21.380 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:23.320 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:25.360 | to the general public.

00:02:26.760 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:27.880 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:03:59.400 | Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

00:04:02.540 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

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00:05:07.900 | And now for my discussion with Morgan Housel.

00:05:10.840 | Morgan Housel, welcome.

00:05:12.260 | - Thanks so much for having me.

00:05:13.100 | Happy to be here.

00:05:14.100 | - I'm excited that you have a new book coming out next year

00:05:17.180 | about the art of spending money.

00:05:19.320 | Is that right?

00:05:20.160 | - That's right, you got it.

00:05:21.960 | - Today, I want to talk about how to think about money.

00:05:25.580 | What is it?

00:05:27.920 | How do we frame it within our historical context,

00:05:31.640 | meaning our personal historical context?

00:05:34.080 | Because I think we all and each think about money

00:05:38.000 | a little bit differently.

00:05:39.800 | And then talk about what is the best use,

00:05:42.800 | or in some cases, not use of money?

00:05:47.600 | This is a topic that could go

00:05:49.360 | in any number of different directions,

00:05:50.720 | but my goal here is that people will get

00:05:52.680 | a better understanding of what money is,

00:05:55.860 | why they work for it,

00:05:57.940 | and really how to make it a true asset to their lives,

00:06:02.940 | as opposed to something that is forever out of reach

00:06:07.060 | in terms of amount or what they expected to bring them.

00:06:10.380 | - Great, looking forward to it.

00:06:11.780 | - Great.

00:06:12.620 | - So your book starts off with this notion

00:06:15.860 | that people are not crazy.

00:06:18.180 | It's in fact the title of the chapter.

00:06:20.260 | Does that mean that people are rational about money?

00:06:23.260 | - Oh, I think it's very different.

00:06:24.480 | What I meant by no one is crazy is that it is so easy

00:06:26.980 | for people to look around at society

00:06:29.220 | and how other people are spending their money

00:06:31.060 | and saving their money and investing their money

00:06:32.980 | and say, why the hell would anybody do that?

00:06:35.380 | Why would you waste your money on this?

00:06:36.740 | Why would you hoard your money like that?

00:06:38.260 | And I actually think if you peel back the onion layer

00:06:40.820 | of what's going on in those people's lives,

00:06:42.900 | no one is really that crazy with how they spend their money

00:06:45.460 | or save their money.

00:06:46.300 | It makes sense to them in that moment.

00:06:48.540 | My brother-in-law is a social worker.

00:06:50.420 | He works with very disadvantaged kids,

00:06:52.260 | kids who are abused at home, who don't have homes.

00:06:55.300 | And a lot of those kids, not surprisingly,

00:06:57.740 | do very poorly at school.

00:06:59.140 | They misbehave, they get in fights, they don't go to school.

00:07:01.900 | And it is so common for those kids

00:07:04.020 | that the teacher will look at those kids and say,

00:07:06.220 | why are you acting like this?

00:07:07.900 | Why don't you do the right thing?

00:07:09.060 | It's so obvious.

00:07:10.480 | And he says, there's a phrase in social work,

00:07:13.020 | all behavior makes sense with enough information.

00:07:15.620 | That if you look at what those kids are dealing with in life,

00:07:18.220 | it would all make sense to you

00:07:19.300 | why they are misbehaving at school.

00:07:20.940 | And I think that's a powerful idea

00:07:22.580 | for a lot of things in life,

00:07:23.660 | that all behavior makes sense with enough information.

00:07:26.060 | And you can really apply it to money too.

00:07:28.140 | That you could easily tie how I spend my money today

00:07:31.500 | and save my money today

00:07:32.820 | based off of the experience that I've had in life,

00:07:35.620 | how I was raised, where I was raised,

00:07:37.500 | how old I am, the generation I was born into.

00:07:40.100 | All things that are outside of my control.

00:07:42.000 | And it is very common to look at people

00:07:43.740 | who are spending a ton of money.

00:07:45.340 | Well, there's a story behind that.

00:07:46.780 | They're spending a ton of money because they want some,

00:07:49.220 | for a lot of them, they want some sort of attention.

00:07:51.060 | They're trying to get people's attention.

00:07:52.820 | Maybe sometimes they're trying to cover up a hole,

00:07:54.620 | maybe they actually are really enjoying it.

00:07:56.540 | People who are hoarding a lot of money.

00:07:57.900 | There's a story there too.

00:07:59.100 | They experience something that's causing them to do that.

00:08:02.300 | And I think that this is really important for two reasons.

00:08:04.760 | One, it forces you to realize

00:08:07.020 | that there is not one right way to manage money,

00:08:10.540 | to save it, to spend it.

00:08:11.580 | You gotta figure out what works for you.

00:08:13.020 | And what works for me might not work for you.

00:08:15.300 | There's not one answer.

00:08:16.780 | And it's not like math.

00:08:18.100 | Like in math, two plus two equals four for everybody.

00:08:20.900 | And in money, it's like,

00:08:21.740 | you gotta figure it out for yourself.

00:08:23.160 | It's almost like your taste in food or your taste in music.

00:08:25.700 | Like, just find out what you like and do that.

00:08:28.520 | The other thing is I think you become less cynical

00:08:30.380 | about other people's decisions.

00:08:32.140 | And you don't spend all your day saying,

00:08:34.020 | look at that idiot spending their money in a stupid way.

00:08:36.540 | No, it's just, you gotta figure it out for yourself.

00:08:38.980 | And I think you become happier

00:08:39.940 | when you're a little less cynical

00:08:40.980 | about how other people are doing it.

00:08:43.540 | - For most people, including myself,

00:08:45.180 | the whole notion of money and safety

00:08:48.260 | are very closely linked.

00:08:49.740 | Do we have enough resources to take care of ourselves

00:08:53.900 | plus a bit extra, one hopes.

00:08:55.340 | I guess I would include in taking care of oneself,

00:08:58.060 | buffering one's anxiety about not having enough money.

00:09:00.940 | That's part of the psychological care.

00:09:03.120 | And also taking care of others

00:09:04.860 | that we might be responsible for,

00:09:06.380 | or simply want to take care of.

00:09:08.640 | That's very closely linked to notions of how much

00:09:13.560 | and what type of education to get, right?

00:09:15.780 | I mean, I think everyone presumably at some point

00:09:19.220 | goes through the mental gymnastics

00:09:21.540 | of is it worth it to get an advanced degree?

00:09:23.660 | What major should I focus on?

00:09:25.380 | Is that, are there any jobs there?

00:09:27.100 | When I went to school to be a neuroscientist,

00:09:28.700 | a cardiologist, a friend of our family said,

00:09:31.060 | why would you go into neuroscience?

00:09:32.180 | There are no jobs in that.

00:09:33.780 | There were plenty of jobs in neuroscience

00:09:35.300 | and still are.

00:09:36.420 | I wouldn't say that most of them are high paying jobs.

00:09:38.880 | So, you know, we know that higher education

00:09:41.020 | doesn't always scale with higher income.

00:09:43.020 | As we grow up and move into the world,

00:09:46.800 | you know, we're thinking about how to integrate

00:09:48.380 | all these different things,

00:09:49.220 | what we want to do because it's interesting

00:09:51.400 | versus what will make us money.

00:09:53.320 | In your experience and observation,

00:09:55.940 | and in writing your book,

00:09:57.500 | is there some sort of mental path

00:09:59.860 | to cut through these different considerations?

00:10:03.300 | I mean, when we talk about money and wealth,

00:10:05.760 | you know, what should we really take into consideration?

00:10:07.780 | Is there some sort of checklist?

00:10:09.220 | I mean, it becomes a pretty vast space.

00:10:12.500 | I believe that you get the best work out of yourself

00:10:16.860 | in terms of going after things

00:10:18.340 | that you're really interested in.

00:10:19.740 | But, you know, there may not be money

00:10:21.660 | in things that are highly interesting to somebody.

00:10:25.000 | - I asked Daniel Kahneman a very similar question

00:10:27.180 | about 10 years ago.

00:10:28.100 | Kahneman is a world renowned psychologist,

00:10:30.580 | won the Nobel prize in economics,

00:10:31.940 | passed away a year or two ago.

00:10:33.700 | And he said the trait that you need

00:10:35.780 | to do well with money over time,

00:10:37.380 | no matter who you are,

00:10:38.740 | is a well calibrated sense of your future regret.

00:10:41.400 | What are you going to end up regretting in the past?

00:10:43.340 | I think at the highest level,

00:10:44.980 | that's how you should base all of your financial decisions

00:10:48.180 | is will I regret spending this or not spending this?

00:10:51.820 | Will I regret making or not making this investment?

00:10:54.500 | Now, much easier said than done.

00:10:56.360 | I think most people do not fully understand

00:10:58.780 | their own sense of regret,

00:11:00.140 | what they're likely to look back and say,

00:11:01.700 | I wish I had not have done this.

00:11:03.980 | The other thing is that it changes

00:11:05.380 | over the course of your life.

00:11:06.580 | I'll give you a perfect example.

00:11:08.220 | I'm a big saver, have been for my entire adult life.

00:11:11.720 | Heaven forbid, if I were on my deathbed tomorrow,

00:11:15.420 | would I regret the vacations I didn't take,

00:11:18.380 | the cars I didn't buy?

00:11:19.900 | The answer right now is absolutely not.

00:11:21.580 | I would feel so good knowing

00:11:23.460 | that my wife and kids are going to be okay.

00:11:25.740 | So I would take so much pleasure in knowing

00:11:27.620 | that I did not spend that money.

00:11:29.520 | I saved it for their protection.

00:11:31.700 | Will I still feel that way if I'm 80 years old?

00:11:34.060 | Then maybe I will look back and say,

00:11:35.860 | I should have lived a little bit more.

00:11:37.400 | I should have given my money away

00:11:39.100 | while I could have seen it being given away.

00:11:41.340 | So it changes throughout the course of your life.

00:11:43.200 | But I think if you're always thinking through the lens

00:11:45.440 | of what am I gonna regret?

00:11:47.420 | It's never about YOLO or about like,

00:11:51.060 | oh, save today so you can have it for tomorrow.

00:11:54.860 | I think that's too simple to think about it.

00:11:57.440 | You have to know what you're gonna regret in the future

00:11:59.660 | and look back.

00:12:00.500 | And back to everyone's different.

00:12:02.300 | What I will regret might be very different

00:12:03.840 | from what you will regret.

00:12:05.100 | Very interesting story from Jeff Bezos.

00:12:06.840 | He talked about when he started Amazon back

00:12:09.340 | in I think it was 1994.

00:12:11.440 | The reason he started it,

00:12:12.380 | and he knew that there was very little chance

00:12:14.180 | it was gonna work when he first started it.

00:12:16.100 | But he said, if I do not try this, I will regret it.

00:12:20.780 | And if I try it and it fails, I won't regret that.

00:12:23.520 | That's an amazing story

00:12:24.580 | that talks about his entrepreneurial spirit.

00:12:26.340 | The other thing, when I first heard that story is,

00:12:28.700 | bless him for thinking that,

00:12:29.780 | I do not have that personality.

00:12:31.340 | If I devoted my entire life and my family's money

00:12:34.820 | and my parents' money to a startup and it failed,

00:12:37.140 | I might regret that.

00:12:38.860 | I admire and I'm grateful for the people

00:12:40.580 | who do not have that vision, as he does,

00:12:42.820 | made the world better.

00:12:43.940 | But everyone's sense of regret

00:12:45.420 | is gonna be a little bit different.

00:12:47.660 | - And sometimes this sense of what one is likely to regret,

00:12:52.660 | if we have access to it at all,

00:12:54.900 | 'cause it sounds like we're not very good at anticipating

00:12:56.700 | this, as Kahneman pointed out.

00:12:58.200 | Most people lack a well-calibrated sense of future regret.

00:13:03.300 | That's gonna change over time, so it's dynamic.

00:13:05.460 | And here we're talking about investing

00:13:06.820 | in two-year or four-year degrees.

00:13:09.260 | We're talking about investing in one's time,

00:13:12.020 | that is, in a particular profession.

00:13:14.460 | And I think we come up with all these explanations

00:13:18.140 | post hoc about, well, I went to that company,

00:13:24.280 | I went into that line of work,

00:13:25.420 | I spent 10 years there or the startup failed,

00:13:27.580 | but I learned a valuable lesson that then

00:13:29.580 | really supported me in a future endeavor.

00:13:32.620 | And so we rationalize our poor choices from the past

00:13:35.780 | in ways that allow us to connect the dots

00:13:38.300 | to sort of steal from the famous Steve Jobs speech.

00:13:41.440 | And yet all of this really says that we are very poor

00:13:46.460 | at placing our current experience and our past experience

00:13:50.340 | into any kind of future projection of ourselves.

00:13:52.780 | - You talk a little bit about this in your book,

00:13:54.420 | and this really sunk in for me in a major way,

00:13:58.620 | that we don't really know or anticipate

00:14:01.620 | how we are likely to change as we get older.

00:14:05.060 | - Right, so there's a thing in psychology

00:14:06.400 | called the end of history illusion,

00:14:07.680 | which means that you are very aware

00:14:09.840 | of how much you've changed in the last 20 years.

00:14:12.160 | You are maybe smarter, wiser,

00:14:13.980 | you have your beliefs about things in life have evolved.

00:14:17.000 | And that's true for most people.

00:14:19.140 | But most people, if you actually dig into it,

00:14:21.500 | they think if you say,

00:14:23.060 | who will you be in 20 years from now?

00:14:25.260 | They think they'll roughly be

00:14:26.100 | the same person they are today.

00:14:27.580 | It's always this belief that I've grown so much in the past,

00:14:29.980 | but I'm done growing.

00:14:31.300 | 'Cause it's hard to project

00:14:32.980 | how you're gonna be different in the future.

00:14:34.700 | A lot of that is if I tell myself 20 years from now,

00:14:37.100 | I'll have very different beliefs about politics,

00:14:40.060 | whatever it might be.

00:14:41.700 | What I'm effectively admitting

00:14:42.740 | is what I believe today is wrong.

00:14:44.440 | And you don't wanna believe that.

00:14:45.500 | Everyone wants to wake up and look in the mirror

00:14:47.180 | and say, what I believe today is the right thing.

00:14:49.260 | It's just like a self-justification of your own beliefs

00:14:51.920 | to makes it easier to go about the days.

00:14:54.460 | What I believe right now is the right thing.

00:14:56.260 | And maybe you have a little bit of doubt around the edges,

00:14:58.380 | but most of it is what I believe is true.

00:15:00.980 | So you don't wanna believe that you're gonna adjust

00:15:03.380 | and adapt those beliefs over time.

00:15:04.740 | So it becomes difficult to take a truly long-term view

00:15:08.220 | and make a decision today

00:15:09.940 | that is going to be something

00:15:11.380 | that you're not gonna regret in the future.

00:15:13.060 | As I've always framed this,

00:15:13.900 | I think the only antidote to this

00:15:15.680 | of trying to get around this problem

00:15:18.060 | is avoiding the extreme ends of financial planning.

00:15:20.660 | And a lot of people are on the extreme ends.

00:15:22.820 | Like on one end, you have the FIRE movement,

00:15:24.740 | the people who save 90% of their income

00:15:26.620 | and they wanna retire at 28, kind of that kind of thing.

00:15:29.260 | And on the other hand, you have like the YOLO crypto traders

00:15:32.240 | who are like, doesn't matter,

00:15:33.080 | like just throw it all down and let's see what happens.

00:15:35.580 | Those extreme ends are what you are most likely to regret

00:15:38.380 | at some point in the future.

00:15:39.860 | And the crypto, look, I think a lot of those people are young

00:15:42.460 | and they have time to make up for their mistakes.

00:15:44.460 | I did a lot of really dumb things with my money

00:15:46.340 | in my teens and 20s.

00:15:48.300 | But I think a lot of them,

00:15:50.100 | that's where they are most likely to look back.

00:15:52.900 | It's one thing to lose a lot of money in your 20s

00:15:55.220 | and say, ah, it doesn't really matter.

00:15:56.580 | But then when you're 48

00:15:57.580 | and trying to put your kids through college,

00:15:59.300 | that's when you're gonna look back like,

00:16:00.400 | I wish I hadn't done something like that.

00:16:02.740 | So those extreme ends are like,

00:16:04.060 | have the highest odds of future regret.

00:16:06.020 | - In order to, as I described it before,

00:16:09.860 | carve a path through this for people,

00:16:12.180 | I'm wondering if people generally fall into

00:16:16.220 | either one or the other category of,

00:16:18.500 | as you described with Bezos,

00:16:20.740 | not wanting to regret not having done something.

00:16:24.380 | So I think of that in sort of pseudo-neurobiological terms

00:16:28.220 | as being drawn toward the possible dopaminergic

00:16:32.780 | or other rewards of having succeeded.

00:16:34.700 | Really, that's what he's envisioning, presumably,

00:16:36.620 | is the pain of having not had been given himself

00:16:40.040 | the opportunity to succeed.

00:16:42.300 | Okay, that's one way to put it.

00:16:44.740 | And then the other path would be

00:16:46.640 | just avoiding the pain of loss.

00:16:48.700 | And there are a lot of studies,

00:16:49.860 | I think Kahneman did some of them, in fact,

00:16:51.660 | that people work a lot harder to avoid the pain of loss

00:16:55.060 | than to gain something.

00:16:57.180 | But in thinking about the people I know

00:17:00.220 | across various wealth scales and different ages,

00:17:04.060 | it seems that some people are just more motivated

00:17:06.420 | to try new things because they like doing new things.

00:17:09.300 | They like the sense of reward

00:17:10.480 | that can come from doing those things.

00:17:12.180 | And so it really is painful for them

00:17:13.840 | to stay in the same place, financially or otherwise.

00:17:16.780 | Other people, they like the sure thing.

00:17:19.220 | They like reliability.

00:17:20.640 | And you can see this in a lot of domains of their life.

00:17:22.500 | I mean, I don't want to extrapolate this

00:17:23.880 | to all aspects of their life,

00:17:25.360 | but some people like dogs that the entire breed

00:17:30.360 | is known for rarely ever having bitten somebody.

00:17:33.220 | Other people like to raise cane corsos.

00:17:35.060 | And while I'm sure there's some really nice,

00:17:37.040 | loving cane corsos out there,

00:17:38.820 | they occasionally bite it when they bite it serious.

00:17:41.700 | So, you know, are we really talking about a propensity

00:17:45.400 | for risk versus safety?

00:17:47.240 | And do you think that people fall

00:17:48.540 | into more or less two camps on that?

00:17:50.800 | - I think it's true that some people would go nuts

00:17:54.360 | if they took the safe path.

00:17:55.760 | And even if they're doing it in the name of like,

00:17:57.440 | "I don't want to regret this,"

00:17:58.640 | but they need some sort of variability in their life.

00:18:00.720 | They need to go out and do things.

00:18:02.320 | The other element is we don't know

00:18:04.960 | the paths that we didn't take.

00:18:06.480 | And I'll give you a personal example of this.

00:18:08.980 | 20 years ago, I was enrolled in Pepperdine,

00:18:11.780 | but I didn't go.

00:18:12.620 | I was enrolled in just at the last second I transferred.

00:18:14.460 | So I never actually attended, but I was all enrolled.

00:18:16.380 | And of course, I think what would my life have been

00:18:19.260 | if I had gone there?

00:18:20.500 | 'Cause the school that I transferred to, I met my wife,

00:18:22.540 | started my career there.

00:18:24.020 | And it's easy for me to say, "God, I'm so glad

00:18:26.540 | "I did not go there,"

00:18:28.060 | 'cause my life would not be what it is today.

00:18:29.480 | But the truth is, maybe it would have been fine.

00:18:31.500 | It would have been better.

00:18:32.500 | You never know the paths that you didn't take,

00:18:35.060 | where they're going to end up.

00:18:36.420 | So back to Conor's point,

00:18:37.700 | a well-calibrated sense of your future regret,

00:18:39.540 | but nobody knows the paths that they didn't take

00:18:41.940 | and where those would go.

00:18:42.900 | So it just makes it very difficult to have any idea

00:18:45.780 | of which paths you should be on in that end.

00:18:50.420 | So I think just avoiding those two camps

00:18:52.620 | of the extreme ends of it.

00:18:54.220 | But again, as I said earlier,

00:18:55.820 | I think that is actually more than half of people

00:18:58.260 | are on some sort of extreme end

00:18:59.800 | of spending way more than they can

00:19:01.340 | or saving way more than they need to.

00:19:03.260 | There's a fat tail distribution

00:19:04.940 | in how people manage their money.

00:19:06.420 | And so that's quite a few people.

00:19:07.940 | And I think that's why,

00:19:09.860 | I think it's one of the reasons why we live in a society

00:19:11.700 | that is richer than it's ever been by far,

00:19:13.940 | not just at the top, but at the median level.

00:19:15.820 | The average family is richer than they've ever been.

00:19:18.380 | But because we manage it in such extreme ways,

00:19:20.700 | is it making people happier?

00:19:22.240 | Are we happier today than we were 40 years ago

00:19:24.140 | or 100 years ago?

00:19:25.100 | That there's not a ton of evidence for.

00:19:27.460 | Because managing it in a way

00:19:28.980 | that's actually gonna make you happier

00:19:30.900 | and reduce your regret and live a more meaningful life

00:19:33.620 | is much harder than earning it

00:19:35.180 | and accumulating it over time.

00:19:37.100 | - When I was growing up,

00:19:38.320 | you would see a mixture of newer cars,

00:19:41.780 | including some very nice cars,

00:19:43.580 | as well as a lot of older kind of beaten up cars

00:19:46.300 | driving around.

00:19:47.900 | Nowadays, of course, this varies by area.

00:19:51.460 | It's actually rare to see really old beat up cars.

00:19:55.180 | You see some really nice old cars that have been restored,

00:19:57.800 | but that's a different thing altogether.

00:19:59.340 | And I assume this is because of credit

00:20:02.340 | that people can now buy things on credit.

00:20:04.740 | How has the ability to purchase things on credit

00:20:07.020 | changed the way that we think about money generally?

00:20:09.640 | I know people who have tremendous credit card debt,

00:20:13.380 | and I think are now at the point where they figure

00:20:15.760 | that they're never gonna pay it off.

00:20:17.420 | They're just gonna probably not live long enough

00:20:19.860 | to pay it off.

00:20:20.700 | And they're sort of comfortable with that,

00:20:21.940 | which is kind of scary to see.

00:20:23.980 | And some of them aren't even particularly big spenders.

00:20:26.540 | They just accrued this debt early enough

00:20:28.380 | and they can't seem to get out from the trap of that.

00:20:31.060 | I know other people who, like myself,

00:20:33.620 | pay off my credit card bill every month.

00:20:35.380 | I'm like, I hate the whatever it is, 18 plus percent interest

00:20:39.020 | even if I'm one day late.

00:20:40.260 | I'm like, ah, you know?

00:20:41.980 | And at the same time,

00:20:43.420 | I'm not somebody who likes to purchase many things.

00:20:45.620 | I'm not a things guy.

00:20:46.820 | I own one or two watches, one truck,

00:20:50.860 | like I'm just not a things guy.

00:20:53.020 | But I certainly have my own psychological relationship

00:20:55.600 | with money that after talking to you today,

00:20:58.660 | I'm sure I'm going to realize is not optimized either.

00:21:01.740 | So it's easy to point fingers

00:21:02.740 | at people in these different groups.

00:21:03.740 | But going back to this issue of credit,

00:21:05.700 | how has the ability to own and use things

00:21:09.460 | that we don't really truly own

00:21:11.340 | basically to exceed our income level

00:21:14.380 | in terms of the number and type of luxuries

00:21:16.900 | that we can enjoy changed the way

00:21:19.340 | that people think about money and use money?

00:21:22.040 | Because today's discussion in your book,

00:21:23.820 | we're talking about money as if it's something that we have,

00:21:25.660 | but credit basically is living outside your means.

00:21:27.820 | - That's a good definition.

00:21:28.660 | - Yeah.

00:21:29.480 | - I think the knee-jerk response would be,

00:21:30.900 | oh, it helps you pull your consumption forward

00:21:32.840 | so you can have more toys

00:21:34.040 | that you would not have had in a different era.

00:21:36.220 | And I actually think for a lot of people, it's the opposite,

00:21:38.940 | that there are a lot of people

00:21:39.780 | that have holes in their life, challenges in their life.

00:21:43.380 | And a very easy answer,

00:21:45.540 | if you're not happy with your life

00:21:47.420 | and you have a hole you're trying to fill is,

00:21:48.900 | well, if I had more money, this problem would go away.

00:21:51.780 | And in previous generations, previous decades,

00:21:54.980 | you could not just go out and have a ton of more money

00:21:57.780 | so you earned your money from your paycheck,

00:21:59.260 | that was what you had.

00:22:00.500 | Today, it makes it easier

00:22:01.700 | to try to fill that hole in your life with money.

00:22:04.220 | And so you can keep on getting more and more and more.

00:22:06.860 | And for a lot of people, they will wake up and say,

00:22:08.760 | oh, if only I had that car, my life would be better.

00:22:11.540 | And they go buy that car and they still feel the same.

00:22:13.900 | So then it's like, ah, you know what?

00:22:15.220 | If I had that car and that watch, then I'd feel better.

00:22:17.760 | They get the watch, they feel the same.

00:22:19.260 | Ah, you know what's missing?

00:22:20.180 | The house, I gotta go get that fancy house.

00:22:22.180 | It's this continuous spiral.

00:22:23.980 | And since you can finance all of that,

00:22:25.560 | it makes it easier and easier to go on that spiral.

00:22:28.220 | Will Smith made this incredible realization

00:22:30.520 | I loved from his biography.

00:22:31.440 | He said when he was poor and depressed,

00:22:35.040 | he had hope 'cause he could tell himself,

00:22:37.080 | one day I'm gonna have money

00:22:38.320 | and all these problems will go away.

00:22:39.720 | And then when he was rich and depressed,

00:22:42.040 | he was still depressed and he lost all of his hope

00:22:44.160 | 'cause he had more money than he could ever spend.

00:22:46.260 | So he could not tell himself, if only I had more money,

00:22:48.520 | these problems would go away.

00:22:49.760 | And so for a lot of people, the availability of credit

00:22:53.280 | is giving them, I think, a false sense of hope

00:22:55.400 | that's keeping them on this hamster wheel of,

00:22:58.160 | if only I had this bigger house, this nicer car,

00:23:00.880 | all these problems that I wake up with every morning

00:23:02.760 | would go away and it keeps you on that path.

00:23:04.780 | Which I think if you actually don't have access

00:23:06.500 | to that much money, you're more likely to wake up and say,

00:23:08.780 | what is this hole?

00:23:09.620 | I need to fix it in a different way.

00:23:10.840 | It's health, it's relationships, it's purpose,

00:23:12.480 | whatever it might be,

00:23:13.520 | rather than trying to put a bandaid of credit over it.

00:23:16.400 | - So interesting.

00:23:17.480 | I sometimes think about the phrase,

00:23:20.640 | money can't buy happiness.

00:23:22.720 | And my immediate impulse is to respond with,

00:23:26.000 | well, somebody with a lot of money probably said that.

00:23:28.760 | Not because I think money can buy happiness,

00:23:31.000 | but money can buffer stress.

00:23:34.120 | I have friends who've had children recently

00:23:36.940 | who have night nurses.

00:23:38.280 | They're looking a lot more rested than the ones that don't

00:23:42.360 | because they can't afford them.

00:23:44.440 | And on and on.

00:23:46.200 | If you have a medical issue, right?

00:23:48.120 | I mean, there's this whole world within hospitals

00:23:50.480 | that we won't talk about in this episode,

00:23:53.000 | but there's this whole world about wealth

00:23:55.240 | and how one is actually even treated

00:23:56.880 | as a person in a hospital.

00:23:58.600 | There's a lot of knowledge behind the scenes

00:24:00.000 | about people's income level when they come into a hospital.

00:24:02.540 | People are gonna really go wide-eyed when they hear this.

00:24:05.120 | They'll get shuttled to different rooms,

00:24:07.080 | different conditions that allow them to sleep better,

00:24:09.640 | recover better, health outcomes depend on this.

00:24:12.520 | I mean, and on and on.

00:24:14.380 | So money can't buy happiness,

00:24:16.120 | but it certainly can buffer stress

00:24:17.640 | and it can drive outcomes.

00:24:19.440 | So how should we frame that?

00:24:21.240 | Especially if we are on the,

00:24:24.600 | or in the pursuit of acquiring more money, more wealth,

00:24:28.120 | because a lot of people are.

00:24:29.240 | - Money absolutely can buy happiness.

00:24:31.000 | It's often though an indirect path.

00:24:33.320 | And what I mean by that is,

00:24:34.600 | will a big fancy house make you happier?

00:24:37.400 | And the answer is probably yes.

00:24:39.120 | But the reason it might is because it'll make it more,

00:24:42.280 | it'll make it easier to host friends and family.

00:24:44.480 | And that's what's actually making you happy.

00:24:46.280 | It's those extra connections with those people.

00:24:48.840 | Does going on a nice vacation make you happy?

00:24:50.760 | An expensive vacation, yes.

00:24:52.640 | Because you're gonna form memories with your kids,

00:24:54.520 | with your spouse, with your friends while you're there.

00:24:56.200 | That's what's making you happy.

00:24:57.640 | So you can't say that money doesn't make people happy.

00:24:59.740 | It does, it obviously does.

00:25:01.640 | The other thing that's important

00:25:02.640 | is what really makes people happy in their core

00:25:05.320 | is some sense of purpose.

00:25:07.100 | There's a great quote from the movie "Boiler Room"

00:25:08.820 | where he says,

00:25:09.660 | people who say money doesn't buy happiness don't have any.

00:25:12.880 | And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

00:25:14.560 | The people who become richer say,

00:25:15.840 | of course I was happier now than I was when I was poor.

00:25:18.000 | Of course, I would never wanna go back there.

00:25:19.960 | But often what's happening is

00:25:21.440 | the reason that you were happier when you were rich

00:25:23.440 | is because the reason you got rich

00:25:25.040 | is because you found some sort of purpose.

00:25:26.440 | You built a business, you were successful in your career,

00:25:28.840 | and that gave you a good sense of purpose and identity.

00:25:31.200 | And where you see the opposite of that

00:25:33.580 | are lottery winners who become rich,

00:25:35.680 | but not because they made a good investment,

00:25:37.780 | not because they built a business,

00:25:39.080 | not because they're successful

00:25:40.360 | and their peers like them and whatnot.

00:25:42.000 | They just got lucky.

00:25:42.840 | And those are the people,

00:25:43.920 | so many studies that winning the lottery

00:25:46.560 | will not make you happy.

00:25:47.440 | It might for a very short period of time,

00:25:49.120 | but over time it doesn't

00:25:49.960 | because you didn't get any added purpose.

00:25:51.900 | You can't wake up in the morning and say,

00:25:53.240 | I built this business, I did it, I'm so successful,

00:25:56.400 | I got my PhD, I did, there's none of that.

00:25:58.400 | You just got lucky.

00:25:59.240 | And so that's not gonna bring you much happiness.

00:26:01.200 | So money does make you happier.

00:26:03.160 | I think it can for everybody

00:26:04.440 | if you learn how to spend it

00:26:05.520 | in your personality and whatnot.

00:26:07.800 | Spending a lot of it, spending a ton of money

00:26:10.000 | can make you happier.

00:26:10.840 | I think there's almost no limit to it,

00:26:12.760 | but it's different for everybody.

00:26:14.420 | And it's often a roundabout way.

00:26:16.640 | I think a lot about this when,

00:26:18.560 | if I go on an expensive vacation with my kids,

00:26:21.280 | let's say that's a 10, that's a 10 out of 10

00:26:23.720 | in terms of just happiness, memories and whatnot.

00:26:26.240 | But actually what was making me happy

00:26:27.920 | was spending uninterrupted time with my kids.

00:26:30.040 | So staying home and playing Legos

00:26:32.160 | on the living room floor with them,

00:26:33.340 | that might be like an eight and a half

00:26:35.140 | because that's what's making me happy.

00:26:36.760 | You just have to figure out like the actual purpose.

00:26:38.940 | I think a good formula for a pretty good life

00:26:41.640 | at the simplest level is independence plus purpose.

00:26:45.160 | You need to have a purpose that is bigger than yourself

00:26:47.640 | that you are chasing.

00:26:49.120 | Family, religion, work, whatever it might be,

00:26:51.620 | different for everybody.

00:26:53.520 | And you need to have the independence

00:26:54.820 | to make sure you can do it on your own terms

00:26:56.500 | rather than chasing somebody else's goal.

00:26:58.720 | That's like the highest level of psychological wellbeing,

00:27:01.560 | independence and purpose.

00:27:03.240 | And money is not one of those things,

00:27:05.520 | but you can easily see how money can help those things.

00:27:08.160 | Money brings you independence.

00:27:09.640 | It can allow you to find your purpose in a bigger way.

00:27:12.840 | You're not chasing, you're not at your boss's whim.

00:27:15.060 | You can do whatever you want, you're independent.

00:27:17.360 | So using money as a tool can make you happier.

00:27:19.960 | Spending money can make you happier,

00:27:21.560 | but it's not the thing that is making you happier.

00:27:23.600 | It's just a tool to do other things

00:27:26.560 | and acquire other things that are actually making you happy.

00:27:29.920 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:30:10.420 | I love the story about spending time with your kids

00:30:12.100 | on vacation as unstructured time,

00:30:14.800 | as well as spending unstructured time

00:30:16.460 | with them playing Legos at home.

00:30:18.080 | My graduate advisor sadly passed away very young of cancer.

00:30:20.780 | She was 50 and I knew her kids

00:30:23.020 | really when they were in the womb

00:30:24.860 | 'cause she was pregnant with the first one

00:30:26.420 | and I attended the memorial service there

00:30:28.720 | and it was an incredible thing

00:30:31.500 | because people gave their speeches

00:30:33.540 | and her kids got up and by then they were,

00:30:36.760 | I think, about eight and 11 or so.

00:30:39.760 | And I'm sure they had a great many thoughts

00:30:43.200 | and feelings that they didn't share.

00:30:44.680 | But the one thing that really stood out

00:30:46.560 | is they appreciated how much unstructured time

00:30:50.040 | their mom had spent with them.

00:30:51.400 | It wasn't this like big event or something.

00:30:54.120 | It was all the unstructured time

00:30:55.560 | that she had spent with them.

00:30:56.640 | And that was very inherent to the kind of person she was.

00:30:59.080 | And so that really stuck with me

00:31:00.520 | and God willing, you live a very long time.

00:31:02.120 | But I think for anyone listening to this

00:31:03.360 | and because of the statement that Kahneman made

00:31:05.500 | where that we are not well calibrated

00:31:07.140 | to sense a future regret,

00:31:09.420 | the unstructured time is perhaps

00:31:10.940 | one of the most valuable things

00:31:12.360 | that we can give our relationships,

00:31:13.980 | both the people we engage in them with and ourselves.

00:31:17.340 | And I don't think it's discussed enough.

00:31:20.620 | - There's a gerontologist named Karl Pillmer

00:31:23.100 | who wrote a great book called "30 Lessons for Living."

00:31:25.300 | And what he did is he interviewed about 100 centenarians

00:31:28.260 | and he just said, "Tell me about your life.

00:31:29.740 | What advice do you have for the rest of us?"

00:31:32.900 | And there's a section of his book about money.

00:31:34.820 | And he says of the 1,000 people,

00:31:36.820 | it was 1,000 people he interviewed,

00:31:37.960 | of the 1,000 centenarians he interviewed,

00:31:40.680 | not a single one of them looking back at their lives

00:31:43.160 | said, "I wish I earned more money."

00:31:44.460 | Not one, but virtually every one of them said,

00:31:47.720 | "I wish I spent more time with my kids.

00:31:49.480 | I wish I was nicer to people.

00:31:50.800 | I wish I spent more time with my friends, my family."

00:31:52.580 | That was universal.

00:31:53.680 | But earn more money was not in there whatsoever.

00:31:56.080 | That stuck with me.

00:31:58.000 | - And as you point out, however,

00:32:00.600 | earning money allows for the opportunity

00:32:03.180 | to spend time with kids and loved ones of all kinds.

00:32:07.500 | - It can, but I think there are a lot of people

00:32:09.140 | for whom it's the opposite.

00:32:10.040 | If you are a partner at a law firm,

00:32:11.480 | you're earning a ton of money.

00:32:12.420 | Congratulations, great.

00:32:13.500 | You probably have a big house and a nice car.

00:32:14.820 | You're also probably working 100 hours a week.

00:32:16.620 | And the things that might fill your soul,

00:32:18.340 | it's different for everybody, this is not universal,

00:32:20.120 | but what might actually make you happy,

00:32:22.260 | spending time with your friends, your family,

00:32:24.260 | exercising, sleeping late, is not available to you.

00:32:27.940 | So that's why it's independence plus purpose.

00:32:30.180 | And I think there are a lot of people

00:32:31.240 | who make millions of dollars per year

00:32:33.240 | and have no independence whatsoever.

00:32:35.740 | They are completely tied to their boss's whims,

00:32:37.860 | to their work, to their employer.

00:32:39.180 | They might love it.

00:32:40.020 | I'm not saying you shouldn't do that,

00:32:41.260 | but they have no independence at all.

00:32:42.500 | I think there are billionaires who have no independence

00:32:44.940 | because they are so tied to doing things

00:32:46.780 | whether they like it or not.

00:32:48.340 | And I think a lot of people go crazy in that situation

00:32:51.100 | because they're like, "I'm making $5 million a year,

00:32:53.620 | but it's not making me any happier."

00:32:54.980 | It's like, yeah, what would make you happier

00:32:56.420 | is independence.

00:32:57.260 | And you are pushing yourself away from that.

00:32:59.100 | You were probably more independent when you were 15

00:33:01.180 | and had no money than you are at 40

00:33:03.240 | making millions of dollars a year.

00:33:04.940 | - So then in an ideal world,

00:33:07.780 | which of course doesn't exist,

00:33:10.040 | one would find a vocation or a pursuit

00:33:12.980 | that they found really meaningful,

00:33:14.660 | would work really, really hard,

00:33:16.960 | would make enough money to then, I guess,

00:33:20.980 | retire and spend unstructured time with the people you love

00:33:23.700 | and then simply stop working.

00:33:25.720 | In this model that clearly is an artificial model

00:33:28.500 | that I'm creating here,

00:33:29.620 | because it seems like after a certain point,

00:33:33.140 | provided you earned that money through an effort

00:33:35.220 | that you felt was meaningful,

00:33:36.660 | presumably with people you enjoy,

00:33:39.500 | or even if it wasn't, you found it meaningful,

00:33:41.720 | you make that money,

00:33:42.560 | then it seems that it's all about human interactions

00:33:45.180 | at that point.

00:33:46.020 | - Yeah, and what's true is that that scenario,

00:33:48.980 | that dream scenario might be true for 1% of the people,

00:33:52.380 | that they can earn enough money to retire young

00:33:54.220 | and then pursue whatever they want.

00:33:55.700 | There's an entrepreneur named Felix Dennis

00:33:57.420 | who wrote a book many years ago called "How to Get Rich."

00:33:59.780 | And there's a quote in that book, he says,

00:34:01.900 | he was at the time, maybe in his 70s

00:34:03.660 | and worth about a billion dollars, something like that.

00:34:05.820 | And he said, "If I knew what I knew now

00:34:07.940 | and I could do life over again,

00:34:09.540 | I would make as much money as I could,

00:34:11.780 | retire at age 35 and plant trees and write poetry."

00:34:15.580 | And he's like, "Looking back,

00:34:16.660 | that's what I should have done."

00:34:18.100 | But let's leave aside that, of course,

00:34:19.420 | not everybody can do that.

00:34:20.260 | - What did he do? He kept working.

00:34:21.340 | - He kept working.

00:34:22.180 | - Even though he didn't need more money.

00:34:23.500 | - Absolutely.

00:34:24.320 | - This is interesting because people who do achieve

00:34:26.620 | a high degree of wealth at a young age seem to keep going.

00:34:29.500 | And we could make all sorts of assumptions

00:34:32.140 | about why it is that they do that.

00:34:33.620 | Expectations from others that their ego,

00:34:38.620 | literally their sense of self in some way

00:34:41.100 | or perhaps entirely is tied to the sense

00:34:44.020 | that they're still in pursuit,

00:34:45.900 | that it's somehow a failure to opt out at that point.

00:34:49.300 | I mean, we can speculate all day,

00:34:51.140 | but what this guy Felix said really rings true.

00:34:56.460 | It seems like once people reach a number

00:34:58.300 | and it for everyone, it's going to be different.

00:34:59.740 | It's not going to be a billion dollars for everybody.

00:35:01.960 | Once they have enough resources for themselves

00:35:03.860 | and the people they need to take care of,

00:35:06.220 | maybe a bit more as a buffer,

00:35:09.020 | it makes no sense to continue on that path.

00:35:11.220 | - Well, I think there are a lot of people.

00:35:12.620 | I think you're one of them and I'm one of them

00:35:14.260 | who enjoy what they do.

00:35:15.720 | And if you and I got to a point

00:35:17.300 | where we're completely financially independent,

00:35:19.080 | all the money we'll need for the rest of our life,

00:35:20.580 | I would still be a writer.

00:35:21.920 | You would still do your research 'cause we enjoy it.

00:35:24.420 | - Yeah, absolutely. I love learning.

00:35:25.260 | - It's not just, right.

00:35:27.100 | And I think if, actually, if you are the kind of person

00:35:29.060 | who says, once I hit my number, I'm done,

00:35:30.660 | you probably don't love your work at all.

00:35:31.780 | Almost by definition, you don't.

00:35:33.460 | I think what's dangerous though,

00:35:34.660 | is when the money itself is part of your identity.

00:35:37.620 | I like being a writer.

00:35:38.620 | I like the process of writing.

00:35:40.060 | But if I were to say, I have to keep writing books

00:35:42.620 | 'cause I need to make more money.

00:35:43.860 | I just, I have to have a higher net worth,

00:35:45.540 | particularly if I'm past the point

00:35:47.060 | of taking care of my family.

00:35:49.080 | Then at that point,

00:35:50.500 | I think money is actually like a liability.

00:35:52.200 | It's a financial asset and a psychological liability.

00:35:54.800 | It's taking control over what you're doing in life.

00:35:56.860 | If you're saying, I have to have more of it.

00:35:59.180 | I mean, if there's anything in life where you're like,

00:36:00.940 | I have to have more.

00:36:02.260 | And even when I get more,

00:36:03.300 | my satiation point goes higher and higher.

00:36:05.260 | What is that?

00:36:06.200 | It's an addiction.

00:36:07.340 | And that's, it's controlling you at that point.

00:36:09.340 | So there are a lot of people

00:36:10.260 | for whom money is a financial asset

00:36:12.060 | and a psychological liability.

00:36:13.580 | And I think that's actually true

00:36:15.180 | for some of the richest people in society.

00:36:17.220 | That the more, like it grows exponentially over time,

00:36:19.780 | the richer you become,

00:36:20.660 | the more addicted to having more, it grows on you.

00:36:23.620 | - In the backdrop of everything we've talked about thus far

00:36:26.000 | is the biology of dopamine reward.

00:36:29.160 | Dopamine, of course, being a molecule

00:36:30.520 | that people associate with reward,

00:36:31.940 | but it's really about the pursuit of reward.

00:36:33.760 | It's about more.

00:36:34.600 | It's about, and it's no coincidence

00:36:36.900 | that dopamine is involved in generating movement

00:36:38.960 | in the body.

00:36:39.800 | This is why people with Parkinson's

00:36:40.760 | who are depleted in dopamine can't generate movement.

00:36:43.340 | And it's also involved in generating cognitive movement

00:36:46.240 | and pursuit, paying attention to things.

00:36:49.000 | There is this idea that I've been pushing

00:36:52.360 | for a few years now that kind of throws its arms

00:36:54.860 | around a big literature on dopamine

00:36:56.780 | that says that addiction is a progressive narrowing

00:36:59.140 | of the things that bring you pleasure.

00:37:01.180 | But your definition is actually much better, I realize.

00:37:05.620 | Addiction is a progressive narrowing

00:37:07.420 | of the things that bring you pleasure and or safety

00:37:10.900 | or a sense of safety, right?

00:37:12.980 | Because here we're not talking about making more money

00:37:14.940 | to enjoy things more.

00:37:16.680 | We're talking about making more money

00:37:17.820 | to avoid the sense that pain is coming

00:37:21.500 | or that we are vulnerable.

00:37:23.920 | - And for a lot of people, that pain is a social pain

00:37:27.080 | that they're not gonna climb high enough

00:37:28.820 | on the social ladder,

00:37:29.740 | that their peers are earning more than them,

00:37:31.140 | that their neighbors have a bigger house,

00:37:32.380 | whatever it might be.

00:37:33.200 | That's the pain that they're trying to avoid.

00:37:34.660 | And that is a game that cannot be won

00:37:36.740 | because gratefully, thankfully,

00:37:38.380 | there are a lot of very wealthy people in this world.

00:37:40.180 | And no matter how much money you're making,

00:37:41.900 | there's always somebody out there who's earning more,

00:37:44.500 | living better and has a bigger house and a nicer car.

00:37:47.180 | That's always the case.

00:37:48.540 | So if you are on that path of,

00:37:50.620 | I need to earn more to climb that ladder

00:37:52.760 | so I can have more than the next guy,

00:37:54.700 | I mean, that's a game that you cannot win.

00:37:56.860 | And I think that game of comparison too

00:37:59.300 | also grows the wealthier you are.

00:38:01.620 | That you are, the billionaires are more likely

00:38:03.580 | to compare themselves to other billionaires

00:38:05.700 | than the minimum wage worker is

00:38:07.180 | to compare themselves to somebody making $10 an hour

00:38:09.340 | or whatever.

00:38:10.340 | You are more likely to compare your lifestyle

00:38:12.400 | the richer you become.

00:38:13.500 | And since that comparison to other people

00:38:16.020 | is what gives you a feeling of inadequacy,

00:38:18.340 | there's this irony.

00:38:19.180 | It's hard to wrap your head around it

00:38:20.700 | and come to terms with it,

00:38:21.660 | but some of the most money insecure people you'll ever meet

00:38:25.180 | are the richest people you'll ever meet.

00:38:26.820 | People who live in a 15,000 square foot mansion,

00:38:28.780 | yeah, but he's got a 17,000 square foot mansion.

00:38:31.340 | Things that ordinary people would never consider

00:38:34.420 | that just consumes their life.

00:38:36.100 | And again, that's the point where money

00:38:37.780 | is like the psychological debt.

00:38:39.660 | It's psychological liability.

00:38:41.360 | It's controlling their,

00:38:42.340 | it becomes an integral part of their identity.

00:38:45.460 | They wake up in the morning and look in the mirror

00:38:46.860 | and they see a person who makes money.

00:38:49.540 | That's their identity.

00:38:50.360 | Who are you?

00:38:51.200 | I'm a person who makes money.

00:38:52.100 | And that's when like your process of chasing it

00:38:54.920 | just becomes like a detriment to your happiness over time.

00:38:57.420 | You're not using it as a tool to live a better life.

00:38:59.700 | You're using it as a yardstick

00:39:01.080 | to measure yourself against others by.

00:39:02.980 | - I fundamentally believe that all forms of addiction,

00:39:08.500 | all forms of addiction are fundamentally a fear of death.

00:39:13.020 | They're a way of shrinking our aperture on time perception

00:39:18.020 | so that we're in pursuit of something.

00:39:20.440 | And for people that can place their addiction within work,

00:39:23.860 | it has this feedback of being "functional"

00:39:26.940 | as opposed to dysfunctional.

00:39:28.460 | This is also true for people that are continually

00:39:31.600 | seeking awards within their profession.

00:39:34.380 | I mean, there are these professions, academia included,

00:39:36.420 | but other professions where people are constantly

00:39:37.900 | pinning awards on one another.

00:39:39.440 | And it gives us illusion of progress when in fact

00:39:41.900 | there's a whole world of things happening.

00:39:43.900 | Now, these people often have quite healthy families

00:39:46.860 | and relationships, so they're not mutually exclusive.

00:39:49.420 | But I think I know a few billionaires, not many,

00:39:52.820 | but I know some that are very happy.

00:39:54.620 | They tend to be the people that are still working

00:39:56.380 | and in pursuit of new things, avid learners.

00:39:59.500 | But perhaps by virtue of the work that I do,

00:40:02.440 | which is focused on science, but also health,

00:40:05.140 | the modern billionaires that I'm aware of

00:40:09.940 | seem to be very focused on not just making money,

00:40:14.380 | but also trying to secure their place on the planet

00:40:17.980 | for a very long time.

00:40:19.580 | Not through legacy, although I think many of them

00:40:22.460 | like to provide for the next generations

00:40:24.500 | and their families, surely.

00:40:26.640 | Not so much by putting their names on the sides

00:40:28.440 | of buildings anymore, this used to be the way it was done,

00:40:31.060 | but rather trying to secure their health status.

00:40:34.660 | Because the one thing that money can buy sort of

00:40:37.860 | is better health care, but money can't buy you

00:40:42.180 | more years of your life, except by virtue of the things

00:40:44.940 | that you are willing to not do and do behaviorally.

00:40:47.620 | You still have to exercise,

00:40:48.940 | you still have to get your sleep,

00:40:50.380 | you have to avoid certain things.

00:40:52.800 | And so the modern billionaires often are talking about

00:40:58.780 | what they're doing for their health

00:40:59.980 | as opposed to their yacht, their car, et cetera.

00:41:01.980 | This has now become the kind of metric for comparison.

00:41:04.780 | Blood profiles become a sort of point of bragging

00:41:07.520 | for people, it's pretty interesting.

00:41:09.380 | Especially given that you just look back about 50

00:41:12.700 | or even 100 years and further back,

00:41:15.060 | and the more wealthy people were,

00:41:16.660 | the less physical labor they were doing.

00:41:18.380 | Now they're doing more physical labor

00:41:19.700 | to try and live longer.

00:41:21.100 | So what are your thoughts on the relationship

00:41:22.940 | between physical health and money?

00:41:25.780 | I mean, obviously there's a sweet spot there,

00:41:28.300 | but there's no pill that people can purchase to live longer.

00:41:32.260 | - Right, I view it in the negative sense

00:41:35.980 | of the people who work to get money so hard

00:41:39.200 | that it takes a physical toll on their body.

00:41:41.160 | And that is so incredibly common.

00:41:42.980 | And that's another form of debt

00:41:44.560 | that you can very easily measure your net worth

00:41:48.120 | and your income.

00:41:48.960 | You can put a number on it very clean to measure.

00:41:51.460 | How do you measure, it's much harder to measure your health.

00:41:54.080 | And I think it's easier for people to say,

00:41:55.640 | "Yes, I'm only sleeping five hours a night,

00:41:57.880 | "and I'm on my third divorce and I'm overweight,

00:42:01.800 | "but I'm making a lot of money this year."

00:42:03.440 | Because one is very easy to measure,

00:42:05.080 | and the others are much harder.

00:42:06.540 | Your happiness, your health, what not,

00:42:07.740 | it's harder to measure that.

00:42:09.080 | And I do think too that if you are very wealthy,

00:42:11.720 | particularly the very, very wealthy,

00:42:13.520 | you get so accustomed towards,

00:42:14.960 | I can snap my fingers and literally get anything,

00:42:17.320 | a Gulfstream jet, a mansion, whatever,

00:42:19.200 | I can get it right now.

00:42:20.960 | But health is like this last elusive thing

00:42:23.400 | that by and large you cannot purchase.

00:42:25.600 | And I think that drives a lot of people crazy.

00:42:27.200 | And that's why if you can have anything in the world

00:42:29.760 | by snapping your fingers and getting it,

00:42:31.520 | then you eventually move towards

00:42:33.320 | what's the thing that you don't have,

00:42:34.660 | and that's immortality.

00:42:35.640 | And I think that there's a long history of that

00:42:37.640 | going back to the robber barons.

00:42:39.640 | John D. Rockefeller was obsessed with it.

00:42:41.200 | Andrew Carnegie was obsessed with it.

00:42:42.720 | If you can have everything material in the world,

00:42:45.440 | you're still gonna have desire.

00:42:46.520 | And ordinary people can sit around and dream and say,

00:42:49.760 | "One day I'm gonna have the mansion."

00:42:51.640 | We're not even a mansion.

00:42:52.480 | "One day I'm gonna have a house of my own.

00:42:53.860 | "I'm gonna have a car.

00:42:54.700 | "I'm gonna send my kids to college."

00:42:56.520 | Everybody wants to dream.

00:42:57.840 | So if all that is a given,

00:42:59.280 | you have all the money you could ever spend,

00:43:00.640 | you still wanna dream.

00:43:01.560 | So what do you dream about?

00:43:02.400 | You dream about immortality.

00:43:03.920 | And so I think that's been the case

00:43:05.360 | for a very long period of time.

00:43:07.220 | What's interesting too is that there was a historian

00:43:09.980 | who looked back at the British peerage.

00:43:11.860 | He got a lot of data on how long people lived

00:43:14.980 | in various points of the UK economy.

00:43:18.700 | And what he found was until about, I think it was 1750,

00:43:21.740 | the richest members of the UK had among the shortest lives.

00:43:25.660 | The poorest people were some of them

00:43:26.780 | who were living the longest.

00:43:28.140 | And he dug into it.

00:43:28.980 | So how could this be?

00:43:29.800 | The richest people die the fastest.

00:43:31.860 | And what he found is the richest people

00:43:33.140 | were the only ones who could afford

00:43:35.060 | all the quack medicines and the sham doctors

00:43:37.980 | who were just poisoning them.

00:43:39.260 | They were poisoning them back in the day

00:43:40.740 | when we knew nothing about medicine.

00:43:42.500 | So I think the idea of I want a better life

00:43:45.100 | and I should be able to buy that.

00:43:46.420 | Like there's a long history

00:43:47.260 | of that backfiring on people as well.

00:43:49.180 | Yeah, there's a lot of excitement right now

00:43:50.860 | about stem cells and treatments

00:43:52.300 | that currently are not available in the United States

00:43:54.620 | that are available out of country.

00:43:56.460 | And I get asked about these a lot.

00:43:59.220 | Most of them don't have FDA approval yet.

00:44:02.260 | Some of them probably never will have FDA approval.

00:44:05.540 | We'll probably talk about stem cells another time.

00:44:07.540 | - Do you think you see this though,

00:44:08.560 | where the wealthiest people are spending money

00:44:11.340 | on treatments that you either know are not going to work

00:44:14.380 | or are very questionable?

00:44:16.380 | - Yeah, all the time.

00:44:17.980 | - And that might backfire on you.

00:44:19.260 | That might make you less healthy.

00:44:20.840 | - Oh, absolutely.

00:44:21.680 | I mean, I'll just point out,

00:44:22.780 | I don't have anything against stem cell therapies.

00:44:24.980 | I think they hold great potential,

00:44:26.940 | but there is a true story about a stem cell clinic

00:44:31.260 | down in Florida prior to the FDA,

00:44:33.220 | bringing the gavel down on them

00:44:36.540 | of injecting stem cells into the eyes of wealthy people

00:44:40.460 | who could afford the treatment.

00:44:42.380 | These people had certain markers for macular degeneration

00:44:47.300 | and other things that can cause blindness.

00:44:48.780 | And guess what happened to these people?

00:44:50.260 | They all went blind.

00:44:52.220 | So that brought the gavel down on stem cell therapies

00:44:55.940 | generally in this country.

00:44:57.480 | A lot of people are getting infusions of stem cells

00:45:00.040 | and related things out of country.

00:45:02.820 | They're coming back and they're walking and talking.

00:45:04.800 | So, and they're calling me

00:45:06.980 | and they're asking what my thoughts are.

00:45:08.900 | And I have a lot of thoughts.

00:45:10.060 | I mean, I think that the basics of longevity are clear,

00:45:12.740 | right?

00:45:13.580 | I mean, you want to avoid head trauma

00:45:15.260 | and environmental toxins.

00:45:16.540 | Those things are real.

00:45:17.460 | And if you have certain mutations like BRCA mutations,

00:45:21.580 | you need to be more careful about cancer and avoid smoking,

00:45:23.980 | all this stuff, right?

00:45:24.860 | Alcohol turns out to be pro-cancerous

00:45:27.540 | and things of that sort.

00:45:28.600 | But then it's, you know, it's physical activity,

00:45:30.180 | it's nutrition, it's social connection, it's sleep,

00:45:32.980 | it's sunlight is, you know,

00:45:34.220 | it's all the things that I've talked about on this podcast

00:45:36.180 | and that other people talk about as well.

00:45:38.140 | But yes, very wealthy people are looking for that edge

00:45:41.400 | to live longer.

00:45:43.560 | And it is true that when you start to layer in

00:45:46.100 | all the basics of do's and don'ts, all the behaviors,

00:45:49.340 | and then you start to augment that with a few extra things,

00:45:52.040 | you get the sense of more vigor

00:45:53.620 | that sort of suggests they may live longer,

00:45:56.520 | but we still don't know.

00:45:58.220 | - Right.

00:45:59.060 | - We still don't know.

00:45:59.880 | With the exception of exercise that we absolutely know

00:46:02.580 | can enrich mitochondrial density,

00:46:04.380 | give people more energy and vigor, et cetera.

00:46:06.860 | You know, most of this is still a big question mark.

00:46:09.460 | - See, I could see a very wealthy person using their money

00:46:13.920 | if you are very sick and you have a rare cancer

00:46:15.840 | to throw the kitchen sink at it.

00:46:17.220 | - Oh, every excellent doctor.

00:46:18.780 | - Those million dollar therapies, well, not absolutely.

00:46:21.140 | I think it's a different animal

00:46:23.220 | if you are already pretty healthy to say,

00:46:25.380 | I'm gonna throw my money at trying to become immortal

00:46:27.680 | or close to it, whatever it might be.

00:46:29.060 | That's a different thing.

00:46:30.580 | - I totally agree.

00:46:32.460 | And I think what we're talking about here is,

00:46:35.660 | you said it fairly quickly,

00:46:38.300 | but I think I wanna highlight it

00:46:40.860 | because I think it's really important

00:46:42.380 | that even people who have billions of dollars

00:46:45.340 | still have a sense of yearning

00:46:48.700 | for something that's missing or that they don't have.

00:46:51.540 | And in some cases that's the sustaining factor

00:46:53.540 | to their wellbeing.

00:46:54.780 | You said it's also good to be in pursuit, right?

00:46:57.100 | Maybe that's with dopamine too, right?

00:46:58.520 | We always want more.

00:47:00.040 | It's the pursuit of more.

00:47:01.480 | And if you're wealthy enough to have everything,

00:47:03.080 | you still have a part of your brain that's like,

00:47:05.360 | yeah, but I want more, I want more, I want more.

00:47:07.440 | And if you've exhausted the physical part of the world,

00:47:10.640 | that material part of the world,

00:47:11.880 | and let's leave aside the billionaires,

00:47:13.200 | even the average ordinary American family

00:47:15.880 | that owns a modest house, owns a car that functions well,

00:47:18.800 | owns nice clothes, will send their kids to a state school.

00:47:21.720 | By a lot of historical definitions, they have everything.

00:47:24.080 | They have everything you would ever need,

00:47:25.200 | but you're always yearning for more.

00:47:26.520 | It's always this pursuit of, well, what else don't I have?

00:47:28.960 | And I think what you want more than anything in life

00:47:32.320 | is what you want and cannot have.

00:47:34.680 | That's what you're gonna chase with all of your effort

00:47:36.680 | is the thing that you want and cannot have.

00:47:38.720 | And I think that's where health comes in

00:47:40.340 | for a lot of these people.

00:47:41.180 | - As long as you think that there's a possibility

00:47:43.760 | you could get it.

00:47:45.040 | The dopamine circuit loves,

00:47:46.920 | you want what you feel is just out of your reach,

00:47:49.820 | but might be possible to achieve.

00:47:52.600 | I mean, this is why people throw

00:47:53.560 | so much money away gambling.

00:47:54.800 | But maybe with social media, it makes it seem

00:47:57.360 | so that there are virtually anything is within your reach.

00:48:00.260 | Because it used to be before social media

00:48:02.080 | that your view of the world was mostly your neighbors

00:48:04.320 | and your coworkers and your siblings.

00:48:05.920 | And now everybody's view of the world

00:48:07.640 | is a curated highlight reel

00:48:10.400 | of the most extreme events in the world.

00:48:13.240 | So if you are a 15 year old scrolling through Instagram,

00:48:16.360 | then what is within your reach,

00:48:18.480 | what looks within your reach is a Ferrari

00:48:20.680 | and a private jet and a mansion

00:48:22.240 | in a way that didn't exist when you and I were kids.

00:48:24.280 | And I think it makes the aspiration level that much harder.

00:48:26.840 | - And real examples of people who went from nothing

00:48:31.400 | to immensely popular or wealthy, et cetera.

00:48:34.800 | I mean, gosh, I would say about once a month,

00:48:39.600 | somebody walks right up to me and says,

00:48:41.440 | "Just watch someday I'm gonna have the top podcast

00:48:43.920 | in the world on blank."

00:48:46.160 | And they're trying to seed this thing

00:48:47.720 | that they've seen on social media,

00:48:49.040 | which are examples of people kind of,

00:48:51.720 | it used to be called rags to riches,

00:48:53.180 | but the parallels in different universes.

00:48:56.080 | But there's a famous musician,

00:48:57.280 | I think his name is Ed Sheeran,

00:48:58.720 | who there's still a video of him early on

00:49:00.680 | saying like he knew he was gonna make it.

00:49:02.720 | If you watch the Conor McGregor documentary, it's amazing.

00:49:05.440 | I think it's called "Notorious" on Netflix.

00:49:07.080 | Even if people aren't into MMA,

00:49:09.080 | they should at least watch the first part.

00:49:10.960 | He was videotaping himself very early on.

00:49:13.440 | And he made this prediction

00:49:15.080 | that he was gonna be a world champion.

00:49:16.560 | And then he ends up being a world champion, right?

00:49:19.400 | - This is a great anecdote that Kanye West

00:49:21.320 | used to practice his Grammy speech

00:49:23.420 | when he was walking to the train

00:49:24.860 | because he couldn't afford the car.

00:49:26.340 | Like when he was an absolute nobody,

00:49:27.780 | he was practicing his Grammy acceptance speech

00:49:29.740 | of just like absolute ambition of where you're going.

00:49:31.840 | - Yeah, and I don't know if this anecdote is true,

00:49:33.900 | but there's the anecdote that I heard

00:49:35.660 | that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

00:49:38.980 | practicing their Academy Awards acceptance speech

00:49:41.820 | in the schoolyard when they were kids.

00:49:44.140 | And then they gave their speech

00:49:45.220 | and they were laughing about that.

00:49:46.540 | I grew up skateboarding.

00:49:47.880 | So when I first got into it,

00:49:50.620 | the Tony Hawks and the Mike McGills and Steve Caballeros,

00:49:53.600 | these were the names at the time,

00:49:54.520 | were like these luminaries, right?

00:49:56.560 | The gap between us and them was so huge.

00:49:59.360 | By the time I was a junior in high school,

00:50:01.000 | my best friend at the time, Paul Zuanich,

00:50:03.240 | sent in a videotape of himself to a company

00:50:05.580 | called Planet Earth.

00:50:06.760 | He got sponsored.

00:50:07.680 | Next thing you know, we're in the shop

00:50:08.780 | watching him skateboard.

00:50:10.600 | And within a year or two, he had his own pro model.

00:50:13.080 | So I think social media gives us

00:50:15.880 | not just the sense of what's out there,

00:50:18.080 | but it gives us very salient examples

00:50:20.260 | of people that went from completely unknown

00:50:22.900 | to extremely known.

00:50:23.840 | Just this last year, there's the, you know,

00:50:26.320 | the so-called Hawktua girl, you know,

00:50:28.200 | is interviewed outside a bar saying like,

00:50:29.680 | she now has a very popular podcast.

00:50:31.600 | She has sponsors, she's known.

00:50:33.360 | - Literally became one of the most famous people

00:50:34.760 | in the country.

00:50:35.600 | - Right, and has a financial stream now

00:50:37.880 | of income through her podcast.

00:50:39.800 | And so this raises the sort of idea in people's minds

00:50:43.560 | or the possibility, however remote,

00:50:46.020 | that if somebody puts a camera in front of you,

00:50:48.860 | by virtue of one thing that you say,

00:50:51.420 | you could suddenly be an internationally known person

00:50:54.880 | and potentially go from quote unquote rags to riches.

00:50:57.680 | - If you look at the studies, when you ask teenagers,

00:50:59.600 | what is your preferred career?

00:51:01.920 | What do you want to be when you grow up?

00:51:03.080 | It used to be astronaut, used to be doctor,

00:51:05.280 | used to be entrepreneur.

00:51:06.360 | Now it's influencer by far is what people want to be.

00:51:09.280 | It seems like the quickest path to fame and wealth.

00:51:12.000 | And for a lot of people, it is.

00:51:13.480 | My sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher.

00:51:15.960 | She has a girl in her class who has over a million followers

00:51:18.140 | on YouTube as a kindergartner.

00:51:19.960 | Like that didn't exist when you and I were kids

00:51:21.960 | or it was so rare.

00:51:23.520 | But now like enough people know stories like that,

00:51:26.480 | even if there are a few of them,

00:51:27.500 | enough people know stories to give you the sense of hope

00:51:29.840 | of like, well, if they could do it, I could do it too.

00:51:32.380 | - Well, I'll tell everyone out there that

00:51:34.800 | if you think that fame is what you want,

00:51:38.160 | fame restricts your freedom.

00:51:39.840 | It does not increase your freedom.

00:51:41.360 | - There's a great quote from Naval

00:51:42.320 | where he says what you want to be is rich and anonymous.

00:51:44.960 | That's a sweet spot that you want to be.

00:51:46.400 | The opposite, you are poor and famous.

00:51:49.640 | And that's the hardest spot to be in.

00:51:51.280 | But if you can be rich and anonymous,

00:51:52.600 | because I think there's a really important concept

00:51:55.200 | with money that I call social debt,

00:51:57.200 | which is when the money that you have influences,

00:51:59.280 | it changes how other people think of you.

00:52:01.020 | And even maybe how you think about yourself.

00:52:03.600 | And you can measure your asset.

00:52:05.280 | It's not actually debt.

00:52:06.720 | Like it's not like debt you repay the bank,

00:52:08.800 | but it is very much a debt in terms of

00:52:11.060 | it is an anchor on your happiness that you have to repay.

00:52:14.960 | And fame is the ultimate social debt.

00:52:17.020 | And for a lot of people, their social debt of fame

00:52:20.420 | is more than the money that they made

00:52:21.920 | from whatever made them famous to begin with.

00:52:24.120 | And there's this anecdote from Tiger Woods

00:52:26.000 | where he said he loves scuba diving

00:52:28.760 | because when he's 100 feet under the ocean

00:52:31.480 | is the only time in the world

00:52:32.760 | where people aren't taking pictures of him

00:52:34.280 | and asking things of him and gawking at him.

00:52:36.840 | Like that sucks.

00:52:38.720 | That's not that you have a lot of sympathy

00:52:40.160 | for somebody like that, but it does suck.

00:52:41.840 | Like you can measure his net worth very quickly.

00:52:44.640 | What's your net worth?

00:52:45.480 | Just show me the number.

00:52:46.440 | How do you measure the liability

00:52:48.240 | of feeling like you have no privacy

00:52:49.860 | unless you are scuba diving?

00:52:51.400 | That's a hard thing.

00:52:52.760 | And at various levels, a lot of people have that.

00:52:55.000 | Even if you are earn a modest income

00:52:57.780 | and all of a sudden your friends, your family start saying,

00:52:59.920 | "Hey, I heard you got a raise.

00:53:01.580 | "I could use a little bit myself."

00:53:03.480 | That's a social debt.

00:53:04.360 | They want you to pay at dinner and whatnot.

00:53:06.080 | And of course, maybe you're happy to do that.

00:53:07.300 | You're happy to share it.

00:53:08.220 | But let's not pretend that there's not

00:53:09.960 | a little bit of social debt and liability

00:53:12.240 | that comes with every added amount of income that you have.

00:53:15.780 | - I mean, so much of social media is just by definition

00:53:19.360 | in terms of the number of followers being displayed,

00:53:21.800 | et cetera, number of likes and comments being displayed

00:53:24.160 | is designed to set up these metrics of comparison.

00:53:27.280 | - Yeah, the smartest minds of the generation

00:53:28.800 | work at Facebook and Instagram and Twitter

00:53:30.520 | to figure out how to give you FOMO,

00:53:32.340 | how to generate a little bit more dopamine.

00:53:34.120 | And they're very good at it.

00:53:35.520 | - I'd like to take a quick break

00:53:37.800 | and thank one of our sponsors, Function.

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00:55:23.320 | One thing that I wish somebody would do,

00:55:27.980 | maybe it's been done, is you mentioned earlier this,

00:55:31.660 | not typical, but I guess semi-common thing of an article

00:55:36.160 | will come out and say, you know,

00:55:37.300 | the five things that people say on their deathbed,

00:55:40.660 | or that they, and they look back,

00:55:42.420 | and they mentioned that they wish

00:55:44.660 | they'd spent less time at work.

00:55:46.020 | They wish they had spent more time with their kids,

00:55:48.380 | or more time in nature, perhaps.

00:55:50.780 | Has anyone ever just asked people directly,

00:55:54.100 | what were the things that they are most proud of,

00:55:56.460 | or the things that they really feel

00:55:58.500 | brought them tremendous meaning then,

00:56:00.300 | and as they're passing away?

00:56:04.260 | Because it's related,

00:56:05.800 | but it's kind of the inverse of the same question.

00:56:07.440 | Yeah, Warren Buffett brought this up one time.

00:56:09.280 | He said a good way to think about life is,

00:56:11.680 | it's kind of grim, but he said,

00:56:13.640 | write what you want your obituary to say,

00:56:15.880 | and then work backwards to live up to it.

00:56:18.000 | And in that situation, if you were to write,

00:56:20.000 | like, what do you want your obituary to say?

00:56:22.160 | Most people would say,

00:56:23.120 | oh, I hope it says Morgan was a good father.

00:56:26.400 | He was a good husband.

00:56:27.360 | He helped his community.

00:56:28.480 | He was admired by his coworkers.

00:56:30.200 | That's what I want it to say.

00:56:31.240 | And for a lot of people, it's different for everyone,

00:56:33.100 | but it would be something like that.

00:56:34.680 | And why Buffett said it was important

00:56:35.960 | is because nobody who's writing their preferred obituary

00:56:39.480 | would say, would include the size of their house,

00:56:43.460 | how many horsepower their car had,

00:56:45.480 | how nice their clothes were,

00:56:46.640 | 'cause everybody knows it doesn't matter.

00:56:48.680 | And it's like, forget who made this idea.

00:56:51.220 | There's a thing between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.

00:56:54.560 | That was David Brooks.

00:56:55.400 | David Brooks said that, thank you.

00:56:56.920 | Resume virtues are, you know, how much money you make,

00:56:59.860 | your degrees, everything.

00:57:01.200 | Eulogy virtues is, he was a great father.

00:57:03.260 | He was a great friend.

00:57:04.140 | He helped his community.

00:57:04.980 | He was funny.

00:57:05.940 | And I think most people really aspire

00:57:07.980 | to have eulogy virtues,

00:57:09.080 | but they spend all their day chasing resume virtues.

00:57:11.580 | Resume virtues can be great.

00:57:12.800 | I want a good education.

00:57:13.820 | I want a good income.

00:57:15.140 | But what you're really trying to chase

00:57:16.540 | is to use those things to gain more resume virtues

00:57:19.380 | at the end of the day.

00:57:20.220 | So I think if you think about it through that lens,

00:57:21.760 | a lot of these things become clear.

00:57:23.940 | And that's why, like I said,

00:57:25.540 | going on a great vacation with my kids, if that's a 10,

00:57:29.220 | what's really fun about that is spending time with them

00:57:31.620 | when I'm detached from work.

00:57:33.080 | I'm not checking my phone every seven seconds.

00:57:34.760 | I'm just spending hours with my kids,

00:57:36.840 | giving them my full attention.

00:57:37.840 | That's what made me happy.

00:57:39.040 | The view was great on the beach, cool,

00:57:41.000 | but that's what made me happy.

00:57:41.880 | And I can do that at home, can't I?

00:57:43.680 | And so that's the difference between,

00:57:45.360 | like going to Maui is a resume virtue.

00:57:48.000 | Spending time with your kids is a eulogy virtue.

00:57:50.440 | - Why is it, do you think,

00:57:54.040 | that even though we've perhaps all heard by now

00:57:57.240 | that compounding interest is great, right?

00:58:00.380 | You can put in, let's say a small

00:58:02.140 | or a moderate amount of money into,

00:58:03.540 | even just a savings account that's accruing a couple percent

00:58:07.060 | varies year by year and with the economy, of course,

00:58:09.900 | or into the markets that over time,

00:58:12.420 | if you quote unquote set it and forget it,

00:58:14.080 | just kind of like put it there and walk away,

00:58:15.740 | that you're likely to make X percent over time.

00:58:18.820 | And you can look at the plot.

00:58:20.180 | You can look at that line upward and to the right.

00:58:23.420 | It almost always is jagged line

00:58:24.780 | drifting upward to the right.

00:58:26.340 | And even just scroll over and see, okay, at age, whatever,

00:58:30.040 | I'm going to have X number of dollars.

00:58:33.040 | And that value is often very high

00:58:35.120 | relative to where one's current wealth is.

00:58:37.840 | Even if they're a student or they have very little put away.

00:58:40.160 | We all hear this, we can see it.

00:58:41.920 | You can run the models.

00:58:43.120 | It's almost trivial.

00:58:45.160 | And yet people don't do that

00:58:47.200 | even if they have the income to save.

00:58:50.520 | Is it that hard for us to project our emotional state

00:58:54.880 | and the sorts of things that we integrate

00:58:56.900 | in terms of life meaning and value into the future,

00:59:00.420 | that most people just don't do that?

00:59:02.060 | And why do you think that is?

00:59:03.020 | I mean, I'm not asking you to play neurobiologist here.

00:59:05.060 | I mean, I think we both agree

00:59:06.060 | that time perception is a complicated thing,

00:59:10.200 | but you would think that people would just sort of get it,

00:59:13.540 | but we're not rational.

00:59:14.700 | Most people aren't rational in that way.

00:59:16.380 | They don't save, they don't invest,

00:59:17.980 | and they don't compound interest.

00:59:19.240 | And so they end up with a lot less money

00:59:21.020 | than they could have and a lot more regret.

00:59:22.820 | - Yeah, I think there's two ways to think about this.

00:59:24.620 | One is my friend Michael Batnick phrased it this way.

00:59:28.020 | He said, "If I ask you what is eight plus eight

00:59:30.460 | "plus eight plus eight,

00:59:31.700 | "you figure that out in five seconds."

00:59:33.200 | That's an easy one.

00:59:34.040 | If I said, "What is eight times eight

00:59:35.180 | "times eight times eight times eight?"

00:59:36.740 | Even if you're a math nerd, it's too hard.

00:59:38.820 | You can't figure it out.

00:59:39.640 | We're not wired for exponential thinking.

00:59:41.300 | You just can't do it.

00:59:42.580 | And therefore, even if you show you the numbers,

00:59:45.220 | "Hey, invest a small amount, retire with a million dollars."

00:59:48.060 | I think it's so counterintuitive

00:59:50.220 | that most people see that and they're like,

00:59:51.420 | "Eh, okay, that doesn't really seem right.

00:59:53.140 | "It doesn't really pass the sniff test."

00:59:54.640 | How big the numbers can get,

00:59:55.820 | how quickly the numbers can get big.

00:59:57.900 | The other thing is if you tell a young person,

00:59:59.700 | "Hey, you have 50 years in front of you to invest.

01:00:02.940 | "That's great, time's on your side.

01:00:04.680 | "When you're 70 years old, you're gonna have $10 million.

01:00:08.180 | "50 years from now might as well be 10,000 years from now."

01:00:10.980 | You're talking about people who don't know

01:00:12.420 | what they're gonna eat for dinner tonight.

01:00:13.740 | And you're talking about like,

01:00:14.560 | "Hey, let's talk about the year 2077."

01:00:17.420 | It's so far out of there.

01:00:18.540 | Even if that's the right way to think about it,

01:00:20.580 | it's a tough way to think about it.

01:00:22.240 | And time perception, you mentioned,

01:00:23.620 | is so difficult for people.

01:00:25.220 | If I said, "You're gonna get punched in the face

01:00:27.700 | "in 10 seconds," that's a fear.

01:00:29.380 | And you're like, "Oh, I don't."

01:00:30.220 | But if I said, "Someone's gonna punch you in the face

01:00:31.600 | "50 years from now," I'll deal with it when I get there.

01:00:33.900 | It's so easy to put out of sight, out of mind.

01:00:36.100 | And the other thing is Warren Buffett

01:00:38.380 | talked about this a lot.

01:00:39.220 | He said, actually, it was Charlie Munger who said this.

01:00:42.260 | He said, "When teaching finance to young people,

01:00:45.060 | "people either understand it instantly or never."

01:00:48.020 | It's like some people are just wired to get it

01:00:49.620 | and some people aren't.

01:00:50.720 | And that's always been the case.

01:00:51.900 | Munger often said all the time,

01:00:53.420 | he said, "The iron rule of math is only 1% of people

01:00:55.620 | "can end up in the top 1%."

01:00:57.300 | And that's why, for a lot of people,

01:00:58.940 | yes, you should save and invest for 50 years.

01:01:01.940 | Let's not pretend that that is easy

01:01:03.380 | or that everybody is psychologically able to do it.

01:01:05.460 | Some people are wired differently.

01:01:06.500 | Of course, that's the case, as they are with health

01:01:08.660 | and intelligence and lots of other things.

01:01:10.900 | So I do think there's a thing for financial education

01:01:13.220 | with getting people to understand what is possible.

01:01:15.860 | But I don't think we'll ever live in a world

01:01:17.300 | where everyone gets it and does it.

01:01:19.100 | I don't think that world has never existed

01:01:20.940 | and I think will never exist because it's not math,

01:01:23.380 | it's not a spreadsheet, it's behavior.

01:01:25.820 | And we now live in a world

01:01:27.500 | where we understand the dangers of smoking

01:01:30.120 | and highly processed foods and whatever it might be.

01:01:32.260 | But even if we know it, people still do it

01:01:34.940 | because it's behavioral, it's not intelligence.

01:01:37.360 | So showing people the numbers

01:01:38.880 | and getting them to do it is night and day.

01:01:40.980 | - Do you know how they got people to stop smoking,

01:01:44.700 | in particular young people?

01:01:46.240 | It wasn't by scaring them about their health.

01:01:48.460 | Turns out the most effective campaign to get,

01:01:50.380 | especially young people to stop smoking

01:01:52.700 | was to hijack the inherent rebellion of youth

01:01:57.700 | and to display ads of wealthy older people

01:02:01.900 | in rooms full of smoke.

01:02:03.380 | So it became us as the youth rebelling against them,

01:02:06.880 | the older generation that are trying to take our money,

01:02:08.900 | it had nothing to do with health.

01:02:10.460 | - I love that. - And it absolutely worked.

01:02:12.820 | And I have friends that work on this sort of thing

01:02:15.100 | in the context of public health,

01:02:16.540 | as it relates to all sorts of public health initiatives.

01:02:19.620 | And the effective way to change human behavior

01:02:23.340 | as it relates to health is to incentivize aesthetics,

01:02:27.820 | to incentivize fear or to hijack fear of dying.

01:02:32.820 | But even fear of dying is not sufficient

01:02:37.420 | as compared to hijacking these cross-generational,

01:02:42.420 | let's just call them frictions that exist.

01:02:46.380 | So I found that to be interesting.

01:02:47.860 | You used a math example of eight plus eight plus eight

01:02:50.340 | plus eight versus eight times eight times eight times eight.

01:02:52.660 | And you said that the human brain

01:02:54.860 | is not capable of exponential thinking,

01:02:56.780 | or most people's brains are not capable

01:02:58.460 | of exponential thinking.

01:02:59.500 | I think you either intentionally or inadvertently

01:03:03.580 | hit on something really important.

01:03:05.460 | I don't know that the dopamine reward system,

01:03:08.200 | which is the fundamental currency of pursuit and reward

01:03:11.660 | across all timescales, it's kind of wild, right?

01:03:15.060 | One neuromodulator, and there are other things involved

01:03:17.700 | that modulate that modulator,

01:03:18.820 | but one neuromodulator is involved in reward pursuit

01:03:23.460 | across all timescales, whether or not we're playing,

01:03:26.620 | let's say we're both competitive enough

01:03:28.220 | to play a game of chess or checkers,

01:03:30.240 | dopamine is motivating the pursuit for the win,

01:03:33.740 | or a four-year degree or an eight-year degree,

01:03:36.640 | or why you would want maybe your kids to win a soccer game.

01:03:39.900 | Now you're like a third person in dopamine, right?

01:03:42.440 | It's across all timescales, all scenarios.

01:03:45.540 | It's incredible, and across many species.

01:03:48.060 | So it makes me wonder,

01:03:50.180 | and I'll have to ask some of my colleagues

01:03:51.600 | that work on these dopamine reward schedules for a living,

01:03:56.300 | whether or not the dopamine reward system

01:03:58.380 | actually can do exponential math.

01:04:01.440 | It might not be able to do exponential math.

01:04:03.860 | It might be that the pursuit of water,

01:04:05.580 | the pursuit of mates, the pursuit of food,

01:04:07.180 | the pursuit of shelter,

01:04:08.340 | which is what these dopamine circuits evolved

01:04:11.260 | under the constraints of,

01:04:14.080 | whether or not they are even capable

01:04:15.400 | of doing exponential thinking.

01:04:16.560 | - Or if it's like the marshmallow test,

01:04:17.680 | which got misconstrued in many ways,

01:04:19.360 | but it's like, yeah, would you rather have one right now

01:04:21.700 | or two in the future?

01:04:22.540 | It's, I think for a lot of people, it's just like they're,

01:04:24.880 | there are some people for whom,

01:04:26.520 | like they're wired so differently for this.

01:04:28.880 | So you hear stories about like the old,

01:04:30.600 | the old, very wealthy people, the old billionaires,

01:04:33.520 | when they were 20 years old,

01:04:35.040 | they would not get a haircut

01:04:36.240 | because they knew that $3 haircut

01:04:38.160 | would compound into $100 by the time they're older.

01:04:40.320 | They were just so wired from birth to understand this

01:04:43.440 | and to have a very long perception of time to do it.

01:04:46.120 | By definition, that's the rarity.

01:04:47.560 | Most people are not like that.

01:04:48.880 | And I don't know if they should be either.

01:04:50.360 | I don't know if you should be the kind of person

01:04:51.800 | your entire life, who is always saving for a future

01:04:55.000 | and never enjoying what you have too.

01:04:56.640 | Like that can lead to a lot of regret as well.

01:04:58.800 | And there are those people.

01:05:00.160 | - So let's parse the marshmallow test.

01:05:02.600 | The marshmallow test, I think initially done at Stanford,

01:05:05.560 | I think it was a Bing nursery school or something like that,

01:05:07.480 | or maybe somewhere at Stanford.

01:05:08.480 | If I'm wrong, someone will correct me in the comments.

01:05:11.000 | Of course, for those that don't know,

01:05:12.800 | is they brought these really cute kids into rooms

01:05:15.560 | and they put the marshmallow in front of them

01:05:18.080 | and they told them they could eat it now

01:05:19.280 | or they could wait

01:05:20.120 | and they could get two marshmallows later.

01:05:21.720 | And then they videotaped them

01:05:22.760 | and the videos are absolutely delightful of the kids,

01:05:25.400 | you know, like distracting themselves

01:05:26.760 | or having the marshmallows talk

01:05:27.980 | or taking a little piece of the marshmallows.

01:05:29.440 | I mean, it reveals as much variation

01:05:31.840 | on human self-constraint behavior

01:05:34.360 | as you could possibly imagine.

01:05:35.840 | And they're really interesting as you know.

01:05:38.080 | I would like to know whether the children

01:05:41.080 | that were able to wait and therefore get two marshmallows

01:05:45.920 | were trying to resist the temptation

01:05:48.760 | or whether or not they were being pulled forward

01:05:50.920 | by the anticipation of two marshmallows.

01:05:53.400 | - My understanding, and maybe this is not complete,

01:05:55.920 | but my understanding, at least part of it

01:05:57.240 | was neither of those two things.

01:05:59.040 | The kids who did the best and resisted it

01:06:00.920 | were the ones who distracted themselves.

01:06:02.400 | They weren't even thinking about the marshmallow.

01:06:03.800 | They would sing a song,

01:06:04.820 | they would start playing with their shoes,

01:06:06.160 | they'd play with another kid.

01:06:07.160 | And the ones who could not resist

01:06:08.640 | are the ones who just sat there

01:06:09.480 | staring at the one marshmallow that was tempting them.

01:06:12.360 | That's too hard to resist.

01:06:13.600 | Almost everybody will resist that.

01:06:15.240 | It was like the environment that they put themselves in.

01:06:17.000 | - But they weren't thinking into the future

01:06:18.480 | about how great it would be to have two marshmallows.

01:06:20.200 | - I don't think so.

01:06:21.040 | I think they were, because their kids are so distracted.

01:06:22.960 | They have the memory of a goldfish.

01:06:24.200 | They wanted to just go do something.

01:06:26.160 | They'd sing a song, they'd play with their shoes,

01:06:27.760 | they'd play with their friends.

01:06:29.160 | And then by dint of doing that,

01:06:31.040 | all of a sudden they had waited long enough

01:06:32.700 | to get the two marshmallows.

01:06:34.000 | I think that was at least part of it.

01:06:35.200 | And I think that's true for a lot of people too.

01:06:37.160 | Think about the stock market,

01:06:38.800 | where so much temptation to always watch it

01:06:42.320 | and see what it's doing.

01:06:43.200 | 'Cause we have CNBC and there's the ticker

01:06:45.160 | and the lights are green and red and whatnot.

01:06:47.640 | For a lot of people, it's impossible to watch that.

01:06:50.080 | Or even worse, in Robin Hood,

01:06:51.440 | you get a push notification on your phone.

01:06:53.680 | That's too hard to resist.

01:06:55.240 | But you know where you see very good investing behavior,

01:06:57.640 | where people do a really good job,

01:06:59.280 | is when you invest automatically every paycheck

01:07:02.160 | into your 401k and you forgot your password.

01:07:04.600 | Because that environment is against temptation.

01:07:07.920 | There's nothing to do.

01:07:08.800 | You forgot your password.

01:07:10.020 | But if you're just bombarding yourself with stimulus

01:07:12.440 | of what to do, most people cannot resist that.

01:07:15.440 | - My way of dealing with social media,

01:07:17.960 | I would say compulsion, not addiction,

01:07:19.800 | is I now, one could take an old phone.

01:07:22.580 | I actually got a phone specifically for social media.

01:07:26.000 | So I have Instagram and X on that phone.

01:07:28.280 | I don't even recall the number of that phone.

01:07:30.640 | I airdrop things onto it if I wanna post

01:07:32.520 | and I do what Rogan calls post and ghost.

01:07:36.280 | So you post and then it goes into a box.

01:07:38.380 | Because otherwise, I'm just absolutely blown away

01:07:41.720 | by how much time can be sucked away.

01:07:43.680 | - All of it.

01:07:45.400 | - You tell yourself,

01:07:46.220 | "I'm gonna just look at social media for a moment."

01:07:47.920 | And then you're pulled down some rabbit hole.

01:07:49.960 | It's just incredible the way they've designed

01:07:52.120 | these algorithms to get you.

01:07:54.480 | And of course I like social media.

01:07:55.680 | I teach on social media.

01:07:56.840 | This conversation will probably be,

01:07:58.720 | fragments of it will be on social media.

01:08:00.760 | But I think that people don't realize

01:08:05.120 | how compulsion inducing the dopamine circuitry is.

01:08:10.120 | And once you start getting pulled down it,

01:08:12.520 | you're a different organism altogether.

01:08:16.040 | And it's not a coincidence that the people

01:08:19.560 | who have the largest social media accounts

01:08:21.640 | spend very little time on social media.

01:08:23.640 | - 'Cause if you spend too much, it just gets overwhelming.

01:08:26.040 | - Well, you're spending time doing things

01:08:27.160 | like commenting and liking

01:08:28.440 | and there's a liability to some of that,

01:08:30.280 | but there's a reward to it too, an immediate reward.

01:08:32.640 | What you're not doing is going and doing the thing

01:08:35.920 | that you bring to social media

01:08:38.000 | that brings you more followers and views.

01:08:40.760 | So I always think of social media

01:08:42.420 | as that last point in a funnel

01:08:45.640 | where I go do things in real life,

01:08:47.080 | like research papers, talk to people, learn,

01:08:50.760 | and then organize that learning into a format

01:08:53.400 | that I think people can benefit from

01:08:55.200 | and then put it on social media.

01:08:56.560 | But that's the end point.

01:08:58.640 | And so if I stay too long there,

01:09:01.200 | then I'm not getting more material.

01:09:03.560 | It's almost like if I were a farmer,

01:09:05.480 | once the crops ship, I'm not going to stand there

01:09:10.680 | just like looking at the road as the truck goes by.

01:09:13.080 | - You got to plow the field.

01:09:13.920 | - Yeah, you got to get back and plant more seeds

01:09:15.600 | and plow the field.

01:09:16.440 | I mean, so I like to think about these things

01:09:18.680 | in these very basic terms,

01:09:19.900 | because I feel that the dopamine circuitry,

01:09:22.440 | it hasn't evolved, right?

01:09:24.120 | But we have new technologies

01:09:25.640 | that have hijacked it to some extent.

01:09:27.540 | Jerry Seinfeld said one of the reason he quit his show

01:09:29.840 | in the 1990s was because what made it so good

01:09:32.360 | and so funny is that he and Larry David

01:09:34.560 | would go like sit in a deli and watch people order

01:09:37.320 | and make a joke.

01:09:38.160 | That's where they got their content from

01:09:39.120 | was observing the world.

01:09:40.400 | But they got so busy and so famous

01:09:42.080 | that they couldn't do that anymore.

01:09:43.280 | And he knew that it was going to come

01:09:44.360 | at the detriment of the show,

01:09:45.720 | that it wasn't like the ultimate reward

01:09:47.480 | of like how big was the season?

01:09:48.960 | How many people watch the show?

01:09:50.080 | How much money do we make?

01:09:51.120 | What made them great was going out and living

01:09:53.040 | and doing their thing.

01:09:53.880 | And once it came at the expense of that,

01:09:55.680 | it didn't work anymore.

01:09:57.260 | - Well, this raises a really key point for people,

01:10:00.240 | including myself, which is in an ideal world,

01:10:05.200 | one can make a living that is sufficient for their needs,

01:10:10.200 | doing something that you truly enjoy doing.

01:10:14.000 | Or I would say to be realistic,

01:10:16.720 | where 75% of the activities are pleasurable,

01:10:21.720 | maybe 15% are kind of neutral.

01:10:26.080 | And then the remainder, there's some punishing features.

01:10:27.940 | There are punishing features in every profession.

01:10:29.860 | - Yes, Jeff Bezos said if you can enjoy half,

01:10:31.780 | that's pretty good.

01:10:32.620 | - Okay, all right.

01:10:33.440 | So I'm a little more stringent with my,

01:10:36.020 | yeah, I'm more of an optimist than Bezos.

01:10:37.500 | Hey, I don't, but then again, he's Bezos.

01:10:40.360 | Yeah, I mean, you want to be able to enjoy your work.

01:10:42.500 | Not all aspects of it are going to be pleasurable,

01:10:44.820 | but ideally that's the case.

01:10:46.980 | Because what we're talking about here

01:10:48.160 | is effort that precedes dopamine.

01:10:51.440 | And I'm a big believer that dopamine

01:10:53.020 | that is not preceded by effort is very dangerous.

01:10:56.900 | It's not just things that are addictive,

01:10:58.340 | but by way of example, methamphetamine, cocaine,

01:11:01.820 | dramatically and quickly spike dopamine levels.

01:11:05.220 | - With no effort put in.

01:11:06.180 | - With no effort put in.

01:11:07.540 | And then of course we know from the beautiful work

01:11:09.420 | of my colleague Anna Lembke and others,

01:11:10.940 | that then the dopamine profile

01:11:13.020 | is that then the higher the peak

01:11:14.660 | and the faster the rise to peak,

01:11:16.300 | then the more drop below baseline

01:11:19.020 | and the more time it takes to return to baseline.

01:11:20.860 | And typically what people do is when they're below baseline

01:11:23.860 | in terms of their dopamine,

01:11:24.780 | that's when they really start hitting the hammer

01:11:26.340 | with whatever behavior or substance.

01:11:28.460 | And all it does is drive that baseline

01:11:30.220 | further and further and further down.

01:11:31.820 | - Maybe that's a good analogy for the lottery winner

01:11:33.820 | who gets a lot of money, a lot of dopamine in this example,

01:11:36.620 | but didn't put anything into it.

01:11:38.060 | You didn't build a business.

01:11:38.980 | You didn't work at your career.

01:11:40.060 | You just got lucky.

01:11:40.900 | So it doesn't feel as good.

01:11:41.820 | There's no effort put into to like base it against.

01:11:44.800 | - Compare it against what you were talking about before,

01:11:47.420 | which is time that's unstructured

01:11:49.520 | with your kids playing Legos.

01:11:51.320 | It's almost, it sounds effortless.

01:11:53.700 | It's not like you're like,

01:11:54.540 | oh, I got to go play with my boy's Legos.

01:11:55.840 | I'm sure that you're like, yes, like this is fun.

01:11:57.860 | This is the good stuff, as they say.

01:11:59.900 | And so there are forms of reward, it seems,

01:12:01.860 | that are not preceded by effort.

01:12:03.900 | Although you had to raise those kids

01:12:05.340 | and your wife had to give birth to those kids

01:12:07.780 | and it's work.

01:12:08.620 | But in terms of what's happening in that limited timeframe,

01:12:12.140 | it's just so seamless, right?

01:12:13.660 | It's just sheer pleasure.

01:12:14.940 | And yet that kind of pleasure is enriching.

01:12:17.940 | It has me very perplexed.

01:12:19.840 | As a biologist,

01:12:20.800 | I still don't know the underlying mechanisms,

01:12:22.840 | but clearly we have multiple paths to pleasure,

01:12:24.940 | but I think we have only one path for motivation

01:12:27.180 | and that's dopamine.

01:12:28.500 | But I think there are multiple forms of pleasure

01:12:30.700 | and I'm certain that dopamine that is,

01:12:33.920 | high levels of dopamine that are not preceded by effort

01:12:36.780 | are not just bad, they are downright dangerous.

01:12:39.420 | - I feel like so much of it too with parenting.

01:12:41.180 | This is a slightly different topic,

01:12:42.400 | but it's the things that you're not trying to have fun with

01:12:45.440 | that build the biggest memories.

01:12:46.560 | And for me, it's when I travel with my son, he's nine.

01:12:48.840 | So we go on a lot of trips now.

01:12:50.520 | What's fun is not the event we're going to,

01:12:53.260 | whether it's skiing or a football game.

01:12:54.900 | That's not the best part of the trip.

01:12:55.940 | The best part of the trip is flying with him,

01:12:57.520 | renting a car with him, going out to dinner with him.

01:13:00.220 | That's where you get all the memories.

01:13:01.760 | It's like, it's a process of doing it

01:13:03.300 | that's gonna, you're really enjoying,

01:13:05.140 | that's gonna build all the memories.

01:13:06.540 | Not necessarily the final destination where you're going.

01:13:10.420 | - Yeah, I just wanna hover on that for a second

01:13:12.800 | 'cause I can think of numerous examples in my life

01:13:14.840 | where the best parts of a relationship

01:13:16.740 | were like a drive home with someone where like,

01:13:20.700 | I'm asleep for part of the time,

01:13:21.980 | they're asleep for part of the time.

01:13:23.220 | And you get back and like, you really,

01:13:24.580 | you feel like you really did something.

01:13:25.900 | There's something bonding about traveling with people.

01:13:29.300 | It's even in the absence of external input.

01:13:31.580 | Like you're just, what is that?

01:13:33.980 | It must be something fundamental,

01:13:35.380 | some fundamental circuit about journeying

01:13:37.720 | with other members of our species.

01:13:39.300 | - Going through a challenge with someone,

01:13:40.880 | going through a journey of like, we did this together.

01:13:43.380 | We went through it together.

01:13:44.860 | I think there's so much of that.

01:13:45.700 | If you go on a long hike with somebody at the top,

01:13:48.060 | like you wanna hug each other.

01:13:49.020 | Like we just did that together.

01:13:50.440 | And it's not even about being at the top.

01:13:52.100 | It's like the journey you did with each other.

01:13:53.620 | So cliche, but I think it's true for a lot of things.

01:13:55.980 | - And what's that movie with Emile Hirsch where he,

01:13:58.560 | it's a true story about the guy that goes out

01:14:01.540 | into the Alaskan wilderness and lives on that bus.

01:14:04.600 | And sadly he passes away there.

01:14:07.140 | I just spoiled it for you.

01:14:08.460 | But he has, I think it's called "Into the Wild."

01:14:11.460 | "Into the Wild," where he's obsessed with this notion

01:14:14.380 | of bonding with nature, but then in his journal,

01:14:16.520 | a real journal of a guy that really died out there,

01:14:19.660 | he gets to the realization that the fundamental pursuit

01:14:24.660 | in life is to experience things with other people.

01:14:28.260 | - Absolutely, yeah.

01:14:29.380 | And this is why solitary confinement is such a torture.

01:14:32.900 | The extreme end of it.

01:14:33.940 | - Brutal, brutal.

01:14:35.760 | On the other end of the spectrum, there's freedom.

01:14:40.880 | So let's talk about freedom.

01:14:42.760 | - Yeah.

01:14:43.620 | - It means different things to different people,

01:14:45.520 | but certainly one does not want to be enslaved by anything,

01:14:49.940 | including their own pursuit of work.

01:14:52.900 | So there, I think at least two forms of anti-freedom.

01:14:57.900 | One would be the type that exists within our head.

01:15:01.880 | We have to continue on this track

01:15:03.420 | because I'm afraid of failure,

01:15:04.720 | or I'm in pursuit of something,

01:15:05.940 | and we are actually enslaved in a way

01:15:07.640 | that we sort of create for ourselves

01:15:10.940 | in the act of pursuit.

01:15:12.900 | The other is the job where it's providing resources,

01:15:17.900 | but we really don't need to be there.

01:15:20.900 | And yet people don't hop off the train.

01:15:23.580 | You know, they could.

01:15:25.100 | They could escape the dreaded boss

01:15:27.140 | or the dreaded circumstance.

01:15:28.380 | You know, I remember a time when all I wanted

01:15:30.120 | was a window at work that opened for fresh air.

01:15:33.180 | That's all I wanted.

01:15:34.460 | And like all these other things,

01:15:35.420 | I just wanted a window that opened.

01:15:37.340 | I even tried to find one of these like little saws,

01:15:39.740 | but then the maintenance people or whatever,

01:15:42.240 | the facilities people told me I'd get in trouble.

01:15:44.740 | We yearn for freedom.

01:15:48.100 | We hate enslavement for all the obvious reasons.

01:15:52.380 | In your observation,

01:15:53.620 | what is the best way to frame this need for freedom?

01:15:58.620 | And I have to imagine that people listening

01:16:01.500 | are at various points along their careers.

01:16:06.420 | What have you observed here in yourself

01:16:08.220 | and with other people you talk to, wealthy, not wealthy?

01:16:11.340 | What is freedom?

01:16:12.380 | How do we get real freedom?

01:16:13.820 | - I think there's this anecdote that I love,

01:16:15.380 | which was from Franklin Roosevelt when he was a kid.

01:16:17.880 | I think he was like five years old.

01:16:19.220 | He complained to his mother one day.

01:16:20.540 | He said, "My entire life is rules and schedules,

01:16:23.980 | and I hate it."

01:16:24.820 | So his mom said, "Okay, Frankie, tomorrow,

01:16:26.780 | you can do whatever you want.

01:16:28.380 | The day is yours, anything you want."

01:16:30.420 | And his mom, Sarah Roosevelt, wrote in her diary that night.

01:16:33.900 | He said that day that he could do anything,

01:16:36.180 | he went back to his normal schedule.

01:16:37.660 | He did everything on schedule like he was supposed to do,

01:16:40.100 | but he was much happier

01:16:41.100 | because nobody was telling him to do it.

01:16:42.900 | And I think that's what's true for a lot of people.

01:16:44.540 | Freedom does not mean you do nothing.

01:16:46.180 | It doesn't necessarily mean you retire.

01:16:47.700 | It doesn't mean you quit working.

01:16:49.260 | I wanna be free and independent,

01:16:51.140 | which means I wanna wake up every morning and say,

01:16:52.820 | "I can do whatever the hell I want today."

01:16:54.780 | Even if most mornings, what I wanna do is work

01:16:57.660 | and be productive and put myself to use.

01:17:00.180 | So I think a lot of people misconstrue freedom

01:17:02.140 | as I'm gonna ride off into the sunset and do nothing now.

01:17:06.060 | It's like, no, I think people have an inherent drive

01:17:08.060 | to wanna be productive and social and do things.

01:17:10.940 | But there's a big difference

01:17:11.900 | between your boss telling you to do it

01:17:13.580 | and doing it on your own terms.

01:17:15.180 | When I was a junior in college,

01:17:17.580 | like a lot of young men,

01:17:18.460 | I wanted to be an investment banker.

01:17:20.380 | That's what looked like power and prestige.

01:17:22.420 | So I got this investment banking internship

01:17:23.820 | and I was absolutely miserable.

01:17:25.780 | They had this saying that is so funny in hindsight.

01:17:28.540 | They said, "If you don't come to work on Saturday,

01:17:30.260 | don't bother coming back on Sunday."

01:17:31.940 | But just the culture of it was work 100 hours a week,

01:17:34.900 | just go nuts with it.

01:17:36.540 | And I hated it.

01:17:37.380 | I hated every single second and I had to leave.

01:17:39.420 | But it wasn't because I was not into hard work.

01:17:41.820 | I think I was absolutely willing to work hard.

01:17:44.380 | I just didn't want anyone to tell me to do it.

01:17:46.140 | And so when I became,

01:17:48.140 | not necessarily financially independent,

01:17:49.620 | but I could have a job, it was more entrepreneurial.

01:17:51.980 | It was like, oh, I will work very hard.

01:17:53.820 | And sometimes I might work as hard as an investment banker.

01:17:56.300 | I might work 80 hours a week, but it's on my terms.

01:17:59.100 | And I think everyone is way more willing to do that

01:18:02.100 | than they are to be told what to do.

01:18:03.500 | I think that is an inherent human driver.

01:18:05.300 | And if you can use your money for independence

01:18:07.740 | to where you can wake up and say,

01:18:09.460 | I have the financial flexibility to work where I want,

01:18:12.340 | live where I want, retire what I want,

01:18:14.300 | take a different job, move to a different department,

01:18:16.460 | even if it's gonna pay less,

01:18:18.020 | that giving yourself independence and autonomy,

01:18:20.700 | I think for most people is what's gonna drive.

01:18:22.820 | That's the highest tool that you can use with money.

01:18:26.300 | And what's important about that is

01:18:27.700 | where do you get independence with money?

01:18:29.620 | It's the things you don't spend money on.

01:18:31.240 | It's the car you didn't buy.

01:18:32.460 | It's the house you didn't buy.

01:18:33.740 | And most people will view that as like idle money.

01:18:36.200 | You're saving up money.

01:18:37.100 | It's just sitting in the bank doing nothing.

01:18:38.620 | No, no, no, it's giving you independence.

01:18:40.420 | And once you view as like every dollar that you don't spend

01:18:43.680 | is money that you are actually spending on independence.

01:18:45.980 | It's not idle.

01:18:46.860 | It's giving you marginal more independence

01:18:49.220 | than you had the day before.

01:18:50.780 | Then I think, to me, that's why I save money.

01:18:53.580 | I'm not saving money because I'm a pessimist.

01:18:56.100 | I think it's all gonna come collapsing down.

01:18:58.140 | I'm saving money 'cause I wanna be independent.

01:18:59.920 | 'Cause that's what I think is gonna give me

01:19:01.160 | the most fulfillment, the most happiness.

01:19:03.020 | And that's where the savings comes from.

01:19:05.740 | - Wow, I think this is a super important concept.

01:19:09.080 | How should the person who is,

01:19:14.080 | well, let's just say early, mid career,

01:19:17.060 | who likes what they're doing,

01:19:19.100 | but thinks that this is probably not the thing for them.

01:19:21.540 | I hear about this all the time.

01:19:22.940 | Like, it's just like, yeah, like it's good,

01:19:25.220 | but it's a ton of work.

01:19:26.180 | It's unclear how it's gonna turn out,

01:19:27.860 | but they feel like they're already on the conveyor belt.

01:19:30.740 | There's always this question of,

01:19:32.340 | do you stay in investment banking another year

01:19:34.840 | to make a bunch of money,

01:19:35.680 | and then you get out so that you then have the freedom

01:19:37.740 | to pursue something where you have more freedom?

01:19:40.140 | People are always playing this kind of mental math.

01:19:43.660 | And I don't think there's a clear answer,

01:19:45.860 | unless, of course, you're lucky enough that,

01:19:47.780 | like, you fall in love with science.

01:19:48.860 | I mean, I did not become a neuroscientist to make money,

01:19:50.620 | and Lord knows I didn't.

01:19:51.960 | I mean, I made some, I made a living,

01:19:53.500 | but if people heard what I was making

01:19:55.400 | as a tenured 45-year-old professor

01:19:58.420 | at one of the premier universities in the world,

01:20:01.140 | where the salaries are relatively high,

01:20:03.140 | they would be shocked.

01:20:04.420 | Just shocked that post-tax income

01:20:06.100 | is quite low by Bay Area standards.

01:20:08.460 | - But did you feel like you had independence?

01:20:09.760 | You could teach what you want, say what you want.

01:20:12.380 | There was a level of independence.

01:20:13.500 | - Absolutely.

01:20:14.340 | Oh, and I loved it.

01:20:15.160 | And, you know, and I still teach there,

01:20:17.180 | and, you know, it's one of these things

01:20:19.200 | where I wouldn't trade it for anything.

01:20:20.820 | I also, in terms of intellectual stimulation,

01:20:23.640 | in terms of being able to look to my left

01:20:25.780 | or look to my right and realize

01:20:27.340 | that most of the people at Stanford, students included,

01:20:29.580 | are just phenomenal.

01:20:31.380 | Like their level of intellect, their drive,

01:20:33.500 | their excitement for what they're doing.

01:20:35.220 | I mean, no one ends up there by accident.

01:20:37.340 | So that was and remains extremely exciting.

01:20:40.500 | But I think a lot of people,

01:20:43.700 | unless they find a profession that they really love,

01:20:46.820 | or there's some feature of that profession

01:20:49.700 | that keeps them, you know, looped in in a way

01:20:52.780 | that feels satisfying, the people, et cetera,

01:20:56.660 | most people are kind of thinking like,

01:20:58.060 | all right, how do I work to make a living?

01:20:59.900 | And then, you know, like, what's the exit ramp?

01:21:02.020 | People think a lot about exit ramps,

01:21:03.500 | and sometimes it's a dollar amount,

01:21:05.600 | but also it's the idea that maybe, you know,

01:21:07.720 | go work on their real love, which might be like gardening.

01:21:10.860 | They want to, you hear about these sort of hobby interests,

01:21:13.700 | right?

01:21:14.540 | I'll go, I'll write poetry or I'll, you know, go, you know,

01:21:17.780 | ceramics or something like that.

01:21:19.940 | The things that they truly enjoy doing.

01:21:21.440 | How should people optimize along those musts

01:21:25.840 | versus want-tos versus sort of aspirational goals?

01:21:29.640 | - Two things come to mind here.

01:21:30.480 | One is like, most people understand inherently

01:21:33.760 | the dangers of communism or something.

01:21:35.520 | If the government's telling you what to do,

01:21:36.880 | when to do it, what to say, that's a bad thing.

01:21:38.920 | That's going to erode society.

01:21:40.300 | But a lot of those people work at a job

01:21:42.480 | where their boss tells them what time to come in,

01:21:44.620 | what to wear, what to say, how to act, whatnot.

01:21:47.440 | So they really understand it fundamentally at one level,

01:21:49.880 | but they're actually doing some version.

01:21:51.360 | Now companies have to manage their employees, whatnot.

01:21:53.320 | It's not a knock against that,

01:21:55.560 | but I think what's really true for independents

01:21:57.680 | and people, if they eventually move on to writing poetry

01:22:01.280 | and playing in their garden, whatever it might be,

01:22:03.080 | is that you eventually,

01:22:03.920 | is that you leave on your own terms.

01:22:05.620 | That whatever your exit from your career was,

01:22:07.400 | was because you wanted to do it on your own terms.

01:22:09.660 | So the thing in psychology called the peak end rule,

01:22:11.600 | where to simplify it, minimalize it,

01:22:14.460 | a lot of how you remember any endeavor that you did in life,

01:22:17.840 | a career, a vacation, whatever it is,

01:22:19.560 | is how you felt at the very end.

01:22:21.400 | And for a lot of people, if you have a great career,

01:22:23.880 | you enjoyed your career, you helped people,

01:22:25.260 | you made money, your colleagues appreciated you,

01:22:27.200 | but then you got fired or your boss came to you

01:22:29.000 | and said, you're too old to keep doing this.

01:22:30.760 | That's bad, you'll never recover from that.

01:22:33.640 | And you compare that to the people

01:22:34.760 | who quit on their own terms.

01:22:35.960 | They said, look, I'm proud of my career, but that's enough.

01:22:38.800 | I'm gonna take a step back

01:22:40.080 | and pass the baton to another generation.

01:22:42.120 | Those are the people who,

01:22:42.940 | even if they didn't really enjoy their career that much,

01:22:45.060 | will look back at it fondly,

01:22:46.580 | because it gets back to freedom and autonomy and control.

01:22:49.320 | Do you leave on your own terms

01:22:50.560 | or are you forced out on somebody else's schedule?

01:22:53.040 | And so I think maximum, wherever you go in life,

01:22:55.240 | whatever you're doing, even if you're not an entrepreneur,

01:22:57.600 | maximizing for independence and autonomy

01:22:59.960 | and doing it on your own terms,

01:23:02.200 | on your own calendar is absolutely vital

01:23:04.440 | in anything you're doing.

01:23:06.400 | I mean, most people are not necessarily,

01:23:08.200 | particularly as they get older,

01:23:09.140 | are not necessarily scared of death.

01:23:11.120 | They're scared of a death, not on their own terms.

01:23:14.280 | That's gonna sneak up on them

01:23:15.520 | where they're not gonna have a chance to say goodbye.

01:23:17.200 | So I think that's a good analogy for a lot of these things.

01:23:19.040 | We're not scared of the ultimate outcome.

01:23:21.400 | We're scared of not being able to do it on our own terms.

01:23:24.720 | - I once heard Ray Dalio say something along the lines of,

01:23:27.340 | you know, the first third of your life

01:23:28.800 | is spent trying to learn how to function in the world.

01:23:33.240 | Then there's a kind of middle third

01:23:34.680 | where you are acquiring resources

01:23:36.480 | to be able to take care of yourself

01:23:37.760 | and people close to you.

01:23:38.600 | And then in the final third of your life,

01:23:41.040 | you want to take your knowledge,

01:23:44.040 | take what you've gleaned in terms of financial

01:23:46.480 | and other types of wealth,

01:23:47.800 | 'cause of course there are other types of wealth,

01:23:49.320 | and put back, you know, for subsequent generations.

01:23:52.400 | It's a beautiful model, if you think about it.

01:23:54.920 | - I heard it phrased as when you get older,

01:23:57.080 | you either become an elder or elderly.

01:23:59.760 | You get to choose which one.

01:24:00.720 | Do you wanna be an elder and help other people or elderly?

01:24:02.800 | You're just gonna disintegrate over time.

01:24:04.560 | You gotta choose which one.

01:24:06.200 | - Nowadays, we have both the benefit

01:24:10.320 | and the problem of people living longer

01:24:12.480 | and maintaining vigor longer and therefore working longer.

01:24:15.480 | This is certainly true in academia.

01:24:16.840 | People don't like to retire.

01:24:19.200 | They really do not like to retire.

01:24:21.200 | And I don't think it's just so they can make more money.

01:24:23.440 | I think it's so they can stay intellectually active.

01:24:27.280 | People get into science typically because they like learning

01:24:31.280 | or academics generally.

01:24:32.500 | They have a campus office where they go to,

01:24:34.480 | and, you know, it makes them feel socially connected.

01:24:36.800 | So you can understand all the reasons

01:24:38.000 | why these people in their late 60s, 70s, and even 80s,

01:24:42.120 | sometimes even 90s, continue to go to work.

01:24:45.160 | It's rare for these older generations of people

01:24:47.920 | that stay in various professions

01:24:49.380 | to continue to glean resources, but it happens.

01:24:53.880 | I mean, how old is Buffett?

01:24:56.160 | - 93, maybe, yeah.

01:24:57.560 | - He's still investing?

01:24:58.400 | - Yeah, oh yeah, full-time.

01:24:59.440 | - Okay, and presumably he's gonna use that money

01:25:01.500 | for what, either philanthropy

01:25:02.940 | or generational wealth within his family?

01:25:05.000 | Is that the plan?

01:25:05.840 | - He's already given away, I think, about 100 billion.

01:25:07.980 | And the plan is to give away the vast majority.

01:25:10.120 | I think he announced recently

01:25:11.200 | that he was gonna leave each of his kids

01:25:12.880 | a billion dollars for philanthropy,

01:25:14.520 | not for their personal use, but for philanthropy.

01:25:16.480 | And the rest is all given away.

01:25:18.080 | - Oh yeah, the children of the ultra-rich

01:25:21.280 | that inherit all their wealth,

01:25:23.520 | I don't know what the numbers are there.

01:25:24.800 | I know a great number of them squander it.

01:25:28.200 | But I also know a few examples of some

01:25:29.840 | that really make good on those incredible assets

01:25:33.720 | that they inherited and are very thoughtful,

01:25:37.840 | hardworking people.

01:25:39.180 | It does happen.

01:25:40.020 | - There are a couple of families.

01:25:40.940 | I think of all the big robber baron families

01:25:43.200 | of 150 years ago,

01:25:44.440 | the Rockefellers probably did it the best.

01:25:46.080 | The Rockefellers still have a lot of wealth.

01:25:47.880 | The Vanderbilts by far did it the worst.

01:25:49.760 | They just squandered it in a couple of generations.

01:25:52.040 | And this is fairly well known now,

01:25:53.660 | but it's pretty interesting.

01:25:54.740 | The first Vanderbilt heir who did not get a trust fund

01:25:58.360 | for whom all the money was dried up,

01:26:00.680 | the first person who didn't get any money

01:26:02.360 | was Anderson Cooper of CNN.

01:26:04.720 | His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt,

01:26:06.120 | was the last Vanderbilt who got a big trust fund.

01:26:09.260 | And Cooper, I think not coincidentally,

01:26:11.960 | is the most successful

01:26:13.600 | and probably the happiest Vanderbilt heir in 150 years.

01:26:17.200 | And he's talked about this.

01:26:18.160 | He was like, I was the first person in my family

01:26:19.960 | who had to make a name for himself.

01:26:21.720 | The fact that his last name is not Vanderbilt, it's Cooper,

01:26:24.100 | and he didn't get any money.

01:26:25.440 | He was like, I had to go out and find my own way

01:26:27.420 | and find my own identity.

01:26:28.840 | Whereas all of his ancestors,

01:26:30.440 | their identity was you're rich from birth.

01:26:33.460 | That's your identity.

01:26:34.300 | You don't need to go out and make a name for yourself.

01:26:35.700 | You don't need to work hard.

01:26:37.020 | You don't need to create anything.

01:26:38.440 | All you need to do is sit here and spend your money.

01:26:40.560 | And it made them miserable.

01:26:42.280 | And Cooper was the first person.

01:26:43.520 | Look, this is very anecdotal.

01:26:45.640 | I'm not saying this is how it's going to work for everyone,

01:26:47.280 | but the first person who had to make a name for himself

01:26:49.040 | and work for himself was the one who was the most successful

01:26:51.960 | and probably the happiest.

01:26:53.260 | - Super important concept.

01:26:56.520 | Again, incredibly important.

01:26:58.880 | I think because people often will think that they,

01:27:01.720 | because they were born into families

01:27:03.040 | that didn't have a lot of money,

01:27:04.740 | that somehow they were given the short end of the stick.

01:27:09.000 | And in some sense they were, right?

01:27:10.200 | I mean, it's one thing to grow up in a world with assets

01:27:12.940 | and another world where you don't have assets,

01:27:15.300 | but we don't often hear about the downside.

01:27:19.020 | - It's hard to have sympathy for a Vanderbilt heir

01:27:21.300 | who inherited $400 million on their 18th birthday.

01:27:23.860 | Well, they're gonna have a lot of sympathy for that, right?

01:27:25.580 | - Right, well, there's show succession, right?

01:27:27.340 | You know, it's all about the horrible interpersonal dynamics

01:27:30.940 | of people that have a lot of wealth

01:27:32.020 | because it's never enough

01:27:33.180 | and they self-destruct essentially.

01:27:35.180 | - I think the situation is you don't have sympathy for them,

01:27:37.500 | but you should also realize that if you were in their shoes,

01:27:39.860 | you would probably self-destruct as well.

01:27:41.600 | It's very difficult to do.

01:27:42.900 | Once in a while, you see someone

01:27:44.300 | who is completely motivated irrespective of money.

01:27:46.980 | You know, Mark Zuckerberg was offered a billion dollars cash

01:27:50.080 | for Facebook when I think he was 22.

01:27:51.900 | And he said, "No, I don't want it, I'm gonna keep going."

01:27:54.420 | That's a ridiculously rare personality.

01:27:57.260 | And I think, you know, most people,

01:27:58.140 | if I inherited a billion dollars on my 18th birthday,

01:28:01.220 | I probably would have no motivation.

01:28:02.940 | But if Musk did, if Elon Musk did,

01:28:04.900 | wouldn't slow them down whatsoever.

01:28:07.100 | Jeff Bezos did, Mark Zuckerberg did.

01:28:08.620 | Those are very rare people who have a motivation

01:28:10.740 | that is so detached from money.

01:28:13.100 | - I wonder if it's the excesses of wealth

01:28:15.660 | that destroy people,

01:28:17.900 | or if it's the fact that the excesses

01:28:22.020 | take them away from the pursuit

01:28:23.820 | of what delivered the wealth in the first place.

01:28:26.340 | - For a lot of those people,

01:28:28.020 | it's the pursuit of solving the problem that's doing it.

01:28:30.580 | And I have a good friend, Patrick O'Shaughnessy,

01:28:32.700 | who phrased it this way.

01:28:33.660 | I'm gonna paraphrase him, but he said,

01:28:34.820 | "If you had to describe the mindset

01:28:37.220 | of those very successful entrepreneurs,

01:28:39.740 | it's not driven, it's not motivated, it's tortured."

01:28:43.780 | That they wake up every morning

01:28:44.860 | tortured by the problems that they're not fixing,

01:28:47.340 | and the opportunities that they have not yet found.

01:28:51.300 | And there's a famous Elon Musk interview,

01:28:52.980 | I think it was on Lex Friedman,

01:28:54.060 | where he was like, "You think you wanna be me,

01:28:55.980 | the richest man in the world, but you don't."

01:28:57.940 | And he was like, "It's a storm up here.

01:28:59.780 | It's a mess up here."

01:29:01.020 | I think that's true for a lot of people.

01:29:03.020 | My friend, David Center,

01:29:03.860 | I was a great podcast founder.

01:29:05.420 | - I love the founder's podcast.

01:29:06.260 | - He's such a good guy.

01:29:07.100 | He's one of the best guys in the world I've ever met.

01:29:08.940 | But he says of all the 350 founders that he's profiled,

01:29:13.940 | only one of them has he actually said,

01:29:16.460 | "I would want that guy's life."

01:29:17.900 | It was Ed Thorpe.

01:29:19.140 | But put that aside, of the other 349,

01:29:22.300 | I think you read their biography,

01:29:23.900 | and you can say, "I'm so glad that they existed."

01:29:27.060 | By most of the time, they did a lot of good in the world.

01:29:29.340 | They created products that make us better off.

01:29:31.140 | And never in a million years would I want his life.

01:29:34.060 | It seems miserable.

01:29:35.300 | Because most of the time, the simple answer is,

01:29:37.540 | their financial and career success came,

01:29:40.460 | the reason they're so successful

01:29:41.740 | is because they devoted every waking second

01:29:43.660 | of their entire life to this one problem, this one endeavor.

01:29:46.700 | And that came at the expense of their family life,

01:29:48.820 | of their health, of their mental health,

01:29:50.260 | their physical health.

01:29:51.700 | And if you get a full view of their,

01:29:53.580 | it's easy to look at Musk and say,

01:29:54.740 | "Oh, richest man in the world, wouldn't that be fun?"

01:29:57.180 | Yeah, but it came because he's had this life

01:30:00.100 | of a singular devotion to, well, in his case,

01:30:03.340 | two or three different companies.

01:30:05.180 | And I think if you take that full picture,

01:30:07.540 | it's less glamorous than it would seem.

01:30:10.140 | And it's too tempting in life to have envy of someone

01:30:13.940 | and say, "Oh, well, I want their money.

01:30:16.620 | And I want their career and their relationship

01:30:19.100 | or their humor."

01:30:20.220 | You're picking little bits and pieces from their life,

01:30:22.260 | but it's not how it works.

01:30:23.460 | You gotta take the full package.

01:30:24.860 | And when you look at the full package of those people

01:30:26.820 | who you might envy,

01:30:28.140 | if you actually take a complete view of their life,

01:30:30.420 | maybe some of them you would say,

01:30:31.380 | "No, that is a great life," like Ed Thorpe.

01:30:33.980 | But I think for a lot of them, if you got the full view,

01:30:35.980 | you would look at it and say,

01:30:36.820 | "Oh, that's actually a lot different than I thought."

01:30:39.060 | I framed this one way.

01:30:39.940 | If you look at, this is flagrantly anecdotal,

01:30:42.260 | but among the 10 richest men in the world,

01:30:45.140 | there are a cumulative 15 divorces among them.

01:30:48.580 | So it's very easy, particularly for young people to say,

01:30:50.580 | "Oh, I'm jealous of that person.

01:30:52.620 | I envy that person.

01:30:53.540 | I wanna be that person."

01:30:54.940 | But I think for a lot of them,

01:30:55.780 | if you actually got a full view of their life,

01:30:57.300 | it's not nearly as good as you would think.

01:31:00.820 | I think people like Elon Musk, people like Mark Zuckerberg,

01:31:05.820 | they represent these incredibly extreme examples

01:31:10.780 | that obviously most people can't even, including me,

01:31:14.340 | can't fathom what a day in their life must be like.

01:31:18.500 | Matt Zuck, he was on this podcast,

01:31:20.380 | and it seems that he really enjoys doing what he's doing.

01:31:24.860 | But I think for me and for most people,

01:31:27.460 | it's just so far out of the stratosphere

01:31:29.860 | of understanding similar to the amount of wealth

01:31:33.780 | that they've acquired.

01:31:34.620 | It just sort of like, what do you even do with all of that?

01:31:36.820 | And people go, "Well, I'd figure it out."

01:31:38.220 | Yeah, I'm sure you would,

01:31:39.060 | but it's so astronomically outside the scale

01:31:43.100 | of one's normal kind of dopamine reward schedules

01:31:46.260 | that it's hard to imagine.

01:31:48.300 | And what are you gonna do?

01:31:49.140 | Buy a plane as big as a state?

01:31:50.760 | But there's a place in between struggling

01:31:55.260 | to "make it" and being at that extreme

01:32:00.260 | where people hit that sweet spot.

01:32:02.660 | And I think a lot of your work is really aimed

01:32:04.520 | at at least shining light on the possibility

01:32:06.420 | of a sweet spot, where you're doing something

01:32:08.700 | that you find meaningful, making sufficient income,

01:32:13.660 | that your anxiety is buffered,

01:32:15.960 | you have meaningful relationships in and out of work,

01:32:21.340 | and you've essentially built a "good life," right?

01:32:24.720 | I mean, I heard Naval say something recently

01:32:27.580 | where he said, "You know, you want resources,"

01:32:30.060 | along the dimensions I just mentioned,

01:32:31.660 | "a healthy, fit body, a calm mind, and a home full of love."

01:32:36.660 | I think that's a pretty awesome list right there.

01:32:41.560 | And it's a lot of work though, right?

01:32:43.780 | Just to check off even one of those four boxes,

01:32:46.760 | a lot of work, right?

01:32:48.180 | - I think because money is so tangible,

01:32:50.180 | the counting it is so easy and so tangible

01:32:52.460 | that even if people know that,

01:32:53.900 | they're gonna put an inordinate amount of effort

01:32:56.580 | towards making more money

01:32:57.820 | at the expense of their relationships,

01:32:59.660 | their health, their children, their friends, their family,

01:33:01.940 | and it comes at the expense.

01:33:02.980 | Because if I were to say,

01:33:05.060 | "How do I increase my income by 10%?"

01:33:07.260 | And it's like, "I can wrap my head around that.

01:33:08.500 | "I can give you a number of what that would be

01:33:09.940 | "and how I might be able to do it."

01:33:11.220 | But if I said, "How do I get my kids to love me 10% more?"

01:33:13.580 | Like, "Ah, I have no idea how to measure that

01:33:15.720 | "or how to even pursue it."

01:33:16.900 | So even if I want that, because it's hard,

01:33:19.440 | it's not tangible, it's much easier to ignore

01:33:21.780 | and just pursue the thing that you can count,

01:33:23.540 | which is money.

01:33:24.380 | - Do you have a dog?

01:33:26.340 | - I do, golden retriever.

01:33:27.580 | - I was gonna say, "You want them to love you 10% more,

01:33:29.300 | "get them a puppy."

01:33:30.180 | But it sounds like you already did that.

01:33:32.060 | I'm just, I'm only half kidding.

01:33:33.660 | I always say that dogs are not only unconditional love,

01:33:37.820 | but they have the ability to give on a daily basis,

01:33:42.820 | multiple times per day in a way that,

01:33:46.900 | I mean, they give love as readily as they receive love.

01:33:49.460 | It's just like this perfect reciprocal loop.

01:33:51.940 | And they're constantly in the moment.

01:33:53.500 | They're just living right there.

01:33:54.340 | This is great cartoon.

01:33:55.220 | A lot of people have probably seen it.

01:33:56.140 | It's a guy and a dog sitting on a lake.

01:34:00.220 | And the guy's thought bubble coming out of his head

01:34:02.220 | is he's thinking about money.

01:34:03.180 | He's thinking about work.

01:34:04.020 | He's thinking about stocks.

01:34:05.300 | The dog's thought bubble is a picture of them

01:34:07.260 | sitting on the lake.

01:34:08.300 | They're just, the dog's just right in the moment,

01:34:10.100 | just enjoying what he's doing right there.

01:34:11.660 | I think that's like, that's my jealousy of my dog.

01:34:14.500 | When I look at her 24 hours a day,

01:34:16.300 | everyone will, there's a dog will recognize this.

01:34:18.540 | They're just in the moment.

01:34:19.500 | They just enjoy what they're doing,

01:34:20.540 | whatever they're doing.

01:34:21.380 | Everyone, including me, is either worrying,

01:34:24.900 | thinking about the past or dreaming about the future.

01:34:27.380 | - I love that.

01:34:28.220 | What's your dog's name, if I may?

01:34:29.100 | - Lucy.

01:34:30.220 | - Golden Retrievers are an amazing breed

01:34:31.940 | because they also are universally loving.

01:34:33.940 | - Yeah.

01:34:34.780 | - They love the person that, you know,

01:34:37.340 | they're owner the most,

01:34:39.780 | but they also love people that stop

01:34:41.420 | and meet them on the street.

01:34:42.300 | Not all dogs are like that.

01:34:43.340 | - The worst guard dogs in the world.

01:34:45.100 | You can break into your house,

01:34:45.940 | a Golden Retriever will just come up

01:34:46.860 | and wag its tail and lick you.

01:34:48.780 | - I love it.

01:34:50.980 | Let's talk about this social comparison thing.

01:34:53.340 | I'm trying to make this practical for people

01:34:57.500 | that are both partnered and not partnered.

01:35:01.060 | Seems to me that a lot of what I've observed

01:35:05.620 | in terms of people who are on the conveyor belt,

01:35:08.260 | work, work, work, work, work,

01:35:09.940 | have a picture in their mind of kind of

01:35:11.900 | where that's all going,

01:35:13.100 | when enough is enough,

01:35:14.820 | and when they plan to hop off or stay on

01:35:16.900 | or how late to stay.

01:35:18.700 | In large part based on,

01:35:20.540 | yeah, their upbringing.

01:35:22.260 | Yeah, kind of who they are,

01:35:23.940 | but also the messages that they're getting

01:35:26.180 | from typically the one other person

01:35:30.220 | that has the greatest degree of input, right?

01:35:32.740 | Like you could create a picture

01:35:34.140 | where the spouse in either direction

01:35:36.620 | is saying like, "We need more."

01:35:38.580 | - Right.

01:35:39.420 | - Right?

01:35:40.260 | That changes the picture completely.

01:35:41.460 | - Right.

01:35:42.540 | - Where the spouse just says like,

01:35:43.940 | "I would just like to see you more.

01:35:45.380 | I don't need any more stuff.

01:35:47.900 | I just want to see you more.

01:35:49.100 | We want to see you more."

01:35:50.820 | These are the sorts of at-home dynamics

01:35:53.460 | that I think drive a lot of decisions about career,

01:35:55.940 | not just what careers to pursue,

01:35:57.820 | but how long to stay in,

01:35:59.660 | whether or not you try and make partner in a firm,

01:36:02.020 | whether or not your social media account

01:36:03.500 | needs X number more followers or not.

01:36:06.620 | I think to me, this is as important

01:36:08.780 | as the social comparison of your peers at work or online.

01:36:13.500 | The messages that we receive by the people closest to us

01:36:17.460 | about what to be afraid of, what the needs are.

01:36:20.100 | And I don't know that people have really parsed

01:36:22.780 | how to resolve all that,

01:36:26.660 | but I'm guessing you probably have some thoughts about this.

01:36:28.500 | - Well, I think the balance between it is so difficult

01:36:30.780 | because for a lot of people who have families

01:36:32.700 | and are working very hard,

01:36:34.340 | at the core, if you said, "Why are you working so hard?"

01:36:36.340 | "Well, to make more money."

01:36:37.380 | "Why do you want more money?"

01:36:38.300 | "To take care of my family."

01:36:39.460 | Like it's for very good intentions,

01:36:40.700 | but it's coming at the expense of time

01:36:42.540 | with your family and whatnot.

01:36:43.780 | So a lot of things,

01:36:44.620 | it's not that you're making a terrible decision.

01:36:46.340 | You're doing what you think is right.

01:36:48.420 | And then if you said,

01:36:49.260 | "Well, how much is enough to take care of your family?"

01:36:51.060 | By and large, it's a game of comparison.

01:36:52.860 | The way that people lived a hundred years ago,

01:36:54.980 | what is a good life a hundred years ago,

01:36:57.100 | is a completely inadequate life today.

01:36:59.620 | Not even a hundred years ago.

01:37:00.580 | You go back to our parents' generation

01:37:02.620 | and say in the 1950s.

01:37:04.260 | There is a nostalgia for the 1950s of,

01:37:06.340 | "Oh, life was so good then and so great."

01:37:08.300 | And the white picket fence and the dog

01:37:09.860 | and the stay-at-home mom.

01:37:11.060 | It's a good picture.

01:37:12.060 | But what was the definition of a good life back then?

01:37:15.780 | A good middle-class life was an 800 square foot house

01:37:19.300 | with one bathroom for four people

01:37:21.060 | and camping for your annual vacation.

01:37:23.020 | You would describe a life that most people would say

01:37:24.900 | that's inadequate today.

01:37:25.980 | That's not my definition of a good life today.

01:37:28.180 | So that is shifting all the time.

01:37:30.460 | And therefore you're saying like,

01:37:32.220 | "Well, how much money do you need to be happy?"

01:37:34.340 | The truth is I need more money than the next family,

01:37:37.460 | than the next person.

01:37:38.300 | It's this continuous chain.

01:37:39.620 | And I think a lot of that is just evolution.

01:37:41.740 | It's a competition for resources.

01:37:43.180 | And it doesn't matter how much money you have.

01:37:45.300 | What matters is that you have more money

01:37:46.580 | than the next person.

01:37:47.780 | That's the sad truth for a lot of this.

01:37:50.180 | And therefore you can easily imagine a world

01:37:52.100 | in which my grandkids are earning on average

01:37:55.380 | way more money than we are today

01:37:57.340 | and have way better resources,

01:37:58.660 | better health, better technologies,

01:38:00.060 | and they're no happier for it.

01:38:01.220 | And they don't feel any more relieved for it.

01:38:03.460 | They don't feel like they can scale back

01:38:04.820 | and work less for it

01:38:06.220 | because they're gonna be competing with other people

01:38:08.180 | that have all of those things.

01:38:09.700 | John Maynard Keynes, a great economist,

01:38:11.180 | very famously predicted a world

01:38:13.260 | where people would be working 20 hours a week

01:38:15.140 | because technology was gonna make it

01:38:16.580 | so we didn't need to work.

01:38:17.980 | And that's not how it works whatsoever.

01:38:19.660 | We are working less than we did

01:38:21.140 | back when everybody was a farmer,

01:38:22.980 | but not nearly as little as we could be

01:38:27.220 | if we still had the expectations of a 1950s family

01:38:29.980 | living in an 800 square foot house.

01:38:31.900 | If we had those expectations,

01:38:33.260 | people could be working way less,

01:38:34.420 | but it's all a competition between other people.

01:38:37.180 | So even if 100 years from now,

01:38:38.980 | a middle-class family is living in a 5,000 square foot house

01:38:41.740 | with a spaceship in their backyard,

01:38:43.340 | if that becomes the norm,

01:38:44.580 | you don't appreciate it, any of it.

01:38:46.820 | I mean, if you took someone 100 years ago,

01:38:49.540 | if you took John Rockefeller,

01:38:50.980 | the richest man in the world 100 years ago,

01:38:52.900 | and brought him to today

01:38:54.300 | and showed him a middle-class family in America,

01:38:56.620 | he would say, "What is this, like Advil?

01:38:58.500 | "You take a pill that makes your headache go away?

01:39:00.860 | "You have sunscreen?

01:39:02.740 | "You just rub this on your face?

01:39:03.620 | "You don't get sunburn?"

01:39:04.860 | His jaw would be on the floor.

01:39:06.420 | But nobody appreciates that today like he would

01:39:08.980 | because it's just commonplace.

01:39:11.300 | Your definition of a good life is I expect to have that.

01:39:14.340 | So it's always gonna be the case that

01:39:16.500 | the reason we're working hard

01:39:17.500 | is to take care of our family.

01:39:18.660 | And what we feel like is an adequate amount

01:39:20.300 | is a growing level over time.

01:39:22.300 | I should also say that that is by and large a great thing.

01:39:24.660 | The reason society progresses

01:39:26.620 | is because most people wake up in the morning

01:39:28.460 | feeling a little bit inadequate.

01:39:29.980 | Whatever I have today is not enough

01:39:31.340 | and I need to go work harder to get more.

01:39:33.100 | That's why we have good technology

01:39:34.500 | and economic growth over time.

01:39:36.220 | So at the macro level, it's a great thing.

01:39:38.660 | That's what pushes society forward.

01:39:40.540 | And better medical technologies, all better technologies.

01:39:43.500 | But the individual level, it creates this hamster wheel

01:39:45.860 | of a constant feeling of inadequacy

01:39:48.420 | that we try to compensate for

01:39:50.100 | by working harder and working harder,

01:39:51.580 | even when it comes at the expense

01:39:53.020 | of things that should be more dear to us,

01:39:55.260 | like our friends and family and health.

01:39:57.660 | - And with social media, we now have access to millions,

01:40:01.840 | if not billions of comparison points.

01:40:03.720 | Whereas just 30 years ago, even 20 years ago,

01:40:07.300 | we only had access to local comparison points.

01:40:10.120 | Like the people in your neighborhood

01:40:11.180 | drove certain types of cars.

01:40:13.180 | Now online, you can see people

01:40:14.500 | that you went to high school with that have certain lives

01:40:16.520 | and their vacations that are spectacular

01:40:18.660 | relative to the ones that one typically has.

01:40:22.980 | I'd like to talk about this notion of social comparison

01:40:26.220 | as a function of place.

01:40:28.740 | We can touch on some major cities.

01:40:30.060 | We were doing this before we started recording.

01:40:31.780 | It's kind of fun to do.

01:40:32.660 | Like in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley area where I grew up,

01:40:38.580 | it seems like there's a high value placed

01:40:43.260 | on the people who managed to do things

01:40:45.900 | that wick out to the entire world,

01:40:48.420 | the building of companies or technologies

01:40:50.340 | that go everywhere.

01:40:52.180 | It's not just because of Facebook and Instagram,

01:40:54.140 | it's also because of biotech,

01:40:56.100 | it's because of all sorts of things.

01:40:58.140 | Apple, right?

01:40:59.100 | I mean, there's a whole history of that.

01:41:01.820 | What would you say for like New York City?

01:41:03.940 | What is the dominant message

01:41:05.700 | that's being pumped into the psyche of New Yorkers?

01:41:09.060 | And by the way, I love New York City,

01:41:11.220 | but it'd be fun to play this game a little bit

01:41:12.820 | as an example and then we'll then wick it out

01:41:15.460 | to people regardless of where they live in the world.

01:41:17.980 | - Well, this is one of those things

01:41:18.820 | where what is so good and beneficial for society

01:41:22.060 | is what makes individuals miserable.

01:41:24.580 | So I think, what is the message here in Los Angeles

01:41:27.180 | or in New York or any other big city?

01:41:29.620 | San Francisco, the message is waking up in the morning

01:41:31.980 | and feeling inadequate because you are surrounded

01:41:33.780 | by people who at least look like they're doing better

01:41:35.540 | than you and you say, I have to chase that person,

01:41:38.140 | I have to get what they have.

01:41:39.140 | That is great for society.

01:41:40.260 | That's where we get new technologies,

01:41:41.460 | new innovations and growth.

01:41:43.020 | The individual level, it's very difficult.

01:41:45.060 | I grew up out in the woods in Lake Tahoe.

01:41:47.740 | And in that region, if you are a dentist,

01:41:50.700 | let's say you are on top of the world,

01:41:52.580 | you are the richest guy in town,

01:41:54.060 | everybody looked up to you,

01:41:55.060 | you had the nicest house, the nicest car.

01:41:57.100 | If you are a family dentist here in Los Angeles,

01:42:00.100 | you don't stick out whatsoever.

01:42:01.260 | You might feel like you are so far behind

01:42:03.380 | 'cause you're surrounded by legitimate billionaires.

01:42:06.340 | And so I think it's interesting to ask,

01:42:08.460 | is a dentist happier in Lake Tahoe or here?

01:42:10.780 | I think it's probably in Lake Tahoe

01:42:12.340 | because your comparison group is so much less,

01:42:14.540 | especially back in the pre-social media days.

01:42:16.740 | The states that are statistically the happiest

01:42:18.660 | in the United States, it's not for cities,

01:42:21.460 | it's not Los Angeles, it's not New York.

01:42:23.100 | It tends to be in the Midwest where wonderful places,

01:42:26.260 | whatnot, but less competitive

01:42:27.740 | than the grind of the big cities.

01:42:29.980 | And so, but that's where,

01:42:32.020 | at the individual, where are you happiest?

01:42:33.900 | It's where you have less comparison,

01:42:35.340 | but for society, what is better?

01:42:36.900 | It's when you have a huge competition for getting ahead.

01:42:40.700 | So I don't know where I come down on that

01:42:42.820 | of like where I would wanna be.

01:42:44.220 | Of course, I wanna be happy as an individual,

01:42:46.180 | but I wanna live in a society that is moving ahead.

01:42:49.180 | And the reason it's moving ahead

01:42:50.340 | is because most people wake up feeling inadequate.

01:42:52.940 | - You grew up in Tahoe?

01:42:54.060 | - Yeah.

01:42:54.900 | - I love Lake Tahoe, but can I ask you,

01:42:58.100 | did you grow up being competitive

01:43:00.340 | or thinking about how well people skied or snowboarded?

01:43:03.740 | - Yes, absolutely.

01:43:04.860 | It was also, I lived in Tahoe pre tech money.

01:43:07.100 | It's very different now

01:43:07.980 | 'cause so much Bay Area tech money just flooded into it.

01:43:10.220 | It's its own little Hamptons now.

01:43:12.300 | But back in the day, it was,

01:43:14.020 | I felt like when I grew up,

01:43:15.420 | normal people drove old pickup trucks

01:43:18.300 | and rich people drove new pickup trucks.

01:43:20.020 | That was the difference between rich and poor.

01:43:22.540 | And both in a city like Los Angeles and New York

01:43:25.660 | and in a social media world,

01:43:26.900 | especially it's normal people drive Honda Civics

01:43:29.420 | and rich people have private jets.

01:43:30.940 | Like the stratification between them

01:43:32.660 | is just blown so far out of proportion.

01:43:35.180 | I see this with my nine-year-old son,

01:43:36.980 | who like a lot of kids watches Mr. Beast,

01:43:39.220 | who I think is great.

01:43:40.060 | I think he's an awesome, awesome guy,

01:43:41.900 | but it's completely warped my son's sense of money.

01:43:44.620 | 'Cause Mr. Beast will be like,

01:43:45.540 | "Oh, keep your hand on the table

01:43:47.740 | "and the last person with their hand wins a million dollars."

01:43:50.780 | It's like, if that's your sense of money,

01:43:52.580 | it's completely warped and skewed.

01:43:55.220 | And so, look, it's a tough way to live.

01:43:58.540 | And I think the more of that angst that people have

01:44:02.140 | of I'm inadequate, I need to get ahead,

01:44:03.700 | the better society is gonna be,

01:44:05.260 | the more technology we're gonna have.

01:44:07.340 | Great example of this is,

01:44:08.940 | what decades were the most technologically innovative?

01:44:12.620 | By far, it's not even close.

01:44:15.020 | It was 1930s, the Great Depression

01:44:16.860 | and the 1940s, World War II.

01:44:18.660 | When society was on fire,

01:44:20.700 | that's when every business, every scientist,

01:44:22.820 | every entrepreneur woke up every morning and said,

01:44:24.540 | "I need to figure this out right now, today, immediately."

01:44:27.860 | During the Great Depression, if you were a business owner,

01:44:29.700 | it was, if I don't figure out a way

01:44:31.300 | to become more efficient, I'm bankrupt tomorrow.

01:44:33.660 | So that was the birth of a lot of the assembly lines.

01:44:36.020 | It was the birth of the grocery store,

01:44:37.460 | the birth of the laundromat.

01:44:38.580 | Every business got more,

01:44:39.860 | just better at what they do.

01:44:43.260 | And the ones that didn't went out of business immediately.

01:44:45.540 | World War II was, if we don't figure out new technologies,

01:44:49.380 | we're gonna lose everything.

01:44:52.380 | Hitler's gonna control the planet.

01:44:53.540 | So that was nuclear energy, radar, jets,

01:44:56.460 | go on down the list of things that we benefit from today,

01:44:59.100 | happened because of that social angst that we had back then.

01:45:02.540 | And so I think there's so much evidence

01:45:04.300 | that society progresses when things are a little bit on fire,

01:45:06.820 | not too much on fire,

01:45:08.060 | 'cause then you just get overwhelmed with it.

01:45:09.660 | But if you have a little bit of angst of,

01:45:11.740 | "I need to wake up, I need to do this."

01:45:13.980 | And when societies become fat and happy and decadent,

01:45:16.900 | or when companies do this,

01:45:18.620 | companies that just are minting money,

01:45:20.340 | and there's no pressure on it,

01:45:21.860 | they have more money than they know what to do with.

01:45:23.780 | That's the downfall of a lot of companies,

01:45:25.540 | Sears, IBM, Intel, Boeing,

01:45:28.420 | who are either not around

01:45:30.100 | or are shells of their former selves.

01:45:31.540 | I think you can tie a lot of that

01:45:32.740 | to the success that they had in the past

01:45:34.340 | when there was no pressure to innovate and get ahead.

01:45:37.100 | It was just a culture of,

01:45:38.300 | "We have so much lying around here

01:45:39.740 | that we can do anything that we want."

01:45:41.340 | I had a guy tell me one time, he said,

01:45:43.860 | "Every business should have a little bit of debt,

01:45:46.700 | because it keeps you in check,

01:45:47.940 | keeps your ambitions in line of waking up and being like,

01:45:50.140 | 'No, I have to succeed this year

01:45:52.180 | because we have debt to pay off.'"

01:45:53.420 | And when you have too much freedom

01:45:55.780 | and a little bit too much autonomy,

01:45:57.220 | you have a higher chance of just letting it slip away.

01:45:59.860 | What made you great when you were young

01:46:02.180 | and poor and broke and hungry

01:46:04.420 | slips away when the wealthier you become.

01:46:06.980 | - Tell me what you think of this mental exercise.

01:46:09.940 | As you're describing this to me,

01:46:11.100 | I'm thinking about how at different stages of my career,

01:46:15.100 | first academic science, and I still teach,

01:46:17.500 | but I shut down my animal lab,

01:46:19.380 | I'm still involved in some human research,

01:46:21.180 | but mainly focused on the podcast these days.

01:46:23.660 | I can look to different things around me

01:46:29.380 | that were the forces pulling on me.

01:46:31.660 | I like to think in terms of carrot and stick.

01:46:33.980 | You know, for those that don't know what that is,

01:46:35.500 | 'cause we have a lot of listeners from outside the US,

01:46:37.260 | carrot is the thing you're working towards,

01:46:39.300 | the enticing thing, the reward,

01:46:40.980 | stick is the punishment, carrot and stick.

01:46:43.480 | Because frankly, that's how the brain works,

01:46:46.140 | carrot and stick, right?

01:46:49.220 | And a lot of what we're talking about today

01:46:50.740 | is carrot and sticks of different sizes,

01:46:53.680 | different types, et cetera.

01:46:55.020 | For every stage of my career,

01:46:58.140 | graduate student, postdoc, professor before tenure,

01:47:02.180 | professor after getting tenure,

01:47:03.580 | it's kind of interesting concept.

01:47:04.620 | People think of it as job for life,

01:47:05.860 | but it's really academic freedom,

01:47:07.540 | and you're still on the fundraising treadmill,

01:47:09.740 | or even as a podcaster.

01:47:11.500 | You know, what the force was inside me,

01:47:14.740 | and I'm not trying to make this about me,

01:47:16.260 | I just can, I know that there are different people

01:47:18.740 | that I'm trying to satisfy.

01:47:20.280 | And of course, satisfy my own curiosity and intellect,

01:47:24.300 | but there are forces, there's the,

01:47:26.060 | I'm part of a group, I'm part of a team here,

01:47:27.820 | I can't let them down.

01:47:29.140 | So it doesn't matter how well I slept last night,

01:47:31.060 | I happened to sleep pretty well last night,

01:47:32.580 | but it doesn't matter, I got to show up,

01:47:35.020 | got to suit up and show up, as they say.

01:47:37.020 | Do you think it's worthwhile for people to stop

01:47:41.580 | wherever they are in their life arc,

01:47:43.800 | and just think about like,

01:47:44.780 | where are these forces pulling us,

01:47:47.900 | the carrots and the sticks?

01:47:49.620 | Because I think therein lies a lot of information.

01:47:52.740 | Are you working for an expectation that you need to fulfill

01:47:57.060 | because you did it before?

01:47:58.400 | I sometimes think about professional athletes,

01:48:00.940 | they sometimes have a shorter professional life

01:48:03.300 | than in other careers,

01:48:04.380 | because just physical capabilities give way.

01:48:07.040 | But you know, like what drives them?

01:48:09.180 | I often want to know like, what pulls them?

01:48:11.780 | Like, where do they feel obligated?

01:48:14.260 | Where, you know, not just, you know, what the drive is,

01:48:17.020 | but where do they feel obligated?

01:48:18.280 | Where do they feel like kind of pulled?

01:48:19.820 | Is it to the general public?

01:48:20.940 | Is it their parents?

01:48:21.820 | Is it their bank account?

01:48:23.620 | Is it the fear that they're going to have to retire

01:48:25.700 | at some point?

01:48:26.540 | Do you ever think about this kind of stuff?

01:48:27.380 | - I think a lot of it is tied to your identity

01:48:29.060 | of just who do you see in the mirror

01:48:30.700 | when you wake up every morning.

01:48:31.780 | And if your identity is, I'm a professional athlete,

01:48:34.500 | if your identity is, I'm a podcaster,

01:48:36.380 | I am a rich person, whatever it might be,

01:48:38.680 | then that's what's pulling you.

01:48:40.060 | It's that source of your identity.

01:48:41.700 | So this gets back to the Paul Graham idea

01:48:43.300 | of keep your identity small.

01:48:44.980 | I think he meant it mainly in the context of politics,

01:48:48.060 | of politics can just poison your identity

01:48:50.020 | and it really affects your thinking.

01:48:52.060 | But keeping your identity small for a lot of things,

01:48:53.960 | I think, is a great point of view.

01:48:55.620 | The more you look in the mirror and say, I am a blank,

01:48:58.540 | doesn't matter what that is.

01:48:59.540 | I'm a professor, I'm an author, whatever it is.

01:49:02.100 | It's hard to give that up 'cause it's part of your identity.

01:49:04.500 | I saw this with my own dad who was,

01:49:06.780 | he was a doctor and he retired

01:49:08.860 | and he went back to work a year later.

01:49:10.380 | 'Cause I think at least part of it was

01:49:12.800 | when he looked in the mirror,

01:49:13.860 | he had to say, I am a doctor, that was his identity.

01:49:16.180 | And when he retired, he couldn't say that anymore

01:49:18.060 | and it drove him crazy.

01:49:19.340 | I think it's true for a lot of people.

01:49:20.820 | Now that could be great.

01:49:21.780 | For him, it was great.

01:49:22.800 | And I think for me, my identity,

01:49:24.500 | I think my core identity is I'm a father, I'm a husband,

01:49:27.820 | I hope to be a friend, but then maybe it's I'm an author.

01:49:31.060 | And if I had to give that up, it might sting a little bit.

01:49:33.420 | It's not maybe the core of my identity,

01:49:34.940 | but it's right there.

01:49:36.140 | And I think for a lot of people, if you're successful,

01:49:38.320 | core to their identity is I'm a person

01:49:40.300 | who makes a lot of money.

01:49:41.260 | I'm a person who makes X dollars per year.

01:49:43.620 | And they're unable to give that up.

01:49:45.100 | And that again, I think if we're talking about money,

01:49:47.500 | that's when money becomes a liability

01:49:49.060 | is when it's ingrained in your identity

01:49:50.660 | and it's controlling you.

01:49:51.700 | You're not using it as a tool.

01:49:53.300 | It's using you as its little marionette doll

01:49:55.920 | to control you every day.

01:49:57.900 | And I think that's when a lot of people go astray

01:50:00.980 | with their happiness with money

01:50:02.100 | is when it starts controlling them

01:50:03.320 | because it's so core to who they see in the mirror every day.

01:50:06.540 | - Yeah, that's like that cartoon of the person standing

01:50:08.620 | with a little cage in front of their face.

01:50:10.420 | Like they're giving up freedom

01:50:12.200 | by virtue of some mental construct.

01:50:14.060 | - Right.

01:50:15.060 | - I wonder if perhaps even better than Paul's idea

01:50:20.060 | of shrinking one's identity to make it operational

01:50:24.220 | and make it verb based.

01:50:25.820 | Because it's one thing to say,

01:50:27.020 | I'm going to not use my professional title

01:50:29.180 | of podcaster, professor, author, doctor.

01:50:32.900 | But if one gets to the verb function

01:50:35.260 | that drove the pursuit of things in the first place.

01:50:37.860 | - I enjoy doing this.

01:50:39.060 | - I'm a curious person.

01:50:40.260 | I seem to mention him all the time

01:50:44.000 | and I'm just going to do it 'cause it's my podcast.

01:50:47.180 | Rick Rubin's a close friend

01:50:50.280 | and I feel so lucky for that friendship.

01:50:52.180 | Of course, I love the music he's produced

01:50:54.080 | but that's not why I love the friendship.

01:50:55.440 | I happen to just really think Rick's a great guy.

01:50:57.400 | But because he's so verb and action based,

01:51:00.360 | it's about almost everything Rick talks about

01:51:02.840 | in terms of creativity and productivity

01:51:04.400 | is about discarding with titles

01:51:05.920 | and concepts of who you were before

01:51:07.720 | and just being in the verb state

01:51:09.320 | of wherever you happen to be at that point in your life

01:51:11.640 | and creating offerings.

01:51:13.080 | And he actually likes to remove the concept of an audience.

01:51:18.840 | He actually talks about this is your offering to God

01:51:21.960 | and the audience may or may not like it.

01:51:24.480 | But that in his words is the way to frame it

01:51:28.040 | because otherwise you end up trying to satisfy people.

01:51:30.720 | And then you're no longer in the process

01:51:32.400 | of exploring your curiosity or creativity.

01:51:36.200 | So yeah, I've decided at this moment

01:51:38.560 | and I'll make it, I'll put it on record

01:51:40.580 | that I'm not going to think of myself as a podcaster.

01:51:42.520 | I mean, I did a lot of things.

01:51:43.440 | I did, you know, pursued skateboarding,

01:51:44.920 | pursued, you know, tropical fish tanks,

01:51:47.000 | pursued, you know, science and research sciences,

01:51:51.000 | teaching, which, you know, and then this,

01:51:52.560 | public education and podcasting.

01:51:54.380 | I fully expect that in five to 10 years

01:51:56.560 | I'll be doing something completely different

01:51:58.200 | but it'll still be attached to the verb state

01:52:00.640 | that drove every single one of those professions

01:52:03.280 | or every single one of those pursuits.

01:52:05.700 | Because as Rick's taught me,

01:52:07.320 | it's the energy that you need to continue to tap into

01:52:10.380 | that is self-rewarding.

01:52:11.360 | The feelings of delight, of friction,

01:52:13.740 | and then release when you solve a problem.

01:52:16.040 | It's not really about the profession or the title

01:52:18.440 | or even the resources that come from that.

01:52:21.360 | But that in fact, the greatest resources,

01:52:23.720 | in particular financial resources,

01:52:25.140 | coming from identifying the verb state

01:52:27.400 | of being in pursuit of something that's truly unique to you.

01:52:31.400 | And that changes over time.

01:52:33.060 | I'm always amazed at these examples like the Warren Buffetts

01:52:36.240 | and these people have been investing their whole life.

01:52:38.200 | You pointed this out in your book

01:52:39.400 | that one of the fundamental things

01:52:42.240 | about Buffett being so successful

01:52:43.640 | is that he's had a lot of time investing.

01:52:46.240 | - He's been doing it since he was 11 and he's 93.

01:52:48.140 | - Right, it doesn't seem like he needs another venue.

01:52:51.580 | It seems like he's got it dialed.

01:52:53.040 | That's his venue.

01:52:53.880 | If he were a golfer, he'd be golfing at 93.

01:52:57.040 | - Yeah, he's doing it because he loves to do it.

01:52:59.320 | I think it's true for me as a writer,

01:53:00.980 | what's always been the case.

01:53:02.000 | I wonder if this, I think this might really apply

01:53:05.560 | to your own career.

01:53:06.680 | I've always written for an audience of one, which is myself.

01:53:09.280 | I just wanna write things that I think are interesting.

01:53:11.520 | I wanna write stories that I find appealing.

01:53:13.480 | I wanna write it in a style that I would enjoy reading.

01:53:16.020 | And I don't care that much

01:53:18.000 | about the audience who might read it.

01:53:20.100 | Of course, I want them to read it

01:53:21.560 | and maybe buy the books and enjoy it,

01:53:22.840 | but I'm writing for myself.

01:53:23.960 | And I think you always do your best work when you do that,

01:53:26.280 | if you're writing or producing a podcast

01:53:28.040 | for an audience of one, which is you.

01:53:29.640 | And so I think if you're doing it otherwise,

01:53:32.760 | it's performative and people do much worse work.

01:53:35.640 | They're much less creative.

01:53:36.540 | They're much less enjoyable when it's performative.

01:53:38.680 | When you start off by asking,

01:53:40.360 | what does the audience wanna hear or see?

01:53:42.520 | And let's do that. - Yeah, that never works.

01:53:43.880 | - But that's what most people do.

01:53:45.000 | And even what does every writing 101 teacher

01:53:47.200 | teach their students?

01:53:48.040 | Know your audience.

01:53:48.920 | I don't think it's good advice

01:53:50.800 | because know your audience very quickly

01:53:53.000 | becomes pander to your audience.

01:53:54.840 | Not just as writers, but in any form of work that you do,

01:53:57.200 | pandering to your boss, pandering to your quarterly metrics,

01:53:59.540 | whatever that might be.

01:54:00.720 | You're always gonna do your best work

01:54:02.020 | if you have the independence and the autonomy

01:54:04.360 | to have an audience of one, which is yourself.

01:54:06.840 | Brian Chesky of Airbnb talks about this.

01:54:08.640 | He's like, "Don't build a product that 1,000 people like.

01:54:11.580 | "Build a product that 100 people love

01:54:13.340 | "or that one person you love and use it."

01:54:15.800 | That's when you're gonna always do your best work.

01:54:17.600 | You're not trying to manage a product or a book

01:54:20.480 | or a podcast towards some metric or goal.

01:54:22.700 | You're doing it 'cause you love doing it.

01:54:24.200 | Much easier said than done for a lot of careers

01:54:26.080 | because if you're working for a company,

01:54:27.440 | you do have metrics you have to follow.

01:54:29.040 | You do have formulas and policies you have to follow.

01:54:31.560 | So it's not that everyone can do this,

01:54:32.980 | but it's unavoidable that you're always gonna do

01:54:35.580 | your best work when it's yours

01:54:37.300 | and you're doing it for yourself,

01:54:38.380 | not because you're trying to reach some metric.

01:54:40.880 | - I guess the phrase, you know, be a lifer.

01:54:43.820 | I used to think that meant,

01:54:45.100 | if you were a musician, stay a musician.

01:54:46.880 | If you're in finance, stay in finance.

01:54:48.500 | But I think now I'm gonna revise that to,

01:54:51.340 | one wants to be a lifer at tapping into the energy

01:54:55.740 | of pursuing things that are really meaningful to them

01:54:58.020 | in that moment, in that phase of life.

01:55:01.500 | 'Cause it's so different.

01:55:02.340 | I mean, when I was a kid,

01:55:03.200 | I was obsessed with fish tanks and tropical birds

01:55:05.060 | and then skateboarding, punk rock music.

01:55:06.820 | And it changed.

01:55:07.660 | I mean, the venue changed,

01:55:09.220 | but we don't really change as in terms of identity

01:55:12.560 | very much, right?

01:55:13.780 | These professions and these bank accounts,

01:55:16.000 | and we don't actually,

01:55:17.980 | we're not fundamentally changed by them.

01:55:20.800 | It's really a bunch of verb states that drive all this.

01:55:24.320 | - And I actually hope that in 20 years,

01:55:25.680 | I'm doing something different,

01:55:26.600 | that I'm not writing about the same topic.

01:55:28.360 | So maybe I hope I'm still writing and thinking

01:55:30.560 | and reading and learning.

01:55:32.100 | But if you're always doing the same thing,

01:55:33.380 | I think someone like Buffett is an incredibly oddball,

01:55:36.380 | rare bird who's been doing the same thing for 80 years

01:55:38.540 | and loves it.

01:55:39.380 | Like I wanna grow and adapt and evolve in what I'm doing.

01:55:42.360 | But if something becomes core to your identity,

01:55:44.600 | then it's hard to release that and let go.

01:55:46.760 | You feel like you have to keep doing it

01:55:48.240 | even when it's not that fun anymore.

01:55:49.680 | And you're not getting the dopamine rush

01:55:51.880 | of trying something new.

01:55:53.360 | You're attached to something,

01:55:54.580 | you keep being a lawyer or whatever it might be,

01:55:56.520 | because that's your identity,

01:55:57.720 | even when you don't like it anymore.

01:56:00.160 | - Think about Michael Jordan playing baseball,

01:56:02.800 | which he did for a little while.

01:56:03.800 | He wanted to play professional baseball.

01:56:06.640 | So he gave himself the shot.

01:56:08.300 | I think it's awesome,

01:56:09.140 | even though it didn't turn out as well

01:56:10.120 | as basketball turned out for him.

01:56:12.240 | Because it just reflected his inherently competitive,

01:56:16.360 | high-performance nature.

01:56:17.960 | - I had to keep doing something.

01:56:18.800 | Or Bezos, so I keep bringing it up.

01:56:20.360 | But you build the biggest,

01:56:22.140 | most successful company in the world, Amazon.

01:56:23.840 | What do you do in your retirement?

01:56:25.280 | You start a rocket company kind of thing.

01:56:27.380 | Maybe he did, I don't know this,

01:56:29.840 | I don't wanna put words in his mouth.

01:56:30.720 | Maybe he did get a little bit bored with Amazon.

01:56:32.800 | And it was, he needed to do something else.

01:56:34.720 | But he's not gonna retire.

01:56:35.560 | He's not gonna play golf.

01:56:36.380 | He's not gonna sit on his boat.

01:56:37.280 | He's gonna go build another company.

01:56:38.960 | Always have to be doing something,

01:56:39.940 | even if it's growing and adapting.

01:56:41.640 | - You're working on a new book.

01:56:45.200 | And I eagerly anticipate the release of that new book.

01:56:48.600 | When's it coming out?

01:56:49.640 | - September, 2025.

01:56:50.960 | - Okay, so we got a little while to wait.

01:56:52.960 | Are you willing to share a few things

01:56:55.840 | that you're thinking about,

01:56:57.000 | or that we might expect to see in that book?

01:57:01.400 | - Yeah, I think there are pieces of the book

01:57:03.120 | that you and I have talked about today.

01:57:04.720 | The book is called "The Art of Spending Money."

01:57:06.560 | And I make a point of,

01:57:07.840 | the book is not called "The Science of Spending Money,"

01:57:10.020 | because spending money is not a science.

01:57:11.920 | It's not something where you can say,

01:57:12.880 | "Here's the formula that works for everybody."

01:57:15.080 | It's an art.

01:57:15.920 | And what is an art?

01:57:16.760 | It is different for everybody.

01:57:17.640 | It's subjective.

01:57:18.720 | It's often contradictory.

01:57:20.040 | And I think that's what an appropriate way

01:57:22.500 | to spend money should be.

01:57:23.840 | So at no point in the book do I say,

01:57:25.880 | "Here's how you should spend your money,"

01:57:27.400 | 'cause I don't think anybody can accurately do that

01:57:29.160 | for a broad audience.

01:57:30.420 | It's a look at the psychology of envy,

01:57:33.280 | of keeping up with the Joneses,

01:57:34.800 | of social aspiration,

01:57:36.280 | of identity that we've been talking about,

01:57:38.320 | managing money and kids,

01:57:40.360 | of being jealous of other people,

01:57:42.520 | of wanting to get attention for yourself.

01:57:44.480 | It's a look at the psychology of that

01:57:46.360 | without offering any firm, concrete advice,

01:57:48.840 | which I would say a lot of people don't like that.

01:57:50.600 | A lot of people are like,

01:57:51.440 | "Well, just tell me what to do."

01:57:52.920 | But I try to make a point in the beginning,

01:57:54.680 | same with my first book, "Psychology of Money,"

01:57:56.240 | of I can't tell you what to do 'cause I don't know you.

01:57:58.640 | And what's right for you is gonna be

01:58:00.280 | maybe not right for me.

01:58:01.720 | You have to figure it out for yourself,

01:58:02.920 | but I can tell you what's probably going through your head

01:58:04.760 | as you're going on that journey.

01:58:06.360 | I can tell you about the psychological pitfalls

01:58:08.880 | and challenges and advice that is psychological.

01:58:12.960 | It's not what you should do,

01:58:13.920 | but here's how most people

01:58:15.280 | and why most people fall for envy

01:58:17.320 | and why if you understand the mechanics of envy,

01:58:19.360 | how silly it can be.

01:58:20.800 | That's what the book dives into.

01:58:24.000 | - In a lot of ways,

01:58:24.840 | what sounds like you're describing

01:58:26.480 | is kind of identifying the sources of self-seduction

01:58:31.480 | where we, by virtue of social media

01:58:36.480 | or just by virtue of being human,

01:58:38.140 | we compare what we have to see if it really is what it is.

01:58:41.860 | You would think that we would be pretty good as a species

01:58:46.960 | at just experiencing things,

01:58:49.160 | kind of like the dog sitting next to the lake.

01:58:50.920 | Given that we can understand that we have this propensity

01:58:53.480 | to compare and to regret things of past,

01:58:57.760 | but not be able to anticipate future regret.

01:58:59.600 | You'd think we would be better at that,

01:59:01.560 | but clearly we're not.

01:59:02.520 | - Well, I guess this gets back to basic evolution.

01:59:04.520 | Evolution doesn't care if you're happy.

01:59:05.760 | It cares that you reproduce and you grow over time.

01:59:07.920 | That's what it's maximizing for.

01:59:09.660 | It doesn't really care

01:59:10.500 | whether you're having a good time during the process.

01:59:12.040 | - Make more of yourself and take care of the young

01:59:13.880 | and then you're dispensable.

01:59:15.160 | - Keep going.

01:59:15.980 | Louis C.K. says more of me.

01:59:16.840 | That's what we're trying to do.

01:59:18.380 | And whether you're happy or not

01:59:20.160 | doesn't really play into the situation

01:59:21.720 | and actually might reward the person

01:59:23.320 | who is gaining a ton of resources,

01:59:25.840 | even if they're miserable in the process,

01:59:27.360 | who's making a ton of money in the process,

01:59:29.040 | even if they wake up miserable every morning,

01:59:30.720 | they're getting a lot of resources

01:59:31.880 | that might increase their fitness over time.

01:59:34.480 | Happiness doesn't play much of a role.

01:59:36.120 | - Do you think birth rates are going down

01:59:37.840 | because people feel that they have to use more

01:59:42.840 | of what they earn for themselves

01:59:45.920 | or that it's harder to establish a relationship

01:59:48.680 | to money and resources that makes them feel capable

01:59:52.040 | of taking care of others?

01:59:53.380 | - I think it's so complex.

01:59:55.320 | It doesn't lead to simple answers,

01:59:56.880 | but I think there is a lot of evidence

01:59:58.080 | that what happens, why societies all over the world,

02:00:01.080 | this has always been the case,

02:00:02.040 | have fewer kids when they become wealthier

02:00:03.800 | is because their expectations for those kids go up.

02:00:06.640 | So if you're living in a poor society,

02:00:09.120 | poor economy, or during a poor era,

02:00:11.160 | you could have 10 kids

02:00:12.200 | because you knew all 10 of those kids,

02:00:14.080 | or at least the ones who survived

02:00:15.440 | were gonna become farmers.

02:00:16.360 | That's what they were gonna do.

02:00:17.640 | And that was their only hope.

02:00:19.280 | That was all they could do.

02:00:20.360 | And you didn't need to provide a lot of resources for them.

02:00:22.240 | If I give them basic food and shelter and clothes,

02:00:24.360 | that's all they need to become a farmer.

02:00:26.300 | And I think if you fast forward to today's economy,

02:00:28.680 | the expectations are so much higher.

02:00:31.320 | You want your kid to become a PhD,

02:00:33.080 | to become an astronaut,

02:00:33.920 | become a hedge fund, whatever it might be.

02:00:35.680 | And there, because of that,

02:00:37.040 | you need to provide so much more resources for that kid.

02:00:39.840 | I need to foster their growth and development

02:00:42.480 | from the time that they are infants

02:00:44.280 | and provide them tutors and afterschool activities

02:00:46.800 | and maybe send them to private school

02:00:48.200 | and definitely send them to a college,

02:00:49.460 | which is gonna cost a fortune.

02:00:51.120 | Because the expectations for what you need to provide

02:00:53.360 | are so much higher,

02:00:54.960 | you feel like you can only provide that

02:00:56.320 | to maybe one, maybe two kids,

02:00:58.220 | which would have been a couple of generations ago,

02:01:00.700 | three or four kids.

02:01:01.840 | And a couple of generations before that, 10 kids.

02:01:04.400 | There's also a very grim statistic about it used to be,

02:01:06.840 | why do people used to have 10 kids?

02:01:08.320 | Because six of them died before they were five.

02:01:10.720 | And so if you needed those hands on the farm,

02:01:13.640 | you needed to have a lot of kids

02:01:14.880 | to make sure you had a lot of teenagers

02:01:16.180 | who could help you one day.

02:01:17.160 | And so I think we're blessed to now live in a world

02:01:19.560 | where thankfully the infant mortality rate

02:01:21.600 | has collapsed so much

02:01:22.920 | that we don't need to play that lottery game

02:01:24.880 | that we used to.

02:01:25.720 | - What are you teaching your kids about money?

02:01:29.700 | And at what age should we start to do that?

02:01:32.200 | And for those listening who don't have kids,

02:01:34.920 | I suppose it's never too late to learn.

02:01:36.720 | - I think one of the points I always make

02:01:38.360 | that I've learned the hard way, parenting,

02:01:41.000 | is I don't think you need to sit your kids down

02:01:44.040 | and teach them about money

02:01:45.040 | 'cause they're paying attention whether you know it or not.

02:01:47.300 | Kids are so incredibly good at learning.

02:01:49.940 | They're better at learning than adults are,

02:01:52.300 | particularly for things like language and whatnot.

02:01:54.260 | But you don't need to sit your kids down and say,

02:01:56.700 | "This is how much we spend, and this is what we value,

02:01:58.880 | "and this is why I save."

02:01:59.980 | They're paying attention, they're figuring it out.

02:02:02.100 | Every time they hear you say, "I can't afford this."

02:02:04.820 | Every time we're at the store and they say,

02:02:06.580 | "Oh, look, this is on sale, let's get two of these."

02:02:08.780 | They're making a mental note of everything.

02:02:10.740 | Every time they hear you bicker about work,

02:02:12.740 | every time they hear you talk about a raise,

02:02:14.340 | even if it's just in the next room,

02:02:16.140 | they're piecing it all together.

02:02:17.360 | And I don't think they even know it,

02:02:18.660 | but they're so good at learning

02:02:19.720 | that they're building a mental model.

02:02:21.240 | And so even if you never sit your kids down and teach them,

02:02:24.000 | by the time, certainly they're teenagers,

02:02:25.760 | they know a lot about money.

02:02:27.640 | And maybe some of those things are good,

02:02:29.680 | maybe some is bad, but they're paying attention.

02:02:31.200 | And so I think the only thing you can do as a kid,

02:02:33.640 | or as a parent, I should say, is to lead by example.

02:02:36.320 | 'Cause we talked about this earlier,

02:02:37.680 | the propensity to rebel as a kid, as a teenager.

02:02:40.960 | You talked about the smoking ads

02:02:42.080 | where they just wanted to do the opposite

02:02:43.680 | of what everyone else is doing.

02:02:45.060 | I think particularly for teenagers, which I don't have yet,

02:02:47.760 | but if you sit them down and say,

02:02:49.380 | this is what you should do.

02:02:50.540 | You should always do this, you should never do that.

02:02:52.460 | Their propensity to rebel is enormous.

02:02:54.980 | So I think, I shouldn't think it can backfire

02:02:56.620 | if you try to teach them.

02:02:57.580 | I think the best you can do,

02:02:58.540 | the only thing you can do is lead by example with people.

02:03:01.420 | One thing that a lot of, not just very wealthy people,

02:03:04.220 | but moderately wealthy people will say is,

02:03:06.340 | or ask is, how do I teach my kids

02:03:08.540 | about money without spoiling them?

02:03:09.660 | How do I use my money to help my kids without spoiling them?

02:03:12.660 | That's a big topic for a lot of people.

02:03:14.240 | Even if you're like a middle-class family,

02:03:16.640 | how do I leave a small inheritance or help my kids?

02:03:20.080 | Should I buy them a new car

02:03:21.080 | or should I help them through college?

02:03:22.680 | I think a big thing that is easy to overlook is two things.

02:03:26.600 | You might think as a parent

02:03:27.720 | that you are teaching your kid grit and independence

02:03:31.040 | by withholding resources from them.

02:03:34.080 | And you're doing it very well intentioned.

02:03:35.680 | You need to earn your iron, my money, and this is mine.

02:03:37.880 | You gotta go figure out your own.

02:03:39.440 | I think it is very easy to overlook

02:03:42.240 | that you are not teaching your kid independence and grit.

02:03:44.920 | You're teaching them to resent you.

02:03:46.800 | And I have a good friend, Chris Davis, who told the story.

02:03:49.200 | Now, he's an extreme example.

02:03:50.340 | Chris Davis's grandfather is Shelby Davis,

02:03:52.600 | who was a billionaire investor,

02:03:53.880 | one of the greatest investors of all time.

02:03:55.920 | And Chris tells a story that when he was a kid

02:03:58.320 | and his grandfather took him skiing,

02:04:00.280 | his grandfather would say,

02:04:01.760 | "If you want me to buy you a Lyft ticket,

02:04:03.400 | "you need to hike up the hill first and ski down,

02:04:05.980 | "hike to the top.

02:04:06.960 | "And if you do that, then I'll buy you a Lyft ticket."

02:04:09.240 | And Chris said, the lesson that they learned from that

02:04:12.920 | was not grit and independence and hard work.

02:04:15.600 | The lesson they learned from it

02:04:16.680 | was grandpa's kind of a jerk sometimes.

02:04:19.040 | And I think that's an extreme example,

02:04:20.800 | but you see that a lot with kids.

02:04:22.480 | One like very practical takeaway from this

02:04:24.280 | is that I think as a parent,

02:04:25.640 | you have to live the same lifestyle as your kids.

02:04:27.920 | It's very difficult to say mom and dad fly first class,

02:04:30.360 | but you're back in coach.

02:04:31.360 | - Does anyone actually do that?

02:04:32.640 | - Oh, absolutely.

02:04:33.880 | And maybe that's still a very extreme example,

02:04:37.580 | but you think as a parent that the kid is learning is,

02:04:41.040 | "Oh, if I work as hard as mom and dad,

02:04:42.940 | "one day I'll be sitting up there."

02:04:44.540 | And they don't.

02:04:45.380 | The lesson they learn is mom and dad

02:04:47.200 | think they are superior to us,

02:04:48.720 | or mom and dad are superior to me.

02:04:50.600 | I'm inferior to them.

02:04:52.120 | I think this is why you see a lot of very wealthy kids

02:04:54.160 | who are just psychologically broken,

02:04:55.920 | because I think you have well-meaning parents

02:04:58.440 | who are like, "Look, we're very wealthy, but you're not.

02:05:00.600 | "You gotta earn your way."

02:05:01.880 | And all the kid hears throughout their life is,

02:05:03.800 | "I'm inferior, I'm inferior, I'm inferior, I'm inferior."

02:05:06.320 | And by the time they become adults,

02:05:08.060 | it's so ingrained into who they are

02:05:09.580 | that they can't take a step forward.

02:05:11.020 | They can't advocate for themselves.

02:05:13.060 | And so, look, that's what the very wealthy deal with,

02:05:15.620 | but I think that's what I think a lot about with kids.

02:05:18.340 | The other thing that every parent

02:05:19.540 | with more than one kid will understand and recognize is,

02:05:23.400 | my two kids could not be more different.

02:05:26.720 | Their personalities, their goals.

02:05:28.380 | Even with the same parents living under the same roof,

02:05:31.220 | they are a million miles apart.

02:05:33.500 | And so, if you say, "What are you teaching your kids?"

02:05:36.220 | I don't know who they're gonna be when they grow up.

02:05:38.700 | I don't know what their goals

02:05:39.540 | or their aspirations are gonna be.

02:05:41.060 | So, is it right for me to tell my daughter like,

02:05:43.480 | "Oh, here's how you can save

02:05:44.960 | "and become super wealthy over time."

02:05:46.500 | What if she doesn't wanna live that life?

02:05:48.100 | What if she does have more of a YOLO personality of like,

02:05:50.220 | "Oh, I just wanna go travel the world.

02:05:51.800 | "I have no aspirations to become super wealthy

02:05:53.780 | "and retire early."

02:05:55.500 | So, you have to let them figure it out for themselves

02:05:57.820 | and realize that what might be right for you

02:06:00.380 | and what may have been right for the era

02:06:02.260 | in which you and I grew up in might not be right for them

02:06:04.980 | and might not fit the era that they grew up in.

02:06:07.820 | - I like this saying,

02:06:09.140 | "None of us know what it's like to be,"

02:06:12.780 | you know, pick an age, "13 years old in 2024."

02:06:15.300 | We think we do because we were 13 years old at one point.

02:06:18.340 | Your earlier descriptions of depriving kids

02:06:22.140 | of the first-class ticket, putting them in coach

02:06:25.580 | and the parents flying in first class,

02:06:28.300 | it makes me realize that we like to think

02:06:31.240 | that those sorts of things will drive integration

02:06:35.120 | of the lesson.

02:06:35.960 | But each one of your examples pointed to the fact

02:06:38.620 | that kids are integrating based on the emotion

02:06:41.320 | they experience at the time.

02:06:42.560 | They're not thinking about the larger lesson.

02:06:44.360 | - No, they're in their moment.

02:06:46.440 | - They're thinking, "I'm hiking up this hill and this sucks."

02:06:49.360 | And they're not piecing together things over time.

02:06:51.760 | Like, "Okay, I'm doing this

02:06:53.080 | "and he's trying to teach me a lesson."

02:06:55.280 | It's really, they're very attached

02:06:57.080 | to their immediate feelings.

02:06:58.200 | - Right, and maybe it would be different

02:06:59.360 | in Chris Davis's example

02:07:00.640 | if the grandpa hiked up the hill with them.

02:07:02.540 | 'Cause then the lesson you're taking is like,

02:07:03.720 | "Oh, we're gonna do this together."

02:07:05.200 | And that is teaching the value of hard work.

02:07:07.160 | "I'm gonna do it with you.

02:07:08.160 | "I'm gonna suffer with you."

02:07:09.440 | So leading by example rather than by humiliation,

02:07:11.960 | I think is the way to do it with kids.

02:07:13.800 | - When I was a kid, my dad used to walk me

02:07:17.640 | to this point along our street

02:07:19.000 | where then he would split off to go to work.

02:07:20.960 | He was a scientist.

02:07:22.120 | He would go to his laboratory

02:07:23.120 | and I'd go off to kindergarten and first grade.

02:07:26.400 | And I remember one day asking him what he did for a living.

02:07:29.920 | And he's a physicist.

02:07:31.760 | And he said, "Well, I'm a physicist."

02:07:33.840 | And I said, "What's that?"

02:07:34.680 | And he explained a little bit about what it was.

02:07:36.720 | And I'll never forget, we still talk about this.

02:07:38.960 | He and I, I'll never forget.

02:07:40.500 | I said, "Do you like it?"

02:07:42.760 | And he said, "Well, you know that feeling

02:07:44.920 | "the night before your birthday?"

02:07:47.240 | I said, "Yeah."

02:07:48.080 | And he said, "I feel like that every day."

02:07:51.160 | And then I think he also said,

02:07:52.440 | and I'm still a little bit murky on this one.

02:07:54.400 | I need to touch base with him about this sometime again soon.

02:07:58.240 | But he said, "Yeah, you don't always get presence.

02:08:00.560 | "It doesn't always work out.

02:08:01.540 | "But the feeling that you might

02:08:03.660 | "or that you're likely going to,

02:08:04.840 | "or there's a possibility, that just feels so good."

02:08:08.440 | And I think I must've internalized that lesson

02:08:10.440 | because what I like is work.

02:08:12.360 | I don't think I'm addicted to work,

02:08:13.560 | although some in my life have accused me of that.

02:08:15.800 | And I'm willing to be open to that possibility.

02:08:17.840 | But it wasn't even really about discovery.

02:08:19.960 | It was about the possibility of discovery.

02:08:22.240 | And so I think in terms of teaching to kids

02:08:25.880 | and teaching to peers and teaching among humans,

02:08:29.700 | getting people to think about the verb states

02:08:34.000 | that really motivate them from the best place

02:08:36.320 | seems to be the kind of general theme

02:08:38.440 | throughout today's discussion and in your book somewhat.

02:08:40.720 | I'm not trying to summarize to find a point here.

02:08:43.240 | But if I may, it seems like,

02:08:45.280 | and what Rick Rubin has said about,

02:08:47.120 | he has this like just supernatural track record

02:08:50.360 | at bringing out the best creative elements in people

02:08:53.560 | from different genres of music.

02:08:54.820 | It seems to be about tapping into these verb states

02:08:57.080 | of like what is the thing that brings out your best

02:09:00.160 | as opposed to thinking about the rewards

02:09:01.640 | that come from that.

02:09:02.960 | But it's hard, right?

02:09:04.360 | We see those numbers.

02:09:05.520 | We see those, the followers, the dollars, et cetera.

02:09:08.000 | We see the metrics of comparison.

02:09:09.740 | It's tough.

02:09:11.200 | There's a work to this that is not obvious.

02:09:13.880 | - I think it will always be like that.

02:09:15.040 | We're never gonna live in a world

02:09:16.600 | where people don't compare themselves to others.

02:09:19.400 | We're never gonna live in a world

02:09:20.440 | where people don't feel inadequate to others

02:09:22.120 | who have more than them.

02:09:23.040 | But back to kids.

02:09:24.320 | I think this is a great place to tie us together.

02:09:27.120 | If you ask most parents, what do you want for your kids?

02:09:29.320 | Most parents will say, I just want them to be happy.

02:09:31.400 | I just hope, I hope they're happy one day.

02:09:33.200 | And then if you said, well, do you hope

02:09:34.760 | that your children are rich and successful?

02:09:37.080 | Parents might say like, yeah, but mainly just happy.

02:09:40.160 | Like, I just want them to be happy.

02:09:41.360 | Regardless of what they're doing.

02:09:42.200 | If they're a kindergarten teacher, I want them to be happy.

02:09:44.580 | And I think the parents themselves say that

02:09:47.320 | because they haven't done that themselves.

02:09:48.760 | Because the parents themselves have chased money

02:09:50.920 | over happiness and they see the downside of it.

02:09:53.600 | And that's very common.

02:09:55.280 | And that's why they say, I hope my kid does this

02:09:58.360 | because I haven't done a good job of that myself.

02:10:00.200 | Because the temptation is to do that,

02:10:01.760 | is to pursue something that's not gonna make you,

02:10:04.080 | is going to make you richer, but not necessarily happier.

02:10:06.680 | Now, that's not an argument against money or working hard,

02:10:09.740 | which I wanna do.

02:10:10.600 | I wanna work hard and make money

02:10:11.920 | and have more money, of course.

02:10:13.720 | But I think there's such a stark difference

02:10:15.880 | between using money as a tool to make yourself happier,

02:10:18.660 | versus as a yardstick to compare yourself against others by.

02:10:21.440 | And so much in the modern world is the latter.

02:10:24.380 | We're not using money to make ourselves happier,

02:10:26.320 | or freer, or more independent, or to sleep better,

02:10:28.620 | or to spend more time with the people we enjoy.

02:10:30.520 | We use money to measure ourselves against other people.

02:10:33.240 | It's just, do I have more than you?

02:10:34.760 | Is my car faster than yours?

02:10:35.880 | Is my house bigger than yours?

02:10:37.560 | And all of that is completely separated

02:10:39.620 | from what we actually want, like for our kids

02:10:41.760 | and ultimately for ourselves, which is,

02:10:43.080 | can I use this to become happier and live a better life?

02:10:46.080 | What a wild concept, but it seems just spot on.

02:10:49.740 | So we need to think about money a little differently,

02:10:55.940 | or a lot differently, if we are to get the most satisfaction

02:11:00.940 | from our work and from resources.

02:11:02.940 | - It requires a lot of looking in the mirror

02:11:04.380 | and just saying like, who am I and what do I want?

02:11:06.340 | I think that's the biggest thing,

02:11:07.660 | particularly when we started this conversation

02:11:09.860 | by saying everybody's different.

02:11:11.220 | What's right for me is not right for you.

02:11:13.260 | Inherent in that is that you have to understand yourself.

02:11:15.660 | And a lot of people, a lot of financial damage is done

02:11:17.900 | when people have a financial plan

02:11:20.220 | that is right for another person, but it's wrong for them.

02:11:23.300 | And that's dangerous because it's the right financial plan,

02:11:25.940 | maybe for a lot of other people.

02:11:27.100 | So it makes sense.

02:11:28.020 | It's rational.

02:11:28.860 | It makes sense on paper, on the spreadsheet it looks good,

02:11:30.680 | but it doesn't fit your personality.

02:11:32.080 | That's when a lot of damage is done.

02:11:33.860 | So I think to do better with money,

02:11:35.060 | you need to spend a lot of time thinking about who you are

02:11:38.380 | and your family and your goals and your aspirations,

02:11:41.220 | realizing that all those things will change

02:11:42.900 | and adapt over time.

02:11:44.140 | So what was right for you 10 years ago

02:11:45.360 | might not be right today.

02:11:46.920 | And in a way that might seem selfish,

02:11:49.580 | like tuning out the rest of the world

02:11:51.180 | and tuning out other people and coworkers

02:11:52.900 | and neighbors and whatnot, just saying,

02:11:55.800 | how can I use this as a tool to become happier,

02:11:57.900 | to live a little bit better life?

02:11:59.180 | Like what's the purpose of money if it's not that?

02:12:02.020 | - I love it.

02:12:02.860 | Well, Morgan, thank you so much

02:12:05.500 | for doing the work that you do.

02:12:07.780 | It's an incredibly unique perspective

02:12:09.780 | on this thing that we all have to deal with, grapple with,

02:12:13.860 | and hopefully can develop a symbiotic relationship

02:12:18.540 | with money.

02:12:19.620 | And it's clear from talking to you today

02:12:22.300 | and also from reading your book

02:12:23.440 | that there's a strong central cord of benevolence

02:12:27.260 | in all of this.

02:12:28.700 | I don't know if that was your intent.

02:12:29.940 | It seems to just come through in who you are.

02:12:32.620 | But when I read your book and as we talked today,

02:12:35.500 | it's just so clear that you want the best for people.

02:12:38.780 | So I think that's an important thing to highlight

02:12:41.620 | because there are a lot of people out there

02:12:43.260 | telling people how to make money,

02:12:44.860 | what to do or not to do with their money,

02:12:46.500 | but you're telling us how to live more meaningful lives,

02:12:49.340 | which is something just in order of magnitude

02:12:52.140 | more important.

02:12:52.980 | So for that and the work that you've done

02:12:54.880 | and that you're doing,

02:12:55.720 | I'm eagerly anticipating your book next September.

02:12:59.260 | And for coming here today to educate us,

02:13:01.080 | thank you ever so much.

02:13:02.300 | - This has been so much fun.

02:13:03.140 | Thank you, Andrew.

02:13:04.540 | - Thank you for joining me

02:13:05.380 | for today's discussion with Morgan Housel.

02:13:07.820 | To learn more about Morgan's work

02:13:09.140 | and to find links to his two superb books,

02:13:11.460 | "The Psychology of Money" and "Same as Ever",

02:13:14.420 | please see the links in the show note captions.

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02:13:40.060 | or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider

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02:13:45.940 | I do read all the comments.

02:13:47.740 | For those of you that haven't heard,

02:13:48.860 | I have a new book coming out.

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02:14:41.860 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:14:43.300 | but much of which is distinct from the content

02:14:45.380 | on the Huberman Lab podcast.

02:14:46.680 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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02:14:57.980 | as well as protocols in the form of brief,

02:15:00.180 | one to three page PDFs.

02:15:02.160 | Those one to three page PDFs cover things

02:15:04.060 | like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure.

02:15:06.660 | We have a foundational fitness protocol.

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02:15:22.540 | Thank you once again for joining me

02:15:23.900 | for today's discussion with Morgan Housel.

02:15:26.460 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:15:28.660 | thank you for your interest in science.

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02:15:33.340 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Morgan Housel: Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness

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