How To Stop an Anxiety Spiral, The Best Protections Against Financial Ruin, and a Workaholic's Guide to Productivity (and Self-Care) | Andrew Ross Sorkin

Life hacks life from one of the busiest journalists of our time. Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times, a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box https://www.cnbc.com/squawk-box-us/, and the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook https://www.nytimes.com/section/business/dealbook, an online daily financial report published by The New York Times. His latest book is 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation https://www.amazon.com/1929-Inside-Greatest-History-Shattered/dp/B0DXQFKTBN/ref=books_amazonstores_desktop_mfs_aufs_ap_sc_dsk_0?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=jhkFe&content-id=amzn1.sym.6d92b4c0-97d6-4063-b66e-20890dfbd616&pf_rd_p=6d92b4c0-97d6-4063-b66e-20890dfbd616&pf_rd_r=141-9976842-2413604&pd_rd_wg=SLWj6&pd_rd_r=d43494e8-a0e7-4e5b-b7fe-ccb7482d584a. In this episode we talk about: The motivation behind his new book Human nature –– and why FOMO might be a good thing Personal finance hygiene The true antidote to irrational financial decisions How to cope with financial stress Practical tools to stop mental spiraling The "Would It Help?" mantra The role of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in Andrew's life Productivity hacks and life routines Calendar blocking vs. to-do lists How much you should ––or shouldn't–– share or disclose about yourself with other people And much more Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: Too Big to Fail https://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Washington-System/dp/0143118242 DealBook Summit https://www.nytimes.com/events/dealbook#overview To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we've got an unusual guest, given the nature of this podcast. I'm talking to my friend Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's one of the best-known and most well-respected financial journalists in the world. I wanted to have Andrew on because he recently wrote a book about the stock market crash of 1929. The book says a lot about human nature when it comes to one of the most reliable sources of suffering for myself and many other people, and that is money. So in this conversation, you're going to hear us talk about how to manage your anxiety when it comes to money, how not to make emotional money decisions, how not to lose your head and fall prey to fads and FOMO, et cetera. We also take a deep dive into Andrew's own productivity hacks,

• 1:04Dan Harris?

  given that he is genuinely one of the busiest people in all of media. And just so you know, one of those hacks is meditation, so we'll hear about his meditation practice. A little bit more about Andrew Ross Sorkin before we jump in here. He writes for The New York Times, where he's the founder and editor-at-large of Dealbook, an online daily financial report. He's also the co-anchor of Squawk Box on CNBC, and he's written two bestsellers, Too Big to Fail and his latest, which is called 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. Quick reminder to sign up for my new app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris.

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  You can get it if you go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try it before you buy it. We've got a lot of stuff going on there. We do weekly live video meditation and Q&A sessions. We also have a growing library of meditations from some of the greatest teachers on earth. Sign up, danharris.com. Join the party. We'll get started with Andrew Ross Sorkin right after this.

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• 3:07Dan Harris?

  Andrew Ross Sorkin, welcome to the show.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.

• 3:11Dan Harris?

  It's nice to see you, and I appreciate you making time to do this.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 3:14Dan Harris?

  There are a lot of questions that your new book raises that I think will be of interest to the audience. But before I ask you those questions, can you just describe 1929, what you were aiming for, why you got interested in this project, and what you were aiming to do?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  So the history of this book is I wrote a book called Too Big to Fail after the crisis in 2008. And people used to ask me all the time, you know, how that related to this thing that happened in 1929? Because I think we all know that something terrible happened in 1929. But the truth is, I didn't really have any good answers for most people because I didn't know that much about it. And I became sort of obsessed with trying to understand that whole period of time and what that crash was like. But more importantly, I was... I don't know. I became obsessed with the people during that period. And for some reason, there have been a whole lot of great books that were written about that period, but they weren't those sort of character-driven narratives that I always loved. You know,

• 4:13Speaker 03

  the sort of Den of Thieves style, you know, barbarians at the gate, in the room, TikTok, you know, Bob Woodward were back in 1929. What would have, what would have you seen inside the Oval Office? What would you have seen inside the banker's office? Like, what were they saying to each other? And so that's the journey I've been on for the last, call it, eight years, to try to uncover all sorts of memos and notes and diaries and letters and all sorts of things, so that you could actually feel it. So you could feel what these people felt as all this was happening. And I think that when you get underneath the whole story, it sort of changes, at least changed my sense of what was happening during

• 4:54Speaker 03

  that period, which was, I was this euphoric, almost FOMO-driven period where everybody in the country desperately wanted to buy stocks. They all were obsessed with it. People were loaning extraordinary amounts of money. That was sort of the background of all this. And there was also new-fangled technology, it was automobiles or, you know, radio. And people wanted to buy into that future. And that sort of was super exciting, but then, you know, got to be, as you can imagine, a little bit too much.

• 5:25Dan Harris?

  So one of the points you make in the book is that, you know, your insights are very much ultimately about human nature. And so I'm going to just read something you wrote, and maybe on the back end of that, you can free associate.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 5:41Dan Harris?

  Ultimately, the story of 1929 is not about rates or regulation, nor about the cleverness of short sellers or the failures of bankers. It's about something far more enduring, human nature. No matter how many warnings are issued, or how many laws are written, people will find new ways to believe that the good times can last forever. They will dress up hope as certainty. And in that collective fever, humanity will again and again lose its head. The enduring lesson is not that booms can be prevented, or that busts can be fully averted. It is that we need to remember how easily we forget. The antidote to irrational exuberance is not regulation by itself, nor skepticism, but humility.

• 6:23Dan Harris?

  The humility to know that no system is foolproof, no market fully rational, and no generation exempt. The greater the heights of our certainty, the longer and harder we fall.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  So that is underneath the story of 1929, the story maybe of our life, which is, you know, I think a lot of people think about booms and busts and what we're all doing. And they think, oh, could we have more regulation? Would that do it? Or is this about economic systems or cycles? Is it about Washington policy? What is it? And I think when I finished the book, I thought to myself, it's not any of those things. It's us. It's how we behave as people. It's, it is that FOMO that drives us. And sometimes, by the way, it drives us forward. You know, I think oftentimes we think FOMO bad or speculation bad.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  I think there's an element which maybe there's an aspect or an element that's actually important to drive us forward. You just don't want it to get too out of hand. But I do think underneath it is this idea that we all get a little too confident. We all get a little too cocky. We don't question ourselves the way we should. We're always very quick to question everybody else, but oftentimes not ourselves. And that the only way to protect yourself ultimately, from an economic perspective, I think, is, is having that sense of humility and also to some degree, being able to have the discipline in your own life to say, okay, I don't know if this is good. I don't know if this is bad.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  I don't, you know, to be asking, to be constantly curious. And I think, by the way, those who are constantly curious.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Do you end up usually on the the winning side of all of this? Or at least the better side of all of this?

• 8:16Dan Harris?

  Do you have any thoughts about how we can? I mean, just to step back for a second, one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on is that money can be a one of the most ruthlessly efficient sources of human suffering. I think it can also be a source of of happiness, too. But what your work reveals about how neurotic and unreasonable and self deceiving and and greedy and all the other human frailties and foibles that can emerge around money. It's really important what you're what you're pointing to here. And and you're pointing to humility as one corrective. Do you have any thoughts?

• 8:59Dan Harris?

  I mean, you you're covering the ups and downs of the markets every day. How can we generate that humility in the face of these huge, sloshy waves of of irrational exuberance that roll over our culture in the face of new technologies?

• 9:16Speaker 03

  So I've always been struck by Warren Buffett because he's obviously had a remarkable career. He's been an amazing investor and he's never really gotten wrapped up in the thing of the moment. Somehow, he's managed to have this sort of detachment from the very idea of FOMO.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  You know, he likes to say he lives in Omaha in his in the home that he bought, was it 50 plus years ago, as a way of of almost forcing that detachment. And, you know, I think money is, you said it, money is a hard topic for a lot of people. It's a hard topic for people to even talk about. I know a lot of families don't talk about money. But I think one of the things so interesting about a Warren Buffett like character is he doesn't get down about missing something. He says to himself, I don't know a lot about technology, so I'm not buying Nvidia. I'm not buying. He didn't buy a lot of the tech companies in the dot com boom. Now, he will tell you, he missed stuff.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  He probably should have bought Amazon, probably should have bought this stuff, but he didn't. He didn't buy into Bitcoin when everybody was telling him he had to do it. He sort of had specific principles with which he approached all of this and said, this is the stuff I understand. This is the stuff I don't understand. You know, the market is, you know, historically up 10%. Oh, I'll sell then. If the market's down 10%, his view was like, I'll buy then. It wasn't an emotional decision for him. If stocks go down, he often gets, you talk about emotion, he often would get excited. If, even if his own stocks are falling, he'd get excited because you know what he'd say? It's now on sale.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  I can buy it for cheaper if I actually like it. If I like it because I think it's going to be a thing for the long term. So I just think there's, and by the way, I think it's very hard to have that emotional detachment. I know personally for myself, I'm not allowed to buy individual stocks or things like that. Mutual funds is sort of where this sort of family lives because of the conflict rules that I live under as journalist. But I can tell you, and you know, I never bought Bitcoin or anything like that because of these rules. But I have the FOMO all the time. And I think to myself, I, by the way, have been protected in some ways by these rules. Because I think to myself, oh goodness, I, I remember, I remember meeting people when

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Bitcoin was under a thousand dollars a coin. And I remember thinking, oh, I should have, could have bought some. And I should have. And I think about that all the time, like everybody else does, I think. And the question is, can you hold yourself back? And I don't know what kind of discipline that requires, but I do think it just, it probably requires sort of overtly thinking about it like that.

• 12:18Dan Harris?

  One of the pieces of advice I received early in my life as a grown up, and I'd be curious to see what you think of this, because this is kind of straight ahead conventional wisdom, but I've lived by it. Wisely or unwisely, I don't know, you'll tell me. I don't buy individual stocks. I don't even follow the market that closely. A little bit, but not that closely. I just put my money, I, you know, have a financial advisor and put my money in some mutual funds, try to consistently save and not think about it much. What do you say to that?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  I think you're doing it right. Warren Buffett would tell you you're doing it right. That is the mantra. He tells his family, buy the S and P index, close your eyes, keep putting money in, and hopefully you'll wake up in 30 or 40 years from now and you'll have a nice nest egg. That that is a much more both economically successful approach, and I'd imagine a successful emotional approach because the, you know, the ups and downs of it. Look, I cover people and deal with people who are living this moment to moment. They're buying stocks, they're selling stocks, they're shorting stocks, they're doing, it is a very hard emotional business. And that, it almost is an

• 13:34Speaker 03

  emotional business. That's what the business is. I know people who can't sleep at night, you know, it's because they're waking up, trying to figure out what's going to happen. Oh my goodness. And the responsibility that they feel for all of that.

• 13:48Dan Harris?

  Speaking of not sleeping at night, there is one thing about your work, specifically in 1929, that makes me anxious that I would like to hear your thoughts on.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 13:59Dan Harris?

  I'll start with this question and I'll maybe get to the sharp end of the, the pointy end of the stick in a second, but you just spent eight years marinating in the most famous stock market crash. Do you think we're in a bubble now headed toward another crash?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  So I do think we're in another bubble now, and I think we will invariably at some point have another crash. But I don't think that the crash has to be as deep or severe as what happened in the Great Depression. I think that one of the great misunderstandings of that period, in fact, is that somehow there was a crash in October of 1929, and all of a sudden we had a Great Depression. And that's not really true. What really happened was We had a crash and that was sort of the first domino. But there were a series of dominos after that domino that were really policy choices, mostly in Washington by the president, by Congress, by the Federal Reserve, that ultimately led to the Great Depression.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  It wasn't preordained just because we had a crash that this had to happen. And I do like to believe that we've learned a lot of lessons from that period, including, and I think we saw it in terms of how policymakers can react to a crash in 2008 during the pandemic and other times, so that the severity of a crash or a crisis, you know, is not exacerbated, is not, is not made worse. So yes, I think, you know, at some point this will happen, but it doesn't have to end in 25% unemployment, which is what happened in 1932. And I don't think, and now I'm talking against my own book because here we are talking about crashes.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  The truth is that most people who invest in the stock market, assuming that they can hold on or hold their investment and, and that they haven't used borrowed money to do it, you know, 10, 20, 30 years later, they will do better. In very, even with the, the crises and the crashes, you know, mathed into all of that. It, it actually has paid much better to be an optimist than to be a skeptic. And here I am, as a journalist, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm the professional Cassandra in the room. But the winners have been the ones not that have sat it out because they've been worried something bad's going to happen tomorrow.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  The winners have been people who have been optimists, actually.

• 16:26Dan Harris?

  Okay. So this is the, the follow-up that I was kind of teeing you up for. When I see you.

• 16:33Dan Harris?

  In my social media feed, or when I'm reading the Times,

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:36Dan Harris?

  Talking about the fact that we're likely in a bubble and

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:40Dan Harris?

  Bubbles tend to burst. That produces for me a lot of anticipatory anxiety. And, you know, I, my phantasmagoric mental movie making capacity that we all have, you know, flashes forward to we're gonna, we're gonna have a crash. Customers won't be able to afford my meditation app anymore. And then I'll be in a situation where I have fewer customers and a smaller savings to fall back on. Blah, blah, blah. Ends up with me living under a bridge, you know, just

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:11Dan Harris?

  Type of that, this is, it runs in my veins, that kind of pension for fear.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  I got the same fear, by the way.

• 17:19Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I'm now I'm digressing. Your grandfather

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 17:24Dan Harris?

  witnessed a suicide after the crash.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 17:28Dan Harris?

  And then never bought a stock again. And around that same time, my great grandfather became a crook, lost the family fortune, put his head in the oven in the kitchen and killed himself. And my grandmother found him. And so I think for both of us, that conditioning

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 17:48Dan Harris?

  Is still in our nervous system. Okay, so having said that, I'm just curious what you, what you recommend about, you know, living our lives, knowing the bubble could burst at any moment.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Look, I think the real thing that I've learned working on this book and, and reporting on this world as long as I have now is that the danger is in debt. Which is to say, if you are borrowing money to invest, borrowing money, hate to say it, just sometimes you have to borrow money to start a company. It's the borrowed money that is the challenge. For the most part. And so if you can try to avoid having debt, or a lot of debt,

• 18:31Speaker 03

  I think you can, you can oftentimes sort of get through to the other side. And if you get to the other side, the world's a lot better. The people who get caught in these downdrafts are people who have decided to take on typically remarkable risk. I don't think, Dan, that you've taken on remarkable risk in this podcast, and I don't think you'll end up under a bridge. But I, but I get it. I get the feeling and I, I think that the trick, I don't know if it's a trick, but you know, back in 1929, people were going to brokerage houses and you know, they'd put down a dollar, the broker would lend you $10. The good news is, by the way, that hardly even happens today. It almost can't happen today, really. So that's another sort of good thing to some degree.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Though there are people who are involved in crypto and other things where people are leveraging themselves up and doing all sorts of wildness. So I think you have, just have to be careful and you just have to say to yourself, if I'm, you know, if for some reason I would be out of work for six months or 12 months,

• 19:31Speaker 03

  can I survive? And if I can't, you might decide I want to save some and don't want to, you know, risk whatever I have, either in the stock market or crypto or doing all sorts of other things that people do. And by the way, the truth is, most Americans don't even, I mean, the sad reality is here we're talking about investing and the like. You know, 60% of Americans are invested one way or the other in the stock market. But that means 40% really are not because they can't afford to be.

• 20:02Dan Harris?

  Well, I want to ask about the, the 40% and even some of the, the remaining 60%. When you say, you know, look, one way to protect yourself is not to take on too much debt. I think there are a lot of people listening to this podcast who have mortgages, who have student loans, who maybe, you know, have to run up their credit card bills because things are dicey in their lives. So what about those folks? And I would include, I have a mortgage myself, so.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  So I have a mortgage too. I think, I think what I'm trying to say is, look, there are going to be times where you're going to invariably have to take on some debt, in some cases, depending on your own circumstances, to live. And so I'm not suggesting you can't have any debt. I think the question is, is it quote serviceable? And so if you said to yourself, meaning, can you pay the monthly payments? And if for some reason something bad happens, if the stock market were to go down, for example.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  You know, do you, do you need that money? Is that cash that you needed? There are people who are invested in the stock market and then they sell every month and they use that money to, to, to live. That to me is a little scary. But by the way, like if you're a retiree, for example, and you're saying to yourself, you know what? I may need this money in five or 10 years. Well, then you should have a portion of it to the side. You shouldn't be necessarily fully invested. So I think it's, it's a little bit just thinking, thinking about the math of your life. I mean, I'm, by the way, I don't know if you do this. I, I budget things. I'm very much, I, I sit around, I look at all my credit card bills and say to myself, okay, how much can I spend next year? How much can I spend per month? And, and you know, there's certain things we're not going to do.

• 21:45Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  This month or that month or whatever it is. We have a running joke in our family. Sometimes I will announce that things have gone overboard, meaning there's been too much spending and I, I, I sort of suggest to everybody that we have to have a month of austerity. That's, and of course, everyone sort of gives me a hard time about that. But I, but I also, look, I, I, I grew up in a family that values frugality.

• 22:13Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  I will say that. And I don't want to say cheapness because there were certain things that, you know, I think my family, we, we like would splurge on a vacation. That was something that was important to us, but we were never like a car, a car would just get you from one place to the other. Like never a fancy car, ever, ever, ever. And so, but there are families, obviously, who I think may not have the means to buy or to lease a certain car or whatever it is, and they decide that that's what they want. And so they go do that. I think you have to think about some of that stuff.

• 22:47Dan Harris?

  Just to say, well, you know, my family, we do detailed budgeting too, my wife and I, and then also with my business, my CEO and I do, and, and are head of operations. We do a lot, a lot of detailed budgeting. I find it oddly soothing to have a real sense of how much money we have coming in and going out and then make decisions based on reality as opposed to like a neasmatic fog of unknowing and dread.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Well, so it's so interesting. So I'm exactly like you are, but then I do know people, I actually have a friend who I'm thinking about, I will not out them on your broadcast. Who really just does not want to know. Like, doesn't want to know how much things cost, doesn't want to know. They have taken on a little bit of debt. To me, it's like, I think they're living with blinders on. They think that it's sort of a much more relaxing way to live. They also sort of have a view that everything sort of comes out of the wash and everything's going to be okay. I'm a little bit more neurotic than that.

• 23:48Dan Harris?

  Bro, yes, me too. On the frugality thing, we have another, we have a mutual friend who I'm not going to name because he hasn't given me permission to say this, but he has a little email that goes out regularly that you may be on too. And he used a term, this friend, recreational frugality, where he makes it a game to see, you know, can he avoid overspending? And I found that really interesting.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  I think I know exactly the person you're talking about, and I think I've read that same newsletter. I like that. But, look, I've always, for whatever reason, it's like a value in our family, maybe from my parents, maybe from my grandparents, that your frugality was, there was something very noble about saving money. If you could avoid the loan, if you could avoid credit. So, but I also recognize, A, that I feel super lucky that I didn't have to take on, I mean, I have a mortgage and things like that, but that I wasn't taking on extraordinary debt. And you're right, there's a lot of people who've had to, whether it's student loans, or mortgages, or even just credit card debt, just to feed the family. So, it's complicated. I wish I had a better answer.

• 25:01Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's complicated. And you and I have been both been very lucky. And I do believe that there are many things we're talking about here that can be helpful, no matter what your economic circumstances are, including what I'm about to ask you.

• 25:17Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Andrew Ross Sorkin talks about some practical tools to stop mental spiraling, the mantra that he likes, which I happen to like a lot as well, would it help? His meditation practice, productivity hacks and life routines, calendar blocking versus to-do lists, and much more.

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• 26:40Dan Harris?

  So there's basic personal finance hygiene that we've been talking about. But then there's also kind of how do you manage your mind in the face of all of this? And I was asking you before, how do we not fall into, you know, paralytic anticipatory anxiety? And there is a phrase that you like, that I also like. And in preparing for this podcast, I was really excited to see that you also quote, as I do very frequently, this underheralded, little-watched, I think, Tom Hanks movie that came out many years ago called Bridge of Spies.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:19Dan Harris?

  In which Tom Hanks plays a neurotic attorney and has a very interesting but calm client. Do you want to pick up the story from there?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Oh goodness, this is a quote that I, I can't believe you found this. I think about this multiple times a day. So in this movie, the spy in Bridge of Spies, you'd think should be more anxious, more nervous. And Tom Hanks can't understand why he is not. And he looks at him and effectively asks him, why aren't you more, you know, worried? Why are you more anxious about all this? And the spy looks back at him and says, would it help? It's almost like a mantra for me, which is that anytime I get into one of these moments

• 28:06Speaker 03

  where I want to say that I'm spiraling, but where I'm really sort of like going through all the permutations and maybe overdoing it and I'm anxious about something that's happened, or I'm trying to think through this or that, and it's sort of overtaking me, I try in the moment to step back and I literally look at, I can like see the frame on the movie and I say to myself, would it help? And by the way, sometimes it actually would help. Sometimes actually sort of thinking through the barriers, permutations, whatever you're, you know, trying to wrestle with can be helpful, but then oftentimes, at least for me, I realize

• 28:47Speaker 03

  I could turn this over in my head 100 times and it's not going to change the outcome at all. And so asking myself that question in this moment, would it help to, to keep, to keep going on this mental journey? I know you're, you're a big meditator. I don't know if it's a form of meditation, but it's, it's something that I, as I said, I, I do ask myself it several times a day. I have it, my desk at home has a little sign that says, would it help?

• 29:16Dan Harris?

  I love that so much and I love that moment from the movie and I too think about it all the time. To answer your question, it, it is at least a cousin of meditation because it's a mindfulness bell. It wakes you up and pulls you out of ancient neuroses and storylines, habitual thought patterns, spirals, or something shallower than a spiral reconnects you to your wiser parts. And yeah, I have found it incredibly helpful that there, there can be a, an objective problem. You, you're having to run up credit card debt because you simply need it to feed the

• 30:00Dan Harris?

  family and you recognize that it could have really dangerous consequences down the road for your financial health, your credit rating, all that stuff. There could be an objective problem like that.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:13Dan Harris?

  But will being frantic, while understandable, will it actually help? It's a very clarifying question.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  I'm so glad you brought it up. You know, you're the second person who's ever brought this up with me. I was just thinking, many years ago, I'd seen it in the movie and then thought a lot about it and that's and I literally had this thing made for my desk. And then I was on a hike, as it happens with a friend of my wife's who's a psychiatrist. And I was explaining that sometimes I have this neurosis, you know, sort of I can spiral. And she said to me, have you ever seen the movie Bridge of Spies? So there's it sounds like there's a nice little group of people who seem to be aware of this this moment in the movie.

• 30:55Dan Harris?

  You mentioned meditation. When my first book came out many years ago, you were super supportive. You brought me on CNBC, not the most hospitable place to meditation, I would imagine, and helped me promote the book. I remember one of your co anchors on Squawk Box was very, very skeptical, borderline hostile. I can't remember that gentleman's name. Anyway, it's a very kind thing for you to do. And you did it in part, not only because we were friendly, but also because you have an interest in meditation. And so I'm just curious, like, where are you with that now?

• 31:28Speaker 03

  So when I saw you then, I was pretty deep on a TM meditation schedule. And I was pretty consistent. I would say 20 minutes twice a day. And I I did. And this went on for many, many years. And then I sort of found myself slowing down a little bit, maybe doing it once a day, you know, for 20 minutes. I find myself now sort of going in cycles with it. And I'm probably right now off the cycle. I used to tell, I think, actually, you and I used to have this conversation, if you could meditate, or you could sleep,

• 32:09Speaker 03

  or you could go to the gym, which would be more valuable? I'm in the morning TV business. So sleep is sort of high on my list. I know there's some people who believe that 20 minutes of meditation is somehow more valuable than sleep. I have not gotten there yet for that. I do find, now that I've been doing it for so long, though, that I don't need as long a period to sort of get to that place. I don't know how to articulate it or describe it. But I feel like when I'm doing TM, And I'm, you know, saying my mantra to myself that I think in the old days, it would often take of the 20 minutes, it could take five to 10 minutes before I'd sort

• 32:52Speaker 03

  of like fall into this sort of, it's almost like going down into some, I can't explain it inside it. I mean, you really, it's like a feeling. And then over time, as I was doing more and more of it, you know, within a minute or two minutes, I could get there. I feel like now, for some reason, because I've done it so long, I can get there pretty quickly. But obviously, the more I do it, and even more frequently I do it, I can get there even more quickly. So I don't know. This goes back to like an efficiency productivity situation about about getting it done. Yeah.

• 33:26Dan Harris?

  So TM, just for people who don't know what it is, is transcendental meditation, which is essentially an ancient form of meditation, often known as Vedic meditation, that was literally trademarked by a guy named Maharishi Mahashyogi, who was quite famous because he was the meditation teacher for the Beatles. He's no longer with us. But TM has been around for many decades. And before that, Vedic meditation has been around for many millennia. And it's different from the type of meditation I do, which is a mindfulness, which is Buddhist, as opposed to Vedic or Hindu. In Buddhist meditation, there is really no getting there, at least for, you know, unless unless the there you're referring

• 34:10Dan Harris?

  to is nirvana, which is very, very, very rare. In TM, yes, as I understand it, and I'm not an expert in this practice, is there is a little bit more of a kind of peaceful, submerged place where you are transcending the everyday egoic mind. Does that track with how you understand it?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, you know, when I was saying, I don't know if people, people are listening, won't be able to see my hand. It's sort of like a motion. You sort of get to this, this place that's sort of like down under a little bit. I know, I'm sure people think I'm a quack saying this.

• 34:44Dan Harris?

  Not this audience, bro. I mean, this is, this audience is very primed.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  It's almost a combination of where your, your brain stops thinking to some degree, not always completely, but of all of the sort of things that are happening around you or what you have to do next, or what you'd sort of. Somehow you're able to transcend that, I think, to some degree. And I find for me, not that it's almost physical. I don't know if you have this, I'm really, I don't know if I'm embarrassing myself saying this. Sometimes if you keep, close your eyes and there's light in the room, you sort of see this sort of black orange or something, at least to me. I don't know why that is. But I've always found that somehow, once I've quote unquote transcended or whatever,

• 35:29Speaker 03

  hopefully a couple of minutes into this, it really is almost a blackness for some period of time. And there's like a stillness. And by the way, sometimes the stillness doesn't last and sometimes it's a busy day and you're all, you know, you walk, you come into it sort of in the would it help mode. There's just a lot of things happening. It doesn't work or it doesn't, you know? So I don't want to say to everyone that's, you know, it's the thing to do. It's, it's worked for me, but it is, it did take a lot of commitment early on. And I'm sure I'm probably not doing it right now in terms of the commitment. I'm sure people who are true practitioners would, would say Andrew is skipping out here.

• 36:11Dan Harris?

  Well, I can't judge your TM practice because it's not a practice that I understand perfectly at all. I can say that you're definitely not embarrassing yourself. I really love the way you described it. And I think just in turn, back to your TM practice, Bob Roth is probably the best known current teacher in this practice who's been on this show.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  I was his student. That's how I learned.

• 36:33Dan Harris?

  Okay. So Bob, who's a very likable guy, I think one of his common expressions is even in a shallow dive, you still get wet.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:46Dan Harris?

  So you can have a bumpy, a seemingly bumpy TM session and you're still deriving benefit. And so I guess that kind of leads me to my question for you, which is, do you notice? Benefit in your life, you are extraordinarily busy. You host a morning show, you run Dealbook on the New York Times. So you're writing all day. You write books. Once a year, you do the Dealbook conference, which as we're recording, has just wrapped up, which makes a ton of news every year. So you just, you have, I'm sure you do speaking gigs. You just have a lot of shit going on. And I'm wondering, does this practice help you in your life? Not to mention the fact that you have a wife and children.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  I think I'm still doing it because it does. It sort of settles me in a way. And it's not just that settles me like afterwards in that, you know, five or 10 minute period, which I think it does. But I think that it's given me some kind of, it's not a superpower, but some kind of ability to also calm myself in other moments without actually doing the TM. So sometimes if I actually have to go on a stage and speak and I'm a little anxious or nervous and I'm sort of sitting backstage for that one minute when I'm by myself, I'm not doing TM, but I can sort of get to this place.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  And I think I can, I think I'm, that place is now familiar to me because of TM. And so sort of a combination of breathing and just sort of trying to think that, that it's, it's for me, super helpful. I mean, I just feel like I'm on the run all the time in a way that's probably not healthy. And so this is one thing I do that I think helps with that to some extent. I'm probably, I could be so much better, I'm sure, if I did a hundred other things, but this is just one of them.

• 38:47Dan Harris?

  Let's talk a little bit about your productivity routines and how you run your day. I mean, you are, I For me, and I think for many other people, really aspirational figure, not only because of the success you've achieved, but your impact on culture. And this requires, as you just said, like, kind of on the run all day. I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about how you get it all done. I've read, thanks to the excellent prep that was prepared for me by Eleanor, our producer, I've read that you don't keep to-do lists. So how do you get it done if you don't keep to-do lists?

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Well, let me say one thing, which is I'm involved in a lot of things, but I also have a lot of help in everything I do. I have either partners or colleagues or whatever, and I have to give them credit. When you read Deal Book every morning, I am actively writing and part of that, but I also have, you know, a group of people who work on that with me every day. Similarly, at Squawk Box, there's a team. I had a researcher when I was working on the books. I do try to... I couldn't get all this done if I didn't have some help. But when it comes to to-do lists, or just like actually how I do it, I have to put everything on a calendar, literally.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  So if I was gonna call you, Dan, tomorrow at 9:00 AM, to me, I might even write, like, this would happen, actually, after this thing, after our podcast today, I might make a note to myself to... If I didn't send you a text message to say, "Hey, thanks," or whatever, but if I wanted to call you, I might actually write, "9:00 AM to 9:15, call Dan Harris tomorrow morning." Now, I haven't scheduled a meeting with you, but it's on my calendar. I know it's gonna take 15 minutes. Now, if at 9:00 you don't pick up your phone, which might happen, I will then move that just down the day to some other time that I have 15 minutes, if I have 15 minutes to do it.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  But I think they call it time blocking, but I'm constantly putting everything on the calendar, because everything I note takes time. And if I don't put it down that way, it either doesn't get done, or I haven't really estimated properly sort of how much I can actually do. I think oftentimes, at least for me, if I don't have it on the calendar, I overestimate what's possible. Meaning I think to myself, oh, I can do a hundred things today. And then I only get two or three things done invariably. And so I'm I sort of I use timers, by the way, big on timers. So if I have to write something, I could be the greatest procrastinator in the world if I didn't have the timer.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  I would go off and run around the internet and look up things and doom scroll on Instagram and all of those things I have. Oh, I have blockers on all of my, all of the apps, you know, that sort of force you to override them. Which I do, unfortunately, too, because it's a little too easy to override them. There are some apps you can get, which I've used that you can't override, or they make it super hard to override. But that's, that's sort of how I do it. So if I, if I know that I have to write something for tomorrow's deal book, I might say, I have an hour, I have to do it in the hour, I have to make it work in the hour. Or forty five minutes or two hours or whatever it is. And similarly,

• 42:13Speaker 03

  I don't know what my colleagues think. I'm always trying to make meetings shorter. Because I know that there's a lot of wasted time. Now, the bad news about this whole scheme and system that I'm running is that there's complete loss of serendipity. And it's terrible. It's like truly terrible. I can get a lot done and I can be very productive and that's true. But I often feel that I'm missing

• 42:40Speaker 03

  the spark of something else of, of just kibitzing in the corner about whatever. I just, I oftentimes go through periods where I'm just not doing that. At the moment, I'm, now that the book is finished, I'm, I have a little more time to kibitz and procrastinate and doom scroll and all that. But I, I was sort of almost like overly disciplined, you know, not the best way. By the way, my calendar says sleep on it.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Literally, it's blocked out.

• 43:11Dan Harris?

  And are you able to, when you get a calendar reminder that says sleep, are you able to like tear yourself away from whatever you're doing and put yourself to bed?

• 43:20Speaker 03

  I mean, for the most part, yes. Again, I don't know if I'm supposed to admit this or not. During the weekday, because I have to try to go to sleep at a decent hour, I take usually one to three milligrams of melatonin. I know that's not like a super severe drug or anything, but I, without it, I would stay up till midnight and then I'd be

• 43:40Speaker 03

  a mess the next day. Even though I I sense that we should be a morning person, so I host a morning TV show. Left to my own devices, I would probably be more like a college kid and stay up till one or two in the morning and sleep as late as possible.

• 43:57Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Andrew talks about some more of his productivity hacks and life routines, the value of a quick know, how much you should or shouldn't share or disclose about yourself with other people, and much more.

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• 45:20Dan Harris?

  On the serendipity thing, you know, I got myself in a little bit of trouble eight, 10 years ago, where I was super optimizer guy, you know, at that time, I was hosting two broadcasts on ABC News, plus a podcast, plus a meditation app, plus speaking gigs, plus writing books, plus I had a kid, plus I have a wife, just on and on, plus, plus, plus. And I was so regimented, and I was also, you know, I had a very, I committed to do lots of meditation every day, that, you know, I was working in an office, ABC, and also I had an office for the meditation app, and I cut the serendipity out of my life so thoroughly that it really hurt my relationships.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  So I agree with you. And I actually work, I'm now actually, in this moment, sort of working on that a little bit, because I know that there was, I'd say the last six months, I was in a super regimented place. And so, but I try to do it like in cycles. I don't know if that works, because I am in this sort of like super productive, try to be super productive. So I sort of go through these cycles where I sort of am like super heads down, and that's not good for relationships, it's not good for anything, except maybe getting all this stuff done. But then on, on the end of it, on either end of it, I then feel like I then do the opposite. I almost like try to like over invest in the relationships, hoping that I then get dispensation when I go back in my hole.

• 46:47Dan Harris?

  Personally, I don't think there's any such thing as over investing in relationships, and I've come to believe that. And, and maybe this is just the vestigial optimizer in me, I can imagine that doing the over investing, or just investing in the relationships, will get you dispensation for when you have to go back in the hole.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  For the most part, I feel like it has worked for me, but I'm also, you know, I always want to do better. I am aware that, you know, it's terrible to go through these periods, at least in my mind, people you love, people you care about will ask you to go to lunch or dinner or whatever, do something. And for a period of time, I remember, especially when I was trying to finish this book, I was constantly writing back, I'm so sorry, I wish I could. I'm knee deep in this project. I'm knee deep in this book. I just, I'm just unable. And it's just, it was like, you know, I hate saying no. I hate that feeling. I don't know if you hate that feeling. I do think when you tell somebody you're like knee deep in something, they're like, oh, okay, I get it. But I also think it's, you know, I wish I

• 47:55Speaker 03

  wasn't in that place sometimes.

• 47:58Dan Harris?

  Well, you actually just brought me one place I was hoping to go as we head toward the final minutes of our time together. In the aforementioned excellent prep provided to me by the aforementioned excellent Eleanor Vassili, who's the producer of this episode. As she pointed out, that one of your productivity moves is the polite no. And now this is not necessarily for social things or, you know, things that may come up with people you love, but people, and when you're in a position as you are, and I think this is true for many of us, even if we're not Andrew Ross or can, we're being asked to do things that are actually not core to our priorities. And so you've learned to issue a polite no. Worth saying a little bit more about that?

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I actually have stolen a line. The line is from Vince Gilligan, who wrote Breaking Bad. I had sent him, I know him and were friends and I had sent him an email about something once. And he wrote back within about two seconds, "I hope a quick no is almost as good as a yes."

• 49:09Speaker 03

  And it was.

• 49:10Dan Harris?

  That's good.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  It was almost as good as a yes. And so what I have learned is if the answer is gonna be no, or if it isn't something that I can prioritize, to get back to people like immediately. The no that hurts the other person and the no that hurts you. Because at least for me, it snowballs in my head. Can I make it work? Or I haven't told them no. Now they probably think I'm trying, I'm really think. If you can quickly come back and say, this isn't, I just can't do it. The dates don't work or the thing, and not even explanation always. I think oftentimes we feel when we're saying no to people, we have to have an explanation to say, oh, we're doing something with our family. Or we're over here, we're blah, blah, blah.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  I just think if you can quickly return the email or the text or, or call them back and say, I wish I could do it, but I can't. That's fine. I think to me, the thing that kills people and kills yourself is sort of the spiraling on it. That may be your own problem. It might be the person who's waiting on you to say yes or no. And when you let that drag out, that's just like the worst.

• 50:23Dan Harris?

  I love that. So I always end the show with two questions. One is, was there something you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't, or anything else on your mind that you were hoping to express?

• 50:34Speaker 03

  You know, I've, I feel like I've watched your journey over the years, and I've always been impressed by actually how much you've been willing to share with people about your own story. By the way, this is not something that I, I came on the show to, to talk about, but I wanted to actually talk to you, if I could, just about where the, I don't know if it's courage, maybe it's courage, to sort of share certain things with people about yourself. I mean, I feel like I've shared a little bit about myself, but I never know how much you're supposed to share. You know, is there a moment where, not that it becomes embarrassing. I guess I used even that word earlier, but you know, especially when you're in the news business.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  I don't think of myself, it's sort of crazy to think of yourself as like a public figure or whatever. And I think people think that you're supposed to share, people want to know you, but then you are you supposed to, anyway, I'm so curious how you've always thought about that.

• 51:32Dan Harris?

  I appreciate you asking it, and I did notice a couple of times when you were revealing like really benign things, you hesitated, like melatonin is is not at all.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a weird thing, because I, you know, as a journalist, I don't know if you felt this way, I feel like we're supposed to almost be like detached, so detached, and so sort of straight. Look, I grew up, I started The New York Times at 18 years old, and so it's sort of like, no, no, and maybe it's a mental problem that I have. That's why I, as I say, I've admired you and how you've done this for so long.

• 52:07Dan Harris?

  Well, I appreciate that, and you know, you and I came up in the same system, I, you know, was, you, you started The Times as a, as an intern at 18, and then very quickly started writing for them even as you were in college, and I, I started a little bit later in television news at 21, but we, we've come up through the system where the ethos very much is, you're not the story. I think that's outmoded to a certain extent, you don't want to, I think it, there's, there, it's a fine line to walk, you don't want to be inserting yourself into every story. And we are in an era where people are much more open and honest and confessional, and even at The New York Times, like Ezra Klein has come on the show a couple of times, and you know, really will talk about aspects

• 52:50Dan Harris?

  of his life in ways that I think are, are really effective. And here's how I think about where, how to draw the line. Is what you're revealing useful to the audience? And, and that there's a broad, there's a lot of range in there, and a lot of ways to interpret useful, but when I, so when I wrote my first book in 2014, I was freaking out about talking about my cocaine habits, and how it led to a panic attack, and all of that stuff. It was not actually, that, that was early for that kind of disclosure. What I learned in the aftermath is nobody really gave a shit, they really just cared

• 53:32Dan Harris?

  about whether I had something useful for them, which in this case I did, because I was only telling the cocaine stories, because it led me to meditation, which is useful for you. And so for you, given the importance of sleep, for all of us, I think mentioning melatonin is, is really helpful, but I would go even further.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:51Dan Harris?

  I would go even further, like you, we didn't talk about it much in this conversation, but you have talked about your grandfather and his witnessing of a suicide. Like that is, these are useful nuggets. If you're oversharing, and again, it's, this is more art than science, but if you're just turning everything back to yourself and not listening to other people and serving up personal information that is of no real value, then yes, that's a problem. But I do think disclosure, especially from people who are, whether you like it or not, public figures, is super helpful because it normalizes things that many of us feel shame about.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Thank you. See, I got, now I got my question answered.

• 54:37Dan Harris?

  Okay, let me add my final question, which is not much of a question, it's more of a request. Can you please just remind everybody of the name of your book, the new one, any prior books, your show on CNBC, your work on the New York Times? Can you just plug everything you do, just so for people who want more from you?

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Oh goodness, I love this question. This is a great question. So the new book is called 1929. It's out now. I wrote a book called Too Big to Fail. It's also still available. It was written back in 2009. I host a show on CNBC called Squawk Box from six to nine in the morning. I pop on with my good friends on Morning Joe on MSNBC, typically between nine and 10 in the morning. And I started something called Dealbook at the New York Times, which is a newsletter about the intersection of business and policy. You can get it for free. You can Google that online, just type in Dealbook, or you can go to nytimes.com/dealbook. And we do a summit that you can see on YouTube right now if

• 55:38Speaker 03

  you search for that. And we do it live at Lincoln Center every year in November.

• 55:45Dan Harris?

  Dear listener, we will put links to all of those in the show notes. Dear you, Andrew Ross, thank you very much for doing this. I'm very proud of the fact that we're going to get you out on time so that your calendar will not be violated.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.

• 56:03Dan Harris?

  Big thanks to Andrew Ross Sorkin. Loved having him on. Don't forget to check out my new app, 10% with Dan Harris. You can sign up over at danharris.com. There's a free trial. Lots of cool stuff going on over there, including our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. DanHarris.com. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleonora Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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