Shane Parrish on Defining Identity and the Path to Wisdom (PT 2)

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street Shane Parrish on Why people who are popular on social don’t succeed when they write books, The mark of wisdom is looking downstream and seeing how a decision affects your life, Delaying gratification isnt easy but is important to learn and his book Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results a must-have manual for optimizing decision-making, gaining competitive advantage, and living a more intentional life.-Shane is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Podcast, where he focuses on turning timeless insights into actions. Shane’s popular online course, Decisions by Design, has helped thousands of executives, leaders, and managers around the world learn the repeatable behaviors that improve results. His expertise is rooted in personal experience–he started working at an intelligence agency in 2001. Clar and critical thinking became a matter of life or death for him. He had to quicly learn how to methodize good judgment and make better decisions under pressure. He’s since dedicated his life to mastering these lessons and sharing them with others. Shane’s work has been featured in nearly every major publication, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. X: @ShaneAParrishIG: @FarnamStreetGreat Mental Models Vol. 1 General Thinking Concepts ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:50Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was raving about Shane Parrish, whose work I have linked to many, many times over the years. I believe he's even in the Daily Dad book. He's just a thinker, a friend, a really smart dude, whose work has influenced not just me, but millions of people. In the way that Stoicism has sort of become popular with all these different groups, Shane's work has become particularly popular. Sports teams, with money managers, with hedge fund folks, just anyone who's making decisions for a living is probably a reader of Shane's book. Shane has a history in the intelligence community.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  And then he's, and he's just a super well-read and smart dude. We're in a writing mastermind together. Anyways, I don't need to get into it. If you haven't read his new book, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results, you must. And then his great Mental Models series is super popular. We carry those at the Painted Porch. I can almost never keep them in stock, so I'll link to both of those in today's episode as well. And we did this talk back, I guess, in early November at the Painted Porch. I wanted to do it in person. I said, "Look, you're going to do a million interviews for the book. You're going to do a lot of remote ones. Please come out and do this one in person," which you did. Had a great conversation, and I think you're really going to enjoy this. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneAParish.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  You can follow him on Instagram @FarnhamStreet. And of course, you can follow the Knowledge Project Podcast, and you can read his blog, Farnam Street, which I have read for over a decade. Also, enjoy.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  In the book, you're talking about how we are products of our environment or our peers. And you have this quote from Epictetus, which is a great one. He's talking about how if you have a lit piece of coal, if you put an unlit piece of coal next to it, it'll either extinguish the lit piece of coal or be lit by the lit piece of coal. The idea that we are products of our environment strikes me as a very critical Stoic idea.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I think it's Stoic. It's been true pre-Stoic, right? Like, so we are always, our environment influences us in so many different ways. And we tend to think of environment as physical, like the coal piece from Epictetus. But our environment is also our mental environment. Our environment is like who we hang around with. Our environment is so many different things that we don't think about. And so, part of the book is how do we shape our environment to make our desired behaviors our default behaviors?

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And you can do that if you think of like one level, it's like, okay, well, if you're prone to coming home and eating a bag of chips, if you create friction, you don't have chips in the house, well, you can still get chips, but now it's a lot of work to do.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  You can do that through, that's a physical sort of solution, or, you know, not having your phone while you're doing writing. You leave it in a different spot. Now you've created this physical solution.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  If you're friends with people who read a lot, you will read more, right? Because you're wanting to participate in what's happening around you, and it becomes normalized. And positive and negative environments can normalize positive and negative attributes in a person.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  So if you want to run, join a run club.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  But the flip side that a lot of people don't think about is like, if you want to quit smoking, That means you're going to have to change your friends.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Because you are not, I mean, eventually, everybody loses the battle with willpower.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  And if you're hanging around people who smoke, you're going to smoke again.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And so my parents went through this and it was actually like oddly a weird fear of success quitting smoking that was sort of subconsciously getting in the way.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Because success at quitting smoking meant they had to give up every every friend that they had and they had to create new friends and they had to go into new environment. And so it wasn't that they didn't want to quit and they they weren't consciously thinking about this, but the same thing happens. Like if you're hanging around with people, your friends are sort of like, let's say they're lazy. They watch Netflix all night and you start going to the gym.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Right? Well, now not only are you going to have a new set of friends because you're not going to want to do the same things that they're doing. But you're also going to create a bit of, I don't know, animosity.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  It's inherently judging or implicating that there's something wrong with the way that you used to do it and therefore the way they are currently doing it. And that creates a tension or an isolation.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you can also, so these are examples of people in your life, but if you think of creating artificial environments, you can do it through software, you can limit, you know, your time on whatever, but you can also create artificial rules for yourself, which become environmental in a way. And one of the rules I talk about in the book is working out every day. So I got up this morning at like five thirty, I'm like down at the gym and I'm working out.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Because I work out every day. When I would try to work out three days a week, I would negotiate with myself.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Because you can push it till tomorrow without saying I'm not going to do it. Right? Which is the most insidious thing. We, what Marcus really says, you could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow. When you have habits that are, sometimes I do this, it allows you to. Honestly, lie to yourself, right? Like logically lie to yourself because you're not saying I'm never gonna do it. You're saying I'm doing it tomorrow, which could be true. Versus if you go, I never, I don't smoke anymore. Every time you smoke, you're, you're violating that. Whereas if you say, I only smoke sometimes. Well, then when you want to do it right now, you're saying this is one of those times. So it's okay.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  So I went to the, I was doing that, right? The little voice in my head starts negotiating with myself and is like, oh, you have a long day today. You'll do extra tomorrow. And I was trying to go three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then I went to the gym just for information. And I was like, how often have I been here in the past year? Cause they get the fob, right? They gave me my swipe data and it was like 1.5 times a week approximately. And so when I created the rule, you can change duration, you can change scope, but you go every day.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  You sweat every day. You don't even have to go to the gym. You can go for a run, you can.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  You do something physical hard.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Sometimes you're just in your hotel room doing pushups and situps and like, that's okay. You check that box. But that's an example of how you can shape your environment.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Using a rule or an automatic rule in this case to change your desired behavior to the default behavior.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  Epictetus is less politically correct encapsulation of the sort of you become like the people you're around line. He says, and I think it's okay because he himself had this. He said, if you live with a lame man, you will learn how to limp. Basically you will unconsciously pick up their habits, their, in this case disabilities, even though you yourself don't have one, right? And that's true. You pick up the limiting beliefs of the people around you. You pick up good habits of the people around you. You, you're unconsciously absorbing all this stuff. So, so you can't really stop that, but you can decide what you put yourself around. So if like the news, negative, most of it, a lot of it not true, a lot of it not of value.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  You can't watch the news and filter it, right? No one has the ability to be deceived that separates the good stuff from the bad stuff. You have to say. I don't watch television news and then not watch television news. And I get my information from these preferable sources. You have to create, you shape the physical, mental, spiritual environment. So willpower is not at stake.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  So we often don't think about that, right? The information we let into our head, whether it's from people in our lives or people we follow on Twitter or whatever it is, that information becomes, I guess, seed for future thoughts.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  However, what we don't think about is like the person who's and to the Epictetus quote, like if, if there's an idiot filtering information for us.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Then we're getting information from an idiot by definition. And so we're eventually.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  From the boys in tree, yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Right. So like, who's doing the filtering? And you think about news and I know we both have similar thoughts on, on sort of news. But i- if you have a journalist writing about thirty, forty different subjects a year, how accurate is that information going to be versus somebody who's living it? And in, you know, writes on the same thing over and over again. And so you think about the high quality sources of information you have and whether those people should be listened to or not.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. One of the things I took from the book, and I've taken this from your writing over the years, is which is what most great investors have in common is that they have rules. And those rules supersede biases, emotions, bad habits. So like you tell the story in the book of this guy, here's this great pitch. And it seems interesting, he trusts the, but his rule is I don't invest in things that I don't know about.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Now, this may cost him that great investment.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  It did.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  But it, but it saves him.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  The things where he has no idea, even less of an idea, and it's, it's less fed. So you, you kind of have these rules. And if you have rules about, hey, I, you know, once I get home in the evening, I don't leave the house again, or I make it home in time for bedtime with my kids. Or, you know, I don't drink in bars alone, or, you know, I, I don't, I don't do. Like you come up with these rules that keep you out of trouble or keep you on the straight and narrow that you want to be on. There's going to be, there are going to be times where it feels like an exception to that rule would be smart, pragmatic, valuable.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  And it's true in that case, but what you're missing is the the the obscured savings of all the other times.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  That you didn't, you don't even understand it saved you from.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  So you can use rules to prevent you from doing something uh poor. And then another example in the book is you can use rules to put yourself in a position to play on easy mode or hard mode. And the position that you're in, this is something that I think a lot of people underappreciate about thinking. And about decision making is the position you're in at the time you make a decision. Dictates whether that's an easy decision or a hard decision, what options are available or not. So a genius in a poor position.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Is still gonna do poor.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  And an ordinary person in a great position is going to do really well.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And this sort of dawned on me with one of my kids who came home with uh you're not at the teenager phase yet. But like, he walks home and he got like this really bad mark on an exam and he he shrugs his shoulders and he like hands it to me and he knows I have to sign it. And he's like, I did my best.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Like, oh, God. And so later on that night, I walked up to him and I was like, oh, what does it mean to do your best?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Like, walk me through this.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it sounds pedantic, but like, step by step. Well, I sat down at ten and like, I looked at all the points on the questions, I allocated my time accordingly. And I filled them out to the best of my ability. And I'm like, oh, you think about this the same way a lot of adults think about decision making.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I showed up at this the decision.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  I did my best when I it was in front of me.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm like, let's rewind ninety six hours here.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Right? Did you study? No. Did you stay up late the night before? Yes. Why did you stay up late? Because I didn't study and I decided to just like start cramming at ten thirty at night.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Did you eat a healthy breakfast? No, why not? Because I got up late. Did you fight with your brother? Yes. Why? Because I got up late and we were like conflict in the bathroom and and I was like, so you chose to play on hard mode. And I use hard mode, easy mode with the kids, but like, that is example of poor positioning and how that impacts your decisions. And so one of the counterintuitive insights about. Thinking and decision making is that the best in the world are rarely forced by circumstances into doing something they don't want to do.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And the way they do that is they're always operating from a position of strength.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're basically what you're teaching your kid there is downstream consequences, which you were talking about, but you're going, hey, you're seeing this test as the test itself.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  And actually, the failure of the test was determined by the decisions you made the day before and the week before and the month before. And so it's insufficient and it's self deceiving to say, I did my best. Yes, you did your best with what you were able to bring to the table, but you could have brought a lot more to the table. And I think you can also go as a parent, I could have intervened earlier and been helpful to you. You know, so like we're both sharing this, right? But you're saying basically, if we had made better decisions earlier, you would have been set up for success. My wife and I talk about that all the time. Like, it's not like by the time there is the tantrum or the fight or the problem,

• 14:13Speaker 00

  a bunch of decisions have been made that made that more or less likely. And your job as a parent is not just to go, what you're doing right now is not okay. Your job as a parent, just like your job is as a leader or your job as a person with yourself, is to set people and things up for success. Right? To set yourself up. When you step in front of the mirror and you don't like what you see, well, you didn't set yourself up to like what you see because you were making bad decisions for the previous six months.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And this is what I think most people who've tackled this subject, which we talked about earlier being hard, is the way that they approach it is here's how to be more rational.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  And that is, there's books filled with how to be more rational and, you know, fill out spreadsheets and do all this stuff. And nobody does that in the real world. And it's not that we're incapable of being rational. It's that we're put into situations that are predictable where we're not. Going to be rational, we're going to react without reasoning and that we don't think about sort of the 96 hours before the moment.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  And I think of positioning and preparation is two different things. Preparation is I know the future, I can anticipate it. And I can sort of like have a big dramatic influence over it. Like I can anticipate my boss's retiring in four months. So I'm going to prepare to take on that role.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  That's different than positioning, which is like, I might lose my job tomorrow. How do I save money? How do I develop the skills that are going to help me land another job? I don't know what the future holds, but no matter if I do both of those things, it's only good news for me.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like you're like, hey, I want to be smarter. I want to make better decisions. So you're reading a decision making book or you're cramming your brain with all this knowledge. But it's like, well, what if you just focused on being less stupid? And one of those ways might be like sleeping well or drinking less or whatever. Right? So you're making, it doesn't seem like it pertains to how do I make sure I don't blow this important decision about whether I go this way or that way. And actually, the best way to do that would have been to go to bed earlier the night before or, or to not be one of these people that's like burning the midnight oil and then taking Ambien to go to sleep and then uppers to be like you're, you're expecting a rationality

• 16:33Speaker 00

  that is physically impossible in your case.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  You're playing on hard mode.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yes, you're playing on hard mode.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  So, so you can't change the fact that you're going to encounter these circumstances, but you can change the person that you bring to the circumstances.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And you do that through simple things like no judgment if people want to drink or, but don't do it on a day before you have a big presentation, right? Like you're just putting yourself in a position where there's no points for difficulty in any of this stuff.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, nobody is judging.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Nobody is going, hey, actually, I need to grade them on a curve because I know all of these factors were.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  They were drinking last night, they got into a fight with their wife, like, whatever.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Did you make the, the game was on the line and the ball came in your hands, did the shot go in or not? They don't, they don't care like, oh, well, you know, he's been dating a lot and so he's been, he hasn't been staying at home and blah, blah, blah. It's like, nobody gives a shit, right? And so you have to make decisions that set you up for success.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And, and this is where it gets super interesting because it's like, A, it's controllable. Uh, I don't need somebody else to tell me, I can look at the things in my life where I can do simple things that will, uh, compound over time and my position just gets increasingly strong. And now I'm creating contrast with other people.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  That contrast gives me more opportunities and those opportunities turn into a cumulative advantage.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, look, I'd like to, uh, eliminate my temper, I'd like to control my emotions. These are impossible things to ask of yourself. So what you're really asking is like, I want to make less emotional decisions, I want to say less things that I regret, right? Your, your, your problem with your temper or your emotions is really what the consequences of those are. So then if you put a simple rule and you go like, you know, hey, I don't respond to emails right away. Or I'm going to tell this person, I'm going to wait 24 hours. Like by putting in a buffer, you're just ensuring that most likely that

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  emotion or that heat of the moment will have lessened with time. So you create these rules or these practices. It would be easier, it, it, look, it would be wonderful if you could just magically turn these negative things off. Probably unlikely, what you want to do is set aside practices or systems that mitigate, uh, or lessen the potential, uh, influence that those things are going to have on you in the big moments.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And I, I think, you know, mutual friend Belichick, who's like, you have to avoid, they're doing a terrible job of it this year, but you have to avoid losing before you can win.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And I, I think that we don't think about that. And if you look at like some of the exemplars that we hold up as, um, I don't know, captains of industry, if you will, or you know, sort of like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Warren Buffett, they just don't really lose that much. And they're never in a position where they're, they're scrambling for survival. I mean, Carnegie made most of his fortune in the 1870s after the financial panic, when he bought out his partners at the steel mill because they were levered. And he didn't know steel was going to become what we, what Carnegie Steel became.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And, but that's how he got this advantage from it. He just avoided losing. And how did he avoid losing? Well, he didn't lever himself up to the hilts.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And he didn't know that there was a, this is the interesting thing. He didn't know there was a financial crisis coming. He just knew that financial crisis come. I can't time it. Nobody's going to give me a warning. They're not going to tell me to go home and be like, hey, you got, you got two weeks. Like, but it's like that with life, right? With relationships, with emotional, with financial, with losing your job, you often don't have that sort of warning. And so you always, I, I don't think you have to be prepared. I think you have to be positioned.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  To sort of pivot and have a lot of optionality with what's going on so that it's not the end of the world and you can take advantage of the situation.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  I think about that on a very simple level. Like, why do CEOs, you know, very busy, important people, like, why do they work out very early in the morning? The reason they work out very early in the morning is because days are unpredictable. So something could intervene that prevents you from getting to the gym at four, or could intervene from you getting to the gym when you get free, right? And so if I run in the morning and I cross it off the list, there's no chance of it not happening because it already happened. I start, I did it first, I cross it off. So like, for me, I, I try to work out usually in the mornings. I try to do my writing before I do other things. I front load the stuff

• 21:05Speaker 00

  so then I am less exposed to the volatility or the unpredictability of the day. I already got it done. So everything else I get done is extra as opposed to, well, I'm going to do these other things that are less important first. And then when I get around to it, I'm going to do these other things that are actually important. And so, so thinking about it that way, it doesn't, that doesn't seem like much. Like, oh, they work out in the morning, or work out in the morning. Doesn't seem like a great insight, but it's actually, it's a statement of priorities. And also, it's a hedge. It's, it's, there's a humility to it. There's going, hey, the days tend to get away from us. We are not in control. Life tends to intervene. So when it is in my power, I get it done. I cross it off first.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  And therefore I am less at the mercy of events.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't, I can't argue with any of that. I think that that makes a ton of sense, right? So I don't work out usually in the morning. I have to work out every day. So this was the time today.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  I usually work out at like noon. So it's a transition between

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  first part of my day, which is like all blank, no meetings, work out at noon, and then it's all, and I find I'm better in these meetings, more attentive, more alert, less prone to sort of like the emotional ups and downs of whatever's going on, uh, if I've worked out.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And so I'm putting myself in a better position to handle them. I, I'm not changing the fact that they're coming.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Uh, and if I rely on willpower, which would be like for me going at five or four or six or whatever time, I, you know, I'd find it much harder to go on a consistent basis because that was what I was doing before. And then that little voice in your head starts chirping and negotiating with yourself. Um, about, oh, do extra tomorrow. You don't need it. You're tired. And when these days turn into weeks and weeks into months, like that becomes your position. That becomes your, your sort of like the state that you're operating in.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  I interviewed this novelist, Philip Meyer, and he was saying, he's like, you gotta be really aware of what you give the best part of your day to.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Right? And so it's like, if the, the Stoic observation in Seneca goes like, why are you giving philosophy the leftover you?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, like your, your work, you're doing all this other stuff and then you go, oh, if I have a few minutes at the end, then I'll do it. But you might not.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  What do we do with like most lives? We give our kids, our partner, the worst.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Leftover, right. After the, the end of the day, um, when you're tired, when you're frustrated, when things have accumulated, you know, you've been texting or, you know, you just, you're not setting yourself up for success, right? And, uh,

• 23:45Speaker 00

  It's better to get it, get the win and then have extra as opposed to do all these other things and then hope it goes exactly as you want it to go.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And the other thing we don't do, if you think of positioning, positioning also applies to your relationships with people. If you and your partner are investing in your relationship and something happens.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  But because you've been investing in it, in like my friend Peter Kaufman has this expression, he's like, imagine a patch of grass between you and your partner.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And if you water that grass every day and a spark falls on it, it's just going to go out.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  But if you don't water that grass, it's going to dry out and then that spark turns into a fire. And it's like, well, what is investing? It looks boring, right? Like it's like date nights. It's like communicating with each other and connecting is talking about each other's day.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  All the stuff that you're like, oh, in the moment, these things I can easily let slip by and not do. And I don't think of them and how they aggregate to the position I'm in when there's inevitable sort of trouble in our relationship, which is going to come. We know it's going to come, but we can change the position we're in when it does come based on how we act and what we do today.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Who is Peter Kaufman, by the way? Because you probably think of him or you've mentioned him in like 50 footnotes.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's the CEO of a company called Glen Arrow in Glendale, California.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And he became a good friend over the last, I don't know, five, eight years. And just through many conversations with him, a lot of these ideas are his in terms of the biological connection between, you know, us being self preserving and territorial. And he's got a unique way of insights. So a lot of the conversations that we've had crop up in the book with sort of how he approaches things or thinks about them. And I find them really advantageous to. No, what are you thinking?

• 25:38Speaker 00

  No, no, interesting. Yeah. It seems like you got like, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by this relationship between Seneca and his friend Lucilius.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Like Seneca's letters are the letters he and his friend are writing back and forth. And they're not like, oh, today I had, you know, dinner that like, it's this kind of ongoing accountability relationship that they have with each other. Seneca says the point of it is like, they, they should each be trying to give each other like one thing a day. Right? And so the letters that survive are obviously the better things, but he's like, oh, I learned this or I solved this. And he's basically saying like the path to wisdom, the path to, to being a philosopher is like just acquiring like one thing a day. And so having these kind of, these intellectual relationships where you're sharing things, you're kicking things back and forth. You're, you're going, hey, I'm doing this or I thought about this.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  And then it's just the accumulated wisdom or insights that come from that exchange. It's so valuable to us as a person. I mean, it's so valuable then that 2000 years later, we're still like, we're basking in the glow of the, of the fire that the friction between Seneca and, and, um, and Lucilius, you know, kicked off.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  But I think it's really important that we have those relationships.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  What I love is sort of, uh, getting able to talk to these people is amazing. And it's byproduct of having a platform and, but when things triangulate.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  And across different industries and across different people and across different generations.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Oh, this person's talking about this. It's the same as this, which is the same as this. There's a lot of signal in that now that I've triangulated it across.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Identifying patterns.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  And so the idea with the book was like, what can I triangulate? What can I pull out from what I've learned over the past 15 or 20 years on this particular subject? And how do I reconcile the language? Cause the language is always different between everybody.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Uh, but they're talking about very similar, the same things.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Well, a good example of this is inside companies is like reports. People are tasked with spending a lot of time organizing information, putting it into graphs or in presentations or reports or whatever. And then very rarely is the leadership who is asking for that information evaluating how much and where they're using it. And so like. I think it was the founder of Patagonia had some rule about how a report should take 15 minutes to make and five minutes to read. Right. And so I, whenever I get information or reports from, I go like, how long did this take you to make?

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Because like, I'm sensing that you are putting more into it than I am putting into, into getting something out of it. And so to go like, hey, only give me the information that I'm actually going to use. And by the way, like, think about information that I would you like, seek out information that I'm gonna like, like. So when I do a podcast, I have someone sort of prep stuff for me. It's like you giving me their bio, like, I'm not going to ask them about where they went to high school. So don't give me that information, but you tell me that, hey, they actually just had a cancer scare. That might be something like I, I, every time I train someone new to do the jobs, it's usually kind of an entry level job.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  I'm going, think about a context in which this could conceivably come up. And if you can't think of that context, it's worthless information. And the fact that you put it together, I'm not giving you credit for how long the email you sent me is. I'm only going to think, hey, I, I formulated a lot of questions based on the information you gave me. Or we talked at length about information that I got from that report. And this is true also for a sales day, like just having, you're paying someone to spin their wheels. And then you're not, what is the point?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Well, so it's make work, it's not visible to you. And there's a judgment problem, if you will, which is like, you want somebody to apply judgment. And how you respond to them applying that judgment is going to dictate whether they apply judgment or not. This is why most organizations work on policies and procedures, because if I follow the policy, even though I know it's wrong.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  You can't hold me accountable.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Right. Whereas if I'm applying judgment on a daily basis and it's very subjective. Well, now there's a fear involved in that. And you also get to a map territory problem with reporting, right? Where you're reporting what the map is, but what you want to see is what the territory is. You want to, you want to touch the medium.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  You want to see if the road moved, you don't want to just see, here's the map from like five years ago.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And so you might be looking at all these variables while your business is going off the rails. And you can't tell because you didn't anticipate some of the variables or how they interact. Where you want that person to apply the judgment to be like, hey, this is, this is not looking right. Like, we want to talk about this.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  And this is why a lot of businesses go off the rails. Their metrics are going well, but their territories are roding. And then what happens is the CEO, the manager, the team leader. If they're not touching their territory and they're only touching the map, they don't know the morale. They don't know what's happening in the factory floor. They don't know, even if they see the metrics, they don't really know what's happening in the business.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, and conversely, like managing up is important, right? So if you're an employee, you have to have the sort of theory of mind, the empathy to be able to go. My boss is doing this presentation and he's asked, he or she has asked me to, you know, do X, Y, or Z for that presentation. How is what I'm doing giving them actionable, how is this fitting into? First off, what are they actually doing? What does that look like? And then you back out what you do from there, not, well, it was easiest for me to put it in this Excel document. Or what like, right? Like, you're not thinking about the context in which you are trying to provide help or service or value. And so it's unlikely that what you're doing is of service or value. And the artists make this mistake all the time.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Authors sit down and they write a book that's interesting to them, but they haven't stopped and thought about the person who's picking up and reading it.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Who's?

• 31:49Speaker 00

  What problem is it solving for them? How are they engaging with it? How are they discovering it? How are they hearing about it? What is the reaction they're having to the tech? All these kinds of, of understanding that ultimately it's, it's not what it is to you. It's what it is to them. Like it's, you're, you're making it for someone else. If you're not making it for someone else.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Be honest with yourself that this is a

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Book for me.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  A personal project. But by definition of signing with a publisher or an art gallery, where you, you are making this for an audience. So you have to, at some point, consider that audience and their needs. Or, or you are hoping to hit a target that you do not see.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's true, right? Like, you should be doing that with everything that you're doing though. But the risk that people don't want to do with that is, and I talk about this a little bit in the book with identifying the most important thing, is your Putting yourself in a position where you could be wrong.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  So I'm going to exercise judgment. I'm going to try to give Ryan, you know, above and beyond what's expected. Well, now I might be wrong.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And I don't want to put myself in that situation because we're not used to operating in those environments where we can be wrong. And it sort of goes back to a little bit of what we talked about earlier, but having the, the strength to be in a position where you can handle it emotionally if, if you are wrong, or you as a boss can give feedback and be like, oh, I love that you did this. I, I see the extra effort. You know, we got to turn it like five degrees to the right here or something.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  I, although I have found again to go to managing up, I have, I have never experienced

• 33:24Speaker 00

  as an employee or a boss, a problem where the person asked too many questions about what you wanted. Do you know what I mean?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Like when you're like, hey, can you do this? Like, there's this famous scene in the office where Jim is asked to, to make a rundown for the new boss. He's like, can you give me a rundown on yourselves? And he doesn't know what a rundown is. And it's funny because he can't figure it out, but it, it's like at no point does it occur to him to go, what is a rundown?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Right? As, as if the boss would be upset, right? Like, because he does, he doesn't want to admit that he doesn't know what a rundown is. And that is, I think, an encapsulation of where sort of ego and insecurity causes so many problems. You, you can't learn what you think you already know is Seneca or is Epictetus is lying, but also you can't learn what you're afraid to ask about, right? And so like as a, as a person who is working with other people,

• 34:20Speaker 00

  you're very, you're much more likely to get in trouble or to cause problems by what you don't ask for specificity or further instruction about than you are to ask too many questions to dial in exactly what they're looking for.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So that's another example from the book, right? When our ego is in charge and our ego is in charge when we respond there.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Cause we're responding by not asking the question about like, what does this mean? Or, you know, I forgot.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  You want it more like this? Do you like it long? Do you like it short? Do you want an email? Do you want an attachment?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  That's our ego at work, right? We don't want to admit that we might not know something. And so in those situations, we're more prone to reacting, not reasoning.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  So how do you put yourself in a position? And if you're a boss, how do you put your employee?

• 35:07Speaker 00

  At ease.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right? So that comes to a little bit of psychological safety.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  But it comes to your relationship with that person too, in terms of, is this a transaction? Is this more than that? How are we operating together? How much time have we spent together? So you can put yourself in a position where people will feel more comfortable. Doesn't mean they're going to do it, but it does make it a lot easier to do the desired behavior in the moment, which is admit. And you can do that as a boss, you can model that, which also helps with the psychological safety and the positioning.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Keep going.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So I just think it's like, it's really interesting to think about. You think about emotion and you think about ego and you think about social defaults and inertia. And these are situations that just tend to think for us.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  And yes, we can have willpower and we can be like, I recognize I'm getting angry. I'm going to leave the room. And that might work like 20% of the time, but are there other things that we can do to avoid that? Like turning off the computer at night, you know, after a long day, when I'm more prone to sort of like these outbursts, not drinking, sleeping well, working out. Yes, yes, yes. We're putting ourselves in a position where we can deal with that anger in a different way. But you can think of something like that, where we can put ourselves in a position where.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  People are not afraid to ask.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  We're creating a culture for our company, where we're creating a culture for our relationship, where you feel safe to do that.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  But it's always funny, right? When, when you go.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  It's like me admitting that I have dyslexia like five minutes ago.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  It's like, people don't want to, people don't want, they're like, oh, I didn't want to bother you. Right? Or I didn't, right? Or I didn't want to look dumb. And it's like, how do you think you look now? How do you think, how do you think this thing I've been waiting three weeks for, coming in, not the way that I want it is? Do you think that's like, like, so, so it is funny, the way that we don't want to do like a small, hard thing.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  It's it's first

• 37:01Speaker 00

  To avoid a much more hard thing later.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's it's first order negative, second order positive, right? So if we do the first order negative thing, which is like admit we we forgot it, we don't know.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Bad delivering bad news.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Right, right. But the second order to that is super positive because now you get a report that nails it. You know, you get what you want in the end.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Prevented the bad outcome.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  So we're only thinking at the first level. And if we think two or three levels deep, we we would rationally come to the conclusion that this little pain now is worth uh worth going through because it's going to save us this big pain later.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  But again, that comes down to like being more rational is we know how to think like that.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  And so if we're if I, you know, the example that I sort of use with people is if you're in a fight with your partner and you're arguing about the dishwasher and it's like slowly escalating and I'm watching, I tap you on the shoulder and I'm like, Ryan, do you want to put gas or water on this situation?

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  You're going to be like, water.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  But what I've done, because you're, it's not that you're not rational.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  I interrupted this sort of response that you're having where you're you're reacting without reasoning.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  And so you say in the book, you say that's something you ask your kids, which I thought was great. You're saying like, is the behavior you're doing making the outcome more or less likely? I say that to my son, it's like, okay, look, we took the iPad away and you want the iPad back. You freaking out and acting insane and hurting your brother, saying, what you're doing this, do you think that's making me more or less likely to give it to you later?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  And then how do you think it's a it's it's changing my understanding or the relationship of the iPad in our house as a whole, right?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  And so the ability to to sort of go, hey, think about the, think about the choices that you're making right now and how they pertain to where you want to be or what you want is is a super important skill. The ability to interrupt, like to interrupt a cycle or a downward spiral is like. The master skill, right? The ability to deal with frustration, to catch yourself, to not make a bad situation worse. I mean, if you can, if you can just start figuring that out at seven, instead of starting at twenty seven, you know, when it's been a continual problem, it's just an enormous advantage.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  So I do this with the kids too, right? The first mistake doesn't kill you. It's like the cover up that kills you. So it's like, are you lying to me? You have a pivot point here. I know what's happened. You know, they don't know that I know.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  But I'm like, the choice you make right now is going to make this situation better or worse.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And you choose and then they'll think, you can like literally see them thinking about it. And they're like, what are the odds I get away with this thing, right? And then they ultimately almost always tell me the truth.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And it's the same with us, right? The first mistake doesn't do us in. It's always the second, third, fourth mistake, because what happens after the first mistake, we make another mistake. Well, what's, what's really happening is our positions eroding. We're getting, it's increasingly becoming harder and harder and harder to get the desired result that we want. And then it becomes impossible at some point. It's kind of like playing Tetris, right? You make one mistake. It's like, oh shit.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can maybe pull out of that, but you can't make five mistakes. It's not salvaged.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  And then you need just the perfect piece, right? To, to start getting out of this. And, you know, you can think of that sediment or accumulation like that.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  I try to tell myself that too. I, I go like, when have you ever faced serious consequences? Like, like you're afraid to tell me the truth as if like, I'm beating you. You know what I mean? As if like I, I'm this cruel, like authoritarian dictator. It's like, dude, the stakes here are so incredibly low and the upside is high. Like, like, but, but it's, it's almost just a natural human thing to just like, you, you, I realize, like what we realized that going like, okay, actually objectively, he must understand the stakes here are pretty low. Like, he's not choosing between if I tell him the truth, I'm, I'm not going to get to do like, so it's what's actually, what is the factor then that's acting on his logic?

• 41:18Speaker 00

  It's shame. So it's an internal feeling and going, oh, okay. So, so this actually has nothing to do with us. This has something to do with you. So now how do I talk to you and present it to you in a way that your shame is not triggered? And how do I give you an awareness that shame is part of the equation for you? So you're aware that you have that bias or that tendency. And then you don't let it take you to a place where, you know, it doesn't work out for you.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that, yeah, there's nothing to say to that. Going back to the gas water thing just for a second. I find with the kids, I never, I rarely tell them what to do. There's like an exception to that, but like when they get, because I have two and they're 14 months apart. So they like.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Very close. Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  And, and I just like interrupt them and I'm like, gas or water?

• 42:03Speaker 00

  That's great. So good.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  And in that moment, I never tell them to choose water.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Right?

• 42:11Speaker 00

  It's obvious. It's rhetorical.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  No, sometimes they actually choose gas. Like they're like, okay.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  No, no, but I mean, the answer is obvious, right? Like we know, we don't always do it, but we know we don't want to make a bad situation worse.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  But from a parenting perspective, it's been helpful because they actually call each other out on it. In a weird way, because they're like.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  A little mantra. Sure.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  They're, they're sort of like, you know, young teens and the, one of them will like punch the other one lightly and, and then be like gas or water sort of thing. But when we're out in public and they're doing something that's escalating, I can just say water. And I don't have to like point out, I don't have to embarrass them. I don't have to call them out. And then it's a cue for them to be like, this is not getting me the outcome that I want. This is not moving me closer to the things that I want. I'm going to take a different path here and try to.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Well, it's not to mix metaphors, but gas or water is an off ramp, right? Like I don't, just because it started to go this way, doesn't mean I have to.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Doesn't have to continue.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  I can go the other direction. I can stop. I can interrupt. And the ability to do that is kind of a superpower.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I think like it's great too. One of my kids came home the other day, he skipped his extracurricular activities. And he has to do these as part of school. And he's like.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  They're not extracurricular.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Well, it is. It's just part of his school, right? And he came home and I was like, what are you doing home? And he's like, well, it was confusing. I thought I sort of like got kicked out of this class, but I wasn't quite sure. And I'm like. You need to decide in this moment, is this getting you closer to your graduation or further away? And then you need to go back to school and you need to fix this. And he's like, what? I was like, put your uniform on, get your butt back to school and like fix this situation. He's like, I don't know how. I'm like, well, what outcome do you want? Who do you need to talk to? And what do you think you should say to them?

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  And then he's like, okay, I'll do that.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, or to even just to go, hey, I did this thing. I don't know how to fix it.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  I need help fixing it. Right? As opposed to, I'm going to either persist in the air. I'm going to let shame make me hide the error to be able to go like, I worked myself into a corner. Like, think about how often this happens in companies, right? Like, you make a mistake, you make a bad call, and then you're just.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  You want to cover it up.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Sitting on it, or you're hoping it magically resolves itself.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  When actually intervention at some point could have saved you.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  How often does it like magically save itself?

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Never, it never does. It never does. So you end the book with a kind of a memento mori, right?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  I like the Scrooge example. I think that that's like so pressing for people, right? Which is like, if you let society unconsciously tell you what to pursue, what happens?

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, you think you want money, status, power, and who do we know that got all of those things?

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Well, fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge, I know lots of real life people who get the same thing. And then what do they want at the end of their life? They just want a do over. And we talked about this at the beginning, because the way that they accomplish these things is mutually exclusive from living a life of meaning, mutually exclusive from the type of person that they want to be, the type of person they want to be remembered for. And I sort of think about, okay, well, you can imagine your death, right? And so, close your eyes, you're, you're sort of in the hospital, it's your last night, you're in a coma, you're surrounded by people, and what are they saying about you? And what do you want them to be saying about you? And now look at how you're living your life, and are you living your life in a way that is most likely to lead to that outcome? Or are there changes that you need to make?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  And again, no judgment about what people pursue. I really, you know, I love the fact that people pursue different things.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  What I really want is for people to be conscious of what they're pursuing and the way that they're pursuing it.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny how timeless that sort of exercise or that insight is. I mean, a Christmas story is what mid 1800s.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  In Meditations, Marx says he does this thought exercise to himself. He's like, consider your life is over. He's like, you've lived your whole life. You're you've just found out you've died. And then he's like, OK, now take what's left and live it properly.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  I love the like, his implication is you're you've died, take stock or you're dying or you've died. Take stock of your life. And then he says, now take what's left and live it properly. The implication being you can't possibly do that exercise and be fully satisfied with the choices you've made, the direction you're going, the the assumptions you you're you're believing. It's but when you look at the present moment in light of or from the point of view of a dying person, you immediately go, I'm fixing this, this, this, and this. So and and you have the chance to do that right now because you're not dying, but you could, you're not dying. And so you have the chance to course correct before it's to it.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And what you're really doing is you're changing your perspective.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Right? And your perspective.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Zooming way out.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  So what you see is what you get. That's our default perspective. But you change your perspective, you change your lens in the situation. Now, all of a sudden, you can see things you couldn't see before. That can also apply to so many other aspects of your life and decision making gives you different lenses into a problem to think like, how would Ryan think about this? What would Ryan see? What would Ryan consider important? But importantly, you can also, it doesn't have to be about death. You can be like, if I were to take over my life today, I fired myself.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  I'm starting from scratch.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  A new management comes in tomorrow morning.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  What's working? What's not working? What am I going to do differently? And now I've changed the perspective on the situation that I'm currently living. And so you can think forward in terms of like death, but you can also think in the present moment about like, what are the things that I'm wasting time on that are ineffective? That I would really be like, if I think Rogan had that thing about a video camera following him around all day or something. And if a video camera was documenting your success. What would you be proud of them seeing? And what would you want to hide from them? And if you're trying to hide something from them, then maybe that's an indication that you shouldn't be doing that, or you should limit your time. You're not going to want them to, you know, record you flipping through Instagram for an hour every night on the couch.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  You're going to be like, no, because that doesn't lead to success, right? They're documenting your success. And so I find those really interesting perspective changes, not only for how you're living life and where you're going, but also for the present moment about what am I doing? What can I do differently tomorrow specifically? Not in terms of my relationships or the destination, but in terms of my actions about other things, like what am I doing that's a waste of time? What would I cancel? Which projects would I take off my plate?

• 48:43Speaker 00

  No, that, and I think that's what philosophy is. That's what sort of what you talk about at Farm Street is just those shifts create changes in behavior and perspectives that make you better. And they, doing them often, doing them consistently over a long period of time, has the ability to transform your life. Because the impact might be small in each individual instance, but cumulatively, the impact is very, very large.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Totally. And that's what we miss, right? Because we're looking for these big impacts, these big wins, these overnight successes.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Because it's, and I have a saying, which is a lack of patience changes the outcome. And so when we want the outcome, we know how to get the outcome, and we try to get it quicker than is otherwise natural, we change the fact that we're going to get the outcome, or we dramatically reduce the odds. And if you think of financial freedom being an example, we know from history, the most likely path to financial freedom is to save more money.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  And to invest that money, dollar cost average it into a low cost index fund, and then wait a really fucking long period of time.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  And we all know that works. And then we all try to outsmart it. And most of what we're doing when we try to outsmart it is not necessarily to get a bigger pile, it's to change the timeline under which that happened. So it's like, I'm going to go all in on Bitcoin. Why are you doing it? I'm just going to make a lot of money, and then I'm going to get out, and I'm going to change my behavior and, you know, do the other thing.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  If you're not.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  But now I don't have the patience. So it's the lack of patience that sort of changes that outcome.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Well, awesome, man. This is great.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Thanks, dude.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.