Best of 2022: Conversations of the Year

The Knowledge Project closes 2022 with a look back at some of the best conversations of the year. Featuring interviews from 10 of the most downloaded and acclaimed episodes of 2022, this collection of conversations offers a variety of insights into evidence-based approaches to happiness, getting things done, small things you can do to make life great, eliminating drama, impulse control, making faster and better decisions, the core human nature that drives us all, sleeping better, slowing down your aging process, and what really matters. Guests on this episode include: Happiness expert Laurie Santos, former Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, leadership expert Diana Chapman, leading neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kunal Shah, sleep scientist Matthew Walker, aging expert David Sinclair, and business leader Sarah Jones Simmer. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Athletic Greens: Comprehensive nutrition and gut health support in one simple scoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:17Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. This podcast is about mastering the best what other people have already figured out, so you can apply their insights to your life. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, private episodes that only appear in your feed, hand-edited transcripts, including my personal highlights, and more, you can join at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link. The final episode of The Knowledge Project in 2022 is a collection of some of the best insights from the past year. We listened to all the conversations and picked out some key moments that will help you make 2023 the best year yet. You're going to hear about

• 1:02Shane Parrish?

  evidence-based approaches to happiness, getting things done, small things you can do to make life great, eliminating drama, impulse control, making faster and better decisions, the core human nature that drives us all, sleeping better, slowing down your aging process, and what really matters. Thank you for listening and learning with us this past year. Together, we're going to make 2023 even better. Let's start this episode with Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale University and a nationally recognized expert on happiness. Laurie appeared on episode 139 to discuss all the factors that contribute to our happiness and why we spend so much time and energy pursuing

• 1:43Shane Parrish?

  it. In this clip, she explains some of the evidence-based approaches to happiness she's encountered in her research, as well as some of the strategies to ensure your kids' happiness as well. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think one awesome thing about the modern day is that, you know, I think we have all these intuitions about what makes us happy. But, you know, with positive psychology and empirical psychology, we can test these. You know, we can take not so happy people and make them engage in social connection or do nice things for others and measure whether happiness improves. Happiness as measured by self-report on how your positive emotions feel after doing that, or your sense of satisfaction with life and so on. And when we do this, we find that things that make us happy are pretty straightforward, right? We want to increase our social connection. We're happier when we do nice things for others. We're happier when we are focused on our healthier habits, like things like improving our sleep and getting more exercise.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  We can really see the effects of this stuff and often quite profound effects. One of my favorite, most profound effects is the effect of taking a little time for gratitude. You know, the simple act of counting your blessings. There's evidence that in as little as two weeks, the simple act of writing three to five things you're grateful for down on a piece of paper can improve your well-being, like significantly improve your well-being. There's also evidence that expressing gratitude to other people, like writing a detailed thank you note to someone that you've always wanted to thank but never got a chance to, the act of doing that, at least in Marty Seligman and others' data, can improve your well-being, not just significantly immediately, but can give you an improved well-being effect that lasts for over a month, right? Which is crazy.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  You know, if I was like, you know, there's like this pill that you can take that will improve your well-being significantly for over a month. You take one pill and months later, you're feeling good? You'd be like, man, I'm gonna do that. Like, the simple act of writing a thank you letter can do that. And so I think we need the evidence, because the evidence is sometimes shocking. Even for me that knows it, I'm like, I would not have predicted that. But then when you see it, I think you can say, all right, I'll commit to that. And I think this is one of the powers of doing this class with my students, is like, I show them the graphs. I'm like, do you want to be here on the graph or here? Like, if you want to be here, that's doing some thank you letters. That's writing down things you're grateful for. And I think when you see how much you can really improve, I think that's what gets

• 4:12Speaker 01

  people to commit and actually make the behavioral changes that take some work to really engage with this stuff.

• 4:18Shane Parrish?

  How much of that is really changing our frame into our own life? So it's not that we've actually changed anything. It's we're changing where we place our attention. And by doing that, we're giving ourselves more perspective in terms of the world. And I say this, coming at this, when I catch myself having a bad day and beating myself up, I always try to remind myself that there are like seven billion people in the world that would instantly change, like trade all of their problems for all of my problems. And that phrasing and just that way of thinking about it

• 4:57Shane Parrish?

  tends to get me into a broader perspective and then gets me seeing things a lot differently.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think there's so much that we can change by changing our mindset, by changing our attitude, by changing the things we attend to. You know, you're talking about resetting your reference points, right? Like, your reference point could be like, there's millions of other people that would be so happy with this, right? Another change that's related to that is a technique that we know from positive psychology, but it's also an ancient one. It's one that the ancient Stoics talked about a lot, which is what's called negative visualization. So the Stoics thought that you should start every day visualizing, just for a second, that everything you thought was great in life is gone. So they said, you should wake up and be like, you know, my spouse left me. I've lost my job. I'm lame in my legs. You know, like, I'm about to be ostracized.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  You know, I don't have my community anymore. You do that for five minutes, you're like, but that's not true. It didn't happen. It's kind of like, it's a wonderful life and you run the movie really fast in your head. And the idea is like, just by feeling what it might feel like to have something negative happen, it resets your reference point. It also kind of like stops your hedonic adaptation for a second, where you're like, oh, my gosh, like, there are good things about having my spouse and so on. One technique I use, which always freaks out my audiences when I'm giving a talk about hedonic adaptation and negative visualization, is I have people say, you know, if you're a parent, imagine like, the last time you talk to your kid, that's the last time you're ever going to talk to them. Like, we don't have to figure out what terrible things are going to happen, but they're gone. It's done, right?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Instantly, you get this sense of like, the next time you see your kid, you're gonna hug them a little bit closer, right? And all it took was like a two-second negative visualization about what if, what if they weren't here, right? You know, we have the capacity to really appreciate this stuff, but we need to bring our attention to what, you know, what matters and why these things are great in our lives. And that takes a little bit of work, but it's really possible. We can have a richer life and savor things a lot more by changing our reference points.

• 7:01Shane Parrish?

  Let's talk about kids for a second. Can we adjust our kids' sort of like baseline level of happiness based on our own modeling of behavior? Or is it all sort of genetic? And is there a magic window where we can influence their happiness set point sort of easier?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Sue, when you look at happiness and genetics, you kind of get, you know, two kinds of messages. One is that there's, there's lots of evidence that happiness is heritable. So some of the variants we see in the population about, you know, happy people and not so happy people, that variance is probably due to somebody's genetic history, right? However, that doesn't mean that genetics is destiny. You know, even the heritability of happiness is, is lower than you might expect. You know, estimates kind of vary, but it's probably around, you know, 40%, 30%. Like, it's, it's not, it's not that all the variance in the happy people that you see out there in the world is like, oh, some people are genetically happy and some people aren't. That's just simply not the case. And that means that there's a lot of room for, you know,

• 8:03Speaker 01

  the environment and epigenetic effects to take hold. And usually when I mean environment, I mean like you and your behavior of what you're doing to promote your happiness. And so that's a story about happiness and genetics. And I think, you know, as a parent, as you think about conveying these things to kids, I think it's about kind of building in these right strategies early on. You know, I focused on college students. I wish my college students got a lot of these techniques and, and learned about these evidence-based approaches much earlier. And so we, you know, with my team here at Yale, we're sort of trying to think about ways that we can get these strategies out to younger and younger kids. But I think there are lots of ways that parents can promote this stuff. You know, I think parents do a great job of worrying about, you know, whether kids are, you know, getting good grades and, you know,

• 8:48Speaker 01

  being academically successful. I think we really need to think about conveying some of these skills for boosting happiness over time, too.

• 8:57Shane Parrish?

  Do you see any parenting techniques or approaches that perhaps are well-intentioned, but over time lead to discontent or unhappiness in children?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we've seen, especially just over the last 10 years, a lot of changes in how much parents intervene and help their kids. You know, there's been a lot of talk of obviously like helicopter parenting and so on. Now it's often said that we're in the domain of what's called lawnmower parents or steamroller parents. It's not like you're swooping in to help your kid, which is the helicopter model. It's like you're mowing the lawn or flattening the path completely. So there's like no bumps or, you know, little things for kids to navigate, kind of doing that preemptively. And I think it's incredibly well-intentioned, right? Like, no one wants your kids to go through anything hard. I think there's a real sense that the stakes are high. Like, you know, you want your kid to like learn, but there's also like performance and you want them, you know, you want your

• 9:51Speaker 01

  kids to learn and to take their bumps, but you don't want to do that on the SAT because that's going to like really matter for whether they get into college. But I think more and more, like, everything feels like the SAT. There's no point where it kind of is okay for them to like screw up and learn. And that's really problematic because we know a couple of things about how kids learn. One is that like, you gotta fail to learn. And in addition, you gotta fail to develop anxiety that you can do. You gotta, you gotta fail in order not to develop the sort of anxiety that whatever task you're doing is going to be impossible for you. And what I worry about a lot is that parents who kind of in this very well-intentioned way try to solve problems for kids, take away the opportunity that kids get from solving those problems themselves. And that might not seem

• 10:35Speaker 01

  bad, except that that, there's lots of evidence that that contributes to kids' beliefs about whether they can solve those problems themselves. My colleague here at Yale, Julia Leonard, studies the way that kids develop beliefs about their own competence. And she does this in like really little kids, like, so think toddlers. And her task works something like this. So she brings a toddler in, she gives them a tough puzzle to figure out, and she either has parents, you know, try to help by, you know, doing, like, giving some sort of strategies of like, hey, what color is this? Like, a kind of teaching thing where you're not solving it for them, but, and you're not giving, like, hey, I'm going to give you a hint. You're just like, hey, you know, let me like just let you pay attention to the right stuff. Versus the thing that parents tend to do, which is... Here's how you do it. I'm just going to give you the solution.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Or even worse, you know, and I get it, like, you know, as a person who's like dealt frustrated with kids before is like, let me just do that for you. Like, you don't know how to do it. It's really hard. Like, let me just do it. What she finds is that when you give kids a very different puzzle later on, kids who've had that taking over condition where the parents give the answer, give up much more quickly. And if you find ways to survey them about what they believe, they believe like they probably don't have the ability to do that stuff. And it makes sense, like, you know, if a kid's like, well, my mom's taking over for me. This must be really hard. This must be really scary, right? You know, when my mom's getting anxious about my grades, that must mean that the grades matter really a lot, right? And so I think what parents don't realize is that that, you know, quick solution of like, oh, I'm just, I'm just going to take care of it, either out of their own anxiety

• 12:04Speaker 01

  or out of a real, you know, idea that this is helping, it winds up ironically doing just the opposite. It winds up kind of making kids feel like they themselves are less efficient and less capable than they could be. And it winds up contributing to a lot of anxiety. And in my experience as a college professor, I see this more and more among parents, more and more parents, you know, checking in, you know, my roommate's having a rooming conflict. And I'm like, well, why are you, why are you talking to me? Like, like, why aren't they, you know, you can give them some advice about handle it, but it's their rooming conflict. Or, you know, parents calling professors about a student getting a bad grade. And again, I think it's well intentioned. The goal is to help, but ultimately, it's not achieving the goal that parents think they're achieving.

• 12:47Shane Parrish?

  Well, in a way, you're not practicing sort of the muscles, the resilience muscles that you'll need later in life, and you're not getting a chance to exercise them. And then when something happens and you're called upon to use them, you just don't have them.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. And I think this is one of the reasons we're seeing so much more anxiety in our college students today, right? Is that they've never, they've never had a chance to, to mess up. They've never had a chance to do it on their own. And so when they finally have to do it, it seems really scary. And they, and they really have these beliefs that they're not capable. The, the author and former Stanford dean, Julia Lithgow-Hames, has his whole books about helicopter parenting. And she talks a lot about how today's teens are failure deprived. Like, they haven't had a chance to fail, and this has these consequences, not just that like when they finally do fail, it's like really terrifying, but even to try something where they might fail feels, you know, way scarier than it would have if they'd had tinier

• 13:45Speaker 01

  failings along the way.

• 13:47Shane Parrish?

  What else comes to mind when you think about parenting techniques that are well-intentioned, but you're seeing in college kids that backfire?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think another one is, you know, I think a lot of parents are worried about their kids' wellbeing. And I think that that's, you know, good. Obviously, we want parents to care about how their kids are doing. But it tends to be, you know, in my experience, you know, very anxious parents that are worried about their very anxious kids. You know, when I meet the parents and I hear their anxieties about the kids' grades, I'm like, well, no wonder your kids are anxious about grades because you're embodying all of these kinds of anxieties. And so I think one thing that's useful for parents to remember is about the science of emotional contagion, that like, you know, we naturally catch other people's emotions. If you're embodying calm, and this is going to be fine, and everything's okay, then kids

• 14:39Speaker 01

  are going to follow that. If you're embodying, you know, anxiety and like, oh, my gosh, this is so, you know, important, like, kids are naturally going to catch that, too. And I think that that's tricky to remember. You know, I often get parents saying, oh, what can I do to, you know, make my child feel happier? And I'm like, well, have you focused on your own happiness? Like, how are you doing? And it's like, well, no, no, no, I want to, I want to focus on them. And it's like, you know, you got to put your own oxygen mask on first, right? Not just because, you know, they're paying attention to the strategies you're using, they're paying attention to your priorities, those are implicitly getting transmitted. But literally, your own emotions are getting transmitted. And so I often say that if you're really worried about your kids' happiness, like, do some work to focus on your own, because, you know, if you're feeling less anxious, if you're feeling in

• 15:23Speaker 01

  a better zone, if you're expressing gratitude, all these things are going to naturally come to your kids more easily, too.

• 15:32Shane Parrish?

  That's Laurie Santos from episode 139, The Pursuit of Happiness. You can check out the show notes for a link to that episode. Next up, I want to revisit our interview with Alan Mulally. Ford was nearly bankrupt when Alan took over in 2006. And through his Working Together management system and a culture of love by design, he turned them around. In this segment from episode 151 of the podcast, one of my favorite episodes of the year, Alan shares the specific aspects of those principles and practices that created a culture of love by design.

• 16:07Speaker 02

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• 17:04Speaker 04

  These are principles and practices that create a culture of love by design. Meaning that it's demonstrating your love for what you're doing as an organization. It's also demonstrating your love of how you feel about all the participants and their contribution. And it's also by design. So you're creating not only the principles and practices, but also a reliable process and expected behaviors of all the participants as you work together to deliver your compelling vision, whether it's at Boeing or Ford or a specific airplane or a specific car.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  And so the first one, and these are written down, people have them on the car, they carry around, they're in the offices. And one of them, the first one is, people first. Love them up. And the reason is that these are talented people that are that are working on these programs. I'll just use the 777 airplane as an example of a major program project in business. Hundreds of thousands of people that are working on this airplane to design it all around the world. They're talented, they're motivated, they believe in the vision of getting people together. So they can work together around the world.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  So appreciating them as a human being and appreciating their talent and thanking them and including them. So every one of these things I'm going to share with you, to your point, is a demonstration or an element of showing your love for all the participants. So the second one is including everybody. So when you're designing their plane, we include not only the airlines, but we include, of course, all the employees, all the suppliers, all the certification agencies around the world, all the cities in which the airplane is going to be used, and all of the investors and all the bankers, all the people that are participating, they are actually represented on the leadership team.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  So their voice and their thoughts and their suggestions are included in the development of the strategy and the plan and the accomplishment of the objectives. So include everybody. The next one is coming together around a compelling vision, a comprehensive strategy, and a relentless implementation plan. So the power of that vision, as we all know, is really, really important. Is it meaningful? Is it have purpose? Is it going to serve not only the stakeholders but the greater good? And you can imagine how that neat that was at Boeing and at Ford. Because our whole life is dedicated to safe and efficient transportation.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  Then having a comprehensive strategy for the product, for the process for delivering it, for all of the people, including the working together strategy, then a relentless implementation plan. And that's the business plan review, which we'll talk about, which gets a lot of attention over the years where every week we meet with all of the stakeholders. And we go through in an hour and a half, two hours, we go through every element of the strategy for accomplishing our objectives. Also, the status of that, we actually color code, all of the team members color code their strategy, plan on how it's going, red. Or green, they have its own plan. Yellow, they have an issue, but they have a solution.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  And red, they have a new issue, but they're, they're still working on the solution for it. And that next one is having clear performance goals and one plan. Most companies have many plans and most people are trying to figure out what the plan is, as, as we all know. Facts and data, really important. We care what you think. Uh, but we also want to know what's, what are the facts and data that you're looking at? To draw your conclusions, because as we go forward, especially I'm working on a yellow or a red, we all want to know those facts and data so that we together can turn the reds to yellows to greens. And then we move to the, some more demonstrations of love. So expect the unexpected and expect to deal with it.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  And so we're going to share the reality of our situation every week. So that everybody knows what the opportunities are, but also what are the issues that we need to, to deal with. And that everybody knows the plan. The product, the process, the people that work together, plan. They know what the status of it is. And also Shane, they know the areas that need special attention. So think about what that respect for people means when you share these things. I mean, many people, many believers, if they have a red item, first of all, that embarrasses them. They think they're not doing their job as opposed to that red item is a gem. We, I clap when you have a red because you're not the, you're not red. It's your item's red. Thanks for sharing that.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Now we all can work together to help you and us turn the reds yellows greens. And then the attitudes are really, the attitudes, the beliefs and the values are really important. And what we really look at are the behaviors because that's what we can see. And so we have these expected behaviors that, that, uh, we have zero tolerance for violating them. So proposing a plan, being positive, having a find a way attitude. Uh, we expecting each other, uh, listen to each other, help each other, appreciate each other. You can see very sophisticated words, Shane, very sophisticated. But we can see this and we can help each other in our personal development plans always be moving forward and growing in all of these behaviors, the way we treat each other.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Then emotional resilience, this is a creative process, it's innovation, we're going to have issues along the way. And so we're going to trust this process of working together and we're going to trust the process of turning the reds to yellows and greens. And the last one that everybody absolutely loves is have fun and enjoy the journey and each other. And as I mentioned, every day we'd wake up and every business partner we would get together and we'd say, you know, thank you, how could I help? And then enjoy each other and also enjoy the journey of creating these phenomenal products and services.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Now, there's one corollary to that, Shane, that's really important. And that is zero tolerance for violating this process of working, the business plan review, the creating value roadmap, including everybody, all stakeholders on the leadership team, zero tolerance for violating that operating process and zero tolerance for violating these expected behaviors because we all can see each other, we're together every week. And you can imagine how seriously everybody takes the process and the behaviors.

• 24:01Shane Parrish?

  That's Alan Mulally from episode 151, The Power of Working Together. Let's stay on the subject of leadership for a minute with our next segment featuring Marshall Goldsmith, one of the best executive coaches in the world. He's helped countless CEOs and leaders take charge of their organization and help people become better all around him. Marshall appeared on episode 142. And in this segment, you'll hear him explain the three things that make a great life and why most people miss them. Hint, there's no money, fame, or success involved.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  This is a different question than corporate success. If you look at life, my new book, I talk a lot about that. And I talk about three things. What's it take to have a great life? All right. And to me, great life is not measured by how much money you have or how much status you have. What does it take to have a great life? First, I talk about three things I don't discuss in my book, and then three things I do. The ones I don't discuss are, number one, it's health. You need to have good health, but I'm not writing a book on health. Two, you need at least a kind of middle-class level of income, and I'm not writing a book about that. And you need to have great relationships with people you love. And this book is only partially about that. Assuming you've got that, you need three things.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  One, your aspirations. You have to have something, why am I doing this? Some reason for existence that's beyond just getting things done. You need a why. Two, your ambitions. Those are the achievements that you have. And then number three is your day-to-day activities. That's the life you're living every day. And to the degree these three things are aligned, you're probably going to have a great life, which not always as easy as it sounds. And what happens is, if you look at the history of the world, most people in the history of the world were kind of stuck in the action phase, that day-to-day activity. We didn't have a lot of control in our history. We kind of much did what we were told.

• 26:03Speaker 05

  We're born where we're supposed to be, played our role in life, and we just lived from day to day. Not a bad thing, it's just that's the way it was. Some people are lost in the aspiration phase. They have lofty ideas and dreams. They don't achieve much, but they think a lot about big things. The people I coach, and most of the people on this podcast, If they're not careful, they overweight ambition and achievement. They're lost in achievement. And the one thing I really focus on in my new book is this. Never make your value as a human being conditioned on the results of what you're trying to achieve. Never do that. It's a fool's game.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  It is a fool's game for two reasons. One, you don't control the outcomes. There are a million variables impacting anything we're trying to do in life today. You don't control that. And number two, what happens if you do achieve stuff? How much satisfaction does that give you in life anyway? A week, a month, a year? Not much. As soon as you achieve something, if that's all that matters, guess what you're gonna have to do? Achieve more and more and more and more, and you never get there. So it's really, this is counter to Western philosophy. We have been hammered that achievement is good. About 98% of all self-help books tell you achieve more, delay gratification.

• 27:32Speaker 05

  Here's how you can achieve more. On the assumption that once I achieve more, everything will be okay. The great Western disease is it's all gonna be defined when? Followed by when I get the money status BMW condominium? Everything's gonna be okay after that. There's no when. That's all nonsense. It's all gonna be a great when. When is an old person waiting to die? That's when. You know, there's no when there. And one, one type of book always ends with, and they lived happily ever after. That type of book is called a fairy tale. That's a fairy, that's not the real world. That's not, that's a fairy tale. In life, we're constantly reinventing ourselves.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  And the first thing I talk about is never place your value as a human being on the results of what you're trying to achieve. I mentioned Albert Burle, who endorsed the book from Pfizer. I called Albert, how'd you do last year? Pretty good, you know? Came up with his vaccine, saved a billion or so lives. That's pretty good. And stocks at all time high and CEO of the year and oh, book and oh, blah, blah, on and on. And I had a pretty good year. I said, what's your problem in life? He said, I have a huge problem. Next year.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Next year, if his value as a human being is he has to do better than last year, pack it in, he will never do better than last year. What happens to the Super Bowl champions? Disaster. Michael Phelps won 25 gold medals, more than anyone in history. What do you think about doing everyone his last medal? Killing himself, killing himself. If that's it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. So what I talk about in the book is it's great to try to achieve things, but don't become fixated on the outcomes. One of the most brilliant people I've ever met is called, his name is Safi Bakal.

• 29:27Speaker 05

  Safi is a small business guy, started up 10 or 12 companies, made tens of millions of dollars. Has a PhD in physics from Stanford, has an IQ probably equal to mine and yours combined. He, you know, just a brilliant guy, wrote a book called Loon Shots. He's consulted to presidents, on and on and on. So Safi is one of the people I spent time with over COVID during Zoom calls every weekend. And he said, he finally realized something. He's a scientist. He said, he finally realized that, that he, I always thought happiness was a dependent variable based upon achievement, that I will be happy after I achieve. And he said, I finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  You can achieve a lot and be happy. You can achieve a lot and be miserable. You can achieve nothing and be happy. You can achieve nothing and be miserable. They're independent variables. And if, you know, when I talked to Safi, I told him, how much you have to achieve? We need two PhDs from Stanford? What, another 100 million bucks? Start up some more companies? Consult a couple more presidents? What does it matter? You're on achievement, you're a 99.999 now. You think it's going to matter? You get to a 99.9999? It's not going to matter. You're just going to find something else to do.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  And it was a great breakthrough for him because he realized you can be happy without dependency upon the next achievement.

• 31:01Shane Parrish?

  Can we teach people this, or does it have to be learned?

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the way you do it is you love the process of what you're doing. You do your best. It's connected to a higher purpose.

• 31:15Speaker 05

  And you achieve what you achieve. You win, you win. If you lose, you lose. I tell a story, the golfer and the beer can. So it's a golfer going to his little country club. He's playing for the club championship, right? Last hole. Noisy people in front of him drinking beer. Oh, very annoying, but he concentrates. He hits a drive, almost perfect. Somehow the ball goes over into the rough, a terrible lie. What happened? He walks up to the ball. A beer can. The idiots in front of him left a beer can on the fairway. He is so angry. What does a golfer need to do? Forget about the drive. Forget about the beer can.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  Forget about the idiots. Come up with a strategy. Breathe. Focus on the process. Hit the shot in front of you. Hit the shot in front of you. That's it. Let all that other stuff go. It's just a distraction. Don't think about winning the tournament. That's a distraction. Don't think about the results. Hit the shot.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  And the other thing is forgive the other people for being who they are.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  And forgive yourself for wishing they were somebody else. Let it go. Don't make yourself miserable because people in front of you are idiots.

• 32:45Shane Parrish?

  That's Marshall Goldsmith from episode 151, The Essentials of Leadership. Next up, we go to another leadership coach, Diana Chapman, who appeared on episode 130 to discuss how we respond to challenges and how to eliminate drama in our lives so we can better become leaders, partners, and parents. In this segment, Diana discusses the concepts of the to me leader and the by me leader, and introduces us to the idea of the drama triangle, as well as the difference between reacting and responding.

• 33:22Speaker 06

  We got this model from Gay and Katie Hendricks, and I don't know where they got it from, but it's this idea that there is a line and you're either in this above the line mindset or this below the line mindset. And when you're above the line, you're recognizing life is happening by me. And in particular, my own experience is happening by me. So my emotional states, my physical states, my mental states are happening by me. The circumstances out there are not ultimately the cause of my direct experience here. So it recognizes that I have a lot of creativity here. I am the creator of the experience.

• 34:06Speaker 06

  Whereas when I'm in leadership from to me, it's more of those things out there are affecting me. It's happening to me. So I don't get to have ultimate creatorship here. I'm now a victim to some of the circumstances around me. And so therefore, I could, you know, from that mindset, I might say, Shane, you hurt my feelings. You know, you are the cause of my hurt feelings, which I hear, you know, a lot in the workplace. Or instead of, hey Shane, I want to let you know I hurt my own feelings. When you said these words, I took them in and I hurt myself with them. It was happening by me. It didn't happen to me. You know, but most of us grew up like, you know,

• 34:50Speaker 06

  Diana, go apologize to your sister. You hurt her feelings. And so we got trained like we are responsible for each other. And now that doesn't mean, again, that I don't make amends for like, hey, I do want to acknowledge that I did this thing and likely that didn't feel, you know, likely didn't land very well over there. And so I can still take responsibility for my impact in the world. But ultimately, everybody gets to have their 100% responsibility in their own wellbeing when we're in this by me leadership model.

• 35:21Shane Parrish?

  We're responsible for our own feelings.

• 35:25Shane Parrish?

  Something that you say to somebody else may, may impact them in a way that you didn't intend, but you're not causing them any sort of injury. Is that what I hear you saying?

• 35:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, what I'm saying is, you know, if I say to you, God Shane, I think you ought to have an orange mohawk on your head. You know, I don't know why you're not wearing an orange mohawk. It would look way better. You know, likely that's not really going to impact you because there's no belief in your own head that thinks you ought to have an orange mohawk. But if I said something like, you know, you could be a more effective father and I think maybe you should, you know, if I said something, something that you believed in too, you might hurt yourself with it because there's a little Velcro. And so some part of you is believing or agreeing with what I'm saying and then you use that to upset yourself. So the idea here is I get ultimate decision rights on whether I'm going to upset myself or not.

• 36:17Speaker 06

  And you should, you know, you might create conditions that make it a little more challenging. So if somebody starts yelling at me, I might need to take a little more, get a little more present to not upset myself. And that's where tools like meditation, other skills help people be able to build that awareness so they can stay present in those scenes.

• 36:34Shane Parrish?

  I, I think that's sort of like a good segue into the drama triangle and the, the role of being a victim and how we see ourselves. Can you talk to me a little bit about the drama triangle, how you came across it, what it is and how it limits us?

• 36:48Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm, I just want you to know, I'm like a huge fan of the drama triangle. It's, it's the tool I use every single day with myself and with my clients. So I learned this from Gay and Kathleen Hendricks and it was originally created by a guy named Steven Cartman, a psychologist. And basically the theory is that we all have learned to do relationship, most in this role of victimhood and that there are three unique flavors of victimhood. And so the first one is the pure victim and you know, Shane, it's so hard and the hours and my emails and oh my gosh, and the kids and COVID and now, now the masks and oh my gosh, you know, there's just all this I'm at the effect of.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  And, and so victim has this sense of disempowerment. It's got this, it's taking less than a hundred percent responsibility. It, it often has a little bit of a whine to it. So then there's another role in the drama triangle and that's the villain and the villain's job is to blame. Whose fault is it? So a lot of us have an inner critic that blames ourselves. So, gosh, I should have uh more health, I should be a more effective partner or parent, I should be more successful, or I shouldn't be, you know, blah, blah, blah. Or you, Shane, it's because of you that we're not having a good time, and I was fine until you showed up.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  So you should or shouldn't be a certain way. Or them, I mean, we all know who they are, who are screwing it up for the rest of us, and so this villain is constantly looking for who's to blame. And then finally is the role of the hero. And the hero's job is to seek temporary relief, and that really is, the key word is temporary. So, I'm, at the end of the day, I'm so burned out. Where's the Netflix? Where's my Pinot Noir? Where's even going for a run, or something that gives me a little relief? And it works. Day after day, it works, but I never go address the core issue of like,

• 38:51Speaker 06

  wait a minute, what's going on that I'm living my life such that I come home at the end of the day so burnt out? You know, how am I, how is that happening? Can I address that? So I don't have to keep temporarily fixing it over and over again. Uh, we see this in friendships and in organizations where people listen to each other's gossip. That's a great way, actually, to hero. Let me give you some temporary relief by letting you vent. So I'm gonna hero you by listening. I'm gonna call it being a good friend. But we don't really solve your issue. We just make, you know, you hang up and you go, oh, I feel better. That was great. Thanks a lot. But now you've gotta go back and we gotta do it all over again. That's a way we can hero each other.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Or we can hero them. Let's put a philanthropy together and throw a bunch of money at a population. And not really ask them to take their hundred percent responsibility. So that we'll take more, and then next year they come back and they go, you know, we got all the same issues. Can you toss some more money at us? So heroing is the most challenging, I think, in the drama triangle, because the culture can really applaud heroes. And so our identities go, well, hey, look, you know, people think I'm good for doing these things. It takes a lot of awareness, because in order to hero, you need victims. And then that means you are requiring people to be disempowered so you can hero. And that's not such a, you know, that's how we're just gonna create more battles amongst us.

• 40:18Shane Parrish?

  Why is it called the drama triangle?

• 40:20Speaker 06

  My sense is because in those three roles, what you get is drama. Nah nah nah. You know, you get recycling patterns where people are reactive. And so that's, that's a definition for drama is, you know, repeating patterns of reactivity.

• 40:39Shane Parrish?

  I, I think that word reactive is, is really important because when we react, what we're not doing often is reasoning.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  Right, we're not reasoning, we're, we're not responding, we're in this kind of compulsive, I got to, I have to. And so, and a lot of it, again, I think is because we get to avoid the discomfort that comes if we actually pause and become more aware and get, and get present to what's happening. And to be honest about what's happening with each other. It's like, oh, I don't want to do that, so let me just temporarily relieve everything over and over again.

• 41:15Shane Parrish?

  And what's interesting to me also about e- each sort of point in this triangle is that from that perspective, we're just always right, whether we're the victim, we're the villain, we're the hero. Like the story that's going on in our head is that we're, we're right.

• 41:31Speaker 06

  Yes, and exactly, we can create these biases that actually can, we can avoid all the evidence to the contrary of our righteous perspectives and the more I'm in my own deep practice, I get that ego and identities need to feel right in order to secure themselves. And if I were to let go of being right from that righteous point of view, which is like a right that defends itself, what's underneath that is a lot more vulnerability. A lot more of, I don't know, a lot more fear. And if you're not comfortable with that, then the identity is going to secure itself all back up again and you're gonna

• 42:14Speaker 06

  get back into, I'm right that this is the right way and that's the wrong way and I'm right to be more like this and not like this and it's just, we all get secured up again in these defense mechanisms to protect this deep, deep vulnerability that comes under, what if I don't know? What if? People don't like to sit in, I don't know.

• 42:36Shane Parrish?

  And they definitely don't like the fear of vulnerability, like even just opening yourself up to somebody else and, you know, telling them you care about them or whatever it is, because you're worried about this rejection. You're worried about all these things.

• 42:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, that that threat to our approval, because, gosh, we all want to be approved of. It's so important and we want to, we all want to feel secure, you know, that I'm going to be part of something and I want to, we all want to have that control. But that all has to learn to be sourced inside of ourselves. Because if I can't source all the approval I've ever wanted, I'm going to then be out in the world trying to control my approval. And that's going to cause a decent amount of suffering for me and maybe for others, too.

• 43:22Shane Parrish?

  That's Diana Chapman from episode 130, Trusting Your Instincts. Again, you can check out the show notes for a link to that episode.

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• 44:29Shane Parrish?

  Staying on the topic of reacting and responding, I was thrilled to have leading neuroscientist and Stanford University School of Medicine professor, Dr. Andrew Huberman, on the show this year in what turned out to be the most downloaded episode of 2022. In this segment, you'll hear him discuss the importance of impulse control, strategies to change our neural circuitry, and the idea of go versus no-go functions.

• 44:58Speaker 09

  I'm fascinated by this. You know, most of the disorder and dysfunction in the world is caused by lack of impulse control. Right? I mean, just think about all the people that tweet something stupid and then lose their jobs. Or, you know, or we hear these cases of like, wow, like the person was on a Zoom and they did something inappropriate, not by accident. It's how they really have a hard, people have a hard time suppressing their behavior and they lose things that they've invested tremendous amounts of resources in. Some of this is relates to biological drives that, you know, primitive drives, you know, you hear about people who have made fortunes or have wonderful families and then they go and have a one-off affair with somebody and they lose a lot.

• 45:42Speaker 09

  Right? They lose relationships, they lose reputation and just think, wow. So do we conclude that the forces of, of the hypothalamus that drive us towards certain types of behavior are more powerful? Maybe, although maybe it's, we should look at it from the other side and just say, well, maybe they were just actually far weaker in terms of impulse control across the board. And maybe that's what made them effective because they were very action oriented. I have someone in my life, I won't mention who they are, who likes to say about themselves, they're all tactics, no strategy. And they're an extremely effective person. They can make more happen in 45 minutes than anyone else I know, but they have no long-term strategy. It's really, and it's gotten them into some serious hot water.

• 46:26Speaker 09

  But in any case, so there's an area of our neural circuitry called the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are vitally important for controlling and integrating thought and action. And they have two main circuits that are both regulated by dopamine, but they use different receptors for dopamine to have different effects, in fact, opposite effects. Some of the circuitry in this basal ganglia pathways are involved in what we call go functions, like pick up this thing or lean into the work. It's go, it's action oriented and that includes thought. And then the other one is no go. And there's a, it actually involves.

• 47:06Speaker 09

  Certain neurotransmitters, including dopamine, to suppress behavior. So what we learned as kids is actually a lot of no-go type behavior. It's sit still, don't interrupt. Okay, it's not just clear your plate from the table. It's not just be kind, say thank you. Those are go type behaviors. It's sit there. It's the two marshmallow task. And beautiful work has a two marshmallow task, of course, being the study done at Stanford many years ago and repeated many times. It seems like I'm citing only Stanford studies. I realize there are other universities, but a lot of great work was done there where they give the kids an option to have one marshmallow now or two marshmallows if they wait. Those videos are very cute and it's fun to watch that the kids will sit there. They use all sorts of distraction strategies.

• 47:48Speaker 09

  One of the kids like starts getting close to the marshmallows, some turn away, others sniff them. And they've tracked these kids over time. And indeed, there are some data to support the fact that kids that were able to defer gratification do better in life. It's not, the studies are not as robust as we once thought, but adults have a lot of problem with delayed gratification. They're just not very good at it. And so one thing that I've done over the years to try and reinforce these circuits in myself, based on my understanding of how they work, is every day I try and have somewhere between 20 and 30 no-gos. And the no-gos can be trivial, like I'm ready to pick up my phone. No, and I force myself to not pick it up.

• 48:33Speaker 09

  And all I'm doing is trying to reinforce that circuit because the thing to understand about neural circuitry is that it's generic. It doesn't, it's not designed so that you have a strong no-go response just to picking up your phone. It actually carries over to multiple other things. And this is also true of the go circuitry. Maybe this is the problem we're in. We heard years ago, and I think it's still a wonderful thing from was Admiral Craven, you know, you get up, you make your bed in the morning. Why? Well, I have a friend from the SEAL teams. He's like, well, you know, the McRaven narrative was you do it so that at the end of the day, even if you have a miserable day, your bed is made. And I heard that and I was like, well, I like the idea, but frankly, seeing my bed made at the end of the day doesn't do that much for me. I actually think it's a much more powerful underlying mechanism.

• 49:16Speaker 09

  And no disrespect to him, great admiration for McRaven. I love his work and what he's doing, but, but I think that at any moment, we can be back on our heels, flat-footed or forward center of mass. That's the way I try and visualize the waking portions of my life. Sleep, of course, allows you to toggle between these states more easily. So get that sleep. But we're, you know, at any moment, we're kind of like feeling defeated, we're flat footed, we're forward center of mass. A forward center of mass takes energy, but it also has its own momentum. So I think getting up and doing something without involving rumination or consideration or thought, just getting into action, sets your whole nervous system into a mode of go. And I think we, then we drink caffeine, it's a go stimulus.

• 49:59Speaker 09

  Then we move towards the things that are important to us. We're emailing, we're always doing go, go, go, go, go. Even if you're scrolling on your phone, it's go, scrolling Instagram or something, it's a go type function. We rarely rehearse our no-go functions. And no-go functions are simply about suppressing behavior. So if you have a meditative practice, there's a little bit of that where you think, oh, I don't want to do it, but I'm going to force myself to sit still, even though I want to get up, that's a no-go. But think about it, if you get better at meditating, you actually have less of an opportunity to get into this no-go mode, right? To trigger this circuitry. So what I try and do is introduce 20 or so no-gos throughout the day that I deliberately impose on myself as I'm about to get into reflexive action.

• 50:44Speaker 09

  And it could be delaying a bite of food for a couple of minutes. I realize it sounds almost like an eating disorder thing, but that's, people with eating disorders probably want to stay away from that one. But there are all sorts of ways that we can do this. We find ways that we are, are short, short-circuiting this process. And so I think we need to keep these no-go circuits trained up. I think nowadays, there's so much opportunity and so much reward for go that we don't train the no-go pathways. One that I think works well for me is oftentimes if I'm training in the gym, I'll have a set routine and then I'll start changing it. I'll notice that I'll have this impulse to, I'll give a dumb example, but just because I want to make it concrete. You know, you're doing one exercise and suddenly you'll, you'll go to alternate limb. It's like, why did I do that? I had a plan, right?

• 51:29Speaker 09

  I should stick to that plan. So the, the no-go there is to not default to something more spontaneous. It's to force, into really enforce regimen. And I think what happens is, is we become adults, there, there isn't anyone supervising us, making us do these things quite as much. And the phone has allowed for so much context switching and so much opportunity for go, go, go, go, go, that pretty soon you've got hours of your day that are gone that were not structured. So I'm not talking about becoming neurotically attached to these no-gos. What I'm talking about is, is Keeping the blade sharp on both sides, keeping the goes intact, getting up, making your bed, getting into action, doing things, but also forcing myself to not check the phone, to not check email,

• 52:13Speaker 09

  to stay in a groove of focus. And that's actually where there's the greatest opportunity. I'm a big believer in 90-minute focused workouts. And of course, in that time, attention drifts and there's the temptation to get up, go use the bathroom, get up and get a cup of coffee, get up and do anything but what I'm doing. But I try and just really create tunnel vision, even if I'll just sit there and go, this is miserable. I can't focus on this, but not allow myself to go do something else unless it's, there's a real urgent need. And this is actually the way I trained myself to study in college. It was a little bit masochistic, but I used to sit down, set a timer, and I wouldn't let myself get up for any reason, for any reason whatsoever. And I think I've lost some of that over the years. So I'm trying to build up the circuitry again. A good friend of mine, Pat Dossett,

• 52:58Speaker 09

  from the, he did nine years on the SEAL Teams, and he's a big believer in keeping these circuits tuned up. And he said, we always do a certain challenge each year. The other day, he said to me, how about in 2022, we do the hour of pain? And I was like, oh, no. Turns out, the hour of pain is where you sit in a pretty uncomfortable position and you have to remain in that position for an hour. It's like, that sounds great. That sounds like a really great, low-cost, miserable way to build up these no-go circuits. Cold water, you could do for a little bit longer, but eventually you're going to get hypothermic, right? Heat, you could burn yourself. Exercise, you could damage yourself. But one hour of pain, so I gotta try this. So I think we're gonna do it.

• 53:42Shane Parrish?

  That's Dr. Andrew Huberman from episode 130, "The Science of Small Changes." Check out the show notes for a link to that complete episode. Next up, let's talk about decision-making. Speed, simplicity, and empowerment are Reid Hoffman's three principles for decision-making. And in this next clip from episode 147 of the show, the founder of LinkedIn explains why each is important for running an effective organization and how you can make decisions faster and better.

• 54:13Speaker 10

  So one of the things, and I'll come to those three principles, but one of the things that I find is useful as a understanding frame for everyone is that I think all companies are in the process of becoming technology companies at different speeds because technology is changing industries. And so there's the obviously, like what is usually referred to as technology companies, are technology companies that are like redefining the borders of software, reinventing new kinds of technological hardware, et cetera. And then it kind of bleeds back in. But I think even like manufacturing companies are becoming technology companies by sensors and robotic lines and all the rest.

• 54:55Speaker 10

  And Hollywood is a technology company through CGI and streaming and distribution. So it's like, it's a general thing. Now, one of the things about technology is it picks up the clock. The technological clock is accelerating decade by decade. And so the timeframes in which you need to operate and need to make decision are accelerating. Part of that is like, one of the things that when I, when I kind of go through the entire world, there's basically two places that embody this fighter pilot terminology called an OODA loop, observe, orient, decide, act. It's how fast you make these decisions through this kind of this framework, both as individuals

• 55:39Speaker 10

  and a society. And it's Silicon Valley in China. And I think that's where all technology companies are in the process of happening. And so then you begin to say, whatever your particular frameworks are, and you know, there's, there's some very good frameworks along RACI and DACE and so forth for distributing decisioning within the organization. And that's part of the empowerment side. And then the speed and simplicity parts of it, speed, we've kind of already covered as kind of like one of the things that generally speaking. Making a decision faster is always better, right? Like unless you, you have to evaluate the decision a little bit sometimes that well, an extra X days or whatever,

• 56:21Speaker 10

  you know, makes it 10% better is worth it on this decision for some particular reason. But like, for example, one of the things I learned very early days in PayPal was, um, when I'm making decisions at startup speed, even confronted with very large decisions, do you buy the company? Uh, you know, this company, do you, do you shut down this division and so forth? You go, what would my decision right now? If I wasn't able to take any more time in order to solve this decision? And you go, okay, well, my decision would be X. Then go, okay, well, specifically what I learned or who would I talk to that might change that decision? Cause if you don't actually end up with a good set of answers, then you said, well, let's make the decision now. Right?

• 57:04Speaker 10

  And then when you, when you think, well, maybe I could talk to so and so, or maybe I could get this information. You say, well, what's the cost and time of getting that information? Is it better to make the decision now? That's obviously all plays into speed. And then in simplicity, one of the things that I've learned by, you know, kind of working at these, you know, organizations that are either at scale or getting to scale, is simple plans are all that work, simple plans are all that kind of, you know, simple things are, are the thing that can, can most easily spread without distortion within an organization. And so you want to have a certain simplicity of, of kind of how you're doing it. Even if you are, you know, kind of being a little overly simple, that's the better side to err on for scale application.

• 57:48Speaker 10

  And then it's that's, that's kind of a, a way of making it. And one of the things that I think is a general thing for all, every professional, and then especially all leaders to really orient on is.

• 58:02Speaker 10

  How do you make decisions fast and well is one of the central things you're doing when you're doing, you know, a wide variety of essentially, you know, kind of all, maybe all jobs, certainly all white collar jobs, certainly all white collar leadership jobs.

• 58:18Shane Parrish?

  Can we dive into that a little bit more? Like, how would you teach somebody to make decisions fast and well, or faster and sort of better at the same time?

• 58:29Speaker 10

  So there's a couple of things. So one, like, for example, one of the things that I I value in in people I work with and hire is is is being explicit learners, which is you try to learn something in a way that you can explain it to other people as a tool and as a principle. And so, you know, a little bit of like when I was learning how to make decisions much faster at PayPal, I said, all right, well, what I will do is I will get into the ritual of confronted with a major decision. I will see if I can make that decision right now, because I'm what I'm doing is a training my way away from the discomfort of, oh, God, I haven't thought about everything. What if I'm wrong? You know, how could I make this big decision so quickly away from that? But not in a way that you

• 59:12Speaker 10

  say, well, the decision's made when you do it. But you're thinking about, you know, concretes about like, well, you know, who else would you talk to? What other information or data could you get? What other things could bear on this decision? What other kinds of risk analysis? So that's one ritual that helps you with that. And then, you know, obviously, you should start by doing the trying it, not immediately going to, I'm going to be making that decision in, you know, five seconds from from when it happens. But then also, part of what you begin to do is kind of learn a set of questions. There's kind of, there's a whole bunch of different stuff around decision making. So one is like, well, how, how much of this is a one way door or a two way door? Like, if you make

• 59:53Speaker 10

  this decision, is it recoverable from? Because if it's catastrophic and and expensive, then okay, well, maybe we should be a little bit have a higher degree of certainty, a higher degree of of likelihood and evidence in what we're doing. Questions around how how much can you experiment with decision? How much can you try it? Like, is there experimentation that can that can do it? It's like the one way two word two way door, but it could be not quite getting through the door, but testing it yet. Like, you know, is there a set of tools there that you learn to do these things? And then, of course, you learn a bunch of stuff from decision-making science, which is trying not to have sunk cost bias, you know, trying not to, you know, kind of be deluded by,

• 1:00:37Speaker 10

  you know, blind spots and so forth. Like, there's most of the decision science stuff kind of shows you how you make easy, like, maybe bad failures, but you slip into failures of decision mode when you don't even know it. And so how do you bring those kinds of things in? And so you try to bring all of that in to essentially decision-making. It's like, it's the kind of thing that when you think about, you know, what should be the advanced courses in high school? You know, because the natural kind of way that academia, you know, which is kind of, you know, all starts with how do you train professors? What's graduate school? How do you train people graduate, undergraduate? How do you train people undergraduates high school? And you go, okay, but that's not the primary arc for most people.

• 1:01:21Speaker 10

  Um, and so like, for example, when you say, well, should I have calculus two or not? Right? As a way of, of, of prepping for this path. The actual, you know, kind of question that you could actually get to that would be a really good thing to have in all high schools is decision-making. Right? Like, how do you, how do you, how do you think about making decision-making a good way? Because, you know, obviously, we go through life making decisions. Should we, uh, date person X or Y or get married to them? Uh, should we stay here or should we move? What job should we choose? What college should we choose? What things should we major in? And there's a whole set of things that go into that. All of those things go into decision-making,

• 1:02:05Speaker 10

  where being thoughtful and learning and iteratively to be better about it is really fundamental. So, anyway, so that's, you know, that's, uh, I myself, I'm a student of this stuff because of that purview of how it applies to everything.

• 1:02:24Shane Parrish?

  That's Reid Hoffman from episode 147, Better Decisions, Fewer Mistakes. Check out the show notes for a link. Staying on the subject of decision making, next we hear from Indian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kunal Shah, who shares the various lenses he uses when deciding on whether to invest in a company. Shah also offers his thoughts on the nature of insight, the differences between the American and Asian cultures, and the core human motivations that drive us all.

• 1:02:58Speaker 11

  A lot of founders who pitch to me are usually well-prepared and make a presentation and come to me. So I tell them that, hey, I don't understand English very well. Can you explain this to me in Hindi? What does it do? Founders who really get what they're doing can switch language without a problem because they really get it. And language doesn't change anything for them. Many people who have just prepared their presentation and not really understand this very clearly, they struggle with the language change and their pitch goes for a toss.

• 1:03:29Shane Parrish?

  So, hold on, one way to... I just want to add P back on this because like, one way that you can do this without switching languages is switch level of the conversation. So often, people prepare at one level and it's like, oh, can you go deeper? Or can you go higher level and keep that in context? Which is sort of like the same idea.

• 1:03:49Speaker 11

  And I've seen that people who are really good, you change language, you change medium, you tell them, I don't want to read your presentation, they'll still be okay. Some people, you tell them, I'm not going to look at your PPT and they'll be like, how do I explain this to you? The other framework that has worked for me is I tell them, I don't understand anything what you're saying. Imagine I'm a user of this product and I have to tell a friend over dinner to try this. What do I say? Only rule, I cannot use any jargon because I don't speak to my friends in jargon.

• 1:04:23Speaker 11

  So tell me, what do I say? And I tell them to take 10 minutes break before telling me the answer. I would say 90% of founders fail at this. Because they can't really distill it to that simple, transmissible message from a friend to friend. If you cannot distill your idea to a transmissible conversation at dinner, it's not going to spread. And things that don't spread will have a huge CAC. Because nobody really understands what the hell are you doing? That's one framework that has worked. The other one is asking them, what is the real motivation? People will use it.

• 1:05:06Speaker 11

  A lot of times, the real motivation is different than what people say is the real motivation. For example, buying expensive headphones. They are not really to make you hear better. You want to signal to the world that you are affluent and you have good status and good taste. Most founders cannot distill that that is the real reason people will buy it. They'll keep going to the functional utility and not the emotional benefit of the product. And that's another framework I've seen that good founders always know functional and the emotional benefit of their product or service. Market sizing. Most founders cannot imagine how will they start from here and go on to build a very large thing from here.

• 1:05:50Speaker 11

  They get stuck in, uh, this is what I do. But they can't imagine how will this become a large company ever. They just don't think, they don't even think, they don't even, they cancel their own idea. And I've seen the opposite type, which is, I call it the Swiss knife problem. They believe that they have to build a Swiss knife when the consumer only is looking for a knife, uh, because they love building. So a lot of them are usually with engineering background. They love to build, they write so much software that consumers are confused when they talk to them because they don't have a foot in the door strategy that, okay, let me sell a knife and then eventually become a Swiss knife in their life. They start with the idea of Swiss knife and you're like, hold on. I can't even process what you guys are doing. And Swiss knife becomes cool, nobody uses it.

• 1:06:35Speaker 11

  Like everybody seems to have a Swiss knife, but never being used. Uh, so I think that's another pattern I've seen. Uh, I've never really thought about this from a human framework problem, but uh,

• 1:06:50Speaker 11

  Another thing is that why would somebody pay for this? And it's surprising how most people do not understand that nobody's gonna pay for that. Like, will your dad pay for this? Will your mom pay for this? Will your CFO pay for this? Will your kid pay for this? Like, they are just off on that. The last one is, do they have an insight that

• 1:07:16Speaker 11

  is not obvious, but when you see them talk about you, you're like, uh huh, that makes sense. You'll rarely meet successful people who are not insightful. I believe the insight is the smallest unit of truth that is actionable. And therefore, people who operate in the currency of insights tend to be generally more successful, at least in business.

• 1:07:38Shane Parrish?

  Can you go deeper on that? The smallest unit of insight that's actionable?

• 1:07:43Speaker 11

  The smallest unit of truth that is actionable.

• 1:07:45Shane Parrish?

  Truth, truth that's actionable. Yeah, go deeper on that for a second.

• 1:07:50Speaker 11

  If you go to ancient Hindu mythology and you study the Sanskrit scripts, and Sanskrit is a very condensed language, right? Because it was invented before paper was invented. So, knowledge was transmitted from human to human through memory. So, they had to distill the wisdom in the smallest unit possible that could be memorized and transmitted from human to human. And the earliest scriptures were also tight. Like, you'll read a Sanskrit yoga line and like in one line, they'll condense like really a lot of wisdom in it.

• 1:08:27Speaker 11

  So, I think the concept of boiling something to the core units of it, that you cannot divide it further, becomes a powerful unit that is also the building blocks of what we call as first principles.

• 1:08:42Speaker 11

  That can help build businesses, right? And I think a lot of times, uh, then it's a painful process. Seeking truth is painful.

• 1:08:53Speaker 11

  Shane, you've been doing this for a while. Like, how many more blogs will it take to get close to the truth? You'll probably not find it, but the joy of seeking truth, for the sake of it, is not natural and therefore a lot of people do not appreciate it enough. And but insights become this nice building block through which you can create great businesses, unlock great success, uh, because that is something that is not commonly available. Everybody seems to be seeing some pattern, but you see something else. For example, I had this view that, oh, India cares about status so much more than the Western society. Let me do one thought experiment. I reached out to my friend who is to be a buyer of a top retail chain in India.

• 1:09:37Speaker 11

  I asked her to check, can you check if the gross margin on all products sold for the living room is lot more than the gross margin of all products sold for the bedroom? And nobody had ever analyzed data like that in retail ever. Because it's like kitchen and sofa and furniture and all of that. Nobody thought living room and bedroom as two separate concepts. But I said, can you please make somebody crunch it? And turns out the gross margin was three X more. The reason is, in a society, we care more about showing to others. So all the products which are showing demonstrating status were put in the living room. Our bedrooms are terrible in India because nobody comes to them. And therefore, it was not surprising that bed sheets were not bought expensive in India

• 1:10:22Speaker 11

  and bathroom products did not sell a lot. We don't have a lot of bathtubs in India because it's not about me. It's about showing social status to others who come to my living room. And therefore, you apply that insight now. And I told this insight to a, a home renovation company. I told them, don't keep saying home renovation. Launch a product line which is living room renovation. And today, seventy, eighty percent of that revenue for them is living room renovation.

• 1:10:53Speaker 11

  Because that's the insight and that's the motivation button that you can press in people.

• 1:10:59Shane Parrish?

  Well, I think in the in the Western world, it's about treating yourself. It's about you're worth it. It's about we still have the status thing.

• 1:11:07Speaker 11

  Individualism versus collectivism, which is how Asian societies are. And therefore you don't deserve things to be special, but you have to show it. And therefore weddings are really big and very high gross margin. It's for others.

• 1:11:22Shane Parrish?

  So let's go back to the, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but I want to go into more detail on. You mentioned some of the core human motivations that transcend culture.

• 1:11:33Speaker 11

  The core human game is to constantly improve our social status so that we improve our mating success or our success of our progeny. The easiest way to answer this question is that if we could really create designer babies, would people spend most of their income on that or not? And let's not go into ethical debate of is designer baby is a good thing or not? If it was possible that you can tweak their IQ, their looks, their health, their chances of terminal diseases to be lower and all of that. Or let me put it this way, let's say I could really invent a pill that can make you younger or healthier, wouldn't you give me 50% of your net worth?

• 1:12:17Speaker 11

  And I think that's where the core motivations are like, what would you give half of your net worth for? Those are the core human motivations. And they don't change from society to society. They remain the same. They manifest differently. For example, the Asian societies unlock that, oh, education is everything. So they're disproportionately optimized for that. But they don't, they save pennies. Like you said, like your parents talked about traveling miles for saving cents. Maybe they were also the parents who would be okay to spend more on your education. And if you told them, I'm gonna cost, it's gonna cost 2X more. They would probably suffer and give you that money.

• 1:12:57Speaker 11

  But they would not buy an extra shirt for themselves. Those are the interesting motivations. So in Asian societies, we treat our kids like assets. So we are making investments on them because a lot of times we expect the kids to take care of our family. So I don't know if you know about, but India is the largest market which sends money back to India amongst all markets that does remittance. Indians remit the highest amount of money back to their family than it comes to Mexico and others. And that's the sign that the kids were raised as assets. You invested in them in hopes that when you make it back big, you will give it back to the family and take care of us in our later life.

• 1:13:37Speaker 11

  So kids in these societies are treated like assets versus, oh, you're on your own now. That is not in our culture. Because they will tell you that I invested so much money in hopes that you will take care of me later on. So there's this whole societal structure or social contract that exists in Asian societies of taking care of parents and taking care of them even after you don't have any obligation to do that, but people do it till they die and really take care of them. Asians will not even flinch one bit to sometimes even wipe out 50% or 100% of their net worth

• 1:14:21Speaker 11

  to take care of their parents, which is hard to imagine concept for many people in the West.

• 1:14:32Shane Parrish?

  That's Kunal Shah from episode 141, Core Human Motivations. Check out the show notes for a link to that complete episode. We spent quite a bit of time in 2022 talking about health on The Knowledge Project, especially how taking care of our mental and physical health can help us as we get older. In this next segment, you'll hear from renowned sleep scientist Matthew Walker, who discussed all the things related to sleep when he came on in February this year, including some things that negatively influence our sleep and unconventional sleep hygiene tips.

• 1:15:09Speaker 12

  I think caffeine, alcohol and nicotine are going to be one category of things that will probably guarantee a bad night of sleep. Oh, nicotine too. Nicotine too. Nicotine is a stimulant and it's a very, you know, it's a very clear disruptor of sleep. We've got some really solid data on that. That's, that's, that's one thing that's probably not going to be so controversial in saying.

• 1:15:35Speaker 12

  I think the other thing that I would very much suggest is getting your mental health straight. That, and we sort of came on to this when we spoke about insomnia. If you are in a state of high anxiety, or if you're in a state of stress, that is one thing that will just almost guarantee, you would have to be very sleep deprived and have a really high amount of sleep pressure to be able to fall asleep easily and stay asleep soundly. If you have a high degree of stress in your life and stress and anxiety, those two things

• 1:16:15Speaker 12

  will really guarantee a bad night of sleep. The other probably two things I would note is making sure that you are sleeping at the right phase of the 24 hour clock phase. And this brings us on to something called chronotype. In other words, are you a morning type? Are you an evening type? Or are you somewhere in between? And you can do a test. It's very easy online. It's called the MEQ test and it stands for morningness eveningness questionnaire, MEQ. And it takes less than probably like five minutes. And if you Google it, it's free versions online and it'll give you a score and it will bucket you into being

• 1:16:59Speaker 12

  either a morning type, a morning lark, a neutral, or an evening type or a night owl. Now, it turns out there's actually in sleep science, we have five categories, extreme morning type, morning type, a neutral, evening type, and extreme evening type.

• 1:17:18Speaker 12

  And the reason everyone has a 24 hour, what we call circadian rhythm. And no matter who you are, your circadian rhythm is going to be 24 hours. So my rhythm is 24 hours, Shane, your rhythm is 24 hours. And that's set a little bit by daylight, because if you leave your body to its own devices, it's a little bit laggy, it runs a little bit longer than 24 hours, it turns out. It's about 24 hours and I think 11 minutes for the average human adult, we've calculated it as. But things like daylight and food and timing and those different will give, they act as a little set of fingers on a wristwatch, that's kind of a little bit,

• 1:17:58Speaker 12

  you know, it's not quartz like, and it just pops the dial out and it resets you to 24 hours. That's no different from one person to the next. We all have an unwavering 24 hour rhythm. What is different, however, across individuals is where the peak and the trough of that circadian rhythm resides on the 24 hour clock face. That's the difference between your circadian rhythm and your chronotype. So, so let me ask you the question Shane, what time would you sort of say that you would normally, ideally like, not time, the time that you have to go to bed or have to wake up, but ideally, what time would you naturally like to go to bed and naturally wake up?

• 1:18:41Shane Parrish?

  I try to go to bed between 10 and 10:30 every night. And then I wake up usually between, I don't know, 4:30 and probably 6.

• 1:18:50Speaker 12

  Okay.

• 1:18:51Shane Parrish?

  And do you wake up with that? I haven't used an alarm clock for, since I had kids.

• 1:18:54Speaker 12

  Well, you're really quite a morning type on that basis. Now, I am, I'm in, I'm a neutral, I'm desperately vanilla, just like most of the things of my, sort of my nature in life, but so I'm usually a sort of 11, 11:30 to sort of 7, 7:30. And so what's nice is that you can see the two of us have slightly different chronotypes. My natural urge to go to sleep is going to be an hour, an hour and a half later than yours, and my natural urge to wake up is going to be an hour and a half to two hours later than yours. And I make this point to come back to your question about what guarantees a bad night of sleep.

• 1:19:38Speaker 12

  You can guarantee a bad night of sleep if you are mismatched in terms of your chronotype with your bedtime. So some people will say to me, look, I get into bed and I just can't fall asleep and I'm lying awake and it's it's an hour, maybe even two hours before I drift off. And then I'll ask them the question, you know, let's do a chronotype test. And and again, this is not me being a clinician, I'm just trying to sort of offer some help to them. And it turns out that they're an evening type that naturally they would ideally like to be going to sleep around about eleven thirty midnight and waking up seven thirty, eight AM. But they're trying to get in bed because they have to be awake at six AM in the morning for whatever they've got to do, get to work, or, you know, get to the gym, or if they

• 1:20:23Speaker 12

  have children. They're getting into bed at ten AM. That's a biological mismatch of an hour and a half to two hours. And so they think that they're suffering from sleep onset insomnia, when they may not have sleep onset insomnia. Instead, what they have is a mismatch between their innate chronotype and their standard sleep bedtime schedule. And so that's another thing just to keep in mind in terms of what can cause you problems with your sleep. The final thing I would say that can guarantee a consistent pattern of bad sleep is spending too much time in bed. It's sound again paradoxical, but it comes back to our bedtime restriction therapy.

• 1:21:07Speaker 12

  Don't spend, if you're struggling with sleep and you're spending a lot of time in bed awake, that's a bad thing. And if you're doing something even worse, which is now I'm lying, I'm going to bed and I'm staying in bed for nine hours a night, to try to compensate for the fact that I'm only really sleeping five hours a night, I understand why you would naturally think that that's the solution. But in fact, it's the very worst thing that you can do. So try to be mindful and not spend too much time in bed.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

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• 1:22:35Shane Parrish?

  You know, a lot of the common sleeping tips are sort of out there, but there's got to be some unconventional tips out there that help you optimize your sleep.

• 1:22:43Speaker 12

  There are, and I think, you know, for people sort of trying to get the typical, what we call the sleep hygiene tips that are out there and you can hear idiots like me espousing them on, on different YouTube places. And those would be, you know, regularity, temperature light, not staying in bed awake and then, you know, minding your alcohol and caffeine. I think unconventional tips, however, maybe there's probably four, three or four or five of those. The first thing I would say, and this sounds going to be, it's going to sound unconventional. If you've had a bad night of sleep, here is my following best advice.

• 1:23:24Speaker 12

  Do nothing.

• 1:23:26Speaker 12

  And what I mean by that is after a bad night of sleep, firstly, don't try to sleep it off by waking up any later than is natural. Don't sort of say, I'm going to then sleep in for an extra hour. The second thing is, don't go to bed any earlier than you would do. The third thing is, do not nap during the day to compensate. And fourth, don't start drinking more caffeine to try to get you out of that bad night of sleep. So let me rewind the tape and go through those because me just barking rules at people isn't useful. I don't think people respond to rules. People respond to reasons and not rules. So I'll try to explain the reasons.

• 1:24:12Speaker 12

  Firstly, don't wake up any later. Don't try to sleep it off after a bad night. The reason is because if you sleep in later into that following morning, when it comes time for you to go to bed at your normal time and you get into bed at your typical kind of Shane, you know, ten thirty at night, you're not going to be as sleepy as you naturally would be. Why? Because you woke up that much later. So you've been awake for less time, so you've built up less sleepiness. And so you're almost guaranteeing a bad night of sleep the next night because you're going to be tossing and turning to fall asleep. The second thing is, don't go to bed any earlier for the same reason.

• 1:24:56Speaker 12

  Don't say, well, I had a bad night of sleep last night. I'm gonna try and make good. I'm gonna try and get into bed at nine P M. tonight rather than ten thirty. Well, you're, you know, you're a morning type, but you're not an extreme morning type. You're, you're naturally going to be tired, even if you've had a bad night of sleep at ten to ten thirty P M. And by getting into bed at nine P M. with all goodwill and intention, you're setting yourself up for then just twiddling your thumbs, lying wide awake for the first hour because you're mismatched with your chronotype. Naps are a double edged sword, but in this circumstance, they can be a bad thing.

• 1:25:36Speaker 12

  Because if you nap not during the day after a bad night of sleep, again, I understand why. But naps in the day are a little bit like snacking before your main meal at night. They just take the edge off your sleep appetite, off your sleep hunger. And you're not going to be as hungry for sleep when it comes time for it at night. So try not to nap during the day. And then the caffeine, the final one of those four things is sort of pretty obvious. It's just gonna jack you up and you're gonna have too much caffeine in your system. The second thing is having a wind down routine, which comes back to this idea of, you know, sleep being like a light switch and it's not like that.

• 1:26:20Speaker 12

  I think as, since you are a father, you will probably know this with raising your children. You kind of have a bedtime routine and it's different for different kids. But when you've figured out what works, you stick to it, you know? What you're doing is creating a wind down routine. Why? Because kids can't just go from, you know, sixty down to zero within a short breaking distance, which is you can't just go from lights on of wakefulness to lights off of sleep within a minute or two. You build in a wind down routine. But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we abandon the notion that we need a wind down. Why don't adults need a wind down routine? Now, it doesn't have to be, you know,

• 1:27:04Speaker 12

  your significant other coming in and reading you a bedtime story, even though that's actually quite nice. And in fact, if you look at some of the meditation companies like Calm, for example, and Headspace, they have bedtime stories read by some wonderful characters like Stephen Fry. Why were they so popular? Why did they save those companies? It certainly saved Calm and it gave them a, you know, I think almost a billion dollar valuation. What saved them was sleep stories. And the reason is because we all need a wind down routine and being read to is part of a wind down that works for many people.

• 1:27:39Shane Parrish?

  Well, not only does it work, I mean, it's probably how most of us grew up, right? It's how we experience going to bed.

• 1:27:44Speaker 12

  Yeah, and it doesn't have to be reading, by the way. Find something that works for you. If it's, you know, having a bath or a shower before bed. If it's meditation, I do usually try to meditate for 10 minutes before I get into bed. If it's light stretching, something that just helps you disconnect and wind down is a really good piece of advice.

• 1:28:11Speaker 12

  I'm doing a deep dive on naps at some point. So I've idiotically released my own podcast with a wonderfully creative title. It's called The Matt Walker Podcast. And it's very different to your form of podcast. You're far more elegant and erudite, and you can interview people and explore. My podcast is rather inane in the sense that it's a very, it's a short form podcast. It's usually somewhere between five to 10 minutes in length. And it's a short form monologue from yours truly. And it's just a, you know, a little slice of sleep goodness to kind of accompany your waking day. And there, I'm

• 1:28:53Speaker 12

  going to take a deep dive into explaining all of the science behind naps. But again, I would say that if you are struggling with sleep at night, then the unconventional tip is not to nap during the day. Or if you're going to nap during the day, make sure that you nap before 1pm. And keep those naps brief, maybe just 10 minutes or 15 minutes in duration and no more. I think the final two pieces of advice unconventional would be, don't count sheep. This, it's a myth. And this, that myth was exploded by another wonderful sleep scientist here in my department, Dr. Alison Harvey. And she did a great study.

• 1:29:35Speaker 12

  What she found was that not only did counting sheep not make you fall asleep any faster, it actually made people take longer to fall asleep. What she did find that was exceptional, that worked to help people fall asleep, was taking themselves on a mental journey. So think about a walk that you would take, a hike that you like to do, or a walk on the beach, or a bike ride. And just try and move through that with, with your mind, and just take yourself on that mental journey. And it's all about, once again, taking your mind off itself. Because in this modern era, we are constantly on reception, and rarely

• 1:30:19Speaker 12

  do we do reflection. And reflection is so critical, and it's so powerful. And you've spoken a lot about the power of reflection. However, I would say that the last time you want to start doing reflection is when your head hits the pillow at night. Because then it's just you start to ruminate, you catastrophize because there's something weird that happens to our thoughts in the darkness of night. Our thoughts are not our own at night. They are darker, just like the the absence of light around us. They the the bad things feel twice as bad. The frightening things feel twice as frightening. The anxious things twice as anxious. It's it's just not a good time to be ruminating.

• 1:31:04Speaker 12

  And taking yourself on this mental journey helps you not ruminate and catastrophize and blow things all out of proportion. My one kryptonite uh in in life, my one vice is I love racing motor cars. This is why our mutual friend Peter Attia and I, we were good friends for many reasons, but one is that we race cars together. So I'll just put myself on one of my favorite tracks and I'll try and go around the track and remember what gear I should be in, what, when I should be braking, my braking distance, left foot, right foot brake. And, you know, I can remember I'm and I'm halfway around the course and that's it. I'm out like a light. I'm done. So that's the second thing. Don't count sheep, but take yourself on a mental journey.

• 1:31:48Speaker 12

  The final silly tip, and it sounds silly, but it is actually effective. If you're struggling with sleep, remove all clock faces from your bedroom. If you're waking up in the middle of the night and you're staring at the clock and you look and you see it's three twenty one in the morning. And then you toss and you turn, then you look at the clock and now it's four thirty eight in the morning. Knowing what time of night it is, is not your friend. It's not going to change anything. It's only going to make matters worse. So if you need an alarm clock, that's fine, but make sure that you can't see clock faces in your bedroom. That's only going to to hurt and harm your sleep rather than help you out during your night of bad sleep.

• 1:32:37Shane Parrish?

  That's Matthew Walker from episode 131, The Science of Sleep. Next, we turn to biologist and genetics expert David Sinclair, a man who has become a leading expert on the aging process and who is out to prove he can live past 100 years old. In this segment, David gives an overview of how the aging process occurs in the body and how controlled fasting can help slow down that process.

• 1:33:04Speaker 13

  There's a growing consensus that what happens is we lose information that we got in the womb. Now, part of it was from genetics, right? We're carrying one copy in every cell of our mother and father's chromosomes. But we're also, in fact, largely determined by what's called, not the genome, which is the DNA, but the epigenome. And the epigenome are the control systems that tell the cell which genes to turn on and off. And there's 20-something thousand genes. But they only use a few thousand to specify how to be a nerve cell versus a skin cell. And this all gets laid down as we're embryos and eventually born.

• 1:33:49Speaker 13

  And this epigenomic information that tells cells how to behave, we think, breaks down over time. And that results in diseases, tissue dysfunction. So, you know, you start to look older. You can't clear toxins. You can't think well. Your nerve cells don't work well. You become less able to see at night. Eventually, you get diseases that kill you. And that's really the major cause of suffering on this planet. And what we've done as a medical community is to look at the end stage of this process. And we call these things diseases and try to treat them with drugs and, you know, basically put in Band-Aids on the problem, forgetting what got us to that point in the first place, which is aging itself,

• 1:34:33Speaker 13

  which I have proposed and is increasingly thought to be the case, that it's disruption of that epigenetic control system that tells the cells which genes to turn on and off.

• 1:34:44Shane Parrish?

  And that's sort of the information loss. And I think one of the analogies you've used before is like a DVD player and a DVD getting scratched for those of us over 40, I guess.

• 1:34:55Speaker 13

  Yeah. I didn't realize you're over 40. You look young yourself. So whatever you're doing, keep doing that. Yeah, so the DVD or the CD analogy works well to with older people. But anyone who doesn't remember, these were plastic discs with foil that had little pits that represented zeros and ones, and this is digital information. And that digital information in the cell is DNA. And it's not zeros and ones, it's ATCG chemicals. And they're strung out about six feet long of DNA in every cell. And that's about the same amount of information that you can fit on a DVD. Okay, so our cells are a DVD.

• 1:35:37Speaker 13

  But what aging is, I've proposed, is that it's like scratches that disrupt the ability of the machine, the laser beam, to read the right songs at the right time or the movie. And you get a horrible cacophony of music. And what we've discovered is that there are ways to, well, we discovered one of the main causes of scratches, that's broken chromosomes, which happens all the time in our bodies. Extreme cell damage also does that if we crush nodes. But we've also figured out and recently published that there's a way, we think, to polish those scratches so that we can play that beautiful music of youth again.

• 1:36:17Shane Parrish?

  Let's talk a little bit about sort of like reducing our biological age. And I think we're all interested to some extent, some people more than others, in living a long time, but we all want that time to be full of vitality and productivity and not just living longer for the sake of of living longer. And I think that's where the biological age versus your chronological age sort of becomes important. One of the ways that I've heard you talk about before is fasting. And it's super interesting because fasting isn't new. I mean, it used to be a necessity for us, but now we're starting to learn about why it's helpful. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of fasting and how it relates to slowing down or even reversing aging?

• 1:37:02Speaker 13

  Yeah, well, these systems that tell cells how to read the genes at the right time, this epigenome, there are factors that control that.

• 1:37:12Speaker 13

  And so a little, very little bit of biology here. DNA isn't just floating around the cell. It's actually looped into big loops that tell genes to be switched on. And genes that should be switched off are bundled up tightly. And we call this stuff chromatin. And those, those loops of genes that are on and bundles of genes that are off are controlled in part by a set of genes called the sirtuins. And those genes make proteins that cause these loops and bundles, particularly to create these bundles to keep genes switched off. Because you don't want a liver, liver gene or a skin gene coming on in the brain. But that's what happens with aging, we find. And so one way to make sure this process goes slower

• 1:37:56Speaker 13

  is to turn on these sirtuin epigenetic regulators, to use a more technical term. And there are seven of these epigenetic regulators, the, the things that prevent the scratches. And we can turn them on with gene therapy. In mice, we do this. And if you do it in the brain of a mouse, they'll live longer. Do it in the body, they can live longer. But we can't genetically modify ourselves. So what we can, we've also found is that these genes get turned on by adversity. Adversity, or at least perceived adversity. If our body thinks we're going to run out of food, or we need to run away from a saber-toothed tiger, or we're chasing a mastodon. Then our body says, oh, you know, times might be tough.

• 1:38:41Speaker 13

  Don't put all our energy and resources into growing bigger muscles. In fact, put that, some of that energy into surviving. Hunkering down and defending the body against toxins, against damage. And that, we know, leads to longer life. It slows down this clock of epigenetic changes, which we can measure. And we also know that the ways to mimic adversity include skipping meals, eating less protein in general, being hot and cold. And then the big one. Is eating the right types of food that we all know a healthy Mediterranean type diet.

• 1:39:23Speaker 13

  And there are actually chemicals within those foods of a Mediterranean diet in olive oil and red wine. That we found in my lab to activate these sirtuins. And probably also slow down the clock, but they certainly improve health. And then the last thing, Jane, that I think is really important is. What I'm working on is not about keeping people older at the end of life and alive for longer. It's the opposite. We're keeping animals and increasingly we're showing with people. That you can keep them younger for longer, so that when you're eighty, you can actually be sixty.

• 1:39:54Shane Parrish?

  Is there, there's so many different directions I want to go on here, but is there a point where fasting becomes? I mean, there is a point unhelpful, right? Like if you don't eat, you will die eventually. Is it sort of like you skip one meal is good, you skip two meals is great, you skip six and you're back to good again? Or is there sort of like some sort of limit that we should think about? In terms of maximizing the benefit if we are going to fast?

• 1:40:19Speaker 13

  Yeah, well, there's some real key points to hear here. One is we're not talking about malnutrition or starvation. That would not be beneficial. And in fact, when, you know, ten thousand years ago or more. People were not living a long time from fasting because they were not getting enough nutrition. But in our world now, we can have not energy drinks, but drinks that contain enough nutrients. We can make sure that we're not deficient. We can measure things with blood tests. And we can make sure that we're not deficient, but. The optimal, the second point is that the optimum is different for everybody. In part because we have different tolerances for not eating. But also because we have different microbiomes with different genders.

• 1:41:04Speaker 13

  We just are genetically different. And we know from studies in mice that you can take regular lab mice. And mix up their, like breed them in a way that you get a little bit of diversity in these lab mice. And give them caloric restrictions. So you don't feed them more than, I think it was forty percent what they would normally eat. And some mice breeds, strains, we call them, lived a lot longer. Some of them died earlier. So you. Then but practically, what should you do? Well, it seems to be a rule that if you fast at at least fourteen hours, you'll have a lot of health benefits,

• 1:41:45Speaker 13

  better metabolic stability, lower blood sugar levels, better cholesterol, these kind of things kick in. Um, a a popular one is the um, what sixteen eight, go for sixteen hours. So you skip one meal a day and have a late lunch or an early lunch, depending on which one you're skipping. And that uses the period of sleep as a fasting state. And then what I do is I skip breakfast. And often I skip lunch skip lunch as well. And so I'm getting actually more like twenty hours of fasting on a good day. I will say that today I had a little bit of avocado for breakfast because I had to get up really early. So I'm not perfect and I don't think anyone should strive to be perfect, but you do what you can.

• 1:42:29Speaker 13

  Now, there are other people that do uh, a week long fast. Now, now that's the other extreme. Uh, I wouldn't go further than a week, actually, uh, given what I know. But once you've gone more than three days, there's a special type of uh, recycling of proteins that's very beneficial, called autophagy or autophagy. And that takes about three days. Now, I've never done that myself. I'm pretty wimpy when it comes to uh, to these kind of things. I'm a hedonist by nature and very lazy. But I think that if you can go three days or four days, that would be occasionally, not it not, of course, not every week, but you could do that every few weeks. And if you do a week long fast, um, you want to do that maybe four times a year. And those are the the rough guidelines.

• 1:43:14Shane Parrish?

  If we fast for two meals and then on the third meal, we eat as many calories as we would have eaten during the rest of the day normally, are we still getting benefits of fasting?

• 1:43:25Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 1:43:25Shane Parrish?

  Or does it sort of?

• 1:43:26Speaker 13

  Yes, yes, yes, we are. That's the great news. That so take me, for example, I have big dinners, um, because I'm I'm making up for the lack of food during the day. And so I'm not losing weight. Once you you've hit a set point and you've got your your body weight. And during COVID, I dropped from a hundred and fifty pounds to a hundred and thirty two. I'm now steady at that hundred and thirty two, feeling great, eating tons of food that I always wanted. But it's packed into an hour or two of feeding. Now, how do we know that works? Well, we know from blood tests in humans that it it looks like it's beneficial. You get the kind of changes that. Are seen in younger people, things like I mentioned, blood glucose, and then there's hormone levels and stress levels, which I've been measuring in myself for a

• 1:44:10Speaker 13

  decade. So I can tell you for me, it works. But the the other thing that's important is that from animal studies that have been done over the last 100 years in mice and rats and dogs, it's very clear that it's not just what you eat, it's when you eat. And there's a very famous study that was done by a colleague of mine, Rafael de Cabo at the NIH in Bethesda. And he made three different types of diets for mice. One that had a lot of protein, the other had carbs, the other had fat, and he thought he would find the optimal diet for the mice. Turns out it didn't make any difference. What mattered was when he gave the food. And if he gave it to them just within this short hour long window every day, they lived dramatically longer, 30% longer.

• 1:44:59Shane Parrish?

  That's David Sinclair from episode 136, Reversing the Aging Process. Again, check out the show notes for a link to that episode. I want to end this best of 2022 episode with some final thoughts from Sarah Jones Simmer, who appeared on episode 135, The Foundation of Trust. Simmer is the CEO of the weight care company Found, but she previously served in various executive roles with Bumble, the online dating company. As you'll hear in the last segment of this episode, it was during that time, while Bumble was proceeding through an IPO process, that Simmer was forced to endure a life changing health diagnosis that ultimately taught her about gratitude and what really matters in life.

• 1:45:43Speaker 14

  So in May of 2020, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. I didn't have a family history. I had no reason to suspect that I would have it. And so it was very blindsiding. And this was shortly after Bumble had been acquired by Blackstone. I was loving and thriving, working with the private equity team, restructuring the business, working through the 100 day plan. It was terrifying. And Whitney was one of the first people that I told. And she was an unbelievable support through that process. But but one of the things I felt like I realized pretty quickly is that I didn't have The same degree of emotional bandwidth as I might have before.

• 1:46:24Speaker 14

  I specifically remember being, getting a biopsy and like awaiting the results and then going through my inbox on my phone. And like, I couldn't even process some of the things that were coming up and like this person's title and like when were these performance reviews and when, like, I just didn't have the brain space. I needed to focus my emotional bandwidth on myself, my family. And so I had a conversation with Whit and, and we constructed this narrower, deeper role as Chief Strategy Officer that would enable me to go from a team of like a hundred and fifty to four or five. And it would take on transformative strategic projects across the business and the first one would be the IPO. Which may sound counterintuitive to want to take on something like that during a cancer journey, but

• 1:47:10Speaker 14

  I mean, first of all, I felt like I had to work. I did not want to be a full-time patient. I love work. I get so much joy from it. If that was also taken away from me, in addition to what surgery was going to take away, what chemo is going to take away, I did not want to lose my ability to lean in intellectually and build something that we were, continue to be so proud of at Bumble. Um, so I knew I needed to do that. And, and strangely, with enough planning in the IPO process, like, we could make it work. I, I made it work around chemo sessions and surgeries and I was so lucky to have this incredible team, mostly led by women across city, Golden Sachs, Blackstone, even our internal team, that was supportive of things like, you know, putting my major surgeries on the calendar and, and working deadlines around that.

• 1:47:53Speaker 14

  And so it was really empowering to not be relegated to patient status and to be able to lean into that process. And then, by the way, when I did get to a, a point where because radiation was daily and I just needed more time, I felt truly empowered to, to take a leave. And I know that not everyone gets to be in that situation and I, I certainly do wish that level of agency for more folks facing something like this. But I think the chance to really lean into something that meant so much to me professionally while I was struggling with something in terms of illness, it just felt really powerful. I think I needed that.

• 1:48:33Shane Parrish?

  And there's even another layer to this, which is that during this process, you, you got a brain aneurysm.

• 1:48:41Speaker 14

  Yes, I I never tell this part of the story because I feel like it sounds like so crazy, but in a strange way, cancer may have saved my life. So I a- as a result of how advanced the cancer was when they found it, they did a bunch of additional scans to check my bones, lungs, liver, the places that this typically metastasizes. And the kind of cancer I have often metastasizes to the brain. So they checked my brain and came back and said, well, we've got good news and bad news. Good news is there's, there's no tumor. The bad news is you have an unruptured aneurysm that's effectively a ticking time bomb. And on the one hand, it's actually great that we now know about that. The likelihood that that would have ruptured is fairly high.

• 1:49:24Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:49:24Speaker 14

  And so I've subsequently had it stented. But part of the reason that I've had nine surgeries on a cancer journey is that two of them were related to my brain. Um, and making sure that we could address the aneurysm.

• 1:49:35Shane Parrish?

  That's a crazy story. I'm so glad you you're okay through all this. I'm I'm curious, like, I I have two, like, I have a lot of empathy for for how that would have felt to get this news and go through that process and work with these people. And then my mind just jumps to like, how did it change you? How did it change you professionally? How did it change you personally? What do you do differently now as a result of this? How do you live life differently?

• 1:50:02Speaker 14

  Yeah, I think the quick answer to your first question is like, I do feel like I got an up close and personal view of the healthcare system, the the good, bad and otherwise. Um, but I'm incredibly grateful to the team of providers that I had the privilege of working with here in Austin, at F D Anderson, at, you know, UT Neurosciences. And so just unbelievably grateful for that. It does change you. I hate that it takes something like this to give us that level of perspective, but that genuinely is the silver lining for me. I just think there's a level of gratitude that I have for like the the simple things and an understanding and clarity of purpose.

• 1:50:44Speaker 14

  You know, on the one hand, it's freeing because like my daughter and I talk a little bit about big deals and little deals, you know, and we'll have like little deals like being late for school, right? Which like before might have given me so much anxiety and and now I'm like, well, the big deal was surviving a year and a half of cancer treatment. It a a lot of these other things, it helps us to put them into perspective. But I think for me, it was super clarifying professionally as well. As I said before, I love work. I really do think part of what brings me joy and energy in my existence is is the outpouring of things that I can build into the teams that I get to be a part of and the amazing products that we make that change the world.

• 1:51:25Speaker 14

  And I I think some people will go through a health experience like this and for them, like that may change the way they think about work and they may de-prioritize it. For me, it made me be crystal clear about what it was in work that I truly cherished and enjoyed. And in my case, that meant the answer was going back and building again. And going back to that like infrastructure development phase, really getting to build and scale a team, wanting to make that better myself as CEO. I I had this moment in our treatment journey where the doctor was worried about metastasis and she said, look, worst case, I can get you five years. And there's something very special about that five-year timeframe.

• 1:52:07Speaker 14

  You know, if you had thirty days, you would change everything. And on the other end of the spectrum, all of us live right now, like we've got infinity in front of us. But what if you have five years? What would you do differently? You do a lot more changing on the margin. And the reality is, we should all be thinking that way every day. You know, what are the things that I would drop if I actually only had five years? What would I be so disappointed that I didn't do if I only had five years? And then the good news in my case is, you know, we all, we all think I have more than five years now. I'm doing well with treatment. There's amazing drugs for the kind of cancer I have and I'm I'm doing well with them. Um, so I don't have to have that five-year timeframe in a literal sense,

• 1:52:49Speaker 14

  but I do try to think about it in a figurative sense. And the other, the other related point I would make there is like that it gives me permission, I think, to prioritize things that I might not have before. So one of the rhythms that I've tried to develop for myself, especially because I now work in a remote first context is like, how do I give myself permission to lean into work when I want to and then permission to lean out when I also want to. And I do this exercise in the evenings where I try to ask myself, what am I blocking? What am I advancing? How did I make people feel? And when I can answer those questions, just even knowing the answers will give me permission to then move into a different

• 1:53:30Speaker 14

  phase of my day, right? And go spend time with my kids or exercise or landscape, whatever the case may be. But that clarity of sort of giving myself permission and guardrails to prioritize all of the things that bring me joy and like, I by no means have it all in balance. No one does. That's a lie. But it gives me permission to reflect. And I think I do just spend much more time on reflection and thinking about how I feel, how I made other people feel, and ensuring that that's a priority for me.

• 1:54:13Shane Parrish?

  That's a beautiful answer and your journey is incredible and inspiring. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

• 1:54:20Speaker 14

  Thank you. I really had so much fun. I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:54:24Speaker 12

  Thank you. And if you would wish me back, well, listeners would wish me back, date, time, and I will be there, right there with you.

• 1:54:32Shane Parrish?

  Thank you so much, Reid, for taking the time today.

• 1:54:35Speaker 12

  My pleasure.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  Well, thanks so much for having me on. I'm always happy to sit down and have a podcast, have a conversation at any point.

• 1:54:44Speaker 14

  Thank you for this opportunity. I'm really grateful. Thank you so much.

• 1:54:49Speaker 13

  The questions you asked were really spot on. And I thought conversations can be very useful for a lot of people. Thanks again.

• 1:54:56Speaker 04

  You're really about something really important. There's so many people that are really working to serve. And so the fact that you're capturing that for people, I think is absolutely fantastic. So I'd just like to thank you for, for your service too.

• 1:55:10Speaker 05

  Let's imagine a few people have a little better life, listening to our conversation.

• 1:55:15Speaker 11

  Thank you for having me, and like I said, I maintain that I'm extremely envious of what you do, because it feels like how life should be lived.

• 1:55:28Shane Parrish?

  Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast, or just Google The Knowledge Project. Until next time.