#35 Robert Greene: Alive Time vs. Dead Time

In this episode of The Knowledge Project, I have the brilliant Robert Greene. Robert is the author of 5 New York Times bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War. He's also written on mastery and seduction. Robert’s books have been somewhat controversial over the years and have been called amoral, cunning, and even ruthless for what they reveal. Yet millions of readers, from mid-level managers to hip-hop royalty and corporate executives have revered his work as a sort of canonized scripture for the ambitious. In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including: Why Robert believes his first book, 48 Laws of Power has continued to sell steadily for over two decades. What Robert calls “alive time” and “dead time” and how we can optimize each day to be filled with “alive time” and live the life we’re proud of The one skill that determines how far you’ll get in life, no matter how talented you are in anything else Robert’s research method and how he finds such unique and interesting examples What Robert looks for when he reads, and what qualities separate good books from excellent books How Robert developed his famous note card system to extract the meat out of anything he reads Why Robert insists on writing all his notes longhand even though it’s less convenient and less accessible than taking notes digitally What Robert’s daily routine looks like, particularly when he’s writing and researching for a new book What Robert considers to be the single greatest power any human has, and what we can do to strengthen it How having unfettered access to information is actually making us dumber in very important ways and what we can do about it How to fine tune your “bullshit detector” so you’re able to tell the difference between pretenders and performers. (As a bonus, Robert shares a few ways you can improve your bullshitting skills when it becomes necessary) And a lot more. Plus, Robert gives us a sneak peek into his newest project, The Laws of Human Nature, which explores the hidden motivations that drive what we do and say. This interview is packed to the brim with interesting and actionable insights that I think you’re going to love. Grab a pen, a notebook, and a glass of wine and enjoy! Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our 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 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.

• 0:08Shane Parrish?

  Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and this is The Knowledge Project. This show explores ideas, methods, mental models, and frameworks that will help you expand your mind, live deliberately, and master the best of what other people have already figured out. You can learn more at fs.blog/podcast. My guest today is author and strategist Robert Greene. Robert's the author of New York Times bestsellers, The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War. He's also written on mastery and seduction. His books have been called amoral, cunning, and even ruthless for what they reveal. In our conversation, we talk about his research and writing process,

• 0:49Shane Parrish?

  including his famous note card system, how he applies what he's writing about and learning, and explores his unique mindset. You'll walk away with not only a deeper understanding about power and how it actually works, but how you can read more effectively. Enjoy the conversation.

• 1:09Shane Parrish?

  Your first book, The 48 Laws of Power, was a slow burn, if I understand that correctly. I mean, it didn't sell all that well initially, but six or eight years later, it suddenly began to take off. And now it's sold over a million copies in the US alone. What happened?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Well, it actually was selling well at the very beginning. It came out in 1998, and we got a lot of press, which is unusual for me because I don't get a lot of press. So it was actually selling pretty well in the beginning. I can't complain. And I think because of that initial push with all the media that we got, it kind of got out there in various different areas. Like, the rappers started reading about people on Wall Street. It kind of spread throughout the culture. And the thing about the book is...

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Is that it just keeps selling steadily. So there'll be articles in media and it's what now? Almost twenty years, my god. Um, you know, every now and then there'll be an article and suddenly the sales spike, or when Trump got elected, suddenly the sales spiked. But it's just been unbelievably steady uh since it first came out. So, you know, I'm I'm obviously uh very happy and very surprised with that because a lot of books, you know, to be honest with you, I mean, we've sold, it's actually inching up more towards two million these days. A lot of books, um, you know, they sell really well in the beginning and then they just die. So um, it's been, it's been a remarkable ride.

• 2:43Shane Parrish?

  What do you think gives it such longevity?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's hard, you know, it's it's better for readers to to weigh in on that, but if I were to speculate, uh, I designed the book uh to be timeless. Um, you know, I looked at a lot of history. I kind of mined all cultures um and all periods of history to sort of give it a feel like um, I've uncovered something very real about power. And so it's not timely. Uh, I'm sure, you know, in a hundred years, it'll start looking a little bit timely as people, you know, have some distance and it definitely reflects the period, the history that we're going through now. I don't doubt that.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  But I made it, I tried to make it um as classic as possible. And the thing about it is, is and I tell people a lot because there's a lesson in this. You know, I had an idea about power, Machiavelli, mostly because a lot of the books out there that talk about power in this world, I feel like really unrealistic. They're very wary of the truth. And the truth is, uh, as I discovered in all my different jobs, is that uh, people are are can be very manipulative. They don't show it. It's all a sort of this hidden language that goes on. And the books don't really expose it in, in, in, in any way that's practical or that's

• 4:08Speaker 01

  real. And I felt like there was, personally, I felt a real hunger and anger. And anger was, why are people so skittish to talk about what really happens in offices and in politics and in, in all areas of life? This kind of stuff that we, we, we know when we work in a, in, in an office, it goes on all the time. And so I was kind of angry that no one was really covering this, you know, and I maybe made it a little bit harsher than I, than reality in some ways. I don't, I'm not gonna say that for sure, but, you know, there is some literary license here in what I'm describing, but I think people are attracted to it because it's not like what other things are, are out there. It's,

• 4:52Speaker 01

  it's delivering the, the, the truth, the reality as straight as can be. And we don't have enough of that in this culture and there's these sort of correct times. So I think that's given its, its, its appeal and its longevity.

• 5:06Shane Parrish?

  You certainly didn't sugarcoat anything. I mean, you, you kind of like opened the curtains and let people, let this concept lay bare for people to digest in all of its rawness.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think what that, just to complete my thought is that the people have a tremendous taboo about this. So, uh, we wanna think of ourselves as, as these just wonderful angelic creatures. Um, but there's another, another reality out there. And, um, it's kind of delicious to sort of immerse yourself in something that's not what you normally read, particularly in a self-help book. Um, but you know, every time I wrote a chapter in that book, um, I was reflecting on my own life. I was reflecting on what I knew in Hollywood, what I read in the news. I've had many different kinds of jobs. So

• 6:00Speaker 01

  it's not exaggerated. Uh, I, I've seen these things. Other people have seen it. Um, and you know, I think, uh, you know, you're right. There's no, there's no sugar coating going on. There's no kind of little sweet little moral lesson at the end of every, every chapter to make you feel better about human nature and. I mean, not everybody likes it. There are a lot of people who don't like the book. For that very reason, they think that I'm contributing to the uh to the badness that already exists in the world. And I understand that, but there are a lot of people who who find that very appealing.

• 6:37Shane Parrish?

  In writing that book, what changed after? Like what, how did you conduct your life differently after writing that book and learning about power?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I, you know, it wasn't like a dramatic change. Of course, you know, I I was a little bit older uh when it came out. I mean, when by the time it came out, I was actually quite older, thirty nine years old. So, you know, it was, I really wasn't, I had no success prior to that. I mean, I worked in Hollywood in various areas. I made a good living, but I was not successful. I was not happy. So the the big radical change was suddenly I I I had attention and I had success. And that was actually very helpful uh for my self-esteem and for where I was uh uh, you know, for my parents who were beginning to really get worried about me. Um, but the change as far as other things was subtle and it took time.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I I I began to consult uh very powerful people in music and politics, in business, began to seek me out for advice. Um, I started talking to them, meeting them, actually working as a consultant. And it was an eye-opener to see um to see my laws reflected through their world. Um, and to see kind of the harsh environments that a lot of people live in. And, you know, I mean, the one I can talk about obviously is Fifty Cent, because I wrote a book with him. The others, I try and not disclose who they are. You know, and so he's obviously lived through an environment that's a lot harsher than what I went through within Hollywood or the other places.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  So it was very exciting and it kind of enriched uh my knowledge um of the power game. And I suppose in the long run, it's it's it has altered me. It's made me um a little more sophisticated. I was a little bit green. Uh, when I first wrote the book, I wasn't really prepared for the attention and. And um, and all that. So I've learned, I've learned an awful lot uh in these interactions that came about because the forty-eight laws of power was successful. And a lot of that, things that I've learned are now going into my latest book. And what, you know, gone into my subsequent books as well. Wha- what's your latest book?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Well, I'm near, I'm finishing it. So it'll hopefully, if all goes well, it'll be out this fall. Um, and it's a book on human nature. Um, and uh, in mastery, I had a chapter on social intelligence that people responded to very well. The idea was that um, in order to be good in your field, you have to know how to deal with people. That's well over half the equation in any kind of power situation. So you could be brilliant at coding or whatever it is that you're good at. But if you don't know how to deal with people, you're not going to get far in this world. And um, in that chapter, uh, I kind of listed these seven deadly aspects of people that you have to be aware of.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  And I got so much feedback from that. People really found it interesting, but they wanted more. And it's a subject that fascinates me and it's sort of expanded into something much larger and ambitious than I originally thought. But I'm looking at human nature at these, I end up having eighteen, not seven deadly sins, but really kind of eighteen, eighteen aspects of kind of timeless elements in human nature. Um.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  How about a latte?

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Maybe dark roast?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Vanilla?

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Caramel?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Blueberry?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  With Keurig, there's over five hundred K-Cup pie varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Every mile matters, whether you're driving your dream car or your daily commuter. The Mobile One team knows that. It's why we created Mobile One Advanced Clean Motor Oil. It cleans your engine in one oil change and helps extend engine life, delivering performance, protection, and cleanliness for vehicles of all ages. All to help keep your engine running like new, whatever you're driving. Visit mobileone.com/advancedclean to learn more.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And going deep into them, digging deep so that in the end, the goal is you'll understand yourself better, you'll understand what makes you tick, and maybe why you might have some problems and some issues dealing with people. And it'll really deepen your knowledge, I hope, of other people, particularly difficult people in your life, because I maintain we really don't understand what motivates others or even ourselves. It's all kind of mysterious. Books really are, practical books really aren't written on the subject. So there's a lot of misconceptions. You're not really, you're misreading when people say something or do something. And whenever you operate in the dark like that, you're going to make mistakes.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  So I'm trying to shed some light. A lot of it deals with darker aspects of, of human nature. I'm doing a chapter right now, finishing on aggression and passive aggression. And I have chapters on envy and irrationality and narcissism, all that juicy stuff. But it's, but it's not all negative. I'm trying to show that if you take what is your natural qualities, that you are aggressive, you are narcissistic, and you're aware of it, then you can begin to perhaps improve yourself in certain areas. So, you know, I'm giving you kind of a long-winded explanation of the book. I could go on for a lot longer, but that's sort of the gist of it.

• 12:34Shane Parrish?

  I can't wait to read that.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. I can't, I can't wait, I can't wait to finish it, to be honest with you.

• 12:41Shane Parrish?

  Your books are so unique in that they draw in like dozens and dozens of examples. Many of them are unique. They're not the same examples that people use in books. I want to talk about the process you go through of pulling all of that together. And maybe we can start with your reading process. I mean, what makes you pick up a book and what keeps you reading and what stops you from continuing?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Well, um, you mean when I'm researching?

• 13:05Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Well, God, that's a, that's a great question. It's kind of complicated, but um, when I'm starting to research, I kind of cast a wide net because I don't really know exactly what the book is going to be. And that's, there's a lesson in that, that in any project, you need to keep things a little bit, you have to keep things open ended. So that you're just constantly discovering and that keeps you excited and energized and creative. So I never kind of closed the book. I'm always open to new ideas, new people. You know, a lot of what I read are biographies, but in the beginning, I'm also reading material about uh, human nature. In this particular case, reading about anthropology and our roots and a lot of books of psychology and psychoanalysis and things like that.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  That's very exciting. And then I go into biographies. You know, and a lot of books um, are bad. They're badly written. Um, uh, I don't, I'm not boasting or saying that I'm superior, but it's to me, it's just the truth. I uh, when I encounter a good book, my eyes light up and there are plenty of great books out there. Don't get me wrong. Um, and what makes a great book is the fact that the writer, you can tell has put a lot of effort. They know their subject really well. They've thought about it deeply. They're not afraid to speculate their ideas. What makes a bad book, and I hate to say it, but there are more bad books being produced now than I think ever, but I could be wrong on that.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Um, bad books start off with a kind of an interesting idea and that's it. After the first chapter, you know what the author is going to say. And it just repeats itself, or they have some stupid acts to grind and you know that they're not really, they're only really kind of reflecting their own prejudices.

• 14:53Shane Parrish?

  Those are the books that could be like 20 pages. You read the introduction, you, you understand.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:57Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  And the reason books are like that is people are very distracted these days. They're not, they have other jobs. They're teaching, they're doing whatever. They don't put a lot of thought into it, you know, I, I, I like Walter Isaacson. I think he's a very fine biographer, but you know, even like the Steve Jobs thing, he's, he's rushed, he's got to write it because she just died. And like you, I don't really feel like when I read that book, I understand the the the man, Steve Jobs, that well. It was kind of shallow. It was sort of skimming on the surface. I like people who go into the depths. They don't, you don't have to lie. You you you you want to get to the truth. But what is the psychology that made Steve Jobs who he was?

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Um, I, when I wrote my war book, my book on strategy, um, clearly the main character in that book was Napoleon Bonaparte, somebody who fascinates me. And I read probably five thousand pages worth of biographies and they were great stuff, but nobody really nailed what made that guy tick. And I wanted to figure out in my modest way, what I felt made Napoleon tick. And I felt like I had my interpretation. Well, I really, really love books that that do that, you know, because you can accumulate facts and data. I could go on Wikipedia and do that. What I want is someone who's delved into the subject and now starts cranking out interesting ideas.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  And I went through that, I described that in mastery, that whole process. Uh, so I like writers who show that kind of mastery. Um, obviously someone like Robert Caro with the Lyndon Johnson series, those massive tomes. Those are amazing, yeah. They're amazing. And his book, Master of the Senate, which I use extensively in my new book, um, it's just an incredible treatise on power, filled with amazing thoughts and interpretations and analysis and speculations. It's fascinating. Um, I just read for the chapter I'm writing now, I read Ron Chernow's book on Rockefeller. And although Titans? Titan. It's a good, it's a good book, a a very good book,

• 17:12Speaker 01

  but it didn't quite go to the level that Caro went to. Um, so I look for the Caros. Um, and then when it comes to source material like a Machiavelli, that's a lot easier because you can find, you know, these are the great philosophers and thinkers out there. And occasionally you find somebody that's surprising. But you know, after, this is my sixth book, I I would hate to speculate how many books that equals, but it's close to maybe two thousand books. I think I know, I have a sense, I can tell almost from reading the back cover or the first five pages, whether a book's gonna have that that juice.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  I, there are great biographies that are being written now, um, and I'm using them in my new book. So I don't mean to say that that that's a a genre that actually is doing very well these days, uh, so it's not all bad.

• 18:07Shane Parrish?

  What other examples come to mind that are like great biographies or great books?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Well, um, you know, I'm I'm having to think of, uh, of the research that I've just been doing, so, um, one of the chapters, I I really made an an attempt to have more stories about women in this book because you can't write a book of inhuman nature if it's all white men, so, um, I I have a, one of the main, one of the figures is Coco Chanel, who's a great businesswoman, and it's an amazing story. It sounded, you may hear her name, go, wow, I don't wanna read about that, but it's an amazing story of a woman who was basically an orphan and who just clawed her way to the top, and it's, she's very admirable in her clawing to the top.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Um, and a great biography of her, I I can't remember, something like Mademoiselle Coco, I don't remember the name, but, and this woman who wrote the biography, what I loved about it was very ambitious, and she's, you know, Coco Chanel ended up, um, being kind of a Nazi sympathizer, it's the main black mark on her story, a very large black mark. And the woman writer speculates about the fusion, the intersection of fascist, fashion and fascism, I I mean, that was great, I loved it, you know, be a little bit wild like that. Um, I, Martin Luther King is a character that I cover, and there's a great biography of him, I I kinda, the names are scaring me, like Garen, Garrett, something like that.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Um, eight hundred page biography of him and of the Southern Leadership Council, that's really good, really great. There's this biography of this woman, Katerina Sforza, who's kind of the the Borja, female Borja of her time, and a great biography called Tigress, a new, a new book. I, I, I could go on. I, I managed, you know, like Nixon was somebody I covered and I, I found a hard time finding the right Nixon book, but eventually I hit upon it, a relatively recent book, like I Divided Nixon or something like that. I don't remember the exact title.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  So I could go on. I could bore you to death. But there are some really good biographies out there, thank God.

• 20:33Shane Parrish?

  So you find a good book. What does it look like when you read that? Like, can we geek out a little bit on your, like, do you read it cover to cover? Are you making an index in the book itself?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Well, I, I hope people are interested in this because to me it seems like a rather boring process, but what I do is it's all very simple. I've had a system pretty much since the 48 Laws of Power. I've kind of refined it, but it's pretty much the same. I read the book fairly carefully. I'm not, if it's a bad book, I skim like hell. But if it's a good book, I, I, I dig and I read carefully. And as I'm reading it, I make little notes in the margins to come back to this section. It's a great book, like practically every paragraph is marked up, but I try not to do that. And, and then I go through the whole book and then I, later, maybe a couple of weeks later,

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I go back to the book and put it onto note cards. So I start from the beginning on the pages where I've made little notes. And I create themes. Now, in this new book, I have 18 themes, 18 chapters. It started out more, but that's what it is now. And so at the top of the card, I'll write envy or grandiosity or, you know, whatever the chapter is.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  And I'll and and I'll take little notes so that each book I'm able to make me to kind of categorize by theme, break each book down into these themes. And if a book yields like nine cards on one theme, well, that's a lot. And maybe that like could be a main story in the chapter. And so then I have and and I end up with thousands of note cards, which you you know, I can I've had people photograph them before, all organized by theme. So if you look at my little note card section under irrationality, which is a large chapter, because we there's so much material about human irrationality.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Um, there was over a hundred cards and over, you know, fifty books in that in there with all sorts of different ideas and material. And that's where the chapter will grow out of it. All of the ideas inspired by these biographies and by these other source material. Um, and then when I come to write the story, let's say I'm writing about Rockefeller, which I'm doing now, I now take the cards and the book and I kind of even go deeper. So by the time I finish, I've spent a lot of hours with this one individual and I try and get to a point where like I can say, I actually know Napoleon really well.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  I I feel like it could be grandiose on my part, but I really know this character now in a way that's not superficial and I feel like I can say something very interesting about them.

• 23:28Shane Parrish?

  Why don't you use an electronic system like Evernote or something like that? That's more easily searchable.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Because I'm an old guy and I've got I've got my limitations, you know, I'm I'm fifty eight, um, and I came to age writing these books, you know, in my late thirties. So your patterns are set. But I'll tell you something, um, I don't advocate this. If I could do it digitally, um, I I probably should and would. But I will say this, and I something I covered in Mastery, writing things out by hand has a logic to it.

• 24:04Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  So when I'm when I'm going through a book. And I'm taking notes and I'm scrawling with my fountain pen on a card. I'm actually thinking more deeply than when I'm sitting there typing stuff on the computer. I don't know how to explain that, but I really, really feel it. That the handwriting process kind of links closer and faster to the way my brain works. And I love the computers. I obviously write my final drafts on them. Um, and, and editing, I, I would die if I couldn't edit like I can on a computer. It'd be useless, but, um, writing things out, there's a logic to it.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  And I know Ryan, who's a friend of yours, who I taught this system to essentially, um, he does the same thing. Uh, he, he, he writes them out. He might've progressed now to doing it digitally. I, I can't say that for sure, but, um, it probably would save time to do everything digitally. But the other aspect of it is, um, having in a box, 2,000 cards that I can now shift through with my fingers. And I could, I can move the cards with incredible speed. Uh, I can go through them like that. I can't do that on the computer. I can't look at five cards at the same time or go through things. I don't know how to explain it the same way. It's not the same process.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Every time you have something on the computer screen, it's flat. It's there. It's the one thing you're looking at. Yeah, I could put five cards on the screen at the same time, but I write on the back as well. So I can't look at the back at the same time. I've gotten more, it gives me a visceral material feel for what actually the book is. And it gives me this power with my fingers to look through what my material is. So. How do you come up with the themes? Well, it's, it's been this way since the 48 Laws. Wow, you're, you're really going into this, man. Yeah. I hope, I hope people aren't like, like in, in a coma as they hear this.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Um, uh, it started with the 48 Laws because what I did is, um, to, to, to reveal a little bit that about that book is, I didn't know what that book would be. I had a, a, a man who was gonna be my producer on it, Yo Stelfers, who was basically paying me because he loved my idea. To write up a proposal that we would sell. And I didn't know what the book would be. So I I read Machiavelli. I read Sun Tzu. I read Vaart Clausewitz. I read Nietzsche. I read all sorts of things. And as I'm writing it, I'm going, wow, these are themes that keep showing up. And originally, I probably had like eighty themes.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Um, and then slowly I'm whittling them down. I compare it to like, if you're a cook and you have a sauce. You want the sauce to reduce itself to this like perfect um quantity. That it's not too strong and it's not too weak. I'm whittling down the eighty themes to what ended up being forty eight, the right amount for this sauce. Um, so, you know, it's the same here. I did all this research and here are these elements of human nature and I ended up with probably about thirty. And then I ended up with twenty four when I started writing the book.

• 27:27Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, it some of them are obvious, like uh en- envy and grandiosity and irrationality. But some of them weren't so obvious and and the research revealed stuff I hadn't thought about. And so it's a growing process. And I said, you keep it open. Because if you go into a book, oh, I know exactly what it's going to be. And how many chapters and what then it it dies on the vine. You know, you asked me originally about what makes a good book. A good book is you can feel it alive. You can feel it vibrating. The character comes alive. You can sense the brain matter of the writer is like is like flickering on the page. They're alive. And a dead book, it's just sort of, the author doesn't have any energy.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The person they're writing about doesn't come to life. The ideas have no sparkle to them. Um, so you have to, I I talk about this in mastery. If you bring energy and aliveness to the process, it shows in your writing. So I have to keep things open. And as I'm writing the book, I drop chapters or I add them, not too often, but you know, that's that's what happens. And so the themes I allow the material, the research to sort of reveal to me what they need to be.

• 28:46Shane Parrish?

  Are you always reading history and biography or are you reading uh new nonfiction books?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I I read new nonfiction, but I try sometimes to avoid that for a reason. I have, there's a method to that.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So for instance, you know, like Malcolm Gladwell is a writer, a very fine writer, who who people compare me to. I don't, you know, I'm, he's, he's more, much more successful than I am. He's a great writer, but I try not to read his books. Because I don't wanna be covering or or overlapping or being inspired by what's already out there. I wanna hit something new. I wanna be original. I wanna say something that comes from my brain. Dead writers is easier for me to do that with. Obviously, not everything comes just from me. I mean, ninety-five percent is from other writers. That's the process involved, but that five percent of me is really important.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So I try not to read too much of contemporary nonfiction. Some of it, quite honestly, is really bad. I just say it outright, you know, I read books about about envy or I I have them on my shelf. I have dozens of them. And they're so thin and they're so unthought through. And they're so irritating. But I much prefer the way people write biographies now than nonfiction. There are some exceptions. I know if I thought deeply enough, I could come up with some really great nonfiction books that are re- recently. I must say, for instance, the books on anthropology that I read are fantastic.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  So Jared Diamond, all of his, his books are great. I have no problem with that. And I read a book called War Before Civilization. These came out in the nineties. Great book about warfare among hunter-gatherers, etc. So there are plenty of great scientists and anthropologists writing very fascinating books, but I don't like to read too much contemporary popular nonfiction so that I can make sure I'm not repeating what's already out there.

• 31:00Shane Parrish?

  I like that. What is, what is researching and writing a book about something like the thirty-three strategies of war do for you personally? Like, what did you take away from that and apply to your own life, to business or relationships? I'm wondering if you can give us some examples, because I think a large percentage of people who read books like these love them and feel them, and they're like, oh, finally, somebody sees something the same way I do. And then they struggle really to put some of this stuff into action.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Well, I tried to design the book so that you can put them into action. I understand the war book, it's a difficult book to write, because, you know, frankly, Napoleon is a fascinating subject. But if you look at his main strategy, which is the flanking maneuver to always attack from a side or from behind, so that the enemy is caught by surprise and then becomes disorganized. How do you apply that to my life, working at a software firm in Silicon Valley? I struggled, because I wanted to make that connection. If the book succeeds, it's because I did manage to do that. If it fails, it's because I didn't.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  And the idea then that I pulled from that chapter on the flanking maneuver of Napoleon is that when you approach people indirectly, it has tremendous psychological advantage power. So when you hit people from the side with an attack, there's no punch that's more powerful in boxing than the one that comes from the side and is unexpected. It has relevance to, if you're planning to counter a rival in, in, in your business, if you hit anybody frontally, they know what you're up to, they have, they can put their best defenses forward. And then it just becomes who can outslug the other. But if you surprise people, if

• 32:55Speaker 01

  you surprise them with your seduction, if you surprise them with your sale, if your approach comes from an unexpected angle, it has the same basic psychology that Napoleon used. In the battle at Austerlitz or wherever. That's what I'm aiming for is what's the psychology? You know, I, I, I went deeply into Sun Tzu. I can't begin to explain to you how deeply I spent several months with Sun Tzu. I don't read Chinese, I don't pretend to, but I read books that annotated books that went through the Chinese characters in each of his chapters. So that it would explain to me the psychology behind something.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Sometimes with, with the translations don't really express what's really behind it. So that I could figure out, you know, and we're all fascinated by the art of war, but like, how do you apply it? So I, I, I, I went in and, and kind of figured out what, what is he trying to say about what really creates force in the world? What like makes an action more forceful than another? What is momentum? We all talk about momentum, but it's a powerful thing. What is it? I went at it trying to make it as practical and actionable as, as humanly possible. It was very difficult. It was exhausting, but I really had a kind of a euphoric feeling near the end that I

• 34:22Speaker 01

  had uncovered something that hadn't been covered before. Now, it could be, as I said, grandiose on my part, but I really felt like the effort yielded some, some, some truths in that. As far as it changing me, I've always been kind of have a sort of a strategic approach to life. So it just maybe only made me more that way. But it was mostly the struggle to make Miyamoto Musashi and his ideas for sword fighting relevant to everybody out there.

• 34:59Shane Parrish?

  It's well worth a read if you guys are listening and you haven't read it. You, you are one of the most productive people I see from the outside kind of looking in. I think you've written, don't get me, I think five or six kind of classic books that will all kind of live on for a prolonged period of time and, you know, a very short period of time. How do you do that? Like, what sort of routines and habits do you use to propel that forward?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Well, you know, actually, I take a long time to write a book. I mean, by the end of it, this book, six, this is my sixth book, was going to be nearly four years, which is a little too much. But, um, so I'm not fast, but I'm very thorough.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  And I've described it before in, in several blogs, which I haven't done in a while, but I, when I was writing about the process and mastery in, in writing the book, is that they're very physically demanding. In that, um, I'm going through very, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about it night and day. And if you've ever done mental labor like that, it's more tiring than physical labor.

• 36:08Shane Parrish?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  You, you end up like three or four hours and you, you, you're just like a vegetable and all you can do is like watch, you know, cheap entertainment on TV just to veg out. So if you're trying to sustain that for two, three, four years, it can be really tiring. So I do have routines, as you asked, I, I meditate every morning. I've been doing that now for about eight years.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Very rigorous, long meditation every morning. That really helps clear the mind and not make it so I'm, uh, so I can relax a little bit and not get too frantic. I exercise every single day. Even if I'm sick, I still exercise. So I mean, if I'm really sick, maybe not, but that does hardly ever happen. So, you know, I, and, and some of that is intense exercise, like the swimming is long distance swimming. Um, and that really takes the stress off and relieves your mind. And then, you know, I, I just do three hours every day of the writing because it's about all I can stomach.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  And the rest of the time I might take notes, think, or I might just go online and, and read mindless stuff just to, just to, you know, decompress. But what happens is when you, when, and, and you do it every day, there's no letting up is, um, you'll be taking a shower or you'll be going to sleep or you'll be dreaming. And ideas were constantly coming to you and the book, the chapter just starts getting deeper and deeper and deeper because you're thinking about it all the time. Um, but I make sure that it doesn't like kill me, um, that I'm able to maintain some freshness through these, these various routines. And, uh, you know, that, that's kind of, it's sort of boring. It's a boring life.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Um, but when the book is finished, it's very satisfying and then I, you know, then I'll be, I'll take some time off and start to be a human being again.

• 38:08Shane Parrish?

  What does exercise look like other than swimming? Do you do lift weights? Do you run? Do you?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  No, I never lift, I've never lifted a weight in my life. Um, so it's every three days I swim and that's like a, a mile and a half, um, and I don't stop, so it's very aerobic. Uh, the other thing used to be, uh, mountain biking because I live some, near some very nice trails, but I've had a couple of accidents, uh, broke a foot, broke a elbow. Um, and, um, and it's also very tiring and I, I found that swimming and mountain biking was, was just making me too wiped out. So I, for the year now, I've cut out the mountain biking, so I don't have another accident. Um, so I've been, I take hikes, which are safer, can't kill myself.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Um, and they're very, you know, pretty rigorous hikes. And then the third day, um, is a kind of a yoga, Pilates type routine that, uh, I've developed because I do a lot of sitting as I'm riding and the body needs stretching. Uh, I wish I could run. I used to run track when I was in high school. Um, but it, I, I, it was hurting me, um, I have like back issues. I think I'm going to get back into running because I've, I fixed my back. I can say one thing, I don't, this is not, this is still interesting to people, but I've had a lot of problems on this new book, physical ailments. And one of them was my back just went out and, um, I was like, I, I couldn't even stand

• 39:41Speaker 01

  up for a couple of days. And, uh, I just was determined that this was never going to happen to me again. So I've incorporated this rigorous back, stretching of the back every morning before my meditation and it's been miraculous. I have absolutely no pain anymore and I think I'm going to take up running again.

• 40:01Shane Parrish?

  I don't know, is it like a yoga routine that you're doing before or?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  It's like 20 minutes of yeah, some basic stretches of every problem area of the back, the psoas muscle, the sacrum, the paraformis, the... And my chiropractor said you have to do each pose thing for 40 seconds in order to have a benefit. So I make sure that I do them each like a minute long, down dog, an insanely intense down dog. And I can feel the stretch, but it's more like every day, every day, every day that, you know, it's not completely gone, but it's gone to such an extent that I finally feel like I can start running again.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  And that's kind of how I approach some of the other, I have a physical problem, I'm not going to let it stop me, I'm just going to work my way through it.

• 40:55Shane Parrish?

  How do you prevent other people from, I mean, you're a much sought after in-demand author, speaker, strategist, how do you prevent other people from dictating how you spend your time?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Well, you've got to be a bit of a tyrant.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  How about a latte?

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Maybe dark roast?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Vanilla?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Caramel?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Blueberry?

• 41:17Speaker 03

  You could get them to agree on one flavor, or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup Pod varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settlement. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Every mile matters. Whether you're driving your dream car or your daily commuter, the Mobile One team knows that. It's why we created Mobile One Advanced Clean Motor Oil. It cleans your engine in one oil change and helps extend engine life, delivering performance, protection, and cleanliness for vehicles of all ages. All to help keep your engine running like new, whatever you're driving. Visit mobileone.com/advancedclean to learn more.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  You know, you have to know how to say no. And it's not easy. At a certain point, I really want to finish the book. I feel confident. I really want it out there. I want people reading it. And every distraction is just like, get away from me. I don't have the time. I get kind of grumpy and cranky and I just don't want anything to disrupt me because I've got a built up momentum. But it's not easy because you get, it gets lonely. It means there's no, there's no interviews really going on except for you and a couple of other people. You're hiding out from the world. You feel kind of like, ah, nobody thinks about me anymore. Ego thinks that aren't so great, but everybody goes through. So it's not easy.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  And I'll be very happy when it's over in a few months. And I'll feel like I've been cooped up in a cabin and I'll finally be let out. And I'll, I'll shave my beard. It's, I don't really have a beard, but it's the equivalent of a long beard. But it's, you know, you have to, you have to cut out all of the distractions or the, or the process won't work for me. Because as I said, and as I've disclosed in Mastery, the way the human brain works is your best ideas come to you when you're not thinking about them. You know, if you're, if you're sitting there always doing other things and chatting with

• 43:38Speaker 01

  people and texting them, the brain won't have the mental space to unconsciously process ideas. That's why I like to kind of veg or take naps or watch mindless television. Things are going on in the brain. And then when I suddenly am showering or shaving, whatever, great ideas come to me. But if I'm continually distracted, if I'm going out every night, that kind of short circuits the process and it makes me think of other things. So I don't want to think about other things. I just want to think about the subject I'm, I'm dealing with.

• 44:12Shane Parrish?

  One of the things I get out of reading your books is kind of this almost biological sense of what was happening around me or in the world. And I think a lot of people take that away, right? The unvarnished truth. It seems like a large part of making effective decisions boils down to dealing with that reality. How do you, how do you go about making sure you're, you are dealing with reality?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Well, um, you know, this is, we, how many hours do we have here? As long as you wanna give it. Uh, that's a, you know, a deep question. It's a good question, but it's a, you know, the, reality is a complicated issue. I don't think a human could ever really know what reality is. And, you know, ninety-nine percent of what we perceive is a perspective that is ours and it isn't reality. So, and what really matters is that small margin in which you can be more connected to, to what is real is, is what I would call realism. So, if

• 45:16Speaker 01

  ninety-five percent of your mental processes are unconscious and you're really not aware of what's going on around you, but five percent is, if you can increase that to six or seven percent, you're a realist and you're connected to something. So, part of that reality is you. You are obviously the source of all reality, but you don't understand yourself. And I went into that deeply in mastery. You don't know why you like something. I, I, I'm gonna be writing an essay soon, if I can ever get the time to post it, about a single power that's the greatest power any human can have, and that's the power to ask questions. And I'm gonna derive a philosophy around it in, in a five-page essay. But, asking

• 46:01Speaker 01

  questions about yourself. Why do I like this book? Why do I, why am I attracted to this woman? Why did that film appeal to me? Why am I going and starting a business or pursuing this field? You don't know. You're, you're an automaton. You're a robot. You're not thinking about it. You're just reacting to stimuli. If you start to ponder why, if you start to say, well, why do, why am I attracted to this? What does it say about me? And you go into your childhood and you think about it, and you think about what it says about you, suddenly you're uncovering a little bit of that reality about yourself. And the power of that is immense, because...

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Now you can choose a career that fit fits your your weirdness, your uniqueness. Now you can avoid people who are just gonna suck your energy because they they're not interested in the same things you are. You can i- it just has immense power to know who you are. Uh, those those were the words inscribed on the threshold of the Oracle of Delphi, know thyself. And so that's reality. Then the reality is also other people. Uh, you're walking around and you don't understand the people you deal with. You could be married to someone thirty, forty years and you don't really know them. Because you're not listening, you're not paying attention, you're not asking questions.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  You're the the the other people in your life are just projections of your own emotional of your own emotions. So stop and think about them and try and not project and try and get inside their skin and try and understand why their world from their point of view. Now you're connected ever so slightly to their reality, which is much, which is powerful because it gives you the power to influence them and it gives builds up your empathy, which is an immense uh, uh, human uh, potential that people rarely tap into. And then the other reality is the world that you live in, the culture that we're in. If you don't understand the times that we're living in the zeitgeist, it's very hard to create a book or a business that taps into what where people are right now.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  So you have to know the cultural environment, the climate, the world we live in. Um, you have to know, uh, the business environment. What does it mean to the the competition that you're facing? So you know that world, now you're a little bit more connected to that reality. So those are the three zones of this reality. And if you can just start piercing a little bit more, uh, then you're more of what I would call a realist.

• 48:42Shane Parrish?

  I like that answer a lot. It's really deep. Um, one of the things I wanted to follow up on is how do we learn to ask better questions? Not only of ourselves, but the people around us.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Well, that would be part of this essay that hasn't been written yet. It was an idea that I had when I was showering, I think a couple of days ago, but um. You don't wanna, if you're asking questions of people, I mean yourself, it's it's it's quite easy. Or the world, yeah. It's quite easy to ask the questions about yourself. People, um, not so easy because um. You can be very, you can very easily become irritating and intrusive if you're sitting there, well, uh, you know. Tell me about your mom and your dad and, you know, why, why are you going out with this person? People will start hating you. There's a way to make, to do it where you're not so intrusive. People love to talk about themselves. I mean, that's.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Law number one of human psychology. People, the favorite subject for anybody, myself included, is myself. Um, cause we never really get to talk about it enough. We never get to be the star in our own show. People are dying to talk. So there's an art to asking the kinds of questions. What is it that they wanna talk about? Uh, it changes with each individual. Some people, I'm always fascinated and wanna know about their childhood. And their parents, uh, because to me that holds keys to their psychology and it's endlessly fascinating to hear about. People's peculiar backgrounds, often so very different from my own.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  And there's a way to do that. It's kind of fun and not so heavy and you don't go, well, you know. Did you dream about sleeping with your mother? No, I don't go with that. Uh, you know, I said, oh, uh, where are you? You know, I, I don't know, there's always a, an elegant way to broach the subject. But um, getting people to talk about the things they don't normally get to talk about, their, their desires, their ambitions. Their experiences, uh, their childhood, um. It's really not difficult to do it. It's just the elegant way of doing it in the course of a conversation so you don't look like. A spy or somebody who's writing a book. Um.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  And you're wanting to find out, you know, their underlying values. What somebody thinks about, what their value is, determines their psychology. You know, if I value my work and my writing and my books, then everything I think about tends to revolve around that. Some people it'll be, and I'm not denigrating it, but some people it'll be pleasures and sports or whatever. I mean, I love sports, but that's, you know, that could be their main physical exercise. There's something, so what? You value your body and exercise. Now, I want to understand more of why you're that way.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  There's a great book by Howard Gardner, you know, going back to nonfiction books that I recommend, called The Five Frames of Mind. And he's basically saying that there are five kinds of intelligence. And a person will tend to have one of them as their main intelligence. It could be patterns in math, it could be the body and kinetics, it could be words and sound, I don't remember off the top of my head. So some people are like that, and I want to know why and where that came from and what's underneath it. I'm trying to get underneath it and see what kind of motivates people, while also carrying on a conversation that doesn't get too deep so that they're not depressed.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Is, you know, that, these are the kinds of questions. The other thing is, you know, you, people often ask questions, this is part of my essay, and they assume they know the answer. Or they ask questions and they don't really listen. And I want people to have the Socratic idea that you, this person that you now are having coffee with, that you've known for several years, start with the assumption that you don't know them. That everything, throw out all the things that you've assumed about them. Like Socrates says, "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything." And so when you're asking a question, you're like a child. You don't know. You feel weak and vulnerable and you don't know and you're curious.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  So you ask a question to understand them and you listen deeply and you ponder what that could mean. It's a great way to make people feel connected and they get to open up to you. Um, they'll probably ask you things about your life as well. But it's more to like loosen up. I think the worst sin in the world today is people feel like they know everything. They've, they've got Wikipedia, they've got their smartphone, they've got, they can figure anything out. And I want this essay that I write to return you back to your ignorance. Uh, you don't know, you don't know about the world. You're not really connected to the zeitgeist. You don't really know what's going on in your work world. You don't understand people.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  And that's a good thing to admit that because then you're going to ask questions and then you're going to listen and you're going to learn. Uh, so that was sort of the idea behind this essay that hasn't been written yet.

• 54:05Shane Parrish?

  I like that. Um, I think that's definitely worth writing. And one of the things you said was talking to people who think they, they know something. I mean, one of the problems that I see that traverses personal, professional lives is separating the people who know what they're talking about from the ones who pretend they know what they're doing or what they're talking about. How, do you have any, how do you do that?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Well, it's like, I guess you'd call that, you know, bullshit radar. Um, and uh, it's kind of a hard thing to verbalize because uh, you know it when you smell it. Like this person doesn't really, uh, i- i- it's just like bullshitting and they don't. I mean, obviously, um, actions are what you're paying attention to because people can, can talk a lot. Um. What has this, what has this person actually accomplished? What have they actually achieved? You know, what businesses did they start that succeeded or what, or whatever? Or are they just talkers?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  So, a lot of that is cutting out the verbiage and actually figuring out what people have done. Cause you can't bullshit your, your achievements in life. So, um, you know, that's the, the old thing that Machiavelli called the effective truth, uh, which he applied to the Pope of, of this time. I don't listen, I don't listen to what the Pope says about religion and Christianity and goodness and stuff. I look at his actions and his actions are, he's a rapacious warlord. Uh, referring to, uh, uh, Rodrigo Borja, who was the Pope, one of the Popes at the time. Or, uh, Loren, uh, Pope Julius that came after later.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Um, so you don't listen to people's words. You, you, you look and focus on, on their actions. And then non-verbal stuff, obviously is very important. I have a whole chapter in my new book about non-verbal communication. Cause it's very, it's an untapped, um, uh, zone of knowledge that I try to go into. But I, I mean, I really, several books could be written about it. But, you know, people reveal things through their body language. They reveal the fact that they're, um, they're not sincere. Um, they reveal the fact that their confidence is, is mostly a facade, that they don't, they're not really competent.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Um, they're, uh, talking so much, but that's always a sign of insecurity. A kind of a, a quietness, a seriousness of people who kind of admit that they're not always right. Generally are signs of, uh, of the non-bullshitter. Uh, but you know, um, we all bullshit. Uh, it's part of social life. So, you have, you know, you accept that. It's just, how do you detect? If you're hiring someone, then this is a critical skill and. Then you really need to focus on their resume and what they've accomplished. But you also need to focus on how they interact with other people.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  And whether they're going to be toxic or not. And that gets into the whole nonverbal zone. But you ask a kind of question that I could go on for hours on. It's very complicated, but those are some of the things I would say.

• 57:35Shane Parrish?

  Thank you. I appreciate you going into such detail on it. I think, you know, speaking on behalf of listeners, we love that sort of stuff. So the more detail, the better.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 57:45Shane Parrish?

  What's the, what would you say is the biggest mistake you've ever made? And how would you recover from that?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I've, I've made several mistakes in my life. But then, you know, Ryan wrote a great book called The Obstacles, The Way. And I've written about similar subjects in The Fiftyth Law and in other books. Amor Fati, which is basically embracing your fate and not looking at life as if you actually have made a mistake. Well, you have made a mistake and you have to learn from it, but there was a reason behind it. So mistakes are good. Failure is good if you're able to kind of glean a lesson from it. So, you know, when I was working in journalism in New York when I was in my twenties.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  There was a, that's not really a mistake. The mistake for me was that I chose the wrong profession. I wasn't really suited for it. And it cost me several years of my most creative period and I got out. That's not like a huge mistake. And then a similar thing, you know, with Hollywood. I can't really think of like an egregious kind of huge mistake that ruined my life. I can think of 20 little mistakes, you know, like.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Law number one of the book is never outshine the master. And I probably violated that law maybe three or four times prior to writing the book. Uh, where I'd be the researcher on a television show. And I was so good at it that everybody hated me. Um, I was like, you know, I, I was the only one that came up with the right kinds of stories. And instead of making me popular and making me, uh, giving me a huge salary, it made me fired. Cause I was outshining the master. Made, I made mistakes like that, you know? Uh, and then a lot of mistakes from getting emotional and getting upset and realizing that that's not, not the proper answer to life.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  So, you know, little things more than any kind of, man, I, I did that really enormous. You know, egregious mistake and, and it sent me back for several years. I don't really have stories like that. I'm sorry.

• 1:00:08Shane Parrish?

  How, how did you go about reflecting on that though? So to becoming less emotional. Like it, it's not a switch you just flip, right?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes, you know, as you get older, that's, it's easier, uh, uh, you're, you calm down. Some of it's not good. Some of it's like you kind of dry up and you're not as affected by things. That's not a good thing, but. So you try not to have that happen, but you know, as you get older, you get more perspective, hopefully. Um, the meditation has helped me an awful lot in controlling my emotional responses. Ninety percent of the meditating, I do a practice, a form of Zen meditation. And what you're doing is, it's hard to concept to relate, but the idea is. You're thinking of your thinking as if you're a spectator of yourself. You're looking at yourself and you're going.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  You know, this is my mind and how it's, has these anxieties and these obsessional thoughts. And you're looking at it as if you're another person. Can't explain it any other way, but it's really an interesting thing to go through. And so you end up having distance from yourself and you end up seeing that. You're kind of a programmed person to respond a certain ways. And with that distance. You find it easier to not react. So with the meditating, I made it, it's much been much easier for me to not react to situations and to kind of hang back and go, wow, that's that's just life. That's just how things are. Let me wait and see how, what, what plays out. So the meditating has, has helped a lot. Getting older has helped a lot.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  And just kind of uh, an awareness of in the past, how getting angry or emotional um, can be very destructive and can ruin your life. Um, and so learning to control that because of mistakes you've made, et cetera. That's kind of, kind of what's going on.

• 1:02:03Shane Parrish?

  Let's talk about some other laws. I think law number four is always say less than necessary. I'm gonna read you something you wrote. Maybe you can expand upon or respond to it. You said, when you're trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear and the less in control. Even if you're saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended and things like powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yes, and so what do you want me to say?

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  You want me to talk hours on, on, on how to say less than necessary? I mean, it kind of explains, it kind of explains itself. I mean, you know, the more you talk, the more likely you are to say something stupid. I mean, that's pretty obvious. Um, in a non-verbal way, people who talk a lot indicate kind of nervousness and insecurity. So you look a bit weak. Um, and if you kind of hold your tongue and you only say kind of slightly enigmatic things, people start wondering, wow, this person, there's more to him or her than I thought, which is always a powerful impression. Um, like,

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  he said this one sentence, I don't really know what it means. And then you go home scratching your head and thinking about him. That's a power that you have to make people think about you. And the less you say, the more mysterious you are, the more interesting you can become. The less you say, the more other people talk. The more other people talk, the more you learn about their weaknesses and you learn about their hidden desires and what makes them tick. And the less they know about you, and the less they know about you, the better, so you can surprise them. I mean endlessly, it's, it's, it's, contains so much power that it's sort of surprising that people don't need to have that explained. I mean, we live in a culture of transparency and Facebook

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  where we want to tell people everything. We want to tell them what we had for breakfast and what did we think about the news that just happened? And you know, what kind of clothes we like to buy. We think that's great, but in fact, it's not so great because it makes you seem very banal and familiar. It's really not very interesting. I don't really want to know where you went to lunch this afternoon. It's not interesting except to yourself. I don't want to know your latest dating adventures. It's kind of boring. So stop being so transparent. It's actually kind of irritating and I don't need to know it. Cultivate some mystery in your life. Don't let people know everything about you. Know how to withdraw. These are other laws of power as well.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  And get control of your tongue. You don't have to be silent, but talk less. Particularly in business settings, but even in a romantic setting. You know, you can talk yourself out of, out of, out of a relationship, the more you talk. I mean, I understand in the end, you want to be honest and you want people to know who you are. So in a relationship, that's, you don't want to always say less than necessary. I get that. That's very true. But in general, people are not mysterious enough and there's tremendous power in talking less. And so in that spirit, I'm going to shut up. It's that that stand is my answer.

• 1:05:28Shane Parrish?

  Law 29 is plan all the way to the end. You say the ending is everything. What does that mean?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Um, it's, well, it's basically that you're not thinking far enough ahead. You're locked in the moment. Um, very human thing. It's actually one of the chapters in the Human Nature book about how short-sightedness and.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  How we're always reacting to what people are giving us, I call it in one of my blogs, I call it tactical hell, you're locked in tactical hell. You're never able to rise above to the level of strategy, you're always just reacting to what people give you. So you can never plan anything, you can never really be strategic, which requires that you think at least, at least two moves in advance. So plan all the way to the end is a way to force you to think further ahead. Now, if you think, I've got this plan, uh, to get rid of a rival business, or to outdo this opponent. All right, in one year, I'm gonna get to this point, I'm going to destroy them in sales,

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  um, and I'm gonna get market share, et cetera. All right, how do I get there? Okay, I'm gonna get that where in a year, how do I get there? Okay, all right, now I've got a plan. Now, that's power, because if you keep reacting to what your opponent is giving you in this rivalry to get market share, uh, your never, your mind never rises high enough above the battlefield to come up with a reasonable plan that actually, um, is more strategic and involves things that aren't just reactions to what your rival gives you. So thinking of the ending, uh, is very powerful, and it just forces you to get out of the moment and think longer term.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Um, I, I talk in my new book that we're animals, we have consciousness, but we don't use it right. If we have consciousness, if we're aware, we should be using it not just to react like an animal reacts to every little tweet or every little thing that occurs on the news cycle. We need to use that power to go further into the future and to imagine possibilities and options and consequences, and to gain out what we do in depth, um, is the proper way to use our intelligence. So that's sort of what that law is about, it's a very important law.

• 1:07:50Shane Parrish?

  Um, law forty-one is avoid stepping into a great man's shoes, which is what happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after ever. Can you talk to me a little bit about that and how people should be conscious about what jobs that they take?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  What jobs they take? Well, I don't know it so much as a job. I mean, in the job sense, it would be, which doesn't happen very often, but some important, powerful CEO is retiring. This person is famous and did a great job, and now you're replacing him or her. That's a dangerous position to be in, and that's fraught with peril. And you need to read chapter forty-one, law forty-one and the forty-eight laws, in which I tell you to don't try and repeat what the other person has done. You're gonna get lost in their shadow and swallowed up, and it's gonna be bad news. And you're always gonna be compared to the person who came before you. But it has metaphoric reach. You don't wanna, you

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  always wanna set off in a fresh direction. You wanna do something that's original, that's you. You don't wanna be lost in other people's shadow. If you're writing a book, you don't wanna present yourself as Malcolm Gladwell Jr. creating kind of a book kinda like him, because then people are just gonna compare it to Malcolm Gladwell, and you're never gonna come off well, and you're lost in his shadow. You wanna write a book that reflects you, that's different, and then there's no shadow swallowing you up. You know, so the laws are not just the literal meaning. There's psychology, greater psychology behind it, which is wherever you enter, whatever you do, there's a predecessor. There are other

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  people who are more famous or renowned. You wanna get out of their shadow, and you wanna create something original, and you don't wanna be following exactly in their footsteps. It's kind of, kind of the idea behind it and the overall import of it.

• 1:09:52Shane Parrish?

  It's really hard to pick a favorite law, but what would, what would you think is the most applicable law for people to learn?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  It it it's an impossible, I'm sorry, I mean, I don't mean to to quibble with you, but it's an impossible question to answer. And so the answer then, because it's an impossible question to answer, the answer is law forty-eight. And that paradox means law forty-eight is assume formlessness. And that means all forty-seven laws are, can be kind of nonsense and you should just ignore them. And you should just be in the moment and not go into situations thinking of, oh, I better do law forty-one. You be, you must be alive to the circumstance, you must be formless, you must be willing to throw out the forty-eight laws, you need to be alive to the moment.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  And you need to be flexible and adapt to every situation and every circumstance. It's a very important law, but the idea is, um, everyone's different, you know? So for me, I work at home and I, I have, I work for myself. So the law that's important for me isn't going to be the same law for someone who's in an office job. Um, you know, kind of stuck, sort of in the middle of the zone and is trying to break out. Or someone who's a CEO of a company with five hundred people. Everything depends on where you are right now and the drama of your life as it stands.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  So it's important to plan all the way to the end, wherever you are and have a plan. Yeah, I could, I could say that there are maybe a dozen laws that kind of transcend that and, and that are key, like learn to keep people dependent on you. Make it so that your necess, people need you, they don't love you, they need you. To get rid of you is painful. It's not a law that applies to me because I don't work for other people, but.

• 1:11:51Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  It's important, yeah. And always say less than necessary, you know, there'll be, if you're, if you're a host of a television show on MSNBC, always say less than necessary is not a good idea. You need to be talking talk. But in general, it's a good, important law. Never outshine the master. I don't have a master, really, unfortunate, fortunately or unfortunately. So everything depends on your circumstances. And I find that when people crack open the book. Their eyes gravitate to particular chapters and go, oh.

• 1:12:25Shane Parrish?

  That makes sense.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Learn not to put too much trust in friends, make use of your enemies. Wow, you know, man, I've really violated that one. I better read that. That's usually how it works. Or they open it up and they go, this book is evil and I don't want anything to do with it. And they they get rid of it.

• 1:12:45Shane Parrish?

  I want to talk about one more thing that you wrote about, which is a lifetime versus dead time. Can you expand upon that and explain that to listeners?

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Wow, um.

• 1:12:55Shane Parrish?

  The quote, I can read the quote that I was.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, read the quote.

• 1:12:58Shane Parrish?

  Which is, uh, the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy and that you're not creative and you're not thinking of the future. To me, you might as well be dead.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it's like, you know, you could put it this way, um.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Other philosophers have put it this way, uh. You really don't own anything in life. When you're born and you come out of your mother's womb, um, and you're kicking and screaming, and you go through your sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years of life. You think that you own stock and money and this, that and the other, but really you don't own anything because it all disappears. It all goes away. And you die and there's nothing left. The only thing, the only thing that you own, the only thing that we can say is that you own time. You have so much time to live. At at your birth, you know, in the in the old way of thinking about it, your time was set.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Your fate is you're gonna die when you're eighty-five years old. Okay, that's a little silly, but let's just say you have eighty-five years to live. That is yours. That's the only thing that's yours. I know we can say your body, but you know what? Somebody could put you in prison. Somebody could torture you. You can lose that, but they can't take away the time that you have. That time could be spent thinking and enriching yourself. A lifetime to go expand a little beyond what I wrote is time that's your own. Nobody tells you what to do. Nobody is commanding you how to spend it. You're not taking that time going over obsessive thoughts that have been instilled in you because you're anxious about this, that or the other.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Taking ownership of your time means I only have this much time to live. I better make the most of it. I better make it a lifetime. I better be urgent, have a bit of an edge, kind of be aware of each moment as it's passing and not kind of in a fog. When you're working for someone else and you're flipping burgers at Burger King, it's dead time. They own you. But if you're working at Burger King and you've just read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and you're thinking about it, or you're working at Burger King and you go, I have a plan in a year. I'm quitting this ridiculously awful job and I'm going, I'm saving my money and I'm

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  going to night school and I'm going to kick ass in this field. That dead time of Burger King is now a lifetime because you've got a plan and everything has a purpose. My purpose here is, all right, I'm gonna get a great job after this crap job. All right, I better learn while I'm doing this shift. Well, what can I study? I can study people. I can ask questions to some of the customers that come in at two in the morning. I can kind of be alive to my circumstance, my situation. I can go home and read books and I can prepare for that time. When I quit, now suddenly you own your own time. It is yours because you are making it your own. And suddenly it goes from being dead to alive. Does that kind of answer the question?

• 1:16:06Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's perfect. That's a perfect way to wrap up this interview.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Okay, good.

• 1:16:15Shane Parrish?

  Where can people find out more information about you?

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  We have a website called powerseductionandwar.com. The "and" spelled out. Those are the first three books of mine, Power, Seduction, and War.com. There's a link there to my site that has to do with Mastery, my fifth book, which we didn't talk much about, but if I may plug it, I recommend it for anybody.

• 1:16:42Shane Parrish?

  I was gonna try to get you on for another episode and talk all about Mastery.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  All right, all right. Well, you gotta give me a little bit of time, but we'll get to that. But yeah, I mean, that's, you know, an important book if you're kind of not sure where you're going in life. It's not such a Machiavellian book, so maybe that puts you off. It's more about figuring out your career in a grand arc and what it means to master something and become creative in your field. So anyway, in powerseductionandwar.com, there's a link to also a Mastery site. We talk about all of the books. And then there's links to a place to email me and to the Twitter and to all the other all the other social media stuff.

• 1:17:28Shane Parrish?

  Awesome. Thank you so much, Robert. This has been great.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  You're very welcome, Shane. You're very welcome.

• 1:17:36Shane Parrish?

  Hey, guys. This is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes from today's show at fs.blog/podcast. You can also find out information on how to get a transcript there. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to fs.blog/newsletter. The newsletter is all the good stuff I found on the internet this week that I've read and shared with close friends, books I'm reading, and so much more. Lastly, if you enjoyed this or any other episode of The Knowledge Project, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. Every review helps us make the show better, expand our reach, and share our message with more people, and it only takes a minute. Thank you for listening and being part of the Fund Up Street community.