2036: The "Hell Yeah" Rule for Work, Money and Doing Less

What if the secret to getting more done isn’t doing more, but getting ruthless about what you stop doing? My guest today, Mike Allen, has a pretty simple test for figuring out what stays and what goes. In fact, you just heard it: “Hell yeah.” If someone asks you to take on the project, go to the thing, have the meeting, make the commitment, and your reaction is anything less than hell yeah? Mike says that might be your answer right there. And listen, as someone who has spent a lot of her career saying yes, building, adding, producing, optimizing, I needed this conversation. Mike Allen is the co-founder of Axios and previously co-founded Politico. He’s also the longtime journalist behind the daily Axios AM and Axios PM newsletters. His new book, Simplify: Do 50 Percent More with 50 Percent Less https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GPBQXD4M?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback, co-authored with Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, is essentially an argument against what they call toxic complexity. Because here’s the irony: AI was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, we have more content, more choices, more decks, more emails, more things we could be doing. And Mike’s argument is that unless we get intentional about what deserves our attention, technology is just going to help us create more noise, faster. Their framework is three steps: Confront what you’re doing. Delete what doesn’t matter. Amplify what does. We talk about why complexity can actually feel comforting, how to declare “meeting bankruptcy,” what a simplified financial life might look like, and why figuring out what is enough may be one of the most important things you can do with your money and your time. And I end up applying Mike’s advice to my own business in real time, including some changes I’m making to So Money in 2027. How's midlife going? Fill out Farnoosh's survey https://www.jotform.com/build/262556781257063 and help shape the podcast in 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:32Speaker 03

  So Money, episode 2036, the hell yeah rule for work, money, and doing less.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  You're listening to So Money with award-winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day, get a 30-minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons? Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life? Welcome to So Money.

• 2:06Speaker 05

  I'm going to change your life. Two words. Hell yeah. So if somebody asks you if you want to do something, if you want to go somewhere, if you want to meet up, if you want to do a project, if you're like, ah, okay, or like, yeah, I guess I should, say no. If you say hell yeah, then it's a good idea. Then it's worth doing. And it just uses our, we know it uses our own filter. We instinctively know if something's a good idea, or if it matters, or if it makes good use of our time.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Welcome back to So Money, everybody. What if the secret to getting more done isn't doing more, but getting ruthless about what you stopped doing? My guest today, Mike Allen, has a pretty simple test for figuring out what stays and what goes. In fact, you just heard it. Hell yeah. If someone asks you to take on the project, go to the thing, have the meeting, buy the whatever, join the group trip, and your reaction is anything less than hell yeah, Mike says that might be your answer right there. And listen, as someone who has spent a lot of her career saying yes, building, adding, producing, optimizing, I know this can be difficult, but I needed this conversation more than anyone. Mike Allen is the co-founder of Axios and previously co-founded Politico. He's also the longtime

• 3:24Speaker 03

  journalist behind the daily Axios AM and Axios PM newsletters. His new book, Simplify, Do 50% More with 50% Less, co-author with Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, is essentially an argument against what they call toxic complexity. Because here's the irony, AI was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, we have more content, more choices, decks upon decks, more emails, and more things we could be doing. And Mike's argument is that unless we get intentional about what deserves our attention, the technology is just going to help us create more noise faster. Their framework is three steps. Confront

• 4:05Speaker 03

  what you're doing, delete what doesn't matter, amplify what does. And I end up applying Mike's advice to my own business in real time, including the changes I'm making to So Money in 2027. Here's Mike Allen.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Mike Allen, welcome to So Money. It's great to meet you.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for having me. Love to chat with a fellow builder, fellow entrepreneur.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. And your new book, Simplify, Do 50% More with 50% Less, you are speaking my love language. And I want to get into this framework that you and your co-authors have created. But let's start with a little personal story. What was, what was happening in your life, Mike, whether it was at Axios or outside Axios that made you realize that doing too much, A, it's not going so well, and the complexity is pricey?

• 5:04Speaker 05

  No, you make a great point. And the idea of Simplify is that in both our life and our work, the obligations build up, the schedule builds up, the bureaucracy builds up, and it holds us back from what we're good at or what we want to do. And to your point, we have lived this. So here at Axios, we're relatively young. We're going to be 10 years in January, relatively small company. We have 400 people, even a relatively small, relatively young company. These barnacles built up. And we found that we didn't want

• 5:44Speaker 05

  people to do more work. We wanted people to do the right work. And it's the same thing in our personal lives, that people ask you to do this or that, and we either think we should say yes, or we don't think about it. And all of a sudden, our schedule is bogged down, and we don't have the chance to do what we want to do. So Simplify, which is just one word, lives up to its name, is a set of power tools and operating system, a mindset, to help you clear away the bloat and the barnacles.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  And with AI moving at rapid speed, taking over so much of our lives, you wanted to get this message out sooner rather than later because of that. Tell us about the relationship between the Simplify story and where we are currently with AI in our world.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  No, that's a great point. So AI was supposed to be a force multiplier, was supposed to be a superpower for us. AI turns out to be the greatest complexity generating machine ever. And I know that you have this in your own inbox. We were chatting before we came on the air, that, that all of a sudden, more decks, more proposals, more timelines, more of everything coming into us. And the AI keeps asking us, do you want me to do this? Do you want me to add this? Do you want more of this? Do you want that? So more choices.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  And so like, if we don't take control of that, it will bog us down even more. So Simplify shows you how to use AI to subtract from what's on your plate, rather than add to it. Because left to its own devices, AI will the reverse of Simplify.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, that you call it, or the researchers have called it work slop. You know, like, if you go to, if you go to ChatGPT without a mission, without clarity, you're going to be spending more time cleaning up the mess.

• 7:46Speaker 05

  No, and often it's inflicted on you. Often, you don't even choose it or create it. We found in our research for Simplify, that it can take two hours for someone to deal with a slop. They've all, all of a sudden gotten this big deck, or this big dashboard, or this big proposal, or this big pitch, and all of a sudden, they have to deal with it. And it's more words, more time, more complexity. So the, the idea of Simplify, we give you three power tools to help you escape from that. And the first is to confront what we do, to look through our schedule, to literally audit ourselves, both in our

• 8:31Speaker 05

  work life and in our personal life. And these tools are like sending your schedule, your workflow, your life flow to the gym. It will help you run better. So, so look at what you're doing and how you're spending your time. And the second one is delete. So delete and no are your two power words. And you will appreciate this because you're in demand around town, that a way to get out of an obligation that you don't want to do, of an invitation, is just say, I'm booked. You don't have to explain. You don't have to apologize. Just say, I'm booked. So one, confront. Two, delete. Just say no. And the third one, this is the payoff, is amplify. That if we cut out the meetings we don't

• 9:16Speaker 05

  need, if we cut out the pointless social interactions that we have, we have more time to do what we're uniquely good at, and what brings us joy. And this is what you've brilliantly done in your own businesses. You've found, you started out, I know, in local and financial news, you found out what you're uniquely good at, and you now do it in a way that brings you joy. And that's the idea of Simplify, is if we confront and delete, then we can amplify.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Yes. The delete part, I will say, Mike, is challenging. I mean, confronting is, all of it's challenging, but the delete part, what is the calculus for figuring out what gets eliminated?

• 10:00Speaker 05

  I'm going to change your life. Two words. Hell yeah. So if somebody asks you if you want to do something, if you want to go somewhere, if you want to meet up, if you want to do a project, if you're like, ah, okay, or like, yeah, I guess I should, say no. If you say hell yeah, then it's a good idea. Then it's worth doing. And it just uses our, we know it uses our own filter. We instinctively know if something's a good idea, or if it matters, or if it makes good use of our time. For our book, Simplify, I talked to successful people around the world in tech, news anchors, all kinds of people. And a surprising number of people told me the same thing. And they said that if they,

• 10:46Speaker 05

  they turned down just about everything that isn't related to work or family. Because if you're building a successful career, and one of the great gifts that you give the world with, with your podcast and with your platform is like helping people like chart and, and revive their careers. If you're going to succeed at work, or if you're going to do what really matters with family, you're going to say, uh-uh, no, to that random drinks or this, the, the social call that in the past, we just thought we had to do. And I was the worst offender. And this is

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Where we started, that so much of this is mistakes that we made and things we learned from mistakes. And for a long time, so I've, this is a sad fact, but I've done a morning newsletter. I've written a morning newsletter 365 days a year for 19 years, 10 years at Politico, I wrote Politico playbook, and for nine years at Axios, I've written Axios AM. And I used to be out and about all the time, like part of my personal brand, and I thought my superpower was being ubiquitous, being everywhere, like being spotted in my little columns, I would say spotted, and I would list the people that I saw.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  But then came COVID, and nobody could be out and about, and we found new ways to connect and communicate. And I found out that we didn't have to do all those sort of random, like time-consuming things that in the end didn't add value to my life or to those of my reader. And that's what Simplify does, is helps you focus on what matters. It's just like our first book, Smart Brevity, and a lot of your listeners and viewers see Smart Brevity on Axios. The big idea there is pick one thing, talk like a human, and then just stop. And that is a very effective communication style, and Simplify broadens that to your

• 12:50Speaker 05

  whole life, helps you get all of your work and life on track, because for you personally, or if you have people work for you, you don't want to do more work, you want to do the right work. And that's what we learned at Axios, is we want people doing the right work, not more work. And if you're not super intentional about confronting how we spend our time and the bureaucracy and the sludge and the bloat that we all have, inertia carries the day. We just keep on keeping on, and inertia is our enemy.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Well, I want to talk about how this applies directly into our financial lives. I mean, you talk about, hell yeah, I always talk about, you know, when it comes to prioritizing your finances, how you spend, it should be a hell yeah. Like, obviously, there are needs, you have to pay your housing and your student loan payments, but when it comes to the wants, that's how you prioritize. This is something that I just, it's like a need-want. But I found your book also to be, like, there was a moment in the book where I was like, wow, this is like a sitting on a therapist's couch moment, where you talk about the psychological pull that complexity is, you know, like, there is comfort in complexity, especially

• 14:09Speaker 03

  in a world where more is more, more followers, more tools, more money. I mean, people thrive on saying, I'm a multi hyphenate, I have 17 jobs, right? And some of that's out of necessity, but there is something kind of psychologically comfortable and comforting about complexity, which then makes it hard to detach and simplify. Can you, can you take us to that place, that sort of mental place?

• 14:34Speaker 05

  No, that, and you've said it and captured it in a very smart way, talking about the comfort, and I 100% agree with you, because we feel like if we have more words, if we have more stuff on our calendar, if we have more activity going on, if we're doing more stuff, we feel like we're succeeding. Stuart Butterfield, who headed Slack, had a great word for this. He called it work-like activity. And work-like activity is stuff that makes us feel good, feel like we're doing something, but we're not really accomplishing anything.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  We're spinning our wheels, as my mother would say. And one thing that I do here at Axios, every time I have a one-on-one, I ask my colleague, what is the one thing you have on your plate that you like least? What is the one thing you do that you would love to get rid of? And spoiler, almost always, that's something that maybe nobody needs to do it, maybe we could do it once a quarter instead of once a month, and maybe we could outsource it, but we're confronting it, and we're not letting inertia just carry the day. And so when you start looking at, oh, like, managers managing managers, people who make

• 16:00Speaker 05

  work for other people, every organization has those people who just make work for other people. And one of the lightbulb moments that led to this book, Simplify, was talking to a meta executive. And in 2023, Mark Zuckerberg had what he called his "year of efficiency." And they looked at these layers of people who flag risk and managers who manage managers, and they said, what could we cut out? And they had a surprising finding. Their surprising finding was not that they could do the same stuff with fewer people, it was that without those layers of complexity, that they were actually able to do what they

• 16:44Speaker 05

  were trying to do better. And the way a meta executive said it to me, and this was what helped lead to the book, was they said, we had a funner, faster company. And that phrase just stuck in my mind and made me realize that getting rid of, freeing ourselves from the list of stuff, the list of processes that do give us comfort and do make us feel like we're doing work is liberating.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Fun. It's a theme that comes up a lot on this show, believe it or not, you know, this pursuit of joy that we seem to have forgotten, or we don't, we don't value it very much in our, in our culture, you know, like, joy carries this, this sort of lightness to it that's like, you're not, we're not, we want to be serious people, Mike, and serious doesn't look like, you know, two appointments on your Monday calendar, it looks like 15, right? Because you're, you're like that, you want to be the workhorse. So, but as you say, that is, that is a construct, that is a made-up thing.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Here's another way that's going to change your life. So we have, hell yeah, here's another gift, and September is the perfect time. I like to do this twice a year, back to school and back after the holidays. Meeting bankruptcy, meeting bankruptcy, delete all the meetings, the standing appointments on your schedule.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  And then add back the ones that actually are useful, or the people like. For this book, I interviewed John Stanky, who's the CEO of AT&T. AT&T, 140 years old, goes back to Ma Bell, goes back to Alexander Graham, and 140,000 people around the world, the ultimate legacy organization. John Stanky calls the bureaucracy "the Borg," and we all have a Borg in our life or, or in our workplace. And he taught me a phrase that will be very useful to your audience. He said, "Stop till they squawk. Cut out that report, cut out that meeting, just stop doing it."

• 18:59Speaker 05

  And if it was useful, if people needed it, if people read it, they'll complain, and you can add it back. But guess what? Almost never do they squawk. Almost always, when you cut something out, when you drop that stand-up, when you drop that meeting where we're just trying to loop people in and just keep people in the know, we find out that we didn't need that at all.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Squat. Okay, that's a very, that's like very visual.

• 19:29Speaker 05

  Stop till they squawk.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Stop till they squat.

• 19:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  One of the themes we cover a lot on this show is this idea of what is enough, enoughness. It seems to me like you really have to have that figured out before you can really tackle these three tools in Simplify, to know what to confront, how to delete, how to amplify.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  No, that's very smart. And here's a way to go at this, and this works both in your workplace and in your life. What are the three things that I need to do to be successful? What are the three things that a week from now, a month from now, a year from now will matter? And that was, this speaks to your point earlier about how we feel comfortable just with stuff, right? Like, a year from now, what will matter? A month from now, what will move the needle? A week from now, what will I even remember? And in a workplace, we say, do those three things, and then talk to your leader, manager, make sure that you're aligned, and then see what are three things you could stop?

• 20:36Speaker 05

  What could you stop doing that do not feed those three things? And what are three things that AI could help you with? Because we talked earlier about how AI adds complexity, but it also can take the worst parts of your job, and the machine can do it. So whatever you hate about your job, maybe it's expense reports, the part of your job that you hate most, AI is probably awesome at it. And the key is using it for things that will subtract from your complexity instead of adding to them.

• 21:07Speaker 03

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  Well, one area where I'd like to have less complexity is news and consumption. And you know, news is a very broad category now than it was 20 years ago. It's, we're getting it at least on different platforms, video, social, tweets, and of course, standard news. So to be an informed citizen, what is, what do I have to confront, delete, and amplify so that I also don't feel the overwhelm?

• 25:31Speaker 05

  No, that's a very smart topic. I so appreciate your answering this, asking this, because this is a shared passion of you and me. And it's, how do we find news, not noise? And again, it's not more that if I sit here and scroll, I'm, I love Dolly Parton, and I've been very, especially fascinated, and I expect you share this interest, I've been especially interested in what a great business person she was and her business thinking. And she would always say, by the time they're done laughing or making fun, I've signed

• 26:13Speaker 05

  the deal and I'm out of there, right? Like she was extremely intentional about her business practices. And I didn't know that, and I've found that very fascinating. But if I sit there on my Instagram, I'm going to see 100 of those. And the other, for whatever reason, my Instagram thinks that I want tips about cruising, like a boat, cruises. I don't know why it thinks that.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  And now you're going to get more, because you said the word.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's listening. But, so if I just scroll, I'm going to see the same thing again and again, or I'm going to hear things from people that maybe isn't knowledgeable, and I don't even know if it's real. I know you get this, too, because you're influential. You get people asking you, is this real? I get that question all the time.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Is this you?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes. No, well, there's, that could be a little scary. And so here's the solution. Here's the way to simplify. And that is to focus on someone like you, someone like Axios, someone who has a track record of being reliable, who is not going to waste your time, is not going to insult your intelligence, and is going to help you navigate the world, is either going to tell you, tell me something I don't know, is always the gold standard for news, or help me think about this. And something that this, that your platforms do is, like, help me know how to succeed. Help me know how to navigate my career. And so, again, this is the intentionality, that the inertia of just scrolling, like, that's

• 27:42Speaker 05

  what will wind up eating up our day. Whereas if we're intentional about, oh, like, this is a podcast that's worthy of my time. This is a news source that makes an effort to be in the reality space. And it turns out that that could be a lot more efficient, is going to save you a lot of time. If you delete this, the junk, if you delete the 100th Dolly clip, then you'll have time to read something in depth, or to write something in depth, or do what you're good at, or help achieve a goal that you've wanted to do, rather than just waking up and you're through the scroll and an hour's gone before you know it.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  This is, a lot of this is like, just take control. Get in the driver's seat, especially now when we're talking about content. You know, you can curate your own content feed now. This is nothing new. But we often don't do it because, you know, it's a simple hack, but it's just sometimes, like you said, inertia. We just go with the flow. And that is sometimes the hardest thing to fight up, to fight against.

• 28:52Speaker 05

  No, that's a great point. Intentionality. And that's, here at Axios, we're very intentional about the way we lead and run the company. We want to be the very best place for the very best people. Every day I wake up thinking about that. Every day I wake up thinking about, what can I do for my audience? Like, we say, audience first, just the way Walmart or Amazon would obsess about their customer. We obsess about their audience. Like, what can I tell you and my other readers and listeners that will be useful to them? All very intentional. How do I create a workplace where there's not people trying to gouge each other out,

• 29:34Speaker 05

  but instead are working together? All very intentional. And that's where the Simplify mindset, the Simplify power tools, the Simplify operating system will serve your audience. That if they stop and think about, what am I doing that is frittering away my time? What can I say no to? What can I delete? And how much more time will I then have to do what I want to do and like to do? One of the people that I talked to for the book, Simplify, was Tony Fratto, who leads communications at Goldman Sachs. And even though it's Goldman Sachs, he has a relatively small team. He wanted to maximize what they do for the

• 30:14Speaker 05

  firm and for the business. And so he used a lot of Simplify principles. And they looked at what reports they could cut out. What could they, what could they sharpen? What could they do less of? And somebody in his team would come to him very proudly and say, this report is so much shorter. And he would say, do we need to do it at all? And here's the punchline, that by deleting things that were not valuable to the business, and that nobody really needed or wanted, His relatively small team wound up with 500 more hours a year. And he was able to ask the question, and this captures the whole book. What are we going to do with our 500 hours?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  And that's the payoff for your audience. That's the amplify. What can I do with those extra hours when I'm not doing junk stuff that makes me feel comfortable?

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Thanks for bringing that part up because I think it can, we can approach this with a very short term lens. We're saying, okay, I'm going to reduce, I'm going to deduct. And that can be messy. That can come at a cost in the beginning. I know you gave this example in the book. I think it was at Axios where you had built this app, a mobile app, and then ultimately decided against it, despite the fact that you'd put in all of this investment, despite the fact that it had users. And it was like this passion project, you know, there's, there's a heartbreak to maybe giving it up. But you saw beyond that. And I think that's really important for people to keep in mind, to have that lens. I mean, right, just to be very candid here on So Money, this podcast, it's a three day a week show.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  It started out as seven, then it went to five, then it's at three. Now I'm thinking, how about once a week? Well, you know what that's going to mean for me is that in the beginning, there's going to be a financial loss. Because in this world, volume, it's a volume game, right? The more downloads, the more you can charge for your ads. But I'm trying to think about what will I gain? And what will my audience gain in the absence of those two other shows? We can make the one show, we can go deeper, we can make it more tailored. We can all have more time to promote the show. Cause you know, when you're doing three shows a week, that doesn't leave a lot of time to do the newsletter, to do the social media, unless you have a big team, which I have decided against many years ago.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  But I'm selfishly taking this all in now too, for my own playbook for how to do the So Money pivot, which, audience, I guess I was waiting to break the news to you, but here we go. Starting in 2027, we're going to have fewer shows, but better shows.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, we have a scoop here. And it's very wise, and I'm going to tell you a story that you will love. When Axios started out back in 2017, my morning newsletter, Axios AM, was called Mike's Top 10. Top thing, top 10 things numbered one through 10 that you need to know about business, tech, media, politics. The first Easter, I was with my family and nothing was going on. And I thought to myself, you know what? I don't really have 10 things to say. I want to spend time with my siblings, my nieces and nephews. It's my newsletter. Nobody's going to sue me if I do fewer items. And so just for that one day, that Easter Sunday, it was Mike's Big Six.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  We did six items. And Monday, when I went back to Mike's Top 10, and by the way, now it's eight. But when I went back to Mike's Top 10, I got all these emails that said to people, I love Axios AM, but could you please send me the six item version, please? So that was the case, less is for sure, more, you will find the same.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Well, what does a simplified financial life look like to you or anyone listening? I think in our financial life, we're also fed a false bill of goods that, you know, more credit cards is better because you get more points or more money is better even. Because well, who doesn't want that? And this brings us back to our conversation about what is enough. But what, what have any research that that ties into the financial efficiencies when we, when we can simplify?

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Yep. This is the intentionality. Think about where you want to be as a human and as a bank account in a year, five years, 10 years. And it will become a very clarifying lens for making a decision. Whether I'm going to sign up for this thing or spend on this thing or go on this and do this. Will this thing make me more likely or less likely to reach that goal? And that's where the clarity comes in. That's where the confronting and the deleting comes in. Because if I have 10 goals, I'm not going to pay any attention to them.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  If I have three, then I can keep track of my progress, chart how I'm going, see what I'm doing. And so the intentionality, like having three things, knowing what is the, what is the one thing? Or what are the couple of things that I need to do this day, this week, this month? To be the employee I want to be, to be the boss that I want to be, to be the human that I want to be. And then I can check it off. But if I've got a list of 10 or 20, then I don't really focus on any one. They all get kind of muddled and mushy and I get nowhere. I'm stuck bogged down by that comfortable complexity.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think in our financial lives, we have so much, so many competing demands. You know, how do I prioritize? It's sometimes not possible to do just one thing at a time. You have to kind of find that balance.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  In your own personal financial life, if I may, like, have you ever kind of confronted that? That sort of, the balance, it could just be competing goals too, right? Like you want to buy a new house, you also want to, you know, send your kids to college. You also want to put money back into the business.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  Right. No, absolutely. And here's one example is I think about what am I going to remember a year from now? And it's amazing how much of what we do is fleeting. And if I'm about to buy something, if I'm about to go somewhere, will I even remember this in a year? And just that, that moment of stopping to stress test what I'm about to do, to confront, to audit, what I'm about to do can be very clarifying.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 05

  And it's, it's, it's like the tidying hack of like, have I used this thing in a year? And if I haven't used this thing in a year, that means we've been through four seasons. I ain't never using that thing. And I might as well get rid of it so that my nieces and nephews don't have to. And so, so like the theme to this, and I like the way that you said it, is that the theme to this is like being intentional, paying attention, making a decision, rather than just keep on keeping on.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  One of the great things that I discovered in researching this book was I talked to another team at Goldman Sachs, who was doing an audit to figure out what they could have AI do. And they discovered that every year, if somebody had ever asked for a particular report or a particular snapshot, that that report was then generated every quarter until infinity. And we do the same thing in our life.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  And so just paying attention to what we're doing and not wasting our time on things that don't matter. In the book, Simplify, we talk about decision energy. And decision energy is like Barack Obama always said he had blue suits and gray suits.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  And then he didn't have to waste time choosing. For the book, I interviewed Rachel Maddow, who every single night, when she was on every day, every single show wears black suit. And she told me that's very intentional. One, she wastes zero time deciding what she's going to wear. And two, it doesn't distract viewers. They pay zero attention to it. They pay attention to what she's talking about. So that's another thing that we can do that's very practical is what is that decision energy? That's the kind of friction in our personal life that if we have too many choices, like we're going to wind up stuck.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  In our house, it's making lunch for school and this is back to school week. And so my hack is my kids are doing it now.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Mom and dad are off the hook, making like hundreds of lunches a day. So that is, but you know, you talked about Goldman Sachs. And it reminded me the SEC even is catching on to this simplify notion where they have proposed amending the quarterly reporting tendencies, where now they are saying, why not just do it twice a year and not four? Because, you know, it's very problematic when you have to just hit a quarterly earnings number as opposed to maybe something a little bit longer term. But so it works for everybody.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's, that's something that again is pure habit. We've gotten in the habit of doing those, investors have gotten in the habit of wanting them. But taking the time to look at, does this, is this really valuable? Does this really make a difference is always going to be game changing.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Yep, change is scary, but if it's not scary, maybe, if it is scary, maybe you're on to something.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Yes, you're making a difference for yourself or for your workplace.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Mike Allen, thank you so much. Congratulations on your, on your latest book with your co-authors. And appreciate you coming on the show. It was great conversation.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Well, thank you so much for having Simplify on and you are so money.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Thank you. You're, you're so money. You're so money.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  Back at you.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Thanks so much to Mike Allen for joining us. The book is called Simplify, Do 50% More With 50% Less. I'll see you back here on Friday for Ask Farnoosh. And if you like what you're listening to, please make sure to subscribe, leave a review. And as a reminder, we're on YouTube now, so you can watch all of our episodes there now. I'll see you back here on Friday and I hope your day is so money.

• 41:29Speaker 00

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