Oliver Burkeman: Give up Control, Save Yourself

Are you constantly overwhelmed by your to-do list? Obsessed with productivity hacks? Always feel like you’re falling behind? Trevor and Eugene sit down with author and journalist Oliver Burkeman to rethink our relationship with time, success, and control. They unpack why perfectionism can make us miserable, the surprising value of “good procrastination,” and why choosing what to fail at might actually be a good thing. Along the way, they explore the psychology behind our social media facades, how modern conveniences have made us less patient, and whether the secret to getting more out of life might be accepting that we can’t do everything.

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

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  You've probably written, for me personally, I think for many people, but for me personally, one of the most influential and important books of my life. So, thank you.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so glad to hear it. What book is that?

• 0:17Trevor Noah?

  Four Thousand Weeks. Changed my entire life.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  It slightly blows my mind, but I'm very, very happy to hear it.

• 0:23Trevor Noah?

  Changed my entire life on this planet.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  How and why?

• 0:33Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 0:40Trevor Noah?

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• 1:15Speaker 03

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• 1:44Trevor Noah?

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• 2:28Trevor Noah?

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• 3:03Speaker 02

  What airline is this?

• 3:04Trevor Noah?

  And New Zealand has, they have a bed section in the back of the plane now. Six bunk beds.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:13Trevor Noah?

  With like a full mattress, closes off for you to sleep, total darkness.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:17Trevor Noah?

  And you go and sleep in that pod for like four hours, and you just book it. I think it's a great idea.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  So, my...

• 3:25Speaker 01

  You don't think so?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  My issue is, any passenger who's at economy, going up there and sleeping for four hours. One, I know that passengers at economy like taking advantage of situations. I've seen how they abuse the drinks.

• 3:43Trevor Noah?

  I like how you say they, like you've been flying economy your whole life. My man, this guy, you're making it seem like, you're making it seem... If I was to apportion your flights as a pie chart,

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Trevor Noah?

  The portion of your life that's business class and the portion that's economy, we wouldn't even see the slither of business class.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  And that's enough for me.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  It's enough for me to know.

• 4:05Trevor Noah?

  I like how you say "they," not "us."

• 4:07Speaker 02

  It's enough for me to know, because I've seen flight attendants coming to gossip about economy-class passengers at business class.

• 4:15Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  When you're at the galley, when you have the seat next to the galley, you hear them complaining about

• 4:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they do.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  six Irish coffees. I mean, really?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  But why is the bed gonna be any more or less gross than the seat?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I'm glad you asked that question, because they like taking advantage of situations. It's gonna be, four hours is gonna be done, they're gonna ask passenger whoever to move. Oliver's not gonna wanna move because he's having such a good time. And what law enforcement do we have up in the sky, Oliver?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Well, officially, those cabin crew basically have the powers of the police.

• 4:47Trevor Noah?

  Doesn't every flight also have an air marshal?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  No, I think that's a myth.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  An air marshal story.

• 4:53Trevor Noah?

  I don't think it's still a thing, or maybe, I think it is.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  I think that air marshal story is us policing ourselves.

• 4:58Trevor Noah?

  You don't think there's an air marshal in every flight?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I don't think there is any.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  All you need is for someone to think there is if they're thinking about hijacking the plane.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  How many videos have you seen of people fighting inside a plane?

• 5:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the air marshal.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Oh, you must, what is he there for? Hijacking's on me?

• 5:10Trevor Noah?

  Yes, for big things.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  But what if the fight is a diversion?

• 5:13Trevor Noah?

  Big ting's a guan.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  What if the fight happening at Row 17A is giving space for people from Row 16 upwards?

• 5:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's why he doesn't get involved in the fights, because it might be a diversion.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 5:27Trevor Noah?

  That's the exact reason.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  You seem to have too much faith in people.

• 5:29Trevor Noah?

  When you woke up this morning, did you think you'd be engaged in a conversation about

• 5:35Speaker 01

  cabins and beds on planes? No, no. When I did that flight, I got so, I was, it was in economy, it was years ago, and I'd gone to do book festivals in Australia, and they flew me, but they flew me on their terms, which was economy. And by the time I got to LA, I was so sleep deprived that I basically had some kind of like neurological issue in the plane.

• 5:54Trevor Noah?

  There's few things worse, yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Really weird things happened because I was so tired.

• 5:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, your body completely, like, it shuts down, you forget who you're talking to, why you're talking to them. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, especially that flying that way, by the way, the time zone. That switches maybe the hardest thing I've ever done. I flew from Australia to Hawaii. Ah, it was a blur.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 6:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that jet lag, like oppressive jet lag. Your body is just like, I don't know what happened here, man. This doesn't seem right.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  So not being in economy didn't help much?

• 6:25Trevor Noah?

  No, bro, we got the whole day back and it didn't, because you remember, when you fly from

• 6:29Speaker 02

  International day line.

• 6:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, international day line, the date line, you go back that way, and then... Where are you based now, by the way?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Uh, the UK, Northern England.

• 6:37Trevor Noah?

  You're on the UK?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:38Trevor Noah?

  All right. It's funny, when you read someone's books, you don't assume they have an accent.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you're reading it in your own voice.

• 6:43Trevor Noah?

  I'm reading it in my voice. I've just realized now I read your books in my voice.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Well, I certainly don't have the same accent as you.

• 6:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Sorry about that.

• 6:53Trevor Noah?

  No, you don't have to be sorry. It's just like, I had this like, in my head, you sounded like me, and now I'm like, wait, where are you from? It's like an interesting, also because you've probably written, for me personally, I think for many people, but for me personally, one of the most influential and important books of my life. So, thank you.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so glad to hear it. What book is that?

• 7:18Trevor Noah?

  Four Thousand Weeks. Changed my entire life.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  It slightly blows my mind, but I'm very, very happy to hear it.

• 7:24Trevor Noah?

  Changed my entire life on this planet.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  How and why?

• 7:28Trevor Noah?

  So, I don't even know how I came across Four Thousand Weeks. I don't know if anyone recommended it. I genuinely don't know. All I know is I started reading this book, and the very beginning of the book breaks down the premise, and you'll forgive me if I butcher anything, because you are the author.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  In your own voice.

• 7:43Trevor Noah?

  But the, the book starts to break down our existence on this planet, and basically goes, if you are lucky, you have four thousand weeks to live your life. Yeah, if you're lucky, you have the average four thousand weeks to live your life, right? And when you think of it that way, you know, when we think of like decades, years, oh, 90 years, 80 years, all of these things?

• 8:05Speaker 02

  It feels longer.

• 8:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, we also think of our time as just being sort of infinite. When you break it down into four thousand weeks, you go, huh, how many summers, how many winters, how many Christmases, how many birthdays? And then you start thinking about how you actually think of the value of your time. And the reason this book changed my life is because your book was one of the first books that challenged the premise that I think a lot of like self-helpy slash, you know, like popular nonfiction books have come out with over the past few years, and that is that like, you know, your time is money, you gotta make it while, hey, while the sun shines, you gotta get out there, come on, bam bam, smoothie baguette. If you're not doing it, then you're not doing it. Sleepy. And then this book came out, and I was like, yo, bro.

• 8:51Trevor Noah?

  The biggest part for me that changed my life was, was like, you are always going to be missing something. Just choose what you miss.

• 9:00Trevor Noah?

  That was literally it. And I was like, wait, wait, what? And it was like, yeah. And the greatest thing you can do is know that you're going to miss it.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:07Trevor Noah?

  Choose to miss it.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:09Trevor Noah?

  Cut a whole swath of things out. And then you're done. When you're making decisions.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:15Trevor Noah?

  You you know, people are like, I I I don't want to get married because I want to find the right person. Then they spend their whole lives looking for the right person and never get married. Then I genuinely, I it it sounds so obvious now. But it's only because I've read your book that I

• 9:31Trevor Noah?

  that I thought like, how did you even, how did you stumble into that world? Like, I mean, all your books are about thinking and living, but like, what's your, what's your background?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  I trained as a journalist, so I worked at The Guardian for a bunch of years.

• 9:41Trevor Noah?

  Love The Guardian.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  At university, glad to hear it.

• 9:43Trevor Noah?

  Yep, subscribe to The Guardian.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Good.

• 9:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Good. Um, yeah, and I I guess I, one of the things that, well, one of the things that taught me is like, it got me over a certain kind of perfectionism in writing, right? Because on deadline driven work like that, you you've just got to write the story when you've got to write the story. Uh, but it also brought me, I guess, right into confrontation with that idea of how much time there is and how much time there isn't because you are constantly trying to, you know, how do I do all the things I'm supposed to do in this job to please my bosses? But also I got to make time to like advance my career in some other ways. And anyway, shouldn't I be having friends and a relationship, right? So you suddenly you're sort of, uh, all of that stuff is is on the agenda. But I'm totally using all the books I write as kind of like my own therapy as well, right?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  So the reason that I was able to write this stuff is not because I found it totally trouble free, but because it was like a big struggle.

• 10:36Trevor Noah?

  It was the thing that was struggling.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right, right. I think I spent a lot of my sort of earliest adulthood thinking one day I was gonna get the combination of productivity systems and self-discipline and daily routines that was just gonna nail everything. And then it would just be like, set it and forget it, you know, plain sailing for the rest of life.

• 10:53Trevor Noah?

  My problem is that's what they will sell you.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:55Trevor Noah?

  Every second video on YouTube is, here's how you optimize your life. Here's the perfect morning routine. Here's how you figure out your week. Wake up, five A M, stretch, do some jumping jacks, lymphatic drainage, get outside, see the sun, make your breakfast, smoothie shake, go for you. It's like, it's it's it's so perfect and it's so precise that you constantly feel like you're failing if you aren't able to hit those beats every single time.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, and the other thing it does, um, in my experience anyway, is that it, it makes you kind of live in the future the whole time, right? Because you're always just thinking, I'm gonna get there soon.

• 11:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Right now, I'm a total mess, but what I'm working on is becoming like a viable human being six months, six years from now. And so the meaning of life is always, is always in the future, right? You're never actually fully present in your own experience. And then, you know, having a kid was another big reminder of this stuff because that's a whole different layer of uh, lack of control over your time and limiting limits to your time and all that stuff.

• 11:56Trevor Noah?

  Of your sleep, of your money, of your urgency, of your, of your control and how you can keep them healthy and alive.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. No, and it's all about control, I think, at the end, or accepting the limitations of your control, which, uh, yeah, I don't find easy at all, but hopefully my not finding it easy, um, you know, is useful for other people.

• 12:14Trevor Noah?

  If you were to, because I mean, I'll do a terrible job because I, because I I love it and I remember the pieces, but like, if you were to break down the ethos of four thousand weeks to somebody, you know, you go like, hey, I I can only speak to them for one minute and I'm trying to explain the the philosophy behind it, how would you break it down as the author?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I guess I would say we have really limited time on the planet. We have really limited control over how that time unfolds. And that's just a fact. That's not like, I think you should live this way or that way. That's just the truth.

• 12:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of our problems with time, as I go through in the book, procrastination, distraction, feeling like you're doing the wrong things, life is meaningless, whatever, often come from not taking account of those limitations and trying to constantly get like out from under them or on top of them. And if you instead sort of fall back into them and embrace them, it's not only more relaxing and realistic. I think it's also more productive and fulfilling, right? I don't think this is a book about like doing less. I think it's a book about doing the right things and actually being more effective, I hope, and more kind of making more of an impact on the world. So it's about embracing instead of constantly trying to outrun our human limitations.

• 13:24Trevor Noah?

  Your your book was the reason I, um, deleted social media apps regularly.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  So you the one. Now my D M's don't get answered.

• 13:34Trevor Noah?

  And I'm sorry they don't.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Ah, man, you know how many nice videos I sent to him?

• 13:39Trevor Noah?

  And you know, I'll go back and I'm like, oh, I've got six to reply to. I also seem like a loser because I respond to people at in bulk. I'll be like, haha, that's crazy. Wow, oh, no, so dope, nice. And then I'm done.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Then it's congratulations, oh, sorry for the divorce. All all of this.

• 13:56Trevor Noah?

  No, but but you, so you know what it was? I think it was the line in the book where you basically say, you talk about, I, so this is what I loved. It's how you frame things. Oliver talks about, it's not about not being on social media or not. It's just, are you doing what you, what you want to be doing? So if you want to scroll on social media for twelve hours, do it then.

• 14:17Trevor Noah?

  If you want to do it, do it then.

• 14:20Trevor Noah?

  But if you find yourself going, I can't believe I spent twelve hours on my phone today, you didn't want to do it.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 14:27Trevor Noah?

  Do you, do you know what I mean?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:28Trevor Noah?

  So it wasn't like a book that like, I I never felt judged. I never felt like, like the ideas in it, don't judge how you're living your life. It just reminds you to actively live your life as opposed to participate in it occasionally.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Right. I find that, um,

• 14:44Speaker 01

  because always, whenever I'm on social media, I'm lucky enough that the algorithm now, maybe it's not luck, maybe it's me training it, shows me what I like. So I don't feel like me being online all the time is counterproductive. I've heard people saying they want to switch off, but I'm like, when I'm switched off as well, sometimes I feel like I've been switched off for too long. So I'll sit at the park and I'll be like, yeah, I've sat here for three hours now. But I also have the same satisfaction when I'm on social media being occupied by what I want to be occupied by. Does that make any sense?

• 15:14Trevor Noah?

  Totally. I I I mean, I think increasingly it seems like you're in a minority if you're someone who feels like that was what you wanted to do, and I'm not judging you. For me, there was always that mismatch.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Judge me, Oliver.

• 15:27Trevor Noah?

  I wouldn't dream of it.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Things I've done.

• 15:30Trevor Noah?

  The the the, I I think a lot of this, and it's not just social media, right? There's lots of other stuff. It's about, it's not about like, don't live your life this way, live your life that way. It's more about be conscious about what's actually happening and what human life actually is. And then it's often a lot easier to make those decisions, right? Because you're sort of making them in reality instead of in this kind of weird fantasy world where you might be able to do everything. I mean, that was always my problem.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  I also, I also think it's the, um, you know what it's the, it's the, it's being okay with failing as well. In what way? That's probably the biggest thing that you changed in the way I see the world. Just being like, oh, I'm gonna fail at this for a while. I've never, I've never heard anyone sell that as a concept, in in my opinion, just the idea of like, okay. So in your life, you have your friends, your family, yourself, your work, your, you know, your fitness, your home projects that you work, you've got all these things. And then it'll be like, you know, get your time right, put the pieces together. This is the first book that was like, yo, bro, sometimes you can choose which areas of your life to be failing in.

• 16:31Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Like actively choose that like, I'm gonna fail at work for the next few months because I want, I really want to succeed at family.

• 16:40Trevor Noah?

  Right, right. So for me, it's seeing that like the standard of success that we hold ourselves to is is like doing more things than a human can do. It's working forty eight hours a day, which don't exist. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's being able to answer as many emails as the world wants to to send you. So you, so actually, any kind of boundary drawing in that situation, any place where you say, this is my focus for this season and this is not, it's gonna feel like a failure in some way because the standard of success is like be omnipotent.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 17:11Trevor Noah?

  Um, but if you decide in advance, like you're saying, right? If you say, well, for this season, like, I don't know, maybe you're the beginning of a career or you've just had a baby or something and like, okay, this isn't gonna be the season when my or my home improvement projects get done because those other things are just gonna take up all the time. Well, then when you don't get around to the home improvement projects, you don't feel like a loser, right? Because you made the decision in advance. You decided that they were gonna turn down that dial to turn these dials up. The worst thing is thinking that you're gonna do all of it. And then every single day is an experience of like how useless you are.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  If you choose to lose.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Oliver, just explain trying to.

• 17:49Trevor Noah?

  Fight jet lag.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I'm going to the mall.

• 17:53Trevor Noah?

  Yo, that feeling will kill you, bro. Yo, that feeling will humble you quickly.

• 17:59Trevor Noah?

  Feeling will humble you quick. I've seen people with jet lag, like, you know, when they try and fight it, they'll get somewhere. Then they'll be like, get outside. The first thing is you gotta get outside, you gotta get moving. You gotta live your day as soon as possible, get some coffee in you, get a run going, three P M.

• 18:18Trevor Noah?

  I just, I just need to lie down.

• 18:22Trevor Noah?

  I just need to like, oh, yeah, I just.

• 18:30Trevor Noah?

  Jet lag, my friend. Oh, man, jet lag will humble you.

• 18:37Trevor Noah?

  So what, like, what was it, like, what was it about your life that got you down this path? Because, I mean, many people are journalists, have stayed journalists. Even if people switch into becoming an author, it's like what they write about is still journalistic.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:49Trevor Noah?

  By its very nature. It, it feels like you're in a world where it, it, it isn't, how can I put it? It's not like a fact that you're trying to research, it's an opinion that you have on the way, you know, we live our lives and the world is.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:02Trevor Noah?

  That's based around facts.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:04Trevor Noah?

  And it makes sense for many people, and then some people will be like, I don't know if that makes sense for me, and, and, and that's fine, but like, how, what do you think clicked in your brain that, that got you thinking like that?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I guess I've always been really interested in sort of big ideas stuff, and I think it is quite journalistic, right? Cause it's not like I'm saying, I work in the tradition of Carl Jung, or I work in the tradition, or in neuroscience. It's like, I'm just taking stuff from everywhere, like, very journalistically, sort of like, oh, this philosopher had something that made a difference to me, and this study seems interesting, and haven't you ever noticed how this always happens on social media? So I'm just trying to sort of, so it does feel in that sense like I'm being a, a reporter in a way. But yeah, I'm reporting on, I guess, what it feels like to, to be in the modern world and what we can, sort of how we can reconcile ourselves to that and hopefully be happy and effective and ambitious, without constantly feeling insane, yeah.

• 19:56Trevor Noah?

  Do you think you've succeeded?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Not in any sort of final way, no. But I definitely am, sort of, I'm way less anxious than I used to be. I'm much more sort of able to take decisions about how to use my time and not be tormented by all the emails I'm supposed to have been answering and, and all the rest of it. So, yeah, I think I'm gradually sinking into reality in a, in a positive fashion. You have to ask my wife, really.

• 20:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, well, that's what I was actually gonna ask you. How many people or how many jobs or how many opportunities did you lose by changing your perspective in life?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Well, this is the great thing about being a finite human, right? You never know, cause you can't ever go back and take the other path and see what happened. So I feel like my life has been, um, really, uh, great since I started sort of living into this way of being, but what do I know? I could have been, I, I could have been ten times as successful the other way, or ten times more miserable. Right, right. And actually, that's part of the idea, right? One of the things we don't get to do as people who can only be in one place at a time and live one life out of all the million options, is see how it could have been the other, the other way. So it's like regret is this fascinating emotion where people think like, well, it would have been better if I'd done this or that, but like, you just can't know.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And when you really see that you can't know, I think that's quite liberating, cause it's like, all you ever do in every moment is take what seems like the best decision in that moment, and then do it again, and do it again, right? I mean, you're never gonna be able to get to the end of the finish line and be like, ah, I did the right things, cause this would have happened if I hadn't done, who knows?

• 21:31Trevor Noah?

  I blame lotteries.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say Spiderman, the multiverse.

• 21:35Trevor Noah?

  That too.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  What a relief, okay, carry on.

• 21:38Trevor Noah?

  No, I, I blame, I blame lotteries. You know, you know why?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:41Trevor Noah?

  Because they make us feel like there was like a right answer, and we could have thought of it and could have got to it. I don't know how to explain this, but like, I feel like.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  There was, there, there were six.

• 21:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, I know it sounds weird. I know it sounds weird.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  And you didn't choose them.

• 21:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  You didn't choose them. They go, we chose them.

• 21:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  You, on the other hand, what a failure.

• 22:00Trevor Noah?

  The person who chose them, you didn't. This was, this was your mistake. And then they'll be like, look at the numbers you did get right, here's the num, here are the numbers you should have chosen. I almost wish the lottery didn't tell you the winning numbers. They just like phoned the winner and that was it, but the rest of us, they left us guessing. They just left everybody guessing. Yeah, and it's just like, uh, the lottery was won this week. Really? Yeah, what were the winning numbers? Ah, bro, you don't even know that.

• 22:26Trevor Noah?

  Because you, okay, let me ask you this question. What, how does it help us?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't, doesn't help us at all, and also it's like.

• 22:33Trevor Noah?

  Do you see what I'm saying now?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  No, I do see what you're saying, because the numbers, the point at which you choose your lottery numbers, the numbers are not known, right? So there was not a right answer. There's just moments unfolding, and at one moment you choose some numbers, and at one moment the people who give out the money choose some numbers.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but for the fact that they even do a live draw is actually used, cause they could actually choose the numbers pre. You still would get them wrong.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. The people who run lotteries are not out to make your life as good and fulfilling as it can possibly be. I think that's, that's, that's what we're learning.

• 23:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I, but do you get what I'm saying? It's like, so, so I think those types of things in life, I, I know I'm being extreme when I say I blame it on that, but it's one of those things where you then think, ah, I made the wrong choice.

• 23:15Trevor Noah?

  But if the lottery never told you about the numbers, cause the, the numbers now tells you that there's the, there was a correct answer. The truth is, there is no correct answer to the lottery. It is just the number that ends up being the one. So there's no correct one. So if they just said somebody won, and it wasn't you, obviously, then we just keep on moving, and they go, we're not gonna tell anybody the numbers, but we're just gonna.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  But it's a human thing, you need proof that you were wrong. People never need proof that they were right.

• 23:38Trevor Noah?

  Then they can just do this, did you take thirteen?

• 23:42Trevor Noah?

  Then you go, no, yeah, so leave us alone.

• 23:49Trevor Noah?

  They can just be like, give us your number, give us, I'll, I'll, I'll, let's roleplay, Oliver. You be the prospective person like Eugene, who, um, wants to know why I haven't given you proof. And then, uh, you, you're calling in.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  You're the Lotto office.

• 24:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I'm the Lotto office, yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  So what I'm gonna ask, like, will you tell me the numbers?

• 24:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, so basically, you want, you want proof, you just want proof, because I, I don't tell the numbers. Ring, ring, hello.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Uh, I need to, you to prove that I didn't win the lottery.

• 24:13Trevor Noah?

  Oh, hello, uh, whom am I speaking to?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Uh, my name's Oliver.

• 24:16Trevor Noah?

  Oh, hello, Oliver. Uh, yeah, you didn't win.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  All right.

• 24:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I like Oliver, you see, go straight to it.

• 24:25Trevor Noah?

  If Oliver didn't believe me, if you say you don't believe me.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  How, I, I don't know how to trust you, you might be.

• 24:30Trevor Noah?

  Okay, that's a very good question, Oliver, we have many people, let me put you through to the non-trusting department.

• 24:39Trevor Noah?

  Ah, welcome, Oliver, to the non-trusting department. Oliver, tell me one of the numbers you picked.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Uh, twelve.

• 24:44Trevor Noah?

  Ah, sorry, we don't have twelve. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye.

• 24:49Trevor Noah?

  Bye-bye.

• 24:54Trevor Noah?

  I, can I tell you? You're, like, this is what I believe, genuinely. I know this is a brash, crazy statement to make. I think it is because of all the signals that we've received in life, whether it's from other people, whether it's from institutions, whether, that there was a correct, that we constantly feel like we are incorrect. So, everyone who posts on their timeline that they found the love of their life, makes you feel like you're incorrect.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  I hate those people.

• 25:19Trevor Noah?

  Join the team. Because when they're on the other side and asking for privacy and respect while they handle their affairs as they're splitting up their, their divorce, then it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, now you want privacy?

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:36Trevor Noah?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You were all over my timeline, writing poems about how, when you find the one for you, you realize that there's a half of you that never existed, and in that you, and then now you want privacy, but you were very quick to basically tell me that there was a correct answer. Your person.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:56Trevor Noah?

  Now in the divorce, why are you not saying that that's the correct answer? So, I don't have a problem with people falling in love or saying they found the right person, or, but what I'm saying is, when the world constantly feels like people are finding the answer and you are not, I think it can make you feel more depressed and more like a loser, like you're saying.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and it's also because like, you have access to your own internal monologue of self-doubt and self-criticism. You don't have access to anybody else, right? So it looks from the outside, you only hear the highlights or the, or the lowlights.

• 26:25Trevor Noah?

  You just made me think of a genius idea, we start a new social media app.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Shoot.

• 26:29Trevor Noah?

  Right, right?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Is it gonna be on the phone?

• 26:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Smartphone?

• 26:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it'll be, it'll be full on.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:34Trevor Noah?

  But it's gonna be.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Are you gonna have it?

• 26:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I'll have it, I'll do what I do now, I'll delete it.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Just checking, Oliver.

• 26:38Trevor Noah?

  I'll come on every few weeks, and I'll, but check this out.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 26:42Trevor Noah?

  Okay, it's gonna be like Instagram, right? But what we're gonna do is, whenever someone posts, they must post the picture, but then they have to post all their doubts and fears that were happening in and around that picture in that moment. But you can't see it instantly, so you gotta go like, wow, what a beautiful picture in the Maldives. And then they gotta post and be like, man, my financial woes have really been crippling me. And I'll be honest, I don't know if I could afford this trip.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  But who can see that?

• 27:09Trevor Noah?

  You.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Only.

• 27:10Trevor Noah?

  No, whoever, whoever's seen the picture.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Not the person that they are with on the picture, obviously. So it kind of blocks you like Tinder does. You and your wife are on Tinder at the same time, in the same house, but you guys will never match each other.

• 27:21Trevor Noah?

  I actually like this idea.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  How does Tinder do that?

• 27:23Trevor Noah?

  Uh, it's a good question, actually.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  I think it's a proximity.

• 27:26Trevor Noah?

  It probably is like an I P based type thing.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, because couples have been on Tinder, in the same house, but they've never matched.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 27:33Trevor Noah?

  What, what's weird is that they're both on Tinder.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  That's the weirdest part.

• 27:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but you get what I'm saying? Just, just because what you said is so valuable. We always know

• 27:47Trevor Noah?

  the realities and the cracks behind the facade.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:50Trevor Noah?

  We don't portray that.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:51Trevor Noah?

  So when people, have you ever complimented somebody on their outfit and been shocked at how doubtful they are about it? You'll be like, damn, you really, this is a great outfit. And they'll be like, oh, thank you. You know, I wasn't sure about these shoes. And then you're like, oh, I had this assumption of you as a human being, that you had everything put together and everything was perfect. You're now revealing to me that behind this facade was a whole lot of not sureness and nothing, that doesn't take away from how you look. But had I not said anything to you and had you not been honest back with me, I would have thought that dressing well comes with like one hundred percent clarity and confidence that you've made the right choice.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Right, right. And the crazy part, I actually get at this in the other book, is that kind of revealing that kind of insecurity and vulnerability is humanizing, right? You feel, you feel closer to that person. We're going through our lives trying to put out these facades and say like, we just know exactly what we're doing. The moment somebody says, I don't necessarily know what I'm doing, you feel so much connection to them, like you feel like fellow feeling because you know that inside you don't really know. I don't really know what I'm doing.

• 28:53Trevor Noah?

  I think we all don't know what we're doing.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:55Trevor Noah?

  You know what I've realized? We trust people more as well. Think about how many times you and I have sat with an expert here. The, the craziest thing, the higher the level of expertise, the more doubt we've seen in people. We've met everyone, you know, biochemists, you know, astrophysicists, you, you name it.

• 29:18Trevor Noah?

  They have doubts. You'll go, what about this? They're like, oh, well, we don't know. And actually, sometimes I wonder, I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure. And, and you're like, well, but you, you're the foremost expert. And you realize with expertise comes a humility and an acknowledgement that you don't really know anything. Because you start knowing how much you don't know.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 29:37Trevor Noah?

  You, you get what I'm saying? But then as like, like average people, we know everything.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  But I think it comes with growing up.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  The older you get, the more you realize that moderation and awareness go hand in hand. So you know that your time is limited, things that you can do and your emotional capacity for things is also very limited. But the awareness is always a helpful thing to help you realize that the path you didn't choose was maybe not good for you or good for you.

• 30:04Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  For example, like relationships, New York will expose to you, or is exposed to me really, when in life you really need partnership. I've seen kids being taken to school. Then I'm like, they need this person to take them there.

• 30:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Then you've seen people between their twenties and their forties in relationships, but within that spectrum as well, they're in different kind of relationships.

• 30:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  So the younger ones are holding hands, being more affectionate. Then the much older ones in their forties and their fifties, they're more comfortable with each other. And then you see maybe people in their sixties and seventies who either don't have a partner or have one and their interaction with that partner is very different. So if you're twenty something, trying to figure out what do you need in your life, this is the best place to look at because you'll see different people in different stages of their lives interacting differently in relationships.

• 30:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what I love about you. So I haven't, I haven't read this one.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  About me?

• 30:55Trevor Noah?

  No, meditations.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you were complimenting me. See how I doubted myself?

• 30:59Trevor Noah?

  No, but I love you as a person, you know this.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Thank you. See how my self-esteem.

• 31:03Trevor Noah?

  Wait, did this come out before, after?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  No, after.

• 31:05Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I didn't see this. Why doesn't it recommend, well, you know, recommendations, they recommend random things to me.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Like?

• 31:10Trevor Noah?

  Bruh, I have the most random recommendations.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Tell us more, Trevor.

• 31:14Trevor Noah?

  I will actually show you my recommendations. You'll be like, what is, what is going on here? No, haven't you ever had this where like, even your Netflix won't tell you to watch the new season of a show you're already watching?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:25Trevor Noah?

  Then you're like, well, I don't, I don't watch Love Island.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yes, because it knows you're not expanding, you're, you're focusing on one thing too much. It wants you to get out.

• 31:33Trevor Noah?

  It's got your best interests at heart.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, moderation. It understands that you've watched enough serial killer.

• 31:39Trevor Noah?

  I don't watch those shows. I don't watch those shows, bruh.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  You don't?

• 31:43Trevor Noah?

  I don't. You watch those shows.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I love a mind of a serial killer. Those people.

• 31:47Trevor Noah?

  Listen to this guy.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  They've choo-, you know, to choose that today is the last day for this person. And I'm gonna make a day out of it as well.

• 31:57Trevor Noah?

  You're too excited by this.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  He really is.

• 32:00Trevor Noah?

  No, but this is like, I'm, I'm, I'm skimming through this. This is what I love about your writing. You see, like, to have a chapter like this, this is a book that's gonna encourage you in life.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:09Trevor Noah?

  Day one, it's worse than you think.

• 32:14Trevor Noah?

  Just like, like just the idea of like, yeah, on the liberation of defeat.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:19Trevor Noah?

  What does that even mean? Like, or, or rather, why would you choose that to be the starting off point to help somebody feel better about their lives?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  I'll try to explain. I did, I did want to sort of bring people down to earth with a bump because then you can get started, right? If you're waiting the whole book to like bring them down to a bump, it's, I don't think it works.

• 32:37Trevor Noah?

  You're my kind of guy, Oliver.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I'm glad to hear it. The, the way I was, what is, the idea I'm trying to get at there is that a lot of the ways that we stress ourselves out in life come from not quite taking seriously enough the problems that we have. So a really simple example that I start with there is like, if you feel like you've got a, a, a really terrible to do list, you've got so many things to do.

• 32:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  It's gonna take all your time and effort and discipline to get through it. It's really gonna dominate your life to get through all these things. Then life becomes a real slog, right? Because you're trying to get to this point where you're through the list. But if you realize that it's worse than that, because there'll actually always be too much to do, because the space of things you feel like you need to do is always gonna be bigger than your time and your abilities. So you're gonna die with a long to do list of things you haven't finished. Well, that's a lot more liberating because then it's like, oh, well, it can't be my job to get to the end of this to do list. It must just be my job to do a bunch of the things on it that feel important, right? Because you're not, it's that feeling that you might be able to get to the point where you're on top of absolutely everything that is tormenting you.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Not the fact that you won't get there. Does that make sense?

• 33:46Trevor Noah?

  It makes complete sense. You, you basically, you've basically come in with, it's almost like people are running a race, like a hundred meter sprint. And they run in their like local municipality or town and they're coming fourth. And they're like, oh, man, I just need to get to first. And you're stepping in going, you're the fourth slowest person or fourth fastest person in your town, but in the world, you are rubbish. You are absolutely trash. So stop stressing yourself about like actually getting faster because even when you get to first in your town, you're still gonna be the slowest person probably in this country. So just like, this is what I mean, this is liberation.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't love the implication in that analogy that like, that there is someone who can do it perfectly, right? Because I wanna say, I wanna say we're all in the same boat ultimately.

• 34:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  With being finite, but no, still, it holds, right? It's like the, once you realize that something that you're trying to do is not really, really difficult, but is impossible, you're freed up to do loads of really important, bold, cool things with your life.

• 34:51Trevor Noah?

  How do we find the balance between that and a complete apathy for life? Because some people sort of have this attitude, but they go like, well, it doesn't matter anyway. Nothing can be perfect, nothing can be good. You can't be a good parent, so why try? You can't be a good partner, so why try? Work sucks always, so why, like, how do you, how do you stop that from becoming a negative and go into the world of actually inspiring people?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  You know, there are different ways of addressing this, but I think what I always come down to is I just feel like if you're interested in this stuff in the first place, that's not gonna be the risk that, that you run, right?

• 35:22Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Like, it's very unlikely that, like, like, you know, anyone who's got any level of success, anyone who's kind of stresses about it to some extent, anyone who's buying books about how to feel saner and calmer in the middle of the world we live in is, is, or, I mean, if, if they're already just completely a total slacker, they're not gonna be in the market for it, right? So there's this idea in psychology of the insecure overachiever, which is whenever I mention this phrase, people are like, oh yeah, that's me, that's me, that's me, right? Like, it's like people who do really well in life, but they kind of do it because they're, they feel like they have to. And they've got to prove themselves.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  And I think most people in like public life, prominent people, famous people, whatever, like, and any of, any of, probably many of us in all sorts of walks of life have a big dose of this, right? And so what those people need is a sort of a calming down and an, and an ability to see that you can carry on being super ambitious without that sense of deficit and like void. You don't, you can, you can try to do loads of cool things in life as an expression of feeling good about yourself, rather than because you feel bad about yourself. And so I think that those are ultimately the kind of people that I'm, that I'm writing for. People who don't feel any stress about how they use their time, don't seek out.

• 36:46Trevor Noah?

  This is not for you.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Writing about it. I mean.

• 36:49Trevor Noah?

  Oliver's just like, this is not for you. Yo, do you think your life is fine? This is not for you, bro. That's what Oliver said.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Now, I do think that there are also, there are people who sort of feel so overwhelmed that they don't sort of give into that kind of nihilistic idea, but they just sort of can't figure out where to start. And like, there's just so much deluging me, how can I find anything? And those people, I think, I do try to address in this book, right? People who feel like despairing at how much they're burdened by stuff they have to do or feel they need to do. That, that I think is a different thing, but people who are just like, why do anything? It's all pointless. Like, you don't think that. On some level, you want to build a meaningful life, right? I think.

• 37:38Trevor Noah?

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• 38:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is smart downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ah, I forgot to download anything." And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded." Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium.

• 39:08Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 39:12Trevor Noah?

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• 39:57Trevor Noah?

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• 40:39Trevor Noah?

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• 41:22Trevor Noah?

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• 41:48Trevor Noah?

  Do you think some of the way you think was shaped by the fact that you're English?

• 41:55Trevor Noah?

  And what I mean by that is like, I'm trying to think of how to phrase this.

• 42:03Trevor Noah?

  I feel like if you were American, your book would be a lot more rosy. But being an optimistic Brit means that you hope and believe in the possibility of a better future, but you're also like, "It's gonna be raining tomorrow." Do you get what I'm saying?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Because it definitely is.

• 42:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a strange, it's almost like you are the, you are what I would assume if someone had like a stereotypical joke. What is a British motivational speaker, an English motivational speaker? I'd be like, "Oh, it's someone who tells you you can be better, but you're probably not gonna be." You know what I'm saying?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  I think it's, yeah, it's a great question because I actually lived for a huge chunk of time in New York as well. So I've, and I often feel like I've come to some kind of outlook that combines these two. Or it's maybe like being a Brit pushing against American culture.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Although that might have been why I felt I wanted to come and live here, right? To try to find that middle space. So, yeah, I feel like, you know, there's a, there's a sort of failure mode, as they say, of American self-help, which is this idea that you can do absolutely anything and everything. All you need to do is to keep pushing and one day you will be, you know, the president, right? Whatever. It's like, it's a perfect success and wealth can be, can be yours with enough discipline. And it's nothing to do with the society in which you live, and it's nothing to do with the circumstances that you start off with or anything.

• 43:33Trevor Noah?

  And the fact that time itself is limited to your point.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. That you're not God. But there is a counterpart, British, like, bad place to go, which is like, you know, life sucks, why bother? Like, all you can do is get through the day, and that's as much to hope for. And I think what I'm constantly trying to do in my writing is like salvage some idea of ambition. Like, I'm quite an ambitious person, I think, maybe for a British person especially, who knows?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  But I don't want to have to do that in this kind of endlessly unsatisfied, always very anxiously facing the future kind of way. I'd like to find a way of taking the best of both of those things. And in a sense, you know, we do or die, and we don't get to do all the things we want. Like, that, some aspect of that British worldview is the truth.

• 44:22Trevor Noah?

  Right. It is very much how it is.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  But I don't think the bit where you then sort of resign, I don't think it's about, I think I want to avoid resignation. It's acceptance, this is a good way someone put it to me once. It's like acceptance, but it's not resignation. And there is a difference between those two.

• 44:37Trevor Noah?

  It's acceptance, but not resignation.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  So it's like living in reality, but it's not drawing from that the lesson that like, we can't have amazing lives.

• 44:47Trevor Noah?

  It's an interesting distinction to make, because I'm trying to think of how you really, really pass the difference. Acceptance versus resignation.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Can I suggest something?

• 44:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, please.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I think it might be the difference between accepting that things are as they are versus accepting that exactly how they are now is just basically how they're always gonna be.

• 45:08Trevor Noah?

  How they've always been and how they always will be. One is, one is a more permanent, would you say it's more permanent? Or is it more, is one based on optimism? I'm like, I'm just trying to like grapple with this now and go, like, what is?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Acceptance?

• 45:22Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Means that there probably is another option, but you're choosing, you're not choosing it.

• 45:28Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  You're accepting this one. If you're resigning this, it means it's out of your hands. If you resign to something, it's out of your hands. But if you're accepting it, you could have gone right, but now that I'm left.

• 45:38Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  So at least with accepting, you know that left exists when you're on the right.

• 45:43Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  But when you're resigning yourself to it, you're like, "These are my circumstance, I'm born on this island, the weather's like this, there's no way out of it. So I've resigned myself to the fact that I am this person from this place."

• 45:54Trevor Noah?

  Right. So I guess one has more agency then in some, or it's like the acknowledgements of your agency in it in a way then?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  I used to see this when I used to work at the mall as a teenager.

• 46:02Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man, this guy loves bragging about working at the mall.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  It was my greatest achievement.

• 46:06Trevor Noah?

  Loves it. For those of us who didn't work at malls, your jeans was like, "Have you worked at a mall? You ain't never worked at a mall in your whole life."

• 46:12Speaker 02

  The empire of the world, where traders would come and peddle their wares and exchange

• 46:17Trevor Noah?

  I always say that because I'm jealous.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  And gold bullion and spices. Sometimes leave their children there, acting like it was a mistake.

• 46:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, malls were fire, bro.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  At the mall, we used to have this tradition. So there was two times of the year where promises would be made, then you would see that people have accepted or resigned themselves to the fate of working at the store. Around Easter, people would say, "Next Easter, I won't be here, man. I'm gonna be somewhere else."

• 46:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Christmas time, because we hated those two seasons. People would be like, "Next Christmas, I won't be here." Three years at the mall at the same store went by with people saying the same thing until I resigned. And two years later, I came back to the mall and the same people were still there.

• 46:57Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  So those people had resigned themselves to the fact that this is their reality. The mall was their universe. If they were ever going to leave the store, it was to go to another store, not the mall. But whenever I left the mall, I was like, "This place here is a choice. I'm choosing to be here." So I left, and I never looked back.

• 47:17Trevor Noah?

  When you went back, what was, what was the vibe when you saw the people?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  They were still the same.

• 47:20Trevor Noah?

  What were they like with you?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  They were like, "It's only a matter of time before you go to another mall."

• 47:24Trevor Noah?

  Wow, really?

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like.

• 47:26Trevor Noah?

  They more cursed you.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  In their world, it was well wishing.

• 47:31Trevor Noah?

  Oh damn.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  They were like, you'll find stability again in a community again.

• 47:34Trevor Noah?

  I thought you were saying like, they were like, you might be out for now, Eugene. But it's only a matter of time before you find yourself in another mall.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Being in a mall is almost like being on those Star Trek spaceships.

• 47:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Where they're traveling across the galaxy and there's different types of aliens that kind of live together. The mall is like that. There's different types of levels. People who work at the body shop smell nice all the time and they think they're better. People who work at the luggage shop know about the world, but they've never been to the world. People who work at the music store know a lot about artists and art, but have never produced a single thing in their life. People who work at the grocery store know about, so it's almost like this multiverse that exists in one building.

• 48:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  And as a shopper, you go in there to get your goods, but as the people that work there, they live in this universe. And after a while, you become scared to leave the, to leave the universe.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Well, the thing that that makes me think of is that like this idea, it's another way of talking about this stuff, I think, that like, we are actually always choosing. It's just that we're either choosing consciously or unconsciously. This is a big point like the existentialist philosophers were really big on, right? This idea that like to not, to stay somewhere because you think you just have to stay there is, is a choice.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  And once you're making it more consciously, like maybe it is the best thing for you to do, right? That's not, that's not ruled out. It could be that it's the, there's something empowering about knowing that it is a choice. There is a sense in which you always have a choice. Not meaning in that sort of worst version of the American ethos way that like, it doesn't matter that you were born into poverty or it doesn't matter that you've got this or that disadvantage, but, but that within those, within those frames.

• 49:11Trevor Noah?

  You do, even with.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  You're making choices every moment.

• 49:14Trevor Noah?

  The analogy I like to use for that is I always go, think of it like a board game. We all started a different place on the board game. But from that point onwards, you, you're choosing and you really are rolling a dice because, but you're choosing to roll the dice. Some people, because I'm not gonna roll the dice, because look where I started. Yeah, yeah, you started in a terrible place, but you can choose to roll the dice. And then the dice is gonna determine some parts of your life.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:35Trevor Noah?

  And it's gonna not determine, but then when you land on certain squares, you can choose to do things or not do things or you, you, do you know what I mean?

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:41Trevor Noah?

  And it's this weird, it's this weird balance of knowing that in every situation, Viktor Frankl had the most famous one.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  I was gonna say.

• 49:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Viktor Frankl for me.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  What'd he say?

• 49:50Trevor Noah?

  Was in the Holocaust and he was like in a concentration camp. And he was just like, he just chose, he was like, no, I'm happy. Said, I'm not happy about this situation. I'm not choosing this to be in this situation. But the one thing I won't let them do is take away my ability to be like enjoying like my life as a person and the ideas that I have of myself. And that, that idea, I mean, you can imagine how many people butt up against it. They're like, no, but you, you can't, you're in a terrible, terrible situation. He's like, yes, the situation I'm in is terrible, but I myself will choose to perceive my life a certain way without being delusional.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:25Trevor Noah?

  And I will choose to maintain my mental state in a certain way. And I mean, obviously he was, you know, that's why he birthed a certain way of thinking.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:34Trevor Noah?

  It, it, to do it in, under such extreme circumstances is quite special. But it does remind you that you can always choose, you know what?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  But would you say he accepted or he resigned himself to this question?

• 50:45Trevor Noah?

  He, he accepted. That's what I mean to your point, because he had his agency in it. This is how I think of it.

• 50:52Trevor Noah?

  I was saying this to my brother the one day, we're like waiting in a line somewhere for something and he's like, ah man, I can't believe how long we have to wait. And then I said to him, not even like chastising, I was like, man, it's crazy to me that you consider this waiting.

• 51:06Trevor Noah?

  Because back in my day.

• 51:09Trevor Noah?

  I was like, we just had to wait. Do you remember going to the post office?

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:16Trevor Noah?

  Do you remember going to the post office? There's a whole generation who will never know.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  What a post office is.

• 51:21Trevor Noah?

  What a post office is.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:23Trevor Noah?

  The fact that you had to go and stand in a line, a single line,

• 51:28Trevor Noah?

  that was manned or unmanned. There were like six windows and one person. And then they would beckon each person and everyone had a different degree of like difficulty that they were coming. Some person wanted a stamp. Some person wanted to know why the routing for this package wasn't.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:46Trevor Noah?

  All you could do was wait in that line. You couldn't pull out your phone and watch a video. You couldn't like read, you couldn't answer emails, you couldn't get on a call even.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:54Trevor Noah?

  When I was first, my first time in a post office, my years in a post office, cell phones weren't even a thing. You just, you just literally just stood there and you just.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:04Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? You literally just stood there. So, so it's interesting to have that idea of like, are you choosing?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Right. And I think on that specific issue, that kind of the boredom and waiting and all that stuff, it's so interesting because the, the more we eliminate that from society, the worse it gets when you still have to do it.

• 52:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  And that's something that I've written a little bit about, like the more things get convenient, the more you can find anything out on a line in seconds that's happening four thousand miles away, whatever. And then you're in a traffic jam. Like that's worse somehow than, than in the world where that was just what life was, because now it feels like, the, one example I've given before is like, it's actually more frustrating to wait for food in the microwave than it is for food in the oven, right? Because like those three minutes are just like, because they're so close to being zero, right? It's like, it's so near to, I can just click my fingers and the, and the food be warm.

• 52:56Trevor Noah?

  Do you wait for it to get to zero?

• 52:57Speaker 01

  No, everyone stops at like seven seconds.

• 52:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, how many, what's your time?

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Ah, me, I wait for the command.

• 53:02Trevor Noah?

  You hit zero?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:03Trevor Noah?

  Legend. Legend. Like you stand, I'm asking the wait, do you stand and wait?

• 53:09Speaker 02

  No, I don't stand and wait.

• 53:10Trevor Noah?

  So you leave?

• 53:11Speaker 02

  I pretend I've got other things to do.

• 53:12Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, no, no, no, no, then you're normal, then you're normal.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, okay, okay.

• 53:15Trevor Noah?

  I don't know a single person who puts the microwave on, watches the numbers and then like watches it countdown and actually stands there. And I'm saying like reasonable, like even one minute.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:26Trevor Noah?

  You'll stop it at like one second.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:29Trevor Noah?

  Ah, that's enough.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  You know that scene in, in Avengers, Doctor Strange punches the Hulk?

• 53:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  And then the other body of the Hulk leaves and then.

• 53:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, when his spirit leaves.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how I am whenever I use the microwave.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's true. And anyone who works in like a shared office, you come to the microwave to use it and it's always stopped at seven or eight seconds, right? And you gotta cancel it, because I think people really find it very difficult to surrender for the, the surrender of control that is involved in, in waiting. Because on some really deep level, we want to be able to determine how our day unfolds. And we want it more now that we can do it in so many ways, so that technology allows so much of this. And then we run up against these moments where you do just sort of have to, you do just sort of have to wait. And it's, it's really a feeling of, I mean, the, the people talk about boredom like it's a really sort of

• 54:26Speaker 01

  passive or low grade feeling, but it can be really quite aggravating, right, to be bored. And, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you're being asked to surrender control for a little while, to just wait for something to happen, wait for the microwave, wait for the traffic, the cars ahead to move. In New York, this is always striking to me, right? Everybody's honking their horns when they're caught in traffic jams famously for decades. Doesn't do anything, right? It's an expression of frustration.

• 54:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  So clearly there's something else going on there than like, now I will do the most effective thing to move the car in front of me. It's just like, why do I have to run up against finite reality in this way and like push against it? And it won't just do what I want it to do.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Is that British optimism?

• 55:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you know, you know what you've just made me realize as well is

• 55:17Trevor Noah?

  the more control we get, the less comfortable we have not having it.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Hmm, addictive.

• 55:24Trevor Noah?

  When you would order a pizza that was gonna be delivered, when you, when pizza delivery first sort of started, the pizza just had, would just be the, you'd have a conversation with a person. They would tell you the pizza's on its way and then the pizza was on its way.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Then they started saying, we deliver within.

• 55:42Trevor Noah?

  Yes, they give you a time. Then you're like, okay, now you're looking at the time. Then they gave you a map to track it on a phone. And now you sit there watching this person. And then you're like, what, what is, what's hap, what's happened, what's, what's going on here? Why, why are they, you know what I mean? Like you've become, even though they, they keep giving you more and more and more control.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Pay more and you'll be first on the list.

• 56:06Trevor Noah?

  Ah, that's even, you know, the worst one that's gotten me now is on the app. It'll say your food has been delivered. And then I'm like, but where is it? And then you find like the person like just got there, so they've registered that they've just arrived. But that delay in that moment in time.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  It feels frustrating.

• 56:23Trevor Noah?

  I'm more panicked than I was for the thirty minutes prior.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  I have a cheeky question I'd like to ask actually, which is another place where this happens famously is like when people get kind of like high profile and celebrity-ish, right?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  What are you doing?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  I'll ask you both. But like, this is kind of like a famous phenomenon where you move ever more into a world where things are provided for you and you don't think about them because you have a team.

• 56:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  And then like very famously, right? You have certain people just engaging in like meltdowns.

• 56:55Trevor Noah?

  Or they become assholes. They become full of, yeah, but I've seen people like that. I've seen, I think it's more prevalent with like musicians. But I've seen like a few like A-list actors who are so sheltered from reality that they don't know that anything comes with any time or opportunity cost. They, they are not familiar with that concept at all. So food is just available all the time and.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  And what they want.

• 57:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and then like.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Not just food.

• 57:20Trevor Noah?

  And clothing, clothing is at their hotel. You know, there's people who haven't been to a clothing store in decades. They, they don't even think of that as a concept. The clothing is just in their closets and then they wear it or they don't wear it. And then there's more clothing and they wear it or they don't wear it.

• 57:36Trevor Noah?

  When they travel, the vehicles are just there that pick them up, that take them to a plane that just flies them somewhere. They, they don't think of the waiting in between. Someone takes their luggage. Someone sometimes flies ahead of them with their luggage to leave the luggage and put the clothes in their hotel room. And then when they get there, the clothes are just there. And so, so you, you remove so much of the time and opportunity cost that you are completely shattered by it when it comes into your world.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  You know what? I, I've just, Oliver, I'm sorry, I can't be part of this anymore.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  I feel like I know someone who's not using their high-profile status enough.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  I feel like some of it is wasted on other people. One mention names, I try to.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  No one flies ahead of him, no one packs his wardrobe.

• 58:30Trevor Noah?

  I've always thought of doing that, I won't lie. It just, but it seems ridiculous.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Just try for a week.

• 58:35Trevor Noah?

  There's a service you can pay that, actually, that you pay in New York, they do that. They will pack your luggage, they pack your clothes. They'll fly your luggage to the country you're going to on vacation. And then they'll hang all your clothes, steam them, put everything up in the hotel. So when you get there, everything's just ready. And then when you check out, you just leave and then they'll come to the hotel, take the clothes, put them back in a bag and then ship them back to you. But I, my brain, I, I don't know why I haven't, I haven't.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Tell me more, I'm here for you.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Because if those services are transferable to friends and family.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  I mean, Oliver and I won't say no.

• 59:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but you're paying for all of these things.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  No, dude, relax, go ahead.

• 59:17Trevor Noah?

  You're saying transferable, like it's not a.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  If it was gonna happen.

• 59:20Trevor Noah?

  Here's what my issue is.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:22Trevor Noah?

  I always believe that you should not become comfortable with things that may not be permanent.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Life is such.

• 59:33Trevor Noah?

  No, no, but what, because what I mean is like, if you are unable to accept it when it like shifts the other way.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  No, I will, I'll accept it.

• 59:40Trevor Noah?

  You think you can go backwards? Nah, bro, let me tell you something, you'll go crazy.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  You know something about me that you think Oliver should know?

• 59:45Trevor Noah?

  Let me tell you something, my friend, you'll go crazy. There, the, I don't care who you are in life, there's gonna be one thing you get to that you can't let go of.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Okay, maybe right.

• 59:56Trevor Noah?

  Warren Buffett was like famous for that. He's like a simple dude, has like a McDonald's burger and a Coke, like every day of his life. And he lives in the same house and he drives the same Honda and all these things, but try and take his private jet. Oh, boy, oh, boy. That old man will, yo. Warren Buffett, everyone's like, he's such a simple guy and he, yes.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  With a private jet.

• 1:00:18Trevor Noah?

  But go look at what he has said about his private jet. He's like, I don't need to change anything in my life and you know, private jet.

• 1:00:26Trevor Noah?

  Yo. He, he has said it himself, he's like, I can't go back.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:00:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, he's like, this is the only thing in my life that I, I can't, I can't, I, I. All this other stuff, the car, the house, the, I can live as simply as you want, I, I don't care about any of it. But the private jet, please, please, please, please, please, please, let's just keep that.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  And this is, I mean, this is a phenomenon you see at every level of, of income, right? It's called hedonic adaptation, I think, right? And, and anyone who is at any level except like really serious poverty, as soon as you have the ability to, you know, buy a certain brand of coffee or like anything, it doesn't need to be private, private jets or within a million miles of private jets. Takes a few weeks and then that feels like it's gone from being a, a perk to being a, the minimum baseline.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  You're like Oliver subtweeting me, yes?

• 1:01:19Trevor Noah?

  It's a new baseline, Mr. Airloom Tomatoes.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Airloom tomatoes and my, I've, Oliver, I've become, I've become a matcha connoisseur.

• 1:01:26Trevor Noah?

  Listen to this guy, matcha.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  I have spat out matchas. Right outside the shop.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Cause they weren't perfect.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Because they were not.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  I, first time I had a matcha, I was like, this is nice.

• 1:01:38Trevor Noah?

  And then now.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Six weeks in, I even know the best spots for matcha. You're right. At some point, what was normal is now not normal anymore.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Right. And this is a very New York thing as well, isn't it? That everyone always has like, there's the one place that they gotta go and get their thing and everything else is, is rubbish, even if actually it's some of the best in the world, right? Yeah, that's a, that feels like a particular New York.

• 1:02:01Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more, what now, after this?

• 1:02:07Trevor Noah?

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• 1:02:41Trevor Noah?

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• 1:03:26Trevor Noah?

  If therapy's been sitting in the back of your mind, Rula is a pretty simple way to take that first step. So, turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com. That's R U L A dot com to find a therapist the easy way.

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• 1:04:19Trevor Noah?

  This is the, before I forget, this is the, this is the chapter that I wanted to chat to you about. Becoming a better procrastinator. That, that like, just like.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Sounds like an oxymoron.

• 1:04:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, exactly, just like the idea behind this blew my mind. But help us understand what you mean by become a, because everyone goes procrastination is the worst thing, right? Putting, or, or rather delaying what you should be doing.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Trevor Noah?

  Cripples most people out, they, I should have done, I haven't done the law, I haven't done it, but, but you say become a better procrastinator, what do you mean by that?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  I guess what I mean is, the sort of, I, I talk about good procrastination and bad procrastination, so, um, there is a bad kind, right? And that is wanting to do everything so perfectly that you, that you sort of never get started. Cause if you want to really feel in control of a project.

• 1:05:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  The number one best way to feel in control is just never to do anything, right? Yeah, cause then you're like, you can think, and we all know people like this, right? They've got their dream, the band they're gonna start, the novel they're gonna write, and they love the dream. So they never take action, cause then the dream would come into contact with reality and it would be painful. And it is painful, right? If you do anything creative or pretty much anything, you're always going through that process of like, this is good enough, but it wasn't what I thought it could be at the beginning. But then I think good procrastination is really just the acceptance of that truth that like, given that we are finite, given that we have twenty-four hours in a day and have to be asleep for a chunk of them. You're almost always going to be not taking action on almost everything, right? Especially on almost everything you care about.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  You make a list of the things you really care about in life, in the next hour, you're gonna do one, maybe two of them. And all the others are not gonna get done. So, making progress and staying sane and being focused in that context, I think is, is, is not about finding a way of, of that not being the case.

• 1:06:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  It's actually a kind of anxiety management, right? It's, it's the ability to say, I know there are all these things that really count that are not happening. I'm gonna make them wait outside the door because right now I'm doing, I'm doing this thing. I, I talk in the book about this idea, lots of us have and I had for ages, right? Of clearing the decks. This idea that if you wanna really get down to something important, first of all, you have to clear the decks. You have to deal with all the little stuff that's dragging your attention, answer all the emails, and then you get down to this stuff. But you never clear the decks, cause there's an infinite amount of stuff on the decks. And actually, the act of clearing them makes them fill up again faster as well. So it's like, the whole thing is a nightmare. The only way to make time for the things you care about is to say, okay, there's all this stuff waiting.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  But I'm gonna make it wait a bit longer, gonna first of all, take an hour, take a couple of hours to, to make progress on this thing that I care about or to nurture this relationship that I care about, whatever it is. And then sure, I'll get a certain amount of time for all that other stuff as well. But it won't be this kind of like, first of all, I'm gonna get my life under control and then I'll start doing the things that count. Because that is a recipe for

• 1:07:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  for bad procrastination. So good procrastination is just acknowledging that things are gonna have to wait. If you're gonna do, if you're gonna do one thing, lots of other things are gonna have to wait. And that's just unavoidable. And once you see it's not avoidable, that's just such a relief, cause then you don't need to fight that battle all day long. You can just be apportioning your time and attention to stuff that really moves the needle for you. Or that you feel you really wanna do or really need to do to keep your job, or whatever your priorities are in the moment.

• 1:07:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  But you're just doing those things in sequence. And that's a day well spent.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Awareness and moderation.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  I think one thing that adults don't do enough is make a list. I think making a list is very powerful. Writing down the things that you think you want and the things that you think you want to achieve.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Will quickly challenge every notion you've had about the single thing that you think you want.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Oh, what do you, what do you, what do you mean?

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  If you write, I want to do one, I want to start renovating the garage, I want to start fixing my car, I want to start. Once you write it down, while you're writing it down, you ask yourself, do I really want to do this?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  But when ideas are just filled up in your head, they all feel urgent at the same time.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good point, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  When you're making a grocery list, it's the same thing. You start with the things that you like.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Chocolate, biscuits, blah, blah, and then you get to the real things.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  The meat, the what, and the what, they go, oh, okay, other, these are the things, yeah, but these ones, yeah. So these are achievable and these are nice to haves. But as adults, we don't make lists enough, but we tell kids all the time.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  You want everything, everything, you want the Christmas, you want Christmas gifts?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but make a list.

• 1:08:47Trevor Noah?

  Make a list for Santa.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Okay, puzzle or a mountain bike? A puzzle or a mountain, adults don't do that.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  We think we've got it all figured out, then it ends up becoming this maze that we traverse throughout our lives of wants and needs and actually nice to haves. And then the lines get blurred and next thing you know, we never get anything done.

• 1:09:04Trevor Noah?

  You also talk about it, um. With with like the choosing of it, which I which I found really interesting. So it's similar to what you're saying with the list. But you talk about like sort of limiting how many things you can be doing at at any particular time, right?

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. So there's I don't know. There's a couple of bits in the book that you might be thinking of, but but. I think there's a really good, like one really simple, if you want like a productivity hack, if anyone does, right? I think one really simple approach is to keep two lists, right? To make one list that is open ended, could have all the things you wanna do that are on your plate that you feel you should do, admin, whatever, could be hundreds of items.

• 1:09:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And then another list that has maybe some fixed number of slots on it.

• 1:09:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like this idea a lot. Yeah.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  And the practice here, this is a very simple way. There are lots of other more complicated ways of doing this. But you just take ten things from the big list, move them through and you start and you and you don't let anything else come on from the big list or the shortlist until you've freed up a slot.

• 1:10:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  By doing it. So you're sort of creating a deliberate bottleneck. You're not really creating a bottleneck. You're acknowledging that you as a human being are a bottleneck. You actually only ever can do a certain number of of things at one time. Thank you.

• 1:10:15Trevor Noah?

  It's been my favorite thing. Yeah, that that also.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  So I only remove one from the ten when a space opens up from that five?

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Wait, no. Say you have five, say you have an open list, open list, and then say you have five.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Yes, I bring over ten to the five.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  No, forget ten. I I made a mistake by using ten as an example and five as an example. Yeah, forget ten. Stick with the five. You move five from the very, very long list. And then maybe you do one of them. Okay, now if you want, you can move another one, but you can't just keep adding.

• 1:10:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you can't add things to your list. So the the way the way I remember reading it was like.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  That's.

• 1:10:47Trevor Noah?

  You're doing a house renovation.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:49Trevor Noah?

  Uh, you are also in the process, you're on this like big fitness journey, whatever thing, you're gonna be running a marathon. And, uh, you know.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Studying for MBA.

• 1:10:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, whatever, let's whatever these things are. Great.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Wanna write a book.

• 1:11:01Trevor Noah?

  But that's all your wish list.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Trevor Noah?

  What Oliver, like what your book really showed me was like, no, no, no. You have sort of like, like you're, you know, speaking or walking. We have a finite amount of things that we can be doing at any particular time, or we can infinitely think of things to do.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Trevor Noah?

  But we have a capacity, right? And so the idea was, no, create your capacity and make it really limited. So like three things even, three like big things that you're doing in your life.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Trevor Noah?

  Three big, like, and I mean, like, the big things that you're doing in your life.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Trevor Noah?

  That's on your list. You cannot put a new thing on the list without eliminating one of these things on the list.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  So if, for example, if you wanna.

• 1:11:41Trevor Noah?

  And you can't, and you the cheat, you can't like switch them back and forth. Cause you're just gonna like cheat yourself like every day. You're just gonna be like, uh, no, this is number two now. Tomorrow is number two. It's like, no, no, no, no.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  You could abandon one of them.

• 1:11:51Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean. They have to go off the list.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Or you could complete it.

• 1:11:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  But all it is, again, all these things are, is just ways of becoming conscious of.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  That's very smart. Yeah.

• 1:12:00Trevor Noah?

  And then what's great about it is you're always looking at three things only. So you go, am I doing this? Am I doing this? Am I doing this? Yes, then I'm actively living the life that I wish to be living. I know there's a whole list in my backpack.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  It exists.

• 1:12:11Trevor Noah?

  Clan Kilimanjaro.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:12:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Open, open a forest, you know.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Starting an affair.

• 1:12:17Trevor Noah?

  Starting an affair, all of those things, secondary list.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Right. And you're not saying that any of the things on that list are automatically less good because they're on that list. You're just saying, I'm limited.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Even starting an affair.

• 1:12:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, right now.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Well, very specific things may be good or bad, right? But it's not because they're on the list.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  You have marriage on your main list and kids, you see? So until those things are knocked off, uh, serial killer documentaries.

• 1:12:43Trevor Noah?

  Friends like you, who needs whistleblowers?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  It's an important use of your time.

• 1:12:49Trevor Noah?

  Uh, what would you say you've changed in your life since you stumbled upon, because you've shared it with people, but you said you you you do it to teach yourself? What were the biggest things you let go of?

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Specific things? I I mean.

• 1:13:00Trevor Noah?

  If someone remembers the old Oliver.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Trevor Noah?

  What would they say he let go of? What would they say he changed? What what would he, what did he put less importance on?

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  I mean, the big one, which isn't quite the answer that you're looking for, I think, is is just the worry, right? Like spending actual large amounts of time just stressing and fretting and feeling anxious, which is its own.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  That's a lot.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Use of time, right?

• 1:13:21Trevor Noah?

  The major, the most important.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  It's not a, it's not an activity that anyone would choose to do, I suppose, is what I mean. But, um, so there, so there is that. And then I think I've probably been more conscious, and again, this parenting will do this too as well. I've been a bit more conscious about friendships and social life, right? Because it really matters to me to have good friends and to nurture those friendships. But there's always that layer of social life where like nobody involved is particularly super wanting to do it, but you're all sort of going along with it.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Pickleball.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Well, if you like pickleball, you like pickleball. But you know what I mean? There's there's that kind of, there's that kind of.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Phrase that everyone's going along with it, but no one really. Those friend groups are the worst.

• 1:14:00Trevor Noah?

  Because it's like, you you just keep meeting for like quarterly reports.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And you miss out on enough to not really.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Care so much, but you still have the, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, uh, not, not to diss the serial killer documentaries, but there is a certain kind of. I do find there's a certain kind of content consumption that pretty quickly falls out when you think about this in these ways. Not never going on social media, not never vegging out with some like fun thing on TV, absolutely not. But you're doing it a little bit more, uh, consciously.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Than you than you were. And and you're not sort of watching stuff that on some level, even when you're watching it, you know, you don't wanna be watching.

• 1:14:41Trevor Noah?

  So I I know this may sound crazy, but how this changed my consumption. I started making a decision, like making decisions to watch a movie that I wanted to watch that I've already watched. Versus just watching a new movie that's come out just because it's a new movie that's come out. And I know that seems like a stupid thing to say, but like. For a long time, I would consume going, oh, there's a new thing I should watch it. Oh, there's another thing I should watch. But the only reason I consumed it was because there was, it was the only new thing that was available.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Like the time you made us watch Mortal Kombat.

• 1:15:13Trevor Noah?

  Uh-uh, that was for fun.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  That was one of the fun ones.

• 1:15:17Trevor Noah?

  That was, that was.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Where was fun then? Where was the fun then?

• 1:15:21Trevor Noah?

  When we were talking about how bad the background was.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that was fun.

• 1:15:24Trevor Noah?

  Come on.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, okay, okay, okay.

• 1:15:26Trevor Noah?

  Like, come on, everything in that. So what I'll do is I I will, when I have my friends gathered, I enjoy making them watch terrible things.

• 1:15:35Trevor Noah?

  And then complaining about it with them.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Trevor Noah?

  But we, oh, I go, have you seen this movie? Then they go, no. And I go, it's the worst movie I've ever seen. And then I go, put it on.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:15:43Trevor Noah?

  And then we put it on together. And then they go, why are we watching this? Then I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, the worst part hasn't come yet. And then we watched the movie together. And I think this shared pain.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  I can well imagine it. I can.

• 1:15:56Trevor Noah?

  Because they keep saying, why are we still watching this? And I go, no, no, no, no, it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. How did they make this movie? It's gonna get worse. And then they go home, Oliver, and then they scratch me off their list.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:09Trevor Noah?

  I need to move him off my list.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  They've made a conscious decision about their friendship. And you make it, you know, you make a good point about new movies as well, right? There's a strong pressure to see new stuff because of all the advertising and because of that sort of, this applies to everything else. The rest of the world will try to make your choices for you, and that's gonna happen anyway. So all we're talking about here is like having enough pushback to keep focusing on some of the things you wanna do, right? In any day, loads of other people's agendas, they're gonna have some role to play in it. That's okay. It's like, you're not gonna get rid of that. It's just that you're gonna have, you're gonna be going into it with with some sense of direction about what what you care about. And I think that's a an important.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  You're making me realize that we. We left, society has left the word peer pressure in our teens. But we.

• 1:16:57Trevor Noah?

  It's persistent.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  It's persistent. It's throughout our lives. The food we eat, the content we consume. No, not yet.

• 1:17:03Trevor Noah?

  Ah, you're missing out, bra. See, I just did it to you now.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  No, I.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  After Mortal Kombat.

• 1:17:16Trevor Noah?

  No, but what you're saying, honestly, like, I joke, but carry on, because what you're saying is really profound. It's true.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So we, as adults, we don't think about, you made me aware of this, the food that we eat and when we eat it and why we eat it.

• 1:17:28Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  It's also just peer pressure. The adverts look good, the packaging looks nice, the cars that we aspire to have. I'm now watching how the, a ten year old nine eleven Porsche is actually better than a twenty twenty six. Those cars are coming up in the market now. People are going, it's actually not so bad. It was actually great. But when it was there at the time, it was not the thing. But now in hindsight, the peer pressure has driven up, but also the appreciation for that has driven up the prices for those cars, because that's peer pressure. If someone that you look up to says this thing is great, they have it. Now those cars are hard to find in the market.

• 1:18:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  But if you look at the market from two years ago and even a year ago, during COVID as well, those cars were dead cheap. But now because of peer pressure and it's so subliminal now and hidden in so many things and comes in so many packages. It's not that kid at school who's smoking and says, do you wanna puff? It's the cool guy that goes, do you wanna invest? Do you wanna be wealthy when you retire? Do you wanna invest your money here? Maybe buy this thing. Have you ever thought about paintings? Maybe have a six pack. Maybe have you seasonal tickets to this thing? You never have to worry about it again.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  And again, it's not that you're gonna become perfectly free of all that, right? You're not gonna be the perfectly independent human. That doesn't exist. But if you have some conscious sense of what your main projects are at the moment, what your focus areas are, what you're willing to fail at at the moment. That's like a filter that you can you can bring to to the world of all the things that you're.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  I'd even argue that we need a, we need, what what you're trying to provide here is a, uh, a a mental and a life GLP one to block. To block those desires.

• 1:19:02Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah, I'll I'll settle for that.

• 1:19:06Trevor Noah?

  I actually like that a lot.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, figuring out like how to boost your, what is it? Sat- sati- satiation?

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Sati-ation?

• 1:19:14Trevor Noah?

  Sati-ation. How do you say it?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. Sati- is, does it end in E, I, I E T Y or?

• 1:19:19Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  A sati-.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  Sati-ation.

• 1:19:21Trevor Noah?

  Sati-ation.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 1:19:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I've never heard that word said out loud. I always read it.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Has anyone ever said it, actually?

• 1:19:28Trevor Noah?

  I've never heard anyone say it out loud, actually.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the list, Oliver's list makes sense.

• 1:19:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's completely that.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  I'm satient with these five.

• 1:19:34Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and what you're doing is.

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  Things will come.

• 1:19:36Trevor Noah?

  And you're limiting how quickly your your your stomach empties out, right? You're not like, it's it's exactly that. You have invented the GLP. One for that's what you're providing people, the GLP one for life.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  I love it and I love the analogy. It had not had not occurred to me. So that's brilliant.

• 1:19:51Trevor Noah?

  You know what had also not occurred to me was when Mortal Kombat started.

• 1:19:57Trevor Noah?

  My Swiss German side of my friend came out. The Freud and shy. What is it called? Schadenfreude. But do you have a memory, a core memory for life?

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Oh, I do.

• 1:20:05Trevor Noah?

  That's what I've learned, Oliver. If you watch a movie with your friends, nine times out of 10, they won't remember it. Because most movies are not memorable at all. They have to be like, I mean, we're talking like peak.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Gladiator.

• 1:20:17Trevor Noah?

  You know Gladiator, Dark Knight, like it's got to be like an extremely special film for everyone to remember it. Make your friends watch a terrible film with you. That moment will stick in your memory forever.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  It also bonds you, right?

• 1:20:32Trevor Noah?

  It does.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  It's like you're prisoners together and then you.

• 1:20:34Trevor Noah?

  We've both suffered. The only difference is I was the prisoner and the warden. I invited you in, locked the door, and then we spent 20 years with me also complaining with you, being like, man, when are we getting out? When are we getting out of here, man? They're treating us like animals. And then after 20 years, I was like, alright, this has been fun. Alright, man, let's go do something else.

• 1:20:58Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man. But yo, Oliver, thank you. I just want to say thank you, man. Thank you for writing the books. Uh, thank you for thinking the way you do. Uh, and thank you. You genuinely changed my life. I hope I don't mean that.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  No, that's lovely to hear.

• 1:21:09Trevor Noah?

  I genuinely don't say this as a platitude.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  No, it's really lovely to hear. I'm, like I say, I find it a little hard to, like, it always amazes me that anything I'm working through in this form helps other people, but it's, but it's really fantastic.

• 1:21:21Trevor Noah?

  Completely, completely changed my life.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  I can't wait to get started now.

• 1:21:25Trevor Noah?

  It's, it's the reason I'll tell anyone to read the book is because for me, 4,000 weeks, here's the best way to put it. It didn't make me more efficient. It didn't make me more productive. It didn't make me, none of those things. You know what it made me though? More relaxed. It freed me in a way, and that's the thing that, that, that I think we sometimes take for granted when it comes to uh, self-help books or productivity, all of these things. They always help you to how, figure out how to do more. They don't help you figure out how to want less.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:21:56Trevor Noah?

  And both achieve the same outcome, but one is way less stressful.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  One is less painful.

• 1:22:01Trevor Noah?

  It's way less painful. So you're going, it's not wanting less in like a give up way. It's just going like, no, no, no, I'm fine with these things. I'm accepting it. That's all I want. That's what I want. That's what I need. That's what I'm trying to do. And then someone goes, why aren't you doing that? Ah, just because I, I don't want to and I don't want to have that capacity. Oh, but you could, it's like, yeah, you could, you could do a little bit of everything. But choosing the things that you want to do a lot more completely frees up your life in a different way. So thank you, man. Thank you very much. What are you, what are you going to work on next? What's the next book?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm working on the book. Yeah, I'm, I'm trying to write a book that is about sort of staying sane and functional and getting stuff done in specifically the kind of crazy-making times that we're, that we're living in at the moment. And I'm sort of.

• 1:22:43Trevor Noah?

  Like how to not be paralyzed?

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm sort of tracking this idea of aliveness, which is the working title for the book, right? This idea of, this idea that that's the thing we need. It's the thing that is threatened by so much of the world in which we live and that really kind of building your life around aliveness is, in some ways, I feel like it's the the question that is not answered by, by, by these books, right? Which is like, well, okay. You take a saner attitude to not trying to do everything. What, what direction do you go in then, right? So for me, that's been a really sort of important piece of the puzzle. Yeah.

• 1:23:16Trevor Noah?

  It, it's almost like, once the human has freed themselves from the constraints that they've sort of like, you know, succumbed to in society, what does that human now do? We talked about this the other day in a, in a little, in a small way. We, we talked about like an addiction. And we're saying, people take for granted that one of the things an addiction will give you in life is something to do.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Purpose.

• 1:23:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and purpose. And when you remove the addiction, sometimes what we don't do is then like find a way for people to have.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  To replace it.

• 1:23:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the replacement that's not, is not an addiction, but it's like your time and your purpose were filled up by something.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that especially today, I mean, this is the diff, big difference with this book I'm working on is that it's written like now instead of a few years ago.

• 1:24:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  And so much stuff. I mean, we haven't talked about AI and I'm kind of glad that we haven't talked about AI. But that's, that's just one example of something that is like, it's changing the fabric of how people interact with the world so much, not all in good ways. And it really bringing up this issue of like, okay, what actually makes you feel alive? As opposed to sort of trudging through your day towards some future moment of like everything being okay. What makes you alive right in the middle of all this crazy chaos that we, that we live in in so many ways?

• 1:24:33Trevor Noah?

  I'm looking forward to it. This has been great. Thank you.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it. It's been great.

• 1:24:37Trevor Noah?

  A lot of fun.

• 1:24:41Trevor Noah?

  People, we need to talk about it. Mondays need better PR. Because let's be honest, nobody likes Mondays. Mondays come with alarms. Mondays come with calendars. Mondays come with emails from coworkers who were definitely productive all weekend. Thanks, John. Friday is a celebration. Saturday is a lifestyle. Sunday has brunch. Monday has meetings. And that's kind of the problem, right? Monday didn't even get a fair shot. It got assigned a personality and nobody ever checked if it was accurate. So yeah, Mondays are due for an overhaul.

• 1:25:23Trevor Noah?

  And what if we didn't just fix Monday's reputation? What if we completely reimagine what a Monday can be? Like instead of waking up thinking, what do I have to survive today? You wake up thinking, yo, what do I get to do today? And not in a small way, my friends, no. I'm, I'm talking about Monday being the day someone hits you up and says, yo, pack a bag. We're going somewhere. Not later, not sometime this summer, not when we finally find time. Monday. You're going somewhere you've never been, doing something you've always talked about, but never actually booked. That experience you keep saying, one day too.

• 1:26:09Trevor Noah?

  Monday says, actually, today is that day. Suddenly Monday changes shape. Monday changes how you see it. It's not just emails and meetings anymore. It's possibility. It's movement. It's the day something unexpectedly shows up on your calendar in a good way. The alarm hits different when you know it might be leading you somewhere that you didn't plan. That's the feeling we're looking for. John's emails are still there, obviously. I mean, we're not miracle workers. But even John might wait until Tuesday if Monday's out here offering you once in a lifetime experiences. And that's why, my friends, I like what Verizon is doing here.

• 1:26:48Trevor Noah?

  Because maybe Monday doesn't need better PR. Maybe it just needs better things to happen on Mondays. This segment is brought to you by Verizon. Introducing Verizon Shine, where now every Monday you can snag once in a lifetime experiences like NFL tickets across the globe. That's the planet. All-inclusive music festivals and the chance to meet your favorite stars. Celebrities, not solar system. Plus, daily drops, tickets and pre-sale access all week only from Verizon. Enroll today on the Verizon app or at Verizon.com. Pure Friday who, what?

• 1:27:33Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduff. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

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