#786: Tactics and Strategies for a 2025 Reboot — Essentialism and Greg McKeown

0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode
0:00:11 of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Greg McKeown, last name spelled, M-C-K-E-O-W-N.
0:00:16 He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Essentialism, The Discipline Pursuit of Less,
0:00:22 one of my most highlighted books on Kindle, and Effortless, Make It Easier to Do What Matters
0:00:27 Most. He’s also a speaker, host of the Greg McKeown podcast, and founder of the Essentialism
0:00:32 Academy with students from 96 countries. 200,000 people receive his weekly one-minute
0:00:37 Wednesday newsletter, and he recently released The Essentialism Planner, a 90-day guide to
0:00:44 accomplishing more by doing less. And this episode is an exploration of all the great
0:00:51 things we hope to accomplish in a new year, how to approach them practically, intelligently,
0:00:58 and most joyfully. After just a few words from the people who make this podcast possible, enjoy.
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0:04:57 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:05:00 No, I would have seen it in my perfect time.
0:05:04 I’m a cybernetic organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.
0:05:13 Me, Tim, Ferris, so…
0:05:17 When something hits, could be a calamity, it could just be something destabilizing, could
0:05:23 be anything. How do you center yourself so that you don’t just end up feeling like you’re
0:05:25 in the washing machine?
0:05:30 Because I am very good at getting things done even when I’m internally suffering a lot of
0:05:35 turmoil. But the last handful of days have been very, very challenging. And we don’t
0:05:41 have to go into specifics, but this is a close loved one. And a lot of the responsibilities
0:05:45 are going to fall on me to figure things out. It’s also the holidays, right? So the people
0:05:49 I want to get a hold of, I cannot get a hold of. And I recognize that fretting over it
0:05:55 does not fix anything. And it makes my day less peaceful and enjoyable. And I’ll make
0:05:59 a reference to one of our earlier conversations, which may have been, on the record may have
0:06:09 been, behind the scenes. But I’m pretty sure that you mentioned a piece of artwork called
0:06:15 The Listener, I want to say. Yes, that’s right. Which is this sort of centered, calm person.
0:06:21 And I have it up on my wall at home with all of this shouting, commotion and chaos around
0:06:28 him. And in the center, he’s just perfectly centered and thinking clearly. So I suppose
0:06:40 my question is, how do you help get yourself closer to that depiction of The Listener when
0:06:45 you realize, wow, there may be a lot of chaos around me. There may be a lot of chaos in
0:06:51 my head. And look, I’m meditating, like meditating like twice a day. It’s helpful. It doesn’t
0:06:55 seem to be quite enough. And maybe the answer is, look, you sit with it. This is just something
0:07:00 you’re going to have to weather. So don’t make a problem out of a problem, in a sense.
0:07:04 But I’m curious what you’ve found helpful in those circumstances.
0:07:11 I think I can respond that I don’t think it’s just sitting with it. And I’m pro meditation,
0:07:18 and I’m certainly pro prayer. But the thing I want to say is sort of distinguishing the
0:07:24 noise outside of us and the noise inside of us, because they are two different things.
0:07:29 And I want to sort of share a story and then illustrate the action that comes back from
0:07:35 it. But this last summer, I was back in England, I’m doing this doctorate at the University
0:07:41 of Cambridge. And so part of the requirement of that is to have residency every year there.
0:07:47 And this summer, I felt really destabilized while I was there. And it wasn’t the doctorate
0:07:54 that I don’t think was particularly major part of why is because my best friend of 35
0:08:00 years, Sam Bridgestock, is dying of cancer. And that’s been a long time coming. We’ve
0:08:08 known that that would happen. But facing it more directly in person. But it wasn’t even
0:08:12 just that because it wasn’t like I didn’t know before it wasn’t that I’d come to a
0:08:17 new understanding of the truth or the reality was I actually for a while, I couldn’t work
0:08:27 out what it was. But then I realized, Oh, he has so much mind share about the reality
0:08:34 of my whole life. We became friends when I was 10 years old. And those years, those
0:08:39 developmental years, I mean, I escaped to that friendship. And it was so stabilizing
0:08:45 to me at the time to have a relationship that was open and honest. And if I’m completely
0:08:50 frank, at a little bit of a risk in a way, but in a family culture that didn’t prioritize
0:08:58 that for a whole series of complex reasons. So suddenly, the imminent and certain loss
0:09:04 of him, it’s like my goodness, my whole sense of reality is being shaken. So it’s not just
0:09:10 even though this is a loss of such a friendship and so on, it tapped right back into this
0:09:15 whole sense of well, what is true and who do you go to to validate that? And do I have
0:09:22 enough internal sense of truth to be able to navigate this? Because he was the one I
0:09:26 would go to, Oh, my goodness, this is what’s happening. This is the reality. This is the
0:09:30 situation in those most complex relationships. And the idea of like, I won’t be able to go
0:09:37 to him, it destabilized something at a different level. And all human systems have these levels,
0:09:45 right, from the surface, which is secure, safe, shallow. And then you go further closer
0:09:49 and closer, like to say that the onion of human systems at the core are things that
0:09:57 are so meaningful, that they are inherently blisteringly vulnerable. Because to mess with
0:10:02 them, to tweak them even. I mean, the opportunity is enormous. I mean, that’s where massive
0:10:08 transformational change happens. But you know, if it gets shaken by something, everything
0:10:15 shakes. It’s the earthquake because the tectonic plate of truth inside of you is getting readjusted
0:10:20 or rather you’re getting a clearer sense of what is true. Now that’s all contextual, because
0:10:27 I think from your own description, if you’re using language of destabilization, it’s because
0:10:33 whatever is happening externally, isn’t just reverberating at the surface, or the middle,
0:10:40 it’s hitting something really deep. And so of course, then that changes everything. Nothing
0:10:45 works the same way before everything is has been injected with some sort of degree of
0:10:49 uncertainty. I just want to come back to this idea of like just meditating, like the idea
0:10:54 of just sitting with it. And people that are like, more deeply meditative than I am may
0:10:59 say, well, no, no, that practice would be the thing to do. But I found this summer, and
0:11:05 I find in general, I need to write it out. And loudly, it’s one of the things I try to
0:11:11 teach our children about, there’s all kinds of prayer, there’s all kinds of writing, scream
0:11:16 it out, cry it out, whatever it is. It’s like it doesn’t have to be a conservative version
0:11:22 of this. A little example of this was given to me, somebody that had my podcast had just
0:11:27 started a new business. And that destabilized it, not all the way to the core, but suddenly
0:11:32 she’s waking up, she doesn’t have a set income as before. And she wakes up at like four in
0:11:39 the morning, just hot sweat, just, what have I done? Just super stressed sounds like my
0:11:44 morning this morning. Yeah. Well, that’s it. Different reasons, but viscerally different
0:11:49 reasons. But the dynamic is similar. And what she did, she did it all spontaneously, which
0:11:53 I think is pretty amazing. But what she did, she grabbed a sheet of paper. And I think
0:11:57 it may have been deliberate that she grabbed a sheet of paper rather than a book like a
0:12:05 journal or a planner, because she wanted to scream onto the page. She wanted to do it
0:12:10 with complete abandonment. With the awareness, conscious awareness, I’m going to throw this
0:12:15 thing away. No one else gets to see this or no one else has to see it.
0:12:22 I see. So the sheet had more of an impermanent implication than a journal where you can’t
0:12:25 tear it. You’re less likely to tear it out and toss it. This is like, all right, I’m
0:12:31 going to scribble fast and furious. And then that’s the act.
0:12:37 Right. And then I thought was interesting, because without her intent, what she experienced
0:12:42 in just a few minutes was that she went, maybe this is my restate of what she experienced,
0:12:51 but she went from confusion to clarity and then naturally onto creation without meaning
0:12:54 to do that. And I thought that that was one of the things that was so interesting in her
0:12:58 case study is that she didn’t wake up going, “Okay, I need to create a plan of what to
0:13:05 do in these circumstances.” She just went, “The noise is so loud and it’s so overwhelming.
0:13:10 The emotions are so much, I have to give it somewhere.” But that process of screaming
0:13:19 into the page, of letting it all out, separating ourselves from that discombobulating internal
0:13:25 state, I think is extremely powerful because I think it helps us to go from prisoner to
0:13:31 observer. And then from observer, I think once we start observing, we’re better able
0:13:35 to become a creator. So I think that’s the shift.
0:13:44 This is a good reminder that these best practices are like brushing your teeth. And I know this,
0:13:48 but I’ve lapsed in my use of something that sounds very similar, which would be morning
0:13:55 pages. And it’s been a while since I’ve done it. I picked up a new habit, this meditation,
0:13:59 and there are only so many minutes in the morning, right? So it’s tough to do a 27-step
0:14:06 boot up, especially if you have kids or responsibilities. So the meditation came in, other things went
0:14:11 out. One of them was the morning pages, which is fine. But I had forgotten that was in my
0:14:19 toolkit. And this is a very good reminder that to me, that when in doubt, kind of go
0:14:24 back to the fundamentals, maybe it’s something that you’ve already used, doesn’t necessarily
0:14:29 have to be a brand new shiny thing. And in this case, you’re absolutely right. While
0:14:34 my monkey mind is just running in circles, trying to think my way through it is not going
0:14:38 to be helpful. It is just a fruitless labor.
0:14:43 I think so. I mean, I remember this summer, because I happened to be doing the research,
0:14:49 I was raging into the page one day for like, I don’t know, a couple of hours. And I don’t
0:14:55 know that anything there was usable for the research or for a future book or so on. It
0:15:00 was too raw for any of that. I just definitely wanted to get it all out. And I thought when
0:15:03 I looked at it all afterwards, I thought, yeah, you know, David Allen says, yeah, your
0:15:08 mind is a bad office. It’s good at all sorts of things, but not that sort of complex organization
0:15:12 on its own. And when I looked at the page of all this content, I thought, yeah, that’s
0:15:20 way, way too much for the ram of my mind to be able to navigate. This is like layers and
0:15:27 layers of complexity and intensity that needs to step over there so I can look at it rather
0:15:32 than trying to live in it. One additional little thing I learned in this conversation,
0:15:37 in the case that I was mentioning, is a term I had never heard before, and it’s instinctive
0:15:44 elaboration. And what that is is when you ask a question, we’ve all had this happen,
0:15:50 if someone asks you a question, it is impossible not to think about it. And that’s a really
0:15:56 powerful thing to learn about somehow our cognitive inheritance, because it means if
0:16:00 you give yourself a prompt and then rage about it, it’s like your mind can’t help but go
0:16:05 there. And just recently, I used this instinctive elaboration when I felt overwhelmed, not
0:16:13 in the same level of destabilization, but a very intense last 30 days with family wedding,
0:16:17 there’s been funerals, there’s been the holidays, Christmas, two birthdays, and that’s just
0:16:22 a normal high level, some of the stuff that’s been going on. So it’s been this really intense
0:16:26 period. And I remember one time I was sitting down, my journalist finished, is over the
0:16:29 holidays, and if so much going on, I was like, I can’t just go and grab another one. I thought
0:16:35 I had extras and I didn’t have it. And I really felt strangely stuck. Of course, there’s
0:16:40 so many possible solutions. But when you feel frozen or stuck with things, you’re not thinking
0:16:45 in that creative way. And I literally used like an AI tool, and I sort of raged into
0:16:51 that, like, okay, this is answering this question, what is going on? Just download the what is
0:16:58 happening in your life. I like this structure of what so what now what, what is happening,
0:17:02 let’s just get it out. And then once I look at it, okay, now what, what’s the news? What
0:17:07 is this mean? These were all meaning makers and destabilizing experiences. What they’re
0:17:11 really doing is they’re messing with our sense of meaning and orientation. And so then now
0:17:16 what is what do I do about it? And I just download like I literally recorded it, and
0:17:20 then sent the recording and was like, okay, what do you make of that? And I didn’t really
0:17:27 expect that much from it. But the restate it gave me back was so helpful. It really put
0:17:30 my life in perspective and helped me go, oh, of course, that’s why you’re feeling all of
0:17:35 these things. And it even gave me some quite, I would say, reasonably advanced suggestions
0:17:38 of what to do.
0:17:40 So you uploaded the audio file?
0:17:42 Yeah, that’s right.
0:17:43 What tool did you use?
0:17:44 Just GPT.
0:17:50 Yeah, okay, that’s a good experiment. Because that’s something you can do kind of in between,
0:17:52 right, if I’m walking around here,
0:17:53 That’s right.
0:17:55 I could just let it rip. And there’s no,
0:17:56 That’s right.
0:17:57 Downside to it.
0:18:02 I’ve done it a couple of times. Here’s a good little prompt to give to that is, I didn’t
0:18:08 do it this last time, but I’ve asked it before to respond as Carl Rogers would.
0:18:16 Carl Rogers was the psychotherapist who really, more than anyone else, introduced into therapeutic
0:18:22 processes the idea of powerful deep empathic listening. There’s been two studies that were
0:18:29 done about Rogerian psychotherapy. When I think in like 1980, something, and then again in
0:18:36 like 2000, something, I can find the links. Questionnaire was sent both times, huge number
0:18:41 of psychologists, who’s the most influential psychologist in psychotherapy. And both times
0:18:46 they identified Carl Rogers as the most influential in their view and in their practice. I think
0:18:51 that’s pretty amazing because, you know, Freud and so on gets a lot more attention.
0:18:58 But in practice, what works is what Carl Rogers did. And of course, what he’s saying is similar
0:19:01 to what we’ve been talking about. He says, if someone would really listen to me, he says,
0:19:07 whenever someone really listens to me, I find that in the process, my life starts to make
0:19:12 more sense. You know, the dots start to connect for me. And it’s not that they’re trying to
0:19:18 do that for me. It’s just the nature of the process of being deeply listened to. And
0:19:24 so he was the one that sort of really invented the language of empathic restating and brought
0:19:31 that into practice. And the whole idea, I think, is that you are delaying the stuff that
0:19:36 isn’t the real issue. Whereas in what normally happens in conversation, even everyday conversation,
0:19:40 if somebody says something, and people just immediately give advice, I mean, within just
0:19:45 instantly, they have no idea what’s going on inside of you. You don’t even know what’s
0:19:50 going on inside of you. And yet they’re already giving advice and suggestions and adding confusion.
0:19:54 And I think often a lot of stress and a sense of judgment and all of those things. Whereas
0:19:58 in what he found was that if you would listen deeply enough, and he said, it takes a lot
0:20:03 of courage to do this. And he said, it’s the most of us cannot do it. We just don’t have
0:20:08 the courage to listen like this. But if we are, and we restate back to them, and we just
0:20:12 keep doing it, we’ll go deeper and deeper to the central issues. And it’s a sense of
0:20:16 like people in the end kind of almost heal themselves because they start to understand
0:20:23 what’s happening inside of them. Well, I’ve played around with using GPT to construct that
0:20:29 backwards and forwards relationship communication. And actually, I found it to be fairly advanced
0:20:33 at being able to do it. So I think it can be a very helpful tool.
0:20:39 I’ll give it a shot. Well, thanks for that detour off of our planned programming. I appreciate
0:20:50 that. And why don’t we then begin at the beginning. We are just about to head into January 1st,
0:20:58 a new year. And a lot of people are thinking ahead with aspirations, goals, hopes, maybe
0:21:09 some trepidation. And before we get into the bucket of tricks, strategies and tactics and
0:21:14 so on, let’s back up for people who don’t have much context on your background. Could
0:21:23 you briefly explain what essentialism is and also effortless the titles of two of your
0:21:31 books respectively? And I’ve thought about it as in part, one is what to do, the other
0:21:37 is how to do it. But that’s not going to give people enough of a table setting. So would
0:21:44 you mind just taking a moment to explain what the sort of main kernels are, the core concept
0:21:46 for these two?
0:21:52 Essentialism in one word would be focus. Effortless in one word would be simplification. Another
0:21:58 way of contrasting them is essentialism is figuring out what the right thing is to do
0:22:07 and effortless is to do it in the right way. And one of the reasons that I wrote both books
0:22:13 was because I’d covered some of effortless within essentialism. But as I’ve traveled
0:22:18 around and taught this now, you know, all over maybe 400 plus organizations around the
0:22:22 world over the last decade, almost nobody got the second message, even though it is
0:22:25 in there, some of it’s in there.
0:22:26 Yeah, I know the feeling.
0:22:32 Yeah, well, I can take responsibility for this, but it’s like people heard the first
0:22:39 mindset shift and not the second. And I think they’re both just as important, just as powerful.
0:22:44 So what they heard in essentialism is, so essentialism has three elements to it, explore,
0:22:52 eliminate, execute, explore what’s essential, as opposed to nonessential, as opposed to
0:22:56 the trivial many, it’s like, what are the vital few things that make all the difference?
0:23:04 Exploring that and identifying that, then eliminate is to actually delete the non essentials
0:23:09 to remove them. It’s not enough just to know what matters, what’s essential in your life,
0:23:16 in your year, in your day, you actually have to get rid of the stuff that’s getting in
0:23:22 the way of those essentials. And then execute is literally to make it as effortless as possible
0:23:24 to do what matters most.
0:23:30 So in there, there’s these two shifts, find what’s essential, eliminate, and nonessential.
0:23:36 And then once you’ve arrived at that state, or in an ongoing process, really, you’re then
0:23:41 saying, Okay, well, how do I set up systems? How do I organize myself in such a way that
0:23:43 the essential things happen?
0:23:45 Having your best day or your worst day.
0:23:46 Yeah, right.
0:23:47 Restay your hardest day.
0:23:48 Okay.
0:23:53 Well, first of all, I’ll recommend both books to everybody. Essentialism is one of my most
0:24:00 highlighted Kindle books that I have. Effortless is similar. And it’s the disciplined pursuit
0:24:06 of less. I would also, in my mind, it’s what to do. That is, effectiveness would be essentialism
0:24:12 and then how to do it, which would be efficiency is effortless. And I think for myself, if
0:24:19 I’m looking back on the past year, I think I’ve been very good at identifying the essential
0:24:28 and old habits die hard. I have been over-exerting. I have been efforting my way through some
0:24:37 of those essential things by subconsciously over-complicating them or introducing unnecessary
0:24:43 complication and obstacles, because there is that mantra that was ingrained in me at
0:24:48 some point, which is, if it’s important and it’s not hard, you are not trying hard enough.
0:24:53 But in the world of noise, if you aim to be surgical, there’s nothing wrong with that
0:25:01 applied focus. So let’s hop into New Year, New You type of discussion. A lot of folks
0:25:06 listening will peg things to like a 30-day challenge, a 60-day reboot, whatever it might
0:25:13 be. But you have a different lens through which you look at pegging dates and thinking
0:25:17 about these types of landmarks. Could you elaborate on that, please?
0:25:23 The term for this in the literature is temporal landmarks. So almost everybody is familiar
0:25:28 with this idea of the New Year, New You. We all experienced that. Oh, it’s a new chance.
0:25:34 What the research on this is distinguishing is it’s like any moment that allows you to
0:25:43 distinguish old self to new self, and that this is a really helpful cognitive malleability
0:25:49 that you have, because, oh, we have an excuse to become a new version of me, to upgrade myself.
0:25:53 So the New Year, New You is obviously a chance for people to do that. It gets a bad name
0:25:57 in some sense, because people say, I mean, everyone says, oh, well, who here has set
0:26:01 New Year’s resolutions, and then by the 7th of January, you’re not doing them anymore.
0:26:07 And I actually think people are really wrong to say that in a sense, to frame it like that.
0:26:13 What we just need is more temporal landmarks, so that we say, yeah, we did the right things.
0:26:16 And if it was seven days, well, that was great, because that was seven days you wouldn’t have
0:26:27 done otherwise. How else can you select meaningful, sort of, tagging fresh start moments? Of course,
0:26:31 your birthday is a chance to do that, but so could the anniversary, and so could your
0:26:35 parents’ birthday, or so could your child’s birthdays. You can have the first day of the
0:26:42 quarter, so that’s an additional four. And so identifying meaningful dates, and this
0:26:47 is more than just a nice idea, and I think people would themselves know if they’ve experienced
0:26:51 this in their lives. Yeah, this is real. You want to increase the number of these you
0:26:59 have in 2025, so that you have lots of what’s called the fresh start effect. You want lots
0:27:06 of fresh start effects supporting you in getting to the new you. So I think, yes, celebrate,
0:27:10 if it’s seven days, great, if it’s two weeks into January, you’re doing that new thing
0:27:17 fantastic. Build in the next one. What’s the next meaningful date of the year, and that’s
0:27:21 your next chance to be able to have an excuse to improve upon something. I think all of
0:27:28 us are prisoners to the way our mind currently works, and we’re prisoners until we become
0:27:34 observers to it. So I think these temporal landmarks are a chance to sort of separate
0:27:40 ourselves a bit. And the moment we get into that observer role, my experience at least
0:27:45 is that, well, it might feel a little less historic to say this, but it’s like, who’s
0:27:52 observing that? That’s the real you. And that observer is not so full of pain, not so full
0:27:57 of confusion. The observers actually really clear. And so anytime you can use different
0:28:03 tools to shift into that, anytime we can break down projects and anchor them to meaningful
0:28:09 dates, not arbitrary deadlines, but meaningful dates, I think is a good accelerating, encouraging
0:28:14 way of going through the year. Yeah, something that I’ve done in addition
0:28:20 to pegging things to dates, I’ve done this somewhat, I suppose, intuitively with the temporal
0:28:29 landmarks is creating landmarks that are effectively tests for the X that I’m trying to improve.
0:28:34 So I will have, and I already have two or three of these blocked out in 2025, which are, let’s
0:28:41 just say, three to 10 day events, which could be a meditation retreat. It could be something
0:28:46 very physical at altitude that’s going to require types of fitness that I am loath to
0:28:53 cultivate because I find them boring. But if I go on this trip with close friends, and
0:28:59 I am not up to snuff, not only will I suffer, I will be ridiculed and have my balls busted
0:29:06 endlessly by my friends who should exactly do that. And by having these, I don’t want
0:29:13 to say final exams, but these tests that are intended to be enjoyable, but they’re only
0:29:19 going to be enjoyable if I do the work ahead of time. It builds in a lot of incentive and
0:29:26 insurance that I will behave myself on some level and do what I know I should do.
0:29:31 Let’s hop into doesn’t have to be rapid fire, but I want to give people a number of different
0:29:37 concepts and tools that they can hopefully contemplate using. And I’ll let you choose
0:29:41 in which order you want to tackle these personal quarterly offsite, which is something that
0:29:46 I’ve long been fascinated from your toolkit. Been fascinated by that for a while. So the
0:29:53 personal quarterly offsite, the power half hour or half an hour, and then the 123 method,
0:29:55 where would you like to go first?
0:29:59 That order I think is good actually, the personal quarterly offsite, if I put it just conceptually
0:30:07 for a second, it’s speed over direction. Because we live in a time where it’s so easy to have
0:30:12 what I would describe as counterfeit agility. So you’re moving fast, life feels fast, life
0:30:17 is fast, and you’re taking messages, you’re sending messages, you’re doing things. But
0:30:21 actually they don’t add up to a lot of progress towards what matters.
0:30:24 Right. It’s a millimeter in a thousand directions.
0:30:25 Yeah, precisely.
0:30:27 So the speed over direction is what you don’t want.
0:30:32 Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. The masterful to go with it, you could say, well, a plane
0:30:37 is off track 90% of the time. It only gets to where it’s supposed to get to at the right
0:30:42 time because it’s adjusting constantly. So it’s what is the forcing function in our
0:30:47 lives to make sure we don’t go too far off track and then find, oh my goodness, you know,
0:30:51 it’s been five years that I’ve gone down this path when really I shouldn’t have even been
0:30:52 on this journey.
0:30:55 Right. I thought I was going to Arizona, I’m in North Korea, what happened?
0:30:56 Yeah.
0:31:01 Right. Right. That would be a moment, wouldn’t it? And so personal quarterly offsite, I mean,
0:31:06 you can take it all the way literally. I mean, Anne and I have done this where we’ll travel
0:31:13 to somewhere and take a weekend or take a few days possibly and really talk big picture.
0:31:18 I mean, there’s three main questions that I think need to be addressed in a personal
0:31:24 quarterly offsite, even though it’s more than these three, but this is the core of it is
0:31:32 one, what are the essential things that we’re under investing in? The second question is
0:31:37 what are the nonessential things we’re over investing in? And then perhaps not surprisingly,
0:31:42 how can we make it as effortless as possible to be able to make that shift within this
0:31:50 next 90 days? Now, there’s more sub questions to it than that, but I think that’s the tension
0:31:56 that is so important to identify clearly. And so it doesn’t have to be as major as
0:32:01 this, though. I mean, that’s, I think you could still make meaningful progress in an
0:32:06 hour or two on your own or with someone else. I like doing it with an accountability partner,
0:32:11 but even there, I think the best practice is you fill out this process, you answer these
0:32:16 questions yourself, they do it, and then you bring them together and start talking and
0:32:22 get into not negotiation exactly, but exploration and working through things. And I think that’s
0:32:27 one of the primary benefits of a personal quarterly offsite is really facing the reality
0:32:33 that all of us are lost. All of us are going in the wrong direction until we pause, think
0:32:39 about it, get clear again. I do not feel like I’m a better essentialist or better at applying
0:32:44 these ideas in one sense than anybody else, certainly not inherently, but I think I admit
0:32:51 to it faster than maybe the average person. And I think that’s the key.
0:32:55 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:34:23 Could you give an example of, ideally a real example, but it doesn’t have to be, but particularly
0:34:27 number three. So what’s the essential that you’re under investing in? I’m sure I could
0:34:32 sit down and identify that. What’s non-essential that you’re over investing in? I think I could
0:34:38 also come up with that list. How can you make it effortless or make it effortless to make
0:34:43 the trade off? That is where the rubber hits the road. So I would love to hear an example
0:34:49 perhaps of how you’ve navigated that or seen others navigate it.
0:34:54 We could do it with me or with you right now. I’m game to try it. We’ll see how, with my
0:34:59 brain cooperates, but I’m happy to give it a shot. Okay, so let’s just ask these questions
0:35:03 with you right now. Let’s do like a little essentialist intervention. Maybe I shouldn’t
0:35:09 call it that, but let’s try it. Sure. Well, let’s do it for the whole year. What are
0:35:14 candidates for things that are essential that you feel like you’ve been under investing
0:35:20 in? I think what I’ve been under investing in in the last month, which is something that
0:35:25 I need to invest in in almost the most literal sense because it’s something that will have
0:35:35 a payoff in the long term as it compounds, is physical therapy and training for the legs
0:35:42 and glutes and lower back because I’ve had this chronic pain for let’s just call it two
0:35:50 years. It’s probably longer with these brief windows of respite. And there was a period
0:35:57 of time where I was doing this training very consistently and having intermittent progress.
0:36:04 And then about, let’s just call it a month ago, I had a injection in a very particular
0:36:13 place, which helped the back pain tremendously. And I could give a litany of excuses, family,
0:36:20 sort of medical situation and various things. I have been neglecting that in part because
0:36:25 I’m having this window of relief from the lower back pain. So it’s not an immediate
0:36:31 pressing issue, but I know it will be. So let’s just say that and it’s something essential
0:36:36 that I’m under investing in, even though I am going to be doing this particular training
0:36:41 as soon as we finish this recording. So it hasn’t completely left the arena. But it’s
0:36:47 something that I’ve been inconsistent with that I know is fundamental to my well-being.
0:36:48 That’ll be one.
0:36:52 Well, first of all, it’s a great example because when I ask people what’s essential that you’re
0:36:57 under investing in, there are some really predictable answers. And one of them is certainly
0:37:00 will be health related, fitness related is something they already know about that their
0:37:08 conscience is already tapping them about. But what I have learned is this strange law
0:37:17 of inverse prioritization, which is, I literally believe now that the most important thing
0:37:22 in our lives at any given time is the least likely thing to get done.
0:37:26 It sort of squares with what I see and what I’ve experienced at points. Why do you think
0:37:27 that is?
0:37:35 I think one of the reasons is because it’s so important, the risk of failing at it is
0:37:42 much higher than anything else in your life. So it adds to this procrastination feeling
0:37:43 performance anxiety.
0:37:45 Yes. Yeah.
0:37:50 Very high performance anxiety around that important thing, because doing something about it shows
0:37:55 that you can fail or might show that, yeah, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. And now we’ll
0:37:59 be back to the beginning on this thing that’s so high stakes. And then the more important
0:38:06 the thing is, the more vulnerable it is. So then you want to avoid, we all know that courage
0:38:13 is a virtue, but courage always feels terrible. I mean, it is an awful feeling. It’s not like
0:38:15 you imagine when you see other people being courageous.
0:38:21 Well, courage doesn’t exist without the prerequisite of fear. It’s you feel fear and you do the
0:38:26 thing anyway, like without the fear, courage as a word and concept doesn’t apply.
0:38:33 Yeah. There’s lots of layers of reasons that add on to that. One is sort of pretend perfectionism
0:38:37 that drives procrastination. Well, unless I’m going to do this perfectly, unless I’m
0:38:41 really ready to do this, unless I’m in the perfect situation, unless I’m going to do
0:38:45 it for the full amount of time. So all of these additional rules.
0:38:51 Yeah. I think I’ve set up basically set myself up to fail with the number of check boxes,
0:38:55 like the perfect length. And as we’re talking about this just in terms of, I’m skipping
0:38:59 to the end, we haven’t hit number two, which I’m sure I’ve got plenty, but in terms of
0:39:03 making it effortless, it’s just like, and I’ve done this in other areas too, it’s just
0:39:07 scale it down. Don’t eliminate the session. If it’s 10 minutes, it’s 10 minutes instead
0:39:16 of an hour. But don’t put a lot of zeros on the calendar in terms of missed training sessions.
0:39:20 So if it’s got to be five minutes, it’s got to be five minutes, but like 60 can be the
0:39:27 ideal, but what’s not allowed is zero. It’s having a maximum and minimum, like it’s a
0:39:33 lower bar, but also the higher bar, like a limit on both. And when I hear you say, oh,
0:39:37 well, an hour would be perfect. Or I think that’s what you said. I felt overwhelmed for
0:39:43 you. Literally, I’m like, what an hour that is, you know, like, oh, I can’t add an hour
0:39:46 of physical therapy, even though I’m sure there are things I should be doing too. And
0:39:51 so I like to term microburst for this. That’s an environmental reality, right? Like these
0:39:56 storms that are just these 10 minute storms, a microburst, but actually setting a timer
0:40:02 for 10 minutes. And the key is that you end the end of the 10 minutes. That’s what you’re
0:40:08 using the discipline for. And you say, okay, I’m going to do that 10 days in a row, 10
0:40:13 minutes. And when it hits 10 minutes, I’m done so that the next day, you know, this
0:40:19 is small, like I really will end when it says so. And therefore I’ll carry it on. There’s
0:40:24 just almost no end to the application of that. I was just reflecting on this as I was finishing
0:40:30 this journal, I need to get the next one. You know, this is like in January, that will
0:40:35 be 14 years that I’ve kept a journal. And I don’t think I’ve missed a day. I might have
0:40:39 done, you know, if I went through it all, but I don’t think I have. But the reason is
0:40:44 because my upper bound when I first started was five sentences and my lower bound was
0:40:49 one sentence. And what normally happens with journals is the exact opposite. First day,
0:40:54 people write three pages. And by day two, that is done by day two, because on day two,
0:40:58 they’re like, I don’t have an hour for this. And so then they go, I’ll do it tomorrow.
0:41:01 And then day three, now they got to do two hours in their mind. And so it’s over before
0:41:06 they’ve begun. So I think that’s one key thing for you is the 10 minutes. I’ve done it 10
0:41:11 minutes. Until I have done 10 days in a row, I’m doing 10 minutes. It’s way, way better
0:41:16 to do that little than to not do any because you want to do it perfectly.
0:41:18 Yeah, that’s good advice.
0:41:23 Then I mean, I think there’s so many things that you could do to make this more enjoyable.
0:41:28 What is a certain book could be a podcast, but could be a book or some other thing, audio
0:41:33 thing that you’re only going to get to listen to or a movie, a fun show. This is the only
0:41:38 time I get to watch that is the 10 minutes that I’m going to do this. And so you link
0:41:43 it together. I’ve gone through so many classics this year, because while I’m running, while
0:41:47 I’m doing exercise, while I’m traveling, I’m listening to some of the greatest literature
0:41:52 ever written. I just almost feel like I’m, it is like cheat code. I’m cheating the system.
0:41:57 I am just having wisdom and knowledge and entertainment poured into me while I’m doing
0:42:01 something else. I really am getting two for the price of one. And so that’s another way
0:42:05 to do it. Of course, you could have a forcing function where if you don’t do it, we’ve heard
0:42:09 these things before, but if you don’t do it, then you have to pay a certain amount to a
0:42:15 charity or to a political party, not if you’re choosing or you can create these forcing function
0:42:20 bets had somebody who is, who had a really important trade off they were trying to make
0:42:26 and their penalty for not making the trade off would be their favorite wine was $300
0:42:31 bottle is some, I don’t know why, but and they he would have to pour down one glass
0:42:35 of it if he didn’t complete it on this day. And that was his forcing function. And that
0:42:40 was so painful for him that it really gave him an excuse. I mean, it’s a fun excuse,
0:42:46 but an excuse to be on track and to be consistent. So there’s all sorts of things that we can
0:42:50 do. Even you public these talking about it here. Okay. Well, now it really knows, I
0:42:56 mean, all of these things are to try to stack the decks in your favor and to try to remove
0:42:59 those things that make it harder than it needs to be.
0:43:03 Yeah. I mean, I’m already thinking about a few things. I mean, it’s very basic, but
0:43:08 for instance, you know, I’m staying due to the circumstances with the family stuff.
0:43:15 I’m not at home. I’m staying in hotels and I need to travel to a location and sign in
0:43:19 and sign waivers and so on just to do any of this. Yeah. So it’s like, all right, look,
0:43:24 I’ve fortunately got the budget. I should just go out later today, get a reasonably thick
0:43:31 yoga mat and just stick in my hotel room. I don’t actually need anything else. And currently,
0:43:36 because it’s concrete floor, I can’t do what I would intend to do because it’ll be brutally
0:43:41 unpleasant on the joints. And okay, like that’s a solvable problem, right?
0:43:47 Obviously, I’m trying to sort of stack effortless ideas. One does not have to do any of these
0:43:52 things. The question is the key. How do you make it effortless? I mean, okay, in a hotel,
0:43:55 somebody in that hotel can go do that for you. Like you could find somebody to pay to
0:44:00 do it and that all sounds like, oh yeah, champagne type of solution, but it’s like, well, that
0:44:06 also makes it effortless. It’s all about trying to ask that question and giving your brain
0:44:14 enough time to do a Google search, looking for easy solutions. And I think there’s such
0:44:20 a insecure overachiever, there’s such a pushback about this in the mind. Well, what’s the easy
0:44:24 solution? Oh, no, no, that can’t be it. That we don’t even allow the search to take place.
0:44:30 Yeah. Well, also as the insecure achiever, which is a label of growing quite fond of
0:44:34 while we’ve been talking, that probably characterizes me pretty well.
0:44:42 You and me both. We’re both in this. Yeah. These achiever types often have a modicum
0:44:48 of success in any number of ways because they are good at solving problems. So the inclination
0:44:56 is to ask, how can I do X? But that’s not how the sentence needs to start. The sentence
0:45:04 could be, who could do this besides me? Or who knows? Maybe Instacart could go get me
0:45:09 a yoga mat, right? It doesn’t necessarily have to be Claude the Butler. I’m not suggesting
0:45:15 that it’s like, well, I’ll just take my seven story hovercraft down to my Scrooge McDuck’s
0:45:21 office and we’ll take some gold coins out of his swimming pool, but reframing and rephrasing
0:45:25 the questions that you habitually ask yourself. This is something I do try to pay attention
0:45:31 to. But my go-to is typically like, all right, look, it’s going to take me too long to get
0:45:34 somebody up to speed on all this bullshit. I’m just going to do it myself. How can I
0:45:40 do this as easily as possible? But that still presents a hurdle. And especially in this
0:45:46 current day of automation, getting someone else or someone else a vis-a-vis an app or
0:45:52 a retailer vis-a-vis an app to do something like this is available to almost anyone who
0:45:56 is listening to this podcast, practically speaking. Yeah. Well, Warren Buffett described
0:46:02 it this way. He said, “To be alive today in the developed world, you have more opportunity,
0:46:08 more means, more chances for learning and for travel and so on than Rockefeller did.”
0:46:13 And that was such a good reframe for me because, you’re talking about Instacart, there are
0:46:19 so many ways to make things happen now. And almost all of us do have access to those things.
0:46:24 And I’m not trying to minimize this. It’s the way of thinking that’s outdated. That’s
0:46:31 where the cluster is. The execution ability in our societies are really pretty unbelievable
0:46:36 right now. Now, there’s one more tactic worth considering here. One of the principles in
0:46:41 Effortless is the courage to be rubbish and doing it a shorter period of time. And that’s
0:46:44 one of the things you could say, well, that’s the rubbish version, but you’re saying the
0:46:49 yoga mat and I think, well, yeah, I can see why that works, but you could also use something
0:46:53 else. It doesn’t have to be a yoga mat on the first time today.
0:46:59 Yeah. If we wanted to scale that down to dirty prototype, it’s like, okay, well, let me just
0:47:05 grab some of the towels or something else. And it’s going to kind of be a pain in the
0:47:11 ass, but it’s better than nothing. It’s better than doing a zero. So I’d love to hear your
0:47:18 thoughts on doing a pre-mortem because I have found that this seems to be something you’ve
0:47:23 given quite a bit of thought to. And the reason I bring it up is, I think a lot of people
0:47:30 fumble sort of right before the touchdown, so to speak. And that’s because they don’t
0:47:34 think about what could go wrong. And there are lots of questions, maybe they have answered.
0:47:38 And I just came from a company offsite, we were chatting earlier today before recording
0:47:42 where we talked about where have we been? Where are we now? Where do we want to be? We
0:47:48 covered a lot of that ground. But one of the questions that we didn’t really think about
0:47:55 as much, we did maybe in some nominal way ask, like, are there any blockers? But we didn’t
0:48:00 explicitly ask, what are the most likely things to stop us from getting there, meaning where
0:48:11 we want to go? And that’s something I really want to hone as a skill which I’ve done intermittently,
0:48:16 but maybe you could just lay out what that looks like if people aren’t grasping the example
0:48:23 that I’m giving. But what is this pre-mortem? I think if you want to make optimal progress
0:48:30 on what’s essential, then using a strategic narrative is a really helpful way to go about
0:48:35 this. I just did a session like this with the leadership of the Navy SEALs. And this
0:48:39 wasn’t the only thing that we did, but this was part of it, was to not to write out, but
0:48:45 to draw where have you been? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? And then this
0:48:52 fourth question that you’re focusing on, what is going to keep us from doing it? What’s
0:49:00 stopping us? What’s in the way? And so you have all of these commanders and above drawing.
0:49:03 And then we’re looking at all the drawing. The drawing is not just, it’s not just to
0:49:10 be fun or gimmick. It’s another forcing function to get to clarity. It’s easy to hide behind
0:49:14 numbers and too many words and too many bullet points. Like if you have to create an image,
0:49:20 it forces a certain part of your brain to light up. And so they did that. But then what
0:49:26 it enables us to do to look at in this case, an image of what’s going to keep you from
0:49:31 achieving your outcome is that, first of all, it becomes tangible so that you can actually
0:49:36 prosecute it. Well, that might not really be the issue. That is a thought that you have,
0:49:41 but that thought is actually outdated thought. That’s not really what it is based on an assumption.
0:49:46 So you need to prosecute it before you try to solve that obstacle. You need to say, well,
0:49:50 is it really an obstacle? Is that just the way we’ve been doing it in the past? How have
0:49:56 we overcomplicated it? Every organization, every single organization follows a predictable
0:50:02 pattern with overcomplicating. Every society does the same thing. There’s a brilliant
0:50:07 book written about this by Joseph Tanger called The Collapse of Complex Societies in which
0:50:15 he says, look, all societies become fragile because they solve problems that add too
0:50:23 much complexity. And then there’s no mechanism for reducing that complexity other than failure.
0:50:30 The most fragile state for society in his analysis is that it requires all of the resources
0:50:36 you have available to maintain the current level of complexity. And so then it doesn’t
0:50:41 matter what the next massive problem is. He studied all these dozens of different societies
0:50:46 that have collapsed and ones for famine and ones because of war and ones because of civil
0:50:51 unrest. I mean, every cause looks different, but he’s like, they’re the same thing. It’s
0:50:56 just another massive problem and you don’t have any resources to handle it.
0:51:00 So the first thing to do once you’ve asked the question what’s getting in the way is
0:51:05 to just pause on it. Why do I think that’s getting the way? Is that really the problem?
0:51:10 And it’s back to this falling in love with the problem, not the solution. And high performance
0:51:16 people and high performance executives and in this case that high performing commanders
0:51:22 and major commanders, I mean, they are built to execute. They’re the elite of the elite
0:51:30 at being able to make something happen. But the problem is how do you challenge that strength
0:51:36 so that you first go, have we identified the right problem? Is this really the issue?
0:51:41 Why do we think this is the thing? Why do we think this is getting in the way? That’s
0:51:46 really non-trivial part of the thought process. If you really think you’ve pinpointed and
0:51:51 unlocked the real issue, which as I say, most people with the curse of competence make the
0:51:56 mistake of not prosecuting it, then of course now you’re saying, okay, well, we really do
0:52:00 think this is the obstacle. We do think this is the problem. Then it’s really creating
0:52:07 a lot of buffer for that to expect the unexpected to know that things will come up. In your
0:52:12 example that we’ve started this conversation with, right? Like, let’s say I assume two
0:52:15 months ago, you didn’t know this was going to happen. And here it is, and it’s having
0:52:20 all this effect. And it’s like, we don’t know what will happen in 2025, but I’ll bet anybody,
0:52:24 almost any amount of money that they will have such things come up in 2025 that they’re
0:52:32 not yet prepared for. If you think about the future as only perfect best case scenario,
0:52:38 you are setting yourself up for really frustrating, stressful, poor execution. The best performers,
0:52:48 you think here like, think of Phelps. Think about Phelps process. So when they’re creating
0:52:54 the coach, Bob Bowman and Phelps, effectively their strategic narrative, right? Effectively,
0:52:58 they don’t literally do it, but drawing out where they’ve been, where they want to go,
0:53:04 what could get in the way? The list is a long list, longer than I realized, because of course
0:53:09 he’s performed so many times at elite level, what really can get in the way at the Olympics
0:53:16 other than the other competitors. Oh, no, they got a long and complex identification
0:53:20 of possible problems. One of the things that they said, which was interesting to me when
0:53:27 I talked to Bob about this, he said, well, the conditions in China or in any Olympics
0:53:33 is that they will be worse than the conditions he’s used to training in. That never occurred
0:53:38 to me before because I just sort of always look so extraordinary. You just assume that
0:53:44 the athletes are having great experiences off camera. And he’s like, that’s never how
0:53:47 it is. It’s always much more chaotic. There’s always many more problems, things that the
0:53:55 conditions aren’t ideal. So his goal was, how can I make Phelps experience as normal
0:54:04 as possible in really abnormal circumstances? So some of the things that they do, okay,
0:54:09 they have a set routine so that he’s there two hours before every race. That’s a lot
0:54:13 of buffer, especially for me who can be quite time blind, you know, like it’s easy to just
0:54:17 show up at the right at the time or a couple of minutes late, two hours ahead of time.
0:54:22 Why? Because no matter what happens, you have buffer now. They’re in the pool following
0:54:27 a normal routine so that he can feel normal even though everything’s abnormal. So they’re
0:54:34 doing the same thing until 45 minutes when he sits on the massage table, never lies down
0:54:40 because it’s routine. You routinize everything you can routinize. When he comes to the call
0:54:45 time, he sits down, puts a towel next to him on one side, his goggles on the other so that
0:54:48 no one can sit next to him. You just don’t need another detraction. It’s another thing
0:54:52 you can control in the routine. He’s listening to the same music. When he gets up to the
0:54:57 board to jump off, he’s getting on always from the left hand side, always dries it before
0:55:03 he gets up there. All of this is as a result of having identified previously problems that
0:55:07 could come up. And if you do it in this sequence, then you’ve mitigated all those execution
0:55:13 problems. When he stands to jump into the pool, he flaps his arms in a very particular
0:55:21 Phelpsian way every time. That’s just the physical preparation in advance. He also
0:55:27 had mental preparation processes that included, for example, for 10 years before the Beijing
0:55:34 Olympics, he has every night and every morning told to put in the videotape. You can see
0:55:38 how long it’s been going on for. Put in the videotape and it means to imagine the perfect
0:55:45 race from end to end in slow motion. But it also includes exercises like, what will you
0:55:52 do if your goggles fill with water? To imagine stroke by stroke, perfect race, even though
0:55:57 your goggles are filled with water and so on, like lots of different mental preparation
0:56:01 cycles. And in fact, that is what happened in one of the races is that goggles did fill
0:56:06 with water, which you could just imagine how if you have never anticipated that, never
0:56:11 thought through it psychologically, mentally, that’s it. That’s over. Forget a race, forget
0:56:16 the Olympics. I would hate to try and do that for even a couple of lengths would be not
0:56:20 at all enjoyable. And he still is able to win because he’s literally prepared for these
0:56:27 scenarios. When it came down to those Olympics, Bob Bowman said to me, he said, I knew it
0:56:33 was feasible to happen, but I couldn’t believe that it happened as effortlessly as it did.
0:56:38 It’s just everything clicked every time one after another. He says at the end, he stood
0:56:43 like in the movie, the miracle he stood in the hallway and just on his own, just had
0:56:49 this moment of sort of exquisite meltdown of like, here I have, I’ve been speaking with
0:56:54 confidence, but the thing actually executed so beautifully so well, no one had ever done
0:56:58 it before. You know, like somebody described him, if he wins seven gold medals, he’ll be
0:57:03 like the first man on the moon. If he wins eight, he’ll be like the first man on Mars.
0:57:08 And he does the eight. When I went to the cube in China, I was reflecting on this, how
0:57:12 did he make the execution looks effortless? It’s like, that’s why, you know, that’s why
0:57:16 I went and ended up interviewing Bob about this because I was like, you got to explain
0:57:21 it. What went on? What’s behind the scenes? It’s not just the moment that looks like the
0:57:26 moment of execution. It’s what are all the problems? What are all the mitigating things
0:57:30 we can do? We’ll build that into the routine. He added this final thought, which I think
0:57:35 is interesting. He said, if you ask Phelps about this, he might not even tell you there
0:57:41 is a routine. It’s so normal now. And it was built so deliberately. That’s just life.
0:57:47 And yet all of it was built in place as anticipation for challenges and problems so that then the
0:57:54 whole thing feels effortless, fluid. But really, it’s because of all of this anticipation
0:58:00 planning. Yeah. And it also strikes me not what is holding
0:58:06 this back. It could be present tense, but what could prevent this? I know one very,
0:58:12 very successful, one of the most, maybe the most successful consumer packaged goods investors.
0:58:16 He’s also a serial founder. So he invests. And if you go to Whole Foods, everything there
0:58:25 is CPG. All right. He will ask co-founders. He said, three years from now, you guys have
0:58:30 had a huge dispute and one of you wants to leave. What are the most likely reasons? That’s
0:58:35 his question. Like, what are the most likely reasons? And I mean, there’s a lot that can
0:58:40 uncork, obviously, if there are already tensions or finger pointing at play, then he’ll get
0:58:47 to see it. But it often will unearth other things that might be problematic. Maybe there’s
0:58:53 an equity split that one person feels is unfair. Maybe there’s a power dynamic where
0:58:58 they’re both trying to split CEO duties 50/50, which I’ve never seen work, and so on and
0:59:05 so forth. But having those come up early allows him as an investor to say, okay, great. And
0:59:09 I’m role playing here. But he might say, I want to invest. Here are the terms I’m willing
0:59:16 to agree to, but a condition of that will be that we fix A, B, and C that you guys brought
0:59:23 up. And that’s it, right? So that’s a way of sussing out a pre-mortem. And in my case,
0:59:29 to focus on my lower back rehab, it’s very simple. It’s like, okay, well, if I’m traveling,
0:59:34 what happens? Because sure, if I’m at home and I have all of my toys and tools and my
0:59:39 routine is already established, so there isn’t a lot of hemming and hawing or figuring out
0:59:46 how to order food from room service or whatever, that’s great. But you need to develop systems
0:59:52 and plans and contingencies so that you do what you’re supposed to do on your worst days.
0:59:56 The best days will hopefully kind of take care of themselves, but the world doesn’t
1:00:01 always serve you up perfect days. So in the case of the low back stuff, it’s like, okay,
1:00:08 well, I should have yoga mat. I’m just using the yoga mat example, pre-ship to every hotel
1:00:14 room. Maybe we choose hotels based on which ones have gyms or yoga mats already in the
1:00:22 rooms, which is true for some places. But basically put that into a template, right?
1:00:27 Maybe that’s a Google doc for me or for someone else where it’s like, okay, I have to book
1:00:32 a hotel for location X. Like, what are the rules? What’s the template? And then that’s
1:00:37 it. It’s just done. Hopefully it’s a set it and forget a type of operation or it’s like,
1:00:46 I identify a possible problem, identify solution to possible problem, build that into every
1:00:49 time X is done, right? Whatever that X might be.
1:00:56 The word that you use that isn’t a new word to any of us, but brings to mind an extreme
1:01:04 and amazing case of this is the word systems. And I don’t know if you know Rob Dierdek.
1:01:09 I don’t think so. He’s an MTV star. Have you seen the show Ridiculousness?
1:01:13 I don’t think I have. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. I’ll have to look it up.
1:01:18 It’s a kind of American home videos, you know, crazy crashes and terrible things and hilarious
1:01:24 or like that. That’s one of the shows that he’s most famous for now at big MTV show.
1:01:28 Before that he was famous first. His first big show was Robin Big. And then before that
1:01:34 he was famous as a skateboarder. Lots of people listening to this know already who Rob did
1:01:40 the decades. But in persona, he’s this skateboarder. I mean, he’s funny and he’s a certain kind
1:01:50 of version of him. But as I’ve got to know Rob, he absolutely blows my mind in the intentionality
1:01:57 of the system he’s building. I think he’s the second best paid skateboarder in America,
1:02:03 among many other things. I want to try and capture this because he sent to me a document.
1:02:09 It’s called the rhythm of experience. I’ve had a lot of people send me kind of life plan
1:02:14 tools and documents and versions of things, right? Like his vision, statements and mission
1:02:18 statements and goals and roles and all sorts of things you might expect to have in there.
1:02:26 This is a 50 page document that is like seeing the future. Every single thing he learns about
1:02:33 himself, about a system, about a problem, they just build it into the same single document.
1:02:37 Everything. So when he got married, he has therapy. I think he does it either every
1:02:41 week or every two weeks from the time they got married. It’s like a Ferrari. We’re just
1:02:44 updated Ferrari. It’s not because there’s a problem. It’s just anticipation. Of course,
1:02:48 there’ll be problems. So we just build it into the routine. So anything that comes up
1:02:51 in those conversations, he doesn’t just go, “Oh, yeah, that’s good. I’m really trying
1:02:56 to work on that and improve on that.” He goes, “Okay, right. I’m not communicating well
1:03:00 about what my schedule is.” Okay. So he builds it into the routine. Every single morning,
1:03:05 an email of my routine will be sent every day forever going forward to my wife. So she
1:03:11 never has to have that specific problem again. Everything he learns, he builds into the system
1:03:18 so that he isn’t learning the same lesson, like living 20 years, but actually you’re
1:03:24 just living the same year 20 times. He’s actually gaining 20 years of experience.
1:03:29 So let me ask you a question about his document, the rhythm of experience, because it sounds
1:03:33 like there are two things, at least just to confirm that I’m understanding this. He has
1:03:42 a document that contains learnings and various things. He also has very rapid action after,
1:03:46 let’s just say, “Wife gives feedback. I don’t know what your schedule is. I want you to
1:03:49 communicate. I’d love for you to communicate better about that.” He’s like, “Great. From
1:03:57 this point forward, daily email to wife regarding schedule.” But it sounds like that goes into
1:04:03 action how that’s implemented. I don’t know. But what does the document do? Because if
1:04:10 the document is 50 pages long or however long it is, presumably there would have to be some
1:04:17 scheduled time for reviewing that or using it. My takeaway is that he basically creates
1:04:24 a rule and systematizes things so that he doesn’t have 101 off-band-aid solutions. There’s
1:04:30 some recurring semi-permanent or permanent policy that he puts in place to address various
1:04:34 things. But how is the document actually used?
1:04:38 Everyone on his team has access to the same document. So it’s not just for him to remember.
1:04:43 And so this is the brain. This is what you’re going to first. You’re not coming to him,
1:04:48 “Hey, how should we handle this and that?” Unless it’s not in that document. It really
1:04:53 is. We all know the idea of the difference between working in your business and on your
1:04:59 business. But he’s just applying that to his life in a more sophisticated, developed way
1:05:01 than anyone I have seen.
1:05:06 I’m curious because I have not surprisingly spent a lot of time thinking about systems.
1:05:12 I come up with rules and policies and this, this, and this. That I have found to be the
1:05:16 easy part. I create a document or someone else creates a document. There’s a Google
1:05:21 doc. It’s shared with everyone on the team. But by the way, in the process of doing business
1:05:27 week to week, month to month, year to year, there are hundreds of Google documents. And
1:05:32 aside from for specific documents saying if they’re short enough, let’s just say there’s
1:05:39 a short, which there is, I have a sort of 12 commandments of Tim’s calendar type of document.
1:05:43 It’s like, okay, like every Wednesday morning, review this or something. Okay, you can have
1:05:49 somebody put in a recurring calendar item to do that. But otherwise, I’m most interested
1:05:58 in how the team uses the document because there’s a search and discovery challenge sort
1:06:04 of inherent with Google docs and so on. Now, if it’s a single doc, that’s interesting.
1:06:08 But that presents its own challenges. If it becomes kind of unwieldy, it’s like, hey,
1:06:12 my wife didn’t get the reminder on the calendar. They’re like, what reminder on the calendar?
1:06:19 Whatever. And they’re like, oh, it’s on page 47 buried under miscellaneous. Why didn’t
1:06:23 you find it? And it’s like, because no human would ever think to find that quickly there.
1:06:27 So I don’t know if there’s any light you can shed on that.
1:06:31 While we’re sort of thinking about that, I’m just remembering of other precision things
1:06:36 that he has on there, right? So he gets his haircut once a week at exactly the same time
1:06:40 as he likes his hair just to be never have to think about that, never have to schedule
1:06:45 it. And every time I schedule an appointment to get my haircut, every time I think, you’re
1:06:51 doing this wrong, Greg, because there’s a way to systematize that. And I know someone
1:06:55 who’s done it and I haven’t done it yet. I mean, what we’re talking about is the difference
1:07:02 between linear results and residual results, right? So if a linear result is one way you
1:07:11 say, well, it only happens today, if you take action to do it today, right? So linear income,
1:07:15 right, you get paid per hour per day. And so you get paid when you work today, right?
1:07:21 And residual income would be, okay, income that rolls to you through all sorts of investments
1:07:25 that can do that when you’re sleeping. So it just is happening automatically. It’s such
1:07:31 a game changer to shift one’s mindset between the two.
1:07:36 Let’s talk about if you’re open to it and feel free to defer this and continue on a
1:07:43 different thread if you like. But defining done, this is also something that has captured
1:07:50 my attention. I’ll let you open that in any way that makes sense. But why is it important
1:07:52 to define what done looks like?
1:08:01 Because insecure overachievers can endlessly complicate any task to a infinite degree.
1:08:07 So just asking the question, what does done look like? And then sticking to it, knowing
1:08:13 when this thing has happened, when we’ve reached that point, that is what done will be on this
1:08:20 project, this goal, of course, is an accelerating thing to do. And then maybe just saying it
1:08:24 a different way, it’s almost like a natural law. Like, if you don’t know what done looks
1:08:31 like, you cannot be done. Even defining a done for the day list, I think is really helpful.
1:08:37 So as part of a tool that I actually never thought I would do it, I was under contract
1:08:42 to create an essentialism planner 10 years ago. And after I worked on it for a few months
1:08:47 with a team, I just concluded, yeah, I think I would just be creating something just totally
1:08:51 non essential, which you know, would be too ironic. And I just just not helpful enough
1:08:56 to anyone. This is just like every other planner like this and or journal. And I uncommitted
1:09:03 got out of the contract. And then a couple of years ago, after I’d carried on trial and
1:09:10 error in my own life, applying these ideas, I finally was like, no, actually, I think
1:09:15 I have something now that special and it works. And it’s so helpful to me. I think I’m ready
1:09:20 to actually get into contract and do it. So we did that went through again, more iterations,
1:09:23 removed loads of stuff you would normally have in a planner so that it really is sort
1:09:28 of just the heart of it has a personal quarterly offsite in it. As a weekly process, you go
1:09:33 through and then a daily process. And the output of the daily process is done for the
1:09:38 day list. It doesn’t mean when you’ve done these six items, and it’s the particular,
1:09:44 it’s called the 123 methods. So there’s six items total. When you’ve done those six things,
1:09:48 you can feel you’re done for the day. And maybe you don’t do anything else, but you
1:09:53 know you have done important things, urgent things, key things for tomorrow. And there’s
1:10:00 a method to get to that. But a done for the day list is, I think, helpful psychologically
1:10:07 for removing unnecessary cognitive strain on our minds when we’re just perpetually doing
1:10:13 there’s no doing and they’re not doing times. There’s just endlessly looping endlessly doing
1:10:18 semi tasks or semi distractions in a digital world.
1:10:24 The 123 method, you mentioned that that is the one most essential thing, two essential
1:10:30 and urgent things and three maintenance items you can start the day. Yeah. Okay. And could
1:10:37 you give an example of what that might look like in your own life? What that 123 has looked
1:10:38 like or might look like?
1:10:42 I’m going to back up just for just a second just to say, okay, this is part of the daily
1:10:50 process. There’s a solid science behind structure and this protocol. And nobody needs to know
1:10:54 that, you know, what all that research is, but it’s helpful just to know that that’s
1:11:00 the case. It follows this structure that I call the power half an hour, because I basically
1:11:05 think, look, for most people, maybe everyone, including me, it’s unrealistic to say, oh,
1:11:09 take control of your whole life. But if you could take control of half an hour of your
1:11:15 life that will improve every other minute of the other 23 and a half hours, okay, that’s
1:11:20 a pretty high return on effort. And if there’s a microversion, you can do it the minimum.
1:11:24 I would suggest I think you can do this. Well, still have a valuable experience is like six
1:11:30 minutes and that’s sort of a backup, you know, lower bound. But you’re answering three questions.
1:11:34 I mentioned the previously, but you do it on a daily basis. What so what now what that’s
1:11:40 the structure so that every day you take that noise. So instead of it building up days and
1:11:44 weeks at a time, you’re like, you’re just spending that immediately just getting the
1:11:49 noise out what’s going on download. So what what’s the news in your life try to find the
1:11:54 headline the key why does this matter? What does this mean? And then the third thing that
1:12:00 now what is the 123 method? What does it look like for me? Okay, you know, so the priority
1:12:06 for the day. So I’m thinking about Saturday priority for the day on Saturday, my niece
1:12:11 is getting married, Clara and John a shout out to them. And so that’s the priority. And
1:12:16 that’s an obvious one I suppose on that day, because, you know, certain things it’s already
1:12:22 structurally built in. I still find it helpful to identify it. Because it helps me go Okay,
1:12:28 that’s the mission. That’s the priority singular. If I only do one thing today, if I only need
1:12:33 to give my attention to one thing today, this is what I need to give attention to. Then
1:12:38 underneath that you have Okay, two things that are essential and urgent. These I sort
1:12:42 of described this as like the taxes of our life. And that was kind of literally true
1:12:47 on Saturday, right? We’re coming to the very end of the year. Any final financial things
1:12:51 I need to have sorted out retirement taxes anything, this would be the last day to check.
1:12:56 You know, so I think those were the items that were on there. Maintenance items I describe
1:13:00 is like the laundry of our life, which can be literally the laundry. But I have a car
1:13:07 that has one of the tires is just losing air on it. Obviously, it’s not normal simple
1:13:11 thing. But if I don’t take care of that, which doesn’t mean I have to execute it, the task
1:13:17 is schedule this or have this organized so that you know it’s done. The three maintenance
1:13:24 items per day are the things that make tomorrow a lot harder. If you don’t resolve them today,
1:13:29 your future self is always grateful that you took care of the maintenance items. And of
1:13:37 course, this is all just a rule of thumb. This 123. But I have just found it so helpful.
1:13:43 And I don’t do it every day. I still wish I did. But what I notice is that when I don’t
1:13:50 do it, my day is more frenetic, more frantic. I don’t have as clear sense of the day. It’s
1:13:55 not nearly as satisfying because even though I can still be productive in a kind of more
1:14:01 forced way, you don’t know if you’re doing the most important thing. You don’t know,
1:14:06 yes, I have selected these things. You don’t have something to come back to going back
1:14:12 to the plane analogy of, okay, well, all these things happened that I didn’t expect to happen.
1:14:17 Yes, that’s normal. That’s life. But you don’t have a chance to go, okay, coming back to
1:14:22 the most important thing, let’s work on this again. And so that’s an example from just
1:14:29 literally this weekend of how I would think about it. And it just allows you on the days
1:14:34 that I’ve done it to enjoy the experience. And also, and I suppose maybe this is the most
1:14:40 important benefit, is that you actually know and work on the most important thing, which
1:14:45 as previously stated, is actually the least likely thing to happen. That’s of course a
1:14:51 very satisfying way to live. Because if you go through 2025, and you literally every day
1:14:56 did, if you and I, if everyone listening to this, does the most important thing every
1:15:01 day, if they did nothing else different in 2025, there’s no question that would change
1:15:08 both trajectory and momentum, you know, the whole velocity of the year would be different
1:15:13 because of our tendency not to do the most important thing. And of course, the other
1:15:18 things add to that sense of an, of a more effortless approach to doing the things that
1:15:19 matter most.
1:15:26 Yeah, I would also add to that that working on the most important thing gives you a sense
1:15:35 of mission and purpose that smaller things do not. So it’s not purely the clinical moving
1:15:42 of the needle on important things, because really, there’s nothing outside of your psychological
1:15:48 experience of reality, but the feeling of being moored and pointed in the right direction
1:15:53 with the bigger thing, psychologically is really, really, really valuable. It’s not just
1:15:59 about whatever the points might be. Sure, the points are nice, but really psychologically
1:16:06 and psycho emotionally, knowing that you’re working on something that matters, however
1:16:10 you’ve defined that is, I have just found, you know, this past year, I think I’ve done
1:16:17 a very good job of that. And it’s remarkable what that does for your mental health.
1:16:22 Well, just describe that a little more in detail. So you’re describing the impact of
1:16:28 meaning, you know, practically knowing each day, each week and so on, I’m pursuing something
1:16:33 that means something to me. But what difference has it made for you psychologically?
1:16:39 Sure. Well, I would say that there’s a bit more to it just in terms of maybe characteristics
1:16:47 when choosing that important thing. So for instance, for me, there has to be a making
1:16:52 or mastery component, one or the other. So either creating something, or I am trying
1:16:59 to master something, not just this is on the flip side, like manage or mitigate. So for
1:17:05 instance, even though doing the PT for the low back and so on is incredibly important.
1:17:13 If I decide that is the most important thing per se, it’s depressing. There’s no winning
1:17:21 there. It’s doing something not to lose. There’s a lot of fear associated with it. It is not
1:17:27 an inspiring headspace to inhabit. No, it doesn’t need to be doing back PT in the gulag
1:17:33 by candlelight. I mean, it doesn’t have to be miserable, but it doesn’t have the requisite
1:17:38 payoff that I would want in a most important thing. It still needs to get done, which means
1:17:43 that it’s maybe the two essential and urgent things or one of the maintenance things. It’s
1:17:49 a non-negotiable maintenance. This is not a nice to have. But for instance, been working
1:17:55 on my first book in seven years, which is making fantastic progress. Shocker, it’s become
1:18:02 absurdly long. One day I’ll write a short book. It’s going to be hell of an accomplishment.
1:18:06 By the way, someone was just raving to me last night about Tools of Titans. This is the groom
1:18:11 who just was married. He was talking to me. He’s like, “Yeah, normally I would try and
1:18:15 read.” He said, “20 minutes a day, but I sat down and I was just gone for like two hours
1:18:19 working through it. There’s so much in it.” That was literally yesterday. They just out
1:18:22 the blue said that. Carry on anyway. Yeah, thanks. That makes me feel good. That was
1:18:28 a fun book to write, which isn’t always the case. That is one at the top, which feels
1:18:36 very good to get back into as I feel like much of what is online, most of what is online
1:18:42 increasingly is just becoming ephemera. Very short half-life. It’s just like you could put
1:18:48 out the best thing imaginable in most formats that are available today and it will have vanished
1:18:53 from the minds of the people it passed in front of within 24 hours. Books still hold
1:18:58 an interesting place. They have a certain durability. It might not last forever, but
1:19:02 there’s a certain durability that I think is really important.
1:19:06 There’s a deep cache about it, deep. Not just, “Oh, that’s impressive. It holds a certain
1:19:11 place in people’s minds still.” For good reason, I mean, books have lasted longer than almost
1:19:18 anything else. Yeah, so for me, if I’m among other things trying to impact lives, that feels
1:19:25 like time very well spent. I understand that. All of that is on the making side. Then I
1:19:32 also have been spending a lot of time on archery specifically, which is every bit as frustrating
1:19:36 as golf in a lot of respects. I don’t play golf, but I’ve talked to a lot of golfers
1:19:41 and that’s the closest comparison. When it’s going well, man, is it beautiful. When you
1:19:49 can’t figure out what you’ve changed to make things go sideways, it’s very frustrating,
1:19:57 but it’s become this constant that I can work on. In some cases, incremental gains. In some
1:20:03 cases, big gains. I don’t want to imply that I’m going to master archery, but I am practicing
1:20:10 as if that is my goal. There’s an article. Let me just pull it up. I want to give credit
1:20:22 where credit is due that I’m reading right now on mastery. It is on readtrung.com. The
1:20:31 name of the piece, which I recommend to folks, it’s actually a fantastic read, is readtrung.com
1:20:38 is a reference to Trung Fan, who’s the writer. Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki and the Prezute
1:20:44 of Mastery. Notes from the 1987 Esquire magazine issue that inspired Jerry Seinfeld to “Pursue
1:20:51 Mastery” because that will fulfill your life.” We’ll put that in the show notes, but it
1:20:57 basically makes the point that if you choose a discipline or something to approach through
1:21:02 the lens of deliberate practice and mastery, which never ends, this may be something you
1:21:07 do for an incredibly long period of time, and it also highlights different archetypes
1:21:14 and why they fail to pursue mastery, which I found very helpful. That art, that sport,
1:21:20 that film, the blank could be your most constant companion you have in life. There’s something
1:21:25 very reassuring about that. To have that as a through line also as identity diversification
1:21:31 so that if something goes sideways with the podcast or something goes sideways in family
1:21:41 life, that you have diversified your psychological health on some level because it’s not totally
1:21:50 invested in one basket. I would say that speaks a bit to how I’ve been choosing things. It’s
1:21:57 making your mastery versus mitigating risk or managing. That’s how I’ve been thinking
1:22:04 about it for myself. I feel for myself, I need something that is inspiring as the most
1:22:08 important thing. Now, that’s not always going to be the case. If you have a family member
1:22:13 who has an acute health emergency, it’s like, “Okay, that may be the most important thing,
1:22:20 but if you have the flexibility, if you have the ability to choose, I want something that’s
1:22:32 inspiring because that inspiration, that breathing in generates energy. It generates the excitement
1:22:40 and the life force for lack of a better term that then trickles down to everything else.
1:22:45 If the thing I choose is depressing or it’s avoiding something bad, it’s running away from
1:22:52 something as opposed to towards something, then it doesn’t work for me. It really doesn’t.
1:22:56 You said a few different things there, but one thing that stands out to me is just this
1:23:03 idea that meaning isn’t a nice to have. Describe this way to me once, and I like this, that
1:23:11 because life is suffering, you need to pursue meaning that justifies that level of suffering.
1:23:14 100%. I’ve been thinking a lot about this as well.
1:23:20 Let’s say the most famous person in the world about meaning would be Viktor Frankl. It is
1:23:26 creation of logotherapy out of the Nazi Germany concentration camps. He’s a psychologist
1:23:30 and a Jew, and he’s going through those experiences and he crafts his story and man’s search
1:23:35 for meaning, but just building on that. He sometimes would try to, if he was in therapy
1:23:40 with somebody, he would say, “They would say, ‘Oh, I just want to die. I’ve got no reason
1:23:45 to live.'” I don’t know precisely the words he would use, but he’s effectively saying,
1:23:51 “Okay, well, then why haven’t you done that? What is it that actually keeps you here then?”
1:23:55 The meaning could be, and I don’t mean it’s trivial, but it might sound trivial, it could
1:24:01 be, “Well, I have a cat and I need to feed the cat.” Those answers were not nothing to
1:24:08 him at all. He would use that as a gateway to being able to reconstruct a life of meaning
1:24:15 because there’s something, some meaning that can be built upon. I really think this is
1:24:23 an undertought and underappreciated idea. I think it distinguishes itself considerably
1:24:29 from productivity because you could be productive at all sorts of things like that you shouldn’t
1:24:33 even be doing or don’t really motivate you, don’t drive you. You could be doing task
1:24:42 execution all day long and feel really meaningless in your life. Finding something meaningful,
1:24:47 something beautiful, something creative as you’re describing, not consuming, changing
1:24:55 the ratio of consumption to creation, I think is one really self-evident shifter I think
1:25:02 a lot of people would benefit in. Consuming it does not fill you with meaning. Creating
1:25:06 anything, even if it’s not very good at first, just being in the act of creation I think
1:25:12 is closer to meaning. I struggle a little bit. People will describe what I’m into. “Oh,
1:25:19 yeah, here’s a productivity thing.” I never self-identify that way because essentialism,
1:25:22 for example, is about, it’s not about doing more things, it’s about doing more of the
1:25:27 right things. Essential, the very word, it means very important. It’s trying to craft
1:25:34 your life around the highest meaning activity you can currently conjure. I think it’s about
1:25:43 as good an antidote to the psychological traumas and taxation of our lives that exists. Maybe
1:25:48 it’s the only one really. This idea of radical gratitude, radical gratitude is expressing
1:25:52 thanks for things you’re not thankful for because that’s what gratitude actually is.
1:25:56 If you look at the definition of gratitude, I did not know this till just a few years
1:26:03 ago. I thought gratitude was a life changer, game changer, and it meant be grateful for
1:26:08 the good things in your life, that is, remember them, express them, focus on them. That’s
1:26:11 not the definition of gratitude. If you look at the definition of gratitude in the dictionary,
1:26:15 what you find is that it’s living with a spirit of thankfulness. That’s not the same
1:26:20 thing because that’s not just for the “good things,” that’s for everything. As I was
1:26:25 thinking about this, I was like, “Well, that was a game changer for me when my daughter
1:26:33 Eve was very ill with an undiagnosed neurological condition, free falling in her executive function.
1:26:40 I found that radical gratitude was a way out of the madness of not being able to control
1:26:45 the situation and watching some of the picture of health suddenly become mentally and physically
1:26:50 hugely incapacitated on the way to being in a coma.” I learned it there. As I was talking
1:26:52 about it yesterday when I was sharing this with someone, I thought, “Well, it’s so easy
1:26:58 to point back to that because it all worked out in the end, right? Years go by and it’s
1:27:04 resolved so I can point back to radical gratitude there, but can I do it now?” I thought, “Can
1:27:10 I express this idea out loud because it sticks in my throat even as I go to talk about it
1:27:19 now? Can I say out loud? I am thankful that my best friend of 35 years is fatally ill
1:27:29 with cancer because I want to rage against that, that phrase, that idea. I won’t say
1:27:36 wrong because that’s not quite right, but it is something so violating about that expression,
1:27:41 but it’s in the expression of it that you open yourself. It’s like an act of faith that
1:27:50 opens meaning that’s invisible until you express the first half of the equation because opening
1:27:56 oneself to the idea that there could be meaning in this suffering and there’s such a gift
1:28:01 in that so it’s sort of hidden behind this action. I don’t want to take the expression
1:28:05 of it, but I’m grateful for this challenge because like one of the thoughts that came
1:28:12 to me just yesterday about this was because now I need to live… I don’t mean in a guilt
1:28:20 way, but I need to live double now. I cannot just go through life. I must live it alive
1:28:26 in a sense living it doubly because he can’t do that now. So the 40 to 50 years hopefully
1:28:30 maybe that we could have had together, that’s just not happening now. That’s not going to
1:28:35 be the story and I still find that unimaginable is almost impossible for me to get my head
1:28:42 around that, but if that’s the reality, what’s the possible meaning in it? This I think is
1:28:49 like something like the actual test of life is to open oneself to the possibility that
1:28:54 there is meaning in suffering. That suffering isn’t because God is a vivisectionist. That’s
1:28:58 C.S. Lewis’s language for it. Like you have to decide is God a vivisectionist? Does he
1:29:03 take pleasure in suffering or is there meaning in our suffering? And that’s only one answer
1:29:10 to this question, but to take responsibility for my life in a different way, to value the
1:29:19 remaining years and hopefully decades differently. It’s like I have a responsibility burned into
1:29:24 me like a scar, like a scar. I don’t think I could have it taken away from me. I don’t
1:29:30 think so, but I certainly don’t want it to be. It’s like, no, that scar stays. I need
1:29:38 that scar and I want to live out of that understanding and just try to make good on the years I get
1:29:43 that he doesn’t get. And there’s something about that. I mean, obviously still living
1:29:50 in the grief of all of this, but I think that’s one way to detect meaning that can save us.
1:29:58 Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. You know, that can’t be easy to think about and feel,
1:30:07 but I do appreciate the opening oneself to the possibility that you can be grateful not
1:30:14 just for the obviously uplifting and positive things, but to tag on that “I am grateful
1:30:22 for X” difficult thing because, dot, dot, dot, to cue the mind to hopefully produce
1:30:31 something that engenders meaning even when overwhelmed with suffering. Yeah. Plenty for
1:30:32 me to chew on there too.
1:30:36 That’s my own lived experience with it, but it’s also you can go back and follow the trail
1:30:41 of research about this, you know, the whole post-traumatic growth literature that is those
1:30:45 people that go through trauma and don’t just, first of all, there’s sort of three options,
1:30:50 right? You can collapse through it. There are some people that return to level as before.
1:30:55 That would be kind of the resilience mindset. And then there’s this other phenomenon happens
1:31:00 less often, but it does happen and has been identified, characterized, codified, and studied
1:31:07 is people that move to a higher level of living post-trauma. And so, you know, we’ve all been
1:31:13 very familiar with PTSD. Post-traumatic growth is less referenced, which is just too bad
1:31:18 because I think that’s really the thing you want to understand that there is a way that
1:31:25 we can in tangible ways have beauty for ashes, that it’s not just a poetic idea. It’s not
1:31:32 just nice to have. It’s like, if there’s so much suffering and those are the raw materials
1:31:37 through which we can actually build a life of meaning. It’s like, oh, okay, so now I
1:31:42 need to embrace it differently, not spend my whole life just trying to avoid it or to,
1:31:44 you know, in a kind of positive toxicity.
1:31:46 You also can’t avoid it.
1:31:48 You cannot avoid it. Impossible.
1:31:52 It’s just like, all right, I want to drive for the rest of my life without hitting any
1:31:56 red lights. It’s like, it’s not going to work. So you might as well figure out how to handle
1:31:57 red lights.
1:32:01 It’s a great metaphor for it. Anna will say to me, you know, from time to time, no one
1:32:07 gets out without a mortal experience. And there’s a term for this, it’s called Sonder.
1:32:11 And it’s a term for the experience of sort of remembering and knowing that other people’s
1:32:17 life is as complex and emotionally challenging and so on as our own. And it’s not obvious
1:32:22 all the time because it’s easy to come up with shallow stories about other people.
1:32:25 I hear it quite a bit from people, oh, well, that person’s all right, you know, because
1:32:29 they, maybe that person has money or because that person’s famous or because that person’s,
1:32:33 you know, appears to be above the fray. And it’s like, I actually think it’s a sort of
1:32:38 a limit of imagination, certainly limit of empathy, but to realize like, no, not one
1:32:44 of those people is escaping the mortal experience of suffering that all of us are. Yes, maybe
1:32:48 they have different set of problems, or maybe they have possible solutions that you wish
1:32:52 you had access to. I mean, obviously people are in different positions in life. But man,
1:32:57 I have never met a person that could escape even close to escaping it. It’s like, you
1:33:02 can’t, it’s hard way add into, I don’t want to call life a simulation, but like, if you
1:33:06 say it is for a moment, it’s like, yeah, it’s hard wired into this, you cannot escape it.
1:33:12 This is why I think so many people try to actually pursue distraction of any number of kinds
1:33:17 because of an attempt to avoid the pain and suffering. And I think most addictions really
1:33:22 are that at the core to avoid the experience of being alive. And that’s because it’s so
1:33:24 painful to be alive.
1:33:25 Yeah, can be.
1:33:31 And so an alternative to that is to open yourself to the meaning. Well, this isn’t happening
1:33:35 for me, not to me. I don’t know a faster way to get there than radical gratitude.
1:33:40 Yeah, thank you for that, Greg. And just to reiterate something you said earlier about
1:33:44 you know, how we can turn the stories of others into these NPC like extras and video games
1:33:51 where they just, you know, simply explained in one sentence, whereas we have this raging
1:33:56 torrent of nuance in our lived experience. And a few things go to mind. One, and I wish
1:33:59 I had the attribution on this, but someone said, you know, everyone is fighting a battle,
1:34:04 you know nothing about number one. Number two, I interviewed Chris Bosch, very well
1:34:09 and then basketball player on the podcast. And I’m pretty sure it was him who said, somebody
1:34:14 else had said this to him, you know, if you’re sitting at a table and everyone else put their
1:34:18 problems on the table, you did the same. He’s like, you pick your problems right back up.
1:34:22 He’s like, once you saw actually what everyone was contending with.
1:34:26 We should just underscore that because I think that’s such a strange phenomenon. As Stanford
1:34:33 University, the Stanford Memorial Church, if you go into that as a non denominational
1:34:38 church from the very beginning, but they carve in stone all of these key ideas. And one of
1:34:43 them is basically what you just said. So I won’t repeat it. But that is a strange phenomenon.
1:34:48 There is something that that gives me a glimpse of, you know, a sort of glitch in the matrix
1:34:54 in that illustration, that even for the discomfort and the uncomfortableness and the pain and
1:34:59 the frustration of our problems, something about them is I think it’s beyond just their
1:35:04 familiar to us, I think they are connected to us. If we’re going really philosophical,
1:35:10 I would say something like, maybe we knew we’d have these, like we actually did have
1:35:16 a chance to choose them or not like pre here. And it certainly has that kind of vibe to
1:35:21 it to me when you share it and I’m sort of just having it hit me again. It’s like, yeah,
1:35:27 we actually do want these problems. Oh, wow, there is something in them that there’s something
1:35:33 like stepping stones to becoming what we uniquely need to become next to become more and more
1:35:37 of who we really are and less and less of who we really aren’t, which is, you know, that’s
1:35:42 the real essence of essentialism. It’s not tasks and to do’s and even goals. It’s like
1:35:48 a becoming process. And these are the raw materials for doing it. It’s not toxic positivity
1:35:52 because it’s not pretending there aren’t problems and not pretending there aren’t challenges.
1:36:01 It’s to open oneself to the possibility that there’s no other way that this is the way
1:36:04 to becoming who we’re supposed to become. I’m not saying every single thing in life
1:36:10 is like that. I’m not saying the flat tire is the thing. I’m not saying it like that.
1:36:17 But these tests of life are actually some of them in my life have felt signature that
1:36:26 they really are built to be in a sense, particularly excruciatingly hard for me. But even in that,
1:36:30 if you can glimpse the other side of it, like, no, but that means it was done with a high
1:36:35 degree of care, of thought even. It’s a really different way to live. And I’m still obviously
1:36:40 just learning in that journey. It’s a disciplined pursuit of meaning.
1:36:45 Disciplined pursuit of meaning. Maybe that’s your next book. So we’ve covered a lot of
1:36:50 ground. I think this will give folks a lot of grist for the mental things to chew on
1:36:55 for the next year, where they want to point themselves, how they want to think about meaning,
1:37:00 suffering, mastery, choosing the most important thing we’ve covered a lot. Is there anything
1:37:06 else we are going to talk about where people can find the essentialism planner and also
1:37:12 perhaps get started learning more about principles that we’ve covered in brief here? But is there
1:37:18 anything else that you’d like to cover, whether concepts or closing words, anything at all
1:37:22 that you’d like to add before we wind to a close?
1:37:29 I had a really interesting conversation with Eric Newton, who took to social media, I didn’t
1:37:35 know him before, to list what he’d learned from the biggest suffering in his life, which
1:37:43 was fatal diagnosis of his wife. He described their relationship prior to this as having
1:37:48 lots of ups and downs. Once he described it as a sort of fantastic love affair, but then
1:37:53 also he described all the problems and challenges that had him on my podcast. Once I’d read
1:37:57 this because someone sent it to me like, “Hey, this is similar to the kinds of things you’re
1:38:02 wrestling with.” What’s particularly interesting about the story is that it wasn’t just when
1:38:11 she got this diagnosis that things changed. It was post that where she got into what turned
1:38:18 out to be the last six weeks of her life that she hit a regret. The regret was not having
1:38:25 been deeply connected enough with the people closest in her life. I thought it was such
1:38:34 a distinct kind of insight. He said she suddenly unlocked a level of vulnerability and intimacy
1:38:39 that he literally didn’t know existed. Not just in their relationship, he just didn’t
1:38:47 know it existed in life. To have someone be so honest, so open, so without all of those
1:38:53 layers of the onion that you had to go back to that metaphor. For six weeks, he was like,
1:38:58 “Okay, this actually is love.” They’ve been married for years and all of these ups and
1:39:02 downs, everything. He’s like, “This is what it actually means.” He summarized it something
1:39:08 like this. He’s like, “If there’s a purpose in any of it, it is to have ever-deepening
1:39:14 connection with the people who matter most to you.” I mean, that was touched by that.
1:39:19 I was touched by his story. I was fascinated by that story, but the question I walked away
1:39:25 with was how do you live like that normally? Is there a skill set to it or is it just one
1:39:31 of those things that you would have to have that extremity to be able to access that?
1:39:37 It links back to some of this research I’ve been doing on Carl Rogers, because I do think
1:39:42 that there’s a way that we can at least get a lot closer to that ideal in normal living.
1:39:51 It is a kind of helpably better form of listening than almost anybody experiences in life. It’s
1:39:55 teachable. It’s learnable. It’s there. It’s available, but almost nobody’s trained in
1:40:01 it. The only people that are really trained in Nigerian listening is like psychotherapists
1:40:07 if they have been. If they haven’t been, the risk is enormous that they will make problems
1:40:10 worse in their attempt to make them better because they simply won’t be addressing anything
1:40:15 like the right issue. They’ll be attacking the leaves of the problem, not the roots of
1:40:18 the problem, and they will do that, and they’ll build in their own mental models of solutions
1:40:22 instead of getting to what the real stuff is. That’s the people that are trained in
1:40:27 it or to some extent trained in it. But think about all the doctors that aren’t trained
1:40:32 in it. That’s what happened with Eve. It’s just unreal. That’s a story for a different
1:40:37 day, but they were doctors with all this training that they just thought they knew what was
1:40:43 wrong with it. If we had done what they had said, she would be dead. It’s not about their
1:40:48 expertise. In a sense, their expertise was the problem. They didn’t have the humility
1:40:53 to be listening properly. I think that’s the thing I want to say is that I do think that
1:40:57 there is a form of listening that we can provide for each other that is so powerful, that’s
1:41:06 so curative. I do sometimes think it’s the primary thing missing in modern life. My son
1:41:12 just said it to me recently. There’s so many things I’ve got wrong as a parent, as a person,
1:41:15 but he just said that if there was ever a problem, I knew I could come and I knew you
1:41:19 would listen. Even if it was something you were doing that was frustrating, I knew you
1:41:25 would listen. That’s not passive listening. It’s a very particular kind. Man, I want
1:41:31 to teach that. I really, really want to help people learn how to do this with each other.
1:41:40 Where should people go to stay informed of your now pending class related to branch area
1:41:43 and listening? Yeah, I really want to do this. I’m not kidding
1:41:46 about it. It’s not just a spontaneous thing. I wasn’t planning on talking about it, so
1:41:52 it is spontaneous, but I really think this has to happen. I think people could just,
1:41:59 the easiest single thing, go to gregmcune.com/homepage. They can get right now, what we do have right
1:42:03 now is a less but better course. They’ll get it for free. They can sign up in 10 seconds,
1:42:09 and then we will send information about this Apex listening or want a better term courses
1:42:18 on there. We’ll do them live, and we’ll learn together how to do this because it’s everything.
1:42:23 Thank you, Greg. I really appreciate the time, Greg, and the flexibility with scheduling.
1:42:29 It’s always a pleasure to have a conversation with you. For everybody listening, as always,
1:42:35 we’ll have everything that we’ve discussed linked to you in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast.
1:42:44 If you search Greg, so, Q-n, certainly you can also try with the MCKEON, and this will
1:42:50 be the most recent episode as of right now. Until next time, first of all, thank you for
1:42:56 tuning in, everybody. Be just a bit kinder than is necessary, not just to others, but
1:43:00 also to yourself as you’re looking forward to the next year. Don’t beat yourself up over
1:43:08 last year. Just see if you can plan for not just a better but more joyous new year. How
1:43:12 can you not just do the important things, but do the joyous things? How can you not
1:43:18 just do the hard things, but find ways to make those important things a little less
1:43:34 effortful, effortless even? These are all questions worth considering. Thanks, everybody.
1:43:39 Before the weekend, between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free
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1:43:50 to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest
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1:44:05 perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my
1:44:10 friends including a lot of podcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up
1:44:16 in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun,
1:44:21 again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend,
1:44:26 something to think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type
1:44:32 that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next
1:44:34 one. Thanks for listening.
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