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sorry now I'm getting emotional um
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Malcolm Gladwell business Guru a rock star journalist I
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just want to explain things to people it's not in your best interests to work at home if you're just sitting in your
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pajamas in your bedroom is that the work life you want to live we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel
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necessary and if you're not here it's really hard to do that what if you reduced your life to
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the language of happiness has to go alongside the this question of what contribution you're making to the world
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you live in if you could make an amazing contribution to society as you have at
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the cost of your unhappiness would you choose that no wow
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we're social animals casting someone out is the great sin it is not conflict that
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drives people away it is neglect that's when you do harm sorry now I'm getting emotional um
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it's varied I don't know sorry [Music]
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if we don't feel like we're part of something important what's the point [Music]
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so without further Ado I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you are
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then please keep this yourself [Music]
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um first of all I want to say thank you I feel obliged to you because your books outliers blink have been very formative
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for me as over the last 10 years since I was running my businesses and trying to understand certain dynamics that I
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didn't understand those books seem to arrive in my life at the right time so it's a real honor to to get to speak to
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you today oh thank you um going back then what are the what you know you've become a
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tremendously well known and highly acclaimed writer and thinker and
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podcaster but when I think back to your your early years says before 10 years old what were the factors that you look
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back now in hindsight and connect and say Ah that's the reason I ended up becoming the person I am today
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oh wow you you mean you say before the age of 10 yeah like sub 10. well I by at
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the age of 10 I had been I had already lived in three countries wow Jamaica
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maybe even four well Jamaica England and Canada
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and it's possible a brief stint in the United States so I was well traveled
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um although you know you're dimly aware of these things at that age um and I had a uh you know I have an
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English father and a had an English father and a Jamaican mother so I was
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conscious of myself as an outsider a little bit which I think is very
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useful um and I was living in that point in
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kind of Southwestern Ontario the kind of one of the
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sleepiest but also most amazing places in
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the West I mean a a place of kind of uh almost absurdly
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happy people and no crime or dysfunction and you know 10 churches in every
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village and uh a kind of I realize now in retrospect
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a kind of magical place to have to I grew up without any kind of broader anxieties
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so there was I was never scared of anything there was nothing to be scared of when I was when I was growing up um
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which I realized now was probably an enormous blessing on that first point of realizing that you're a bit of an outsider why'd you
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cite that as being a a good thing for a lot of people that leads to bullying and feeling you know feelings
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of sort of social inadequacy but why'd you say that's a good thing well I think of it as liberating
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you know I'll give you a small example when I first came to Canada I was six years old and in in rural Canada when
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you're six all the boys have been playing ice hockey since they were in
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skating since they were four so I remember very distinctly being aware of the fact that everyone
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played hockey and I didn't and also being aware of the fact that wrongly but I felt that it was too late for me to
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learn so I was permanently outside of hockey culture I was the only boy who didn't play which is incredibly
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liberating which meant that I could choose none of them got to choose what they wanted to do right I did you know it so
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it was like I didn't have to participate in these kind of uh compulsory rituals of
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the Canadian upbringing um and having choices being an outsider it does allow you
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a kind of range of Freedom that is denied people who are embedded in a culture
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and what did you choose well eventually running
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um but I think I chose just to you know the amount of time seven-year-olds spend playing hockey in
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Canada is enormous I mean it's just so I think I just had more time to read and kind of it said full-time job for for an
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eight-year-old or a seven-year-old um you know I just I I had a quite a
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solitary childhood which again I think was a blessing um you know I think a lot of I didn't I
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didn't I had time to kind of indulge my curiosity and read lots of books and
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um I wasn't kind of I see a lot of children today pushed into unwanted
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social interaction I don't understand what is it really necessary if you're if
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you're seven you'd rather spend an evening by yourself isn't that fine I think it should be fine one of the things that I you know I
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read about in uh the story of success was about the impact that parental
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involvement at that young age and this is kind of maybe maybe somewhat linked to what we're talking about parental involvement can have on someone's
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outcomes and I my parents were I was the youngest child of four so my parents had
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resigned to the fact that they had to parent me so I had this huge freedom and I think I always cite that as being the
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reason I went on to become an entrepreneur because I had this huge void of Independence but um so I wanted to get your take on
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on that because I that led me to believe that less parental involvement would lead to
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Greater Independence which would lead to better outcomes yeah but except that yes
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I actually completely agree with you but I wonder whether um you know the kind of so if you're
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describing a kind of benign neglect which is which youngest children I'm
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also a youngest often encounter but benign neglect is not the same as a lack of Parental involvement because it's
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it's benign neglect it's also it's considered neglect it's that your parents have simply they haven't removed
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a safe structure around you the structure remains in place what they've removed they just stopped hovering over
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you they realize it's no longer necessary or productive or they no longer have the time for it but they've
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not abandoned you so you know I think it's you know sometimes I think we those of us who are
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youngest um do our parents a little bit of a disservice when we when we when we describe their absence from our
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childhood They're Not absent they're um they're just simply wiser in a way
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that they that they uh that they they choose to parent yeah I thought my parents were absent but you're right
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the house was still hot we had a reef over our head I was still attending
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school yeah I got expelled ultimately for like 30 attendance but I was still kind of going you know I did the same
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thing yeah I read about that I thought yeah we were similar but my mother was complicit in my my mother would was
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quite happy if I chose to die oh really well I think she realized my mother is
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quite subversive in a very very quiet West Indian kind of way and I think she understood that
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if she chose to I didn't have any great desire to go to go to school on a regular basis I think
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she realized that if she opposed that desire should make it worse so she decided instead to endorse it and
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so it kind of she sort of diffused whatever rebellious intent I had
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just by saying she would sign fake notes for me to give to the principal I mean she was wow
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wow what about your father what was he like he said you were very very competitive
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he thought I think he was competitive I don't know whether I think I was quite competitive but in a kind of at games
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and at running um my father was a a very very
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Englishman he was from Kent he was uh he liked dogs and
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gardening and long walks in the rain uh he was
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uh exceedingly intelligent but it combined with a kind of humility that
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was and I realized that as I get older it's the humility that was the more important
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um aspect of his uh personality so he would never he was
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probably smarter than most people he met but he would never ever Make That explicit and he was if he
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thought that you even had a slight edge of knowledge in some domain over him he would defer to you
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which made him an incredibly curious he was curious about everything and would ask
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he had friendships with people who had dropped out of school at the age of 10. I mean he was and he was a man with a
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PhD in you know in mathematics um so he was a wonderful he was he was a
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really wonderful role model for a uh for a little boy
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how did you and why and how did you learn the value of that humility and the
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impact and the importance of it when you're dealing with other people well I think it's because
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you can't be a good journalist unless you have a kind of uh Baseline respect for what
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others can teach you if you're going to interview be a good interviewer you must enter into every interview
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with the expectation that you know less that the person you're interviewing has someone something to tell you
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right and that's actually much more difficult than it sounds because nor in normal conversation we have an urge to
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assert ourselves and we think we have a kind of um intellectual Advantage informational
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advantage that's why we you watch people talk interruptions are all about often about
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the other person asserting their superiority on that point someone says oh it'll take me forever to get
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here the other person says no it won't right you can't be a journalist if you have to
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turn that off if you want to Be an Effective interviewer you have to trust that this person ultimately can teach me
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something that I can't learn on my own even if in the moment I'm not getting anywhere you just have to quiet that
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voice and let them keep going and keep you know asking the right kind of
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questions that requires an assertion of humility um it took me years to Kind of Perfect
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that as a journalist um and I would watch it when I worked at the Washington Post I would watch the great journalists and
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they all had that just that ability to kind of to to make it plain to whoever they were
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talking to I know less than you that's why I'm having this that's why we're having this conversation right
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it's a beautiful thing when it's done right when it's done well it's gonna be reflecting on various
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people one of the people that made me reflect on the interesting he was Joe Rogan how he's he feels like such a bridge to
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his audience listeners because he does come across as being tremendously humble regardless of who's who he's speaking to he always seems to understand his
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intelligence as well who always calls himself a monkey yes that's a kind of yeah yeah well he yes
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he well he has this wonderful thing um where he can put himself
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he's squarely in the position of his listeners which is a really you know for
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a for a host of of any kind of show like that is if you
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can do that you can win you're going to win right he there's there's he's he's having the conversation that his
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listeners wish they could be having with with these subjects in his in his uh on his show
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on that point of Journalism at what point in your your early years did you was there any inclination that you might
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become a journalist you might go into that profession if any never in the I mean I had thought about
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I liked writing I didn't imagine that it was a profession it didn't occur to me that
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you could actually make a living doing it so I always was thinking of other things I wanted to do and then I kind of
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fell into it by accident after my after I I graduated from uh University so I I
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never really I just I thought something you did on the side you know I I didn't it seemed unimaginable that somebody
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would pay you to do this kind of work lack of Role Models lack of
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I mean I think it's a it's a little bit of a if I grown up in you know New York or
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Toronto or London I would have been much more aware of people who who
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you know were in the creative professions but I grew up in a town of 4 000 people there were no one there was
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no one in my town who made a living in the creative professions right you you wouldn't live in a small town like that
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and do that so I didn't know I have friends who grew up in you know Manhattan and they they knew they knew
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film my film filmmakers and actors and you know fiction writers and is as part
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of their parents Circle when they're growing up I knew none of that what advice would you give to to people around that age say that you know early
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20s just maybe just graduated and thinking about going off into the world because I hear a lot of these these
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stories about certain small factors can have such a tremendous impact on your outcomes like the city you live in would
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you encourage you younger people to go and get into those big cities if they're if they're trying to
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have careers in things like journalism or Media or whatever or business and how
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much of a how much of a swing does that have because I always think you know I'm on Dragonstone and I see these entrepreneurs coming in and pitching tech companies and I always think
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sometimes I think you're at like a 90 disadvantage versus just being over there on the west coast of America in
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San Francisco um I I think sometimes I think it's more than a 90 disadvantage but situational
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and environmental factors on outcomes it's always been this puzzle in many countries but particularly
00:15:22
United States about why do immigrants do so well and uh you know the one of the explanations
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was immigrants to the United States have always been very aggressive about seeking educational opportunities or
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maybe they brought with them education that so that was one argument for the longest time but now we realize actually
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it's less that and more that they unlike many people many Native Americans are
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willing to move where opportunities are so the the immigrants are mobile
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in a way they don't have any Roots they don't have family that's keeping them in one place another they simply make a
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beeline for the places where they can you know further
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their own economic and personal interests the quickest and the most efficiently native
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people don't do that too many encumbrances my advice to people young people is
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always where do you want to move first question you should ask yourself
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your your default should be you're going to move somewhere right don't fall in the Trap of doing
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when you're 23 of doing the comfortable thing and staying near family and friends that's there'll be plenty of
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time for that later only question on your mind should be where should I move and once you decide where you move I think a lot of other
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things fall into place so if you are someone who imagines it you would like to start a
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company in the tech world and then yeah move to move to Northern California or
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Austin Texas or Tel Aviv or whatever you know go where the I think you're absolutely right you need to go where
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the opportunity is it's not going to come to you magically and you are at a huge disadvantage if you're not there
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it's it's just no question about that people have confused the efficiency of
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digital communication the kind of um the logistical efficiency of digital
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communication with emotional efficiency and kind of psychological efficiency it is it is only logistically efficient it
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does not resolve the quiz and help someone trust you more or take a chance on you or get to know you in all of your
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complexity yes I wish yeah it's one of the things my parents said to me at very young age was
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we lived in Devon which is you know Devon right down in the corner on the farm um and they they were very clear at
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young age they said you've got to leave here so just just so you're all well aware for the four of us you have all
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got to go out of this city so when we were all very clear on that and all of my friends are still there every single
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one of them all of my best friends are still in Plymouth even if they went to University in another city they came
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back um it's not to say that they're not happier than me and this is maybe my next question which is um because like because I hear that
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immigrant tell all the time that immigrants tend to have better outcomes relatively whatever it might be but my
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question becomes um are they happier and I say this actually because of a conversation I was having last night with my friend who has built his family
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have built a billion dollar company in this country um the dad was the first generation immigrant here the dad is just
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completely overwhelmed with work like he is obsessed to the point now the sun said to me last night I don't actually
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think he could he knows what makes him happier little but because he was in survival mode when he came here they've got a billion dollars actually I think
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it was worth five billion now but is he happy and I I sometimes ponder that the first
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sort of generation immigrant is on survival mode the second generation has the chance of being in a maybe a
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thriving self-actualization situation but I don't know if you had any light to shed on first generation
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happiness I'm always I'm dubious of this so I I all this happiness stuff and I
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say this and I'm I'm fully open to the possibility that I'm wrong but
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um my understanding of happiness is because of the research on happiness is that it's a fairly stable
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trait in other words there are people who are happy regardless of where they are and people
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who are not or people who don't appear happy or people for whom happiness represents itself differently so I would
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say of your friend's father you know maybe he is happy he just expresses it differently he built a
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massive business he's made his family stable he's created a secure beachhead
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in a whole new country you don't think that makes him happy when he puts his head on the pillow at night I think it
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probably does it's just not just it's not the kind of lie on the beach read a good book happy but it sounds to me like
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a pretty amazing set of accomplishments that would make him will he die happy
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having done that yes he will I think I don't know I never met the man but I'm
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just I'm wondering generally what's that people say they've never met a happy billionaire I just don't I don't believe that I
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think they derive I think people who've who've um accomplished something like that they drive a different kind of
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satisfaction from it but it doesn't it's not a lesser kind of satisfaction
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um you know do I work more than most people if I look at the cohort of people I went
00:20:31
to college with University with do I work more than most of them yeah probably
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uh do I spend less time you know uh watching movies and reading
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books and going on holiday yes absolutely does that mean I'm less happy no I think I'm pretty happy
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I you know it's like and I I just I yeah that's I'm a little bit skeptical of
00:20:58
this narrow definition of happiness so so I think I think it's based on this
00:21:04
idea that to be happy or whatever you have to have this kind of recipe of ingredients and they have to be equally
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balanced you have to have you know strong interpersonal relationships or meaningful connections you have to have
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you know exercise you know these kinds of things so when you see an individual who's so out of balance because they
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they just work 20 you know every waking out of every day and they don't make time for friends families or walking the dog people and they're you know consumed
00:21:33
by it people from the outside go well that's that's not a happy person and you would I would think the science would support the fact that people tend to be
00:21:40
happier when they have stronger more meaningful relationships and they have more of more balance in their lives
00:21:45
generally yeah no I think so you understand I'm making so let's go back
00:21:51
to your friend's father so your friend's father is uh not someone about whom we can generalize yeah uh he's clearly a
00:21:59
you know he's an outlier of some um sword he's probably he's in I imagine there's a whole series of traits that
00:22:06
he's in the 99th percentile on probably incredibly intelligent incredibly driven you know list them all so that kind of
00:22:13
person is never going to have a balanced life I mean you could put him
00:22:19
in you know the the the the the cornfields of Iowa and say you're going to be a
00:22:27
you're going to be a farmer that's all you can do and he's gonna he's gonna live he's gonna be someone who's like
00:22:33
working you know 80 hours a week and right that's just his temperament so the question is what I'm saying is happiness
00:22:39
for him is probably going to look differently than happiness for lots of other people but he's highly unusual
00:22:46
for the average person yes balance is is appropriate but you didn't ask me about an average person you asked me about
00:22:52
someone who's who built built an enormous business from scratch yeah I worry I think I worry sometimes
00:22:58
part of the reason I think ask the questions for myself that I'm being dragged by my own like insecurity so I
00:23:06
sit here with a lot of you know successful maybe billionaire CEOs that have built these great companies and you find out that the reason they built them
00:23:11
is because their mother um in the case of one of my previous guests which was on two weeks ago who and he said this on the podcast he's got
00:23:17
a billion dollar beer company you find out because his mother when he was a young kid basically always convinced him he was never enough he should come into
00:23:24
his room smash his toys and say things to him to convince him that he was just never good enough so he's had this
00:23:29
almost neurotic obsessive drive to prove to the world that he is good enough and you wonder how voluntary that that that
00:23:35
drive is and what it's come at the cost of and is he really you know is this individual really
00:23:42
happy and fulfilled or are they just being pulled by their insecurities but you know there are maybe another way of
00:23:48
saying this is that um so to use that person as an example so he took uh uh a kind of trauma and
00:23:57
made something productive out of it yeah he had a great deal of certain personal
00:24:02
costs but he took something that might have defeated others and ended up contributing substantially to society I
00:24:10
wouldn't he may not be happy but I would describe his life as a Triumph right and the other thing I would say is
00:24:18
that the language of happiness has to go alongside the this question of what contribution you're making to the world
00:24:25
you live in that there are many people who are not personally happy but who make enormous contributions and that's
00:24:31
that's a parallel and in many cases far more important
00:24:37
um function you know was Florence Nightingale happy probably
00:24:43
probably not Jews she's supposed to tell from what I know about her life she had all kinds of psychological issues or
00:24:50
whatever but she made an enormous contribution that continues to this day right she started a Hulk you know so
00:24:55
there are like I said I would like to have a kind of I would like to the to evaluate people's
00:25:01
lives along a whole series of dimensions and understand that not everyone can satisfy each of those dimensions in any
00:25:09
moment one of those you know being happy feels like
00:25:14
something that I would like for me making a great contribution to society feels like something that others would
00:25:20
like from me and I I wonder you know which if you could make a huge this is
00:25:25
just a tangent here but if you could make it amazing you know contribution to
00:25:31
society as you have at the cost of your unhappiness would you choose that
00:25:36
depends on what the contribution was the contribution you've made in your life you've helped millions and millions oh I see uh
00:25:43
would I have done what I did if I thought it was coming at a significant cost to my own happiness yeah uh
00:25:49
probably not but then I think the world you know but if I was doing if I was a
00:25:57
you know uh a a biologist who had working on a breakthrough for some
00:26:03
disease I might the calculation might be different I mean I'm not saving lives
00:26:08
I'm entertaining people or enlightening them but it didn't read me they would be enlightened somewhere else I'm not
00:26:14
crucial to the functioning of society but if I was I might feel very differently I think
00:26:21
you know it's funny where the I'm I'm over here because I have this
00:26:27
um book now in paperback the bomber Mafia and it's a story of these
00:26:33
uh group of men pilots in the 1930s in America who have a dream about
00:26:39
a better way to fight Wars and they're all down in Alabama and they have these ideas about how the bomber
00:26:46
high altitude Precision bombing can revolutionize Warfare and save countless civilian lives their dream turns out to
00:26:53
be uh they can't pull it off in a second world war they they start out the war with
00:27:00
high hopes and by the end many of them have had their careers destroyed because they pursued an idea which didn't work
00:27:07
it didn't work at the time now it does work they really pioneered a kind of warfare that is
00:27:14
um essential to the way we think about war today and as as today you know saves countless lives didn't work in their
00:27:22
time frame so in a sense they sacrificed their career and large part of their happiness for uh uh for a future cause
00:27:30
they were long dead before it paid off am I glad they did that absolutely
00:27:36
would they be glad if you resurrected some of these guys from the dead and you
00:27:41
said look I know in 1936 you had a vision about how to make war better and it was finally realized during the
00:27:48
Kosovo campaign of the 90s 60 years later are you happy you did what you did
00:27:54
uh you do feel now that it was worth sacrificing your entire career over this lost cause because it turned out not to
00:28:00
be a lost cause and they would I'm sure from the grave they would say I am so grateful that I did what I did right
00:28:06
even though one of these guys one of them one of the heroes of the book is a man named Haywood Hansel
00:28:12
brilliant passionate romantic figure in the second world war
00:28:17
who has this extraordinary set of ideas about how to revolutionize the era war
00:28:23
in the second world war which he tries and fails to implement in the war against Japan and by his by the age of
00:28:31
40 he's this is a man who devoted his life to the Air Force he's a career his
00:28:36
father and grandfather they're all like career Military Officers he this is his
00:28:42
whole world he's basically through by the
00:28:47
by his late 30s he's just pushed out to pasture and spends the next 30 years of his life basically
00:28:54
as the guy who failed in the second world war right he would say it was worth it I think if
00:29:00
you think so yeah I think he did I think he would and I'm we should all be enormously grateful to him for making
00:29:06
that sacrifice um I I am grateful for them for making that
00:29:12
sacrifice but I tend to believe that people are more motivated by their own
00:29:19
ego than they typically often allow their own sense of like wanting to accomplish something so they can be
00:29:26
someone that accomplished something and I tend to actually think this probably from doing this podcast so much where I
00:29:32
often get to the root cause of a successful person's achievements and find out it was just time and time again it was just an insecurity from their
00:29:39
childhood it was they had it you know they were bullied they were beaten up and it's this almost involuntary pursuit to prove
00:29:46
the bully my mum uh being outcasted and being nearly black in an all-white
00:29:52
school to to fit in or to prove someone wrong and if and then you look at it from the outside and you clap and go oh
00:29:59
they were courageous or they were Brave no they were insecure so why wait why
00:30:05
why does it bother you that insecurity manifests itself as courage and absolutely doesn't I did a a tour of
00:30:11
this country where I opened the show and say you call me Brave I was actually just insecure yeah so it doesn't bother me I just think it's reality we didn't
00:30:18
talk and I think obviously in hindsight bias we we say oh this person will say courageous they were so intentional they had most of the time they were just
00:30:25
insecure like they didn't get Christmas presents and they were bad but that makes I like that though because it to
00:30:30
me to my mind it makes courage far more accessible when we realize that courage can have many many fathers I love it
00:30:37
yeah I think it's beautiful it's a beautiful notion and the idea people can take what can be harmful damaging
00:30:43
traumatic things like I was saying before and spin them into gold is this
00:30:49
is the this is the at the heart of what is so kind of Joyful about you the human
00:30:55
Spirit right it's it's incredible like that was actually the the headline of
00:31:02
the Guardian newspaper two weeks ago was my face with the title that said uh insecurity was my greatest motivator and
00:31:08
it was and it was because I never understood this idea that I was because I expelled from school dropped out of University after one lecture I never
00:31:14
understood this idea that other people thought I was Brave when and really I was like a coward running away from
00:31:19
things I didn't like fueled by insecurities like oh it was actually cowardice and insecurity if you're really being honest yeah and so go match
00:31:26
your point about these um you know these these people from the 1950s yeah 1950s 30s I wonder what there
00:31:35
driving underlying force was because well they were it's funny so there's a
00:31:40
little group of men and they call themselves the Brahma Mafia and they are
00:31:46
they're all in their 20s they're young men in the 1930s and
00:31:52
they're in the army and there's no such thing as the Air Force in the 1930s anywhere and Air Force is a division of the uh of the
00:31:59
Army in most countries and the people running armies in the 1930s think planes
00:32:04
are a joke they're a toy right and here are these young guys and they actually think planes are what the future of
00:32:12
warfare is and they feel they feel overlooked and ignored and they're you
00:32:20
know in the 1930s if you were in the Army you had to spend time you know learning how to ride a horse because the
00:32:25
Cavalry was still a thing and they would you know you'd have to groom your horses and you know Trot
00:32:31
around the and these guys think this is a joke right they're just this is the most absurd thing they've ever seen why
00:32:38
are we riding horses when we've invented this thing called an airplane which can fly hundreds of miles and drop bombs and
00:32:45
revolutionize Warfare and no one's listening to them and they they're they are
00:32:51
um they feel like they're outcasts who are in an institution that they don't belong in and they're they're
00:32:58
really at a loss and their solution is they're all up in Virginia right around the where military headquarters is in
00:33:04
America they decide to as a group move to the most remote
00:33:09
uh Air Force Base uh In America which when they say remote meaning as far as
00:33:16
possible kind of psychologically from Washington DC so they moved to this
00:33:22
little tiny corner of of Central Alabama um Montgomery Alabama which even today
00:33:29
Montgomery Alabama is the middle of nowhere and they want to be they want to be off by themselves and left a kind of
00:33:35
dream and they have a massive chip on their shoulder but about that who they
00:33:40
believe to be the the morons running the army so again you have a and they they
00:33:46
spark this kind of technological Revolution they dream big and reimagine
00:33:52
what work can be but it's all born of frustration uh isolation alienation
00:34:00
um rejection rejection I mean it's it's exactly what you're talking about here their motives they come across as these
00:34:06
heroic idealists and these brilliant kind of technological uh
00:34:12
thinkers that's not that's not how it begins psychologically they're disgruntled it begins as these
00:34:20
kind of lonely upset disgruntled they're like I'm sorry we're out of here we're
00:34:25
going to Alabama and they were they would they would get us only about 10 of them and they're on this I've been to
00:34:32
this Air Force Base even today it's like it is literally in the middle of nowhere and they're just like don't call you know basically they're like we're hiding
00:34:38
down here don't call us we're like on the you know as it happens it's such a
00:34:43
marvelous Story the second world war then breaks out when they're in the middle of all of this dreaming and
00:34:48
there's no one else who's been thinking about air War policy and so all of these
00:34:54
disgruntled guys get whisked out of Alabama and they occupy all the top positions in the U.S Air Force at the
00:35:01
beginning of the second world war so by magic by sheerus chance this group of
00:35:08
Misfits gets plunked into the center of the American Military machine when
00:35:14
America enters the war in 1942 um so it's like they get a lucky break I mean if if the second world war never
00:35:20
happened they might still be there like you know fussing and groaning and grumbling and which is this other thing
00:35:27
that you know uh thing that I've observed in I'm sure you've seen the
00:35:33
same thing in doing this in doing this podcast is the amount of times that sheer Serendipity unleashes this allows
00:35:41
the innovator to turn their um disgruntlement and Neurosis into gold
00:35:46
right it's just something random happens and boom that they they see a window and
00:35:53
they think that's it right that's a shaft of light that's my light
00:35:58
um but if the window been closed they could still be disgruntled and running around history will never know the history will
00:36:04
never remember that yeah we never look back and see that that outcome so even
00:36:09
in that case it sounded like that one of their initial driving motivators was more like I told you so so going back to
00:36:15
your point about would they be happy today because they never got that particular I Told You So moment before
00:36:21
they before they died no they yes they would have had to live to uh you know a
00:36:26
hundred and hundred years old to get out to get there I told you so a moment the question I would have liked to ask them
00:36:33
is did they did they still have faith at the time of their death that their
00:36:39
vision would be realized at some point so there's a whole class of
00:36:44
of uh innovators who pursue an idea and then
00:36:51
they're just early right and it comes to fruition afterwards it's a famous case
00:36:56
of a I've forgotten his name but there was an American um biochemist who had this idea for how
00:37:03
to fight cancer tumors um by starving the
00:37:08
cancer tumors grow you know blood feeds them they have all these blood vessels that they connect that's how they and
00:37:15
his idea was let's choke the supply of blood to tumors and we can kill them that way and it's called angiogenesis
00:37:22
and physical nitrogenesis someone will correct me anyway he had this idea in the 60s and he it takes him sort of 30
00:37:30
years to figure out that it works and I I've often wondered and then he dies but
00:37:36
he gets eat just before he dies he has this kind of finally boom he demonstrates that his
00:37:43
life's ambition actually works I've always wondered had he died like just before
00:37:49
the moment of would he have died happy did he die believing it would someday come his his
00:37:56
notion which is in which is kind of if you think about it it's it's intuitively it makes sense if I can
00:38:03
starve the tumor of of blood of its blood supply I should be able to choke the tumor that's it's a as
00:38:10
an idea if I just explain that to you none of us knew anything I'm guessing about medicine it makes sense right so
00:38:16
he has this idea in 1960 whatever it is and I think his faith was strong enough that
00:38:21
had he died before proof of concept he would still have died happy I think I
00:38:28
don't know though I would love to have asked him that to have asked about a hypothetical question
00:38:34
I mean another thing I've learned from this podcast is generally that the destination is just a thing that goal
00:38:40
ultimate goal is just a thing that gives us orientation but we're always on a journey and I imagine if he had
00:38:45
accomplished that one he would have set off on another one another Journey so um one would assert that because he was
00:38:51
striving towards a meaningful goal I always say you know when people ask me what I want for my life now I say if I'm striving towards the meaning for goals
00:38:57
surrounded by people I love and I feel I feel somewhat challenged I am happy yeah and the minute I'm no longer striving so
00:39:03
the goal is complete or I'm not around people I love and it's not challenging me it's not outside sort of the outer limit of my comfort zone Then I then
00:39:10
you're not satisfied so he sounds like someone that was striving towards a goal a meaningful goal and that was
00:39:15
challenging him so I imagine accepted lots of other people began to
00:39:21
believe that he was wasting his time so he has that he has he is surrounded by a small
00:39:28
Court of people who believe in him and presumably a long-suffering wife but
00:39:33
uh the general World in which he's operating is rolling their eyes by the end and that's his that's his challenge
00:39:39
that's his challenge so I mean that by the way as you know incredibly typical of I mean this this goes into one of my
00:39:46
I'm I'm actually obsessed with this and this is one of the reasons I wanted to write about our Mafia because it is a perfect example of
00:39:53
this idea that it's incredibly simple but is so often overlooked when we look at Innovation everyone
00:39:59
including the innovator radically underestimates how much time it takes to bring an idea to fruition so
00:40:07
the reason most innovators do what they do is not that they have a
00:40:12
clear picture but rather they are they are massively deluded about their own their
00:40:20
own idea they think it's so obvious and they should be able to pull it off in you know five years if they realized it
00:40:27
would take 30 they would never do it right so they're they're their their success is based on this illusion
00:40:33
they're by definition delusional um and every but everyone everyone involved always thinks that just because
00:40:40
I can describe it clearly and I can make a case or what I'm doing I should be
00:40:45
able to will it into being overnight right and I I there's not a single
00:40:52
can you come up with a single significant Innovation that took less time than the innovator imagined
00:40:58
no just never happens yeah for so many reasons yeah I mean legislations that
00:41:03
weren't often the big one yeah that goes in the way of anything there's a hundred reasons why everything is takes longer
00:41:08
yeah um like the the Battle of Lafayette honestly believed in an idea they hatched about
00:41:14
completely revising the way war is fought they thought that you could fight a war entirely from the air
00:41:20
you would no longer need armies tanks Navy anything all you would need is bombers they thought you could fight the
00:41:27
entire second world war with a fleet of bombers okay they had this idea in 19 let's say 35. they thought they could
00:41:33
pull it off when the war starts in 1942 they thought they could pull it off seven years later
00:41:38
we can't even pull it off today we're getting close but like it's been they underestimated
00:41:43
how long it would take to bring this idea to fruition by like basically half a century right that's the that's what
00:41:50
they're doing but everyone has this delusion do you know how long my favorite example is the the automated teller machine the
00:41:58
cash machine is invented if I'm not mistaken in the early 1970s now if the guy who
00:42:06
invented it there's a guy forgot his name we had him right here right now and we said when you came up with this idea
00:42:13
and whatever it was in 1973 how long do you think it would take to spread this idea throughout the
00:42:18
entire world he would have told you it'll be all done by 1980. it's a no-brainer couldn't be easier I'm making
00:42:25
everyone's life easier Banks like consumers like it it's cash out of a machine all you got to do is punch in a
00:42:31
code this is the this is not like computers or I'm not changing anyone's
00:42:37
life everyone wins you know how long it actually took it took 25 years to make an ATM machine to make it popular ATM
00:42:43
machines take they're not so they're invented in the early 70s and they're not really everywhere until the mid 90s
00:42:51
in the West why they don't you tell me take a long time
00:42:58
consumer Behavior has got to change and they've got to make space for them and it turns out it turns out it's complicated consumers took a long time
00:43:05
to my mother is still not taking any money out of anything you know so you know she's still I mean
00:43:12
she's 90. she may eventually but you know it turns out people are the
00:43:18
thing that that guy and all of us didn't understand is so when it comes to how we handle how we deal psychologically with
00:43:25
money we are extremely conservative so I can give you the I can sit you down
00:43:32
and say never have to line up in a bank again 24-hour access to money and you will
00:43:39
still it'll take a generation for you to warm up to it a generation yeah that's it isn't it because the generation is
00:43:45
going to pass because that's too stubborn to change yeah interesting you write a lot about this idea of timing
00:43:50
you've written about it in outlines I believe about the importance of timing now everything you've said there makes
00:43:56
me feel maybe a little bit scared as an as an innovator an entrepreneur because I might be 50 years out and listen I'm
00:44:03
trying to quench these insecurities now so I I can't wait 50 years what have you learned about how we can
00:44:10
um improve our timing or understand if our timing is good is that even possible is it possible to
00:44:18
know if our timing is good when it comes to inventing things creating things launching a podcast are we too late
00:44:24
people say that to me a lot is this too late to be starting a podcast you know yeah
00:44:30
okay cat is timing something we can control or does it just live in hindsight I well I do think a lot of
00:44:35
people claim to understand timing and really what they're doing is they're they were just
00:44:42
lucky and they're after the fact assigning themselves you know a pat on
00:44:47
the back for what um that is not to say though that there aren't people who
00:44:53
have a kind of um at least in flashes have their finger
00:44:58
on the pulse of some kind of marketplace Steve Jobs comes to mind with
00:45:03
yeah think about Steve Jobs of course is that he's not he's not a Pioneer in anything
00:45:08
so he's always late he's late to every Market that he eventually wins so his
00:45:14
genius was an understanding that being first is massively overrated he's 10 he's 10 years late on the smartphone
00:45:20
he's you know every all of the ideas that go into the first uh the Macintosh computer
00:45:27
are all taken from Xerox Park he didn't demand any of that stuff he's
00:45:33
so his genius was in understanding that if you are the first person and you're probably too early interesting but also and he understands
00:45:40
as well that um that in that world of consumer electronics
00:45:46
um you're better off being the person who tweaks the idea than the person who
00:45:52
truly innovates in other words what consumers are interested in is a kind of mature
00:45:58
experience with their Electronics the average consumer doesn't really want to be the one who's pioneering how to
00:46:05
work a kind of you know stage one laptop or home
00:46:10
computer or they don't want the remember I don't know if you remember the Palm Pilot Palm Pilot was an early a way too
00:46:18
early smartphone that was big in the kind of 90s and it it was for it was used by a very small number of very
00:46:24
technical technologically focused people jobs would have looked at that and said
00:46:30
you're never going to win selling a Palm Pilot it's just not you need to kind of tweak it two steps
00:46:36
and make it something that an average person would want to use he was very commercial in the way that he
00:46:44
um approached uh uh product Innovation that was his genius so he's in some
00:46:51
sense I think he is exactly what you're talking about someone who um who had an uncanny sense of how to
00:46:56
bring something to a mass Market and when the time was right to do so
00:47:01
yeah although he yes when I when the time and when the time was right yeah he did a very good job of never being too
00:47:07
early the weird concept of being too early but not one that people are that familiar of
00:47:13
between the ages of um 24 and 34 you spend 10 years working at The Washington Post yeah what was what did you you know
00:47:20
that was your 10 000 hours per se what did that give you that in hindsight you realize has been so sort of foundational
00:47:27
and important and significant to what you went on to do those those are 10 years
00:47:33
well it taught me when I was talking earlier about that thing about reporting
00:47:39
requiring a kind of fundamental humility it that was
00:47:44
uh uh was hammered home in those years
00:47:50
um I also learned to write without anxiety so you can't be a newspaper reporter
00:47:58
if you have any Neurosis whatsoever about the act of writing you just have
00:48:04
to you know you have a limited amount of time the discipline of being forced to write something every day in a limited
00:48:09
amount of time for 10 years um cured me of
00:48:15
a writer's block ing anxiety you know hey you can't be that way you're right it's just like
00:48:21
it's like a it's like a boot camp for writers it just is it um that was
00:48:26
enormously um useful in [Music] um in kind of freeing me up to spend my
00:48:35
mental energies on other parts of the writing process right what about writing generally and the
00:48:42
value that and role that writing has played on your self-awareness your personal development
00:48:49
because you know we're living in a generation I think where writing is becoming less popular and maybe even
00:48:55
less necessary maybe that's true maybe it's not um but I because I do this podcast
00:49:03
because I have other obligations to write because I have a Instagram following of millions of people that expect me to write things every day
00:49:09
I started having to write like it was the discipline I had to do it at 7 pm I had to post something and it only in
00:49:15
hindsight I've reflected on how much that changed my life it helped me understand the world I was living in because every day I have to say
00:49:21
something that's true and in hindsight I go [ __ ] I wish someone had told me how how much I think
00:49:27
I could Advance my wisdom understand myself just by having having some kind of commitment to
00:49:33
publish every day more from like a personal perspective you know I'm wondering if that's if it's if you found a similar
00:49:40
thing I tend to think writers people that have a something making them right every day and publish are infinitely
00:49:48
just so much more wise and Incredibly more self-aware similar thing with podcasters to be
00:49:54
there so I think of curiosity as a habit not a trait um and I think that too often we think
00:50:02
of it as a trait not a habit by that distinction I mean it's not people are not naturally
00:50:09
curious or not not naturally curious they there are people who have cultivated the habit of curiosity and
00:50:16
those who have led at life life fallow what you're describing is an institutionalized a way of
00:50:22
institutionalizing the habit of curiosity if you are required to write something every day
00:50:28
then you are you've put yourself in a position where you're forced to think
00:50:33
about and look for things to write about every day that's institutionalizing the habit of curiosity right I think all
00:50:41
successfully curious people do that in one form or another put themselves in situations where they have to come up
00:50:47
with some new idea or have to are forced to look for interesting new things or you
00:50:55
know why you know um anyone who has ambition does this for
00:51:01
many people the idea you know ambition is very often rooted in a sense of dissatisfaction
00:51:08
with your current state of knowledge um or practice what does what does
00:51:15
dissatisfaction do it is another institutionalization of the habit of curiosity it forces your your
00:51:22
unhappiness and dissatisfaction with what you know forces you to go out and
00:51:27
look for a solution to that feeling right find things that to keep going and
00:51:34
you know instead of stopping get up and look again and so these are all versions
00:51:39
of the same um of the same thing so I I sort of agree with you that there's
00:51:45
writers who have obligations writing obligations do it's a tremendous
00:51:51
advantage in terms of of um of uh pushing pushing them to kind of
00:51:57
think freely about things The Tipping Point in you wrote that book in 2000 yeah
00:52:05
did that change your life well it uh it was it it allowed me to
00:52:11
think you could make a living writing books and it validated my feeling that the way in which I wanted to write books
00:52:18
had an audience so I was on I didn't know I had a particular way that I wanted to write
00:52:25
books but I didn't know whether anyone else liked it shared my Approach so that book
00:52:33
made me think oh okay there's a there's a universe of people out there who
00:52:38
um who are into this kind of thing and that was that was again freeing you know at each stage in my career I've been
00:52:44
lucky enough to go through experiences that allow me to shed various anxieties The Washington Post sheds anxiety about
00:52:50
writing Tipping Point sheds anxiety about whether the kind of writing I want to do
00:52:56
as an audience those are two enormously freeing things what was the way that you
00:53:02
wanted to write that you were unsure if the public would receive I wanted to jump around and go on lots
00:53:08
of digressions I wanted to use uh I wanted to make ideas as
00:53:15
make adventure stories around ideas not about necessarily around people or narratives
00:53:21
I wanted to kind of ransack the academic world for really interesting insights
00:53:27
and apply them to kind of everyday stories I wanted to kind of like
00:53:34
it's an idea of like um making a book that is a jumble of
00:53:40
different genres right so in the course of reading a chapter you should
00:53:45
entertain a new idea meet an interesting person be have something that you believe
00:53:52
challenged it should be fine to have all those components in one chapter of a book and the next chapter it should be fine
00:53:58
to move on to something completely different that was what I wanted to do I wanted to jump around all the success you've had as a writer
00:54:04
has resulted in you now being doing a lot of public speaking one of the things when I was reading about your your sort of philosophy
00:54:11
towards public speaking that surprised me was that um you say you don't try and start a
00:54:16
public talk with a wow with it with a wow moment I think the
00:54:21
quote was that never starts his talks with a wow moment or anything to hook them in but it says tries to draw them in slowly
00:54:27
and this surprised me because I I've always thought that the opposite approach was better as in like when you
00:54:33
walk on stage people are typically on their phones whatever and you don't have their attention so trying to get them to
00:54:39
pay attention within the first 10 seconds by saying something that is somewhat I don't know
00:54:44
provocative was a better approach I was Keen to hear why you take that stance
00:54:49
the question is what do you want your audience and in this sense it's no different from
00:54:54
writing what is the experience you want your audience to
00:55:00
go through you have them for whatever 45 minutes an hour and I want them to feel that they have
00:55:08
progressed I don't necessarily want them to agree with everything I said or think I'm
00:55:14
wonderful that's not important I want to be in a different place than they were at the beginning so to have thought
00:55:20
about something that they hadn't thought about to have moved their position on something a little bit to be emotionally
00:55:27
in a different place so if they started out one way I want them to be something somewhere else they started out
00:55:33
distracted I love them to end up being focused I just want movement right so My
00:55:39
worry is when you start with a bang is you compromise the movement so
00:55:44
if for example I'm I want them to be amused their journeyed to be a journey
00:55:50
towards Amusement if the first thing I do is tell them an incredibly funny joke the Journey's over
00:55:56
right it's about time so the central problem of these speeches is
00:56:04
that they've committed like I say 45 minutes to an hour that's a long time and everything has to be
00:56:11
about that you have to think about that time frame you're telling a story Within
00:56:18
a 60-minute window right and they're going to judge you by how they feel in the 60th minute not how they feel in the
00:56:25
a minute one um movies you know the movie that fails you sit in a two-hour movie and you're
00:56:34
enthralled for the first 90 minutes and then it falls apart in the end you leave unhappy you have never I you have never
00:56:41
given a movie recommendation where you said the following you should totally go and see that movie the first hour is
00:56:47
amazing now I will warn you the second hour is terrible yeah you never do that right yeah you would actually but you
00:56:54
would say oh you should totally see it it'll be it'll start a little slow and you'll wonder why you're there but wow
00:57:01
the last hour that you would say I've described to you this you know from a
00:57:07
logical perspective the same experience 50 good 50 bad but all I've done is if
00:57:15
by by putting the bad first and the good second I've made it something you recommend and by reversing it I've made
00:57:22
it something that you would never tell a friend to do right I actually talk a lot about to my team about how um people
00:57:28
remember this the peak and the end of an experience and all the like psychology tests they do and big tech companies use
00:57:34
this as a way to um create a more memorable recollection of any of the sort of customer
00:57:40
experiences and also of the studies they've done on whether if someone misses the flight at the start of their holiday versus if they miss at the end
00:57:47
of the holiday the recollection of the holidays drastically different exactly they missed it at the end this [ __ ] awful holiday there yeah so that makes
00:57:53
sense but my I think my thing is I wouldn't even have their attention at the peak of the experience or the story if I haven't held them at the start with
00:58:00
some kind of promise and we actually see this with like Mr Beast who's the biggest YouTuber in the world
00:58:06
much of the reason he says he's successful and now you 100 million subscribers fastest growing YouTuber
00:58:11
over the last five years is because he will at the start of the video and this is a little bit to do with algorithms he
00:58:17
will tell you the promise he's making you that you're going to get at the end so he'll do something in the end like
00:58:23
uh he'll basically create the plot in the first 10 seconds and go in this video I buy a million iPhones and then I
00:58:32
text them all at the same time and you're now waiting till the end to
00:58:37
see the plot realized I guess well he's he's promising to tell you a story yeah right so with most stories if you go and
00:58:44
see a um if you if you pick up a mystery book mystery story
00:58:49
um it's the same thing by virtue of being described as a mystery it's making a promise the promise is I'm going to
00:58:57
you know create some I'm going to lead you to a dark place where you don't know where the solution
00:59:03
is and I'm going to give you the solution so like that yeah he's he's when you when you when you make the
00:59:08
contract with your audience and the contract says I'm telling you a story
00:59:13
you can hold them without you don't have to why you're not wowing them but you are you are binding them to you if you
00:59:19
can if you're promising a story then you deliver on that now he's probably promised successfully come through so many times
00:59:27
now that people believe him when he says I'm going to tell you a story they believed and they're quite willing to
00:59:33
sit and wait for the for the the you know the the the the story to be
00:59:39
completed he actually just say that he says the second thing is you actually have to deliver the the punchline of that story
00:59:46
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which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one
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are you um are you an emotional person do you consider yourself to be an emotional person yeah
01:01:54
does that does that impact your your writing and your storytelling and your your
01:02:00
um authorship if that's even a word in my podcast very much so less so in my books
01:02:07
um because audio is so much more emotional um so a lot of my religious history
01:02:13
episodes um many of them are quite emotional
01:02:18
um and uh they're the ones that I value the most the ones particularly the ones that
01:02:24
kind of um this in this season for example there's two episodes
01:02:29
which one will almost certainly make the majority of those who listen cry
01:02:36
um and that's something you can do in audio and that I think is great accomplishment
01:02:42
real tears not kind of um
01:02:47
uh not you know there are some people who kind of cheat their way to tears manipulate the way the audience but
01:02:54
well-earned tears um on that I love that kind of Storytelling where you can move someone
01:03:00
so deeply that they will respond emotionally to what you're saying I saw a quote actually from you that
01:03:06
said um I cry but I don't get mad I cried but I don't get angry that was it yeah I don't really get angry much
01:03:13
[Music] I I don't come from my I don't come from a family that does anger I don't sort of
01:03:20
see the point it never gets you what you want it doesn't make sense rationally
01:03:25
it feels terrible emotionally it just makes everything everyone is
01:03:31
worse off and unhappier after the angry episode than before so it's like if you
01:03:37
remind me why this is some I mean I if I have I try to kind of squelch it whenever I
01:03:43
have an Impulse to do and then I just find it goes away the impulse when was the last time you cried
01:03:52
oh I don't know two days ago really yeah
01:03:58
I tend to cry most often when I'm by myself I think about something that causes me to
01:04:06
get emotional is it typically in your writing or is it is it you think no I'd be walking down
01:04:13
the street and I would um I will I will be pursuing a line of thought that will
01:04:20
bring tears to my eyes really
01:04:25
is that what happened two days ago oh you're walking down the street and oh
01:04:31
are you able to share what that line of thought was I was thinking about my father right uh
01:04:38
I was with my daughter taking her she's 10 months she's in the little baby carrier
01:04:44
and I uh uh my father never met you know died before she was born and uh
01:04:51
I would dearly have love for him to meet her and they have a lot in common I think
01:04:57
although it's hard to tell at 10 months but um it seems to my mind they have a lot in common and I was just reflecting on how
01:05:04
lovely would have been for them to meet
01:05:11
you're a person of Faith right so you believe you're Christian
01:05:17
Christianity or yeah that's the tradition of Griffin yeah yeah same I grew up in Christianity my we were
01:05:24
always in charge growing up until I was about 18 years old how has that impacted the way that you see the world and your
01:05:30
your work and your writing and even that particular moment because um being of the Christian faith I
01:05:36
imagine that oh I'm guessing here so excuse me if the guess is wrong but I imagine that your belief is that he is
01:05:44
here and he has meta
01:05:50
uh yeah yes I do think that uh
01:05:58
sorry now I'm getting emotional um
01:06:04
yeah I do believe that why is that um why does that make you so
01:06:10
emotional um [Music]
01:06:17
it's varied I don't know sorry
01:06:23
it's very difficult for me to talk with my father without
01:06:34
uh his loss was that
01:06:39
just the saddest thing that ever happened to me
01:06:47
that's right I I would be fine I'm you know it's it's in many respects a
01:06:52
very beautiful thing what you're saying in in the sense of his um
01:06:58
the love you clearly have for the man
01:07:03
I I um I always feel particularly moved when people talk about their fathers and I've talked about someone's podcast a lot because I I'm living with this kind
01:07:10
of ongoing regret ongoing forecast of regret that I'm gonna regret
01:07:17
my father is not at a young age and and we're not so close and we don't have a
01:07:22
close relationship and I can't seem to figure out why I don't do something about it so one of these
01:07:28
stories like that I think it's this could really Stark reminder to me that like parents don't live forever and I'm
01:07:34
living with that illusion that my parents are going to live forever and I'm also forecasting the regret based on speaking to people like you if that
01:07:40
makes sense I'm like it's when people say what do you regret I think I say I think I'm going to regret
01:07:47
not um not having a close relationship with my parents when they're gone
01:07:54
yeah well one of the ways you realize that you're
01:08:02
uh grief is one of the ways you keep them alive
01:08:07
[Music] you know the the thing I feared the most
01:08:13
when my father died was that uh was it I would forget him
01:08:20
and my grief reminds me that I am not and so
01:08:26
it's very it's very valuable it's um if I was if I was not
01:08:33
uh moved by the by thinking about him that would be a a great tragedy in my mind
01:08:41
but is there a cost to that grief
01:08:47
I think so I mean I think it's a kind of uh
01:08:52
I said it keeps him alive um and it reminds me
01:09:02
somebody a friend of mine once wrote uh uh in a book about his own father
01:09:09
that my father he wrote the following line my father died 25 years ago
01:09:16
I know him better now than I ever did back then um
01:09:22
which I think is one of the most beautiful lines true lines that I've ever
01:09:29
read and I I as time passes
01:09:34
I see that more and more true of my own father that I I feel I know
01:09:40
him better now than I did when he was alive um
01:09:46
and it's hard to explain why that's true but I uh
01:09:53
but um and I feel like if I were to ask my father
01:09:59
about how sad he was about dying the knowledge that
01:10:04
I know him better now than he did and I did when he was alive would make his he would find out that
01:10:11
fact would make his passing easier in his own mind if that makes sense it's getting awfully convoluted but I feel
01:10:16
like it's one of the things that makes death of a loved one less tragic is that you have an opportunity to get
01:10:23
them to know them better um I realize that's hard to it's a very
01:10:30
hard concept to explain it's very difficult for me to explain when I read that it just seemed it seemed so
01:10:35
enormously resonant and true [Music] um that something about
01:10:41
the opportunity to kind of reflect on them over an extended period of time
01:10:48
and to see them reflected in you know I mentioned my daughter to see my father's reflection in her
01:10:54
clarifies my father in my in my mind you know that specific traits that are
01:11:03
um that are popping up in her everything from the the size and my father had an enormous head my daughter
01:11:10
has a truly enormous head and I look at her head and I think
01:11:16
that's him that's you know like but uh
01:11:29
we have wandered off into all manner of
01:11:35
complex territory yeah it tends to happen on this in this conversations but it's really interesting that that
01:11:41
expression because I was thinking about how I recently had um someone I knew I knew passed away and the process that
01:11:48
happens in in the wake of their passing is you first as you would perfectly saying they were very well in person in
01:11:54
this country they Trend number one and you you see this outpouring of the impact they had on others and you go oh
01:11:59
my God it wasn't just me that felt that way about this person but then their parents came here and sat on the sofa
01:12:05
and we just compared notes about this individual and you can start to see as you kind of describe it there the
01:12:10
patterns and oh yeah no and and it's almost like the investigation starts once they're gone and yeah yeah
01:12:16
and so that's why that was that quote particular quote was so resonant Timmy um
01:12:22
on the topic of relationships one of the things that I am in your book blink in the first chapter you talk about John
01:12:27
just John gottman oh yeah I read about John gottman completely separately I read about his when I was trying to read
01:12:34
about relationships and what ruins relationships I read about this idea of contempt ing them yeah I actually when I talked
01:12:41
about my show that went up and down this country in the show I talk about professor John gottman I talk about contempt and how that's this Insidious
01:12:48
little hard to see force in relationships but you actually got to meet him what did that teach you about
01:12:53
relationships and um and the ones that are going to last in
01:12:59
those that are gonna yeah
01:13:05
kind of obvious but crucially important point which is a reminder of how we're social animals and
01:13:13
casting someone out is the Great um
01:13:18
is the great sin the great injury not being angry with someone or or anger is
01:13:25
wrong word but government is clear that anger is not a predictor of
01:13:30
the expression of anger is not a predictor of the failure of a relationship the expression of contempt is
01:13:36
um and he makes that crucial distinction that if I confront you over something
01:13:42
that I'm unhappy about I am the implicit understanding is I'm doing this because your our relationship
01:13:49
is of such importance to me that an injury needs to be addressed right
01:13:54
contempt is where you have given up on the relationship like ah what's the point right it doesn't matter
01:14:01
and that idea that it doesn't matter whatever is worse than I can't believe
01:14:07
you did that super interesting and it made me kind of think a lot about
01:14:12
um would it you know if you're thinking about building
01:14:18
organization structures relationships family anything that's that that
01:14:24
is keeps people engaged and happy over the long term understanding that distinction is
01:14:31
crucial it is not conflict that drives people away it is neglect
01:14:37
right and not every encounter has to be positive to be useful
01:14:43
and you know when I when I thinking about the team I work with on my podcast revisions history for example
01:14:49
we know many of them are much younger than me and uh there are things I can teach them and I have a choice do I
01:14:56
bring this up look guys we screwed up on this this isn't good or I let it slide my
01:15:05
personality is such that I often would let things slide otherwise no no that's wrong and that's I am I am impairing our
01:15:13
relationship by letting I think I'm in the moment helping things just by letting my irritation not get the better
01:15:19
of me no I'm impairing a relationship when I say to them this isn't good work
01:15:25
and here's how it can be better I am affirming to them that they are part of my team
01:15:31
and when I just shrug and say whatever then they become Superfluous right I
01:15:37
have truly injured them in that moment this idea that that's a lot of what effective management is is
01:15:45
um is implicitly ensuring subordinates that they belong
01:15:51
that you're you're part of the team even if that's manifested as in
01:15:56
in terms of approbation or conflict or what have you um
01:16:02
uh and that neglect is the is that neglect is the enemy and in this
01:16:08
shoe in families as well right neglect is the enemy the thing that you can't we were talking earlier about about benign
01:16:15
neglect benign's the key word right considered neglect is fine but when you turn your back on a child
01:16:22
that's when that's when you do harm um and you know none of us were talking
01:16:28
about our parents turning their backs on us they were watching from far and not doing anything totally different yeah
01:16:35
totally different it's actually completely changed my perspective on my own childhood because you're right I
01:16:40
always thought of them like it being a form of like bad parenting but it but in fact I they loved me very much and they
01:16:46
were there at a house and I was safe and I had a foundation to to flourish in
01:16:52
without that if I wasn't out on the street you know yeah
01:16:57
lovelessly which I actually think would have been even worse than being hungry just being Loveless uh completely Loveless and love again even in my child
01:17:04
we weren't maybe an affectionate family I still don't call my parents by mum and dad I still call them by their first names not really but I knew yeah it's
01:17:11
weird it's very strange it just I think it started as a joke my mum saying she felt old if we called her mum and she
01:17:18
wanted to be our friends and it was just a joke that I was born into and never knew otherwise so I call them by their
01:17:24
first names but I was still well that they loved me because it was this it was it was actions it was like trying to you
01:17:31
know being there whenever I was at danger those kind of things like um as opposed to smothering
01:17:38
that's really interesting though that idea and it kind of does it's a bit of a narrative violation that by giving
01:17:44
feedback and by being honest and constructive in your feedback you're actually
01:17:49
showing people that you in even in a professional sense that you that you care and that you are together on this
01:17:55
yeah you're not you're yeah that they are necessary to the process right it's that feeling of of of of that
01:18:03
they've if they feel they are necessary then you have you know we've noticed this I've started this little company on
01:18:10
this Audio company with my friend Jacob Weisberg called Pushkin produces all of our podcasts and others um and you know
01:18:18
we've noticed that the people like every small company we have people who come and go
01:18:23
and the people who go are the ones who this is an obvious
01:18:29
observation but it's an interesting one the people who have tended to leave are the ones who are the most socially
01:18:35
disconnected from their organization so who came into the office the least or who were not were
01:18:42
based in another city and we hired them largely to do remote work or they have they don't feel it's very hard to feel
01:18:48
necessary when you're physically disconnected and um you know as as we Face the battle
01:18:55
that all organizations are facing now and getting people back into the office that this people it's really hard to
01:19:01
explain this core psychological truth which is we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary we and
01:19:09
we wanted you to join our team and if you're not here it's really hard to do that it's not in
01:19:16
your best interest to work at home I know it's a hassle to come to the office but like you know if you work if you're
01:19:23
just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom is that the work life you want to live right don't you want to feel
01:19:30
part of something I mean it just I I I I'm really getting
01:19:36
very frustrated with the inability of people in positions of leadership to
01:19:43
explain this effectively to their employees that
01:19:48
um if we don't feel like we're part of something important what's the point
01:19:53
it's not you're not just doing this to get a if it's just a paycheck then it's like then you what if you reduced
01:20:00
your life to right it has to be I don't know I I this really is getting
01:20:05
me kind of I was in I was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and um
01:20:11
I was pitching some idea to a studio I went to two Studios
01:20:17
I won't name them both have these beautiful gorgeous fancy offices other
01:20:23
sorts you only see in LA right fantastic you know sun is shining you go into the parking lot and there are no cars there
01:20:29
and you go into these places where they normally would have 500 people and there are four now they say it's because of
01:20:35
covet it's not covered it's just they they just did everyone's just decided they want to work at home like this is a
01:20:41
business that is in they are in the business of forging an emotional connection through storytelling to an
01:20:47
audience and they cannot even form an emotional connection to their own employees right what is going on here
01:20:55
this is nuts you're totally preaching to the choir by the way because I've had
01:21:00
this I've had this conversation with with all of my companies in all of my teams and even the people in this room now know I've spoken to them about it
01:21:05
I've wrote a letter and I said listen we believe in um interperson in all connection the value of it this is why
01:21:11
we've never done this podcast on Zoom even in the pandemic yeah because I because part of the reason I do it is
01:21:16
because of this and what I'm not doing it to publish an episode I'm doing it
01:21:21
because I like to meet someone and connect with them if you take that away from it I don't want to do the podcast and it's the same with my work like we
01:21:28
ran a company who was that when we had 700 employees we were no tourists for company culture for having this where
01:21:33
the office was like a community center you know everything happened there and our employee base again as the BBC wrote
01:21:39
were on average about 21 22 years old the minute the pandemic comes around for the first time ever we see people
01:21:45
quitting on mass because Suddenly It's them doing a to-do list in the boxer
01:21:52
shorts at home and the only upside we're bringing them in their life the only sort of remuneration we're giving them
01:21:58
other than you know the work is interesting whatever is pay it literally then becomes the pay we're giving versus
01:22:05
the company down the road that are paying you to set in your box of shorts and do your to-do list so it became pay versus pay and to be honest there were
01:22:11
other people that were willing to pay more so we we saw tons of people leave and I realized that Central to the value
01:22:17
that we bring to these people's lives is community and togetherness and connection so I fully fully believe in
01:22:23
it and I also think that and this is a controversial thing to say people don't
01:22:28
typically know what's right for them and and I'm not saying it's just the context of work I'm saying like look at other
01:22:34
areas of our life where we've sacrificed Community for productivity or efficiency where maybe we now sit at home and tap a
01:22:40
glass screen to get our food and then swipe on a glass screen to get a date and then click double tap uh photos like
01:22:48
that's probably what you would have chosen through convenience but then the cost on happiness which you don't get to
01:22:53
see when you make that transaction so I I think I said to all my companies and even some of my foreign companies
01:23:00
like the most important thing for me is to give you Clarity on who we are then you can decide where you work yeah and
01:23:06
the problem we've seen over the last couple of years is spineless virtue signaling scared CEO specifically that
01:23:13
are in San Francisco like the Facebooks and the twitters who all had to follow the same kind of leftist do whatever you
01:23:19
want without realizing that company culture should be reverse engineered from your company's mission
01:23:25
and if and when you think about your company's Mission the thing that will help you achieve your company's mission is connectiveness is employee retention
01:23:31
is the sense of community is all the other things other than just pay these are all so
01:23:37
um when you think about it from that perspective thing in fact bringing people together giving them freedom I mean don't like they can still have as
01:23:42
much Freedom as they like to decide the days and what you know they've got to have freedom because that's also connected to them fulfilling the mission
01:23:48
but saying that we are a group of people that get together because we believe in that we believe in the value of it yeah
01:23:54
and every time I say this you know there's a big cohort that yeah amazing and then
01:24:00
I mean I was at an office this morning and it's exactly what you've described they said there's usually 500 people in there my team were there with me empty
01:24:07
empty completely empty I went to another office a big ticketing company they
01:24:13
built they'd started building the construction of this building in central London during covert they spent what I believe hundreds of Millions on this
01:24:18
office completely empty and I go what's going on again well we're trying to get people
01:24:23
back in we do pizzas on Tuesday downstairs people still don't come in why don't you give them Clarity why
01:24:29
don't you say this is who we are because they're scared you're scared they're scared to be clear just do whatever you
01:24:35
want decide whatever you want that's not how teams work name a team that runs on that basis in sports
01:24:42
do whatever you want yeah so I think I believe I have a hypothesis that we're gonna return uh
01:24:49
not not to where we were before because I think that was somewhat broken as well but I think we're going to return to a nice Middle Ground
01:24:55
well freedom and Clarity sadly if an economic recession will you have that
01:25:01
effect yeah um I mean if when people start to get worried about their job
01:25:08
um I think that might be easier to get them uh it's sad that it's going to take a lot of pain
01:25:14
um but um yeah I suspect that will bring that will change the culture somewhat the kind of climate I think it will be
01:25:21
and it Jack is a good example here Jack was freelance so in the company I
01:25:26
described with the great office culture whatever Jack used to come in as a freelancer so he wasn't part of it so he
01:25:32
was one of the people sat at home in his boxer shorts I'm guessing and he was he would part of the reason why and this I
01:25:37
don't want to speak for Jack but from what I understand do correct me if I'm wrong jack is Jack wanted to move from there to from being this freelancer to
01:25:44
being full-time in our team was because he saw that he was missing something Jack please correct me is that accurate
01:25:49
yes what were you miss what did you well I'd come to your offices and I'll see what it was like being part of a team which I haven't seen before and yeah I
01:25:56
just realized that's what I've been missing from my work the whole time and so he was in the freelance sitting
01:26:01
at home and then saw this group of young people that were all friends and played football and went out on Fridays and and thought you know what that's actually
01:26:08
as important as just getting a check you know so yeah that's my hypothesis I'm actually going to start using our office
01:26:15
coach as a way to employ people which kind of bucks the trend that it's gonna sort of disincentivize people to work
01:26:21
here so yeah oh I mean if it it could have it could have a really lovely thing
01:26:26
where if you preferentially select people based on their desire to work in an
01:26:33
office that's a really wonderful way to kind of build a nice office culture right yeah just for the moment you can
01:26:39
just sort of cream skim all the people who exactly what a party that would be
01:26:46
those are the people I want to be with anyways I mean so yeah another thing that I found um very
01:26:54
curious was this idea that too much information when making decisions sometimes can sometimes distort reality
01:27:01
and be unhelpful because I mean in most of the Pursuits in most
01:27:06
of the businesses I run the phrases like the more information the better and even when we're trying to
01:27:11
figure things out we're using looking at the analytics we're trying to get as much data as we possibly can to make our decisions now now in blink you kind of
01:27:18
contest that idea yeah that's sometimes less information is much well particularly you know and if these
01:27:25
are unsupported decisions so um if you're going to be using decision making tools analytic you know Advanced
01:27:32
analytics and you are confident in whatever algorithms you're using to kind of then find but for the
01:27:40
for for sort of much more human decision making you know we have all kinds of problems a classic one would be
01:27:48
you know you you want to buy a car and there are six things you're concerned about and
01:27:54
you you fall into the default mode of of weighing all six equally when in fact
01:28:00
you know price is probably five times more important than color of the car you
01:28:05
know but you have you to make the mistake of thinking oh I don't want to buy that one because it's the wrong shade of green when it's you know Far
01:28:12
and Away that I and that parallels was something that I I didn't really
01:28:17
understand until I started this company with I've observed a kind of startup in
01:28:22
operation with this company Pushkin which is um it's really really hard for decision
01:28:29
makers to focus on more than a handful of things you the the idea that focused is
01:28:36
a limiting variable in a lot of crucial decisions it's something that I didn't I
01:28:41
understood it abstractly but now I understand you simply the reason as a
01:28:46
company you want to pick you know two lines of business not five it's not that
01:28:52
two lines make more rational business sense than five but because you can't focus on
01:28:59
five she can't see him being you only have a limited amount of your limit of space in your head right and like so
01:29:05
that idea that we have a limited amount of space in our head Obama President Obama used to every morning he would uh
01:29:11
he would have someone lay out his clothes for him so he didn't have to think about what clothes he was going to wear I know on the theory that if you
01:29:17
spend if you devote space to what you're going to wear that morning you have less space for other stuff he's absolutely
01:29:23
right it's totally true so we clutter this idea that cluttering our
01:29:30
decision-making process with extraneous information in the hopes
01:29:35
that makes us better off in the end is a Fool's game don't clutter like I said if
01:29:40
we're talking about unsupported decision making um if you are you know
01:29:46
IBM sorting through some complex fine or but I mean for every day kind of stuff
01:29:53
that yeah clear away prioritize very be very clear about your
01:29:58
priorities focus on what is crucial that's the way to be a more efficient
01:30:05
um decision maker in in in the kind of in the in these immediate unsupported
01:30:11
domains I really need to do that with my wardrobe upstairs because I've just I've
01:30:16
got [ __ ] hundreds of I wear two of the black t-shirts and there's a hundred in that like in that cupboard but I
01:30:23
could just take the others out and I could I could really I just thinking about my life generally How I Live it's kind of a cluttered clutter experience
01:30:29
which I think my rule is every time I buy an item of clothing I remove an item
01:30:34
of clothing from my closet so I have homeostasis
01:30:40
slightly obscure um topic alcohol do you drink yes because I I read about your
01:30:47
I've seen various sort of opinions you have on alcohol and I assume that would mean you you didn't
01:30:52
why were you laughing yeah these are things I would but which I love to kind of opine
01:30:59
it's half tongue and cheek wait what so yes what's your what's your question the really interesting thing that I was I
01:31:05
was actually reading about just before you came was about how alcohol is such a situational thing and how in for many
01:31:11
people it's a depressant if they are sad alone you can make them more anxious if they're anxious and then at a football
01:31:16
stadium it can make them jubilant and feel connected and happy
01:31:22
what's your opinion on alcohol do you think it's a a bad thing for society do you think it
01:31:27
should be banned no I mean I mean like I said I do drink not to excess but um uh I think of it as
01:31:36
we're stuck with it in a good way I mean uh we I do think we have we're
01:31:42
relatively Cavalier I mean this is a big theme in my book talking to strangers yeah a whole chapter on alcohol and how
01:31:51
a lot of what we talk about is that you know when we talk about a section the culture of the problem of sexual assault
01:31:57
particularly among young people it's really an alcohol problem that's driving it right it's very very few cases of of
01:32:05
you know accepting violent rape if you talk about what we think of as sexual assault um
01:32:11
where one party thinks it's conceptual and the other party does not that kind of which are the problematic cases in
01:32:19
many of with young people someone's always one or both parties are always drunk in those situations it's
01:32:25
very rare for that not to be the case and understanding that oh if we want to tackle really really
01:32:31
serious things like sexual assault we have to get our hands around drinking problems first and to
01:32:37
understand that something weird is happening and drinking has happened in drinking culture in the last generation
01:32:43
in the west um which is that the
01:32:49
the fringes have gotten more Extreme More young people abstain from alcohol
01:32:54
than ever before but at the other end of the Continuum what it means to be a heavy drinker today is very different
01:33:00
from what it meant to be a heavy drinker 50 years ago heavy there is more binge
01:33:05
consumption and um over consumption of alcohol at The Fringe today than it was in the past
01:33:10
among young people and that's really problematic um and trying to understand how to in
01:33:17
reintroduce a culture of um not necessarily sobriety but of of um
01:33:25
uh of balance in of um moderation in alcohol consumption is
01:33:32
one of the kind of I think one of the sensitive Central tasks facing society today why is that the case why is there
01:33:38
more binge binge drinking on one end we don't really have a good understanding of why part of it is I think that
01:33:44
um Norms around uh female drink I talked about in in talking to strangers Norms
01:33:50
around uh female alcoholic consumption have changed very dramatically so
01:33:57
50 years ago if a man and a woman go out on a date there is zero expectation in
01:34:03
fact they would be a it would be considered problematic if the woman drank as much as the man
01:34:11
now there is in many situations particularly in colleges universities there is a an expectation that the woman
01:34:18
will match a man drink for drink and that is so incredibly problematic for a whole
01:34:24
series of physiological reasons not just that women not just by the way that women are tend to be have a lot way a
01:34:30
lot less than men it's not just about weight it is that women process alcohol in a fundamentally different way than
01:34:36
men so two a man and a woman who weigh exactly the same amount can have exactly the same amount to drink and the woman
01:34:42
will be a lot more inebriated at the end of that process that is a physiological fact about men and women so if you have
01:34:50
as a norm that women should match Men drink for drink you are asking for trouble
01:34:55
right and our failure to talk frankly about alcohol abuse among young people I
01:35:01
just think is Criminal it's just like it's just I feel the same thing about
01:35:07
um in some sense about about cannabis where I don't have a problem with people
01:35:13
smoking dope but the idea that we can have THC levels uh in cannabis that are
01:35:20
north of 25 or 30 percent is insane are you kidding me it was a one percent a
01:35:26
generation ago and people are smoking the same amount and it's 25 times as as I mean it's just like nuts like why do
01:35:33
we suspend the laws of biology when it comes to uh to mind altering substances
01:35:40
it's just it drives me nuts yes money is the reason but anyway another time
01:35:45
another time um so we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next
01:35:50
guest um not knowing who they're leaving it for yeah and so it means that all of our guests are kind of speaking to each
01:35:56
other I guess this guest has asked the question
01:36:01
what is one thing you regret not saying to somebody and why didn't you say it
01:36:06
oh wow what is one thing I mean the the obvious
01:36:12
answer everyone's going to give is I didn't say I love you to some loved one so I'll skip the obvious answer and try
01:36:18
and do something less obvious um I think it would be I'm this is not a cop-out
01:36:24
there's a there is a a genre of politeness
01:36:30
that I have neglected and that is people doing everyday things at a lower
01:36:37
the person who being kind Kinder and more appreciative of the person of the
01:36:43
janitor who sweeps the floor in the office you work in or the the woman who cleans your hotel room or
01:36:49
the you know I could make a long list of the nurse who picks up after you know
01:36:56
you in the hospital or that those kinds of people doing thankless
01:37:02
things I have been I believe I would be I regret that I have not over the course
01:37:08
of my life life been more obviously thankful to them
01:37:14
why why that why did that I mean I agree but
01:37:20
what's made you realize that now uh
01:37:26
well my mom was in the hospital she's out now a few weeks ago and uh
01:37:33
I just realized wow like I don't know it's just something about that it's obvious but it's not obvious it's
01:37:39
just like here are people doing you know very Elemental things
01:37:47
caring for people who are you know in that moment helpless not
01:37:52
getting paid an awful lot of money working really really long shifts just went through an experience
01:37:57
where they were risking their lives by going to the hospital for a couple years I mean it's like what
01:38:03
we asked these but we put these people through and the idea that we would take them for
01:38:08
granted seems that I have taken and for granted seems to me
01:38:14
outrageous so maybe that's why welcome thank you so much for being so
01:38:20
generous with your time and thank you for the conversation um you're a very special person very very important thinker for very many
01:38:26
reasons I love the way there's so many observations I've had for instance speaking to one of them is that you really listen which is strange because
01:38:33
often I sit here with podcast guests and it's the whole like listening to speak thing but for some reason when I speak you listen and it sounds like a strange
01:38:40
thing to say but that is really really surprising because you're very very smart and maybe that's your dad maybe
01:38:45
that's the because that's what I saw and it's like that's what you described of your dad was that humility almost
01:38:51
um so that's incredibly surprising but then the way that you think and how considered nuance and your admittance that you could probably be wrong which
01:38:57
you said many many times I think is also incredibly refreshing but uh but it's also why your books are so great and it's why your podcast is so great it's
01:39:03
why I would recommend everybody to go and check out the bowl of Mafia because there's a certain curiosity and wonder
01:39:10
and Beauty to the way that you write and the reason why you're writing that is very rare and I hope to one day emulate
01:39:16
in my own writing so thank you for all of the inspiration and thank you for doing this um your podcast you're in season seven
01:39:22
now season seven of revisionist History yeah and uh that's coming to a close you've got is it two episodes
01:39:28
yeah season yeah and people can get that everywhere so Spotify Apple everywhere yeah
01:39:34
amazing thank you so much Malcolm for your time thank you generous thank you
01:39:39
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[Music] thank you
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