Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Making Fun a Habit and The Pursuit of Joy | Dr. Mike Rucker

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Michael Rucker, an organizational psychologist, behavioral scientist, and charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Mike for about two decades and I’m stoked to introduce him and his work to you. A former corporate executive, Michael found himself burnt out, unfulfilled in his career, and as he states “over-optimized in the pursuit of happiness”. So, he decided to make a change. He quit his job and set out on a journey to rediscover the joy of play and fun – and to help others do the same. This January, Michael will be publishing his first book, The Fun Habit, an action-based approach that helps you critically examine your pursuit of happiness and make adjustments using evidence-based practices to invite more fun and joy in your life.This is a fun conversation, about fun – how we can invite more of it into our lives, and why it is an essential piece to high performance, corporate cultures, and a life well-lived._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that's when you start to see the world through a lens that I have control and I can create moments of joy essentially on demand. And that creates a very optimistic space. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. I trade and training a high-performance psychologist. I'm really excited to welcome Dr. Michael Rucker as our guest for today's episode. Mike is an organizational psychologist, a behavioral scientist, and a charter member of the International Positive

Psychology Association. Now, I've had the pleasure of knowing Mike for about two decades now, and I am so stoked to introduce him and his work to you. He's currently taking a deep dive into the science of fun. In January 2023, he'll be publishing his first book called The Fun Habit, How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. Mike, it is great to have you on. How are you? I'm doing well. This is really exciting for me. I think we're going to get into it, but you are part of my origin story. So to be able to kind of see this book come to fruition and be able to explore some of the topics on your podcast is,

uh, means a lot to me so that we're going to have a good time here. Oh, that's really cool. And, you know, I think as we share our stories that, you know, the origin story will come through, but before we get to that part of it, can we zoom in on a particular phase in your life? It was specifically, I want to go back to 2016. And you were coming off two entrepreneur events, one that had a meaningful exit, which usually is code for like, you did pretty well. And then the second one, it offered you a strong learning curve, which usually is code for like, financially, it didn't quite work the way I wanted.

But then can you, so that's just a little context setting and there's obviously many more details of your life, but can we zoom in into the heart of what you've shared publicly about being one of the most challenging phases of your life? Yeah, absolutely. So I like system design thinking, right? And so up until that point, I had used all of these tools from psychology and the quantified self movement

to really almost over optimize my life. And that's easy to say in the rear view mirror, but at the time, it seemed like I had everything and I was doing quite well. I was really enjoying endurance activities. And that was the way that I made a living. I, you know, was able, I was on the talking circuit. I had a great marriage with two kids and really was pursuing happiness in this very organized, deliberate manner. And then in June 2016, my younger brother passed away quite suddenly from a pulmonary embolism, and it just

knocked me on my butt. And a few months later, they're not correlated at all. I found out that I had advanced osteoarthritis and basically had lost the labrum in my leg. I had just run my fastest half marathon. It was the way that I mitigated my anxiety and was basically told, you know, especially at such a young age, needing the hip replacement that I would never run again. And then this isn't an unfortunate event, but my wife who had just backed up me during my doctoral pursuits, which I did pretty late in life. So she had, you know, essentially carried the family for six years, got a great opportunity in North Carolina, which moved us away from our psychological support network of family and friends in California. And so I was like, but I got this, you know, and so I kept trying to use all these tools that had been

helpful before, to will myself to be happy, right? Because I thought that was possible. And paradoxically, the more that I tried to figure out how to be happy, I was becoming miserable. And I guess long story short, serendipitously, around that same time, there was a lot of research suggesting that I wasn't the only one, that this Western pursuit of happiness was leading not just to despair, but to mental illness. A lot of this research comes out of, or some of the research that I admire the most comes from Dr. Iris Mouse out of Cal Berkeley, but she has colleagues that

have replicated her work. And that is not necessarily people that value happiness, because I think we all should, right? We want people to flourish and wanting that for yourselves and others isn't necessarily what we're talking about here. But it's those that are overly concerned about, you know, why am I not happy or I want to be happy more and are kind of stuck in that introspection. And it becomes this sort of, you know, infinite loop of despair where you see where you want to be out there on the horizon. You identify where you are. And because of that distance, it starts to bleed into your identity that you're unhappy because happiness is way off somewhere else. And so I started to pick that apart.

Luckily, I had access to the research and realized something had gone astray. The way that I was trying to pursue happiness wasn't helpful anymore for me. And if that was the case, if this was actually counterproductive, what could I do differently? And that's when I started going down the rabbit holes of taking a more action-oriented approach to starting to index pleasurable experiences and not necessarily having to identify with the emotion of happiness or joy or delight but really having delightful experiences and once i was able to do that sort of index them over time i found that it pulled me out you know of where i was and it didn't necessarily need a label in fact the more that I tried to label it, the more I tried to, you know, contain it within some space instead of just enjoying myself in the moment.

It became, you know, this self-fulfilling prophecy instead of having to worry about it always in the rear view mirror. So the, okay, there's a lot to pull apart there, but one of the, I think really important pieces is that the industry, both philosophical and the psychological industries, for a long time have talked about the, you know, don't chase pleasure, right? Like, be more attuned to happiness. It's more enduring. It is not fleeting where pleasure is. And usually pleasures are,

there's an external circumstance or event that provides temporary fleeting, but wonderful pleasures. And happiness and joy are deeper. They are more sustainable. They work from the inside out. And so pay more attention to those more stable pursuits. And so you flip that on its head. You're like, I need some pleasure. Right. And so, okay. Which sounds like you to break something apart, flip it around. It's why you're a good entrepreneur. It's why you started to study psychology as you're like, you see things just differently. And so when you did that, my first inclination would be that, okay, so would you, you have a bunch of sex, do a bunch of drugs. Um, like, you know, like that's what most people talk about when they're talking about pleasure, go on thrill rides, go on vacations, like eat a

bunch of chocolate cake. Well, it's funny you say that. Cause I think during that time, your buddy, Steve had just come out with stealing fire. And I was like, wait, is this the path? And I love the book, but it wasn't for me. I was like, no, I'm not going to do these things, especially because I wanted to keep my marriage. But no, I think there's a couple of things to unpack here, right? We can get a little geeky and then move on. And that is that when I talk about fun, I'm really just looking at anything that's on the positive side of valence, right? We now know that a lot of things that we do to pass on. Let's start, let's just, sorry to interrupt you, but explain valence. It's a very technical term that needs a little bit.

I think we don't need to nuance it, right? It essentially means if you're on the positive side, you're enjoying your activity. And if you're on the positive side, you're enjoying your activity. And if you're on the negative side, you're not enjoying it. And so it's not necessarily tied to emotion. You know, emotion has those components, but you can kind of look at it as just a spectrum, right? And then, you know, arousal tends to be what's unique with regards to, you know, our preferences. But for the most part, valence is universal. We either know that we're enjoying our time or we're not. And so for me, it was, okay, how do I get out of this malaise and still use the agency and autonomy that I have to be able to create instances where

I'm enjoying the time that I'm spending rather than being in rumination. Okay, this is this is really good, because I want to pull a couple words apart again. Sure. Malaise. Just explain what you mean by malaise. I mean, I was kind of trapped in this negative thinking. And you know, I don't have control over my emotions. And later on, I unpacked that I didn't create the space I needed to mourn my brother's death, and really get over the fact that I need to accept the fact that I'm not going to run, right. So I kind of always geek out on systems. But I think one of the problematic parts for me up until that point was I was always solution oriented, right? And I was never able to sort of accept

the problem as it was, because up until that point, I'd always been, you know, there's a solution to this particular thing, whatever it was, making my wife happy, making my kids happy, getting more money, running a little faster, you know, especially in the internet age, there's always a little piece of information that's going to get you one step further. But I, and what's, what, what is wrong with that? That there are certain instances that were reality is that is reality. I'm not supposed to run again yet. I kept trying to figure out what it was. I condensed the story of that hip replacement, but I went through two labrum repairs that were kind of ill-advised because I was like, well, maybe there's a chance if I get a great surgeon, I can solve this and I'll be able to, because the Boston Marathon every seven years

hits on my birthday. And so that was a big bucket list item. And I refused to cross it off, you know, because I was like, no, this is going to happen. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time.

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free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day.

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and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters, and that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. I wanted to spend a little time on this is because it's like toxic optimization where we talk about the importance of having a vision. We talk about the importance of purpose. We talk about the importance of the pursuit of happiness, which you're squaring

up with. That's what this conversation is really about. And then we do talk about lean in, front foot of mass, have a sense of the person you want to become, backfill all of the psychological skills and principles and practices and organize your life to be your very best, which is a very, very much about the, I don't know, the biohacking life hacking type of stuff, which makes me, I don't want to be disparaging, but it just makes me cringe and you you're saying right now is like i was toxically working to optimize every part of my life and i was missing something that was really important and what i was missing was the ability to accept that some things are just real and i think because i had survivor's bias, right? And I

think a lot of us do. We're always kind of looking at the person that was able to make a left. And then we sort of conveniently have blinders for the other 90%. And so to answer your question discreetly, I think the subtle shift was that before everything was cause and effect because I had had a pretty good track record with that. Right. Like, OK, I didn't get the result that I wanted. So I'm going to figure out what are, you know, using coaching methodology, you know, like the grow model, like what are my options? And that had always been helpful. I could always kind of see the branch in the system and then say, I want this piece. But in a spectacular way in 2016, that failed me, right? And so I don't know if it was Annie Duke. I don't even think her book was out yet. But just sort of serendipitously, I started now thinking in probabilities. So what's the

probability that I'm going to run the Boston Marathon with the fact that I don't have a leg that functions anymore? It's zero, right? So at that point, you now need to move on. And so that became the subtle shift, because I think those moments where I got stuck, like, no, but there is a way because there always has been, right? With both happiness and both wanting to resolve this issue with being able to compete in endurance sport, I wanted to solve it. And that was probably the biggest crux to the problem, right? Was that I wasn't able to accept what was real.

And so this is where like this spiritually infused and psychologically backed word that I'm about to talk about becomes challenging, which is acceptance. And there's a word that we use intermittently sometimes, which is surrender. And that word usually doesn't play in alpha competitive environments. And acceptance sometimes doesn't as well because there's an unreasonableness. And I think I'm unreasonable. And many, like if you knew what you do, you know where I come from, that like it's unreasonable that the way I experience my life, the way I do do because it's not the initial track that i was placed on and so listen there's no small violence here by any means but my point is that there's an

unreasonableness there's a grit there is a um a disdain to surrender and so you're saying i needed to square up with those i needed to accept. And it felt maybe like a surrendering to the mission, to the purpose, to the goals, to the ambitions. And I needed to like think differently about the unreasonable nature of optimizing every facet of my life. One, as I'm saying it out loud, Mike, it sounds exhausting, the way you're doing it, that the way I just described it to myself even sounds exhausting. But in our circles, that's exactly what everyone does. Right. And so I was lucky to have some guideposts along the way. Right. I think a colleague that we both have, Gloria Park, you know, was an associate that part of the

International Positive Psych Association and kind of watched her journey from being a competitive ice skater to losing that ability and how she reconnected to joy. And part of that was surrender. So she was a good mentor for me. And then understanding that a lot of what we are trying to do, especially in this place of success, is to regain autonomy over our domain, not necessarily conquer. And so I think that subtle shift too allowed me to sort of redistribute the rules. Because if you're trying to conquer, which sometimes we're led in that direction, but that's not necessarily what we desire. At least that's what in my experience, when you talk to folks, it's really that they want to gain more of that autonomy, but that's not necessarily what we desire. At least that's what, in my experience, when you talk to folks, it's really that they want to gain more of that autonomy, but that

they're sort of led in the wrong direction. Well, to do that, you need to have an unsatiated appetite. But there's sort of this divergent path, right, where you don't need to necessarily be a martyr. You can be a trickster. I'm stealing that from Liz Gilbert, but there's some truth in that, right? You know, in the book, I use this metaphor of Ultima, but there's all sorts of metaphors where there is this path, right? There's this game plan that's given to you. And if you, if you execute it flawlessly, you're going to get to the, to the promised land. Yet there's always alternative paths that we don't have access to unless we kind of step back and go, wow, I don't necessarily need to play by the rules or what's being prescribed. Or the only path to this is not necessarily meritocracy.

It can be that I'm going to deliberately design my life, set the goalposts so it doesn't move, and then figure out how to get there while accepting my limitations along the way. Okay, so there's your model. That's the model that you're working from at this point. And what's new in that model is the accepting, did you say of limitations? So I think one is limitation. So I would say that it's more predictability than cause and effect, right? Like what is the predictability of success in this? And so in the instances where it's not like, you know, there's some challenges with my kids, right? And if I know there's a deficit, I accept that we're not going to

change certain things, right? But we're going to figure out how to work within that acceptance. And then it's deciding what is it that actually I feel connected to. So rather than just chasing a version of success that's been fed to me, figuring out, okay, what is it that's really going to make me feel alive and play with that so that my connection to something isn't fed to me externally, whether that's through marketing or social media. Okay. That sounds like a hedonistic approach. Sure. And so are you, are you co-signing like, yeah, a hedonistic approach, meaning like, let me just pursue the things that

bring me joy or the things that bring me pleasure no so i'm saying that that allows you to be a better version of yourself what what more more specifically what allows you to be a better version so when you're finding ways to feel pleasurable about how you interact in the world, that allows you to then spread that feeling, you know, through social contagion to the others that you love. And so for me, I think there is some sharp teeth to it, right? Like you could certainly be hedonistic and not have a sense of wanting others to thrive and be an awful person, but that's not part of my DNA. But what I have found is that people that are devoid of these types of good times within their life, whether that be a mom, whether that be a leader within an organization, that ends up to be a top-down approach where everyone within that social circle starts to

feel awful. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Yeah. And so how do you stitch this thinking to passion? And how do stitch that uh either passion this concept with passion or this concept with fun so i think ultimately passion is something that you do feel connected to so i would you know i lean back on escapism there. And so there's healthy escapism and then there's escapism for the sense of coping, right? And so, well, and that's not, I mean, that's a component of passion, but I think passion is that thing that pulls you towards something.

And so as long as you're engaging in that activity in a pleasurable way, again, back to that positive valence, then I think passion can be an interesting component to sort of guide you into the things that you really feel connected to. But, you know, just like any of these constructs that we're playing with from a linguistic standpoint, the way that I view passion, that certainly could steer you in the wrong direction, right? And outside of this interview that we're having, we've talked about that, right? I think critically, I've asked you about the athletes that you coach, because one

of the things that's finite in anyone's life is time, right? So when you allow your passion to sort of drive you and crowd out other things, then potentially you have to have sacrifices. And in my own life, my family means a ton to me. And so I don't sacrifice for the sake of, you know, passions. I figure out a way to sort of, you know, blend all of those together. And that means that there are trade-offs with regards to some of the things that I want to do. A little fun thought is, have you heard of the long body?

I have not, no. Yeah, so I can't source it, but it's a Native term, Native American term, I think, we think. And maybe somebody can help me out here. And so the long body is that we're all connected. And if you think about the full team, soccer team, football team, whatever, business team, and I'm not talking about a group, but I'm talking about a team. There's a shared purpose and a shared mission. And we are collectively straining daily to see if that thing can materialize, which means that it's a different level of partnering when you're a teammate.

And the idea is born from this idea of tribe and tribal focus, that we are one long body. So a team is one long body. If somebody is hurt, we're all hurt at some level. If somebody is having a great experience, then we all draft off of that. If the collective is stuck in a position of pain from not knowing how to deal with a loss or stuck on the narrative about how great we are from a win and it clouds our ability to live in the present moment because we're thinking about the past or thinking about something that's not quite accurate, that that long body experience is a poetic way of talking

about how the collective, how strong the collective is and how connected we all are. And so it feels poetic, but it's born out of tribal roots. And I wish, I hope that somebody can hear this and go, oh, I know exactly where that comes from because I haven't been able to source it. But you opened the door for me to nuance something that I think I want to do because it's important. That is, with regard to hedonism as a rule of ethics, like I want to distinct that from hedonic tone, which is essentially just another geekier word to say valence, right? Like for me, it's optimizing on hedonic tone so that

we do feel good. And the next step is we feel good connected to something other than ourselves, right? And so just feeling pleasure for pleasure's sake and it's completely extrinsic is not what we're going for here it's really what is that connection with the person that you're with when you're doing the thing or what is your connection to the sport that you're doing like you know in the book we look at studies of dancers and how they just talk about you know some of it's connected to flow but it's more than that it's this love that they have for the thing they do right or it's you know for introverts it could be that connection to spirituality or a connection to nature but in almost all instances once you sort of evolve to the fact that i do have some more control over the domain of time than i thought

your fun generally connects you to, I don't know if I want to call it a long body, but it connects you to something bigger than yourself. And that's really where you, you know, derive that pleasure is that connection. Okay, so let's pull this right down into into the fun part of this, which is why fun over happiness. So for me, I did, you know, in the first version of the book, kind of villainize subjective wellbeing. And it goes back to, I don't know how many people are going to actually watch the video, but when you talked about biohacking grimacing a little bit, and I certainly, you know, lived in that tribe and I think I've now reeled back from it too. And so it comes from that over quantification that we have of subjective wellbeing, which is what we generally talk about

when we're talking about happiness and flourishing within the context of positive psychology, right? I mean, you've seen some of my spreadsheets. I was like filling those out daily and trying to figure out what are the correlations that make me more happy. And then realizing from folks smarter than myself, like Jordan Etkin out of Duke here in North Carolina, and a host of others that that type of introspection is what generally leads you out of happiness, right? As soon as you have to go, okay, so let me think about happiness for a while, you know, unless it's sort of reminiscing and savoring and fond memories and not really, you know, deconstructing them per se, that those are the things that sort of break happiness apart. So to answer your question, I meant happiness is

really an evaluation, right, of your life and where fun allows you to sort of engage in the moment and so that's the distinction that i make that whenever we're having fun we're allowing ourselves to be joyful in the moment and it's by design where happiness by definition is an evaluation and almost always happens you know as an introspective exercise. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits,

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You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com. And use the code findingmastery20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. And then, so let's operationalize this just a little bit further, which is fun can take many forms. And so when you start to put some handles on fun, how do you help people think about it? Cause like give it concrete. It's fun for me to play the guitar. It's also fun for me to be in a conversation

with a loved one. It's fun for me to try to solve something that is difficult to solve. It's also fun to go surfing. So when you think about fun, how are you operationalizing it? So I would say all of those are right. And so where my work is really meant to be helpful is folks that have over optimized their lives for productivity. Because I think especially in the sandwich generation,

you know, folks that have I don't I don't know what that is. So it's a term for folks that have both young children and aging parents, you know, it's kind of caught in that sandwich, but it really can apply to, you know, entrepreneurs that are just grinding it out. Anyone that's succumbed to hustle porn or whatever, were they you say did you say hustle porn yeah i did so what is that what is hustle porn you know all of those things on instagram that say you know if you're not 10x in your day you know and you haven't pushed everything off to the side then you're not a real achiever you must have seen some of this stuff. Oh, I'm grinning, quietly grinning. Because the hustle hard mentality, I just, I don't know.

I have a particular bias here because in the environments that I spend time with, there's the rare, rare 0.001 percentage of people that don't work hard. And so people are working hard and it's connected to something else. You know, for the ones that play the long game that are truly in this commitment to mastery, there's peak performance is overrated. High performance is slightly overrated. Sustaining high performance is really quite rare and interesting, but it's not about hard work. There is something else. And that's what it sounds like you're pointing to. Hard work, yes, you have to work hard, but it's not the sacrifice. No, you're saying there's more to it than just sacrificing everything else in your life for the achievement.

That's right for a majority of the people, because I know some of the, you know, I know the folks that you've worked with. And I think that there are going to be a small subset of people where that's their life, right? I mean, they've been given a gift. And, but the problem is that through marketing and other measures, again, you know, the psychological concept of survivor bias is that we're fed those stories and we're not fed the other 99 percent that have tried that path and failed, which if we were right, we would understand that, again, sort of that acceptance and that we talked about earlier would apply, right? Like this isn't, there's only one person that's able to be on the top of this mountain and it's not going to be me. So maybe there's some better opportunities for me to spend this very finite resource that we have. And so this term that's emerged in recent research is called time poverty, right?

And especially here in the United States, we know that for a majority of folks, that's a true phenomenon that affluence up to a certain point, we know, I think the latest measure is $125,000, excuse me, yeah, $125,000 with regards to personal salary. After that, you don't really get happier, the more affluent you are, right. But what we do know is that people that are time poor, tend to be some of the most unhappy people. Because again, it goes back to social determination theory, right, where once we begin to lose that autonomy, and it happens slowly over time, right, it's this sort of compound effect. So you don't understand, you know, death by a thousand cups that it's happening to

you. And everyone's experience is going to be different, you know, with regards to what they feel a sense of duty to, but we just allow our lives to sort of habituate. And then the spaces in between, we try to pacify negative valence through things that don't aren't really fun, but we kind of are tricked to believe they're fun. Right. You know, oftentimes social media gets brought up, but I sort of feel like everyone knows, you know, that as a as a potential harmful thing. But it can be anything that you habituate. Friendships of convenience where you're like,

you know, you're just kind of doing your thing on a Sunday, but you don't know why you're doing that anymore. Or habitually watching TV where you look back at that. And so this might seem foreign to folks like you and I, right? Where we're not really just plopping down on the TV and doing that because we live deliberate lives. But for so many people, when they do a simple time audit, which is really easy to do because there's only 168 hours in the week, they're like, holy cow, I really haven't taken anything off the table for myself. And so generally, what I advocate is just looking for one or two hours a week that you can recapture. Because most of us,

when we do a time audit like that, we'll find that there's two to three hours out of the day that are sort of just where we're mindlessly in neutral, just kind of doing things because that's how we've habituated our behavior. I think that's a central thesis that you're making right here, right? And, or the actionable insight, which is time on it. And when you do that in an honest way, you'll find that there is time for you to not optimize, but you're saying time to have some fun. Absolutely. Okay. And then if I, if I i'm following correctly one of the benefits of fun is that it helps it thrusts you into the present so you're increasing the time spent in a pleasurable

way in the present moment there's a whole cascade of physiological neurochemical social psychological benefits that come from fun. And you're saying, listen, we got to get back. We got to get back into this not selfish way of living, not purely hedonic way of living, but to be able to just make a commitment to have more fun because of all the benefits that it does provide and pay less attention, not zero attention, but less attention to optimization. Absolutely. Am I getting? Okay.

Yeah. And you've also talked about toxic positivity. And so toxic positivity, when I read your insights there, I was like, oh, I want to bring this up because I talk about the value of training optimism for a whole host of reasons. High optimistic people outperform, outsell, if you will, versus low optimistic and pessimistic people. And so it's like a 7x and 3x amongst those three groups. So I talk about a bunch in the first pushback I get, oh, it's not just about performance either.

It's, you know, it's a whole. And by the way, I agree with you wholeheartedly. So I'm interested in where this is going, but I never villainize optimism. In fact, I would say that optimism is a byproduct of going through the exercises that we've discussed this far. I mean, once you understand that you can take ownership of at least part of your day, that's when you start to see the world through a lens that I have control and I can I can create moments of joy essentially on demand. And that creates a very optimistic space. Yeah. So you're using the time audit to get to autonomy. So autonomy is a fancy phrase for like, I choose. I have the power within me to choose how I spend my time, how I spend my money, how I spend whatever it is that I'm spending.

The reframe I often say is have to do from get to do, because most of us live through this lens of we have to do things. I'm a parent. I have to, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Like as simple as I can't take dance lessons on a Wednesday. We don't do things on school nights, right? Like as simple as that sounds, you don't know how many people kind of gate themselves from things that would light them up. That would be simple to do because of weird social norms. So I have to do the dishes on a school night versus I get to that. That to me, I get it. It's a wordplay. It's a framing. But I don't, I personally don't love washing the dishes unless I can get into the frame. Like I have to actually work to get into that psychological

frame, which is like, it can be a trigger for flow state. It can be an act of kindness that I'm doing for somebody else. But I don't, I rarely feel like I get to do the dishes. Yeah. But I think you just put it against the context. It's sort of not really the way that I would apply it. I think some of the research where I make this argument actually comes from your backyard, Cassie Holmes out of UCLA. Her and Colin West asked a bunch of people

just to pretend that their vacation,, excuse me, that their weekend was a vacation. That was the only prime, no other instructions. And all of a sudden, everyone hit Monday. A lot of their routines didn't change. They just realized like, wow, okay, this is sort of a break instead of an extension of this sense of duty I have Monday through Friday to employer. Now, I have to attend to my children and, you know, do things around domestic duties, et cetera. Instead, they realized like, wow, okay, this is just a break and I can spend this time however I want, but I'm choosing to do it the way I want. So in that study, what I would posit is that you really didn't like to do the dishes. Maybe you would figure out either how

to time box that a little better or, you know, at dishes is a tough one. You painted me in a corner a little bit, but like, you know, common tasks. One of the things I challenge people is, you know, it just seems like a luxury to outsource my laundry. And like, generally people don't realize how inexpensive it is and that they look at what their time is really worth, you know, compared to, you know, sort of that exchange of value, like, then it illuminates really quickly, like, holy cow, I should outsource a lot of the things that I don't like to do, like doing dishes, right? So again, that's a weird example, because outsourcing doing the dishes would be interesting, but, you know,

I'll give you an example that's pretty close. So we had the same sort of dilemma because my wife and I hated bathing our children, which is a fairly intimate act. Right. And so, but it just was weird. Like the more we hated it, the more they pushed against us to the point where we were both indifferent. Right. We would just wait until the very last minute and figure out who wanted to fall on the sword and just go through this awful process. And we weren't, at that particular time, we didn't have enough money to get a full-time nanny.

And so it was sort of weird, this idea of bringing someone into the house just to bathe our kids. And then we were like, who cares? I was already kind of building a lot of the material for the And then we were like, who cares? You know, I was already kind of building a lot of the material for the book. I'm like, this is exactly what I talk about. Let's absolutely bring in someone just to bathe the kids. And so we did that. And this is a great example of a time exchange, right? And so her name is Caitlin. She still helps us sometimes. Came in, bathed our kids. She's an amazing, fun person. So they

all had a great time. They made a mess that was cleaned up by the time we got back. And instead of my wife and I having to do this habitual activity that we hated, we went off and had dinner. And so we ended up, you know, it was supposed to be just one or two times a week. We ended up doing it three times a week. And we had three dinners together where we connected again, you know, because we hadn't been spending a lot of time together, especially pre-dissertation. And yeah, just, you know, had a lot of joy. The kids had more joy. We had more joy when we came back, we were better parents. So, you know, there's examples of bound where you can kind of challenge like, wait, I can't do this. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. You know, you know what I like about that experience that you just shared

is that most people would have a really hard time saying that, you know, I'm going to outsource this intimate, cherished kind of experience that I'm supposed to really enjoy to be a good parent, you know, bathing or cleaning or whatever it might be. And I'm supposed to really enjoy to be a good parent, you know, bathing or cleaning or whatever it might be. And I'm going to outsource that. There's like this social norm that says, you shouldn't say this out loud. You definitely shouldn't do this. You know, like, and you're, but this is one of the things that I really like how you work, which is you're like, ah, let me be honest. And he turns to people around you. Well, you know, like, what do you think? And so there's a refreshing. I think I would have a hard time getting to the truth in the way that you did about this.

Because I would have that gnawing, I don't want to say guilt or shame. I don't know what it is right now. But like, no, I'm not supposed to outsource this part of my life. So I really appreciate that you just bring that up and just, you know, it's a refreshing way to think about it. Well, and I can only have sympathy, obviously, because one of the things I've learned fairly intimately is you never want to pretend that you understand kind of a group's perspective if you're not from that group. But the messages from the book really seem to be

resonating with working moms. And so what I've garnered from sort of thematic analysis of their feedback is that they operate from a sense of duty that's sort of foreign to the domestic role that males have in the US, right? Like, I just can't do that. And so I find it that that's really fun when you can kind of illuminate, like, you know, just using a simple coaching technique, like five whys, right? Like, okay, why can't you do that? Okay, you know, and pick it apart. And like, wait, I can do that. And again, it goes back to, let's just play here. The five wise. Yeah. Explain that it's a, it's a really nice little methodology. Well, you just keep kind of asking why until you get to sort of this asinine kernel of like, wait, there's absolutely no real reason I can't do X.

Right. And so it's, it's, it's a fun thing. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part

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them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay, so you brought up fun. Okay, one more time. It's a fun thing. So I want to break this apart one more level before we come back up to more of some unified takeaways, which is for me, intensity is really fun. My son and I, he's 14, we like to do physical activities together,

whether it's some sort of fitness training or sports or whatever. And if we're doing some fitness training or some conditioning, I get really intense. And he looks over and he wants to kind of screw around. He's 14. He wants to just do whatever he wants to do. He wants to have fun in a different way. So our ideas of fun are clashing in a activity that we both really want to do together. So can you coach me a little bit here? Man, you're giving me some sticky challenges. Because the research that I've fallen back on there is transactional analysis, right? This idea that we have three roles that we generally play, either adult, parent, or child. And I would say in that instance, you've devised the game where you're not really trying to be a child. You're trying to instruct your son and so i i would argue that

that's something that you should still do but that you actualize it as not necessarily an hour of fun that you're meant to have with your kid um there you go well just to be just to be clear to thin slice it one more time is like we we're both doing the fitness exercise. I'm not coaching fitness or like I'm, I'm in it with him. So I'm in the trenches with him, you know, in the suck, if you will. And we're both sweating and he wants to pull out of it, tell a joke, kind of knock me off balance, whatever. I don't know, whatever. And I'm like, come on, man, like focus. And I'm trying to, and I've got this meta awareness.'m like what am i doing right now like why am i so intense here and so but i i still think it worked what you said i still think it works right no yeah i think you know for parenting in the context of fun there's sort of two rules that i

see one is if you're trying to have fun with your child you really need to let the child lead right and so in that instance what's fun for him is not fun for you so maybe there's another opportunity right and then the second is it's not fun if you're not both having fun so again it doesn't sound like you are and so kind of both rules are getting broken there um one of the anecdotes that i talk about in the book i did did the same thing. I took my daughter to the Rise Festival. And so for folks that don't know what that is, it's a lantern release out in Nevada. And there's this movie called Tangle that's about one of the Disney princesses that has a lantern release. So I thought, you know, I was going to be dad of the year by taking my daughter there. But it was also when I was trying to process Brian's death, my brother. And so another component of this is you write, you know, your thoughts down on the lantern and release them. And it's supposed to be this big quasi spiritual event, right? And that was my frame. Like I was going to go there and Burning Man out and Sloan was going to be an amazing part of it and get to see this crazy event. What happened was because my daughter is like the biggest extrovert in the world is she just thought the whole thing was amazing. Right. There's this, you know, techno music going and everyone kind of liked her childlike antics. So here I am trying to zen out and really just immense myself in awe and wonder

and sloan's being a kid and being an amazing kid making everyone laugh having her own fun the whole thing was ruined for me because i was like what the heck like this is supposed to be this big spiritual event i would have you know with you know my friends are into that stuff. So I brought the wrong claiming, you know, and I mean, it blew up in my face in a spectacular fashion. I think that's kind of what you're, what's here, you know, like, you guys need to co create what's going to be fun for both of you. And clearly, there's some disconnect in this particular activity. Yeah, I love that. What's fun for me is at the end of an intense process, whatever it is, and kind of take that deep breath together and look at each other like that was awesome. You know, so it's fun to strain. And I don't know if that was always the case for me, but it certainly is now. So I love the calibration that you're offering. Like, you know, the playmate idea for fun is really cool and agreeing that we're going to play the same game. Well, and another, like, just because this is, you know, some of the limited original research

that I did put in the book where it can be helpful for you, especially if there's a linear approach to what you're doing, when you're able to get in that childlike state, that's really when we go nonlinear. Right. And so I went to all these children's museums to kind of try and understand how adults play. And so children and adults as a general, you know, sort of observation, will go into experiential play places, and the kids run in because they have no heuristics, again, sorry, big word, but you know, essentially, personal personal algorithms or, you know, things that get in the way of being able to be creative and to, you know, just kind of think. And so they'll go in and create their own rules, create their own, you know, interesting things with all these play blocks.

And adults just sit in the corners paralyzed because they're waiting for instruction, right? We don't do things unless we like, you know, and so in those instances, if they don't have permission to play, like the whole experience is lost on them. And so that's a good metaphor for what often happens a lot, right? Where if we feel like there have to be bumper rails on what we do, we can't really explore the territory. I love this saying that, you know, comes from science that the map is not the territory. Right. And where I think fun is really, you know, something that brings a lot to the table is that we really get to explore the territory because the adults so often we're kind of stuck in the map right like i just want to get from here to there and awe and wonder lives in the outside i love it i i i say every year at the end of the year like the science around resolutions are wanting like they don't they just don't hold up for a whole handful of reasons. And I don't know if we want to go down that rabbit hole now.

But so at the end of every year, I do something that I call the year of. And so it's just like more of an intention setting. It's a focus. It's a bit of a North Star for me. What do I want this year to be? And the last couple of years, it's been the year of play. And I didn't know you're writing this book. And then when I saw that, you know, when you asked me to take a look at it, I was like, oh my God, like, this is like, I really want to read your

book. But quickly I learned that play and fun, they're cousins, but not the same thing. And so can you differentiate just a little bit between play and fun? So to put more handles on, you know, your call to action that you're challenging us to think about, which is having more fun. Yeah, I think, you know, for play, it's again, it's a construct that's defined by different people. So, you know, generally, most of us fall back on the grandfather, Stuart Brown's definition. And it's something that doesn't necessarily have a purpose where we're engaged in sort of, you know, playful acts, you know, where we have this, you know, again, it's sort of playground, it generally has a beginning and an end,

but it's not confound by rules. Where fun, again, simply put, is anything that brings us pleasure, you know, where we're, when we're in the activity, we're enjoying what we're doing. And so, you know, play certainly is fun for most people, but fun can be anything. It can be that connection you have to whatever hobby lights you up. It can be an intimate experience with a friend or a partner. It can be that connection to your spirituality because like Meng, who was on, where he's just connecting to something

that's bigger than himself. Or like my brother who didn't necessarily find his fun around other people, but when he was on the hiking trail, that connection to nature was something that he just found really pleasurable and wanted to stay in that moment. So that's the nuance. Again, fun is really simple.

If we were to talk to business leaders or business owners, if somebody is running a company or running a unit and they hear us talking, they're like, you know, that's cool for home, but we shouldn't be having fun at work. How do you respond to that? So that's interesting because, you know, my background as an academic is in workplace wellness. I don't necessarily know. There's certainly a lot of benefits for engaging in a fun workplace. So I can definitely make an argument. I mean, we know that from the science of engagement, right? It's that when people are really enjoying what they're doing, they tend to be more productive.

Again, they tend to think in more nonlinear factions, so they get more creative. But at the end of the day, we're getting paid to do something, right? And so I think for leaders in a work environment, it's twofold. One, to what degree can you give autonomy to your individual employee? There was a great example. I don't know if you saw what was trending on LinkedIn today,

but essentially it was a French employee that sued his company because he was being told what to do after work, what they believed was fun. And he didn't buy into their fun culture, which was essentially drinking. And he won the case, right? So this idea of forced fun we now know is toxic, right? It's essentially a component of toxic positivity. But when employees are allowed to have some autonomy over their domain, so they can control, you know, how they engage in their work, so they can create it to

be as pleasurable as they want. They have free time over their breaks so that they can engage in pleasurable activities when they control their time. So their lunch hour, they're really allowed to do what they want to do. These things all bring vitality back into the workplace. And so the second component is making sure that you don't burn the folks out. Because when people don't have enough energy because they're so burnt out about what they do within their work environment and there's no empathy about that, they come home and they crash. And ultimately, that becomes a downward spiral. And so there's a host of research that backs this up that, you know, and for me, I studied the most in medicine, right? You know, for doctors that are burnt out, we know that they lose empathy. And once you lose empathy, that correlates highly with patient outcomes. And so any person that is a hospital executive listening

to this, you know, that hands down, you saw that research because you had access to my dissertation. We just know that you're now taking your hospital, right? And so open this, open this up, because your, your dissertation and research here was, is meaningful. Yeah. I think again, creating an environment where people can thrive. So not necessarily how do we make work fun through forced fun, because that never is fun.

So there's the paradox, right? Like if you try and organize something that's not inclusive, that's not co-created with your employees, nine times out of 10, it's going to backfire. Sometimes it's going to be amazing, right? Because you got lucky and everyone enjoyed it. And they're like, wow, that would. But for the most part, forced fun tends to be counterproductive. So to create a fun environment, one, you want to give employees the autonomy to be able to decide what's fun for them so that they can self-organize around how to make work more enjoyable. But second, you also want to make sure that you're creating the co-mingle around activities that they self-select in, right? Whatever that is, you know, rock climbing, surfing or whatever. You know, we see that in different environments.

But it's really creating fertile ground to have fun rather than prescribing it. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change. That's when people pay attention. Now, that's why I've been loving iRestore Elite. It's a hands-free red light therapy device that helps stimulate dormant

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They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa, L E E S a.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. When you think about the science and your book is grounded in applied science, which I love, I mean, really is a beautifully sourced narrative of applied science. What are some of the research findings or some of the investigations that have still stuck with you now that you're like, this is really good. I just can't wait for people to read about this bit of the research. What are some of the things that are still sticking with you? Yeah, I think the big ones I've already mentioned, you know, Iris Mouse, obviously,

this idea that being overly concerned about happiness, just that, that reframe real quick, of, you know, getting out of that and realizing that you can kind of read, instead of thinking about things, you can just really take action and the action is simple. Again, time poverty, the fact that almost all of us can find one or two hours out of our day. And then when you do, you create an upward spiral instead of a downward spiral. You start to realize like, wow, I really can't control how I'm doing things. And sometimes it's just a simple reframe, right? Again, I gave the example of bathing, but it could be more simple. Like, you know what, you know, for you, actually, this is a good example, because

this is grounded in research. So maybe it's not necessarily you trying to co-create that fun, if you can't change, you know, this activity that you have with your son, but relishing in the fact that he's having a good time and laughing and trying to tell you a joke. And, you know, so just kind of finding those subtle ways of making something where, you know, right now I'm not having fun to what is needed within the environment, the people or the way I'm engaging in that activity to just make it a little bit more pleasurable and realize that you really do have that control.

Right. And then I think this idea that, that happiness is really kind of grounded in adapting, comparing, and that when we don't move the goalposts, when we're more deliberate, again, you know, going to the subtitle, when we kind of understand like, this is what I enjoy. And so I want more of it in my life. And I have the ability to create that, that that's where true happiness lives, because then you're just living it rather than trying to discover where it lives in the rear view mirror. What about having fun at work when somebody is laughing and giggling and having a good time and carrying on? It can send, unfortunately, a message that they're not doing the work. They're not serious enough.

They're not buckled down. Like, do you have a way in for leaders and or people that are responsible for shaping culture to invite more fun? Yeah. So you start with psychological safety. I've been looking at this because obviously it's one of the first questions asked. And I think one of my colleagues, Jeff Harry, put it this way, like,

you know, when you're looking for sort of fun group bonding experiences, you know, one of the common ones is an escape room. And if you hated all your colleagues, now you're essentially put in a room where you can't escape them. Right. Like, you know, and that's really because we're so pedestrian about those choices. And so you got to start with psychological safety, right?

You've got to do the work, you know, you got, people need to feel comfortable with each other and know what their limits are so that you can begin to integrate, you know, what are the jokes that within this group dynamic are allowed to be told, right? And once you figure out what those bumper rails are, then you can start to play with it. And then you need buy-in from the group. I mean, that's just kind of common org psych knowledge, right? Is that what are the things that within this, you know, the culture of this collective are going to be okay and what are not? And so, you know, you're talking about interesting dynamics where, you know, there's going to

be a gender bias and things of that, right? But in the common workplace, there are a lot of things that need to be considered. And so it's complex. It's not an easy feat, but it can be done with a little bit of kind of forward thinking and making sure that it starts with empathy and psychological safety. What is the, when you just kind of push back a little bit and you think about if people knew what you knew, what would the workplace look like? What would the family's experience look like that's different than it is now? So we would definitely cap work, right? I think one of the most problematic things looking at the history, you know, essentially, again, the initial manuscript was a lit review because that's how I know how to write.

So I really dug into like, where does this problem originate? And I'm at the roots are the Puritan work ethic, right? But what happened was that we moved from algorithmic work where we created things, where we knew what we needed to do, right? I mean, there was a limited amount of time to do it. We knew what the numbers were and we could kind of optimize against that. And because the numbers were discreet, that worked well, right? Until it didn't. Because then we evolved into this knowledge work and we don't know what the finished product is a lot of the time.

So to answer your question, it's really figuring out what that is. And there are mechanisms to do that, like OKRs and things of that nature, but we're not really good at doing it. And so figuring out when the day ends so that you protect the leisure time, because we're one of the worst countries. I think we're tied with Thailand at the bottom with regards to access to leisure. And Fortune 500 companies are wise to this like so much so that people that don't engage in leisure are productive and these companies are forcing people to essentially take their vacation or incentivizing them in different ways because they know that that makes better workers it's not you know just an altruistic motive. It's because it allows those workers to function better. So to answer your question, it would be, how do we guard leisure time so that people can

actually enjoy their lives? And that's not just because I want people to have more fun. It's because we're better versions of ourselves when we're able to do that. And so I would go back to, you asked me, what are the easy entryways into this, just play with one or two hours. You know, time audits are exhausting, right? It's not necessarily like, even when I turned in the manuscript, they're like, a time audit isn't fun. Let's figure out how to reframe this. I think we call it curiosity, right? Because it's not fun. Like, work with RDs. I know you introduced me to Chris, like RDs hate doing that too, because they know no one wants to write down the food they eat for a week. It's not a fun thing. But I think if you just look in the rear view mirror

of your 168 hours, if you don't feel like doing a full time on it, you can figure out that one or two hours, like, yeah, let's play with this. Let's just figure out something totally different to do something that lights me up, and figure out whether that's a different environment, a different activity, or different people, but like play with that, so that you can understand, wow, I do have a lot more authority over this domain than I thought my life doesn't need to be habituated. I think what you're doing is pretty radical. And, you know, I, I'm thinking there's a secondary conversation I'm having with myself. I'm having the one with you. And then I'm also having with myself as like, did I help create the right space here for us to really illuminate and hold up this radical way of living, period,

that you're suggesting or challenging me and others to do. And I hope so. Do you feel like this is pretty radical or is it not feel radical to you? I play on both sides. Like, I think, you know, it's always interesting. It's the mastery dilemma, right? I've never been the best teacher because I see it. And so, you know, when I give somebody a simple suggestion, and they're like, holy cow, I can do that. I'm like, yeah, you know, for me, it's like, you know, you, you shared the anecdote about, you know, for me, it's like, you know, you you shared the anecdote about, you know, with my daughter, like, how is that received? And I think, you know, I have enough self-confidence that I don't really care how it's received. But ultimately, just playing with those variables, right, is will get you to see the light and then just big things start to happen. And it's, it becomes contagious. That's another thing that's just really fun to watch people just grab onto one

or two ideas that are in the book, right? Because, you know, there's, there's a lot there and a lot of it's really dense, right? It's like, like, what does curiosity mean? What are the benefits of awe and wonder? Like these things that sort of become byproducts of, you know, these initial little dips into of having fun. Right. And like, so it becomes a snowball and it's where do you start? Right. And so, yeah, is it a radical idea? Sure. Can I frame it as radical to just reclaim one hour of your life. Like that's difficult for me. That's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. How do you know if you're doing well in having fun? How do you personally know if you're having enough fun or the right amount of fun or if fun is taking up enough of the space that you want it to take up?

So I've even sounds like it almost sounds limiting the way I said it, but like, how are you measuring this? No, it is limited. I've kind of thrown out the measuring stick through advice of a lot of folks. And mainly because, again, another thing that we're not prescribing here is not a breath of emotion. Right. And so there are going to be times where it's appropriate to not have fun, right? There's always going to be a sense of duty for certain things. There's always going to be challenges. So for me, it's, you know, kind of looking back and that, but not necessarily in a way that's quantitative. It's like, can I do this a little bit better? Or if something is not fun, I do keep a journal, you know, and so through the act that Fred Bryant, are you familiar with his work, the book, but kind of trying to savor my memories in a way where it's, again, another fun activity.

It's not like excruciating, but using that as a guide, like, oh, but, you know, I remember that I wouldn't ever want to do this again, or this person, every time I'm with them is not really that fun. And so you start to become selective, but it's all predictive. It's not necessarily, you know, through architecture, where you're kind of, you know, where the process isn't fun. And, you know, so I don't know if that makes sense, but. Yeah. Well, I think the way you answer it was like, yeah, Mike, what do you think about measuring fun? Like that's. Because it all started.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where it becomes problematic. I was just asked that on the radio a couple of days ago. Like, so, you know, because everyone does want to quantify it. And again, it's one of those interesting things. I think it's when people try to understand totally right. And the power of now, like you can read that book like five times. What is this guy trying to say? Right. And it's sort of the same thing with fun. Like, again, you kind of just realize that you have the ability to connect to whatever you want and you have the agency and autonomy to be deliberate about that, at least with a proportion of the time that you spend in any given week. And just so many of us have lost that insight that, wait a second, I do, you know, because we've habituated things.

You know, a lot of it has to do with just the tools of social norm. We live through our calendar. And so all of those things become unmutable. Right. And so, again, this goes back to the science. Another kind of low level technique is if you're finding it really difficult, put it on your calendar. Some of the most successful executives that are also living fun filled lives, fun filled lives. That's what they do because they have to. So you're really curious, Mike. And if you could sit with one master. With us or not, and ask them one question, who's the master and what's the question?

That's a great question. You know, I think it'd be Alan Watts just because so many people are comparing me to him now. And there's so many questions. His stuff is so rich. And so I think it would be, what is your interpretation of my work? Like I've, you know, kind of put this frame, I certainly villainize meritocracy, like you have, you know, what am I getting right? And what am I getting wrong? You know, he says that life is supposed to be a joyful dance, right? And that's what I'm trying to architect for myself. You know, where are the potential landmines in my ideology? It'd be really interesting to get his opinion on my work. Where do you see yourself in another 20 years? Speaking of curiosity,

right now, in this moment, I'm having fun looking at a green field. In 20 years, I hope to be retired and, you know, enjoying my grandkids but uh right now I've purposefully not tried to architect that because you know how deliberate I have been about that architecture I'm just really enjoying the unknown it's really interesting space for me that's cool man that's cool Michael appreciate you thank you for sharing thank you for all the deep work that went into reminding us how important is to to play but more importantly to have fun in life so i just want to say thanks i meant likewise like that oh you're a debt of gratitude i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you so thank you michael thank you brother all right thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery

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