Good Life Project - Seth Godin | Art & Work

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Over the past few decades, Seth Godin has made quite a ruckus in nearly every domain he's explored, from business to marketing to education, innovation and beyond, in no small part by encouraging us all to join him in purposeful ruckus-making, too. He's launched a number of successful companies, taught millions of people and left his mark on our creative culture. And, he’s written, just a bit. In fact he writes daily at Seths.blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the world. He's the founder of the altMBA and The Akimbo Workshops, online seminars that have transformed the work of thousands of people. Seth is the author of 19 international bestsellers translated into more than 35 languages, including Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing, and now his latest New York Times bestseller, The Practice, an insightful and provocative look at how to get more out of the work we do by giving more to it, to the world and to ourselves. Or, as he describes it, you’ll learn to dance with your fear, take the risks worth taking, and embrace the empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy. And that’s what we explore in today’s conversation.You can find Seth Godin at:Website : https://www.sethgodin.com/Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/sethgodinCheck out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, so my guest today is an old friend, Seth Godin. He's one of the few people that I've met beyond mega celebs in the entertainment world, who is often simply known by his first name, Madonna, Cher, and yes, Seth. Over the past few decades, he's made quite a ruckus in nearly every domain he's touched from business to marketing to education, innovation, and human potential and beyond, in no small part by encouraging us all to join him in purposeful ruckus making too. And he's launched a number of successful companies, taught millions of people, and left his mark on our creative culture. And he's written just a bit. In fact, he writes daily at Seth's.blog, which is one of the most popular

blogs in the world. He's the founder of the Alt-MBA, the Akimbo Workshops, online seminars that have transformed the work of thousands of people. And Seth is also the author of 19 international bestsellers, translated into more than 35 languages, including Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, This Is Marketing, and now his latest, The Practice, which is this really insightful and provocative look at how to get more out of the work that we do by giving more to it, to the world and to ourselves. Or as he describes it, you'll learn to dance with your fear, take the risks worth taking and embrace empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy. And that is what we explore in today's conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

You know, it's interesting. So reading your book, in the background, I had playing the, weird to say, new album from Keith Jarrett, Budapest. Yeah. So for our listeners, Keith Jarrett is this stunning jazz and classical pianist. Started playing, I think, when he was three. Played with Miles Davis. Played with so many amazing people. And then began to do these completely improvised solo concerts, the most famous of which was recording a poem, where he would just sit down at the piano having no idea what he was going to play. And then for three, four hours sometimes, just play. And I have him in the background as I'm reading your book on the practice. And in my mind, this thing that you have shared in

various ways over the years, what makes someone an artist is they're doing something that might not work. And it just, it all seemed to fit. It was like he was the manifest expression of everything that you were talking about. I have so many things to say about Keith Jarrett and I hope he feels better. He's had a health cycle. But if I could require one of 10 albums

for people to listen to when reading the book, that would be one of them. I heard Keith play for the first time in the 70s one of 10 albums for people to listen to when reading the book. That would be one of them. I heard Keith play for the first time in the 70s. And at the end of the concert, I was in college. They called him back on stage for an encore. And he came on stage and he played like eight bars of rolling blues that were thrilling. And then he stopped and he turned and he said, I don't do encores. And the reason I don't do encores is because when I have delivered to you what I made,

it's finished. And I'm not playing a game with you to say I'm holding something back. And that stuck with me. And then I saw him the most recently, a couple of years ago in Carnegie Hall. And when you get to Carnegie Hall, there are giant, giant vats of Ricola cough drops just for his concerts. And the reason is because he, several years ago, realized that when the crowd starts coughing, it's not because suddenly they have a scratch in their throat. It's because he's done something that made them a little uncomfortable, a little slower, a little more introspective. And he said, if you're not willing to work at least as hard as I am to engage with this music, I should leave.

And I've been there when he's walked out of a concert. And what happens when you get to Carnegie Hall is there's this tension in the air because everyone doesn't want you to blow it. They're like, make sure you get some cough drops. And the tension is a key part of what I'm talking about in the practice, which is we're not trying to fit in all the way. We're trying to create just enough friction that something can change. I have been told that he will at times, even when it's really getting annoying, stop what he's doing and have everybody say like three, two, one, collective cough, go. Get out of your system and now let's get back to work.

Exactly. This idea of creative tension, I think, is really fascinating to me. Because it also, it's not tension that exists within the creator. It's a co-creative tension. Correct. Talk to me more about this. Well, if you want to shoot a rubber band across the room, you have to pull it backwards first. That change is what art does. And I know this is something that is controversial.

Some people think art is decoration. It's not. Art is a human act of making things better. And making something better means changing things. But change always has tension that goes with it in between you and the person you're creating for. The tension of it might not work. The tension of I'm not sure I want to go there. The tension of I might not be qualified. The tension of I might cough. All of those pieces heighten our senses and is part of the deal. And that's why, you know, for my whole life, since my mom taught me when I was a dozen paintings on a visit to a contemporary art museum because if it's going to work it's going to work because it changed you and you just get too wiped out after you've had your way of seeing the world change just a few times but if you can use oil paint or musical notes or a keyboard to get someone to change, that's pretty extraordinary. And it creates

tension. And then if you do it well, it creates a benefit. Yeah. I mean, implicit in what you just said, you said the tension exists between you and the person for whom you're creating. So what if the person you're creating for is you? And my curiosity is that still art the way you define it? You know, I think of, I've been incredibly blessed to sit down with Milton Glaser, you know, who passed away, I guess earlier this year, but had a stunning career, 91 years. And I remember him telling me, he said, I realized when I was a kid that I loved to make things. And then I realized that if I actually made things that move people, that could be a career. But it seemed like two different impulses. Talk to me about this.

I will. And then I'll tell you my Milton Glaser story because I'm not really speaking ill of the dead. So if you make it for yourself, it's a hobby. And I love hobbies and you should have hobbies. And one of the things that you have opened the doors for so many people around is this inner work of mindfulness, which is too important to be called a hobby. But it is a deal we make with ourselves. And the question you have to ask yourself if you're going to make any creative work is, do I want to be on the hook? Because to be on the hook means I made a promise and I will keep it whether or not I feel like it. And so I feel like if you're doing your hobby, part of the privilege of a hobby is you can stop anytime you want because you didn't promise someone else. But are you doing the important work of mindfulness, of working on yourself?

It feels like there is a promise made between your subconscious and your conscious, between the inside and the other voice. And one of the things that someone like Milton Glaser was so good at was persuading himself that he was doing the work he wanted to do in the moment when he was also pleasing the client. And Milton Glaser didn't get to be Milton Glaser without pleasing the client. But pleasing the client doesn't mean, what do you want? I will do that. If your motto is, you can pick anyone and wear anyone, then you're not much of an artist. Part of what it means to please a client when you have good clients like Glazer did is to tell them a story that they will accept your inner insight, even if it's not what they expected. And my Milton Glaser story is I'd been a brand manager. I'd done packaging. I was the client. And in 1986, I moved to New York City and I wanted to learn to be a creator, not just the client. So I signed up for Milton's class at the School of Visual Arts

and it was a portfolio class. And so he had to approve you to get in. And I show up with all the packaging I'd built in the millions of dollars worth of stuff. And he said, yeah, but you didn't do this with your own two hands. I said, I know I'm going to bring a different point of view. And here's the deal. If you don't think I'm adding any value, I'll leave. And that was a gutsy thing for a 27 year old to say. And so he said, fine. And at the end of the third class, he kept me after class and he said, you should leave now. And he kicked me out of his class, but he didn't kick me out of his class because I didn't have something to say. He kicked me out of his class because I did have something to say because I knew the punchline of the joke. And he was trying to help these designers on their own figure out the punchline.

And because I had been in the room, I was revealing the punchline too soon. And I am glad he asked me to leave because I didn't want to hurt the experience of these other creators. But basically what Glazer taught in that class was how to see. Not how to do what you felt like, not how to do your craft, but how to see what was actually there. And that was something he was great at and most people struggle with. Yeah. I would say the vast majority of people alive spend their entire lives not even realizing that they don't know how to see, let alone actually struggling to see. It's not even a process they step into. You know, what I struggle with in your framing of art versus hobby, I agree with so much. And

at the same time, I think about famous filmmakers who take the one for me, one for the studio model. I think about a friend who, recent friend through actually our producer, Danny Canetop, who is this wonderful guy who has a workshop in LA and he has been building some of the most stunning jazz guitars, acoustic guitars for, since he was 15. And whether he has a guitar sold, whether he ever intends to sell it or not, it's not why he does it. He does it because being in the workshop, the process of creation, regardless of how it lands, regardless of how it interacts with someone else or changes them or whether he gets paid for it, That's a nice thing for him. It's wonderful. But fundamentally, I don't think that's why he does it. And does that mean he's not making art? I'm looking at your face and saying that's not the

right assumption. No, I'm not sure. I'm doing a poor job of differentiating. So let me try again. He wasn't born to make jazz guitars. Jazz guitars were here before he was born, but if they hadn't been, he wouldn't have invented them. Jazz guitar is a genre that he has chosen because it lights up certain parts of him. And in order to do it as a professional, he has to make a product, a guitar that meets the standards that other people have as well. He can't say, well, this one can't play a B note because I didn't feel like adding the note, right? That as soon as you show up as a professional, whether you're a filmmaker or a guitar maker, you're saying, I accept the genre. I will change the genre. I will listen to the unfiltered, nonverbal voice inside of me about what great looks like.

But they're also really reverse engineering based on domain knowledge. They have a knowledge of what has come before. They know how to cut dialogue so that it rhymes with the other films that people have seen. So we make up this incredibly complicated story that has side effects like writer's block. But in fact, we are thoughtful beings who have domain knowledge and genre knowledge. And if we're going to ship the work, we can't be a diva. Not completely. We have to be willing to say, and it's also for you. The clarification helps. Then when we think about the word shipping, shipping is then the way you're using it when it leaves the context of just you. It's sort of like shipping is the moment that you have created something that now leaves your own private domain and interact with the world in some way, shape, or form. Right. So we have a friend, haven't seen her in a while, who was a well-known corporate architect.

And once she had achieved a level of success, quit to become a furniture maker. And no one has ever seen the furniture she's been making for 20 years. And I applaud that, right? Because the minute she starts showing the furniture, it's not just for her. But she is not a professional furniture maker because no one has ever seen it. So when you share that, what immediately came into my mind is Hilma Afklint. That was the next thing I was going to say. Right. All right. We're on the same wavelength here. That show was extraordinary and it, and it was heartbreaking. Right. Right. Because you hear you have somebody who is, you know,

was one of the most stunning artists, capital A artist. And, you know, you go back to Kandinsky and all the, her contemporaries, and yet she hid her work until 20 years after she was dead. It was in her will. I believe, was the story. It wasn't allowed to be shown until then. Yeah. I mean, her poor nephew, who didn't ask for it, had to deal with that, confronting bankruptcy. And it only ended up in the world because the landlord was going to burn down the building it was all stored in because the rent hadn't been paid, et cetera. Helma would have changed the world of art for all of us if she had shown her work.

And the fact that she didn't was ultimately a selfish act. She did not hide it on our behalf. She hid it on her behalf. And for me, art, and again, I got to clarify, it's not just painting, but art is a generous act. We are bringing change to others because we think we can turn on a light and make things better. And to hold back is selfish. And reminding ourselves that we can do this generous work is so important. I mean, this is what podcast number 300 for you, something like that. Five, six, seven. I don't even know. And some of the episodes you've said, I don't know if this is the best one I ever made,

but someone heard it and you changed their life because that is what art does. And we ship the work for the people it's intended for. And then we are surprised by what happens after that. But it is essentially this generous act of saying, here, I made this. Yeah. I mean, I think there's an interesting distinction to be made also between withholding work because for selfish reasons versus fear-based reasons. Or if we talk about, you know, like Helmuth-Clint, this story goes, you know, Rudolf Steiner shows up and says, no, not good. And that triggers something in her mind that says,

well, that just means society isn't ready for it yet, but they will be. So is that selfish at that point? Or is she actually saying, this is so important and it will matters so much that I want it to land at a time when people are ready to receive it? That could be completely correct. And I might be wrong about what her motivation was. My understanding was that because of the misogyny at the time, because of issues of class and

spirituality, she had made the decision that this wasn't for other people um but you're right the temporal element of this is also important like when am i making this for maybe i'm not making this for the person down the street i'm making it for that person's children into the future that's still generous what i'm trying to get at is the story we tell ourselves and i think the story we tell ourselves. And I think the story of a hobby, and I have tons of hobbies, I will never sell a canoe paddle I make because the minute I sell one, my entire narrative of how I am, why I make them will change. And we're entitled to do things for ourselves. But if we're going to show up as a professional and on the internet, that means shipping our work with one click, one button press. We have a different narrative, which is we can't command the infinite audience to love what we did.

We can't command people to get the joke. We have to find the smallest viable audience, a group of people who we can serve and make it for them. And most of the people who I wrote this book for feel stuck because what they really want is a guarantee. They want someone to tell them that if they put their heart and soul into it, everyone will like it. Yeah. We want that in every part of our lives, not just our work, our relationships, our health. It's the constant, where is the person who's just going to say, it's all going to be okay. And then I can breathe, which brings it back to earlier, you brought up this notion of mindfulness, which to me has been the practice of getting comfortable with the fact that you will never know. And almost to the point where I don't know

if you feel this, but if I'm doing work and I don't ever feel that edge, it's now a signal to me that I'm not doing the right work. Yeah. Yeah. No, you nailed it. When we think about this. So Tony on Trump and Rinpoche's great quote, everyone is falling, falling, falling. But the good news is there's nothing to hold on to. And when I feel like I have something to hold on to, the whole thing's empty for me, because then it's just rote. Then I'm just putting truffles into the candy box over and over and over again. And I'm super fortunate that I don't have to do that for a living. A lot of people do. But if you're going to do art, you need that feeling of falling.

Yeah, I so agree. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. You know, something I've been thinking about, and we're really talking about taking actions and making decisions in the face of the unknown now, which is easy when the stakes are low. But when the stakes, you know, like we love reading books about people who are in like absolute fear-based dilemmas because we don't have stakes.

But when we're the protagonist in that story, we freak out and melt down. step into or even create in the name of making art versus the creation or the uncertainty that so many of us are moving through right now. Do you have that same sense? Oh, for sure. I mean, I used to love to go on roller coasters. And then finally I hit the age right when I went on the cyclone in Staten Island, where I was like, if I was in a bus or a cab that was like, yes, I would get out. Why am I paying money for it? But people pay money for a roller coaster because it is this controlled sort of disaster. And current events combined with the media made us feel like it was an uncontrolled sort of disaster, an existential one,

not just one that upset our desire for the status quo, but one that really undermined our sense of justice and fairness and health and possibility and opportunity and connection and culture all at once. And not only that, but everyone was feeling it at exactly the same time. So you couldn't even go somewhere else where people weren't aware of your particular trauma because everyone had it. And compounding it, which doesn't get mentioned very often, is the world has always been about the baby boomers. And the people who are between 58 and 72 are now entering a final chapter of the way they think about the world. And so instead of it, the world's going to get better of 1968, it's all over of 2020. And I think when we compound all of those things, it's the hardest cycle I can ever recall of what it means

to truly be mindful to chop the wood and carry the water today. Because if you're fortunate enough to not be ill today, at least you can try to make something better. But it's been a real slog. Yeah. I think so many people I know have been feeling it. And people who I know who are really comfortable, they have cultivated the skill of stepping into that space to do their work. They're struggling this year because they've cultivated the skill. And it goes to that word that you use, which is control. So there's this really, it's the razor's edge between the uncertainty that you invite where you are deliberately losing control, but you kind of know that you have a ripcord versus the uncertainty that is not invited. You have no ripcord. You have no idea if and when

you can ever step out of it. And when you compound those, even people who have trained in the skill of alchemizing fear into possibility, they just become stifled and paralyzed in a way that I've struggled with this year, and I've seen so many others struggle with. Yeah. And we can't make it go away, but we can dance with it. And it doesn't mean we're going to dance the best dance we ever had, but it's better than the alternative. And, you know, for me, as soon as I can get down to just connecting with one person or five people, just focusing on how do I move that from here to here?

It makes it easier for me than if I have to think about, yeah, but what are we doing about carbon? And what's life going to be like in 20 years? Because the further out we try to make our circle in time and space, the harder it is to not want control. And the internet brought the whole world to everybody. And it might make sense to just have a part of the world instead of all of it. Yeah. It's about locus of control, right? It's sort of, we don't feel like we have locus control in the context of the world, but in this one teeny little domain. So it's almost like you can, you keep asking the question,

you know, like what is the smallest point for which I feel like I have some sense of control, but also still enough groundlessness creation is possible. And then maybe you keep testing and pushing the boundary of that out until you find the edge. Yeah. And, you know, I'm really glad I had my daily blogging habit long before this hit, because there's no way it would have been easy for me to start it in April or May. But there's going to be a blog for me tomorrow. I don't have to decide that. I don't have to negotiate that.

It's just part of the practice. And the problem with day trading with the media is it will destroy your practice, especially if you don't have a firm one, because there's always going to be something breaking that they want you to drop everything and embrace instead. Even if you have no control, they're trying to remind you you have no control, but not in a productive way. Yeah. In a fear-based way. So you will continue to consume and consume and consume.

It's interesting, your decision 20 years ago to say, I will wake up today and before I lay my head on the pillow, something will be written. And like you said, however many hundreds of episodes we've done, however many thousands of, you know, episodes we've done, however many thousands of things you've written, some of it's great. Some of it's average and some of it, I'm not speaking for you, but I'm speaking for me. I'm really embarrassed. Low average, but you don't know. Right. I did a post last week. It took less than four minutes and I heard from more people than anyone in the whole month. I don't know, the harder I work, the less it works. I don't know. Yeah, I learned that a long time ago also. The notion of deciding these things, it was fascinating years ago when I was really focusing a lot more on uncertainty, which interestingly enough has been swirling back. I was looking at the patterns of

so many different creators across art, science, business, life, health, and found this really fascinating pattern, which was that there was a stunning amount of ritualization and habit creation in every domain of life, except that one place where they felt charged to do their art. And I got curious about why. What's your lens on that? Well, most of us have felt decision fatigue, particularly, let's say, back in the day when we could be tourists.

Four hours into being a tourist, you're exhausted. Just like whatever's on the menu we'll take it because you've made so many decisions that day and so decision fatigue is real and uh by eliminating whole swaths of decision from my life i make it so that i'm thirsty for a decision i want to make a decision and the only place I'm allowed to make a decision is the 26 letters of the keyboard. Right. And so, yeah, I have intentionally boxed in, you know, in the last six months, you know, I don't know if it works for you, but Google Maps sends you an update once a month of all the places you've been, right? And it's gone from you've been to 18 countries to you went to Yonkers.

And so the geography has gotten smaller. The clothes I wear have gotten smaller. I come to this room every day by myself. But as a result, in order to satisfy my need to make a decision, I got to do it with my keyboard. And again, the industrialized mercantile marketing culture doesn't want us to do that. It wants us to always be one click shopping and trying this and trying that. But if you do that too much, you won't have any reserve

for the hard work of creation. Yeah. Which is terrifying because billions of dollars and brilliant minds are going into trying to figure out how to make us do that too much. All day, every day. And you wonder, I mean, of course it has personal impact. I often wonder what the societal impact is on that, on the repression of contribution. Yeah. Well, I mean, you just have to spend some time with the industrial education establishment to see how we do it from an early age. One of the things that's happened is the parents in my town realized something that took me a while to figure out, which is that education

has nothing to do with learning. They're watching what their kids are doing at home and they're just butts in seats who are sitting there trying to take dictation and then regurgitate it. That's not learning. And it was hidden and now it's not. And the reason we built it into education is we need willing consumers and we need compliant factory workers. But we don't actually want more of either of those in our world. We want kids who are comfortable being bored and who will solve their boredom problem by creating. And we want people who will engage with one another with respect and dignity and create a better next thing. But we have pretty

much weaponized the school, so we won't do any of those things. Yeah, and eliminated boredom. I mean, like the state that is most fruitful for forcing people sometimes angstfully and with huge resistance to say, well, this really sucks. I need to do something that feels a little bit different is almost entirely eliminated from our daily experience these days. Yeah, now we ran this workshop free for people whose senior year had been completely disrupted.

And it was five days, got to apply to get in. And 10, 20% of the people who applied got in. It was 14 hours a day for five days, no tests, no exams, no certificate. 99% of the people who started finished it and they uniformly said it changed their life. What did we do? We just made a place. We said, in this place, we're going to give you the shortest possible prompt. Please come back tomorrow morning at 10 with group work. And these flowers just bloomed because finally someone was out of the way of these high performing people. And they weren't wondering, is this going to be on the test?

Because there was no test. What would happen if we multiplied that times the 100 million kids who are in school or whatever the number is, and just let them do student-directed, self-paced projects. I mean, it would be extraordinary, but it would require boredom and trust. And we don't want to trust them. Yeah. We'd have a lot of artists wandering around. I remember when my daughter was in fourth grade, as a kid, she loved reading. I absolutely loved reading. She would just sit down and lose herself for hours. Then in fourth grade, she came home one day and said, teacher said, we need to read for 35 minutes a day. That was it.

It was over. Her love affair with reading was done. It was so heartbreaking to watch that process unfold and to try and figure out how do we counter this? Because she's also somebody who's, she has learned from the system. She likes to perform and she's very, so when you're trying to do something like that, so the notion of you creating this five-day workshop

and saying, let's disrupt it, what's spinning my head is, okay, so now you have permission to do that in theory because we're in a circumstance that nobody's ever been in. How do we take the outcome of that experience and then talk to the local parents and the local administrators and local teachers and say, why doesn't this happen again next year and next year and next year and next year? And why don't we scale this into every school? How did we end up with the school we ended up with? It took 100 years, right? How did we end up with the highway system? It took 100 years. We want, with progressive good ideals, to fix

everything right away. What we really need to do is plant the seeds and build the ratchet so that it eventually occurs. So I'll narrate this journey on my blog and almost no one will get the joke, except 50 people will. And those 50 people will model it for 500 people. And long after I'm gone, maybe that seed will grow into something. And that's the only way change ever happens. It happens peer to peer and it grows over time. And so people like your daughter are going to remember what it was like being in your house. And maybe she'll put together a group of five people when she's in high school or wherever she is now. And then five more people. The network effect is real.

It is truly the most powerful thing in our culture right now. But we are not patient gardeners. Yeah. So agree with that. And you also use the word modeling, which whether you're a parent, whether you're a leader or safe argument, they're the same thing. You're out there in the world where anybody is looking to you for a nod on how to behave, what actions to take or not take words don't matter they look at how we we live you know if if you take on an ethos as a grown-up that says you know like i will regularly disrupt myself for no other reason than to model for other people that that is an acceptable way of being you wonder what the ripple effect of that would be yeah Yeah. No, we become what we do,

not the other way around. It seems like the program you created also, the five-day program, was that in any way derivative of what you created with the Alt-MBA for full-blown adults, but in a much shorter timeframe? Well, so the Alt-MBA, which still is around 5,000 graduates later, adults need more structure in the sense of what it's Tuesday. What are we doing right now? And they have full-time jobs. So it's three hours a day for a month and it has 14 projects and a lot of curriculum elements to it here. What I was trying to do and they're running it again soon, is to say what you really just need is a safe platform,

and we're just going to have a meta conversation about working on your work, learning how to learn. There isn't going to be anything for you to take notes about. Where the whole thing started was this. About seven years ago, a friend asked me to give a talk to her 30 summer associates at Allen & Company. And Allen & Company is sort of the pinnacle of late capitalism. It's where big deals are done. So if you're a summer intern at Allen & Company, it's because you have parents who know somebody, pretty much. And so there's all these people in blue suits, men and women, and you go into this room and they're all sitting around this long table.

And they're really good at taking notes. They're really good at knowing what's on the test. And I said to them, okay, you're five weeks into the summer. Warren Buffett comes in and Elon Musk is with him. And the two of them say, great news. We have a really important, fun, powerful project. And we're putting you, this person right here, in charge of it. You're going to have two months to work on it with an unlimited budget. You can pick any three people in this room to join you for this project. That's the hypothetical.

I said, all right, so take out a piece of paper and write down the names of the three people in this room out of the 30 that you want on your team. And there's all this uncomfortableness in the room, right? And I said, don't worry, you won't have to tell me what you write down. So after a little bit of cajoling, everyone writes down all three names. And I turned to the room and I said, how many of you think more than one person put your name down? And I said, because you all started from the same place five weeks ago. So the second question is, if you had the summer to do over again, what would you have done to be one of the people that folks would have put on their list? And there was this really fascinating silence in the room, because I think what they understood for the first time is that is in fact how the future

is going to work for them and for just about anybody else. Who wants you on a list? Are they going to put you on a list because you did well in school? Are they going to put you on the list because you are generous and honest and thoughtful and open to possibility and all the other things that are skills pretending to be attitudes? And they're all a choice. So what would happen if just for today, you acted like somebody who wanted to be on everyone's list and then repeated that? And I can't remember ever once hearing that in organized school. Yeah. I mean, such a powerful demonstration of changing the question by which we measure the way we invest our energy and our efforts, our heart and our souls, which profoundly changes the way

like you wake up every day and decide what to say yes or no to. But yeah, I like that question framed in that way or even remotely similar. Never dropped into my experience of, and it's also fundamentally, you know, it kind of circles back to what we were talking about earlier. It brings generosity and creativity back into the context. Yeah. Yeah. I got all choked up the first time I did that exercise because it just came out of the blue for me.

But watching the expression on these kids, super privileged, right? Why hadn't I been told? Why hadn't anyone ever explained to me that meritocracy is a scam and that what we're actually in this for is generosity and connection? Whereas the way you get dignity is by offering dignity, but we don't even talk about dignity to people, whether they're kids or adults. And dignity is in a crisis right now. It's in really short supply. Yeah. Do you think that's true of all generations? I feel like boomers, Gen Xers, and to a certain extent, even millennials, and I hate using wide swaths like that, but just for

ease of conversation. Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like Gen Z, I feel like there's a generation coming up right now that is different, qualitatively different. Yeah. I think that one of the things that's overlooked when we talk about a post capitalist mindset is what happens to communities when they start running out of food? What happens when there isn't enough to sustain us? Because based on every bad science fiction movie I've ever seen, suddenly someone quickly shifts to, well, how do I get mine? And what we did in the last 25 years was just add all these layers of frosting on top of the cake of life.

And people got obsessed with getting more frosting. And frosting is ultimately unsatisfying, right? And we forgot to focus on where are we actually creating value, not how do we get a prize at the mall today? And so I'm worried that as more and more generations come along that don't make a thing, we have a challenge because we need to make a thing. We need to make a thing of value for the people in our community because it's that value that we're able to exchange for the things that we want with or without marketers telling us what we want. Yeah. So great. I also wonder whether there's the other side of the pendulum. I'm curious, if you do swing the pendulum all the way to the side of generosity and expression, or expression in service of generosity be more generalized, that tips from generosity to indulgence. Because I feel like I have experienced that as a consumer. It isn't fascinating. I want

to say last year. I don't know if you saw this. Derek DelGaudio did this show in New York in a black box theater called In and Of Itself. Blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. Seth is holding up cards, which are sort of an inside joke from the show, but this was an illusionist slash mentalist slash... I have no idea how you describe him. And I'm watching and my mind is being blown. And at some point during the performance, I also start to think, he's enjoying this more than I am. Certainly when he was doing the memory part, which lasted too long, he was enjoying it more than we were. But the other thing is, back to the museum thing, there was so much mind shifting going on. The show had to be too long because the fatigue set in. The thing about generosity that's worth examining is generous does not mean free. If it's free, it might not even be generous at all.

Generous has to it a component of emotional labor. So my car had to go in for service and the three or four people who I interacted with, I mean, it was under warranty. I didn't pay anything for it, but it was in a completely ungenerous series of interactions because not once did someone say, sorry, this is taking longer than we said it would. Sorry can mean one of two things. If I say, sorry, your cat died, that doesn't mean I killed your cat. It just means I see you and I'm extending myself. So I'm sorry that this is taking longer. It doesn't mean I wasted all the time in the shop. It just means I see you. That's a generous thing to say. Whereas if you're busy giving away free CDs, if you join AOL, that's not generous, right? That's just a shift in our

transactional posture. And what I am hoping will happen as we start to realize what a dead end we put ourselves in into this consumption race is that we'll do the generous work of extending ourself even if we don't get a prize because that takes emotional energy and that emotional energy pays dividends for other people yeah um so good the apple watch series 10 is here It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Part of what I think we're talking about here also is there's a time element in all of this. And it's shown up in a lot of what we talked about from the intensity of the five days to the speed with which you put that together, because you knew its urgency. There was a moment, there was a window that would close. There's a really interesting dance I feel like we all do when we're trying to put our art into the world between patience and impatience. There's a tension there because you need both, but in different ways and at different times. Dr. Andy Roark at different times. Yeah, that's totally profound. We hurried too much in the last few decades,

but in other ways, we didn't hurry enough. And when we are trying to overcome our fear, it is tempting to stall because then we are putting off, like Hilma Oplimp did, the day when other people are going to see our work. We don't want the next Rudolf Steiner to say, it's not that good. In those moments, we need to hurry because the engagement with a marketplace opens the door to possibility. On the other hand, if we are hurrying simply to get out of the space of tension and get it over with, that is a mistake. One of the things that maybe one day I will be able to do a five or 10 day silent retreat, but it feels to me like the last four days are the key, no matter how long it is. Because you could say, well, I'm already done.

But it's the last four days where you've stayed longer than it seems reasonable. And then opportunity arises. So agree. And I'm in the exact same place of not having yet done that retreat. And the same exact thought. But it's interesting else, even in the context of my, I have a daily morning meditation practice and I have for a decade now, it's 25 minutes, not longer, not shorter. And I cannot tell you how many times I hit minute 23 and I'm like, oh, this is where it begins. But I couldn't just start at minute 23 and I'm like, oh, this is where it begins. Right? But it couldn't just get, it couldn't just start at minute 23 and do two minutes.

I need those 23 minutes to get there. So it's this really weird dynamic. And if it was a 45 minute sit, it wouldn't start till minute 41. So You're busted either way. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really interesting to sort of look at the

different timeframes and lenses and understand that there's a time to be patient and a time to be impatient. Zooming the lens out a little bit also, we're talking a lot about cultivating change in lens, a change in metric, a commitment to a daily practice of thinking about how you're going to bring yourself and your work to the world. Part of that is a behavior change. Part of it is a decision change. But part of it, and I know you talk about this, is also it's an identity-based change. Tell me more. Well, a friend decided to become a runner. And the way you become a runner is really simple. You run. And if you run every day for 30 days, even if it's just to the mailbox and back, you're a runner. That changes your

identity, what you did. And podcasters are podcasters because they have a podcast and because they keep doing it. So I regularly run into people who say, I wasn't born to be creative. I wasn't born able to write. I don't have a talent for this or a talent for that. And I'm like, well, show me your bad work. Show me your practice of showing up with things that don't work. And they can't. Because what they're really saying is, I'm afraid of my bad writing.

I'm afraid of being seen. So I won't even have a practice. And the magic of the culture we live in right now is you don't have to do it for the whole world. We're not going to put you on the Superbowl. You can do it for 10 people. You can do it under another name, but simply do it because once you do it, your identity changes. And if you want to be a leader, the only way I know how to do it is to lead. Yeah. It's a mindset shift, but also I've been fascinated by the research around passion and where they essentially say it is an impulse to do something in a particular way. There's also research that creates a split that says passion can be expressed harmoniously or obsessively. And the harmonious expression of a passion is one that

is constructive and that allows you to honor all the other things in your life that are good. The obsessive takes you into that dark space where you are doing it and you may be doing it really well at a high level, but you're probably destroying everything else that you say you care about along the way. And I wonder sometimes as people step into this realm of building their practice and saying yes and developing their habits, that a counter to that, and maybe it's individual, but I've seen this a lot, is also to set up effective circuit breakers that allow you to understand when this practice is actually becoming unhealthy. Yeah. Oh, that's so profound. can we acknowledge that human beings have been around for a hundred thousand years and for only 1,000 of those years, did anyone have a chance of making a living doing the kind of stuff we're

talking about? Right. And so it's a modern problem and it's amplified by applause and money. So if applause and money are causing you to become a diva, self-hating, self-destructive, selfish, narcissistic, then you have an inputs problem because we're not entitled to any of those things. And if those things are getting in the way of your wellbeing, you need to self-intervene or have someone else intervene to change what you are measuring. And in 2020 North America, we tend to measure what's easy to measure, not what's important. So just because a company calls someone a friend doesn't mean they're your friend. And just because they call a symbol a like doesn't mean someone actually likes you or the opposite. And getting hooked on those cycles is a real problem. So in my case, I have no idea how many people listen to my podcast. I have no idea how many people read my blog. I don't have

any feedback loop on a daily blog post. And I used to. I used to get comments. I used to have social media shares. And they were not just ruining the work. They were ruining me. So turn them off. It only takes a lot of effort to turn them off once and then they're off. And if we can get back to the thrill of creating with generosity, it's good for us and it's good for the people who are consuming what we make. Yeah. Which also I think loops in this idea that you talk about and you've talked about for years and you've definitely circled back to it in a central way in the practice is the notion of critique and also distinguishing critique from criticism and understanding the difference between data, which is valuable and we want, and emotion or subjectivity, which may be helpful at times,

but also can be completely devastating. And I think sometimes we tend to make it a binary thing rather than a grayscale thing. And when we air too much either way, exclude everyone or let everyone in, they're both devastating. Yeah. Yeah. Most people aren't good at giving criticism, just like most people aren't good at making pizza. They're both skills. And you would not accept a pizza that was made by someone who was bad at it because it wouldn't be delicious. Especially not as a New Yorker.

Yeah, exactly. And just because someone wants to give you criticism doesn't mean you need to hear it because it might be, in fact, mostly is a statement of this work wasn't for me. That's all the person had to say. Anything below that doesn't help us because all the reasons you know i'm a vegetarian and this is a sausage pizza okay i don't need to know that all i need to know is i didn't make this for you let's go on but then every once in a while you meet someone who is gifted in the best possible sense they've earned the talent of giving criticism. And that is a gift. That's a gift for the ages. And we can embrace that. But getting good at distinguishing between the two, that's not easy. And I know that there have been many times in my career where I mistakenly listened to someone because they had high status and they were completely, completely wrong.

Because what they were really talking about was their fear or their standing in the world, not my work. Yeah. And I think it's also, I mean, it's connected in a fairly linear way to the notion of being an amateur. When you wake up every day and step into the work and say stage yourself, I know a little bit, but the universe of what I don't know is so much vaster. And the only way I'm going to know a teensy weensy bit more tomorrow is if I admit that I don't know the vast majority of it and I'm willing to just go and do and whatever happens, happens and be willing to be in that place.

And remember, I think it was Dubner and Freakonomics a couple of years back said like the most terrifying phrase on the planet for people to say is, I don't know. We want to feel like we know everything and we become so invested in status that when we actually reach a point where we're like, oh, I'm a beginner, we feel like success is about no longer'm a beginner. We feel like success is about no longer being a beginner. I can't imagine not being that way because it's so much more enjoyable. Oh, yeah. And it is brilliant. A guy used some connections to get a half an hour with me to talk about a piece of software he wanted to launch. And I honestly thought he wanted my insight as someone who has launched software for

many, many years. And within five minutes, I realized what he really wanted was for me to like the software he had already decided to make. Validation. And why is he wasting his time or mine on this conversation? I would have happily sent him an email saying, yeah, you can like the software if you want. Because if you can find someone who can give you criticism and you can learn from the universe, that's priceless. I mean, my conversations with Nikki Papadopoulos, my editor at Penguin, every word is worth something to me. Because even when I don't agree with her and take her advice, I know where it's coming from. And to walk into that room and insist that she liked everything I did would be foolish. Yeah. Zooming the lens out, we're having this

conversation in the context of work and art, but especially these last couple of notions around understanding the value of criticism and where's the data, where's the honesty and also being okay as an amateur. It's not just about work. This is about life and this is about the society that we're living in right now is in no small part the result of just a massive crisis of this, along with the crisis of connection and community.

Yeah, and also people who are making a profit from A, making us feel insecure, and B, making us feel isolated from people who are different than us. Every single time capitalism makes a profit at something, half of Los Angeles is paved, half, because someone made a profit paving Los Angeles. And so I'm not at all surprised that we feel divided because people are making a profit doing it. Very hard to unwind that. The fiber of society and economics and everything and now morality and is wrapped around it. But, um, I certainly hope we find our way back to a different way of being, um, sooner than later.

This feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. Um, sitting here in this container, sadly, not face to face as we normally do, but, uh, distant, which is still beautiful as it is. If I offer up the question to live a good life, what comes up? To be missed if you're gone, to connect to people who care about you the way you care about them, and to explore things just outside of your grasp so that we can feel like we are moving towards something that matters to us. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode.

And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.