The Tim Ferriss Show - #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

"If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will."— Greg McKeownGreg McKeown (@GregoryMcKeown) is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and the founder of McKeown, Inc, a company with a mission to teach Essentialism to millions of people around the world. Their clients include Adobe, Apple, Airbnb, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!, among others.McKeown is an accomplished public speaker and has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world, and in 2012, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.Please enjoy!Click here for the show notes for this episode.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.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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learn more with a 15% discount off any new plan. Go to WordPress.com forward slash Tim to create your website and find the plan that's right for you. So learn more. Take a look. WordPress.com forward slash Tim for 15% off a brand new website. Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Greg McKeown. That is spelled M-C-K-E-O-W-N. Greg is the author of the New York Times bestseller Essentialism, subtitled The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, and the founder of McKewen Inc., a company with a mission to teach essentialism to millions of people around the world. Their clients include Adobe, Apple, Airbnb, Cisco, Google, Facebook. You may have recognized a few of these. Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec,

Twitter, VMware, Yahoo, and many others. McEwen is an accomplished public speaker and has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world. And in 2012, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Originally from London, England, McEwen now lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and their four children. He can be found at Gregory McEwen on Twitter and at gregmcewen.com. Greg, welcome to the show. It's so great to be with you, Tim. And I'm looking here at a table in front of me with many, many pieces of paper spread out. And they consist of printed out highlights from your book. Your book is one of the most

highlighted books that I have on my Kindle. And I wanted to, first and foremost, thank you for writing it, because I found it tremendously helpful personally, and it has become one of the few books that I revisit on a regular basis. So first off, I just want to express gratitude for you having written the book. Well, that's awfully nice of you to say that. That's very humbling. Here I was thinking we were going to have a bad conversation, and now I feel like we might go somewhere. That's nice of you, Tim. The secret to happiness, low expectations. So it's nowhere to go but up from here. And it's also a book I mention in that way, because I don't want to create the illusion that I have some type of set it and forget it solution where the setting of priority or priorities is not an ongoing project at all times, or at least very

frequently, something that needs to be revisited. So I'm looking forward to digging into a number of different topics and portions of the book, as well as many things that are not in the book. But perhaps for those people who don't know, could you just tell a little bit about the genesis of essentialism, whether that is sort of the concept or the focus itself or the book? Well, I mean, one of the initiating moments was when I received an email from my, you know, colleague at the time saying, look, Friday between one or two would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby because, you know, I need you to be at this client meeting. And, you know, especially in hindsight, I'm sure they were joking or at least half joking about that. But somehow I was enough stressed in that moment or at that time between all the different competing expectations responsibilities that as we

go into the hospital it's thursday night we're in the middle of you know the daughter's born in the middle of the night friday comes along and i am still feeling torn and i'm still feeling look i probably ought to go how can i go how can i keep everybody happy how can i how can i do both? And so, you know, to my shame, I went to the meeting. I remember afterwards being told, you know, look, the client will respect you for the choice you just made. And I don't know that they did. I do know that they did feel that the look on their faces didn't evince that sort of confidence to me. But even if they had, you know, it's obvious to you, to me, to everybody listening that I made a fool's bargain. I violated something more important, more essential for something less important, but less essential. And what I learned from that was the simplest of lessons, which is if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. And so that gave me fire

for the deed to really dig into the subject, to try and understand better why it is that we make these kinds of prioritization decisions and what we can do to be perhaps better at it and to actually live our life according to the things that we've identified as mattering most. And at that time, on that Friday when you took that meeting, what type of work were you doing? What was your profession? I've spent 20 years in this field generally, so it's leadership development, it's writing, it's research. I was working with Silicon Valley and noticed a predictable pattern there at a professional level, which is that these companies in the early days would be very focused on, you know, this is what we're trying to do. It's sort of a phase of clarity and that clarity would

lead to success. There was real alignment between if you knew exactly what you were trying to do at the right time, then you could generate success. And then I noticed that success breeded lots of options and opportunities for these companies. Well, that sounds like the right problem to have, but it does in fact turn out to be a problem if it leads to what Jim Collins has called the undisciplined pursuit of more. If these companies, and they often would fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, it would lead them and they often would, fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, it would lead them to make decisions in such a way that they would plateau in their progress or even start to fail altogether. So I named that the success paradox. And so it was

absolutely the combination of observing this phenomenon inside of these organizations and then suddenly observing it in my own life that I realized, oh, this isn't a business phenomenon. It's a human phenomenon. And there's a pattern here that I think I'm going to put the pieces together. I can see that it's highly relevant for people who are otherwise successful people. Because the very nature of success is that you will have this basic problem. You'll be stretched too thin at work, at home, both and beyond. You'll feel often busy but not productive. You will feel many different pursuits hijacking your agenda each day. And you'll just have more that you want to do than you can do.

So that's, in fact, the normal scenario for successful people. And so, you know, but I felt like it was an underserved problem because most of the literature on success is how to become successful in the first place. But for many, many people, the real problem is what to do once you are, even if you don't feel very successful, as soon as you have more options and opportunity, you know, that you can pursue, you need a new way of handling it than being in a scenario where you have no options at all. So this is where I see the book, you know, came into its own is it's really one of the few books connected to the subject of success that's about what to do once you are successful. And I want to underscore at least my interpretation of that, which is by saying successful, you don't necessarily mean someone who's making a million

dollars a year or a company that's generating a billion dollars in turnover a year. But in the simplest terms, it's someone who have more options than you can possibly metabolize and use across the board. So then you start to have to winnow that down. And in that case, this is where principles of, say, essentialism are very helpful. And I thought that we might explore a little bit one of the reframes that I think is very clever and very effective, which relates to the endowment effect. Could you talk, and I can certainly, I have it right in front of me, if you'd like me to jump in as a reminder. If you're more familiar with jump in as a reminder. If you're more familiar with essentialism than I am. Well, just in case, just in case.

It's a reasonable possibility. I write very long-winded books, and I've done them over a pretty long period of time. So every once in a while, I get quoted, and I feel lost. So if that happens, let me know. I have everything in front of me. But could you talk about the endowment effect and how you turn around questions people might ask themselves about certain things, whether that is something they own or an opportunity that gets presented to them? Because I think this is really important. Well, let's use a metaphor to get to the endowment effect. Our closet is a pretty good metaphor for the problem and what to do about it. So for a lot of people listening, even as you say, they don't feel incredibly successful financially, incredibly successful in all the things in their life.

Right. They probably still have more things in their closet than they actually can use usefully. It's a bit cluttered. Maybe it's a lot more than a bit cluttered. I mean, I talked to somebody not so long ago, and they said, oh, Greg, my closet. They said, you've identified the pain point. They said, I have my closet organized by decade. So they had organized it, but it was sort of, you know, I said, you don't have a closet, you have a museum, man. And, you know, they have the 70s and the 80s. She's not using

any of these things. She just has them. And that's an organized version of the problem, which is that we just have so much stuff. Now, that is true in the physical stuff. It's literally true in the closet. But in the closet of our lives, it is equally true. Now, just staying with this metaphor for a moment, almost everybody has had a moment where they say, I've had enough. I'm going to organize my closet. And they begin the process. And they take an item off the shelf, off the floor. And they say, it's time to just get rid of this item. And in the moment of picking it up and reflecting on it, as if to give it away, something mysterious, almost magical seems to happen to many of us, which is in that moment we're looking at,

we think, well, you know, yeah, but I, you know, I'm not sure I want to get rid of it. I could use it sometime in the future. And so-and-so gave it to me. And somehow in the act of giving it away, it's harder to give it away than it was before we picked it up to give it away. So what's going on? And as it turns out, there's a a heuristic a brain heuristic a predisposition that we have um to all physical objects in our life and also in fact all the the

opportunities that we have in our life too and and it is this it's that we value things more because we have them uh and that means that's a good thing in certain situations. I mean, that's why you essentially, you know, owning a home is generally a good thing because people look after the home better. It explains the phenomenon of why nobody in the history of the whole world has washed their own rental car. You know, it's a positive phenomenon until and unless we overvalue something that we really ought not to have in the closet at all. It ought to go. It is actually not useful to us. It's not valuable to us, but we are overvaluing it and therefore keeping it. So it's overvaluing because we own it or it's endowed to us.

So in our life, that is an incredibly real problem. We have, you know, I'll give you an illustration. It's not in the book, but it's something that happened to me that really hits a chord. It happened when I was staring at myself in the mirror, dressed from head to toe in a stormtrooper outfit. We're all a good epiphany start. Right. And I'm looking at myself, and I realize two things. I realize that I have been thinking of this moment in some small degree for 30 years. This is true. I realize I'm standing there staring. I'm in, you know, I'm in the Halloween store. You know, this is not a cheap suit that I'm trying on.

And I remember that this is goes back to like when I'm 10 years old and maybe Return of the Jedi had come out or one of the Star Wars movies. And my older brother, one of my older brothers, had said to me in passing, but with quite a lot of enthusiasm, wouldn't it be great to own, you know, a stormtrooper just like from the movies, like really like the real thing? And somehow that got lodged in me. Well, that's an idea. Let's see. That's something you should pursue. That would be so cool. My older brother thinks so, so it must be so.

And somehow in the back of my mind, there it lives, unquestioned, for 30 years. And finally, I'm in the store thinking about whether to buy this. And in that moment, I actually did have a eureka moment, which is there is no part of me that wants this. It stayed with me, but I don't. And my 40 year old self does not need this. This is ridiculous. Why are you in this suit right now? And so I was able to sort of separate myself from the moment.

And that's exactly what I'm advocating here. I'm saying that for a lot of us, we have a lot of – it became a shortcut phrase. My wife will say it sometimes to me now. Is that a stormtrooper that you're pursuing? Is that a stormtrooper opportunity? You used to think this was the thing, but you're pursuing it because you just sort of have it, you caught onto it. You feel a sense of this endowment effect, the sense of it's my opportunity, it's my thing, it's my goal. And it's not serving me anymore.

I think a lot of people have a lot of stormtroopers in their life. And so it's not about the closet, it's not about the stormtrooper outfit, it's about the stuff that really we need to get past and let go so that we can pursue the right things now, not just the things that we are pursuing because at one time we wanted to pursue them or one time they came into our life. And it seems like there are a number of ways to identify these, whether they're stormtroopers or items, opportunities that we are endowing with greater value because we have them, because we either own them or being presented with them, right? So you could take, let's just say that sweater from Aunt Mildred or whatever it is,

and rather than asking, how much do I value this item? You turn it around and ask, if I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it? And that turnaround seems really important to me. Or in the case of opportunities, and I'm quoting directly from you here, but how will I feel if I miss out on this opportunity? Instead of that, if I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it? That strikes me as a very powerful reframe and is certainly also, I think it was Andy Grove at Intel who also used this, and there are many other business examples, but if we were not already in this line of business, how much would we pay to pursue it or would we pursue it in the first place?

Right? As a way of pruning activities and conserving resources so they can be applied to the most important things. Yes. And the idea is to trick your brain into putting it in the position where you don't own the thing, where you don't have the opportunity. So you have to reflect on it afresh you have to say okay starting now do i want this thing now do i how hard would i go after this now if i didn't own it if i didn't have it and it helps us to evaluate things more without this this um inflation uh of the fact that we own it, which is, of course, the endowment effect.

You co-created, as I understand it, a class at Stanford GSB at the business school. Yeah. Did that, could you describe that class and the curriculum? I know nothing about this. It was just mentioned very briefly in passing in some of the reading that I was doing in preparation for this. But could you describe the class and the intent and the curriculum of that class? Yeah, it was co-created at the design school at Stanford. And the, I mean, the intent of it was, look, would people be interested in really coming together to design their life, not just using design principles, which design thinking has enormous application and value to our lives, but particularly design thinking with an essentialist lens.

So if you had to come together and you had to design your life, and we did it in design pairs or even in design threes, where you would be designing for each other a life around the most important things, the essential things. And if we haven't made it clear, it ought to be made clear that this is what essentialism is. It's to figure out what is essential, it is to eliminate what is not essential, and it is to then build a system that makes execution as effortless as possible. And that's exactly what we were doing in that class. So people would come and they would work together to get greater clarity about what really mattered versus what was just good in their life, what those very few highest values are, highest value projects,

you know, most important contributions, and then together to work out how can you start to trade off the things that are of least value, that still play a role in your life, that are still the stormtroopers, still taking up energy, resources, attention that aren't really the right things. And so this is what we were doing. We had a variety of exercises for trying to get to that. Could you walk us through any of those exercises or describe them? Because one of the topics I was going to get to, of course, is how to answer the question, am I investing in the right activities or how to determine that? Because there are cases, let's just say in a sales

organization where you have very clear measurables, very clear deliverables, and it's perhaps rather straightforward. Then you have just say solopreneurs or early stage entrepreneurs where they're wearing 17 different hats at a given time, and they might actually have some trouble identifying the answer to this. So could you walk us through any exercises that you use with the students? Yes, I would love to do that. And I'd love to do it in a different way, rather than to talk about it in the abstract, or even just to tell a story about someone. Let's do it. Like, if you're game, I'll go through an exercise

that grew out of those experiences, but with you right now. Are you game? Let's do it. Okay. At the risk of embarrassing myself, I will agree. I don't think you will.

You and anybody listening doesn't have to overthink any of these questions. This is really simple, but it cuts away all of the concepts and just gets moving. So, okay. So, Tim, just in your life right now, for real, think of something, tell me something that is essential to you, very important to you that you feel you're underinvesting in right now. It really matters, but you know you're not really putting the resources you wished you feel you're under investing in right now? It really matters, but you know you're not really putting the resources you wished you were behind it. Go.

Okay. I would say I'm investing in it pretty well, but probably not as much as I should or feel that I should. It would be experimenting with and researching different modalities for addressing psycho-emotional trauma, things that I have not addressed in previous books. So, the emotional component of life that subconsciously very often drives so many of our behaviors and patterns. It would be doing personal experiments related to that. And I've already done that over the last four or five years, but really investing in organizing all of that. Now, okay, so just clarifying, it sounded to me like there's a future book here. Potentially, potentially.

It's something I didn't think I was going to write for probably a few decades, but I've put it on a closer burner. It's not on the back burner. It's still on a burner, but it's been pushed from the back burner to a front burner. Yeah, interesting.

You can see that if you could identify the tools, the concrete ways of handling this kind of deeper trauma, I'm reading into this now, but that you've experienced, that you know other people have experienced, that that could be incredibly valuable to people because it's actually so much more universal than is obvious, right? It's not talked about a lot, but it's really universal challenge that we've gone through traumas that we don't know, we don't have the skills and the tools to know what to do with that. So it produces suffering. That's right. Those same objectives can be used as salves or numbing agents to avoid the root psychological or emotional traumas that are causing self-destructive behaviors, if that makes total sense, and we should go there for a moment because a friend of mine once said to me, you know, success traps are often harder to get out of than failure traps. Yeah, I agree. uh of of good objectives to be successful to to what could could in fact be as you as you're saying they could be just a form of being stuck in a different more positive looking coping mechanism yep yeah and and i should say also i'll let you pick where we want to go that would be one that would be one area i'm not investing enough in potentially the other would be uh rehabilitation of a and a sacroiliac injury that i have in my hip so it'd be those are two options we can go whichever direction you want

um i i i don't know i i kind of i'm looking to looking to you for which one's the most important. The first one, I think. The first one. Then let's stay with that then because what I'm exploring a little with you here, just to be sort of transparent on the process, is why does it matter so much to you, right? You've said it's essential. You've said this thing matters. And we ought to identify then really you know why and maybe we're as far as we need to go on that but i sense in you it's it's a pretty deep why for you you know whether we have words for or not it's like no that you know i've maybe it's like this it's all of the books i've done before are really preparing for this you know know, that those have all given a platform, you know, this is millions of people literally, right. And, and, and, you know,

and well done, you, you built, you built this extraordinary platform to be able to reach people, make a difference. And, and now what, what, what, what is the, what is the, the highest or deepest contribution that can then be made and as as you're doing it i feel like there's a sort of uh you know there's that quote that which is most personal is most universal and there's something about that here which is which is okay if we get really honest and and raw we find that there's a lot of unresolved, a lot of unresolved trauma. And now we're riffing here a little bit beyond the process, but, but I mean, this is something that's very like, yeah,

this is important to me, the subject that we're on too. And so I can relate to it in this way. One of the things that I've begun doing research about is, is intergenerational trauma and how even if in our own lives we go, I think my life has been pretty good and life has worked out and so on. What you find is that there can be multiple generations of unresolved issues that manifest wordlessly in our own lives because no one talked about them. So the ramifications are real, but we don't have language. That's the worst scenario to be in, is to have the problem without any ability to even talk about about it to address it to to even know that

it's really there until we have language for things they're not even that real or or or the ability to feel that something is off and an inability to identify what it is even even in the absence of words so so the what i would put together would be a, from my perspective or from my experience, a comprehensive description of my personal journey, but also the tools that I've found to be most effective, not only for myself, but for other people. So yes, that's very, very important to me. Okay. So let me ask you another question about this, which is what would, what is success for you? And I don't mean success like the, okay, the book is this or that, you know, that's not even, that's not even necessarily the thing at this point.

It's, it's the, you know, you could go down this journey and conclude, okay, no, this isn't the right time for it and so on. But what is your daily amount of time that you would need to invest in this for you to say to me, I now feel like I'm not under investing anymore. I now feel, so what's the delta between where you are right now and a daily amount and where you say, no, I'm not perfect. It's not like I feel amazing about how much time I'm spending, but I feel good about it. It's not under-invested anymore. This is a really good question. And I want to explain why I struggle perhaps a bit to answer it. And I think this will also be a struggle that applies to other people. This is a project where I don't yet feel I have gathered

enough research to proceed to the writing and synthesis phase, even though I've collected notes for almost five years. And so there's the question of, am I ready or am I not ready? Or am I simply putting off the next step because I am fearful of something? I would say once I get into synthesis phase, and I am doing a lot of experiments and have for the last four or five years, I would be putting in four to five hours a day minimum on this to feel fully vested. I can't, I find it very difficult to put together prose in any fashion or attempt to put it together

for more than three or four hours a day. So probably, yeah, three to five hours per day, but I would be thinking about it all day every day. It would be running in the background. Seinfeld was asked recently how many hours did he spend working on the recent one-hour special he'd done for Netflix. How many hours did it take for him to do it? He said that's like asking God how long it takes for him to grow it. And he said, that's like asking God how long it takes for him to grow an oak tree.

He's like, all the time. That's what he's doing all the time, is just growing trees for the world and everything. He said, that's what I'm doing. It's not five hours or 10 hours in my whole life, that's what I'm doing. So, I understand that from what you're saying. Okay, so that's interesting. So, of the two, you just said two interesting things. So you said, you said, I don't know what it is that's really keeping me back from doing it. You know, so you don't, there's a, there's a question mark here around, do I spend time on more research per day or do I spend, do I shift, I shift? You've got a gathering of research phase, and then I'm going to consciously be applying it and writing about my applications. So there's sort of a two-phase

process that you're following, overlapping but still distinct. And to answer my question about how much time you need to spend, you have to know which phase you're in. Right, right. I would also say, if this is something that's useful fodder, that the fear may be as simple as fucking it up. Because I've built this book up in my mind for the last five years as almost certainly the most important book I will have written to date and may ever write. And there is a, there's a, there's a very clear fear of fumbling the ball when I've been given a fantastic opportunity to do some good. So I think there's that as well. There's a fear of fucking it up. Oh, absolutely. I, I, uh, I completely relate to that. I just barely begun in this very early process of

working on a book. And my mantra to myself for quite a while with this has been, don't write a rubbish book. And actually, just recently, I think I say sharing that with my wife, and she's like, yeah, you might want to come up with another mantra. Right. And she's right. I thought it was kind of funny. It kind of cued me to say that I don't want to write a rubbish book. It's not cute inside. It's a real fear. I mean, when something's important, and frankly, from my point of view, it's the easiest thing in the world to write a bad book.

That's what happens, in fact. And often after a book that's been successful, the next book is very hard for people to write. So that alone is a fear. But then you've got this double whammy fear because you're going, it matters so much. I cannot get this wrong i cannot mess this up yeah and and and i think you can sense but i'm putting words in your mouth but i think you can sense that that may be just an obstacle that's that's that's keeping you back but it isn't really real like you're not going to write a rubbish book, but you worry

that you are and that worry is holding you back. Does that sound right? What are your thoughts? That sounds right to me. It's helpful just to talk through, frankly. So this is valuable for me. And your mention of the mantra replacement that your wife suggested made me think of something I was told, and I can't recall the attribution. So someone can find this certainly, but that worrying is like praying for what you don't want. So in a sense, that's brilliant.

I have the wrong, the antecedent framing that I have right now is, is preventing me from, from taking the most essential next actions. Okay, so I can see I accept and I agree that it's that's probably a phantom worry. Like I'm not even if I wrote a book that I felt was rubbish, I also wouldn't publish it. Right? So you wouldn't publish it. So there's no there's there really isn't that fear isn't real. real. What's the better mantra for you? Well, the first thing that came to mind was good now is better than perfect later, since there's a lot of suffering in the world.

And not that I'm playing savior or anything like that, but I've experienced aing of suffering over time would mean that if I put out a book that is 80% of what it could be in 10 years, it's still better that I put it out now. That may not be the right mantra, but just as a enabling belief, that could be one or assumption. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I'm curious about whether it's perfectionism that is the barrier. Yes, I think that's absolutely one. You think it is. Well, I cut short your multiple choice question. No, that's all right. Yeah, but it feels like that is definitely an element. But the second element is, is it just the very subject itself?

It's just like, oh, there's mass. I guess that is a form of perfectionism still, isn't it? It's just it masses so much. It can really make a difference. But if I don't get it right, what what? If you don't get it right, what? What happens then? Let's say you didn't get it right.

What's the fear really? What's the fear really? if you don't get it right what what happens then let's let's say you didn't get it right what what's what's the fear really what's the fear really uh that i let people down that i receive widespread criticism because i didn't do enough due diligence to cover all the bases and to test the different modalities that I should. Part of the big challenge in this particular arena for me, the subject matter, which is so broad, is that unlike physical performance, where you have many measurables, unlike in the realm of startups, where you have key metrics and so on, which are measurables, a lot of this emotional terrain is very squishy. There's a lot of bullshit and a lot of charlatans and a lot of, I would say, imprecise thinking and faulty logic that needs to be sifted through. So it's been a very challenging

realm in which to do testing and research, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah, it makes perfect sense. We're like in the germ theory era of emotional traumas, where it's a wild, wild West in comparison to what eventually we'll know and we'll learn about the subject. Uh, okay. So, so, so let's say, let's say you, you are, uh, this is too bombastic way of saying it, but let's say you've kind of been a little bit hiding behind this concern, this, this fear, and, and, and we're going to now shift towards phase two of the project, right? Where it's And, and, and we're going to now shift towards phase two of the project, right? Where it's where, okay, I don't have it all. Of course,

I don't have it all. There is no such thing as that, you know, uh, 80% is going to be good enough. My mantra at 80%, uh, if it's 80% good, I'm going to be able to move forward. Um, so let's say you do move to the second thing you You said you identified three to five hours. Is that additional three to five hours from where you've been before? Are you spending some time on it now so now you have to add another two hours? What's the... I'm spending the way I've been working on it. And my apologies for folks if this is not immediately seemingly apply to what you're doing. But hopefully this is helpful just to hear people or to hear the two of us work through this process-wise. The research phase for me is very chunky, if that makes sense.

It's two weeks of 24-7 and then four weeks of trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. And it's, it's not a daily slow and steady process. Whereas the, if I were to say enough is enough, Tim, you could always do more research. This is a defense mechanism you're using to put off starting the composition of the book, start the composition of the book, then I would get it into a phase where I'm looking at that three to five hours a day on a regular consistent basis. So I would say I'm effectively starting at zero because I'm in phase one where, for instance, ending about a week ago, I was two weeks off the grid doing pure experimentation and research and gathering notes. So I have that.

But then for the last week, I have effectively spent zero time on it because I am in the downshifted phase without an active experiment. Okay. So, so before we can move on, this is all, everything we've done is really covering the first phase. They're not equally, they're not equal phases, but phase one of applying essentialism is what is essential. And that includes, why does it matter? What does success look like? And what's the thing you want to shift to and so on. So it's, you know, and I always want to emphasize this small side point, which is that sometimes when people, even when they read essentialism, or certainly if they've heard about it, just the peripheral level, they think I've written a book about sort of saying no. And that is part of it. But I didn't

write a book called, you know, called no ism. It's about essentialism. And so that's why the thrust of this conversation has to be there, because we've got to get clear what's essential, what do we actually need to make a change that is highly important to us? And that's what gives a drive to everything else. So just before moving on to the trade-off phase, I think I can identify my core question before with the multiple choice. I don't feel like I gave the multiple choice properly. Is the primary thing the perfectionism, or is the primary thing just the personal pain? pain, not of writing a book, that's its own kind of pain. That's its own kind of heavy lifting, right? For sure, there's that. But there's just this particular subject, the very nature of it is riskier. Riskier to put it out there, riskier to be vulnerable, riskier to explore these things at that kind of a level, riskier to be criticized when it's something that's so personally vulnerable? That's a very fair question. I think it's perfectionism. I've spent the last handful of years coming to terms with the risks inherent in writing a book like this and the inescapable barrage of criticism that I will get.

And so I'm really trying to, in gathering the notes, focus on or have the base assumption that it's not how many people don't get it that matters, it's how many people do get it. And focusing, I mean, there are, and I heard, you know, I heard recently in this, well, actually a documentary, which is very entertaining called The Price of Everything. I'm paraphrasing here, but there are sort of three categories of people, those who see, those who can see when shown, and those who will never see. And I'm really, in the context of a book like this trying to focus on the first two categories

so I've accepted the the risks I think come to terms with most of them it's it's perfectionism I think yes that is that is the hurdle I'm not clearing at the moment yeah at least one of them yeah and and and um it just I mean I just still want to be on this just for a moment. I mean, I, I just want to support you with the process. I mean, this, the idea of a kind of, uh, tools for Titans, but applied to this pain point just seems totally relevant yeah it just seems you know as anxiety has become the number one you know uh diagnosed condition uh beating out depression now right there's there's there's stuff going on and there's stuff going on there's more traumas going on in a variety of ways i think it's fair to say but also there's more openness to talking about traumas. So all these backlog of things not discussed suddenly being able to be discussed. And and there's just so much going on in the cloud of noise out there and social media in a variety of ways, you know, that that I think people feel unsettled inside.

I mean, we've always known that there were things out there that could hurt us, right? There's, we had the Cold War, we had, there's always risks in the world. But recently, I feel like the risks feel more within people than they used to. And so I just think it's so relevant. And I think the way that you would approach it uh you know there are obviously people that will need it just the way you do it weaknesses and all you know what's an all that that they're so so i uh okay so that's it there's phase one okay so so so let's let's move down to phase two which is is what are you willing to give up to do this?

Let me ask it slightly differently, which is what is something non-essential that you're over-investing in currently? Yeah, that's a great question. I've already categorically in the last six months cut out certain things. Say, certainly any type of book blurbs which necessitate reading books those are all gone yeah speaking engagements all gone uh with very rare exception unless they happen to be within a 15 minute walk of where i live which doesn't doesn't happen very often uh and so no your email your email bounce back is just like classic. No, it's classic.

I never seen anybody that's done this ever. Your email bounce back has a word attachment to it. Am I making this up? I think this is what I seem to recall. It might. It has evolved over time, but it's very clear on the things that i do not do oh it is and it like lists them one after another after another like none of this stuff

if you ever reach out to me for any of this stuff there is no point and i do i do when possible try to point people to other helpful resources which which for whatever for whatever reason people really don't want to read they want me to regurgitate it in a half-assed manner to them one-on-one rather than just pointing to them to a resource but that's a whole separate conversation so there are there are things that have categorically decided to say no to because i do not do moderation well with those items. Right. I don't do moderation well. Nobody does moderation well. That's my opinion about this subject. People don't do moderation

well. I decided to go off sugar a year ago, almost a year ago, New Year's Eve, talking to somebody. I've been thinking about doing it for a while. They've been off sugar for 12 years. And I'm like, okay, if you can do 12 years, I can do a year. I'm going to make this decision. If I've gone 95% off sugar, I'll know I'm out before I begin. Everything's an exception. Well, that's amazing cake. I've got to eat that. I mean, this is a holiday. I've got to eat that. It's the weekend. I'm going out on a date with my wife. I've got to eat it now. She's eating. Everything's an exception. So I think there's a variety of things in life that it's much, much easier to go 100% than it is to go 95%. Because what you're doing is you're taking out the decision process. It's done. We are not doing sugar. Now, I don't

have to think every time. And by the way, there's crazy amounts of sugar in this world. I don't have to think about it every time. The decision's already made. So anyway, I guess it. So there's a lot of things you've cut out. What is something- I'll tell you. I have one. So first, I want to just mention that one of the concepts in Essentialism that I really appreciated is trying to find the one decision that removes a thousand decisions, such as the elimination of sugar that you mentioned as just one example. I will tell you where I struggle. And I think I'm better than maybe average Joe or Jane at saying no to things. I'm quite good. But one of

the great ironies of writing a book called, say, Essentialism or The 4-Hour Workweek is that if those concepts hit and the books do well, you suddenly have a flood, a torrent of inbound requests and all sorts of new categories of things to contend with. And I find myself struggling to say no to people who probably land on the spectrum of good acquaintance to reasonably good friend who ask for help with various things. And there are certain things that I feel very comfortable saying no to, like the book blurbs. But I have hundreds of requests. Those aren't all from friends, but dozens certainly for promotion of their books on social. It's usually book-related because people want their books to sell. Being on the podcast, you name it. And I feel like friends who do not fully think of the

ramifications of their request, oftentimes when it's last minute, where they wouldn't ever go to the New York Times the day before they have something come out and ask for everything to be reshuffled for their benefit. That is what ends up happening to me on a fairly regular basis. So I think I allocate too much time to trying to explain myself to those people or placate those people in some way. And I would love to hear your thoughts on best practices or heuristics related to that specifically, because I don't view myself as a people pleaser. But nonetheless, with this particular subset of people, I do find it really challenging. And there are times when people I would like to maintain a good relationship with who come to me last minute for help that I cannot deliver without massively inconveniencing my entire team and reshuffling get very pissed in a way or they

take it very personally. And maybe that's okay. I think I tend to think that it is and I'm going a little long here. But it's I think a challenge that a lot of people face. What are your thoughts? Well, let's just agree on the problem, first of all, because as a CEO friend of mine once told me, he said, I take every time and resource estimate that's given to me now, and I multiply it by pi. So he's saying, I thought he was exaggerating at first, but he's saying that people so massively underestimate everything. And there is another heuristic for this, right? It's called the planning fallacy. The planning fallacy is saying these things take, we as humans

underestimate almost all the time, how long things will take and we do that even with things we have done ourselves before driving from point a to point b takes us 15 minutes but if we're in the middle of writing an email we will convince ourselves we can do it in five minutes this time we'll get you know all green lights everything's going to work out somehow it'll be done in five minutes of course we do it doesn't take that long it takes 50 minutes and we're late for the meeting right but we want to con ourselves into it what you're describing i think it has two pieces to it the first is this piece and the second is the relationship impact of of of how to handle this but what you're describing is a problem where somebody is really underestimating what their request is. They're saying in their head, they're going,

this is a two minute favor, Tim. It's not hard. All you have to do is put out a tweet. How hard can it be? Or whatever. And so in their head, their ask is very small. But the reality is that their ask is much bigger. Right. They also don't think about the reputational risk or anything like that of endorsing something that I don't have time to read, for instance. Well, that's exactly so. So I think that there is something around this, again, before we get to the relationship impact of, and maybe you already did it, but of actually creating one page, you've got the email bounce back document, having a page that says, look,

this is the real cost, the total cost of ownership of me saying yes to this. So that, and maybe there's even, once it's created, it could be used in a variety of ways. One is reactively, right? When the request comes in, okay, I need you to read this first. I need to understand. But maybe there's a proactive approach, which is like, look, this is, I'm just putting this out there. This is what this actually costs. Because even what you just said, reputational costs, not that people aren't thinking about that.

You know, they're just thinking about getting their thing achieved. And so being able to try and calculate all of that, the total cost of ownership, I mean, that's what you have to do with the planning fallacy is we have to consider the total cost so that we don't start projects that we don't complete. In fact, the New York Times just ran a piece about exactly this that I'm aware of because it's quoting essentialism uh you know in trying to address the problem but if all these projects can start we don't finish this is just a version of that problem that they're coming they're not they're not being they maybe are being thoughtless maybe they don't think they're being thoughtless they just think it's not a big deal for you

and they don't understand the full range of impact. So I think writing this out, like almost like it's a recipe, this is the cost. And in that, I think in the helpful side of it, you could say, so in the future, if you want to be considered, this is the process you would need to go through. So again, what's happening

is that you've got to help other people's problems be their problem. Right. And there's a story that I came across for the book that I really like on this principle, which is – I think it's a true story. I can't quite remember now, but it's by Dr. Cloud. He's talking about meeting with a couple, a husband and wife, parents. And they come to see him him and they say, look, our son, we have so many problems with our son.

And he's on drugs. He's drinking all the time. He's living back at home with us now. I mean, he's just not got a job. Everything is just such a mess for us. It's just so concerning. And he says, OK, well, I understand. Where is he, though?

You have an appointment here to deal with this. Where is your son? And they said, well, you know, he doesn't really see that he has a problem. And Dr. Platt says, well, I think he's right. And they're shocked at that. What do you mean that he's right? You know, he just described all the problems. He said, no, he says, listen, he says, if you look outside your window in the morning and your sprinkler head on your lawn is faulty and it's spraying on your neighbor's grass and your neighbor's grass is green

and your grass is dying, and your neighbor's grass is green, and your grass is dying, who has the problem? You've got the problem, right? Because your grass is dying. Your neighbor doesn't have a problem. Their grass is fine. Your son doesn't have a problem because he's comfortable at home with you. He gets to do whatever he wants. He's looked after. Life is fine. He doesn't have a problem. You have a problem. And your job now is to help your son to have a problem. Let your son have his problem. You've been well intended to try, but you've got it all wrong.

You've got to let him own it if he doesn't have a problem if he if everything's taken care of for him he can't move forward he can't get better and and so now obviously it's a bit strong to use that example with the example that you you've you know led this conversation with but but it is a similar principle is that there has to be a boundary and there has to be an education of going you've made this from my problem right now let me just lay this out so that you can own the problem so in the future we can do this perhaps in a better way yeah it's it makes perfect sense i i was told something not not too terribly long ago maybe two years ago which was along the lines of a line you could use with such people,

although you'd probably have to dress it up a little bit, which is, you know, your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency. Right. And which is, which is, I suppose, in theory makes a lot of sense. But it sometimes falls by the wayside in practice, due to fear of social repercussions, which we can get to in a second. I mean, I've had some awful experiences, and I don't want to turn this into a 100% Tim Ferriss therapy session, but just so people know, for those people out there who may be like, oh, yeah, that Tim Ferriss, he never agreed to X or whatever it is. I've had instances where journalists from mainstream publications have reached out for book blurbs or help with their own projects. I've very politely declined because I've

been unable to help them in the capacity they required. And they've gone on to write like hit pieces or hatchet pieces or slam pieces about me out of spite. And it's like that kind of shit happens. So I think I'm a little once bitten twice shy from a lot of those experiences. But ultimately, does any of that prevent me from doing the essential project that we discussed? Not really. Well, that right there is, of course, is exactly the point. If, you know, one can say, let's take the opposite argument for a moment, and I'll just play non-essentialist to the conversation, which is, yes, Tim, you're guessing it wrong. You're thinking about yourself too much. And every single request that someone from media or any friend or any acquaintance, that anything that they want from you, you should be saying yes. Because you got helped by lots of people. Therefore, you're under total obligation to do it for everybody else. And you got this

wrong. So is that argument right, Tim? Is it really right? It could be right. Is it right? I don't think it's right. And even if it were right, it's not sustainable. Right? Yeah, but if something's not sustainable,

that's like foundationally clear that it can't be right. Because like by definition, something that's not sustainable will not continue. It cannot continue. Right. so what you just said which is awesome is like is like well it's correct other than it's impossible yeah right right right so other than that but you've just done for us a favor which is that you've helped us to to understand the basic foundational error with non-essentialism. The problem with non-essentialism is that it happens, it's the only problem, happens to be

a lie. It's just got that inconvenience associated with it. You can't actually do everything. You can't actually get this next book that we've just identified what it is, why it matters, deeply why it matters, launch living and out into the universe, and also do everything that people think is reasonable for you to do. You cannot do both of those things. Now, as soon as you come to terms with that, you say, okay, well, good. Okay. That's not a solution I can have. That actually isn't, it's not, you say not sustainable. That means it can't be done. You can pretend you can be doing it for a little while, and then the book doesn't get written. And so all those people that the ones that aren't probably asking anything from you, but they're still in pain and you could still

do something to be useful to them, provide them some helpful insights that you've gained. You know, you can do that or you can you can keep helping the people that are asking for things that that really, you know, disrupts that whole process. So which do you want? Which problem, Tim, do you want? Yeah, the former. The former. Right. Okay. Now you're right. It doesn't make the problem go away that you suddenly feel bad and that there could be other hit jobs and there could be other misunderstandings and criticism. That's true. Now, so what we do is separate the decision from the relationship. You've got to think of the decisions in two separate buckets. We've just done that. You know, you've made the decision, you understand the

decision. And then, of course, you say, well, there is still going to be relationship impact. And that is true. And I don't think you should pretend that that isn't true. You know, somehow in some airy-fairy land oh you can have it all you know because that would be violating the whole idea which is that essentialists embrace the reality of trade-offs of course there are trade-offs you know of course there will be people that are frustrated right that they want a piece but but just think about think about uh But just think about somebody, Oprah. How many requests are going that she can't possibly ask? How many people sent her books?

Can you imagine how many books were being sent to Oprah at the height of the Oprah show and everything? I mean, it's just insane the number of things. Warehouses full. Had to be. Warehouses full are going that way. And she had to get somehow, we assume she appeared to, to get to a level of peace with going, look, there's no way I can even touch any of that stuff. I've got to find to be truer to this voice within me of clarity about what my mission is and my essential mission and not all of this other stuff. It's not being unhelpful to the world. For you to say no to something that's less important

is not being unhelpful or selfish in the world. I don't buy that. Your obligation is to the highest point of contribution you can make. But what I think happens a lot is that people get caught up in the idea that, can I do this thing? And it's like they pretend there's nothing else going on in their life. The request comes in and they go, can I do this? Well, yes, I can do this. I know how to do this. I can make this happen. And that's not life. That's non-essentialist junk. That's just rubbish. The question is, if I do this thing, what doesn't get done? What else gets pushed out? Now, I'm not

saying don't be helpful to people that come requesting things. There can be absolutely ways of helping people. I want to help people. But if it's at the cost of something that's actually more important, that makes a higher contribution, we have an obligation not to do it. There's one more piece here, which is important, which is that you don't want to hurt these relationships. And that's where the concern really comes from. So the question is, how can you deal with this in a way that minimizes the damage to you through some media outlet stuff, doing some hit piece or help people to understand the context behind it. And I think that still comes back to at least for yourself writing this all out.

You know, this is what I am trying to do and why it matters. I mean, in a way, it's having the conversation we've just had, but written out so that it can be expressed again and again and again. The why behind this answer, the why, is the thing that we miss out on. So let's, in fact, move to step three. So step one was what is essential. Step two is what is non-essential. And step three is how do you create a system that makes executing what's essential as effortless as possible? And it's a perfect way to get there at this point because having this written out document, I mean, how you'll use it is – I'm not sure yet about that in my own head. But if you have it clearly written out, this is what I'm doing.

This is why. This is the cost of disrupting that. This is what I'm doing. This is why. This is the cost of disrupting that. This is what it does. This is who will lose out if I don't stay focused on this now. All of that becomes like a core communication core for yourself, a place to pivot to when the request comes in and you go, oh, maybe change you know everything today to make that possible and you go hold on let's go back to the document uh my my assistant was was away for a little while a couple of weeks and uh and the amount of damage i managed to do in those couple of weeks was ridiculous you know the number of things i managed to commit to i said she came back actually she's gone for a month i'm remembering now it's for a honeymoon.

And, and when she, she comes back and I, I was very positive. I wasn't saying, Oh, I've messed everything up. I said,

I said, let me tell you all the things that happened in the month you've gone. And it was just kind of a little silence at the end of it all, because she's like, she didn't say it, but this is, this is what's in the silence. It's like,

you know, what, what, what's wrong with you? How are you thinking that you can take on all of those projects and all of those ideas? Like, you aren't thinking fully about the cost of doing all those things. She was dead right. And what grew out of that is we came up with three rules of things that I would and wouldn't do.

And I'll give one of the rules was no personalization. I don't do any personalization. So if I'm doing keynotes, workshops, whatever, I'll listen. I'll understand what the company or the client at the conference needs. But I'm not going to redo, rethink, rechange. I'm not changing the slides. I'm not changing the, you know, the subtle things you can do in the moment, but I'm not redoing stuff because if you re if you personalize everything as I, as I had a want to do, uh, it's like you're rewriting a book every time. I mean, you have to rethink everything. And so that was one rule. And we had two other rules. Those are so helpful. And when I'm...

Are you willing to share the other two rules? I'm trying to... I should know what they are, right? If I say there's three rules, they were really useful to me. If they come up, they come up. We can also wait for them to surface. Yeah. So, um, uh, so actually one was, one was don't over, over, um, over correct based on,

uh, based on a negative feedback. And that's a little more vulnerable to share that one, but I think everybody suffers with that. That's, that's why, you know, which is most persons,

most universal. I, I, you know, so, so, so we do an event, do a keynote conference, gets good feedback.. I, I, you know, so, so we do an event, do a keynote conference, gets good feedback. One of the people, you know, in the comments says X. And I think,

geez, absolutely right. That is a, that is a valid criticism. Let's change it. Let's redo how we're doing this to address that concern. It's the same sort of thing. It it's it's overreacting to it and frankly when you overreact to this kind of feedback uh you really cause a problem for other people giving feedback and i in hindsight can see how that's been in my life right somebody's trying to be helpful they're trying to be honest they're giving the feedback and i'm multiplying the effect of it uh and then you know so that was number two and um i think number three might have been something like you know um it was like even no new projects like beyond what we'd identified like we've already identified a couple of really big things i want to go after it's like no no no new projects outside of that um it might have been it might

have been specifically no workshop business uh which is there's always a demand for it with essentialism there's always been interest in it i always feel an obligation because one there's a need people are interested and two you know just just i think yeah there's there's a full business here and and it could it could easily be or have been successful business and those things have keep pulling me into it and and i just my whenever i start working on it i'm like you know you see those kids in a supermarket you see a kid on the floor, not throwing a tantrum. They're just lying on the floor, like legs spread out, arms spread out. They have no energy to even get up off the floor. This is how much passion they feel for being in the supermarket on this day. They're just like,

nothing here is interesting. Not one part of me wants to be getting up and doing this that's how i feel in that business it's just not what it's not what i'm supposed to be doing and and my my poor assistant has had to hear me say that in one way or another so many times oh okay we should do i know i should do this okay let's do it we're gonna make it happen and finally she's just like look there's no part of you that wants to do this why are you doing this and so we managed i think those are the three rules we got there so instead of storm trooper you could use floor angel as a shorthand for that one, doing floor angels. Floor angel projects. That's exactly what it is. So we've identified only a little bit here of building a system for you. And I don't want to

shortchange this too much. We need to do a little more, which is you've identified now something that is essential to you. You've identified something that's non-essential, but awkward for you, that's risky for you, that you could give up. So there's a trade-off now. So we have an essential trade-off. But that's not enough because as soon as we finish this conversation, all of those dynamics that have been there before still are there. There is a system in place that keeps you away from getting on with this next book. It keeps you saying yes to requests and feeling very fearful about pushing back. We've identified one thing so far you can do to build a system, which is writing this all out so that you have it there, so that you can either say in person or put in email or express clearly the why of why this cannot simply be an easy yes,

why this is a costly yes. And this makes me just think for a moment just about this simple idea, which is that to every request, whether the request comes from somebody else or from within ourselves, which is where a lot of the non-essentialist stuff comes from, there's only three options, right? You can say yes, you can say no, or you can negotiate. And that's it. And I think what happens is that people default yes, because they're so fearful of a rude no and its effects. And so they forget that there is a negotiate part of this. There is a educate part of this. And that's what I think this document can help with, is reminding yourself, getting yourself clear, and then you can educate other

people too, because they just don't know. They don't understand what their request really means and what the cost really is. So that's one thing. But there's got to be more, and we ought to do something else that will actually help you make the shift. Let me just ask one more time. Do you want to make this shift? Do you want to make this tradeoff? already of hacks and tools and tricks to be able to help people to execute when they otherwise wouldn't. So you could definitely help co-design this, right? That's how we began, right? The design school at Stanford to help actually design a system that's weighted in your favor. And we know when we'll get there. We'll know when we've achieved it because on a day you don't want to make the trade-off, you'll still make it. On a day that you don't want to make the trade-off you'll still make it right on a day that you don't want to make the trade-off you'll still make it that's when you've got a system working

on your side yeah which is i should just also note for people listening applies to diet applies to exercise applies to just about anything where a system can be designed that is weighted in your favor in such a way that it's unlikely to fail, right? So one question slash topic that would be very helpful just to hear you talk about, I've thought about it quite a lot, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. And it'll give me also an excuse to read something from your book that I enjoy, is determining what a fair, well-reasoned, polite decline looks like. And recognizing that I only have control over the delivery of that message, not how people emotionally respond to it. And really just leaving it at that, like I've delivered my message in a fair, even handed manner. And it's up to the recipient as to how they want to

respond. And if they overreact in some negative way, that is their problem, not my problem. And I bring it up on a meta level. I just want to mention one line that I highlighted in your book. Actually, I'll mention two. The first is make your peace with the fact that saying no often requires trading popularity for respect. And I'll just read this part here. Yes, saying no, respectfully, reasonably, and gracefully can come at a short-term social cost, but part of living the way of the essentialist is realizing respect is far more valuable than popularity in the long run. This gives me an excuse to just read. I don't think I would use this exact text, but Peter Drucker, who is one of my favorite authors, his extremely boringly titled book, The Effective Executive, remains one of my repeat reads.

But his response, and you may have to help me with the last name here, but I think it's, is it Csikszentmihalyi? Is that the professor he's replying to? But he's replying to a request, and his polite decline goes as follows. Quote, I am greatly honored and flattered by your kind letter of February 14th, for I've admired you and your work for many years, and I've learned much from it. But, my dear Professor C, I'll just abbreviate, I am afraid I have to disappoint you. I could not possibly answer your questions. I am told I am creative.

I don't know what that means. I just keep plotting. I hope you will not think me presumptuous or rude if I say that one of the secrets of productivity, whereas I do not believe in creativity, is to have a very big, all caps, very big, waste paper basket to take care of all, all caps, invitations such as yours.

Productivity, in my experience, consists of not, all caps, doing anything that helps the work of other people, but to spend all one's time on the work the good Lord has fitted one to do and to do it well, end quote. That's very clear and very direct. Do you have any suggestions for templates or favorite ways of saying no to requests from people you know that you simply cannot or do not want to comply with? Let's just pause for a second on that story. How do we have the text? Why do we know that that's

how he responded? We know because it got published in the book on creativity, positively saying, this is one of the keys to creativity is, you know, I reached out to him and he showed me this and I learned something in the process, which is that highly creative people are willing to block out space to do the work that they are built to do and want to do and aren't just doing everything that everybody else is doing or everybody asks of them. So what it helps us to identify is that there is such a situation as being able to push back, say no, and there to be a positive result come from it. You know, I liked your email bounce back. This was positive to me. I learned things from it myself. This is, you know, there is such a thing. And often we're such novices at no, we just are so fearful of it. We don't learn how to do it and we don't do it. So we just assume that bad things are going to come. Sometimes they do. But I think that we have to do like reverse pilots sometimes

where we try not doing something and saying no to something or just not doing it at all and seeing what the effects are and learning from it in our way. You know, in terms of a template, I've explored lots of templates and lots of things. An example that came up recently I really liked, which illustrates one way to do this, is from Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, right, respected? Yes.

Right, quoted all the time, arguably the most respected investor ever. You know, he's constructed a system in his life that allows him to communicate and give back to people through his annual conference, for example. But that doesn't mean that he's saying yes to every request along the way. So in fact, there's an interesting story. Tony Robbins tells a story in his book on finance about Warren Buffett, in which he basically failed to get Warren Buffett to ever be interviewed for his book. He's getting all the big top investors and he's priding himself on being able to access these people. And he's using all of those people and those relationships, excuse me, to go after Warren Buffett and to keep tapping him for an interview. And still he's not getting anything.

So then they're at some media event together they're about to you know one's bet he's leaving and tony's going on to be interviewed and he catches him for saying he says oh i'm doing this book and so and so is reaching out to you and i'd love to have you in this and and his response was uh was oh you know i just don't i think i just said everything i could say on that subject i just just don't think there's anything else I could add to what's already out there. And that's his polite no. And the people that are best at it, I don't think are saying no. And I don't even think they have to be as Peter Drucker was kind of – I mean, that was a particularly explicit way of dealing with it, right?

And I don't think that's necessary either. I think you could just be very quiet, happily, gently. I just don't think I could add anything to that project. Thanks for thinking of me. I just don't think I'd be the right person for that. I just think I've done everything I can do on that. And it's so important. I mean, Peter Drucker, not Drucker, Warren Buffett. I cannot find the original citation of this that it's him, but he's quoted as having said that the difference between successful I'm trying to say is sometimes you can simply say no. I mean, it does depend on the relationship and the request. But also, I think sometimes it's just the best no is a yes. It's saying it's saying, look, yes, I can I can do you know, I'm doing this.

So I just couldn't do anything beyond this. You know, I request to be interviewed for something. Hi, I'm working on this book, this really important project. It's high risk for me. I think it can make a huge difference, but it's consuming all of my energies and creativity right now to do this right. And I just can't get this wrong. That's, you know, that's what I've. That's what I can do. I think it's starting with the yes. In some ways, I think the best no's are really saying the yes that we're committed to saying what we're doing. And you're right. Sometimes people are going to react badly. But that if we've been respectful, if we've been thoughtful, if we've been useful within the parameters that we've identified, for example, if you can actually

do a favor for someone in five minutes, if you really have a system that allows it to be five minutes, fine, five minute favor, I'm a big, I can be a believer in that. Discipline giving, I'm a believer in that. But if within that context you've made, if then somebody is upset, takes the victim approach, is basically throwing a tantrum. Yeah, that's no fun for anybody, but that's not good enough reason to have said yes to it, as every great leader has ever dealt with, and every great parent has dealt with, almost on a daily basis. Every great parent has dealt with almost on a daily basis every great parent is dealing with a situation where a child wants something and they may throw some sort of

tantrum if it is of a major tantrum because they didn't get the thing they wanted of course and we just have to be adult about it and mature about it and uh and recognize yeah you're not going to keep everybody happy all the time what's a con yeah yeah definitely now you you have is it four kids yeah right so you're not not not very essentialist of me but you've had a fair amount of practice with the the tantrum mitigating or at least uh accepting of those possible consequences. I'd love to chat for a second if we can. And this just gives me an option to read also something that stuck with me from your book, which was, and I'll just read the excerpts.

So this is a case study or a story of a gentleman named Jeff, G-E-O-F-F, and talks about his progressive burnout effectively. But he ultimately, quote, paid a high price to learn a simple yet essential lesson, and that is protect the asset. And then I thought this was worth mentioning for people who are type A personalities, achievers who are very good at getting things done or pride themselves on that. And the quote is as follows. In the many hours Jeff spent resting, he came to see an interesting paradox resting after he burned out. Interesting paradox in his addiction to achievement. For type A personality, it is not hard to push oneself hard. Pushing oneself to the limit is easy. The real challenge for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard. He explains to any overachievers, quote, if you think you are so tough, you can do anything. I have a challenge for you. If you

really want to do something hard, say no to an opportunity so you can take a nap. And I thought this might be a good place to explore the quarterly offsite, which I don't recall as being explored very much in the book, but I've heard it mentioned in some interviews that you've done. Could you perhaps elaborate on what the personal quarterly offsite is? It's creating space for you to actually think long-term about what really matters in the greater scheme of things. I mean, it's the same as any executive team. They have a quarterly offsite, an annual offsite, why do they do it? Because they know if they don't, they're going to get buried in reacting to proximate issues instead of seeing strategically where they want to be headed and what trade-offs they need to make in order to get there. And it's just the same for the individual level. My wife and I started doing quarterly off-sites two or three years ago.

And in fact, one of the things I did to try and construct a system to make sure we followed through is I did it where we had a few people come together. And I was sort of leading the the the process but but underneath it one of the important intents of it was so that anna and i could actually have a full day once every quarter you know away from everything else and to think about the the long-term goals and and out of that process for us and what what are you doing on that in that process you you're saying okay what's happened over the last uh you know well the big picture you can say okay what's happened in my life what's the long-term perspective here uh where have i where where am i where have i been what's been going on um so you're trying to get a clear view of your life, what's been going on with it. And then you

say, okay, going forward, long-term perspective, what would I like to be achieving? What feels important? Again, it's not just success. It's not just goal setting. You can set the wrong goals. It's what's essential to me, what it feels like my mission to pursue. And I remember in that very first official session that we did, Anna, as she was going through the process, had identified a couple of things that were really important. And I could tell they were, they had been within her, but they just sort of came to a surface um one of them one of them was a i don't know it might sound funny to people but but it was like horses horses right that's a weird thing to say isn't it horses that's not what you expect me to say she said i just have this vision

of having a place with horses and it's not necessarily even that we would own the horses it wasn't even necessarily that and we don't have any horse background it's not like we you know horse people nothing like that but but it was a sense of if we if we were to achieve what that means our children would grow up in a certain kind of environment. It was like a symbol of a certain type of childhood. And our children at the time were sort of in the golden years, which means the years before they're driving and after they're out of diapers. And so it's like a magical period because you can do things, you can make memories together, you can do it. And we weren't living in a place at the time, we were in the middle of Silicon Valley,

which is terrific in lots of ways, but you're not going to end up with horses, right? You have to think differently. And that single insight in that quarter, the offsite, shifted a whole sense of intent. And we realized if we want to do this while our children are still in this golden years, we're going to have to move sooner rather than later to be able to achieve this dream. Otherwise, we're going to achieve it after at least the eldest is out of the house. And then what was the point? And so it was an insight, a strategic insight that has had profound influence on on a you know it's a one decision that makes a thousand there's a whole series of things we had to do to put in

process to be prepared to organize it to find such a place and so on and it took a while to do it but um i mean it took a couple of years maybe maybe as much as that um and uh and and that now we live in a community that you're required to have space for horses you don't have to have them but you have to have space for them and and that single criteria again makes a lot of other influences change right you're going to be around a lot of nature you're going to be even the kind of people in some ways that you're around, a certain value system that they care about, all those kinds of things. And so that's sort of a personal example of why to hold personal quarterly offsites. It shifts the whole direction you're going in. It gives you – it tilts and bends your, your, you know,

your narrative as you go forward. Do you have any recommendations for other format best practices or any best practices for personal offsites? Is it a, is it an afternoon? Is it a day? Is it two days? Is it in your living room? Is it offsite? Okay. I think, I think here's what I think. I think,? Is it off-site? Okay. I think – here's what I think.

I think it's off-site. It's in nature or thereabouts. It's somewhere that's quiet, uninterrupted. I've never done this, but I know someone who has a second phone and their second phone is like one of these little credit card sized phones. And there's only two people in the world that have the number to this phone. And so when they go, it means they can be reached for emergency, but that's it. And so they are just gone so that they can have an uninterrupted space, which is very hard to have these days. So you want to be in an uninterrupted space, which is very hard to have these days. So you want to be in an uninterrupted environment. You want to not have, uh, text and email and all of that available. Uh, you know, I, I recommend you either do it on your own or maybe with one other person, you know, a design partner, uh, that you can, that you can really go through the process.

I think that the longer the perspective is the better better. You know, the one I was referring to, we actually started prior to our life. You know, it was back to, you know, so we started at great grandparents, in fact, great grandparents, parents, your own life, and then going forward to the end of your life, to your kids, grandkids, great grandchildren, or if you don't have children, it's just the people that you'd influence generations from now. And it's that kind of huge vision, that kind of level of perspective that helps to draw up within you an unexpected insight, something that you already know but somehow is being buried because you're thinking about life in just sort of reactive ways. What questions do you ask related to, or might you ask related to, say, your grandparents or great-grandparents in that portion of the session? Things that include, well, first of all, write down anything you know about them.

It won't take long. It's its own kind of lesson, actually. What do you know about them? Most people, I think less than 5% of people, not scientifically, but based on thousands of people, many thousands of people I've asked this question to now, cannot name the first and last names of each of their great-grandparents, right? Their eight great-grandparents, they cannot name the first and last name of all eight. We cannot even name the first and last names of the people that made us everything we are. It's extraordinary.

It's its own lesson. We're where we live, the country we live the the language we speak that everything was in was either determined by them or largely influenced by these people we don't even know their names amazing but we know something about them if we know anything about them we should gather it what what has lasted what decisions have they made that still affect us even if we don't know anything about them, we don't know their names, but we know that, well, they moved to this country, they moved to this place, they did anything that we know they've impacted us. So what lasted, for good or ill, what has lasted?

And you get to grandparents, so people know a lot more about their grandparents in general. You're asking, okay, what positive things did they do that are still with you how did they shape you in ways that you would want to to pass on to others what challenges did they bring into the table meaning to or almost always not meaning to if you you've been impacted by decisions they made and it's true for almost everybody i mean great very rare you have all positives from your ancestors, right? I mean, that would be fantastic. Sometimes people do get pretty close to that. But for most of us, it's pretty dysfunctional family history once you get back a little ways. And the same for parents.

So you're really trying to understand what is their impact? What have their decisions been impact on me positively and negatively? What am I grateful for? I mean, I'm a big believer in the idea that if we're going to blame people, we got to blame them intelligently. I, I,

I watched somebody talking about this one time and it had an impact on me, which is if you're going to blame your parents or your grandparents for something, you can blame them for everything meaning yeah yeah i blame you for this bad decision but i also blame you for giving me my life right you know i also blame i blame you for having you know messed this thing here a thing up that's always made this particular thing hard for me or for my for my mother father but i also blame you for the fact that they turned that around and became strong and i've always always benefited from that strength because you blame intelligently you see the good and the bad you blame intelligently you're looking at the

whole picture so that you can see your life with some sort of perspective uh this is something i learned the design school at Stanford. I didn't know it then. I was still thinking birth till death thinking. I thought that's pretty long-term perspective. If you're getting people to think about their whole life from birth till death, you are doing a good thing. And I think it probably was a good thing. And it's certainly far more long-term than most people think on a daily basis but it's so insufficient it's necessary

but insufficient we've got a what what a self-centered perspective i couldn't believe it actually when i really realized how blind of a perspective i was suggesting i mean but like like like my story begins like like the story of my life is really about me. What a weird thing to think that it's about my birth, my death, and what's happened in between. The narrative is so much richer than that, and I've got to tap into that. So as I then move into the future, I'm also doing the same thing. So in these personal quarterly off-sites, it's pushing yourself beyond that. You're saying, okay, what do I want my children, grandchildren, generations, especially this idea? What do I want the generation

that has forgotten me? What impact do I want to have on them? If it's true that we can't even name our great-grandparents, then it's going to be true that our great-grandchildren won't dare to name us, or it might be true. It might not be true. It might be true. But the impact doesn't change. Just the memory changes. Impact outlasts memory. And so this perspective, this helps to reveal for us the difference between good things and essential things. And that's the whole shift. You know, the essentialism is different to every other productivity system that I'm familiar with in this primary way. It's not about getting more stuff done. It's about getting more of the right things

done. And it's not about efficiently doing what's on the to-do list. It's realizing that the most important thing isn't even on the to-do list. That's the insight. And that's what the personal quarterly offsite can do. Could you chat a little bit, this is very helpful, about what makes a good design partner and what that might look like, how you help each other? Because design thinking came up a little bit earlier. Maybe you could just define that for folks since it came in the context of the d.school at Stanford. But what is design thinking and what makes a good design partner find that for folks since it came in the context of the d school at stanford but uh you know what what is design thinking and what makes a good design partner and what might they ask you or do in a quarterly offsite um okay well let's start with what makes a bad design partner perfect um

you know a bad design partner a bad friend, bad relationship is one that eats the heart out if you're successful and has some sort of pleasure if you're unsuccessful. That's like a bad relationship. And unfortunately, I think because of our human weakness, that that is often what we're offering. That's often what we're offered. And so you've got to find that person who is celebrating your success, who wants your success. When you're successful, they don't go, oh, geez, I'm now jealous of that. Oh, what's wrong with me? They just are delighted. And I say this in a small way. I mean, I am fortunate that my design partner, right, that's my wife, Anna, is this.

And she has been the whole time I've ever known her. And it's been really amazing. And I think often about how different my life would have been without her being that design partner. I'm not making some, I don't know, some cheap comment or cheap praise. Me without her is not to have written Essentialism. No way. I might have wanted to. I might have thought about it. But the idea of executing or the idea of completing it, the idea of the key breakthrough moments, it's not that she's done it, it's that she's believed in me as I've tried to do these things. I mean, I read somewhere that all you need is one person to believe in you for the rest of your life. To have somebody believe in you, affirm you, just not, and a weaker version of that is like don't talk them down.

Don't, you know, why are you doing that? Oh, that seems weird. Why would you want to achieve that? Any of that kind of stuff. Just to have somebody that isn't doing that is something. But that has been incredibly useful to me with Anna. And so with a design partner, that's what you're trying to least approximate.

And so it doesn't have to be a spouse, of course. It could be a friend. It could be a colleague. It could be a parent. It could be anybody. But as long as these are the rules of the road. I think the only other thing I want to say about the design part is that one shouldn't expect the conversations to all be easy, especially if you're choosing someone who knows you well. Just because they're a supporter of you doesn't mean that they're going to say

easy things to you. I mean, I don't know. I mean, the idea of having a close relationship with someone, I mean, I'm talking marriage now for some reason, and I'm reflecting on that. The idea that you can have a relationship without having conflict is absurd. There is conflict in all of life. And so having conflict about what is important is really to be expected. And to figure out together, to have even what is sometimes painful conversations, what is most important to us? Is it this thing or that thing? Which is the trade-off?

How much of this are we really going to have in our life? This is hard work. And it's not one more thing to do. It's like the very work of life. And so with a design partner, you're engaging, you're willing to engage now in something over time that could be quite tough, especially, as I say, if you're living together with the output of the decisions. Those are some of the things I've learned, I've thought about. But I do think having a design partner or two can be a good idea.

Maybe one of the comments about it is is that maybe i've been a little idealistic to say it this way but but having people who can powerfully listen is got to be a key element of of success with a design partner to be a powerful listener is is uh is also pretty rare um you know people that aren't the second you say well i've been thinking about this jumping in with their opinion reading their autobiography into your life telling you what you know you've got to have space and and i i think it would be better to go on a personal quarterly offset on your own than it would be to go with somebody who's just going to jump in immediately and interrupt your thinking and tell them about what they think. The whole idea is to create space to be able to discern that voice.

We will have lots of names for it, right? But we'll just the voice, your own conscience your own sense of direction and to be able to listen to that so that you can discern again between all these good things all these different pools and and so on and really what it is that you feel even you you know what you came here to do and that's the point of it if if there's no one who can help with that process go on your own but if you've got somebody who can do it together with and you're doing it for them too so it's not one way you you're being listener for them and not just to what they're saying but to try and get deeper and to hear what they're not saying right in of, I mean, the Quakers have a process that's

very powerful. You can put a link to this possibly, I don't know if I've got some notes or whatever, but a process that they follow called the Clarity, it's not the Clarity Council, but it's something like that, the Clarity, and they have rules, these two rules, which is that you're not allowed to give any opinion and you're not allowed to give any advice, any advice, any opinion. You can only ask honest questions in pursuit of helping someone to find clarity. And so your goal is not to persuade them to do something or persuade them not to do something. It is to ask questions so that they can feel and get clear on what is they feel right to do. That is, that's again, I know I'm talking high standards. I know this is

these aspirational things, but that's really what you're trying to get to. You're trying to create an environment. I mean, one of the things I'll do, I certainly meditate. I mean, I pray. And so I pray when I'm on these off sites so that I can feel that sense of direction. You know, I'll read. I'll bring literature with me that gets me centered. What type of literature? Any examples?

Yeah, I mean, beyond Scripture, which I do bring and do read, it can be, you know, it's classic literature. What it's not is as important as what it is. It's not rubbish. It's not just thought of the day latest reactive thing. It's, you know, it's as far away David McCullough. And I loved that. I mean, that's a long biography. And by the end of it, I just loved John Adams and loved what he was trying to do. And it inspired me no end to what I want to be able to do with my son. I have a son, and actually, he's a namesake, just like John Adams has John Quincy Adams. And it's just inspiring. I mean, John Adams reads, he was reading Latin, Greek, all of these classic texts, not just classic texts in English, in their original Greek and Latin. I mean, okay, I need to give up this kind of junk gossipy news that is so easy to get dragged into multiple times a day. Breaking. Everything's breaking

news now. Everything's breaking news. This is the most important thing that's ever happened. And when you click on the bait, what you find is that somebody is now talking about someone who was tweeting about somebody else who was tweeting. And that's the breaking news. This is gossip. This is just gossip. This is just nonsense. Well, at least that's how example of a kind of book that I would want to be reading, something that can ground me in principles that are longer term than hopefully than my own life. I mean, that's what I want to be connected to. to, prayer for just a second. Do you have any prayers or types of prayers that you

return to more often than others? You know, so prayer for me is, what it is characterized by is not being wrote. Not being, I'm sorry? Not being wrote not being i'm sorry i'm not being wrote wrote so so when it's when it's great it has a single um a single test point which is already kind of mentioned which is that you can feel that voice of clarity. You can actually center yourself in it. Okay, I can now feel the difference between all of these voices around me. In my office, I have a picture by James Christensen. It's called The Listener. And in the picture, you have the listeners in the middle is a young man. And around him, he's got all these people, very colorful picture. He's sitting there almost in a sort of Buddhist seated position, his eyes closed, to represent that he's trying to listen to his voice of conscience instead of all these other people around him. Some of them are laughing. Some of them are yelling. Shakespeare's in there. I think his mother-in-law was painted in there. He's got all these different

people, and he's trying to listen, not to all of that, but to the voice within it. That's when I know that prayer's working, so to speak, is that it's not just one way. I'm not just going through the motions. I go through the motions, but when I go through the motions, it's not, it's not changing. I don't feel different afterwards. You're just, you're having a, I mean, if you, if you and I got on the phone and every time I got on the phone with you, I said exactly the same things thoughtlessly, our relationship would not be very real. You know, this would get very irritating. And so, so for me, you know, it's about the realness. I mean, I certainly subscribe to the idea, to the principle that the state of my heart before God that matters at any given moment. It's not what I did yesterday. It's not what I did 10 years ago, good or bad. It is this

moment, and of course that's true in every moment, this moment you're conditioned. Am I willing to admit my vulnerabilities? That's what I'm trying to do in prayer. Look, this is what's going on. This is what's a struggle for me. This is what's a trouble. And I'm really willing to do whatever I'm – if I can hear the voice of clarity, I commit right now. I'm doing it.

I will do it. And if I'm in that state, then it becomes clear what to do and what not to do. And especially important on something like a personal, of course, the offsite, but also true, of course, in this, you know, this ongoing journey of trying to discern not between, not just between as, as you could frame it, uh, yeah, good and evil. Um,

maybe it is that still in some way, but really for me, I don't think about it like that. I'm trying to discern between essential and good. I'm trying to say, look, it's all good. I got, I got a long list of things I can do

today. And there's nothing on this list that's bad. There's nothing in me. I don't personally struggle with, oh, I want to do something bad in my life. I don't feel that. But I want to know between the essential and the good. I want to know what that is because I don't have time to get all the good and all the essential things done. I don't have that time. I don't think actually any of us do. I think really we have enough essential things to fill the rest of our life. And that is precisely why I must – it's sougglerly important to me to figure that out. It's because every time I'm not doing what's essential, I am giving up something that is essential.

That's a great way to put it. And we could talk for many, many hours. I may have to, at some point, ask for a round two. This is incredibly enjoyable and helpful. And I thought I would start to wrap up just by reading a few other highlights on these many pages in front of me. And then we can start to put a close to things. But the first is, quote, to embrace the essence of essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions, which previously come up in the book, with three core truths. Number one, I choose to. Number two, only a few things really matter. And three, I can do anything but not everything. And then the complementary two highlights later on are,

quote, the ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away. It can only be forgotten. I think that's really important. And then to become an essentialist requires a heightened awareness of our ability to choose. And so I wanted to open the door if you wanted to elaborate on that at all. But then also to ask you, metaphorically speaking, if you could put one question, one line, word, quote, whatever it might be on a gigantic billboard to reach billions of people, what that might be. But that'll be probably my last question. But the ability to choose and how often we forget that we do have choices. We may not love our choices, but nonetheless, we do have choices. Why is it that we so often feel we do not have choices or forget that we have choices?

Well, we're creatures of habit. And so we get pulled into a whole set of things as if, and eventually those habits are acting on us. And so we just really start to believe, I don't have a choice. And we say it that way. We say, I have to. What we're saying when we say we have to is there is nothing else that could be done. I have to means there is no agency involved. There's no choice involved. And I had a great little experience with this where we had a son through a funny and welcome sort of wager that I did, just this friendly, silly wager with a friend of mine. He said, we had this thing, if I won the w wager then he would take my son to baseball for the whole season uh and if and and if i lost i had to take him to baseball the whole season which

seemed like that was a wager in my favor but it was really unlikely that i was going to win the wager and and um at least at least he thought so and so as it turns out, he lost a wager, so he's now doing this. And so this is all just fun and games. But then as the season began, we realized that we, of course, had been conned in our own thinking, planning fallacy.

Of course, there's still requirements for us. We still have to get him all the equipment and we still got to get him ready every single time. And we still got to go take him to, there's still, it's not going to literally be zero impact just because someone else is taking them to the practices and so on. And so right as it came, there was still enough going on in our life. It just felt like definitely one more thing and quite a big one

more thing. But here we are, we could have said, look, we have to do it. We don't want to, but we have to. And we almost did make that mistake. And then we changed. We could have said, look, we have to do it. We don't want to, but we have to. And we almost did make that mistake. And then we changed the language. We said, and this is important, I choose to have a son in baseball because, and we had to fill in the blank, because if we don't, he's going to be really disappointed. By framing it like that, if you say I have to, it's the end of your reasoning, end of of your thinking you can't prosecute the hypothesis you can't do anything there's no hypothesis you just it's end of story by saying i'm choosing to do this because he'll be upset now we could test it now he could have been upset we didn't know so we can test it jack come in here comes in so we're

thinking about this baseball season we're thinking it might just be you know one more thing and and we're just wondering you know what what are your thoughts about this about you know if we did it didn't do it what are your thoughts it instant reaction oh that'd be fine i'd be fine if we didn't do that oh well that's that was easy i saved months of work it was no love lost from at all that's why we get caught into this. We think we have to. We don't take responsibility. It's a choice.

It's a choice because I don't want this output. Now let's go and find out if that output really is what would happen. So I think that that's kind of where we get into it. And in some ways you could say, well, that's not what's the big deal. But it's a huge deal. Because at the core of it, what we are is our ability to choose. That's who we are. That's what makes us human. And so when we remove that, when we forget about it, robotic ways, disconnected ways, disconnected relationships. We're not choosing anymore. We are, but we're not doing it very consciously. We're doing it compulsively. And that's exactly the shift that I'd be advocating for. I rarely advocate

explicitly for what I think is essential or non-essential. There's some for those that are paying attention in the book. Some of my values, I think, are in there. But it's not explicit. I'm not saying, hey, you should value this thing over that thing. But I am advocating that people should be conscious about the value that they are choosing, not compulsive. Compulsive, this is the environment in which we don't know we're choosing. We're not conscious of it. We just become a function of everybody else's choices and what everyone else is doing and whatever we just last thought in our heads kind of a thing. Which is a choice in and of itself, right?

If you think you're not making a choice or you abdicate yourself from making a choice, that is in fact a choice. You are just putting fate in the hands of other people, other forces, your subconscious and so on, as opposed to exerting agency over your set of circumstances. And it easier to do that in in the short term it feels easier i don't have a choice see i'm not responsible i'm not i'm not i'm not on the hook for this i mean i'm the victim of everything i mean of course in a sense we don't have to worry as much because we don't i i don't like this but this is what it is is. And that's all fine if everybody around us is making the right choices and society is going in the right direction and culture is supporting our highest values and our best contribution that we could make in life, fine. But of course, that's not the case.

And so in a world where, you know, it can be tilted in all sorts of pernicious directions, all sorts of negative themes and influences, if you just go with the flow, if you just go, oh, I don't have a choice. I think, you know, you can end up living a life so differently than the one you really intended to live that, again, it's waking up to this. Yes, I have a choice. I've got to make a choice. It might be the wrong choice.

I might guess it wrong. Of course I am, but I'm going to make it. I'm going to actually lean into that reality. The one choice you can't make is to get rid of your ability to choose. It cannot be done. It's not theoretically, not practically possible. So that's a good, it's good news though. This discovery, I am choice.

Whatever's happened to me, I can make a different choice going forward. Whatever's happened to me intergenerationally, it's full circle back to this new work that you're going to start working on in a new way from this moment on forever is is that is that we we don't have to do what happened to us we don't have to repeat what happened to our mother father grandfather grandparent great-grandparent bad stuff did happen i'm almost certainly but we can be a transition person we can say i have a new choice and i

choose differently and and it's so powerful the moment somebody discovers that weight has an awakening around that they're able to they're able to move forward and change everything that comes after them oh we didn't talk about it in my family but i'm going to talk about it in my family we we you know this was a black box and we didn't deal with it but we're going to deal with it it's not going to be easy but we're dealing with it now so that it doesn't just get passed on to the next my great-grandkids are still struggling with this stuff i'm going to shift it hell we had alcoholism in our family but we i'm not going to i can choose not to drink alcohol i can choose not to drink alcohol. I can choose not to pass this on. This is tremendously, to me, empowering, inspiring change in perspective.

Hugely. And like you said, you do have the option to flip the switch, to switch the track, to redirect the train. And you can be that transition point for yourself and for the people around you and for the people who come after you. Well, Greg, this has been such a wonderful conversation for me. I hope it was somewhat stimulating or fun for you to be a part of. And perhaps we could just close on the billboard question. Does anything come to mind as a question, a word, a line, a quote, anything that you would put on a billboard as a message to convey to millions or billions of people? Light. Light. Just that word. L-I-G-H-T. That's it, light. Is that every moment in our lives, in whatever capacity we're in, there is always this choice in this moment

to step towards light or to step towards darkness. And I don't mean grandiose, as I said before, massive good versus massive evil. It's not that. But each moment we have the choice. Do I step towards the light? Do I step towards some dark version of this moment? Do I get irritated with my kids or do I be patient? Do I listen to the voice of conscience in this moment or do I just go after what my ego would want me to go after and my experience with this and i'm just just beginning my own journey of course but is that if i if i pursue what is light it will bring more light and that light grows brighter and brighter and maybe it carries on forever until maybe until the perfect day. But that's the idea.

Wherever anybody's at, they can do that, right? Whatever choices they've made before. And all of us have made mistakes, right? All of us have chosen in those moments, oh, I went down. It was a dark choice. I don't mean the dark side, like some Star Wars thing where you go over to the dark side. No, but just in this moment, I chose the impatient path. I chose the negative path. I chose the self-interested path. I chose the, you know, or I could just choose the light.

And my experience is wherever anybody is on this journey, you know, between light to dark, let's's say wherever they are on that continuum the people that are most full of light aren't the people who have done all the best things in their lives necessarily it's which direction they're headed in it's which decision they just made and and and so that's why it's so powerful it's this is not getting all burdened about whatever the past has been it's in this moment am i leaning into the light or leaning out of it? And that to me is like, seriously, it's like the whole of life written in one single rule. And so that would be, I think that would be my answer for that, at least today, light. I like it. Well, thank you so much, Greg. People can find you online, gregmckeown.com. They can

say hello, give a wave on social at Gregory McKeown on Twitter and probably elsewhere. The book Essentialism, I highly recommend it. And I don't say that much about many books. It is a very useful book. I found it personally useful. It's something that I revisit. Is there anything that you would like to say in closing remarks? Anything else you'd like to add for people listening? Any ask you'd like to make of them, if anything? No, I don't have any ask for them. i do want to say tim i really appreciate uh how you know this conversation i feel like you know it's it's been i found it more than a normal podcast kind of conversation and that's uh you know that's credit to you uh and uh you know i appreciate

that that you know you've brought so much to the conversation and helped it to be what, at least for me, has felt rich and meaningful and real. So thank you to you. Thanks so much, Greg. This is a conversation I think I will certainly listen to again. I'll be revisiting the book. I think that's a good starting point for my next quarterly offsite. And for people listening, I will include links to everything we discussed. Of course, everything that Greg is up to, the Quaker process.

I've taken notes on things to follow up on. The piece of artwork you mentioned as your reference point. All of that will be in the show notes, which you can find at tim.blog forward slash podcast. Just search essentialism or Greg's name and it will pop right up. And I want to mention one more quote before we close. And this is also from the book. It is a quote of Lao Tzu and it goes as follows quote to attain knowledge, add things every day to attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom,

subtract things every day. So until next time, folks, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

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