The Tim Ferriss Show - #719: Walk & Talk with Greg McKeown — How to Find Your Purpose and Master Essentialism in 2024

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance, and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller more than a decade ago, The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I simply loved the product and felt like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement that you could use conveniently while on the run, which is for me a lot of the time. I have been using it a very, very long time indeed. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement.

Starting point is 00:00:38 And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? What simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. Since 2010, they have improved the formula 52 times in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible using rigorous standards and high-quality ingredients. How many ingredients? 75.

Starting point is 00:01:14 And you would be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now, I do my best always to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So

Starting point is 00:01:57 each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com

Starting point is 00:02:40 slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which

Starting point is 00:03:22 Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix sleep quiz at helixsleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes. Personally, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10 or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge. And there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not

Starting point is 00:04:05 the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines. And now Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring you a truly elevated sleep experience. Their newest collection of mattresses called Helix Elite includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences, so you can get exactly what your body needs. Each Helix Elite mattress comes with an extra layer of foam for pressure relief and thousands of extra microcoils for best-in-class support and durability. Every Helix Elite mattress also comes with a 15-year manufacturer's warranty and the same 100-night trial as the rest of Helix's mattresses.

Starting point is 00:04:47 And you, my dear listeners, can get 20% off of all mattress orders plus two free pillows. So go to helixsleep.com slash Tim to learn more. That's Helix Sleep, H-E-L-I-X, helixsleep.com slash Tim. This is their best offer to date and it will not last long. So take a look with Helix. Better sleep starts now. to see an appropriate time. What if I get the album? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. Tease that out.

Starting point is 00:05:39 This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. And this episode, I'm very excited to announce, is an experimental format. As per usual, I will be deconstructing, in some fashion, world-class performers to tease out the habits, routines, frameworks, etc. that you can use in your own lives. And my guest today is a guest who is very relevant for me personally right now, Greg McKeown. And he is relevant because he is easily one of my favorite thinkers on all things related to effectiveness, efficiency, and at the end of the day, quality of life and keeping your priority or priorities top of mind so that you are laser focused to do what really matters, the high leverage things,

Starting point is 00:06:27 which are sometimes the small things done with relentless focus that deliver incredibly, incredibly important outcomes. So let's get to it. This is a walk and talk with Greg McKeown. And overall, it is about how to find your purpose and master essentialism in 2024 or in the new year, if you're listening to this later. And the walk and talk format is something I wanted to experiment with because, let's face it, most of us sit too much. And if we consider sitting the new smoking on some level with its health implications, and I want to give credit to Kelly Starrett, who is also a multiple time podcast guest for, I believe, coining that expression. We should get out and walk more. Part of what makes us human, part of what enabled our brains to become these incredible machines they have become, which are powered on less electricity than a light bulb, by the way, is walking. The fact that we perambulate, the fact that we walk historically much of the day. And I wanted to also contend with some back

Starting point is 00:07:28 issues that I have that are exacerbated by extended sitting. And many different health issues are correlated to extended sitting. So this is a direct oppositional approach to perhaps the YouTube build TV show approach, which is this is audio only. And when I'm recording this, I am out walking. I have a high fidelity headset on and Greg is doing the same. We are doing something good for our bodies while we are having a fun and productive conversation. And my suggestion to everyone listening is if you can, do a walk and listen. There is no reason for you to be parked in front of a laptop watching a video contributing to your own physical demise hour by hour if you can be out walking around listening to this, also doing

Starting point is 00:08:21 something good for your body and therefore for your entire life. So get out, try a walk and listen while we walk and talk. You can be part of the conversation and that's enough preamble on the format. But I really feel strongly that this is something I'm going to do more of. I loved doing it. And my hope is that you will join us in walking more. It is the cure-all for so many things. Greg McKeown, who is he? You can find him on Twitter at Gregory McKeown, spelled M-C-K-E-O-W-N. Greg is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, mega bestsellers, Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which is a book I've read many times. And then I have reread my Kindle highlights probably 15, 20 times. And his second book, Effortless, subtitle, Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Together, they've sold more than 2 million copies in 37 languages. He's also a speaker, host of the Greg McKeown podcast, and founder of the Essentialism Academy with students from 96 countries. More than 175,000 people have also signed up to his One Minute Wednesday newsletter. He is currently doing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge, and he is, as I mentioned, easily one of my favorite thinkers on many, many, many, many, many different areas. And he is intensely practical. Originally from London, England, Greg and his wife Anna are parents to four children. You can find everything Greg at gregmckeown.com. And without further ado, please enjoy, hopefully while you are in motion,

Starting point is 00:09:56 this wide-ranging conversation with Greg McKeown. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Are you feeling good about the new year? How are you feeling about this year? I'm feeling great about the new year. I'm feeling really outstanding about the new year, actually. My realization on New Year's Eve, as I was doing an inventory, was that despite my predilection to self-flagellate and always look for the black lining on the

Starting point is 00:10:28 beautiful cloud, that 2023 was a great year. I did a lot of things right. I did a lot of things that were uncomfortable and overall feel really good about it. So my overall feeling is do more of that, keep going, which is unusual as a realization or maybe just a framing for New Year's Eve. So I feel really good about 2024. And of course, the hex that kicked this whole experimental walk and talk podcast off, people have no context, in case we use this, I am walking around with multiple quorums of audio recording attached to my head and my hips. And I am really appreciating the combination of locomotion and conversation. And you had sent me a text, which was very simple, at least at face value, which is, what is your top goal of 2024? And I thought to

Starting point is 00:11:26 myself, that's a damn good question. And I would like to hear your answer, at least explore it with you. And here we are. So how are you feeling about 2024? The way I've been thinking about it myself is just what is the number one highest priority for the year? So normally I'm not even thinking about it necessarily like a goal because that itself can be constraining. Could you say that wording one more time just so I make sure it sticks in? What is the number one highest priority for the year? That's not very different than the way I worded it when I texted you. But it just means a little different than just, okay, well, you've got all these existing goals. What's the next book? How do you get the podcast to the next level?

Starting point is 00:12:13 It's saying, look, bigger picture than that. Step back, look at your whole life from the broadest possible perspective and get connected to that. Something like, okay, what do you understand the purpose of life to be? And therefore what is missing right now? You know, if you got to the end of your life and you didn't do something differently this year, what might you regret? Just a couple of months ago, I dropped off my daughter, Eve, who you and I've talked about before. She was the one that got really sick and we dropped her off. So she is healthy again. She is well again.

Starting point is 00:12:49 She's really done well. And I was dropping her off for a mission. So she's gone to Brazil for a year and a half. And I thought dropping her off would just be like this really happy thing because I felt happy about it. And she did. And the whole family did. It's just this great thing. And she's going to Manaus, which is in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, which she also loves. I know where that is. It's all good. I mean, she's learning Portuguese,

Starting point is 00:13:13 but she just like everything was working good about it. But about 10 minutes before I drop her off, I just have this awful feeling. Just not like, oh, this is bad, this is wrong, but I suddenly just feel grief and strong emotions, and I can see her whole life to this moment flashing before my eyes. And I have, I don't know, something, the language I've given to the experience was something like a micro- essentialist judgment day or something like that. Like, what does that mean? Well, it means like, did you miss it? Did you miss her life? Were you there for it? Like a ghost of Christmas past type. Yeah. Yeah. Just like review. Yes.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Just like a Christmas Carol type experience in micro version of it, because it's done, you know, like there's of course, there's a role to be played in her life, you know, forever, but that phase is done. And so like, whatever I feel in this moment, that's it. I, the moment has gone and I'm just now reflecting on it. And in that moment, I did sort of come to this awakening of like, no, I, I was, I was there for it more than I wasn't. We traveled together. We did things together. We've made all these memories, our relationship connect and safe, safely attached. But I also learned in that moment, like, goodness, this life is so pathetic, short. And I learned also in that moment,

Starting point is 00:14:40 it's not divided between one X, two X, 3x activities, you know, on an important scale, it's like 1x, 10x, 1000x. And this was an 1000x relationship. And did I live it like that was reality? That is reality. But did I understand that in the moment? I mean, that's fairly dramatic way to answer your question, but it's like, that's the perspective that I was reflecting on as I was thinking about, okay, therefore it's all of those perspectives are the true perspective that approximates reality. How do I think about where to put my time and energy for 2024 when there's so many good things you could be doing and so many things that will act upon me, good things that will act upon me that would consume the whole year easily. What's missing?

Starting point is 00:15:33 What do I need to do differently? And an answer did come to me, but that's some of how I've been thinking about it. So it sounds like, if I'm hearing you correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the way you're thinking about 2024 was informed by this realization slash reinforcement that as we think about different priorities, I think, kind of 1x or 2x versus like 100x, 1000x. Right. In terms of importance. So you have that farewell with your daughter, sending her off to Manaus, which I've always wanted to visit, but that's a separate story. So where do you go from there? Because people have these realizations.

Starting point is 00:16:20 Maybe they go, I have no idea. They go on a rafting trip with friends. They think to themselves, oh my God, this was so nourishing. I deepened my relationships with three of my most cherished friends, and I need to do more of this. But then it like sand through the fingers, slips away as they reenter their daily lives. And that's kind of it. Things get busy.

Starting point is 00:16:41 Things get crowded out. So what do you do or what did you do or what are you doing after you have that realization? Let me answer this in a conceptual way first of all, right? Like why have all sorts of limitations that make focus challenging, that make prioritization challenging, that make relationships challenging. And all of us have our own mix of, literally, our DNA can predispose us to various weaknesses. And so the key for me seems to have been, I have to build, I mean, the word gets overused,

Starting point is 00:17:18 like build a system that's equal to that challenge. And so I have like a paper plan that I built and designed myself and keep adapting all the time. As soon as I learn, oh, that's kind of a weakness for me, I build something in. And oh, that's a tendency where I make trade-offs that I'm not pleased with later. I build something in so that it acts on me. And this really is the whole idea of effortless, right? Like effortless execution is I don't want to trust my weaknesses. I want to build a system that means my weaknesses become something like irrelevant. That's what I'm trying to build. So one of those

Starting point is 00:17:57 things, like, I mean, literally physically, I take it with me everywhere. My personalized plan, I take everywhere, literally everywhere I go, I will have it. And so in it, I have the key relationships of my life, right? And that for me is very simple. That's my wife, Anna. That's our four children. They are the thousand Xs in my life. And then there is a select group of friends. And then there's a much broader group of people that I also am building relationships and making sure I'm checking in on that really matter to me. If I fail in those relationships, then probably everything's probably okay. But if I fail in my relationship with the thousand Xs, it's like, no, nothing's okay. You're like, well, my wife and I, let me use that as an

Starting point is 00:18:43 example. I mean, it's an old saying, but it's like, if things are bad in your marriage, it doesn't matter how good anything else is, nothing's good. And if everything's good in your marriage, it doesn't matter how bad everything else is, everything is good. It's like, this is so disproportionately important. And so I don't think I can separate my answer to your question without saying, yeah, it's actually the establishment building of this family that means there is a permanent system in place to help me remember what matters and who matters. When do you revisit that? In other words, if you're carrying this with you everywhere and it seems like, and again, I'll just, I'll add in my thoughts and then you can refine as we go. But it seems like unlike a lot of I'll just, I'll add in my thoughts and then you can refine as we go.

Starting point is 00:19:26 But it seems like unlike a lot of folks, and this would include me, who probably start with, what should I do? Right. What should my priorities be? Seems like you are starting with who. And if you have this constant reminder, which acts as a system, I'm wondering how you use that system. Right. Because I think about my phone. I have 1,379,000. I'm wondering how you use that system, right? Because I think about my phone, I have 1,379,000, I'm making that up, notes on my phone. And I'm like, oh, this is so important.

Starting point is 00:19:53 I'm definitely going to come back and read this. And 99% of the time, I never look at it again. So how do you use this list of people? The way that my binder works, like the first section is all about direction, sort of, let's say essential intent for my whole life. Like what really, really matters. It's as succinct as possible. It's a few pages in total. That's always the place to begin, right? Because I want to come back and get centered in what I have come to learn is closest approximation to the purpose of it all. And I literally have to come back to it, right? Like you've heard the metaphor before, but you know, the idea of a flight is off track 90% of the time, like an airplane literally only gets to where it's supposed to get to at the time it's supposed to get there because it readjusts

Starting point is 00:20:41 constantly along the way. And I feel like that myself. So like, for example, I don't think that I'm better at being an essentialist than anybody else. I think if there's any advantage I've had in that journey, it's that I just really admit that I'm a non-essentialist easily. And so it's this idea, like there's only two kinds of people in the world.

Starting point is 00:21:02 There are people who are lost and there are people who know they are lost. It's like, I know how easy it is for me to get lost never heard that that's good i'm looking that definitely i will look properly at those few pages once a week right like every sunday morning i will look through that i will read through it all and that's scheduled that's in your calendar yes yes sund Sunday morning. That's right. But then at other times through the week, if I feel that sensation, I know people feel this. That just sort of feels a bit crazy. It's feeling just a bit frenetic and frantic.

Starting point is 00:21:34 I just texted Anna yesterday, like, man, in the morning, I'm like, man, I just feel so lost. And I don't mean for the last six months. I mean for the last half hour. What is, I don't feel so lost right now. Okay. That's right. That's the signal. Go back, get centered, take a moment. What really is the intent?

Starting point is 00:21:54 What matters in your life? Okay. Now from that, you know, and then you start designing your day. And I have some thoughts specifically about that, but you know, you're asking me the year process, I guess you're asking my system. So that's once a week. Okay. So for per day, let's get to that. So I've come to call this the one, two, three method. I do not do it every day. Man, I wish I was doing it every day, but I do it more often than I don't

Starting point is 00:22:19 do it. And it's simply this, and it has to be written down for me in paper and pen, like not in technology, free of technology. And I try now more often than not to have this power half an hour, right? Like where I don't go to text and email or apps or my phone for the first 30 minutes. And I do that. I haven't been doing great at that recently, but I still do that more often than I don't. And so in that, then instead of doing that, I'm in my planner and I'm literally writing, okay, what's the essential for today? What's the one most essential today? Most important person, most important action for that person. Number two is I write two things that are essential, but urgent. That's like, you know, it could be all sorts of things. Any, you know, uh, whatever's got a deadline on it, finish this writing assignment by this deadline. It could be finished these financial things for, you know, retirement documentation stuff that I don't really want to get to, but I know it's

Starting point is 00:23:18 important and there's a deadline. And then the third thing is three things that are maintenance items, right? So that's just, I mean, that's anything that if I don't do it, it's not important today, but if I don't do it, it will make life a lot harder later. It's like an effortless strategy. And so that's the one, two, three method, right? One essential, two things that essential and urgent, three maintenance items. Would you mind, Greg, giving me just some concrete examples so we can visualize what this looks like? They don't have to be real. I mean, they could be hypothetical,

Starting point is 00:23:50 but just to give an example of what a 1-2-3 might look like. I'll just sort of talk through yesterday. So yesterday I was in California, in LA for an event. I was doing a keynote. I had my eldest daughter, Grace, with me. So when I texted Anna, like, oh man, I'm just kind of feeling a bit lost. After I expressed that, I was like, okay, get focused. What is the essential for today? The number one thing.

Starting point is 00:24:20 Oh, it's Grace is here. It's my relationship with Grace. I need to make sure that we connect today, that we're not just with each other all day. I tried to travel with one of my children about 80% of the time for keynotes. And so that's built into the system, but you still have to be present and connected. And so that was the priority. The two things that are essential and urgent, like one of them, the keynote, That's coming up. And I don't really know how to phone it in on a keynote. And I certainly fear phoning it in because it's like such an opportunity missed. The thing is coming like that, that moment will arrive and you're going to be on

Starting point is 00:24:57 stage. And it was for, there's 500 people, it's a non-trivial event and all the senior leaders of the organization. And that was one of the key urgent tasks. And then the next urgent task was to do with some family members who are, I won't get into the precise details of it, but there's some health challenges involved. So I've sort of taken it upon myself to say, okay, how could I maybe kind of be a little bit of a coach, which is not really the natural relationship I have with them, but I'm risking it because I think it really matters. And they seem to have responded really positively.

Starting point is 00:25:31 And so I wanted to keep that going. That would be the next thing. And then of course, maintenance items from there. Maintenance items literally included, I was in Florida a couple of days before California. So like literally I have to unpack everything, put everything back in its place, make sure that that's just in order so that you don't get behind on those things. I needed to respond to a key email about a contract that we've been in negotiation with over the last couple of months. That would be an item of maintenance. So when you're talking about the few pages that you would review on Sunday mornings,

Starting point is 00:26:03 what would be an example of something from those few pages? Because I feel like this would be very helpful for me in the sense that I feel like I am pretty good at staying on task. I'm pretty good at keeping the important things in mind and majoring in the major things. However, there are certainly times and weeks when I get a little lost and end up doing a lot of minor things and at the end of the week couldn't really point to what I've achieved. What might be some examples from those few pages, if you don't share anywhere, but it's very carefully worded. The highest expression of what I think the fullest manifestation of my life can be. It's not goals. It's beyond that. It's like who you can be, what your most important relationships can look like. And it's sacred, right? That's how i feel about that and so that's all

Starting point is 00:27:08 the most important centering part of it because literally if you don't get clear on that nothing else matters in the system right if you execute superbly on things that end up not being what your life needed to be about then it it doesn't matter. Efficiently doing what should not be done at all, of course, is like, it's a form of madness, right? Like it's you speedily going the wrong direction. So from that, I've identified, let's say, five or six roles and a goal that goes with each of those roles. And so my worldview includes the idea that I'm a child of God, that you're a child of God. So one of the most unbelievable things to me, one of the benefits of my church membership is that every person who wants one is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can have a specific blessing that somebody gives you personally to you that nobody else ever gets to

Starting point is 00:28:07 read. And it's like, we literally think about it, not metaphorically, like it's like literal scripture for you. And no two are the same. I've only ever read mine and as the children's and my grandfather who died and grandmother who died, because you can read your ancestors once they've passed away and my grandfather gave it to me he was a patriarch every thousand people is makes up what's called a stake and every stake has a stake patriarch and the only thing they do is give these patriarchal blessings they're the only blessings that are recorded and this is like whenever i think about what it is i'm just like my, how would you go about thinking about life without this document? Because this is precise and specific, revelatory insight into who you are, who you were before you came, who you are here, what's possible, what relationships are going to matter, what weaknesses to think about. And it's like, this is the centering document. So a version of this,

Starting point is 00:29:05 when Stephen Covey's talking about, hey, we need to create a mission statement for your life and company and so on, he's describing, let's say, something like a watered down version of what he's actually using every day. I see. I see. I see. So this was adapted, sort of a secular version of the blessing effectively. Yeah. And if you want the kind of language he used for this, so we think of life after this as having not heaven and hell, but like a series of heavens, let's say, or something like it. So different kingdoms, a celestial kingdom, a terrestrial and celestial, like describe sun, moon, and stars. And so he said to me once, he said,

Starting point is 00:29:45 look, I think about my work professionally as a terrestrial mission. It's like I'm trying to bring a certain amount of light, like the light of the moon, but there's this whole other light that's way brighter. How long is your blessing? Is it two pages long? It's like two to three pages.

Starting point is 00:29:59 Ah, wow. Okay, so it really covers a lot. Yes, and it's a different range. I mean, some people's could be as short as half a page, but I remember meeting somebody that had one that was eight or nine pages. And it really doesn't matter because what it is, is a portal. What I just described, a portal, all reading, every book is potentially a portal, right? It takes you there in time and place. And that's what makes fiction you know, fiction, especially so powerful. You suddenly experienced this whole other world. But I really

Starting point is 00:30:28 think that that's a way of thinking about scripture that isn't obvious to most people, even people that sometimes are like reading scripture all the time. It's not words. It just opens up the possibility. So like I've read, let's say I've read my page, I don't know, like say, let's say it's 500 times or something. It's probably more, but two weeks ago when I read it, suddenly a phrase, a way that it's phrased suddenly opened up to me. And I was like, oh my goodness, I bet that means that. And it's like, it doesn't matter. The words are just the vehicle. And it's as soon as I'm ready to like understand something more that suddenly the particular word is open. However, that sounds, I don't know how it comes across. Nobody else has And it's as soon as I'm ready to understand something more that suddenly the particular

Starting point is 00:31:05 word is open. However that sounds, I don't know how it comes across. Nobody else has to believe or think or see it the way I do. But it's a fact. That is an experiential fact that that is what happens over these years. I got it when I was 13. So whatever, I've had it for more than 30 years. And even now I'm like, oh, that's what it means.

Starting point is 00:31:24 And this is what I need to do differently in my life. Oh, that's where my weakness lies and that's how I need to improve. And so this is a very centering tool to guide all of life. And I think, yeah, that's the difference between that and trying to read 200 self-help books or all in some sense regurgitating the same set of potentially terrestrial ideas. It's like this document to me helps. It's like better than me.

Starting point is 00:31:55 It's better than my book. I'm trying to figure out the higher set of thinking that's won me and it's self-transcendent rather than about self-actualization. It's not me setting a goal for me and I'm it's self-transcendent rather than about self-actualization it's not me setting a goal for me and i'm going to achieve it it's oh man i'm i'm going the wrong direction this is what i'm supposed to do and the whole idea for example of the biblical term repent it was translated from a greek word that doesn't really mean what people think of when they hear the word repent

Starting point is 00:32:21 what it means it comes from that's anoint it means be life yourself life god everything through new eyes and it's that idea of new eyes and new breath and seeing that isn't that newness of sight that is what the goal is right and so the repentance isn't about shame it's about let go of the old thinking so that there's something new and better. And it's higher. We've talked about it before the idea of light and it's lighter and lighter and lighter to, you know, eventually you some perfect day in the future, but it's like more light produces more light. And as long as we're following that light, it gives us more and more and

Starting point is 00:33:02 bringing this now back to you for a second. It's like, I see you doing this in your life. I see it, you know, when it's happening because you feel more light and you know, when it's not happening, just like I do, because I'm like, yeah, I feel myself. I'm being pulled into the, not away from the good into what I want to. I have a goal now when I'm doing keynotes, it's probably not the most'd go but I like I really wanted to work out how to get standing ovations that hadn't been my journey that hadn't been my story I'd get great feedback really well but not standing ovations and I'm like man what do you do and it and so like I feel like I should know how to do that now and

Starting point is 00:33:37 and so that just happens and in the event yesterday it was really distinctly different because they'd had everyone read the books ahead of time. And so for the first time, it never happened before. I walk out on the stage and they gave us that innovation at the beginning. And I've seen that happen to others, but it never happened to me before, ever. And I thought, you know, like in that moment, like it was a really, just the whole conversation was enriching and good. And like I was doing the right thing and it made difference to people and all of that. But imagine if you just are living in that, breathing that in every day, you could lose track of your way so easily. And there's a risk of that, right? There's a risk of that for me.

Starting point is 00:34:15 There's a risk of that for you. There's a risk of that for anyone in a certain, consumed with, what could we call it? I could call it bro culture. That's what I would call it, where we're just consumed with a certain set of ideas and a certain set of what winning looks like. Well, it's just consumed by groupthink, right? Or sort of group trend, right? Or whatever the success du jour happens to be. Maybe that's going viral on TikTok, whatever the hell the shifting sands of supposed favor and adulation appear to be, right? Well, and you just named it, right? Like the shifting sands of supposed favor and adulation appear to be right well and you just named it right like the shifting sands like in my lifetime like in in the last i don't know if it is as short as five years

Starting point is 00:34:53 in the last 10 years i feel like what success means has changed in some ways and not in a good way like in a shallower way and in, you mean in general, in the world? Yeah, I think so. I look at it and I go, yeah, I don't even want these things that are being talked about, the influences, influences I never even heard of. They weren't influences years ago, and now this is what to do in life, and this is how to be.

Starting point is 00:35:23 And I'm like, this just feels like a bad 1980s motivational speaker or something like that. And I'm like, I think I could get really lost if I pursued all of this shifting sands as you describe it. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Momentous. Momentous offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few that I use constantly. Personally, I've been using Momentous Mag3 and 8 L-theanine and

Starting point is 00:36:02 apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now, the Momentus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. Momentus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world-class products to market, including a few you will recognize from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested, which in this case means informed sport and or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. So check it out. Visit livemomentous.com slash Tim and use code Tim

Starting point is 00:36:40 at checkout for 20% off. That's livemomentous.com and code Tim for 20% off. Let me come back to the blessing in the two pages if you don't mind, because I'm really grateful that you brought this up. And it resonates very deeply for me because I actually use different types of poetry for this, but the pages change, which has some upside, I would imagine, but also some downsides. Some downsides. But if you're looking at, say, as I might, the poetry of Hafez or other, they're generally mystics. They don't need to be from the Islamic traditions. They could be from any tradition, but they resonate a lot with my lived and felt experience for a multitude of reasons. So I will flip to a random page and that is the page, right? That is the page that I use as the mirror, so to speak, or the lens

Starting point is 00:37:42 through which I look at my life or whatever I'm contemplating, the goals, the mirror, so to speak, or the lens through which I look at my life or whatever I'm contemplating, the goals, the troubles, whatever it might be. And it's incredibly helpful as a way to grease the skids to get unstuck, right? Because if you're in a pattern of thinking that has not solved whatever puzzle you're trying to solve, then oftentimes more thinking of the same kind is not going to do a hell of a lot. So having this type of jolt of novelty slash unexpected, in my case, words is very helpful, but I do see the benefit of something more comprehensive and more consistent. So maybe the life mission is one approach. I will say, and this isn't something I've talked about, that I've been single, as you may or may not know, for the last year plus,

Starting point is 00:38:30 maybe a year and three months or something like that. And I wrote down what I was looking for. I also asked my ex, who I'm still very close with, if she could write down what she thinks I need so that I could provide it to, say, a potential matchmaker or people who might want to help. And what I found was that description of what I need certainly applies to a partner, but it applies to a lot more than a partner. So I found myself reading that quite consistently. And it applies to much more than, I mean, just isn't an appropriate word, but just the partner piece. It applies to so many other aspects. So indirectly by accident on some level, I've ended up also with some document that I read on a regular basis. One of the,

Starting point is 00:39:20 not just popular now, but popular forever questions is okay. You know, like how do I meet the right person? You know, what would I want in that person? And some questions you lose just by trying to answer them. Okay. Yeah. Please say more. Because it's the wrong question. And so you can get, you know, people can spend years and years on a question like that. So let's say a better question is maybe not surprising. It's like, how can I be the right person? Who do I need to be?

Starting point is 00:39:52 And then that means that some point you attract people like that to you. And so the, your probability of meeting somebody that actually is the right person for you increases, but that seems like the right person for you increases. But that seems like what's happened to you, like you say, almost without design, but it's like, oh, actually that list looks a lot like what I need to be and how I need to orient myself in the world. So what the patriarchal blessing is to me is the highest possible ideal that I can have? And so I think that that's the question for everybody. It's like, given all the tools that we have, all the insights we've ever heard, all the

Starting point is 00:40:36 best and highest wisdom that we have come across thus far, what's that highest ideal and to focus on it and to have mechanisms where you come back to that more often than not more days than you don't so that that becomes the guiding force of your life and so i think that it probably is some process right now where you say let's take the best of poetry or the best of this list and i'm going to try and write down like, uh, these are the things that it's not, what do I want? It's what is the highest truth I've ever come across. Even if it's really inconvenient for me, what's the closest thing I can articulate as to the purpose of my life. And I do think that really without doing that when we don't do that

Starting point is 00:41:26 i don't know man i just don't even know what i'm doing when i don't do that it's like i can respond to a lot of emails i can travel a lot i can i mean when i look back at 2023 i think man i did a lot of things and i just need to be really grateful for all those things. But sometimes I'm like, did you do what really meant it the most in the whole year? Did you? And I don't want that to be true for 2024. What comes to mind for me also, actually, I haven't thought about this in a while, but it was from a conversation I had on the podcast with General Stanley McChrystal. And I'm going to paraphrase here, but he said something along the lines, and I've heard this elsewhere since, but the purpose of life is to find the purpose of life, something along those lines. And the reason that that came to mind is I would imagine, I'm just visualizing myself here, that if you have something like the

Starting point is 00:42:18 patriarchal blessing or four or five pieces of poetry, so Wild Geese by Mary Oliver would probably be in my shortlist. As an example, if you have a handful of things that you have decided, even for a year, even for just say the next year, are going to be effectively your personal mission statement, something like that. Directional documents. Yeah, your directional documents. Just having that directional document, I would imagine, gives you a certain peace of mind or ability to exhale that makes it less likely that you're going to chase as many shiny objects and get as easily distracted as you would otherwise. Does that make sense? Like just the act of gathering that and having that, I see having an impact on your state and also your behavior above and beyond what it does when you check it each week.

Starting point is 00:43:13 Does that make any sense? Does that make sense? Of course. Yeah. Because it's kind of like you're lost in the woods. Do you have a compass or not? Like even if you haven't figured out how to get to where you're going, like,

Starting point is 00:43:22 do you have a compass or not? And if you have a compass, you're going to feel a hell of a lot better, even if you don't use it. Well, so like literally, I guess this is actually true that, that if you, there's like a piece of research about this, that people were given the task to walk in a straight line. And they, they found that if they were in a wilderness where there was no point that they could look to, they literally walked in circles. They didn't know they were doing that.

Starting point is 00:43:47 And so the only way to actually go forward is to pick something on the horizon. There's the mountain. There's a thing. I'm going to that. And then you could walk in a straight line. And so that's so strange because that means that there's nothing inside of us that knows exactly where to go physically. I mean, that's true for me when I'm driving. I'll tell you that. And there's nothing inside of us that knows exactly where to go physically. I mean, that's true for me when I'm driving, I'll tell you that, and that's

Starting point is 00:44:09 absolutely sure. So I think that it's beyond a goal. It's what's the direction? What's it all about? I'm going to fix on that for a while. And then I'm going to strive to live that. We're going to see how that goes and whether that reveals another higher insight. You know, so if Wild East is your poem of today, maybe in five years, there's a new poem that you go, oh, that's a higher truth for me. I'm going to hold on to that and walk towards that and see how it goes. So, so yeah, I mean, this could all sound ethereal to people, right? When they say, oh yeah, but I just got to get on with the actions of today. But man, the risk of skipping this part of the process

Starting point is 00:44:46 is you just go in circles for years and years. There's a big difference. I read this a while ago. There's a big difference between 20 years of experience and the same year lived 20 times. That you don't learn the lessons because you're just going in circles and you're just rushing, rushing

Starting point is 00:45:03 and actually not getting closer to what the purpose of life really is. I have a question for you, Greg, which is self-serving as a lot of my questions are, I suppose. But the personal is universal, right? That's my pitch. So I imagine you've been exposed to thousands upon thousands of people, not just through Essentialism and your other books, but also through the church and your various communities. And what I'm very curious to know is when you think about the people who come to mind as secular, but who are good at, in some fashion, doing what you're describing, it could be, what do they have in common, as the question? Or it could just be, if you think of one or two of these people,

Starting point is 00:45:57 how do they approach this? The word that comes to mind, I'm worried it might sound, I don't know, almost trivial because it's like, oh yeah, well, we know that word, but it's like, it's truth. It's like willingness to speak the truth. Meaning not that they or any of us have some monopoly on the truth. Obviously we don't. Obviously truth is beyond us and our expression needs to be as close to what we understand the truth to be as possible. Otherwise, it can't be corrected. We can't engage in proper communication with other people.

Starting point is 00:46:33 I have a few thoughts about this. One, I think that telling the truth is like whatever the consequence is for telling the truth. In the immediate moment, it is the path to your best possible future. That speaking the truth and listening to other people, like as soon as you start speaking the truth, you start having truthful conversations with people. And if you can do that in what I would describe as the spirit of truth, which is different than just saying what you think is true, I think this, and then it's like you, you're trying to say the truth, but in a spirit of truth, which is different than just saying what you think is true. I think this, and then it's like you, you're trying to say the truth, but in a spirit of truth, it's like,

Starting point is 00:47:12 am I doing this in the right spirit? Am I just doing this to win the conversation? It's like, there's a, I'm doing it. Could you, I understand winning the conversation as a description, but what would the antonym of that be? In other words, saying it in the spirit of truth, what does that look like or feel like? It means that the intent of the conversation is to discover together what is really true, not to make your point, to win and so on, right? So the intent of the conversation changes. And so let's describe the absolute ideal of this. the ideal of this is i am trying to speak the truth by the spirit of truth that is that is as soon as i've spoken it i'm open to being wrong and i'm open to not just being wrong but i'm open to learning because like then you say something back to me and you go well this is well this is how i see this and and hopefully me being true

Starting point is 00:48:01 makes it easier for the person i'm talking to to be truthful and so then they share something and i go oh my goodness i have not thought about that way oh that makes me think of this and and so it's you are trying to say what you think is true but now let's see if we can expand the parameters of truth that we together can have previously like there's more truth that's going to come out in this conversation. I think that's what the spirit of truth looks like. And the ideal, of course, is that when the other person speaks, now I want to make this safe so they can speak the truth to me, whatever that is, even if I don't really want to hear it. So I have to listen with the spirit of truth.

Starting point is 00:48:40 And so that becomes the symbiotic communication. And I would say that most people have experienced it occasionally, rarely, but they have experienced it because when you get into this kind of communication, time sort of evaporates and we're not worried so much about ourselves anymore, how we're coming across, who we're not judging them and so on. It's just, you know, it's back to portal communication. It's like, and I think what I'm describing now, it's taken me a long time to understand this or to articulate this, but I think this is the one true way of communication. It was Anna Karenina, you know, opened the brilliant line, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way and happy families are happy in one way. There's like a single way of doing it right and a thousand ways of doing it wrong. And I think that's communication too.

Starting point is 00:49:22 And I didn't know that until fairly recently, but I think that's communication too. And I didn't know that until fairly recently, but I think that's right. That every other form, when we're trying to speak to impress, or when we're trying to weasel out of responsibility, right? Like I've done that in my own family. Oh, well, no, I meant to do it this way, or I tried that way, you know, defensive. This isn't communication. I don't know what it is. I don't have a word for it, but it's, it's anti-communication. I think speaking with truth, the spirit of truth, listening in the spirit of truth, that magic happens then in that you make each other better. You edify each other. You, you understand each other. You can sort of rejoice in it. I mean, I have to assume that you have had moments like, well, many moments of in podcast

Starting point is 00:50:05 conversations when they're at their best, it's like it's beyond any agenda. And so the people that I'm thinking of in my mind have the courage to speak the truth and that's non-trivial. And in my own life, I have to get better at it and having the courage to do it, whatever the consequence seems to be in the moment. And then immediately open myself up to what they're going to say, because it'll surely bring a response from somebody else and have the risk it, the real vulnerability. Is there anything else that comes to mind if you had to add something else to the answer of the

Starting point is 00:50:40 question of what you see in some of the secular examples to seem to really be able to travel the road less traveled in the way that we've been discussing it anything else come to mind it doesn't have to be specific to any type of patriarchal blessing like document or compass per se but but just someone who is in general good at operating kind of top down if that makes sense as opposed to like here are the thousand things that i could do in a reactive sense and then let me try to pick a handful of those as my priorities people are very good at operating kind of top down it's hard for me to get out of the thread that I'm on about this because what I'm learning is that, I mean, we've talked already about this idea of sort of the highest aspiration. You're looking towards something bigger than you, self-transcending.

Starting point is 00:51:35 Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, is wrong. It's wrong like Maslow said it was wrong. And nobody updated the documentation. Oh, I can't wait. This is new to me all right yeah so so before he died before maslow died he wrote a final book in which he updated his model and just no one i don't know why i don't know what was going on precisely but it just got ignored and some reason that model just as bit is in every single psychology book that's ever been written and it's everywhere everywhere the highest need is self-actualization and he changed that before he died to self-transcendence

Starting point is 00:52:10 but that's the highest ideal and my goodness that's a big difference a huge yeah they're not even not even similar species no they're really not they really are different in kind self-actualization is like what i was briefly describing before as bro culture and maybe that's not a precise terminology but it named something for me of of like yeah it's just about you greg mckeown looking like he wants to look really like he wants to feel getting what he likes to get. It's just more for me. Yeah. I mean, it's an individual achievement. Yes. Related. It's achievement ethic. And the data shows that achievement ethic as a value has increased in society over the last few decades significantly more than any of the other, let's say the other virtues. And of course I think achievement is a virtue, the desire to

Starting point is 00:53:01 achieve, but it's of course just one of many. And so self-transcendence is kind of what we're talking about. And it certainly leads me down this path of, yes, it is about the relationships. It really, really is about that. Because if you have a model of self-actualization and then you try to be in a relationship well it's not going to work that's a summary point it is not going and it's not going to work because that's not what a relationship is and by the way like this is big in my mind and one could argue that the biggest insight that's that's come about in psychology and in psychotherapy over the last 50 years is this growing understanding of what a relationship is, what love is, and particularly

Starting point is 00:53:55 the idea of safe attachment and the attachment theory. And so at risk of riffing too long on this subject, let me just... I got nowhere to go, man. And actually, Greg, just so we don't lose track of one thing, for people who may not be familiar with the term self-transcendence, if you could just define that at some point, could be brief, just so people have an idea. And self-actualization, I think people probably can infer, but self-transcendence.

Starting point is 00:54:24 Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for the attachment stuff, and I'll bring it back to self-transcendence. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for the attachment stuff and I'll bring it back to self-transcendence. Okay. One could ask a question like, what is a relationship? What is love? What makes a healthy, strong, resilient, successful relationship over decades, right? What does that look like? And it's a really non-trivial question, especially when one considers what for something like 50 years we have been actually taught. And the data now is increasingly showing that that is wrong. So that really matters. But what we've been taught, first of all, go back with me to how people thought about raising children in, let's's say 1910, 1920, like this in England, right? The

Starting point is 00:55:07 center of the world, probably still in terms of economic power and political power and so on. And like, what would the perspective of that relationship? And John Balby is in an upper class home and a gentleman's home. He's allowed to come and eat at the family dinner when he turns 11 or 12 just for dessert. Prior to that, he's not even allowed to eat dessert in his own family. And the reason is because there's this idea that children should be seen and not heard, that if you were to show emotional connection with your child and are overly loving, you're going to raise namby-pamby kids and they're not going to be strong in the world. And so in that perspective, the reason it's so non-trivial is that that defined policy and behavior in the broadest possible sense.

Starting point is 00:55:55 So for example, if your child needed to go to hospital, like I mean like a two-year-old, three-year-old, you are going to drop your child off at the door. You will see them. If you see them, you'll see them once a week for one hour. And all of the nursing staff in the hospital will treat them also in this same regimented way, non-emotional, non-connected way. In fact, Balby, who is shipped off to boarding school. And so again, he's separated from his family of origin and connection, and he's not safely attached to them.

Starting point is 00:56:28 He didn't have that language yet, but that was it. I mean, eventually he goes on this journey. He creates this documentary. It's something like, I don't remember the name precisely, but it's like a two-year-old goes to hospital. It might be a three-year-old goes to hospital. It's something like this. And he videos the experience of this child

Starting point is 00:56:44 and the separation anxiety that they experience and how terrifying it is for them to suddenly be in this hospital, unwell, don't know anybody and so on. And they create this video. That video was almost banned. It was almost kicked out of whatever the agency was that was managing psychological institutions in the UK. He almost got kicked out of it for having this theory that eventually he caused the theory of attachment. But over time, I think more than a thousand studies have been done since on his work. And over time, his insights have been really strongly plaudited and it's grown. And so now we have attachment theory. What that means is that

Starting point is 00:57:22 especially in years one to three, whatever level of attachment we have with our mother, with our father, it finds us in really significant ways for the rest of our lives. And if we were insecurely attached, then it also makes it extremely hard for us to have deep and proper relationships with people all through our lives. It's like massively influenced by those early years. Now that's phase one, but phase two, he died before he ever got to see this. But another set of researchers picked up the baton and started looking into whether the attachment theory that everyone thought applied only to sort of these infants could also be true with adult relationships. And the answer to that question is a resounding yes. And that every argument, every fight that adults have with each other and in intimate relationships, especially, let's say every fight is about the same blasted thing. And what it's about is described by a different professor as like a primal cry or a primal scream or something, I can't remember the term now, but what that primal desire is, do you really see me? Do you

Starting point is 00:58:33 really know me? Are you really going to be there for me if I'm desperate enough? And that's what it's always about. Every other argument is about the same thing would you really see me can i be securely attached to you are you securely attached to me and so okay now contrast that with self-actualization with a whole argument of self-actualization if you think self-actualization is the highest need in life and then you get into a relationship you start creating this kind of language in the psychological industry you start saying if you need the other person too much, you're codependent. You create language around it. You say, well, that's just enmeshment you're struggling with.

Starting point is 00:59:11 What you need is to be independently happy, independently secure, independently invulnerable, independently strong. And then together, then you're going to create this great dynamic relationship. I can think of people, I don't really want to say it, even though everybody knows these people, global icons who are in a relationship that looks about as toxic as a relationship can possibly look, in which they describe that they're in, they say, we're in this bad marriage, we're in this terrible, but we're going to stick it out because that's what love is. It's like, you go make yourself happy and you go make yourself happy and then we'll be happy together. It's a global manifestation. I feel so bad for the

Starting point is 00:59:49 couple and all the people involved by it, but it's like this manifestation of a bad paradigm that we have been taught. What you want is exactly the opposite of that. It's like, no, we need effective dependence where we actually feel deeply connected, deeply seen, emotionally safe, attached. That's what we're really going for. And so bringing this now back to the question of self-transcendence. Self-transcendence means multiple things. So I don't want to oversimplify it. It certainly means giving yourself to something bigger than yourself. It certainly means that transcending yourself, trying to live for something beyond us. And it includes, definitely includes in his definition, being able to be unified with other people in deep relationships. And so that's not the whole sense that he meant by that term, but it's certainly included in it. And that is to say, you can't have self-transcendence if you haven't learned how to, like they go together. You have to be quite developed in order to be able to deeply connect with others. You have to be very

Starting point is 01:01:02 vulnerable because my goodness, you have to cry out as it were to say, I feel so unsafe right now in this conversation. I have to speak truth about this. And I'd rather just, I'd rather say, oh, you just don't like me. Or you just are like this. Or you're, instead of the vulnerability, the truth of this is how I feel. This is what's going on. Now, let me listen to you. Let's fight this out, but let's have as our intent, we're going to actually deeply connect with the other person. I see an overlap between these two terms. Yeah. Let me hop in with a couple of thoughts that are popping to mind and then a couple of questions. So the first is that if we end up publishing this, for people who are listening, I would imagine what you're describing

Starting point is 01:01:46 on some level as its core has truth, right? So you can be truthful and communicate your needs and so on without trauma performing or using performative vulnerability, right? Which I think has become very fashionable, especially in places like Austin where you meet somebody, you're two minutes into meeting them at a party and they've already told you about their worst childhood trauma and are just offloading

Starting point is 01:02:14 these horrible things as a means of theater almost. It's just become like a Portlandia of here are the bad things that have happened to me and let me be vulnerable but i feel like what you're describing is is very different in the sense that there's a core of truth to it and you can still be independently strong in a million different ways and effective in a million different ways while still doing that right i just i'm just trying to say that to myself as much to anyone else like it doesn't have to be this overly sort of bemoaned drawn out protracted confession of weakness or something like that it can have a component of vulnerability certainly but there's also a core of strength in my mind because it requires a certain

Starting point is 01:03:00 core of strength to be consistently truthful and to solicit truth. That is not easy. Is truth not performance? Yeah, exactly. And then the question that I wanted to ask is thinking about, say, attachment and self-transcendence and relationships and so on, what order do we put these in? For people who are listening or for myself, right? Although I think I've actually made tremendous progress on most of these fronts in the last handful of years, but how would you suggest someone approach this? In other words, if they're thinking, all right, well, self-transcendence is the top of the ladder

Starting point is 01:03:32 by Dr. Maslow in his final writings, I'm up for that. That makes sense to me. And they want healthy interdependent relationships. And they recognize that the sort of Gordon Gekko slash go, go, go achiever culture in the US, while it produces a lot of GDP and other things, doesn't always, actually very rarely produces stable well-being in most people. And the question then comes up, which is, in what order do I tackle these things? Should I read a book on attachment theory and do that first, and then maybe look at Maslow's stuff and then look at something else? From a brass tacks perspective, if somebody's like, yeah, you know what, you're right. If I look at myself, truthfully, honestly, I have deficits in these areas and I want to try to make the leap. I want to work on these things. How would you suggest someone do that? Maybe you can give me your two cents. There is a book. Let me look at the cover really quickly. I think it's just called Attached. Yeah, The New Science of Adult Attachment, et cetera, et cetera, which has, I guess, two magnets in the form of a heart on the cover.

Starting point is 01:04:42 Pretty good cover. I'll give it credit. The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love by Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A. 19,437 reviews, 4.7 star average. I have not read it, so I can't speak to this, but I know a number of friends have read this and found it helpful. But I'm speculating here. So what would you say? Well, I can start with myself in just being, I suppose, truthful about how I'm seeing it. But the answer to the question,

Starting point is 01:05:13 what's my one priority for 2024? It is to help my wife, Anna, and I to feel safely attached, deeply connected. And I would say there's a lot more right with our relationship and marriage than there is wrong with it. And actually, I think there's a lot of goodness in it, right? We've been married 23 years, we have four children, we work together, we're communicating in all sorts of ways, and I think successfully. But I now understand there's this additional gear. And I think, yeah, that's the difference. And so one of the books that was recommended to me is a book called Hold Me Tight

Starting point is 01:05:55 by Dr. Sue Johnson. And I think I would say that she's done maybe more than anyone else to bring this adult attachment theory, I think she calls it EMT, to the therapeutic process. And so I think that's a pretty great place to start is to read what she's written. She has a process, a series of conversations. I want to also suggest Sue Johnson. She's actually been on the podcast and was beyond impressive, exceeded every possible expectation I could have had. So I'm glad that you're mentioning her. I think that's the place, but I think that is an answer to that question. The only thing I'm concerned about as I try and answer that is to what degree am I reading my autobiography into other people's lives?

Starting point is 01:06:40 I'm sort of coming at this with the, there are a thousand X relationships. That is, if there's a purpose to life, it's that. I'm using a quote and I want to tell you where that's from in a second. But, you know, and so therefore my most important relationship is Anna. And therefore, as I'm understanding what really creates these disproportionately great relationships is this attachment. Like there's a, there's a logic that gets me here, but of course, somebody else is coming at it, their lives are so different to mine and different. There's different starting point. They have different ending points.

Starting point is 01:07:12 I want to be careful about that, but I don't think what we've talked about today is the kind of thing that people regret. You know, like if you pursued this, you're not going to use the deathbed test. You're not going to be like, my goodness, I can't believe it. I can't believe that I really figured out the most important relationships and i really invested in them seriously and i got attached to them and you know struggled with them and improved them like you're not going to regret that journey it seems to me no no definitely not what was the quote was that uh you alluded to a quote yeah this is something man so okay so i'm writing

Starting point is 01:07:48 a new book doing new research doing a doctorate at the university of cambridge inadvertently and so what i've learned is something like like this it's we live in the loneliest era on record. More surface interactions is not going to help at all. So we have to learn to connect deeply with vital few people and that that is sort of the work of life. Okay. So that's part of what I've come to as I've been doing all this research and this thinking. So I posted something about that in these subjects on social media. And one of the people, one of my friends that follows this said, you know what? This is something I just read. It's right on that theme. So that's how I got connected to it. I think it's Eric Newton, I think is his name. And Eric Newton took to Twitter, Eric Newton took to X and he wrote up a story of what's happened in his life recently,

Starting point is 01:08:42 which is heartbreaking, but also life-changing. And he says, he starts off basically saying, look, this is, I've wrestled with whether I should share publicly something that's so private. It's a bit tacky to do that, but still really glad that he did it. Okay. So I just pulled it up. I'm just going to read a few little bits from it. He said, I lost my it up. I'm just going to read a few little bits from it. He said, I lost my wife to cancer last month. Our daughter lost her mother. I'm hesitated sharing any of this,

Starting point is 01:09:12 but there is something I want to record. Fair warning, this is mostly about love. I'm devastated. A hole has opened where I thought my identity lived. Our daughter is doing the same in her toddler way, asking questions questions slowly understanding what's happened grieving in stages we had a delightful life together full of intense highs and lows but two elements that were vastly more important to us than any of this our extraordinary

Starting point is 01:09:35 little daughter and the quality of the time we all spent together Aubrey and I fell in love early and fast but we fell more in love during the time she was convalescing than I thought was possible. Facing death every day allowed us to set aside the silly things and focus on what matters. The privilege of knowing and loving her so deeply outpaces every other experience I've had is the one thing that matters. Okay, I've considered whether to share any of this. Obviously, it's tacky to make personal tragedy into a public spectacle, but I wanted to capture something that I've learned. Okay, I'm skipping here. He says this. We had an epic love affair, and yet we reached a depth of intimacy while Aubrey was on her deathbed that we'd never had access to before. That depth of love wasn't available to us any earlier for whatever reason, but it is available. I want to make it available to everyone by reminding you it exists. Aubrey shifted into a deeper love about six weeks before she died.

Starting point is 01:10:33 During her time in the hospital, her one regret was that she hadn't spent more time deepening relationships with the people she cared about. She said the only thing that matters at all is the quality of the relationships with the people we love. Focus on that. I know it sounds trite in a tweet, but I can guarantee you with absolute certainty that when you're dying and you will die, these are the only things you will care about. Aubrey realized this deeply in the most fundamental way because she was running out of time, so she put it into action. It was mostly instinct at first, but by the end, her deeper way of loving had become very conscious and intentional. Her change was palpable. She softened and opened. She began to be with those around her in a kind of total surrender. We all felt that she was experiencing us without a filter somehow.

Starting point is 01:11:21 We were seen and loved. It was beautiful. It was overpowering. It was humbling beyond measure. As she did all this, those around her began to learn how to do it as well. I learned being loved that completely is overwhelming in the best way. It's probably all any of us ever crave. I've tried to carry that love forward ever since. Loving that deeply is a practice. It's like anything. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's very hard, but it's always worthwhile. The key to this kind of love is necessarily different for everyone. I only know one way, complete surrender to the inevitable death of yourself and those you love. I'm not writing this to proselytize any given path. I simply want to say out loud that it is possible to love with a depth that I that I used to think was fiction progressively deepening love is the goal and end in and of itself if there is a point it's that

Starting point is 01:12:11 that's incredible I'm just sitting with that for a minute what a gift to write that down for people also to absorb well to read yeah so I reached out to him and so he's already responded we're just going to schedule a time and i'm going to try and get you know more of that story and the details of it because i think that deserves to be told you know like when i read that that sort of is reinforcing and crystallizing of all these other themes i've been describing it's like yeah he just he said it and he said it out of his suffering produced that level of clarity. And it's like, look, if I don't understand that, and then I make my goal list, if I don't

Starting point is 01:12:52 understand that, and then I just go to email, if I don't understand that, and I just react and just do what I think of the people think is cool or good. Oh, they think, I mean, I shouldn't use this example. I don't know why I'm using this example. I love skiing and so do you, but like, oh, I, if I'm just going skiing because other people think it's cool to go skiing. If I'm traveling because other people, I think other people think it's cool to travel. I could spend my whole life doing that and really just miss it all.

Starting point is 01:13:23 Miss this. Miss what Eric's dated quick maybe mundane recommendation get off social media for a while folks or ask yourself before you post or actually let's rewind before you do something if you could never tell anyone about it outside of maybe your family or closest friends via a phone call, if you could not post it, if you could not put this on social media or in a newsletter or on a blog or pick your channel, YouTube, would you still do this? And if the answer is no, don't do it. As an exercise, you can always go back to the the heroin feed of fake social reinforcement on social media. That's always available, but at least as an

Starting point is 01:14:06 exercise, ask yourself that question. I've done that. And part of the reason I have no social apps on my phone, and that's been largely true for two or three years now. If you don't have, as you mentioned, if you don't have these foundational directional documents or tools, given the tools at hand, given the information deluge that is only going to accelerate exponentially with AI and disinformation and so on, that is going to, this year, 2024, it is going to at least 10x, probably 100x. I mean, it is going to multiply so unbelievably. If you do not have these guardrails and these sort of operating principles in place you are going to lose right what you'll lose is personal like you are going to lose whatever then that could apply in a lot of different

Starting point is 01:14:56 domains but the technology has you completely diagrammed and defeated before you ever step into these domains. It's like billions upon billions of dollars of data science and research and so on that has gone into ensuring that your willpower will not be sufficient, particularly if it doesn't have a trained fixed point in the distance to come back to the being lost in the wilderness analogy. As my job interview some of the top performers in the world, hundreds of them, and the change that I have seen for those people in that subset who are already, I think most people would agree in the top 1% of 1% in terms of worldly achievement, the dramatic handicap that I've seen, the dramatic reduction in productivity that I've seen among those people

Starting point is 01:15:51 who have succumbed to the siren song of social media specifically is jaw-dropping. It is truly unbelievable. Just in the last 12 months, what I i've observed it really seems to be going parabolic so in any case i'm gonna stop giving my uh scent of a woman speech i listen i like that speech and i think first of all that's right and you know it's assisting right like i mean i don't even love the term like matrix for various reasons but it's still helpful too. But the matrix is so consuming and it's so much bigger than me. And it's so much, in that sense, more powerful. Now, it's not if I am conscious of it and can step out of it and can make it like all of this AI and all of it perhaps makes a good servant,

Starting point is 01:16:45 but it certainly makes a poor master. And if I'm not conscious that it is either already my master or is trying to be, then it's already over. You know, like if I'm like, oh, it's fine. It's easy. It's like, oh, okay. Well then I already lost the game, the battle. If you don't realize you're in a game, you've already lost the game. But let me ask you, when you're talking about the priority, your priority, top priority, the one priority, and I'm going to make mistakes with the wording, but it was along the lines of fostering and cultivating secure attachment with your wife, if I remember correctly. For a lot of people who may be listening, certainly for me also, when I think about that, I'm like, yes, yes, and yes. And also, typically, if I had a primary goal, let's just say I'll pull out something that's

Starting point is 01:17:34 less lower to the ground in a sense that makes it easier to use as an example. Write a screenplay. Let's say I want to write a screenplay this year. That's one of my top goals. Okay, great. Then I can work backwards from that and say, okay, well, what are the sort of antecedents? How long do those take? Who do I need to interact with? How should I block those out in the calendar? And then I can execute something resembling a blueprint, right? Or a Gantt chart or something like that. With your top priority, how do you ensure that you're taking meaningful action related to that top priority? I know exactly what you're saying. I mean, this is the advantage of a concrete goal is that a concrete goal almost immediately presents

Starting point is 01:18:19 the plan or elements of a plan almost immediately start to arrive. Okay, well, if we're doing this, we would have to do A, B, and C and so on. And that's one of the reasons goals are so powerful and so scary too, because if you get your mindset on the wrong goal, then you'll be consumed with it and maybe going in the wrong direction. Okay, so how do you do it? If the goal is a relationship, it's really different, isn't it? Because it's not about

Starting point is 01:18:45 achieving checkpoints and the very nature of the relationship is that it's symbiotic but i i think that the way i've been thinking about this is like this it's i like this intent the language that i've chosen because it's something that it's a metric in and of itself and so it's an immediately testable metric do i feel that right metric. Do I feel that right now? Does Anna feel that right now? And then of course, you could go from that to each of my children. Do we feel it right now? And if we don't, let's talk about that because now we're having the real conversation. Is that feeling one of calmness, lack of fear that you are not withholding? What are the characteristics of feeling the yes?

Starting point is 01:19:26 Stately attached. Yes. Right. Yeah. I'll give you the words that come to mind and then maybe by the end of the year, I'll have better, more precise ways of describing these things. But yes, I think it's really safe, not just sort of safe, really safe. I'm safe to say what I really think it's safe enough to hear what you really think and not take it personally. So that there's just space somewhere in the world to be able to express all of that, that we don't express in any other situation. It's a little bit like this idea that you want your, like, remember somebody,

Starting point is 01:20:04 a psychologist describing this, they said you want your like remember somebody a psychologist describing this they said if your children are acting out at home but not at school like they're doing well at school but not at home you know the teachers are going oh they're so great here and and you go geez they're not so great with us it's actually just exactly what you want because they're safe to be able to act out at home so that people have to be everywhere else didn't see that coming okay yeah that makes sense and and so it's a similar way, I think, in a safely attached relationship is like you can act out a bit because you need somewhere to be able to do that. You can say all your fears, you can say all the nonsense. So I think that's sort

Starting point is 01:20:38 of a test of it. If you want to build beyond there, like I think it's, and this is, this is, I would say the biggest test for me is can I create enough time every day for that so that it's not just a bit here and a bit there, you know, like normally happens in fact, because just in the same way as if you leave exercise and you leave your relationships, it's just like, well, we'll just let that happen. However it does, then you end up with bad relationships and ill health. And that's what normally happens. I mean, that's like when I ask people what's essential that they're under-investing and those are like basically the two most frequent answers. It's not exercising, not eating well. And my relationships are, you know, my most important relationships are struggling in some way. So it's how do I create like, let's say one to two hours per day, not watching TV,

Starting point is 01:21:33 not together, not doing things, not even just talking about, hey, what happened today and what's going on and updates. And there's loads of that, but enough time uninterrupted time. So you actually get to get to the other subject because whenever I do that, whenever we do that, it works. I mean, the difference is conversation. It's it's, you know, conversation starts at a pit, right? It's trivial. It's present. It's like, okay, this has happened in the news and Jack's going to work right now.

Starting point is 01:22:03 And he just got back and I just, it's updates. as you go down it becomes more vulnerable but it also becomes more essential and so you have to have enough time to have those conversations so that's that's the piece that I'm like and I have to really be willing to make the trade-off for a distinction and this is a question because I've developed this as I'm sure some listeners have, this acute allergic reaction to the word processing. You've heard this word, I'm sure, used when it's, let's talk about all of the difficult emotional things. I would imagine what you're referring to is some version of what people might call quality time, where you're getting past just the triage of updates, right? For instance, a friend of mine,

Starting point is 01:22:46 he's been on the podcast quite a few times, Seth Godin, has found that preparing meals, he had cooked for his family as his kids were growing up a lot. And his kids would help with some of the prep or they'd just stand around the kitchen island. And that's when the kids would volunteer a lot, right? And it was in that type of setting. So they were doing something or he was doing something, but it kind of provided a safe container for all of that to happen. But it wasn't like sitting down in two chairs opposite each other, plumbing the depths of like deep emotions as a conversation,

Starting point is 01:23:21 if that makes sense. So I'm wondering when you say making the time, what forms that time takes? It's quantity and quality. It really is actually making a sacrifice, making the trade-off. So examples, yes, yes, what you're saying, Seth, an example I think is included. So with my children and with Anna,

Starting point is 01:23:40 when I travel, I will take somebody with me. And so that just provides a lot of potential for, you know, riffing at the surface area. Exactly. And then, and then suddenly kind of spontaneous. I mean, conversations are like that. There's a random and then, but there's method in the madness too, that suddenly something more sensitive comes up and now you're talking about that real subject. And so I think it is is there is a structural piece too for me with anna it's okay there's the date night actually structurally insisting it happens once or even maybe you get to twice a week and you you're sort of forcing the space to exist possible conversation and it can be all sorts of things but it's a structural piece and i think that that's non-trivial space never happens

Starting point is 01:24:26 in our life no never you know if i go back into like 1820 kind of time frame like so pre-industrial revolution and i'm not trying to romanticize it i think that must have been so hard to live then i cannot even imagine surviving was so, so, so hard. You mean you don't want your five-year-old being a chimney sweep? Yeah. I mean, honestly, though, right? But what they did have an advantage over us is that the sun went down and there wasn't electricity. And so you could not escape the people in your life in the way we can.

Starting point is 01:25:03 It wasn't default. It was defaulted in favor of you're facing each other. There's not a phone to face. You got a few books, maybe probably have the Bible. If you have a book and then you have a few other books and you're going to read from those books and you're going to talk about them because once the sun is down, that's what you have. That was a forcing function that we've just completely lost. I talked to somebody one time. Here's what I was doing.

Starting point is 01:25:30 I was working on a TV show based on essentialism. And so we were doing like the, trying to kind of create the pitch depth for it. And we'd selected these people and we're talking to her. She's very professional together woman. And like maybe even non-emotional, even in the interaction and the conversation, the coaching session, we were having this speed coaching session. And then quite unexpectedly, completely unexpectedly for her, she burst into tears just right in the middle of the conversation. It surprised me too, but it shocked her. Like does not do emotion. And it was because she was reflecting on her relationship with her husband, I think, and how basically that relationship had become both of them in the bed on their phones.

Starting point is 01:26:14 And that that had become so consuming, not an exception, but the rule of the relationship. And it was like, goodness, there's no connection. It's just, you know, that's so different than what you would have had in 1820. You know, like there's no phone, there's no connection. It's just, you know, that's so different than what you would have had in 1820. You know, like there's no phone, there's no technology. There's no, it's not there that that whole system was, was gone. So, so anyway, I do think, you know, right. That never exists. Now you have to create basin.

Starting point is 01:26:38 And so that's the structural element I would say means that I travel with my children and I've started saying, okay, like once a quarter we go away ourselves and it's not, hey, we're going on a little vacation. It's like, we are trying to go deliberately. Let's talk. Really, we're here to talk. Let's talk beyond the things we get to normally. And look, we got miles to go, but we just got back from the last one. And it was, I mean, that was an amazing, it was an amazing trip, but it was so helpful. And so we scheduled the next one and it wasn't three months later.

Starting point is 01:27:11 It's probably about six months later that we'll, we'll go to that specific location again, as it worked so well. And so it's, you know, I think it's, it's the daily scheduling. It's the, the week structure, the monthly structure, quarterly structure. And all of these things, I think once you start exploring them, you're like, okay, well, that's what you would do with other goals as well. But it's not getting it done. You're not trying to get it done as you are with other goals, right? Checking it off the list project is complete. This relationship is not a means to an end.

Starting point is 01:27:46 Relationship is the end. It is the end in and of itself. That's how I think it is. You mentioned the 1820 and I just wanted to say that I have spent a lot of time in South America and Africa and some very rural locations, and I've then gone back and visited these places after cell phones and very slight broadband penetration, and then post-broadband. I've been able to the farm very often. And then as things are introduced, for instance, I went to two different villages in northern Ethiopia and chatting with one of the interpreters who was helping this group. And he was mentioning that one town was really unhappy and the other town was very happy because I was commenting how I found Ethiopian people in general to be very upbeat and to smile easily and so on.

Starting point is 01:29:08 And I asked him why that one village was unhappy. And he said, well, they got satellite television introduced and now they see the Kardashians in reality TV and they know how much they're missing. Literally, that's what he said. Not in those exact words, but more or less that and and then if i look at for instance some of these places in south america as as another example that i've visited which now have say starlink and other means of readily accessible easily accessible 24 7 broadband they are suffering from all of the same distractions and issues now the fracturing of social bonds the isolation not to the extent that you see in a city like new york city of

Starting point is 01:29:51 course but you're seeing the same phenomenon and so much like sometimes people have heard the expression you don't see the economy is stupid on some level like it's the tools stupid like you you don't assume you are fundamentally flawed. There's always a lot of self-work to do, and the project is never finished. But also, let's look at the Occam's Razor contribution here to a lot of these issues and so much malaise and sense of discontent, which is the tools.

Starting point is 01:30:22 So turn off the tools, or at least ration the tools and see what happens. And then I would say, just to kind of bring this full circle, that this conversation has been super, super helpful for me. It's given me a lot to think about. Also, I'm still thinking about the patriarchal blessing and what my version of that could be, something that I revisit on a regular basis. So I'm actually fortunate that I'm spending time right now with a friend of mine, my only male friend who is incredibly well-versed with poetry, or at least younger male friend. So I can visit his mental library to see what he matches for me. So I'm thinking about that. And then also, once again, about systems and structure for

Starting point is 01:31:01 not just busy CEOs, but for almost anyone who is barraged with the sensory overload and uninvited inputs and stimuli that anyone listening to this is, without structure, without putting things in the calendar, without a plan, the most important things are not going to take care of themselves. You're not just automatically going to have time and a program for self-care, for the gym, for your most important relationships. It's not going to happen accidentally, or at least the odds are against it.

Starting point is 01:31:37 So the better plan is to plan. That's it right there, is how do you stack the decks in your favor because they're currently stacked against you. I'm not making a plug. I'm just expressing the reason I did it, right? The reason I wrote Effortless After Essentialism was I'd be like, you have to build a system that makes it the default that you'll do the essentials and not do the non-essentials.

Starting point is 01:32:00 And I already said that in Essentialism actually, but it was like, people didn't hear it. They just heard, oh yeah, you got to do the essentials versus non-essentials. And I already said that in essentialism actually, but it was like, people didn't hear it. They just heard, oh yeah, you got to do the essential versus non-essentials. And then I hear the feedback over years and years, well, it's so hard to do. And it's like, yeah, you aren't doing it because you figured out what's essential, you figured out what's non-essential, but then you didn't maybe realize the system is so built to make the non-essential easy, immediately at your fingertip, addictive, and so on. So now you go, how do I, it's not easy to build the system, but you build a system that makes the execution easier than it would otherwise be. So on that, strongly recommend that everybody read Effortless. I'm going to reread it. And I will also say that there's a corollary to what you just said that I've found helpful. And that is

Starting point is 01:32:53 one way to make the default easier is to make not doing the default harder slash painful. Exactly. You want to make the non-essential hard to do, precisely. Yeah. So in my case, for 2024, and I've done this for a few years now, but looking at my top relationships, right? I don't have my own nuclear family right now. I mean, I don't have progenies, I'm trying to say. So I'm looking largely at my... Yes. Yes. So I'm looking at my family, my mom and my immediate family, my parents and so on, siblings. Then I'm looking at my closest friends and I'm blocking out time in the calendar, getting commitments for say trips or people coming to visit, etc. Making it happen and putting in, in my case, let's just say these are trips, sunk costs so that it is actually painful for me to undo the thing that I know is good for me. Does that make sense? And I might write a blog post on this because it's been on my mind for six months now. I've been talking to friends about it. It's just like choosing the right sunk costs. Sunk cost and sunk fallacy can steer you in the wrong direction, but you can

Starting point is 01:34:00 actually use it to steer you in the right direction. And that's something that I've thought a hell of a lot about. No, I like that so much because you're right. I generally talk about it in the worst sense. But if you were going to design humans for success, you probably would want it to be true that the thing you've committed to, you want to stay committed to, right? Like you probably would want to design where people tend to continue to do the thing that

Starting point is 01:34:31 they've been doing because they have invested so much in it. In a way, it's like when they changed divorce law in the UK originally, of course, it was intended in a certain way. And I think it was maybe even well-intended, I would say, because you don't want people to be desperately stuck. And certainly you don't want anyone ever to be in an abusive relationship. And then they just cannot get out because the laws are so strict. So there's obviously scenarios in which that helps.

Starting point is 01:34:57 But the disadvantage is that it incentivizes this kind of like no fault divorce. It's like, hey, I'm out now. And because self-actualization is the priority, it's always, always easy to think that's going to lead to greater happiness, even though the data suggests that people that are divorced like five years later, the majority wish they weren't and that they hadn't and that they could go back and change it. But it's obviously too late now. Think about what you're saying about like, yes, committing, doing things where you go, I know it's the right thing. How can I commit in a way that I will be following through even when I feel like getting out? Feel like I would rather not do this thing now. It's like, no, you do want to be locked in.

Starting point is 01:35:41 Yeah, for sure, man. Well, Greg, this has been so much fun. It's nice to hear your voice. And where can people find you if we end up publishing this and we'll talk more about it? You know, there is a single thing. It took me,

Starting point is 01:35:52 it took us way longer than I thought it was going to take to build this. It's totally free. It's like, literally takes people 10 seconds to sign up for it. It is where to start

Starting point is 01:36:01 with essentialism and with effortless. And it's, you go to gregmccune.com. It's right there on the homepage. It's a 30-day email program. is where to start with essentialism and with effortless. And you go to gregmckeown.com. It's right there on the homepage. It's a 30-day email program. You get a whole workbook that goes with it,

Starting point is 01:36:14 completely free, easy, 10 seconds to sign up. And it answers that question, where do you start? And how do you spell your name, dear sir? Oh yeah, that's fair enough. G-R-E-G, Greg McKeown is M-C-K-E-O-W-N. So G-R-E-G-M-C-K-E-O-W-N.com, right there on the homepage, people can sign up and they'll get an email every few days,

Starting point is 01:36:32 but they can also just get the workbook, print it up and work through 10 lessons, carefully curated, combining the best, all of that published written work. Beautiful. And I'm going to dig back into your writing as well. That's on my to-do list. successful experiment i enjoyed doing this i appreciate you being game yes to mess around with it no i love it i think it's i think it's a really smart move for you to

Starting point is 01:36:55 do it you got so podcast right i mean i have my podcast too i know like it hits you it comes at you so fast to see content you're always in trying to create content you know mode and it's nice if you can if you can walk and just uh build it into your natural routine this is actually an example of trying to do the thing that is unlikely to happen by itself or on its own and that is i've realized a lot of my constraining physical issues, right? My principal physical ailment that affected my last year was this pyramidal stenosis at L4, L5, just some lower back issues. I mean, there is no just to it. It's been kind of cataclysmic in its implications for my sleep and for many other things. However, what I've concluded, I'm on the mend, but what I've concluded is the pain is directly correlated to sitting time. So the more I sit, the more it hurts. The more consistently it hurts, the longer it hurts.

Starting point is 01:37:50 And I looked at the driving forces or the different converging trends related to, say, podcasting, several of which lead to the creation of basically fixed television studios, right? Most podcasters, if they're aiming to be highly competitive and to feed growth, are building studios, legitimately building what would be recognized as television studios. And that is antithetical to my reasons for starting the podcast, number one. So the characteristics, including mobility, sort of ease, and ease of lightweight production, those are the opposite of what is happening and what I, on some level, feel driven to do because I am competitive. So I have to be aware of that. It doesn't always serve me. It can serve me, but it doesn't always serve me. And so I asked myself

Starting point is 01:38:42 this question. I asked myself a lot. I should probably ask myself more often, frankly, which is what if I did the opposite? Not just what if I did 20% less, not doing TV studio light, but what if I actually did the opposite? What would the opposite look like? Well, instead of sitting in a fixed location, I would be moving.

Starting point is 01:39:00 And I would double down on lightweight so that my production would actually become more lightweight, not more heavyweight and let me test that for a month and sprinkle it in and see what happens right because I can always go back to the other but from the perspective of trying to think for myself and not succumb to group think and also just external pressure but also trying to not just avoid pain but produce wellness in my life this is an experiment worth running so i have thoughts on this now number one is and i'm not trying to be commercial in saying this you are describing an effortless strategy, right?

Starting point is 01:39:45 Like it's inverting it. Saying it's like literally it's like Judge Castaneda will do the opposite. We literally think there is seriously this idea that better is harder. So therefore, okay, we, oh, well, look at all these people. Look at what they're all doing. Oh, I have to have the studio. Mine needs to be better than their studio and cooler than theirs. We have to have all the, it's like, well, that's one strategy.

Starting point is 01:40:05 And maybe that is that maybe that's the way, but what if, is there an effortless way to do this? That actually supports what I really want in my life. I love that you're doing, I love you're going in the other direction. And the other thing is, do you have a walking desk yet? So I do have a walking desk and I really want to be outside and or around people. Yeah, perfect. So I'm messing with that.

Starting point is 01:40:29 But yes, I do have a walking desk. I love my walking desk. I'm on it right now. This whole conversation, I've been doing it. That way we can have good audio on my side, but I'm still going. I don't want to work unless I'm walking now. I literally just think it's so much better for my mind.

Starting point is 01:40:44 Of course, it's better for your body, but it's just, I feel healthier mentally when I'm doing it. So kudos. Yeah. What fun, man. It's really nice to hear your voice. And this has been also very personally helpful for me to think about the upcoming year. So I really do. I really do appreciate it. Tim, it's been a genuine pleasure. All right, man. Well, all thanks to your proactive outreach. Final thought on that is like, what I want you to feel, forget like all the self-attachment,

Starting point is 01:41:15 they sound like attachment stuff, but like what I want you to feel about me really is like this. Like, I just feel a sense of like, I want to be there just for Tim. This is spawned in this fun thing and having this conversation in a way that's that that's helpful to your podcast. And also of course is, is, is helpful to me, I'm sure in various subjects in various ways, right, reach of your audience, like I get that this is spawned into this, but like, I want you to feel that amongst your group, right?

Starting point is 01:41:46 You've got your group of people and your people that Greg is like one of these people in your world who's not looking for something from you, but is concerned about you. And that's really for real, for real for me. Like that's my intent. And that's what I want you to think. The day you feel the worst, you need to text me. I want you to be able to feel safe on that day to go, Greg, I'm here.

Starting point is 01:42:10 This is the worst. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I take that to heart. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. We'll talk again soon.

Starting point is 01:42:18 See you, man. Take care. Bye-bye. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter,

Starting point is 01:42:36 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,

Starting point is 01:43:14 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next one thanks for listening this episode is brought to you by helix sleep helix sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep

Starting point is 01:43:37 preferences their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses including a collection of luxury models a mattress for big and tall sleepers that that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix sleep quiz at helixsleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes. Personally, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom and feedback from

Starting point is 01:44:20 friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10- or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge. And there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit,

Starting point is 01:44:46 you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines. And now Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring you a truly elevated sleep experience. Their newest collection of mattresses called Helix Elite includes six different mattress models,

Starting point is 01:45:05 each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences, so you can get exactly what your body needs. Each Helix Elite mattress comes with an extra layer of foam for pressure relief and thousands of extra microcoils for best-in-class support and durability. Every Helix Elite mattress also comes with a 15-year manufacturer's warranty and the same 100-night trial as the rest of Helix's mattresses. And you, my dear listeners, can get 20% off of all mattress orders plus two free pillows. So go to helixsleep.com slash Tim to learn more.

Starting point is 01:45:38 That's Helix Sleep, H-E-L-I-X, helixsleep.com slash Tim. This is their best offer to date and it will not last long. So take a look. With Helix, better sleep starts now. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller more than a decade ago, The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I simply loved the product and felt like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement that you could use conveniently while on the run, which is, for me, a lot of the time. I have been using it a very, very long time time indeed and I do get asked a lot what I would

Starting point is 01:46:28 take if I could only take one supplement and the true answer is invariably AG1 it simply covers a ton of bases I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road so what is AG1 what is this stuff AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food source nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. Since 2010, they have improved the formula 52 times in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible using rigorous standards and high-quality ingredients. How many ingredients? 75.

Starting point is 01:47:06 And you would be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now, I do my best always to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once

Starting point is 01:47:45 and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. drinkag1.com slash Tim.

Starting point is 01:48:34 Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #719: Walk & Talk with Greg McKeown — How to Find Your Purpose and Master Essentialism in 2024

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.