WEBVTT - 10 Books That Changed My Life 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.360 I need to tell you something about books that no 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.960 one really says out loud. Most books don't change your life. 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:08.719 Most books give you a little dopamine here a feeling 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.240 smart for a week, and then you forget ninety percent 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:13.960 of what you read and go back to operating exactly 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.560 the same way you did before you open page one. 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:20.080 You've experienced this. You read a book everyone raved about, 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:22.680 you nodded the whole way through, you told someone it 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:25.119 was really good, and then three months later you can't 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:27.920 remember a single idea from it that actually changed how 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.160 you live. That's not your fault, that's just most books. 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.279 They inform you without transforming you. They add to your 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.760 knowledge without changing your operating system. The ten books I'm 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.760 about to share with you are different, not because they're 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.400 the most popular or the most impressive on a shelf, 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.080 but because each one broke something in my brain. Each 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.040 one gave me a single idea, one idea that fundamentally 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.440 changed how I make decisions, how I see other people, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.440 how I understand myself, or how I moved through the world. 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.800 And those ideas didn't stay on the page. They followed 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.399 me into my actual life and rearranged it. I'm not 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.520 going to summarize these books. Summaries are not that helpful. 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:11.080 I'm going to give you the one idea from each 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:14.880 book that hit me the hardest, explain why it matters, 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.560 and show you what changes when you actually absorb it. 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.360 Ten books, ten ideas, each one building on the last. 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.360 By the end of this video, you'll have a framework 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.240 for thinking, deciding, and living that took me years and 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.600 thousands of pages to assemble. And I'll tell you now, 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.560 Book number nine is the one that ties all the 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.399 others together. It's the one that made every other book 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.120 on the list makes sense. It's the oldest book on 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.600 the list by about three thousand years. I'd say, stay 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.680 for it, let's go. The first book on my list 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.960 is How to Decide by Annie Duke. Here's the lesson. 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:55.880 You were confusing the quality of your decisions with the 0:01:56.040 --> 0:02:00.840 quality of your outcomes, and it's destroying your judgment. This 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.320 is the book I wish I'd read before I made 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.400 every major decision in my twenties, not because it tells 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.640 you what to decide, because it exposes the fundamental error 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:16.079 in how you evaluate your own decisions, an error you're 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.640 making every single day and don't even know it. Here's 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:24.440 the error. You judge your decisions by what happened after. 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:28.560 If the outcome was good, you assume the decision was good. 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.200 If the outcome was bad, you assume the decision was bad. 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.360 This feels so obviously correct that you've never questioned it. 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.480 But Annie Duke, a former professional poker player who went 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:45.320 on to study decision science, dismantles this completely. She calls 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:50.360 it resulting judging a decision by its result rather than 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:53.079 by the quality of the process that led to it. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.480 And resulting is everywhere. You took a job and it 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.160 worked out, you think, great decision. Your friend took it's 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.960 the same job and it didn't work out. Bad decision. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.519 But the decision was identical, the information available was identical, 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:12.080 the reasoning was identical. The only difference was what happened next, which, 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:17.079 in most real world situations involves a massive amount of luck, timing, 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.200 and randomness that had nothing to do with the quality 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.880 of the choice. Here's why this matters so much. If 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.919 you judge decisions only by outcomes, you learn the wrong 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.640 lessons from your own life. You abandon good strategies because 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.360 they had bad results. You double down on bad strategies 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.600 because they happened to work, you become superstitious instead of strategic. 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.360 You let randomness rewrite your playbook. The shift is this, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.760 start evaluating decisions at the moment you made them with 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.000 the information you had at the time, not with the 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.480 information you have now. Ask yourself, given what I knew then, 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:02.040 was that a reasonable choice? If yes, a bad outcome 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.400 doesn't make it a bad decision. I'll give you an example. 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:10.040 Let's say you analyze something perfectly as an investment. You 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.440 got really strategic about it, you look to every part 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.920 of it. You finally put some money in and it 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:18.279 didn't pay off. You would say it was a bad 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:22.200 decision to invest or that your process was flawed. But 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.000 let's say you just threw in some money into something 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:27.720 because you felt like in you felt some moment that day, 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:29.800 and it turned into a great decision. You'll say, hey, 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:31.880 I'm a lucky person. I'm just going to do that again. 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:37.719 This distinction separating decision quality from outcome quality will make 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.960 you a sharper thinker than ninety nine percent of people 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:45.760 you know, because almost everyone is letting hindsight rewrite their judgment, 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.160 and hindsight is a liar dressed as a teacher. Book 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:54.000 number two is Finding Your Element by Ken Robinson. Here's 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:58.080 the lesson. You were not designed for one purpose. You 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.920 were designed for an intersection, and you've probably been looking 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.640 in the wrong place. Everyone wants to find their passion. 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.279 Ken Robinson's work helped me realize very early in my 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.760 life why that search feels so impossible. Because you're looking 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.239 for one thing, a single calling, one career, one label, 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:21.120 one answer to what will you put on earth to do? 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.440 And that framing, that framing of a single discoverable purpose 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.719 is why you feel lost. Because for most people, the 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:34.679 purpose isn't a single thing. It's an intersection. Robin calls 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:39.159 it your element, the place where natural aptitude meets personal passion. 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.520 Not aptitude alone. Plenty of people are good at things 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.880 they hate, not passion alone. Plenty of people love things 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.000 they'll never be good at. The element is where the 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.359 two overlap. And here's what Robinson understood that most career 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:58.560 advice ignores. The element is almost never found through introspection. 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:03.160 It's found through exposure. You can't think your way to 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.120 your purpose. You have to collide with it. You have 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:08.960 to try things, fail at things, stumble into rooms you 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:11.880 didn't plan to enter, and pay attention to the moments 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.479 when time disappears, when the work stops feeling like work 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.680 and starts feeling like breathing, And those moments will never 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.479 happen in the place you expected them to. The reason 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:23.719 this book changed my life is that it gave me 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.920 permission to stop searching for one thing and start paying 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.200 attention to what was already happening at the edges. The 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.240 skills I was developing over here, the curiosity I couldn't 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.800 explain over there, the conversations that energized me that had 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.919 nothing to do with my job title. Robinson showed me 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.559 that the element isn't found by narrowing down. It's found 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:47.760 by paying attention to where your different interests, skills, and 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:52.640 fascinations collide. Mine happened to be monk teachings with media 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:56.159 and with management, and when I worked in business. The 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.800 intersection is the purpose, and you've probably been standing in 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:03.880 it for years without recognizing it because it doesn't match 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.960 the single label format the world told you to look for. 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.760 Book number three is The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.960 Here's the lesson. Your brain was never designed to hold 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:19.080 the life you're asking it to hold, and every ounce 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.880 of mental clutter is costing you intelligence. This is the 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.200 book that made me understand why I felt stupid on 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.880 my most productive days and sharp on my laziest ones. 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.000 And the reason was embarrassingly simple. I was using my 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:40.000 brain wrong, not metaphorically, neurologically. Daniel Leviton is a neuroscientist 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:43.960 at McGill University, and his core argument is devastating in 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:48.960 its clarity. Your brain's processing capacity is finite and measurable. 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.000 Every decision you make, what to eat, what to wear, 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.920 whether to answer that text, where you put your keys 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:59.720 uses the same neural resources as your most important creative 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.960 and analytical work. Your brain does not have separate budgets 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.320 for trivial decisions and important decisions. It is one budget, 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.600 and you are blowing most of it before noon on 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.040 things that don't matter. The research he sites is staggering. 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:20.560 The average person makes approximately thirty five thousand decisions per day, 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.800 thirty five thousand. Most of them are micro decisions you 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.960 don't even notice, but your prefront or cortex notices every 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.520 single one, and each one drains the same tank that 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.680 you need for the work that actually matters. Here's the 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:40.040 idea that rewired me. Every piece of information you're holding 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.520 in your head instead of writing down every decision you're 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:47.240 making in real time, instead of making in advance, every 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.280 open loop you're tracking mentally, instead of externally. All of 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.280 it is taxing your working memory and reducing your available 0:08:55.320 --> 0:09:01.079 IQ literally, not figuratively. You're making yourself measure dumber by 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:03.840 trying to keep everything in your head. The fix is 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:08.800 not productivity hacks. The fix is externalization. Get everything out 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.480 of your head and into a system, any system. Write 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.760 down the decisions, automate the routines, put the keys in 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:18.400 the same place every day. Not because your type A, 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:23.160 because every micro decision you eliminate frees up neural bandwidth 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.120 for the thinking that actually matters. The most organized people 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.680 in the world aren't organized because they love order. They're 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:35.400 organized because they understand the neurological cost of disorder and 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:38.200 they refuse to pay it. Book number four is the 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:42.160 Courage to be disliked. Here's the lesson. You're not living 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:46.160 your life. You're living your fear of other people's judgment, 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:50.160 and it has cost you everything authentic about you. This 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.520 is the book that makes you angry first and feel 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.079 free second, because it's central argument attacks the one thing 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.400 most of us have built our entire identity around and 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.079 we don't even realize it. The book is structured as 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.560 a conversation between a philosopher and a young man. The 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.520 philosopher draws on the work of Alfred Adler, the third 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.640 giant of psychology alongside Freud and Young, whose ideas have 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.280 been largely overlooked in the West but are foundational in Japan. 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.080 And Adler's central claim is the one thing that will 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.640 make you want to throw this book across the room 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:29.079 before you realize it's true. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems, 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:33.680 every single one, not most all. Your anxiety about your career. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.320 That's anxiety about how other people will judge your career. 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:42.079 Your dissatisfaction with your body. That's dissatisfaction filtered through how 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.560 you believe others perceive your body. Your reluctance to pursue 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:49.840 the thing you actually want. That's calculation, unconscious, instant, and 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:53.440 devastating about what pursuing it would cost you in other 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:58.199 people's eyes. Adler called this separation of tasks, and it's 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:02.440 the single most liberating frame I've ever encountered. The idea 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.440 is this, in any situation, there are your tasks and 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.040 there are other people's tasks. Your task is to live 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.120 according to your values, to do your best work, to 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:17.240 be honest, to act with integrity. Other people's task is 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:20.480 to have their opinion about it. Their judgment is their task, 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.000 not yours. And the moment you start doing your tasks 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:28.959 while also trying to manage their tasks, their perceptions, their expectations, 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.839 their approval, you lose the ability to do either one. Well, 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:37.680 here's what makes this so difficult. Dr Naomi Eisenberger's fMRI 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.840 research at UCLA, the same research that showed social rejection 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:46.040 activates the brain's physical pain matrix, explains why we're so 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:50.600 enslaved to the opinions of others. Disapproval doesn't feel like 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:54.680 an option, It feels like a threat. Your nervous system 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.000 processes the possibility of being disliked using the same neural 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.840 hardware it uses is for physical danger. So when I 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.319 tell you to stop caring what people think, your brain 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:10.360 here is stop protecting yourself from harm. No wonder, it 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.520 sounds impossible, But here's what the book showed me that 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.600 changed everything. The freedom you're looking for, the freedom to 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.880 pursue what matters to you, to be who you actually are, 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.840 to stop performing and start living. That freedom has a price, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.920 and the price is being disliked, not by everyone, but 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.200 by some people, the people who preferred the performing version 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.520 of you, the people whose expectations you were carrying, the 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.280 people whose approval was running your life without your conscious permission. 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.480 You cannot be free and universally approved of at the 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:48.280 same time. Those two things are mutually exclusive. Every authentic 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.319 life in human history has been built on the willingness 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.680 to disappoint someone, And the person you're most afraid of 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.760 disappointing is almost certainly the person who's approval has been 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.240 costing you the most, controlling you the most. The courage 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.960 to be disliked is not arrogance, it's not selfishness. It's 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:10.320 the prerequisite for an honest life. An honest life, Adler 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.480 would argue, and I now believe, is the only life 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:17.320 that doesn't eventually collapse under the weight of its own performance. 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.400 Book number five, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnman 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.920 the lesson. You have two brains and they're lying to 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.320 each other, and the one you trust most is the 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:52.679 one that's wrong most often. This book showed me that 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:55.000 the machine I was using to navigate the world, my 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:58.680 own brain, is far less reliable than I believed. Conman, 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.439 who won the Nobel Prize in Economics despite being a psychologist, 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.319 which would tell you something about the importance of his work, 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.800 spend decades with his research partner Amos Twersky mapping the 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:15.440 systematic errors in human judgment, not random errors, systematic ones, 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:20.600 predictable ones, errors that repeat across every culture, every education level, 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.920 every IQ bracket. His framework is deceptively simple. You have 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:29.840 two cognitive systems. System one is fast, automatic, intuitive, and effortless. 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:34.080 It's the system that reads facial expressions, finishes sentences, and 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:39.120 makes snap judgments in milliseconds. System two is slow, deliberate, analytical, 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:43.040 and effortful. It's the system that does math, evaluates evidence, 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:47.240 and makes complex decisions. Here's the problem. System one runs 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.880 the show approximately ninety five percent of the time, and 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.320 System one, for all its speed and efficiency, is riddled 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:59.400 with biases. It uses mental shortcuts, heuristics that are often 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:04.600 useful but frequently catastrophically wrong. It anchors the irrelevant numbers, 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.720 It confuses how easily. It can recall something with how 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.480 likely that thing is. It substitutes easy questions for hard 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:14.560 ones without telling you it made the swap. The real 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.800 devastation is this System one doesn't just make errors. It 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.680 makes errors and then delivers the answer to System two 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:26.440 with absolute confidence. You don't feel the bias operating. You 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.160 feel the certainty. The intuition arrives and it feels right. 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:34.240 It feels like truth. And System two, which is supposed 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.840 to be the fact checker, is lazy. It mostly rubber 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.880 stamps whatever System one delivers, because engaging System two is 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:47.200 metabolically expensive. Your brain would rather be wrong effortlessly than 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.120 right effort fully, the single idea that changed my life. 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:56.560 The feeling of certainty is not evidence of accuracy. The 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.800 strength of your intuition about something, how right it feels, 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:03.480 how obvious it seems, how confident you are, has almost 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.480 no correlation with whether you're actually correct. Canman proved this 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.600 across hundreds of studies. Confidence is not a signal of truth. 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.080 It is a signal of cognitive fluency. It means the 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.400 thought was easy to produce. That's it. After this book, 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.560 I started treating my strongest intuitions with the most suspicion, 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.280 not the least, because the moments when I feel most 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.120 certain are precisely the moments when system one is most 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.760 likely to hijacked. The process and the question I now 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.680 ask myself before every important decision. Am I sure about 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.440 this because I've thought it through? Or am I sure 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.880 about this because it feels easy? Has saved me from 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.520 more bad cause than any other mental tool I own. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.760 Book number six is called Flow by Mihai Chick sent 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.960 me Hi, here's the lesson. Happiness is not a destination 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:57.520 or an emotion. It's a state of absorption that you 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.240 can engineer. This is the book that's the happiness question 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.280 for me, not by answering it, by making me realize 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.440 I'd been asking the wrong question entirely. Most people spend 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.359 their twenties chasing happiness as if it were a place 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:12.560 they could arrive at. If they got the right job, 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.000 the right relationship, the right body, the right bank balance, 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.080 they'd arrived, they'd feel it. The pursuer would be over 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.920 Flow takes it differently me and Heichik sent me high 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.040 as psychologist whose name I practiced pronouncing for longer than 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.560 I'd like to admit. Studied happiness for decades, not by 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:32.200 asking people if they were happy, by interrupting people throughout 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.360 their day and asking what they were doing and how 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.879 they felt in that moment. Thousands of people, hundreds of 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.880 thousands of data points across cultures, demographics, and income levels. 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:47.160 What he found destroyed the conventional model. The moments when 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:51.359 people reported the highest levels of fulfillment, joy, and aliveness 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:56.000 were not moments of relaxation, leisure, or reward. There were 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:00.480 moments of deep absorption in a challenging task, moments where 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.320 their skill level was perfectly matched to the difficulty of 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.280 what they were doing, not too easy, not too hard, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.080 but right at the edge of their ability. Let me 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.720 explain this. If you're doing something where your skills are 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.440 above the challenge, you'll feel bored. If you do something 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.720 where your challenge is above your skills, you'll feel lost 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.840 and confused. But if you have your challenge and your 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:28.640 skills match, you will experience flow. So in any given situation, 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.560 you either have to increase your skills or increase your challenge. 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.040 MIHI call this flow state. The people who experienced the 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.879 most flow and therefore the most moment to moment happiness 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.800 were not the wealthiest, not the most successful, or the 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.560 most celebrated. They were the ones who had structured their 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.560 lives around activities that demanded their full attention and pushed 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.720 the edge of their capability. This means happiness is not 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.600 something you achieve after the work is done. It's something 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.439 you experience during the work, if the work is the 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.280 right challenge and the right skill. Book Number seven is 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.919 The Lean Startup by Eric Rice. Here's the lesson. You 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.040 don't fail because you built the wrong thing. You fail 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:12.120 because you built the perfect version of something nobody asked for. 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:14.760 This is the book that cured me for the most 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:19.520 dangerous mindset you can develop in your twenties, perfectionism disguised 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.399 as preparation. Here's what I used to do. I'd have 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.840 an idea for a project, a business, a piece of content, 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:29.040 a life change, whatever, and for weeks, sometimes months, I'd 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:33.160 be perfecting, refining, trying to figure it out, making sure 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:35.880 it was exactly right before I showed it to anyone. 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.480 And then when I finally revealed this polished, meticulously crafted 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.720 thing to the world, the world would shrug, not because 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.600 the execution was bad, but because the premise was wrong. 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.480 I'd spent months building a beautiful answer to a question 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:53.200 nobody was asking. Eric Rice calls this the fundamental startup fallacy, 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.479 and it applies to far more than startups. It applies 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.159 to careers, creative work, to relationships, to every domain, or 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.720 you're building something you hope other people will value. The 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:07.320 fallacy is this, you assume you know what people want, 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.640 You build the complete version in isolation, and you treat 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.000 the launch as a single high stakes part or fail moment. 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:17.679 That model fails at a staggering rate, not because of 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:22.439 bad execution, but because of untested assumptions. Rise of solution 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.760 is the minimum viable product, the MVP, and the MVP 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.879 is not, as most people think, a worst version of 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:34.199 your idea. It's the smallest possible version that lets you 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.520 test whether your core assumption is correct before you invest 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.560 months or years building on top of it. It's not 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.479 about lowering your standards. It's about learning before you build, 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:49.000 rather than building and hoping you learn. Here's the idea 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.760 that rewired me. The fastest path to something great is 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:57.760 not perfecting. It's exposing your imperfect thing to reality as 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:02.320 early as possible. Listening to reality, says Back and iterating 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:06.000 ship it ugly, ship it in complete, Ship it scared 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.199 because a mediocre thing that has been tested against the 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:13.199 real world will evolve into something greater faster than a 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:16.840 perfect thing that has only been tested against your own assumptions. 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.680 This applies to everything businesses, for sure, but not just products. 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.840 That conversation you've been rehearsing in your head for weeks, 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.439 have the messy version. Now that career change you've been 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.280 planning in a spreadsheet for six months, Run a small 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:34.240 experiment this week. That creative project you keep perfecting in private, 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:37.719 Publish the rough draft, the video, the podcast, whatever it 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:41.719 may be. Let reality be your editor. It's better at 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.560 the job than you are. Book number eight is The 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:48.240 Righteous Mind by Jonathan Hyde. You can tell I've read 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.560 this one a few times. I've lost the cover. Here's 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:53.840 the lesson. You don't use reason to form your beliefs. 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:58.120 You use your beliefs to select your reasons, and everyone 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.919 you disagree with is doing the same thing. This is 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:05.000 the book that changed how I debate and disgust things, 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:07.760 how I listen, and how I think about every person 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:11.639 I've ever dismissed as wrong. Jonathan hy is a social 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:14.879 psychologist to Nyu, and his central argument is one of 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:19.679 the most humbling findings in modern psychology. Moral reasoning is 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:22.240 not what you think it is. You think you arrive 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:26.480 at your moral and political beliefs through careful thought, evidence, evaluation, 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:31.200 and logical analysis. You don't. You arrive at them through intuition, 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:35.440 a fast, automatic emotional response, and then you construct rational 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.840 sounding arguments after the fact to justify what you already feel. 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:44.000 Height's metaphor is devastating. Reason is not the driver, it's 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.959 the press secretary. The driver is intuition. The press secretary's 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:50.840 job is not to seek truth, it's to defend the 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.480 position the driver already took. And the press secretary is 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.639 brilliant at its job. It can find evidence for anything, 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.760 It can construct a compelling case for any position, not 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.600 because the position is correct, because that's what press secretaries do. 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:07.800 This means that when you're in an argument with someone 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:12.160 about values, about any charge topic, you're not watching two 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:17.200 rational minds clash. You're watching two press secretaries perform. Neither 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:20.720 one is seeking truth. Both are defending the intuition that 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:24.320 was already there before the first word was spoken. But 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:26.840 here's the part that should change how you engage with 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:35.879 everyone you disagree with. Height identify six moral foundations care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, 0:23:36.080 --> 0:23:40.000 and sanctity that function like taste buds for moral judgment. 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:45.000 Different people in different cultures wait these foundations differently. Liberals 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:49.000 tend to wait care and fairness heavily, and discount loyalty, authority, 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:53.040 and sanctity. Conservatives tend to wait all six more equally. 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:57.679 Neither configuration is wrong. They're different moral palettes. And the 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:00.200 person you think is insane, the person who's view who 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:03.280 make no sense to you, whose positions seem cruel or 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:07.920 naive or backwards, is not operating without morality. They're operating 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:11.800 on a different combination of the same moral ingredients you use. 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:15.840 They're tasting the same meal with a different tongue. After 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:19.240 this book, I stopped trying to win arguments, because winning 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:24.320 an argument means convincing someone's press secretary, which changes nothing. Instead, 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:28.200 I started trying to understand which moral foundations the other 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:31.840 person was weighing most heavily. What are they actually protecting, 0:24:32.280 --> 0:24:35.280 What value are they afraid of losing? What do they 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:38.560 care about that I'm not seeing the moment you understand 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:42.280 someone's moral foundation, even if you disagree with their conclusion, 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:46.280 something shifts. They stop seeming like an idiot to you. 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.159 They become a person navigating the same complex world with 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:54.719 a different moral instrument panel. And that shift from dismissal 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:59.760 to understanding is not weakness. It's the beginning of actual wisdom. 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:03.280 Book number nine is the Bargo Gita. Here's the lesson. 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:06.159 You have the right to the work, but never to 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:09.160 the fruit of the work. And this single idea makes 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:11.800 every other book on this list makes sense. I told 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:13.439 you at the beginning to stay for this one. It's 0:25:13.480 --> 0:25:16.679