WEBVTT - Why More Freedom Is Making You Miserable | David Epstein on Constraints 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.560 Welcome to two Percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter. This 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:22.720 is a podcast where we talk about improving your performance. 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.400 I am an author, and today I am extremely pleased 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.960 to bring on a fellow author whose work I very 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.960 much admire. We're going to be talking to David Epstein. So, 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:38.560 David started as a sports reporter, specifically in the realm 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.080 of the science of sports at Sports Illustrated Now. He 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:45.680 became famous there and had a big moment of attention 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:50.760 when he broke the A Rod steroid scandal. So, if 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.160 you are a New York Yankees fan, you probably hate 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.880 the guy already, but please bear with me, because this 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.160 guy is a very, very fascinating thinker who can tell 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.120 us a lot about improving our work life, improving our 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.280 performance in the gym and on the road if we're 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.160 a runner, and just improving our thinking across the board 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.800 in a way that we can live better. And David 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:11.280 has a new book which we are going to be 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.680 diving into today. It is called Inside the Box, How 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.160 Constraints Make Us Better, and it argues that even though 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:20.840 we often do not like constraints and we want as 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.960 much freedom as possible, he argues that constraints are actually 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.920 what lead us into better outcomes at work, better outcomes 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.800 in our wellness, better outcomes across the board. Let's get 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:36.640 into it. David Epstein, thanks for coming on the show Man. 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:38.240 It is my absolute pleasure. 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.600 So the new book Inside the Box looks at the 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:46.360 idea of how constraints can actually be beneficial. And there's 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:48.480 one story that I loved. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.360 That you open the book with. It's about this company 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:53.200 called General Magic. 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.000 Yeah. Well, so they have the people who designed the 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:57.040 original Mac. You know. 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:02.040 It's the company was so visionary the iPhone, like in 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:02.840 basically the IP. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.520 Yeah, and this was in the late eighties, early nineties. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.480 The sketch the CEO has a notebook his named Mark 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.760 Parratt in nineteen eighty nine where he sketches a thin 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:15.680 glass rectangle with no protruding buttons and a touchscreen where 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.120 you can download apps and it'll be a phone in 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.079 a computer. Nineteen eighty nine, only fifteen percent of Americans 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:20.760 had computers. 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:22.239 Yeah, and the Internet didn't exist. 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.040 He saw all of this stuff, Like he envisioned a 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.720 virtual meeting space where different devices could connect, and they 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.959 called it the cloud in nineteen ninety like they they 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.440 were ahead, and again they had the designers, the original MAC. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:36.320 It was so everything was. 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.680 So alluring, their vision, their talent that Goldman Sachs actually 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.639 took them public in the first so called concept ipo, 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:47.360 where they went public with an idea. 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.400 Nothing to without a product, nothing to actually sell, just like, hey, 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:51.359 check out this idea. 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:52.000 Let's roll. 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:54.200 I mean they had an idea that they had the 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:58.120 idea plus the talent, plus a seventeen member what they 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:02.680 called the Alliance, which was basically other companies that had 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.880 invested in them. So this was seventeen companies from around 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.080 the world. It was the largest consortium of international businesses 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:11.520 in American business history. Each had given millions of dollars 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:13.639 in investment. And we're going to be part of the team. 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:14.400 And so like. 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.079 Apple White, these are giants are like Sony, Right, there's 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:17.760 all kinds of. 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.160 Grapples Sony, Panasonic, you know, AT and T like all 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.040 the It was actually they covered so much of the 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.240 communications technology world that their meetings had to begin with 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.519 an antitrust lawyer listing all the topics they weren't allowed 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.079 to discuss in their meetings because they covered everything and 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.240 they have this vision. So Mark Parrat, the CEO. He 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:38.960 raises all this money early, a stock price doubles on 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.120 the first day. It's a Wall Street darling. And he 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.320 says his goal in raising all that money so quickly 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.200 was to create what he called heaven for engineers, where 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:49.920 they could play and create and be limited only by 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.320 their imaginations. As he said, what more could anyone else 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.240 ask for? And I think the answer in retrospect turned 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:59.040 out to be a little less freedom because they could 0:03:59.120 --> 0:03:59.640 do anything. 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:01.320 So they did do anything. 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.400 Everyone who had a good idea, they did it like 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:08.160 they any They built and built. They had no clear 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.240 they they defined their customer as Joe sixpack, which is 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.400 very vague. So after a few years of miss deadlines, 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.680 they turned around and realized nobody knew the guy or 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:18.880 what they were building from, or what problem they were solving. 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:20.719 Like beer. 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.279 Yeah, yeah, just like it's like saying Joe Schmo, you know, 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.520 like random guy. So they didn't take any time to 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.000 define their actual customer. So they ended up building for 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.480 each other and the project just grew and grew and grew. 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:35.760 They couldn't ever decide what not to do, and so 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:37.760 it ends up being this huge disaster. They ended up 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.400 selling three thousand units of their personal communicator when it 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.320 comes out. It has so many features that the battery 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.280 life's terrible, the user experience is choppy, it's expensive, it's confusing. 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.000 But there was one interview that I think kind of 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:56.080 encapsulated their problems, and it was at this guy named 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.320 this engineer named Steve Pearlman, whose job was to create 0:04:58.360 --> 0:04:59.520 a calendar function. 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:02.680 For their operating system. 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.800 And so he creates it to run from nineteen oh 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:08.040 four to twenty ninety six and checks it in and 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:09.599 is like, all right, I'm done. And then one of 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.440 the managers comes to him and says, look, somebody might 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:14.320 build apps that go way back in history or way 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.280 into the future. You have to make it longer than that. 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.240 So he opens it up again. He goes back to 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.080 year one, fine, thinks he's done. Then another team comes 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.120 to him and says, look, why are you starting with 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.599 that arbitrary religious context. You should go back to the 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.359 beginning of astronomical time. So he builds the calendar app 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.560 from the beginning of the universe way into the future. 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.320 And as he said, if he had stuck from nineteen 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:38.760 oh four to twenty ninety six, it would have been 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:40.360 four lines of code and he could have moved on, 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:42.159 and instead it dragged on for months. 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:43.560 And this is how everything worked there. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:47.120 Because they didn't put boundaries in place, everything grew and 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:49.240 grew and grew until it just totally collapsed under its 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:49.680 own weight. 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.320 So this becomes this like big metaphor for the book. 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:57.400 We often think that freedom is like the most desirable 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.560 thing for creatives. For businesses, it's like, just take some 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.000 smart people, you let him figure it out. 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:03.720 They'll do it. 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:07.200 But this becomes this great metaphor for the fact that 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:09.520 even when you have the greatest teams ever, you need 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:12.760 some sort of boundaries because without boundaries, things just turn 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:14.440 into chaos totally. 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:17.000 And in fact, in one way I would say that 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:22.400 General Magic was actually a success, which is it's so traumatized, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.039 you know, in a business sense some of the people 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:26.680 that were there, especially some of the. 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:28.720 Younger employees, that. 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:32.719 They learned all these lessons about the importance of constraints 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.840 that they then took in their next stops in their 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.640 careers and did things like led Google Maps and built 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:46.599 the Apple Watch, co founded Android, LinkedIn, eBay, you know 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.440 all these other companies that you've heard of or the 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.000 guy who became an absolute zealot for Constraints, a guy 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.640 named Tony Fidell who general Magic was his first job 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:57.960 out of college and these were his heroes and so 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.400 he was just devastated when the company collapsed. I was 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:05.000 actually connected with him by the famous venture capitalist Bill Gurley, 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.080 who's famously invested in Uber and Zillow. I told him 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.360 I was interested in constraints and Bill said, oh, we 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.320 have a saying and venture more startups dive of indigestion 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.800 than starvation, like too much, not too little. He said, 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:17.680 you got to talk to my friend Tony. So he 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.400 connects me to Tony Fidel. The first time I talked 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:21.400 to him, he's like yelling at me. If you don't 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.280 have constraints, make up constraints. He's like a very intense guy. 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.080 And he went on to lead the design of the iPod, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.640 and when he showed Steve Jobs a styrofoam model in 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.080 March of two thousand and one, got the green light 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.960 and said we are shipping by Christmas. Gave like ten 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.520 weeks for the first design and then stop and collect 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.280 your lessons and go on. And it forced the team 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:47.480 to think creatively and repurpose technology. So the famous scroll 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:49.920 wheel is something that they basically repurposed from a Danish 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:52.800 cordless phone because they were saying, look, we can't build 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:54.920 everything from scratch like they had done in General Magic. 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.400 Then Fidel goes on and he co founds Nest, the 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.560 smart thermostat company, where he forces the company to work 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.600 inside a literal box. He makes them prototype the box 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.360 before the product, because he says, this shows what we 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:09.520 want to communicate to the end user, and if it's 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.400 not in this box, it's not one of our priorities. 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.440 And it was just so interesting to see his arc 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.080 from this like the trauma of General Magic, to becoming 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.520 this absolute zelo for constraints, which is why I wanted 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:23.160 to give his narrative some air. 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.880 Well. One thing that I thought was really fascinating is 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.880 you could almost see I think the typical point of 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:35.040 view would be constraints are going to constrain creativity, right, 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.000 and so when you have these products like the iPod, 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.200 the first iPod, the Master, you're like, wow, that must 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.720 have taken a lot of creativity, a lot of thought, 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.800 and just kind of figuring things out. But you also 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.120 write about this idea called is it the Green Eggs 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:53.600 and Ham effect where having constraints can actually enhance creativity, 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:55.720 because we'll I'll let you explain it. 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.640 You know it reliably does. In fact, there was just this. 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:03.839 I cite this recent survey by psychologists around the world 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:07.199 of known creativity myths things that we know from psychological 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.880 research are not true, And the second most popular one 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.479 is that people are most creative when they're most free. 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:17.440 And as you mentioned, psychologists know this isn't true. There's 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:19.640 actually something called the green Eggs and Ham effect, which 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.520 is named for the fact that Theodore Gaizel aka doctor 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:28.480 Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet that 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:32.120 he couldn't write a book using only fifty words, and 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:37.120 it forced him to experiment with rhythm because he couldn't 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.840 use vocabulary. Even before Green eg and Ham, he had 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.719 been given a task to write a children's book using 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.520 only two hundred words from a kid's vocabulary list, and 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.640 at first he starts looking at the list, he starts 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.360 complaining to his wife. He says, there are no adjectives, 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.080 and then he says, I think in fine Susian form, 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.800 it's like trying to make a strudle with no Strudels, 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:57.480 which I think is hilarious because it's like he was 0:09:57.520 --> 0:09:59.680 the same guy in his personal life as his books. 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.320 And then he just decides, throws his hands up and says, 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:04.200 I'm just going to take the first two rhyming words 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:05.920 on the list and make a book. And the first 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.079 two rhyming words are cat and hat, and that kind 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.760 of changed children's literature forever. It gets to this idea 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.320 that cognitive psychologists have really fleshed out now that you know, 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.320 as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has put it, you 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:21.199 may think your brain is made for thinking, but it's 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.640 actually made to prevent you from having to think whenever possible, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.720 because thinking is energetically costly, and so if you're not forced, 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:30.960 you'll just go down what cognitive psychologists call the path 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.160 of least resistance, meaning you'll just reach for ideas that 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.360 you've already used, or that you've seen, what's familiar, what's easy, 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:41.040 and so unless, in many cases, unless the normal thing 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:45.319 is actually blocked, it becomes incredibly hard and sometimes impossible 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:45.959 to be creative. 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:50.680 Yeah, and that was one that one surprised me at first, 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.680 and then two I thought about my own work and 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.480 when I'm doing a book, like I just finished this 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.680 a draft of another book, and as I was writing that, 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.240 I have sections where I'd be like, oh, this kind 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:04.120 of worked before in my last word, and I'd start 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:05.720 to do that and They're like, yeah, but you can't 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:08.760 do that same sort of thing. This is a new book. 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:10.840 And so it was like I needed that sort of 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.920 constraint to not just default to the easy thing, even 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.560 though it was originally somewhat creative, but now that I'm 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.079 doing it again, it no longer becomes creative. 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:21.960 Absolutely, I mean to your point. 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:24.480 We were talking before we started recording about my process 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:26.440 a little bit for the book this time around, and 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.680 this was the first time I ever created an architectural 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:32.840 plan for the how I was going to order the 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:34.840 information before I started writing the book. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:36.720 I have deportion of this book is mesearch. 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.360 I was terrible at putting constraints in place and wanted 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:40.840 to get better at it. That's often the case for 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:42.880 a lot of the things I'm researching is I'm bad 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.440 at it, didn't want to get better, and so I 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:47.679 wrote way over length in my previous two books, and 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.480 it just incredibly inefficient. So this time I made this 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.839 one page outline. I forced myself to outline the whole 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:55.360 book on one page. As you can see, I ended 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.200 up writing very very small my own attempt, my brain's 0:11:58.200 --> 0:11:59.720 attempt to defeat my own system. 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:02.600 But if it's not on this page, it's not in 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:03.120 the book. 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:05.080 So this is the first time I wrote the length 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.760 of a book to get a book, and the book 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.600 is tighter than my other's, about twenty percent shorter. But 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:16.600 it also blocked the kind of some of the methods 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:19.000 that I was used to because I had never laid 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.640 out a plan ahead of time where I wanted the 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:23.199 beginning and the end of the book to kind of 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.520 come full circle in a way that the other ones didn't. 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.160 And so I think that was really helpful because especially 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.520 and it's exactly what you're saying, like, we've gotten competent 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.000 at this thing, which is great, but competency can also 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:37.200 be a trap from getting better. 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:37.400 You know. 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:38.920 It's like you end up lifting the same weights the 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.240 same number of times every day, which means you may 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.680 not get worse, but you're also not going to get better. 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:47.480 It's like putting bumpers up. If you don't have the bumpers, 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:49.640 you're probably going to get it in the gutter sometimes, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:51.280 and I find out in my own writing where I 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.400 will find a thread that it's I'm like, I don't 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:55.880 know if it works for the book, but it's kind 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.040 of interesting. And then I'm writing, you know, a thousand 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.640 words on this, and then I read it and I go, yeah, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:02.640 this is interesting, but what the hell does it have 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:04.800 to do with this book I'm writing? Or if I 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:06.920 could just keep down the lane, it would be a 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:08.760 much more efficient process. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.520 I have that problem in spades. 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.120 I mean, I have a very psychologist I was interviewing 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.400 once told me that I have a what he called 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.720 a flat associative hierarchy, which means that I see lots 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.360 of disparate ideas as kind of connected. It's easy for 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:25.760 me to connect them. And that can be nice because 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.280 I maybe find things that aren't obvious to other people. 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.840 But it also means that I can be incredibly prone 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.319 to doing what you're describing, which is going down these 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:36.560 rabbit holes of things that I think are interesting and 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.599 they're really not that well connected in a way that 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:40.800 will make sense to other people. 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:42.640 And so I really need. 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.719 Structure to kind of prevent myself from writing books that 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:49.000 are just all over the place. 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.640 Yeah, what did this What did report in this book 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.040 make you think about when people get too many resources, 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.600 like specifically financial resources. 0:13:57.640 --> 0:13:58.880 It kind of made me think that. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.600 A lot of times you find the people who sort 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:03.840 of have it all almost have nothing because of a 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:05.920 sort of aimlessness sets in. It's like, when you can 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:08.240 have everything, why go after anything? 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.959 Yeah, I mean I think it's actually don't think it's healthy. 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:13.480 For as Jonathan Hyde told me in one of the 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.520 interviews in the book, it's not healthy for anyone to 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.760 have everything everywhere all the time. And a lot of us, 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:22.000 even if we're not rich, are kind of in a 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.960 situation like that in the digital world now, And so 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.320 I think when it comes to businesses, there are a 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:30.800 bunch of you know, there are examples in the book 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.560 where people are just sloppy, like when they have too much, right, 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.160 it leads to sloppiness, It leads to not feeling like 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.240 you need to define these boundaries. And I think one 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.480 of the things this gets at one of the things 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.040 that I hope maybe the mindset shift that I hope 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.280 the book engenders, which is from seeing limits as only 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.680 bad to seeing as to seeing them as opportunities to 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:56.360 clarify priorities and launch productive exploration. And I think when 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.040 people have too much, like to Bill Gurley's more startups 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.880 die of indigestion than starvation. Quote, you're not forced to 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.600 be resourceful and you're not forced to clarify priorities, and 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:08.920 so you don't. And I actually don't think that's a 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.400 good thing for people, right. It's like, I don't think 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.080 it's good for work, and I don't think it's good 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.680 for having meaning in your life to kind of always 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:19.280 have your options infinitely open. 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:24.160 I feel like I'm conscious that it may. 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.560 Sound like sometimes I'm contradicting at least the title of 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.200 the book sounds like I'm contradicting range my previous book, 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.720 which is about broad experiences. But it actually felt like 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.280 a natural next question to me, where it's, okay, you 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:36.400 get this broad tool set, at some point you have 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.040 to focus this into something, into achievement, hopefully into meaning 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.440 and satisfaction. And I've kind of found that in a 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:50.040 lot of really talented or hardworking people, they may over 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:54.480 index on optionality, like keeping their options open all the 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:56.720 time because they can maybe they're very talented or they're 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.480 very hard working or lucky or whatever it is. But 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.560 sometimes I think they can actually really backfire if people 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.840 start making decisions, if keeping your options open becomes an 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.360 end douneto itself. And so I think I've seen some 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.680 very talented peers and friends endlessly keep their options open 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:18.880 in a way that actually doesn't doesn't help them reach 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:21.160 better satisfaction. I'm sure I'm articulating that well. 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:23.200 I think I hear what you're saying. 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:28.720 It's like there comes a sort of phobia towards commitment, 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.160 and you sort of tell yourself that if I commit 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.840 to this one thing, I'm saying no to all these 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.160 other possible things that could land on my plate, and 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:43.040 so it leads to someone being unfocused. I think I 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:48.480 think a good example would be something like marriage totally. 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.440 It's like that is sort of the ultimate commitment. I 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:53.200 feel like you see a lot of men are like 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.320 they're afraid to get married because like, well, what could happen? 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:56.320 I'm going to be tied down. 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.960 But I think when you survey to people in general 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.000 at a population level, marriage people tend to be happier 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.520 because it's like I was talking to my friend John Deloney, 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.360 who has a podcast on relationships and where he's doing 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.760 a book about marriage, and he asked me, He's like, well, 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:14.480 why did you get married? Like you don't have to, 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:16.119 you know, he's asking all these people this, and I 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:17.520 was like, you know, that's a good question. 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.160 And the way I thought of it was, now, you're 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:22.520 doing the. 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.879 Crossword puzzle in ink, so you got to like, you 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.080 know what I mean, Like, you're committed, You're into this thing, 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:30.040 and you're into it for the law. 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:32.200 Think a lot harder about what your decisions if you're 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:33.280 doing in ink totally. 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:35.159 One thing you brought up in the book too, is 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:39.920 that so many people think about, well what should I do, 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.560 when oftentimes a better question to ask yourself is what 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:44.720 should I not do? 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.639 In different situations? Where did you see that manifest I. 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.640 Mean again, that was like part of general Magic's big 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:51.760 problem was deciding what not to do. But I think 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:56.280 about that all the time in things like our information diet, right, 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:58.080 Like people are overwhelmed. 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:01.840 There's so many things that seem interesting. 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.679 There's so much information coming at you, and I think 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.200 it's a constant question of I'm curious, I want to 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:10.199 learn things about how can I stay sane? And I 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:15.200 mentioned I describe this in one genetics lab in the book, 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.080 where they take post it notes and put them on 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.960 the wall, and each one representing one of their current 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.760 commitments or projects. And the first thing that happens is 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:26.359 once they put them on the wall, so making all 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.600 their current commitments visual is they realize there's way more 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.760 than they could ever get done already in process. And 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.280 so immediately they see it and say, we have to 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.320 start moving some of this stuff out or will never 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.320 get anything done. And they have like a hopper where 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:41.639 they don't say, we don't have to just throw that 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:43.639 idea out the window. We can put in a holding place, 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.959 but it's back burnered, right. And then they implement this 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.720 rule where you can't start a new project in the 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.440 funnel unless one moves out of the funnel, so it's contained. 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.040 So they're making these choices about what not to do, 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:58.520 and some of those things that they decide not to 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.600 do maybe good ideas, but doesn't matter because they weren't 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:04.120 going to get to anything if they had all these ideas. 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:05.919 And I kind of took that and did that for 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.560