How To BE HAPPY, STAY POSITIVE & Live An AWESOME LIFE | Neil Pasricha x Rich Roll Podcast

you gotta train your brain to be happy first and then the big success comes at the end it's not great work big success be happy it's the reverse you've got to train and prime your brain to think of Happiness like a practice like a habit like something you invest in then being happy leads to doing great work and the great work leads to having big success [Music] we all want that right but why does it feel so complicated so elusive well many self-help gurus present happiness as a choice the idea that happiness can be produced whenever we want irrespective of circumstances others believe it's mined in reorienting your life a byproduct of pursuing purpose meaning and service but today's guests my friend Neil pasricha believes happiness lives in the small the simple the often overlooked daily wins Neil pazricha is the best-selling author of the book of awesome please welcome to the show that's not what happens to you it's what you do about it Neil's the author of nine books including the book of awesome the happiness equation and his newest offering our book of awesome in this conversation I confess my cynicism in the face of Neil's unflappable optimism we talk about how to find deep contentment day to day and how simply fostering curiosity about the world around you can produce a qualitative Improvement in your lived experience before we get into it this episode is brought to you today by Roca now I get asked constantly about the glasses that I wear on the show Rich what are those they are Roca always I love them they're high performance super light great Optics they have tons of great Styles and uh they never slip off my face no matter how much I sweat and you're going to hear a little bit more about Roka later on but right now let's invest in the magnetic presence that is Neil pasrichi so hit that subscribe button and let your day be brightened happy happy to have you here man it's good to see you thanks for having me yeah yeah uh it's been a long time in the in in the making to get you here we had to reschedule that other time so thank you for being flexible about that and uh I don't know man like I have so many ideas about how to approach this conversation and I'm not quite sure how to crack it but I think perhaps the best way to to do it is to start with a little bit of an uncomfortable confession uh and that is that you know how much I love you and appreciate your work and just think the world of you and I'm so excited to have you here uh and yet at the same time like I am such a cynical bastard that when I look at you and I see somebody who oozes with unbridled earnestness and optimism and writes all these books about being awesome like I can't help but get a little bit like I contract you know I start to feel like a little bit uncomfortable which of course says everything about me and and nothing about you right so do you come up against people who are like I don't know about you and your whole empire of awesome uh yeah and uh that that emotion and that feeling is like I I sh I share it as well I mean the the thing is like the origin of this idea and these these Concepts it's not coming from a place where I'm like unbridled unbridledly optimistic yeah it comes from a place where I I think I was you know trying to trying to string a Vine above my head and reach for something you know it was it was really about trying to carve a path light light up light a little tunnel like you know figure out a way to get to that place I think of it as well in reflecting on this so I had the same reaction I've told Melvis too I have the same reaction with the whole five second rule of things come on man you know like let's get real here right and that's my you know cynicism like percolating up but I think when you look Beyond it with respect to your work it's what it really is like when I get past my own you know kind of uh resistance to these types of ideas it's really about noticing the small things and cultivating a practice of appreciation of gratitude for what you have and and you know a sense of ah like when we really stop and pay attention to the world like there's plenty to you know to see that is nourishing right and and and extrapolating from that notion the little things are the big things and you talk a lot about how if we're only looking towards you know our kids graduation or you know walking your daughter down the aisle at the right like these are very few and far between moments that may or may not occur but we have the capacity the ability the opportunity to have that kind of experience in the mundanity of of our daily lives yeah absolutely I think I met you was a five years ago and at the end of the couple days we spent together I said to you something like rich thank you so much for your word they're so beautiful I love the way you speak and you look them and you're like I feel like I want to run away from you so uncomfortable I remember I remember that reaction but I do think of that it that way I do often think about the time we have and I do often measure it and sort of think of it in the highest possible sense you know the global average lifespan right now is 25 000 days the North American average lifespan is 30 000 days and those days are finite they are ticking the average person's awake for a thousand minutes a day per day that's it you do the quick math that's why that you know that there's so much resonance with the Oliver Berkman book you know of four thousand weeks or whatever it's called it's because it just paints such a finite portrait of what we have and if indeed it is so fine and it is so fleeting that it's it's incumbent upon all of us to try our best to look for the Silver Linings the small Pleasures those little moments of Joy because they Infuse our days with the richness that helps us cultivate a positive mindset and you know what that benefits of that are rich it's like now we have better connections with our family stronger connections with their Partners deeper connections with our children and we see the beauty in the world around us I'm not saying it's easy I'm not saying it's I'm not saying it's something that you know I do every day I'm not saying it's easy you know he be like I'm not saying any of this stuff I'm just saying like we owe it to ourselves if we want to have the richest most intentional lives possible to try to create a practice where we're looking for small moments of beauty yeah I think when I think about my own kind of predisposition you know I'm Gen X it was sort of cool to be aloof and be ironic and the older that I get the more I realize that that veneer of cynicism or that kind of default setting is actually pretty lazy you know and it's premised on like oh this is what cool and it's not cool to be Earnest and have a smile on your face and you know Embrace Life as it comes and be optimistic but actually and those things don't come easy to me like I can I can I can experience them but I only experience them in fleeting moments or when I'm really intentional intentional about like trying to cultivate it in my life which is what your work is all about right so again back to me being the the douchebag and all of that no no no um not not a douchebag not you know pull back the Judgment I mean it's it you got an amygdala in your brain man it's to creating fight or flight hormones all day it's looking for problems all the time it's not just you it's all of us we're oriented to looking at things that way I don't know if it's Gen X it's unless it is like when you get a blood test back you're looking for the high cholesterol we all are when you get a Mathis back you're looking for the one you got wrong I mean I read your Memoir and I I know that the sort of studious like ASP you know the academic side of you that was in there it's like there's a biological part of this too we're all oriented towards looking for problems because that's how we've survived so long so get don't don't call yourself a douche yeah fair enough fair enough I mean this goes into the self-love piece which you talk about which is something that I'm working on right now we can maybe get to that um but let's let's sort of begin with where you know where this comes from I know your dad was kind of a a lighthouse as as somebody who introduced you to you know this idea of appreciation yeah he was um my dad was born uh in tarantara in a village in India in 1944 um very poor family mom died when he was three um the family together rang a Singer sewing machine store and he's you know they scrapped they saved and he was able to get a degree in physics from the University of New Delhi um at the time he said I looked for places around the world to to kind of springboard into and he's like the Scandinavian countries like they wouldn't they wouldn't have immigrants at the time so Canada and the U.S I applied to both I got the letter back from Canada first so I just said yes so he came to Canada in 1966 he's 23 years old and he came to the country with an unbridled sense of optimism where he said he thought I'm gonna make I'm gonna make this work he was the very first High School physics teacher in the school board east of Toronto where I grew up he um my mom at the same time that this was happening she was born in 1950 when I was born in 1944 she's born in Nairobi Kenya and she's the youngest of eight kids and yeah and you know three boys they get all the money they get all the resources they get all the education five girls nothing left you know nothing saved for them but my mom wrote and enter wrote an exam that everybody in Kenya wrote when she was 12 and she got the top Mark in the country or one of the top marks in the country so she was whisked off to Kenya High a boarding school with as she calls it with the rulers with like you know the white major the white minority and um when she was a teenager graduating from there her dad passed away Idi Amin was um the dictator in uh nearby Uganda and so the family was trying to like get out of there but the way you get out of there was like typically through like marriage um and her family which was wealthy lost everything in the India Pakistan partition wealth being held in the form of you know jewelry and real estate so they went from very rich to very poor which worked out perfectly for my dad who was poor because then when my mom got out of East Africa went to England my dad went back to England One Summer as a teacher they got the Summers off they were introduced my dad performed the hamburger test which you wouldn't like but he ordered two hamburgers and one to make sure she ate it so that he didn't marry a vegetarian two weeks later they got married because she ate she ate the hamburger Rich so two weeks later their second date their second one to argue with that their second date was their wedding the ultimate litmus test the ultimate marriage material I look at the time it was like you know just like what am I going to be eating for the rest of my life my parents got married uh two weeks later they come back to Canada and they they sort of thump land in Oshawa Ontario a suburb of Toronto where my sister and I are born so that's like the background story of kind of how it came to be and for me uh I had a very comfortable childhood mom's an accountant now working at General Motors dad's that's a teacher teaching math and physics at the local high school and I was a minority that's for sure it was it was all white um I had very little cultural exposure because we didn't grow up in a place where there was Indian restaurants or clothing or or temples or anything like that and um I had a pretty cozy quiet comfortable childhood until I started hitting the Rocks you know in my 20s later on right and what kind of student were you uh I would describe myself as uh studious um you know straight A student uh working really hard all the time especially in the sort of you know the classic Indian subjects of like math science chemistry you know physics it was always a problem if I came home and there was like you know two questions wrong on the math test and we'd sit down at the kitchen table with no pressure there was no there's no there's no violence there was no screaming but it was like let's review those questions until we get them right and so uh I would say that the vast majority of my faculties went towards academics so I was not you know the the extracurriculars were like playing the clarinet and the band and you know drawing cartoons on the side but I had no like and an expectation that you would pursue a certain uh type of career path absolutely be a doctor yeah be a doctor I mean it's it's the most stable highest paying profession that's the you know best marketed to other eligible Indian Bachelor bachelorettes at a later date right you know and and the sort of fallback plan to being a doctor was like you know the Indian like number twos there's like lawyer no offense that you're number two lawyer engineer dentist you know a a practical High salary stable job and that was always the expectation and that's certainly what I saw you know growing up and going to other Indian families houses everybody else was a doctor and I once said to my dad this is interesting probably as a side note I said dad why is every other Indian family's dad a doctor but you're a teacher and he said when I was deciding what to do in India in the 1950s and 60s doctors and teachers got paid the same interesting so it was on parity at that time at the time in the place it was like it was like the value of education and health was was the same he's like I just I guess I just picked the wrong one for this culture although that plays into one of your kind of tenants that you talk about which is everybody is paid by the hour right so when you look at the hours of a lawyer or a doctor or a Management Consultant or an investment banker at least in the you know early years of that career path and balance that out against uh you know a teacher in their 40-hour work week and their unbelievable amount of you know vacation time it all kind of balances out the same economically I have a table in the happiness equation that's got me more hate mail than almost anything else especially from teachers unfortunately um where I show that yeah uh a Harvard MBA making 120 grand out of grad school makes 28 dollars an hour when you factor how much they work and so does a teacher when you take into account the Summers and so on and that gets you a lot of hate mail from teachers Bob sure but it also doesn't take into account the the trajectory of somebody who's on that Management Consultant or Investment Banking path it's like yeah sure your first year salary is this but it quickly escalates after that but the hours probably stay the same yeah I know but you could argue also the other way if I think about my dad specifically is that the amount of time he had before and after school I mean he was the one that was picking us up he was the one that's taking us to extracurriculars my mom would get home at five or six or seven and my dad was like the parent that was present especially in the Summers and so you know what's that worth in the model sure you know it was it was worth it was priceless for us yeah that's a question around values you know what are you prioritizing for what do you what are you aiming to optimize for in your life is it you know Economic Security or wealth or is it you know having a robust you know intense relationship with your children and your family and those two things come into conflict when you know you're contemplating your career trajectory absolutely and it's like it's kind of an eternal question I mean the can you have it all how do you balance it all how do you make it all work how do you measure how do you measure a life and these things fold into what I think about all the you know what I think about all the time right and in working our way like kind of towards up towards like what you do now I learned a couple things about you that I didn't know in in the research one of which was you if this is correct I don't I assume it is you moved to New York City and you were like a comedy writer for a while yeah I didn't know that yeah so basically I I I I graduated from high school in 1998 and I went to Queen's University and I took a bachelor of Commerce degree so Business Degree four-year degree and it pretty quickly I pretty quickly learned and this is you know similar to what we were talking about before a little bit with you it was like I have this artistic impulse that was on the side and Queens University happened to publish the only weekly comedy newspaper in the country called Golden words right and so pretty quickly my 20 hours a week my pretty light load for for business classes was dwarfed by the 40 hours a week I was spending at this weekly comedy newspaper writing articles submitting articles it was at the time I mean newspapers in the late 90s I mean there were 30 40 50 pages out coming out on a weekly basis it was a big production with a lot of people 20 30 person staff and I loved it I got I got I was so fulfilled intrinsically motivated to spend time with funny people trying to craft things that were funny in print right and so that took me up over the four years through a trajectory that was tangential to my Commerce classes where I was you know becoming the business manager of the paper becoming the you know an assistant editor and then in my last year I was a co-editor of the paper there's always two editors every single year they typically didn't want it to be outside of the engineering faculty so I was it was me and an engineer named Mike Jones a good friend of mine and that summer between third and fourth year I sent applications around to any place I thought would want somebody who had a now a little portfolio of funny articles right I like tried to research like where did the Harvard Lampoon people go you know and I I you know I applied like Uncle John's bathroom reader in Ashland Oregon and they're like you could come here as we can pay you ten dollars a day you know and at the time with the.com kind of first Boom coming there was all these startups there was a comedy writing startup in New York City called modern humorous started by some Simpsons and Saturday Night Live guys and ex-lampoon guys and I went down I I rented an apartment in New York City really really crazy story how I found this apartment online I go up to this apartment the first day it's a Brazilian vegan chef and she's leaving for a month so I've subled her apartment for a month and she says to me um hey you might get some weird knocks on the door here you might you might have some people coming by it's because the the person who bombed the World Trade Center in 1996 used to live in this apartment I was like what are you talking about she's like it's a Murphy bed that comes out of the wall you'll be sleeping in this bed isn't that very apartment very apartment the very apartment that I rent and she's like I gotta go I'm off to Brazil like but just so in case you get some weird knocks or some funny mail right you know that's what that's about and and the neighbors then told me I'm 21 I'm in the UCI drops in exactly yeah and this this and by the way this summer I was working in in New York rich in the story it was to Summer of 2001. okay so so I now take the F train every day to go from Lower East Side over to Brooklyn where I'm working for this comedy startup I'm making ten dollars a day that's my stipend stipend however you say it I got ten it's ten dollars a day and I'm writing articles but now I'm writing it for money four deadlines and the extrinsic motivator killed the passion for me it was like oh my gosh I love doing golden work words at Queens it was intrinsically motivated I was running with people I loved about what we wanted to talk about it was so fulfilling for me and students it became right 800 words by 5 PM about getting dumped for cosmopolitan that was like extrinsic guidance and it it really killed my love of it and there's a lot of research on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators yeah we could talk about if you're interested at Brandis now Harvard Business School James gambarino there's great studies that say when you're doing it because you'll want to you're way better at it you do it for longer you can't care aware more so the love of the comedy writing dissipated there okay like I like didn't like being directed and told for the money and the guidance and the it was the antithesis of how I was writing at queens and then when I come home with the end of August yeah 9 11 happened and it just rung home to me I literally left a month before yeah 9 11. yeah well less than two weeks we stayed you would have been living in the apartment from the prior bomber yes I mean you would have definitely gotten a knock on the door yes yes yes yeah it was it was that's crazy yeah and just thinking about how young I was too like I was also just generally overwhelmed with being in New York like I was the buildings was I was so loud it was so busy like I was I was my skin felt like it was sensitive just being outside never mind that's experience on top of it but even with that realization that it wasn't for you in retrospect because you know looking through the rear view is always 20 20. yeah um it it seems to me it strikes me as an experience that was probably very uh you know kind of fundamental to the person you later become like you were in a writing boot camp situation where you had to be churning out a lot of yes written materials sure when you decide you're gonna write a blog post every day for a thousand days and then ultimately go on to become this author and write nine books like that was pretty good practice for just being in the flow of like you know create creating creating creating creating every single day even if it was kind of uh you know denigrated by external factors yeah and I went to denigrated is an interesting word just like dampened your enthusiasm for a damp well what I what I came to realize was the question I there's a question I always ask myself when I'm doing anything which is now would you do this for free would you do this for free when I was running for Golden words we were all getting paid nothing the the sort of real newspaper on campus the journal they paid every the editors got paid everybody got paid there this was like we were the same circulation but we were not paid and so I I've held on to that so so much so that flash forward to my 20s after I go through a divorce after my best friend takes his own life after I decide to try to put my mind in a pause by starting this blog called 1000 awesome things in my late 20s after not reading writing for viewers that's why I decided not to put ads on the site not to monetize the thing I thought let me try as best I can to preserve that original feeling of writing when I want the way I want without having length limits if I miss a day I design it so that it it wasn't like there would was going to be some I wasn't going to get like a problem from an advertising company saying okay you're not posting frequently enough for for you know the beer company or whatever it is and so I've I've held on to that probably to my detriment now talking but to the point where I now don't put ads on all my stuff and it's like now it's a problem the other way but I've just held on to the idea that in order for work to be its purest creative form I like the idea that I need to think of it as something I would do for free I hold on to that question because I mentioned Teresa I'm a bit late earlier just say you did this study at Brandis University asking people to come up with silly collages some people were told they were getting rewards for the collages some people were not when they asked independent judges to evaluate the collages guess which ones were more creative the ones that were not told they were getting a reward they were more creative right James gambrino did the study that has like I think 11 year old girls can you tutor younger girls can you tutor younger girls well there's piano math whatever one group of girls was told they were going to get a movie ticket for doing it spend half an hour you're gonna get a movie ticket the other one was not told that the ones that were not told that they were going to get a reward spent longer took more care and had you know the people that they were they were tutoring did better at the end of it and so I really hang on to this intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation as a bit of a guiding tool for me I'm not saying it's perfect but it has become something that I hold on to because of that original golden words versus modern humorist experience yeah it's uh it's uh it's really important to think about those things and it's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about in the context of like doing this thing that we're doing right now like I started it 10 years ago I Did It For the Love of it I did it for a number of years without not only did I not make any money doing it it didn't occur to me that you could and then it grew to the point where um you know it was it was viable to be monetized in a responsible way and I had to make the decision like if I wanted to do that and I actually needed to because we needed the money um and so it's a balance so it's not a binary thing it's like yes this is a commercially viable entity but I would sit down and talk with you for a couple hours for free so how do you do both right how do you balance both and so when you when you allow the the Commerce aspect of it to kind of come into the equation then it becomes about figuring out how to balance all of that understanding that there are not necessarily concessions but like I have to do meetings and do phone calls and do intake on and make decisions about which sponsors I want to work with and which ones I don't and there's a time consuming aspect of that but at no juncture has there ever been a situation in which a sponsor has compromised the quality or the Integrity of the show like there is a little bit of a church and state with respect to that that we've been able to maintain but you know it is something that I think about so it's not just interest intrinsic versus extrinsic like these two things like never intersect um but it's about like how you kind of um live with both of them at least in the context of this thing yeah and you know I'd be lying if I didn't say like I occasionally look at the rank I want to see like well how's the show doing you know like I can get caught up in all of that right but I know myself well enough and and you know once I start doing that I become less happy yeah and it becomes less about um the reasons why I got into this to begin with which was to have nourishing amazing conversations that I get to share that people out in the world seem to extract value from and that's really what it's about in the minute I lose sight of that and start focusing on those externalities is the moment at which the this thing kind of begins to lose its its soul and its reason for being you are so wise the way you articulate it and the way you embrace the complaint of it and the way you can have a rhythmic uh almost like almost like a surfing of of these two sides right the artistic side and the commercial side how they come together on the show and just in general and I'll add on top of that and I'll ask you this question back it's like from what I see from my perspective is just like a person living in the world it's like the advertise the the capitalism is uh aggressive and it will want the front of your podcast then it will want the middle of your podcast and then then I will want pieces of of and I don't mean your pockets but just yeah you want our minds and so what guiding principles do you use you know from now into the future because you know we've had conversations over the years where like elements that were sacrosanct I think to use your word it's like there's a constant aggressiveness to this late stage capitalism that we're part of and that it's getting more difficult as a consumer and especially I'm assuming as a Creator to try to balance the demands of right those capitalist forces with what you're trying to produce artistically yeah it does it does get tricky you know like at some point like imagine a scenario where you know suddenly you know podcasting is like this medium that everyone's like to and there are these big companies out there you know Spotify and Amazon and Sirius and I heart radio and for a minute they're dangling like big deals out there like hey come with us and you know we'll help you grow your show uh but there are concessions that you have like if you do that then suddenly they're going to be like we need you to do ads for McDonald's or you know like in all the other I heart radio shows so yeah or or start inserting ads that aren't your voice but are for products that you don't necessarily believe in and then you find yourself thinking well at what price would I be able to sleep at night with something like that so that's where it becomes like pernicious and it kind of creeps up on you slowly and then you wake up one day and you realize like wow like this isn't why I got into this or you know the heart and soul the spirit with which you know this thing you know the reason why this thing became uh important to a certain number of people um suddenly is lost in all of that and then you have nothing so what do you hold on to what are the principles or do or do Nots or you know because that must be tempting not just for you but just as a Creator I mean I think people are creating things in general the truth Neil is that like we're doing great like we don't need to do any of those kind of deals and we're in a very privileged situation in which we can pay our bills and I can pay you know everyone that you see here around in this room and works very hard to create something of of of of of high quality um and and the more that I root myself in in the love of it and the reason why I got into it to begin with that Curiosity like how can I grow what is lighting me up who are the people I really want to talk to not because they're big fancy people out in the world and I know if I have them on that I'll get attention or it will grow the audience but truly like when it's coming from the heart that I know I'm on the right path and that's like kind of playing a long game like you're not hacking a system for the purpose of growth and under understanding that growth isn't necessarily the most important metric right the important metric is making sure that you stay in love with this thing because that energy people feel it like they know whether that's true or or kind of um uh artificial I suppose and uh and then and then you know making sure that that uh that what was I gonna say I lost my my train of thought but it had to do with um uh you know following your curiosity right and and oh and it was it's about like making sure that you're that you're nourishing the people who already care about what you're doing and not worrying so much about growth right right right right and that love that you say is not dissimilar to the would I do it would I do this for free question that I try to keep as a steering guide for myself yeah you know if you could keep saying I'll do this I could I would do this for free then that is a nice sign that you're doing it for intrinsic purposes at the end of the day but there is so much intrinsic I'm sorry extrinsic uh impulsing out there right now more than ever you talk about like hey like it used to be you know the New York Times bestseller once a week you could see these lists now Amazon refreshes it constantly you can get caught up in that charts everybody's got you know however many people follow them on all these social media it's like all of that you know is a distraction from the the the the work itself and you know trying to stay connected to the purity of that is something that I feel like you have done in incredible job of um and it's not for lack of of like intention like you've created all of these systems to insulate yourself from all of those impulses that can lead you astray so that you stay rooted in like what's important to you such that the time that you spend really is dedicated to the um it's it's in line with your value set and is dedicated to the things that you know you care about the most absolutely a hundred percent and a lot of the systems are designed because I've fallen off the leg and I don't like the way I feel after I fall off the wagon I mean you start with the morning system that I have for myself this two minute morning idea why do I why every single day when I wake up and I know you do a morning Pages thing yourself but why every single day when I wake up do I not check my phone do I not even I'm staying at a hotel room last night to come here the phone's plugged into the bathroom like I can't even have my phone near me because I'm so addicted to it if I open up my eyes and it's right beside me of course I'm gonna check it there's 12 texts waiting there's 12 of these there's 12 of that so I have to start the day with this two minute morning practice I grab a pen and grab a piece of paper or I use the yellow Journal that you have there but typically it's on a pen and piece of paper I just say I will let go of I am grateful for and I will focus on and those three phrases I'll tell you they wipe a wet Chamois across my mind every single day and I think you got a special moment in the morning when you talk about systems and you wake up it's like you really you when you wake up you haven't been jostled senseless yet by anything that anyone's trying to tell you you got a really small window because as soon as you touch your phone even as soon as you look at a paper as soon as you it's as soon as you turn on the TV it's now it's it's something pushing its information to you but when you're the most you it's like right when you open your eyes and so right when I open my eyes the first thing I do every single day I will let go of the worry I feel about how I'm going to perform on the ritual podcast today like I'm I'm it's a it's a gigantic pockets it's a huge show I will but I'll write I'll I'll write it down right I am grateful for okay and I'll I'll say a bunch of things about my kids or the smell of my wife's neck I wrote today like I write little little bits and pieces The View out of this hotel room what a cool view I can see a Ruddy Duck out my window a Ruddy Duck by the way currently breeding with the Blue Bell it's a pretty special bird rich and I could see well when I woke up this morning it was pretty cool and then I will focus on I will focus on you only got a thousand minutes you're awake a day that's it thousand minutes about 16 and two-thirds hours the average person you gotta have one Focus otherwise again you know the book will power by Roy balmeister and John Tierney it's like you got decision fatigue coming on her ears we got hundreds of decisions to make a day so if we don't write one thing we're gonna focus on we're lost at the end of the day you've got nothing done those three prompts help give me one system they're one system I use of many in order to help give me a fighting chance of winning the morning and then the morning wins the day you know so it's like just trying to get some of these little snowballs rolling so that they end up having disproportionate benefits not unlike the Habit work that's very popular right now we're brought to you today by Roka glasses are not something you normally think about as a piece of performance gear which when you think about it is kind of insane because you can't perform at your best if you can't see well the Geniuses at Roka basically rebuild eyewear from the ground up no matter how active you are or how much you sweat these things never slip or fall off your face they're super durable they look awesome and they've got tons of super classy modern styles to choose from I've been rocking rokas for about four years at this point I love them I'm a big fan of the Hamilton style and gloss black that's this Frame right here as well as clear or I guess they call them vintage on the website and if you want to try them out for yourself you can do that right now and unlock 20 off your order with the code richroll roca.com or you can click the link in the description below okay back to the show Jonathan Fields our our mutual friend uh said said about you that you are the freest and most rule-based person that he knows right and there's something interesting about that dichotomy it's not that different from like Jocko willink who says discipline is freedom like there is freedom once you set up these rules and when I hear you talk about all the systems that you create and all these rules that kind of Drive um how you spend your time and and reduce that decision fatigue I can find myself a little bit overwhelmed like oh my God like you know how do you like his life is so regimented in that regard like it feels somewhat robotic but then I realize like oh I have rules you know like I don't think maybe I don't like think about them or like talk about them in the way that you do but I do have certain Like rules that drive my decisions that make uh that make my day kind of flow in a certain direction generally like like what well like I don't I don't drink alcohol like they're binaries it's like or or uh you know I don't schedule meetings or phone calls before noon that's a great when I break that rule you know life intervenes I don't always but I try to hold that like the rules break you know like they're guys they're gonna protect morning hours things like that you know um you have it sounds like you have rules early hours of the day are for like journaling and writing and meditation and training and things like that so maybe they're a little bit more vague than yours you got rules around your food yeah rules around the food like no animal products like it's just buy like talk about decision fatigue like that kind of makes it easy like okay so I don't have to really think about that like I just don't do that so that removes that aspect of of like where are we gonna eat or what are we going to do or should I do this or should and holding on to these rules I mean I had this I've had the same thing although when I'm traveling I've had the same thing for breakfast for 15 years exact same Shake exact same ingredients I might change the food some people would say like oh you've just been at like to the point of being robotic like doesn't this make you some sort of automaton like this is you're living a spreadsheet life Neil [Laughter] I wrote I wrote the happiness equation in a spreadsheet of course you did yeah but but it is to it is to the so for example though I will say so you know about my family contract right yes you know that lesson I I have I I say to everybody you write a contract with your company they give you a piece of paper it tells you how much money what your job title is who's your boss what your expectations are you sign this piece of paper you go home you got no equivalent like balance creating contract with your home life right that was a a a lesson that somebody told me when I got this big job offer at Walmart at the time was like director of leadership I was going to be the director and the guy's like well are you gonna take it I was like well of course it's a home run it's like there's gonna be more travel it's gonna be more hours like what's What's it gonna be like at home and so I created a family contract we still write and sign it every year we've got four bullet points in it lastly and I so Flash Forward for those that didn't catch that I was divorced like I'm now remarried I'm now remarried and and it's like maximum four nights away per month right minimum four family days per month those are days where it's just Leslie and I our kids nothing else no no extended family no no no no no birthday parties no trips no ideally no screen so family times a minimum of four date nights per month which has become difficult lately but we're working on so prioritizing time just the two of us right and you're looking at me with this funny face no go ahead no I want to hear it all okay okay um so I've got the I've got the knights away I've got so four four maximum four four nights away I've got the four I've got the four family days I've got I've got the four I've got the four date nights and why do I why do I put these structures in place well because then guess what Rich when I get an offer to come fly out and do a podcast or come and do a speech or something it's like a really nice and easy filter to send it right through that system and say well do I have four nights away this month or not yet if I don't well that that's a possible acceptance if I do it's an automatic no and then guess what that enables it enables the other part which is I have four minimum four Untouchable days per month which is one per week and Untouchable day is a day where i'm on unreachable Untouchable by anyone in any way any form which is where the best creative work comes from and so um yeah it's a maximum of this one but it's it's to create you mentioned why is there so because I have the time and space to create them because the rules allow for that freedom right so I agree with Jocko I agree that discipline is freedom I never met the guy but this is sounding good to me and I I do that because it enables the the space that I think we are losing in society today desperately there is a lack of space all over the place mental space physical space mind share it's going down fast and so these rules are their their arms on the gates like they're ways to keep that precious Sacred Space so I was able to go bird watching this morning before coming here walking around the pond behind the nice hotel that you told me to stay in and I loved it because I had created a rule that this day was about this conversation in the morning is empty you know emptiness creates space for the nourishing the nourishment as you call it of a fresh air of of getting out of my species by looking at another animal I've gotten into bird watching as you can tell uh you know of breathing in the phyton size the lower the cortisol and adrenaline so I'm not as nervous and it just is a wonderful way to live so ultimately these are things in service of living a rich intentional life which is what I'm ultimately doing my icky guy is trying to help people live an intentional life trying to help people live happy lives where do I start with me right what helps the rules yeah that's beautiful and the key word being intentionality right I think we all you know have certain intentions um that drive our decision making but by and large we live reactively and I'm speaking for myself I I know we all just bouncing around and and and maybe not as in command of how I allocate our most precious resource which is my time and my attention on a daily basis and those rules really help Drive the decisions to make sure that you're valuing that precious asset and then deploying it as effectively strategically as possible to move your life in the right direction and to honor those things that you are clear that are the things that you care about most right and then I have this other side of my brain where I'm like if I wrote up a contract and said this is what we're going to do and it's going to be like this done I handed it to Julie and I was like sign like let's negotiate this and sign it she'd be like get the [ __ ] out of here like you know like there's also a there's also something to be said for like like you do acknowledge and care about being in in a state of awe and wonder and presence and and an acknowledgment that like being present in that place of receiving uh provides space for you know magic and mystery and the unexpected thing that isn't on the spreadsheet or kind of uh you know lives outside the boundaries of your rubric yeah and if you're too regimented like this is what I'm doing and I'm glad this and I got this and then this hour I do this and this then you're robbing yourself of of your availability for that so is that like how do you like I you know I would imagine that you think about that a little bit like I do it's in that space like you have those days where you're like I'm unavailable like this is where I'm living in my ex my expanded state of receptivity and creative cultivation and soulless and the me like sort of courting The Muse I mean when I was at Walmart I I had a boss Named Dave cheese right he was the CEO of Walmart Canada at the time and people I was mystified about the fact that this guy never answered email he just never answered he's like you sent him an email it was like sending an email to like a black hole wouldn't come back and people were always like you know he can do that because he's the CEO but what they were missing was the fact that no he's he's the CEO because he did that all the way up his career trajectory there is something about figuring out the right way to decide what to do before you have to do it each time for me it comes down to a two by two Matrix that I've designed called the time versus importance Matrix I think every decision that comes to us Rich has takes a certain amount of time and it's of a certain importance if you think about time and importance like let's put time on the y-axis low high that's put importance on the on the x-axis low high anything that takes a low amount of time and is of low importance we should automate we should not think about it's low in time and it's low in importance so I wear the same thing for every single speech that I ever give I don't I don't I wear the same shoes I wear the same jeans I wear the same shirt I have the same I don't think about it it's a it's a it's an automated system same as my breakfast okay a cup of water shake a turmeric shake a cinnamon throw in a couple a frozen banana is this Frozen it's the same thing every single day I automate that now this is the interesting part about this two by two Matrix what do you do about the decision this is the what affects all of us a lot which are uh you know really important really important but they don't take very long saying hi to your team when you walk in here saying goodbye before you leave those ones you effectuate that means just do it get it done pick up your kids from daycare drop them off those are things that are important they don't take very much time what about the third thing this is maybe the most important one things that are um high on time but low on importance high on time low on importance the best example is email takes forever people are doing email all day the average person's getting 147 emails a day it takes so much time you look at people's time charts they're like checking email all day but it's not that important well this this one needs a regulated regulated fenced-in area okay I did this study on email it turns out that the two best hours of a data check email are from 9 to 10 in the morning and from four to five PM why because you create for yourself a six hour email free window in the middle of the day an oasis that's email free but you still have two hours on email which is like good for if you have like a knowledge working type of job right those three things the outsides of the two by two Matrix where you're automating you are effectuating and you are regulating and I'll give you another example regularly and just before I close that off it's like Leslie and I we first when we first bought a house um is an old house things were going wrong all the time what was driving us the most crazy and Baddie Rich was always like oh my gosh there's a wobbly patio stone oh my gosh there's a door that's squeaky oh this light bulb needs to be changed every single day we had something to fix on our house so then I sent her an invite Julie went like this I sent her a recurring invite every it's the first Saturday morning of every month for half a day it's called Old House morning she accepts it it's recurring every month and guess what we made a list on the inside of one of our kitchen cupboards anything that goes wrong in the house we write it on the list now we've regulated fixing all the stuff in our house into one half day per month it makes the other 29 and a half days a month free discipline is freedom it makes the other 29 and a half days a month without the worry of the patio stone and the squeaky door because you regulate it into one specific window now what's the beauty of this model again it's time versus importance every single decision low time and low importance automated right then you got regulated then you got effectuated it creates space to debate the things that really matter it creates space for the high time high importance decisions that none of us have the mental capacity to wrestle with you say all the time conversation matters and you get into these dark beautiful thorny nuanced places in your conversations and this is partly why people like me love this show because you go there but that space that mental space to debate where I want to live who do I want to be with whom I really am what job lights me up we don't give ourselves enough space to do them because we're handling all those low-time loan Force decisions yeah I mean that's a really important point we're constantly distracted and we fill up any opportunity to do that kind of work with additional distractions because we have phones and that can entertain us and when we're standing in line or whatever and so never before in the history of humanity have we had to exert such discipline to craft boundaries to carve out time for that type of work and uh you know if you're not like super intentional and perhaps even goal-oriented like I have this thing I want to achieve whether it's I want to write a book or whatever it's some creative thing you know those goals will drive a recognition of the need for that type of carving out of time but for the you know average person who's working a job and is kind of doing fine or whatever and it's busy and it's like I'm just trying to like do my thing and raise my kids and you know maybe have a little bit of fun on the weekend it's it's harder to say like hey you know like they don't have this situation where they're going to be able to carve out a day you know off their phone where they're going to like walk around Toronto right just think right deep thoughts right you know like you like that's a very you have a life that affords you that because you've made certain choices and you're a writer and this is what you do but how does that impact like the average person like how do they think about how to how to you know craft you know their own version of what you're talking about that is functional in the construct of their their you know current situation absolutely so there's two things there one is I will say I do get up all the time I was like you could do this because you're a writer no and I do argue back yeah I get I am a writer because I make the space having said that I also worked at Walmart for 10 years 10 years a corporate job office job you know I I was working in leadership development tell the story because like like we haven't even gone into that I mean you so we we kind of left off with you you know decamping New York City right before you know 9 11. but the other thing I didn't I didn't know about you Neil is that you went back to Toronto and then you you owned a Quiznos franchise yes this is true this is true right yeah yeah there's a lot there's a lot of missing people for going to Harvard Business School yes that's right yeah we're filling it all into that okay so so um just because I don't want to lose those people that are like wait a minute he didn't answer maybe we don't like maybe we can park that but I want to go I'm happy to go back into that but I'll just say Untouchable lunch that's what I was gonna say at Walmart we all went out for lunch we go to the sushi place everyone takes their phone at the time it was blackberries everyone takes their blackberries we cram to the back of someone's Toyota we all goes for sushi people are checking their phones in the blackberries for work the whole time what's the boss saying is the boss texting me do I need to rush back I got this meeting at one o'clock it's 12 58 we gotta rush back practice an Untouchable lunch practice leaving the phone on your desk and walking out of the building for one hour that's the practice the practice is just can you do without a phone for an hour can you walk in the path down the street from your office just to practice an hour if you can do that then let's see if you can do some tradesies with your boss with your co-workers say I'm going to take one afternoon to be Untouchable on my work at home I might work wherever you don't even know where I'm going to work let's see what happens and if you come back Wednesday morning and you've got some good ideas this is the way to sell it back into your boss he's like hey why don't you take try that too we'll take a half day off a week where we each try to this Untouchable time so I just want to say for those that were kind of latching on to your question here let's just baby steps baby just start small Neil pass reach at age 20 age 23 comes back from comes back from Manhattan finishes finishes his Queen's Commerce degree and my very first job I don't know if you know this was I was doing brand marketing for Covergirl and Max Factor makeup in Toronto I did not know that so I can tell you all about the lengthening volumizing and separating properties of mascara if you're interested I was running 1200 skus for a Covergirl okay I thought it was a PowerPoint job Rich it turned out to be an Excel job it was like crunching data on price changes and it was like not very creative and I I failed at it completely i i i they didn't like me I didn't like them I was put on a pip you know performance Improvement plan within months which is a fancy way of saying we'd like to fire you but we don't have enough of a paper trail let's build one together you know so it was like not going well so now I'm looking for something else to do when this job was not working out well and I bit into a quiznosed sub sandwich one day and I was like this is the most delicious sandwich I have ever eaten I talked to the local franchisee in ashwintero he was telling me his sales per square footage or double that of subways it's a brand that no one's heard of Quiznos it's 2002 and so I teamed up with my dad took a big loan out of the bank and I bought a quiznosub franchise at age 23 and I was the owner operator manager lease signer wow managing hiring a whole team of teenagers to work there and I ran a minute through a minute through the oven for some warm toasty love and Rich that was our slogan we put it on a big sign and we sold mesky chickens and Black Angus steaks and delicious veggie sandwiches with guacamole and I absolutely loved it and it lost a ton of money really so you go so you write your application to Harvard Business School talking about how you lost a bunch of money owning a Quiznos franchise well the cool thing about what you so so you're like okay why'd you go from Quiznos to Harvard how that how that happened well basically a year and a half into running the quiz on subfranchise it was pretty clear that this was just not look I did say I loved it we had no turnover the staff all we had so much fun there it was just a joy being in that restaurant we had it was I learned how to manage a team I learned how to hire when I asked the head office how do you hire people they said hire the prettiest girls the head office told me that over the phone that was their that was their guide this is 20 years ago that was their hired the young pretty girls I was like this isn't gonna this isn't gonna work so I came up with a whole hiring practice where I I asked people one question what's something you're passionate about tell me about it for five minutes if the passion was demonstr like it was like they were excited I was like I could probably get them excited about sandwiches then I took them to another Christmas sub saw how they ordered the menu from the other side how do they interact from a customer service perspective then I gave them I designed a sandwich exam so I had them memorize the recipes for the sandwiches fill out an exam if they got over a certain percentage as a team of people then they their their staff discount kicked in well this hiring practice turned out to be so popular that they implemented it around the chain and there was lots of things like that it was like customer service I called that office like what's the customer service policy they're like I don't know just give them a free sandwich like if somebody complains I was like no we got to come up with a practice we came up with a practice called last listen apologize solve thank we branded on stickers we stuck it on the cash register my very first day that we were open a woman calls me up the very first day and saying my whole family's puking at home right now thanks to four expired chunk filled chocolate milks we just bought from your store I was like listen I'm so sorry I apologize that's the second part solve what's your address I deliver a six foot sub to her that afternoon on a big wooden plank to try to make it up to her and then we add thank thank you because of you we've now added check the expiry dates of the chocolate milk to our morning checklist so that last process also got implemented around the chain so it was a failure financially but it was a real growth from a leadership perspective and I got to develop some instincts and some ideas for how you form and shape these things inside organizations so after I sold the criminal sub franchise and was deciding what to do next Quiznos called me up and said why don't you be our director of operations so then become the director of operations for Quiznos head office oh wow that's interesting so you're this lowly franchisee but you're actually like drafting policy that's getting implemented across this gigantic Corporation I made a big uh poster called the life cycle of a j cloth because people were just using them and throwing them I was like no no no no it goes from the tables to the back bins to the bleach buckets like we have to make them last four days we can 4X our usage on on J claw so yeah I was doing stuff like that then I worked for direct a Christmas Canada as director of operations and then you know grad school often rich is like you don't know what you're gonna you know you don't know what you want to do so you may as well delay the decision by going to school and because I had specialized early and I don't I wouldn't do that again now like specializing in a discipline like business from when I was 18 years old you know you have you know I I envy the people that have had like you a wider breadth of of learning at that age but I specialize early so in my mind I was like well if I'm going to do a master's I guess it's got to be business I can't quite go into astronomy or or Philosophy from here and so I uh you know stirred up all those wacky experiences I had the comedy writing down in New York City the brand marketing and recover girl and Max Factor the running of a quiz and it turns out that a lot of Business Schools base their application base their admissions although it's a black box they based on you know there there are spaces uh available for like the weird applicant because everyone else is coming from consulting or banking yeah and so if you have just like this Molly Crew type resume you do stand out and so if you can combine that with at the time for me it was like you know do a good job on the GMAT at the time it was like a you know aptitude test like the LSAT or whatever and get some nice references you're in and so I was very shocked and surprised when I got a letter saying you're in and I was delighted when the letter then said hey how much money did you make the last three years and I was like none because I had this bankrupt company and I was in school and stuff like that and I had this job that I quit really soon and they're like congratulations we have an 18 billion dollar endowment you're so poor that we're gonna pay for you so I got I also got and I wasn't it wasn't expecting that so then so then I also got to go there and they covered it because when you go to undergrad they ask for your parents tax returns when you go to grad school they ask for your tax returns because now you're right now you're an adult so you got your Harvard graduate school education subsidized scholarship massive amounts of Lucky breaks all stirred in there yeah yeah and then you you go you have that experience and you uh end up not going to Wall Street or the management consulting route because you went up at Walmart not in the front of the store greeting people but in the back office well because the the fellowship I got at Arbor was called the John McArthur Fellowship which was the the dean of HBS of Harvard Business School from 1989 to 95 was a Canadian guy who set up the scholarship for all Canadians who made less than a certain amount of money to get a free ride I write a five-page thank you letter this guy telling him like thank you so much for paying for me to come here he invites me to lunch and he's like how's it going on campus and to your point about the Wall Street jobs the iBanking jobs I said it is stressful here I am in my third week of a two-year program and already every single night is like whining and dining with McKinsey you know like we're hanging out with millionaire bankers and Consultants with black bags under their eyes hoping that we can become one of them too I'll never forget going out for dinner with McKenzie until two in the morning sparking conversation smart people having great conversations but when the thing ended at 2 am they were all going back to work and that's what stuck and lodged in my head the most like at 2AM they're all like jumping on conference calls with Shanghai and like I was like oh my gosh I cannot do this and he said to me Neil you are like he said you were like a horny guy outside a beach and you see those Bathing Beauties in there and you're at a fence and there's a thousand people the class of Harvard Business School you don't feel special when you get there there's 900 people there's 900 people that get in you're with 900 to a thousand people all trying to get one of those bathing beauties the bathing beauties were the metaphor for those jobs those million dollar kind of Wall Street jobs he's like but when they open the fence everybody's gonna run in chasing those same 10 jobs teaching the same 10 Beauties and you know what even if you land one of them which you probably won't you're going to be looking over your shoulder the whole time so I was like what are you trying to tell me this is the former dean of the place there's a whole career services department full of dozens of people all orchestrated towards like this whole rhythm of like career visioning and networking nights all the stuff and he's like tell me to light a match to it all he's like get off the beach I was like what do you mean he said go to the library call up the companies that are broken have PR problems that are bankrupt that aren't flying in Jets to Harvard Business School because they don't have the time or money or ability to come here and you call them up and then if you get into one of those companies they give you a job where you have meaningful work they listen to you they take your ideas and you know what you become a big fish in a small pond it increases your academic self-concept and you can ride that for years while learning the most so I never applied to another job from Harvard Business School ever again instead I came up with a spreadsheet of companies that I thought were going through difficult times at the time Walmart had a pretty rough reputation and was a sizable enough size to Warrant somebody potentially working in there in leadership development which is the field I was interested in right so you go there and this idea of being a big fish in a small pond becomes another one of your kind of core tenants that that you speak about and and kind of advocate um and it's interesting because like I've I've had decisions in my life where I had to decide whether I wanted to explore being a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond and I've I've made the latter you know on occasion I've had occasion to make different decisions but you know my thinking at the time was you'll never know unless you put yourself in that position like you go and be a small fish in a big pond and you will quickly get feedback as to whether you know you'll be able to compete at that level or not but if you don't and you go be a big fish in a small pond you're robbing yourself of that opportunity to really explore the fullest capacity of your potential absolutely and it's different times in different places and different people I'll tell you for me as a cracked up like low self-confidence 25 year old at Harvard Business campus that advice was like a bomb on an itch on my chest because I felt so dumb at all these I I felt so I'm coming here from a sandwich restaurant that didn't work out very well teaching people how to use J cloths better yeah but you were probably studying business earlier than a lot of these guys too you're selling yourself short well either whether I was selling myself store or not I'll tell you my confidence was extremely low it was extremely low and the proof of this 1984 paper on is it better to be a big fish sell small yeah shows that our academic self-confidence can increase for up to 10 years after we're out of the pond so for me it's like I use this instructional tool of finding small ponds in my life when I find that my it's my confidence and my work that I want to start flash forward to when I was becoming you know when the book of awesome came out in 2010 I know we're jumping here but now I'm in my late 20s uh I'm I'm at Walmart um I get married um we buy a house um we're talking about having kids and it it doesn't work it doesn't work out you know my wife tells me after two years like I don't love you anymore I don't want to be I don't want to be in a relationship with you and as that's happening and that marriage is crumbling I'm having to sell my house my best friend Chris Kim you know at the time he's going through severe severe depression and takes his own life that's where from those Embers I start up this tiny blog called 1 000awesomethings.com as a way to try to Prime my brain for positivity okay but I was telling the fine small pond story when that turned into this book called The Book of awesome which came out in 2010 I was encouraged to start going on speaking tours to talk about positivity around the world and they want to throw me into a paid speaking category with the the amount I was going to get paid for speech was like I was like this I feel very uncomfortable this is way too much who else is speaking in this category and they're like this best-selling author this Olympian this and I was like whoa whoa whoa whoa like what's the smallest lowest speaking range you have and they're like well this is the you know this is the smallest it's like five five thousand dollars I think at the time they're like it doesn't make sense for us working on commissions to like do all this work for less than that it's like put me there so I was speaking in boardrooms for 50 people working out my ACT my like confidence in though that's what I'm saying a low pressure situation that's exactly what I'm saying so I'm saying this fine Small Ponds adage is helpful when you think you might need it and so maybe for ritual the the great you know Stanford you might not have and like look you know yeah so I was like oh I can go oh should I go to Stanford and be like the tiniest fish in this massive pond at the time I was like well I'll never know if I don't and I went and you know I don't know that it worked out perfectly you know like maybe it would have been much better had I you know gone in a different direction I don't know um but I would say to your point like that's not dissimilar from when I started this podcast 10 years ago and I was listening to podcasts and I could put up episodes and there was like very little risk like it wasn't it was like not really anyone was listening and I was able to like do it for the love uh you know be be uh I don't know was podcasting like a a small pot I guess it was at the time at the time I could be uh not even a big fish like a small like a small fish in a small pond and you know work it out and figure out you know what my thing was um and and then it kind of grew around me organically but I do feel I do see the value in of course like you know putting yourself in a situation to succeed especially if you feel vulnerable or whatever to boost your confidence in in a real way not in a in an artificial or manufactured way yeah yeah and once again you've added the layers of complexity and Nuance that are really good below my little try kind of your zingers my zingers you got a lot of zingers but where were we before that I don't even know but we were talking about um uh oh you going to Walmart being at Harvard Business School um starting the blog you know doing it out of like when I when I think about that story of you going through the divorce and suffering you know the loss of your friend and and being in this kind of dark place having this job and and you know having your kind of needs being met but but having this desire to um you know process these challenging challenging emotions try to find a way to grasp onto something that had light attached to it um you know starting a blog and committing to like I'm going to put up a blog post every day about one awesome thing seems like it's a you know it's like a practice it's like I'm going to meditate every day or I'm going to do this one thing that I have control over I don't have control over how many people are going to read this thing but I can control doing this one thing um that that actually you know perhaps could lead me to processing all of this and and helping me to feel better yeah yeah and at the time you know you think about as 2008 here blogs were uh you know that was the blog it was the blog era but I did a couple things in the design of that website that maybe are hard to see from now at the time they were unique one was I did it as a countdown not as a count up so it was called 1 000 things but my first post which was number one thousand broccoli flower the strange mutant hybrid child of Nature's ugliest vegetables then number 999 so I always had this like finite slow building pressure towards an actual end date so I had the end date when I started like so I started it June 20th 2008 I knew the thing was going to end May 15 2012. I had that mathematically worked out because it added to me a little bit of forced positive pressure and and the WordPress blogs at the time you could and I typed in how to start a blog into Google I pressed I'm feeling lucky WordPress was number one so it was I didn't know how to do it it was just like okay I'll start that way and um you know WordPress I think you can set a timer so I set the timer for 1201 am every single day so it was a forced little pressure cooker to be like okay one pose it could be a one-liner or it could be you know a thousand word essay about the joys of old dangerous playground equipment burning your legs in hot slides falling into cigarette butts and milk thistles like kids with cats and I was like you know I could go on a big long rant or I could give myself an excuse and just say hey a post could just be one line and so yeah starting that thing out it was nobody was nobody was reading it I always joked that my mom sent it to my dad and the traffic doubled overnight and eventually you know you know this feeling um the ver the moment of truth is when you get a comment from a stranger you know the moment it's like you find out that like someone you don't know is is reading this thing and then it just got you know bigger and bigger I was getting five thousand hits a day and then 10 000 hits a day then Twenty Thousand Seven fifty thousand then I got the uh at the time a big deal the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences had these awards at the time that were quite prominent called the Webby Awards now they're not I don't know if they're really a thing anymore but at the time I got the award for best blog I fly down to New York City I'm walking a red carpet with like there's selfies of me there with like Sarah Silverman Martha Stewart Jimmy Fallon Seth Meyers I go on stage they have a five word maximum for speeches the all speeches have to be five words long so when Stephen Colbert goes up for his his web he's like me me me me me me and you know he walks off it's like a five-word speech limit so I was like sure acceptance speeches are awesome and I walk off if I get this big trophy I come back 10 literary agents are waiting to turn my website into a book okay and so then um I signed on with one of these literary agents Aaron Malone WME she did stuff like people like which at the time was the biggest like blog to book out there and um she took it to Publishers and she conducted like at the time like a bidding war if you could believe it for this guy's blog to turn into a book and that turned into the book of awesome which came out in 2010 and and they printed 6 000 copies of it no one was expecting it's just the blog stapled together into a book it's literally just the blog in the book you could read the whole thing for free on the internet they printed six thousand copies but there were a number of fortuitous once again looking backwards things that fell into place like Heather reason the CEO and founder of Indigo books which at the time had like 70 market share books again made it a Heather's pick and she typically picked like literary fiction so it was very unusual so now the book's at the front of all the tables then it tips into like the big media and then I get invited to do a TED talk and then I'm invited on The Today Show and on the early show and all these well they just create their own spiral yeah the energy just escalates it's the snowball rolling downhill exactly at that point it's like you know everybody want wanted to feature a book that was about Simple Pleasures and when you open the book and you cracked it open the very first century was flipping to the cold side of the pillow in the middle of the night and I just wrote an essay about that that's it that's the whole thing I know but it's kind of amazing right and like how many how long was this thing on the on these bestseller lists like forever yeah it was like it was years it was yeah hundreds of weeks and and you do this Ted Talk that goes on to be like in the top 10 of all time of tedx is like I don't know five and a half million views yeah like yeah they had they had this thing on on their the 10 most inspiring TED talks and it was I was like number nine or something like that on that list but when I think about this uh what what is most meaningful to me is that when you started you mentioned like you started in reverse order so the when you started the blog the first entry was number one thousand yeah it wasn't like number one right so what I infer from that is you just lower the stakes of the whole thing there's no pressure it's all I have to do is come up with a thousandth kind of awesome thing like so it doesn't even have to be that awesome just has to be kind of awesome right and when you when you lower the pressure lower the stakes deflate like all of that like you know pressure that one can put on themselves when they're trying to create something it gives you space and permission to just be free right back to like Freedom a lot of your rules are about like how do you create that place where you feel safe and free right um and I know that in my own work like I have to do that I have to find ways of doing that for myself because I'll put oh it has to be perfect has to be like this I suck I'm terrible the only way I can kind of do anything is when I find a way to let go of all of that and like be like it's okay like this is your time to suck you'll edit this a million times before it goes out like just just be sucky right now it's cool because everything I've been able to create has started out as something terrible and you know communicating which is what you do uh you know communicating to people in a way that that allows them to feel empowered that allows them to feel like they too you know can have the capacity to to express themselves you know in their own version of of your journey I think is like a really beautiful thing thanks yeah yeah it's been it's been a very it's been a it's been a it's been a lucky and wild right and beyond anything that that your rules and your spreadsheets could predict right this goes back to like the mystery and the magic of all of it it's like all I did was like yeah you know start this blog and not for nothing and you didn't quit your job like you were doing this while you were working like you didn't quit your job until like way later years later the whole thing right as you're having this experience of becoming more and more uh you know well known for the creative things that you were sharing with the world while having this job at Walmart the whole time I know and it was really hard to let go of that job because as we mentioned like a long time ago it was like the goal was to be a doctor and if it wasn't going to be a doctor as an engineer it was a lawyer if it wasn't going to be engineer it was at least going to be like an income it was a salary it was like benefits you know there's that Naseem Talib quote that the three most addictive things in life are sugar heroin and a monthly salary you know I was like I I was like not gonna leave that for this what was this like a book on a bestseller list that like yeah sure it pays some royalties today but like that's a 15 minutes of fame thing that's not gonna last I can't be a viable career and so for eight years five books 200 speeches I was at Walmart the whole time and big Kudos five books before you left Walmart yeah I didn't know it was that many yeah yeah well this is because that's kind of insane well it's big kudos to the organization because um you know uh I went and spoke to um you know the head of legal because I was like I I think I'm like am I breaking the rules here like I got this thing on the side I got this blog and this book and they're they're like well um what's it about and I was like uh well it's about like small Pleasures like flipping people no well because at some point like you're on the Today Show like they're like they know what's going on yeah yeah they know what's going on at the same time it was like it I had to if anything rich I had to like make sure that I doubled down on on on how I showed up at work because it would be too easy for the person that's just not there on Fridays to be like off on the TV show so I had to like double down to work and by the way for four of those five years I was the project manager the CEO so for four of those five years I got a development rotation where I was working for the CEO and I was two different CEOs in that role where I'm like writing CEO speeches I'm like working on strategy presentations for the CEO so I like also don't want this is also a hugely formative development role for me inside the organization to see how the leader of the world's largest company like Works how this how this office works I'm doing that it's all also based on communication and and you know meeting design and doing all that so I don't also want to let go of this career you know I really liked it there and they were really good to me and I really enjoyed the company and the culture I have only positive things to say but it got to the point where I ha when after I crash landed downtown I'm Stark single like I'm like I'm basically like I'm basically like coming home from work getting takeout from the the vegetarian restaurant that's underneath my downtown Toronto like um you know bachelor apartment and I'm sitting at my computer in front of a glowing screen from 5 P.M to 2 A.M every single night doing that second entire job which is right in this blog writing the books answering media inquiries and all that stuff so when I show up to the dating world it's not a pretty scene like I am showing up to like online dating sites now like a year into this after the divorce and I'm like there's this guy in front of you imagine he's lost 40 pounds he's real thin he doesn't know how to talk like I'm like doing all this stuff online I'm basically like a a like an internet hermit you know comment on my shell so the dates the dating scene for that first year were just like bad like I didn't I didn't go on a second date for over a year and I had a lot of first dates and I liked a lot of those people but none of them manifest into anyone ever giving me the three dots back when I texted them after the after the after the day it was like I was ghosted weekly like I was it just never worked out and then finally two years after my divorce I go on a date with a woman named Leslie she's a teacher at a Toronto at the Toronto District School Board and she's a kindergarten teacher so I'm like trying to make plans like late at night she's like I go to bed at eight like we're gonna have to have like something early so um there's a there's a woman on on the floor that I lived in this bachelor apartment it was her friend and so we go we hit it off there is chemistry and I completely scared I've never told the story before I completely scare her off because I flew the next day to go to the Olympics with the CEO of Walmart's like cover do some stuff we were doing at the Olympics and I sent her a text message that was like I really like you I really think this could be a meaningful long-term relationship I I would like to date you as soon as I get back in a week and she's like I am I am not up for this guy's energy at all yeah that has nothing to do with like you know you being a Hermit and writing on the internet and being too busy that's just like poor social skills dude thank you yeah well well it takes six months but he's such a good talker and you're so engaging and like charming and and uh charismatic it's hard for me to imagine such a such a like a horrific gaff so we finally get to the second day and then that we're still on that we're still on that second date now and now we've been together are you talking into a second date after after that text uh like like bi-weekly text messages for six months like like is really chasing chasing right well that's gets into a whole other tenet that is a big thing with you which is like basically like swings at bat or like you know our relationship to failure we'll park that for now though continue yeah yeah well hey the the pitcher with the most wins Cy Young has the most losses cyan this pitcher with the most strike as Nolan Ryan has the most walks Nolan Ryan so there is something to just the number of times you can take a swing so Leslie and I we hit it off um on the second day and our hearts connected you'll be happy to hear and like I said it feels it feels like that second date is still is still going now I'm very very very lucky to be married to an incredible woman now the thing about the wedding I don't know if you knew this um she uh uh she basically planned the whole wedding and so I said I gotta I want to plan the whole honeymoon like it was going to be like a surprise honeymoon and she's like I don't know if I trust you to plan on the entire honeymoon but I she did so I the imagine you're getting married and you don't know where you're going how long you're going for nothing it's like this is going to be the surprise the next day but I wanted to really plan this honeymoon because she's basically playing the wedding so we go to Southeast Asia neither of us have ever been before neither of us have been since but it was like a real a dream destination and and we go go through southeast Asia um on the flight home she's not feeling well and we have a six hour layover in Kuala Lumpur and in that airport which is like lots of steamy noodles for sale lots of flashing lights she's very seen feeling very sick she's looking for a pharmacy she's looking for a place to lie down we find her a pharmacy we find a place to lie down we get on a 13-hour flight home to Toronto on that airplane she goes up goes to the bathroom comes back to our seats like 30 000 feet above sea level and she looks at me and she's like I'm pregnant she bought the pregnancy test from the pharmacy in the Kuala Lumpur Airport Pharmacy she did the princess in the airplane bathroom at the front of the airplane above the clouds and she tells me on the flight that she's pregnant so we land home in Toronto and it's like our first child was born nine months to the day after a wedding night wow Mary July 12th he's born April 12th I spent that those nine months writing my fifth and final book while working at Walmart which was the happiest equation which I wrote as a 300 Page Letter To My Unborn Child on how to live a happy life so that is where that book came from and it was the one that tipped me over into eventually trying to figure out do I want to stay at Walmart or do I wanna try this writing thing kind of full time and that question I've been asked many times how do you make it you're a systems guy how do you decide whether to make the leap between organizations I called the CEO that I was working for who is a mentor to me Dave cheese Wright and I said how do I make this decision he said you only got to ask yourself two questions and I hold on to these two questions which whenever I'm trying to make a major crew decision and I recommend them for anyone who is listening to this who's trying to make a major career decision now the two questions are number one you got to do the death bed test and number two you got to do the plan B test the death bed test is the simple question you got to ask yourself which is which of these choices would I regret not doing more from the vantage point of my deathbed okay it sounds simple but when you really try to internalize and metabolize it it it it from the heart becomes clearer which one you naturally would prefer not to miss out on right and for me that was like becoming an executive inside Walmart or trying to get this writing thing going right the second thing is the plan B test which is simply the question is what are you going to do if this doesn't work out what's your plan B and when he asked me that I was like well I guess I'll have to shine up the Old Linkedin profile and go knocking back on the door again and and sort of uh get back into the corporate world he's like well do you think you could do that I was like well now I've been working here for quite a long time I probably have a decent chance of getting some job it's like okay so you've wrestled with and navigated and and most importantly visualize what the plan B looks like for you everyone's degree of risk is different everyone will have different levels of comfort with like how much you're burning the boats and how much you have something to fall back on but those two tests the deathbed test and the plan B test I still use to illuminate big career decisions yeah that's that's super interesting and and helpful to hear and makes a lot of sense uh on the on the plan B thing when you were telling that story I'm thinking about the people uh you know particularly artists who who uh who will tell you like there is no plan B like there's just this is what I'm doing if I have a plan B that gives me a backdoor exit out of this thing but I am committed to making this work I'm in for the whole shebang and uh you know when it gets uncomfortable I don't want to be able to be able to easily bail like do you like how to burn the boats yeah yeah and uh the the thing I would say is that we have a Survivor bias on those stories where when you typically hear them from the people that are successful exactly exactly there's a lot of and what about the yeah like we live in Los Angeles every day thousands of people arrive here pursuing a dream very few of them actually achieve that dream and we hear about those amazing Stories and we don't hear about the people who end up getting on the bus and going home that's what I'm saying and so it's just again everyone's got a different level of risk if you have there's a lot to be said like you know you watch that um Serena and Venus Williams movie it has the same kind of vibe of like you know this was the you know remember the press conference when she's like 13 years old and she's like I know I'm gonna I know I'm gonna do this like there's an undertone of like it's this is success or bust and I don't personally subscribe to that as much perhaps because of my East Indian upbringing and the idea of having like insurances in place and like how you're gonna like structure your life and like so for me thinking about Plan B and making that at least palatable if that's how you say the word enough so that you know if it fails you have something to come back on is a little bit more my brain yeah sure lower risk again it's all about like what is your like getting really connected to what your risk tolerance is exactly exactly um I want to shift gears a little bit and pivot more into this whole world of Happiness a lot of conversation around happiness how do we get it how do we cultivate it where are we thinking about this correctly incorrectly um pursuing the Art and Science Of Happiness now has become like a career path for many people yeah many interesting thought leaders I'm thinking of Arthur Brooks and many others you're certainly one of those people you wrote this amazing book the happiness equation and you have some interesting thoughts around uh how we think about practice and try to cultivate happiness into our lives you're here in part in Los Angeles because you're going to go give a keynote at Expo West and I think that the nature of that keynote is around happiness right and yeah how we're thinking around about it incorrectly so I don't know State your thesis around that this like where are we going wrong with with uh you know our Pursuit of Happiness sure so just zooming out like a huge level before we get into like my My Views let's just remember that 2400 years ago in ancient Athens Aristotle at the world's first University Plato's Republic had a very famous quote happiness is the meaning and purpose of life the whole aim and end of human existence that if you want to talk about people that have made a career out of happiness or you know that there's the OG guys the original happiness influencer well before that it was like survival like we got it we just gotta make it through this thing you know like we he's like no no no no no no no the whole purpose is also we got to enjoy it too 2400 years ago oh he they put that down right then Flash Forward 2000 years they write the Declaration of Independence you know the famous phrase they put in there everybody gets life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but you're a lawyer Rich you know it's the legalese in there you don't get happiness you get to pursue it you get to pursue it you get the pursuit of it life liberty you get those for sure about happiness you just get to chase it right so now we Flash Forward all the way up to 1998 let's say Martin Seligman and mihal chicken are co-founders of a new a new field that they they invent called positive psychology right and for a lot of your listeners who have heard that phrase before pause this psychology it's we should remember it that phrase didn't exist in our culture before 25 years ago so that's still a relatively new phrase so from 1998 to today hundreds and hundreds of Studies have been done applying the scientific model to the study of Happiness right Carol dweck on growth mindset slasher and Panabaker on on journaling Evans and McCullough on gratitude at University of California there's these there's these there's this massive huge emerging body of work and literature so I just use those three points to just say like just just look what's happened here like 2000 we say this is important then we write it into the the Declaration we got to chase it and now we're like starting to actually study it only really 25 years ago now I think that the underpinning of how we think about happiness in our society is totally backwards okay we when I was a kid what my parents said to me was we've already talked about this a few times but it's like come on you know study hard you know get get straight A's and you go be a doctor the model therefore is great work leads to big success leads to be happy right and that model is also if you're listening to this and you're a parent it's like don't you say to your own come on we want you to get into a good school come on we want you to get a good job come on we just want you to be that's common parental wisdom and it's totally false so after combing through all these studies there's a really formative study done by sayula bemirski with Ed Diener and King Jin King and they show that actually that model is totally backwards it's not great work big success be happy it's the opposite it's you got to train your brain to be happy first then if you can do that if you can think of Happiness like a practice like a habit like something you can invest in you invest in your physical health so beautifully we see that we aspire to it we see that you're a model but how many people do you look around and you see them investing in their happiness the same way we don't we aren't as a culture doing this yet then the great work follows happy people are 31 more productive they have 37 higher sales they're 300 more crave you can go down the Litany of all kinds of things that happy people show up better they're more connected and then the big success comes at the end what kind of success two kinds if you want to go on the career point which I was on for a second there happy people are 40 more likely to get a promotion in the next 12 months but just zooming up a level there's this really famous study called the nun study that shows you know what happy people also also live live longer and if going back to our earlier conversation you only got 30 000 days here well if I told you if you you could get 3 000 more bowls of ice cream kissing your kids good night watching the sunset running on the trails behind this place once you do it so again it's not great work big success be happy it's the reverse you've got to train and prime your brain to think of Happiness like a practice like a habit like something you invest in then being happy leads to doing great work and the great work leads to having big success I'm with you man I mean that notion that false notion is so deeply embedded into my DNA and the only way that I got to a place of of deconstructing it and trying to rewire that was through like personal crisis right it's like I chased that exactly like you yeah um well-intentioned parents who were like we just want you to be we want you to be happy like we want you to be like we just want you to be happy but implicit in that is like yeah but happiness is a product of like you do all these things and you go you you have this career and you do all this and and the result the implied result of all of this effort all of this endeavor is the happiness and it is backwards right like it is a choice happiness is a verb it's a practice like gratitude like presence like mindfulness um and yet you are so correct like there is no priority around this notion let alone some shared idea of what those practices are to cultivate it right well and and and and on top of all that a lot of the practice that turns out that do help you cultivate happiness have got real bad ad campaigns they don't have uh the benefit of anyone advertising trees no one's advertising trees right now well because you can't profit from it that's exactly what I'm saying yeah that's exactly what I'm saying the vast majority of things that I'm about to tell you about that can actually imbue Our Lives is a bit more happiness they don't have great Giant ad campaigns and we aren't talking about them in a in the the what our culture is trying to teach us is that you gotta buy more stuff you got to click more links you got to buy more things and that path to happiness is you know whatever is on a billboard that looks that looks pretty that you know someone smiling the implicit thing is that that's going to lead to happiness it's not well and it's so powerful such that somebody could listen to you and say Neil is spot on I totally get that he's he's 100 right money doesn't buy happiness but then in the back of your mind you're like yeah but you know just if I could I'm going to get that job yeah and then I'm going to get that other that new condo yeah I can like upgrade my Carly sure then everything's gonna be good like I somehow we still think that that we are exceptions to that well that notion and I say about money in particular because people do ask me all the time does money buy happies and I do say yes and here's what I say about it there's a really famous study done by Daniel Kahneman at the Woodruff School in Princeton that shows that above a certain level of Baseline income at the time of the study it was done it was like 75 000 which was by the way is way above you know average household income so it's pretty high amount then your happiness diminishes after that if you put it into today's money it might be ninety thousand or a hundred thousand or something like that meeting your needs and having some uh percentage of disposable income to pursue the things that make you happy exactly now using the research that is many research studies have been done since I say money does buy happies if you buy the three s's okay the three S's are sweat skill and social okay if you use your money to buy those three things and actually buy it actually buys happiness so let me take you through each one sweat I suck at baseball I'm on a softball team I'm honest I'm honestly I'm running around I'm not the kind of I can't run like you rich I'm not a runner I'm not a do an exercise that doesn't go I can play sports so buying this 200 ticket every summer to join the softball team is like a guaranteed Sunday night sweat that is really good for my happiness levels absolutely I almost feel great at the end of it and there's a lot of research to support this then skill we are learning animals where's this podcast classified is it education self-help well all the categories on Apple or whatever they're all about self-help we are we are learning animals We crave learning we want to learn so if you can invest in a skill okay I think this is behind the whole like Master Class phenomenon if you can invest in taking something you've never taken before you can take a painting class if you you could take a language course if you could you know if you could buy the experience of learning something new that's also going to pay off in your happiness levels and the third and final one is probably the biggest which is social so the 1938 however adult development study longest running study on happiness over time shows that community and connection is one of the biggest drivers ever happiness if you take the form of 2006 book stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert at Harvard he has a phrase in there that says if I can know everything there was to know about you your health your gender your income your nationality all of it would fall away in favor of the strength of your relationships with your friends and family so what does spending money on social actually turn out to be well it's like going up it's going out for dinner it's going out for dinner it's it's it's it's leaning into saying yes when the social opportunities that cost money are you know encountered by you and that adage I know I know it's simple I know it's a Zinger but but but it adds up to a little model that I use when it comes to that specific kind of sub question we were just starting to explore on does money buy happiness I think it does if you buy sweat skill or social experiences but those three s's don't necessarily have to be bought they can be cultivated they're not necessarily absolutely financially you know like things that cost money like you can cultivate community and friendships you know outside of that on on some level and you can sweat without having to you know pay a bunch of money all of those things are available the that vast majority of things that lead to our happiness are are afraid to your point I was just you know just going down that path of money specifically but like zooming up a level look ah you're a paragon of this rich but like like just getting outside and being in nature and by the way I'll just preface this point uh by saying we we have the lowest ever levels of nature exposure in our children in history according to the American time you study seven percent of a kid's day right now is spent outside seven percent we'll do the math multiply seven percent by seven days in a week that's 49 it takes a kid a whole week to get half a day outside now right so what's the solution Michael babick and a team of researchers have shown that even three 30-minute exercise or outdoor Windows a week ultimately results in higher happiness levels than people taking antidepressants or people doing both they compared it to a subgroup doing both the walking and taking the antidepressants so this this I said trees have a bad ad campaign it's like we're missing the amount that we really need to be outside and one of the biggest ways I tell people to do this is if you have a meeting on your calendar with someone you know that you like already that you trust already whether it's your boss whether it's your direct report whether it's a weekly meeting that you always have just say to the person let's both do it outside let's just both do it outside the average person walks this kilometers an hour you move one hour meeting a week outside you get 6K of walking move two you got 12. move three you got 18. it's a simple way to just introduce a little bit more outdoor activity in your life it doesn't cost anything and it has a huge positive disproportionate effect on your happiness it's hard not to see the the kind of tragic aspect of this because on some level we're all victims of modern progress and technological Evolution because it wasn't that many decades ago that Society was constructed in such a way where it was conducive to these three s's just by living your life you would be you know kind of engaged with those in a very fundamental way without even trying and now we have to you know erect all of these systems and create boundaries and you know and set intentions just to do things that were kind of naturally wired to do I know uh and and short of the way that we've decided to live our lives we would ordinarily but you know as a result of of you know kind of urbanization Etc which has been exacerbated by covet and all of that were really separated from Community we're disconnected we're living Our Lives more and more digitally we're not going Outdoors uh you know the skills that we're developing are all digital skills they're not they're not like tactile skills in in the way that we've traditionally thought about them and these are distancing ourselves from our ability to connect with happiness and then of course there's the conversation around the relationship between happiness and and Longevity it's like if you're you know if you're not sweating and you're not learning new skills and kind of like actively engaging your mind and you're not connected to your community you ain't gonna live that long right right so you're going to be unhappy and die early yeah and it's true we have so much of what is designed in the world today is like the default settings do not naturally allow for us to succeed on our happiness level I mean when I got the new iPhone and the first thing I saw when I opened the screen is like it just bombards you with the news I was like oh my gosh they set this thing up so that you now have to like figure out how to like edit the widget delete them all I have to clean up my dock otherwise it's full of all these notifications I have to delete all social it's like you gotta work really hard to create a space where it allows happiness to kind of come into the picture and that's just on one thing that we're talking about on exercise here's another one that I I just want to give a little quick rant on here it's reading fiction from a real book we are losing and I know you've had a great interview with Johann Hari on on the show guys have you just had him on I did just he just went up like this week on your show right I just did yeah he's uh he's he's uh I got into chasing the scream and it was it was it was really wonderful and um you know uh we're losing our capacity to read and it's oh it's horrifying what's happening so 57 of Americans read zero books last year zero not one that's the first time it's been in the majority okay and why is this an issue well according to the 2011 annual review of psychology only reading fiction opens up the mirror neurons in our brain responsible for empathy compassion and understanding my job when I was at Walmart was to help grow leaders managers and directors directors of eps VPC seps you know what the number one Gap was amongst all leaders at all levels like what's the derailleur what's going to take you off course EQ empathy compassion understand Tony you're awesome at your job Tony no one likes in the meeting Tony is not going to get promoted and you can't ship that person off to empathy class it doesn't exist reading actually immersing your mind in another life is one of the very few ways that we can actually grow our empathy our compassion understanding these are very incalculable skills that are important for a trust-based cohesive Society to exist right you have you have to there's that George RR Martin quote our reader lives A Thousand Lives before he dies the man who never reads lives only one and we're losing our capacity to engage with books we're losing our ability to fall into other lives and less able to identify and relate to the people around us massive issue so I am very bullish on books you know this about me yeah I am obsessed with reading books I think it's very important and I have we have books all over our house we have books in every room of our house we are trying to surround our children's lives with books I think it's I think we're losing our capacity to read books and scares me so much so that I just yelled about it for a couple minutes yeah and and I'm sitting here feeling guilty like I do read a lot but all of my reading is non-fiction and is driven by guests that I host on the podcast yeah that monopolizes all of my I couldn't tell you the last time I read a fiction book I see lots of movies maybe that serves some it does a piece of that but it's not the same thing and I would say that you know as a parent of of older children it's it's been like the older the two older boys voracious readers especially Juan Trapper just like incredible reader the younger ones it's hard man yeah you know you're competing against uh you know inputs that are so addictive and you're trying to tell that child like hey you should read a book it's like they're like they're looking at you like you're a martian like what are you talking about I know I loved your conversation with Casey neistat and he said you know comparing Tick Tock to reading a book is like comparing like it's like eating like a kale sandwich or it's like it's so difficult to try to wrestle with a book after being do you want to walk on hot coals or ride in a spaceship that's what I'm saying yeah it's it's very very difficult that doesn't mean it's impossible and the way I encourage people to do it or to get back into it is I say first off we got to start with moving the cell phones out of the bedroom we have to start with that right now if I go in front of an audience and I say put your hand up if you sleep within five feet of your cell phone guess that's what 98 99 of hands are up in the air okay and I say what'd you do before bed people are like well I checked I checked my cell phone I gotta see if my boss texted me I gotta check the markets I gotta see what's going on Twitter somebody comment on my Instagram post what'd you do when you woke up in the morning it's back to two minute mornings again you know I checked myself was the first thing it's the first thing we do it's the last thing we do we're sleeping beside the thing and it's the first thing we do I say listen everybody stop if you drank up all the wine before bed every night slept within five feet of a ball of wine and drank a bottle of wine when you woke up every morning we'd have no problem calling an alcoholic we are phonaholics now and when everyone has an addiction it looks like no one has this addiction it is a problem it's a huge problem and we gotta get the phones out of the bedroom you know what the number one excuse is I hear when people say that they say oh well it's my alarm clock go to Walmart it's ten dollars you can't like buy an alarm clock as permission to get the phone out of the bedroom oh well I'm very very important I get lots of calls a night no you don't you really don't and if you think you do give get a get a landline and give it to the three people that you think might call you and guess what the permission of thinking oh my mom my my sick sister and my my boss that they could call me that gives you permission to get the phone out of the bedroom why is that important because when you have the phone out of the bedroom Rich you make space in the morning to do two minute mornings and you make space before you go to bed to read and this is what I say to people two pages of fiction before bed I say two specifically I don't say read a book I don't say read 20 pages I don't say read 20 minutes I used to say read 20 minutes and no one did it now I've got a new thing and it's really working read two pages of fiction before bed as the last thing you do and you know what animal farm is 96 pages so you know in a couple months you're ahead of the whole world because 57 of people are reading nothing so just getting back into the idea of reading a couple Pages before bed at the end of the night is a way to start back on the trail and I think we can I think we can do it I know that the we know how good it feels how good does it feel when you finish a a piece of food it feels good and also for people that struggle with sleep or insomnia uh pick up a book and like read it start reading a book before you go to bed yeah you're out exactly no like you will like fall asleep and then beyond that I saw really sorry but I thought it was like really funny it's like a post on Instagram or Twitter um but it was like oh yeah people you know talk [ __ ] about reading books but if you think about it you're literally like taking a tree and then you know like and then staring at pieces of a tree and hallucinating is there anything crazier than that [ __ ] exactly exactly some trippy [ __ ] right it's very trippy I I think you're a fan of on writing by Stephen King right where he calls you know that on writing by Stephen King he calls he calls uh reading um you know telekinesis or he calls it um ESP like he's like basically what you do when you're reading is you're totally transported into another mind probably getting the word wrong but it's the it's the concept of yeah it's real right it's it's the most ai ai we have you know you're engaging an aspect of your brain to you know like like connect with imagination in a way that like watching a movie or TV show it's not just us saying it here they've done MRI scans at Emory University even the morning after people read literary fiction and guess what more of their brain is opened up and being used even the smell centers even the language centers if you read the word soap and you read the word leather and you read the word cinnamon your smell centers are opening up and when you watch the movie I'm not I'm not crapping on movies here but you're not you know someone else is the director you watch big little lies they chose the actresses they want Reese Witherspoon to wear this they want Nicole Kim to wear that they choose this nice fancy bathroom this is the way this is the music's Gonna Roll this is the they're the directors when you read the book you are you have to use more of your brain and it feels good to use it it feels so good it really does it makes you happier it really does there's a famous article in the New Yorker called does reading make you happier guess what the answer is yes hahaha I'm thinking like this is going to make for a really good reel on Instagram like what you just said the case for reading books um another uh you know tenet in your in your happiness equation is this idea that that nobody should retire and so you have these interesting ideas around the nature of retirement and how this idea of retirement like became a thing yeah this is remember I said that the uh the the dollar uh the the comparing salaries on dollar per hour was was like one of my most controversial the never retire is probably the most controversial chapter I've written in any of my books and so basically here's the deal um in 1889 in Germany Chancellor Otto von Bismarck coolest Head of State name of all time Chancellor Otto von Bismarck he had a problem you know those problems Rich he had youth unemployment in like the 20s and 30s percentage and so he decreed from the state that anybody 65 and older could make a claim to the state and get a little bit of money to bridge them from age 65 to death this is where the concept of retirement was invented okay late 1800s in Germany why is it notable couple things average lifespan was 67. so the guy's only providing a little bridge to two years really they didn't invent penicillin for 40 more years okay so like we was we weren't living nearly as long but what happened was we ended up using this number 65 Across the Western world as like oh let's just cut let's just copy that if you look at the the UK the U.S Social Security Act the Canadian act 65 became this arbitrary retirement age well if you look through at the 20th century the percentage of people over 65 that chose to retire after age 65 was extremely low because people thought correctly that it was against activity Theory the idea that like no we want people to like be a big part of society in 1951 the Corning Corporation began an ad Campaign together with insurance companies to Bill retirement is something that you deserve for years of work and to Market like relaxing as this like new concept that was like behind the whole idea of building that retirement communities out in like Florida and Arizona and so on the percentage of people that chose kind of living a life of pleasure after 65 from that point onwards skyrocketed through the decades to the point where now we've got life spans that are way longer you take that 37 30 000 days you distill this 83 but you know a lot of people are living to the 80s to their 90s and there's actually downward pressure on the retirement age the downward pressure on the retirement is you know in Canada I grew up it's like Freedom 55 like you want to get off work as soon as possible and what we're doing is we're killing ourselves we really are Fortune Magazine says the two most dangerous years of your lives are the year you're born and the year you retire there's a reason that almost everybody I know probably including you definitely including me has a story of someone who retired and then they lights out my guidance counselor in high school was forced out of work at age 65 because that was this right that was the mandatory retirement and he had a heart attack and he died the next week and a lot of people have stories like that so I say it's not that we want to retire you don't want to do nothing what we want to do is find something we love and so what I actually say to people is okay you're looking for the four s's that's what you're looking for I know that these are different than the three s's I just talked about on on money they're they are social okay that's the overlapping one structure stimulation and story it doesn't matter if you get paid I didn't say one of those s's a salary what I'm saying is that what we're looking for in life is something that gives us the social connection of being part of a community or a group right the structure of getting out of bed in the morning and having an icky guy okay icky guy that word you've had Dan button around a number of times from the blue zones yeah Okinawan word they don't have a word for retirement in in the language there they have a word called ikigai ikigai which means the reason you gotta bed in the morning structure stimulation we've already talked about it we're learning animals we want to be learning something new every day and Story the ability to be part of something bigger than yourself okay these are four natural Cravings we have so that's not assess our desire to retire by a certain age and do quote unquote nothing you know to pursue a life of leisure for what it's going to be like an internal set of decades a we can't afford it the average the average we're way underwater on the financial side of this thing we can't afford to help other to pay for it to be happening in the state there's all kinds of countries around the world that are like not going to be able to pay for the people that are about to retire from the number of people that are below them you know what I mean the demographic curves don't work very well and it's a New Concept that was just invented over a hundred years ago in the western world like it doesn't exist in a lot of places so I say retirement is a bunk concept we should not desire to retire instead we should crave the four S's and we should seek those to the end of our days and seek those through some kind of of of profession that will compensate us for pursuing them like I'm trying to parse that notion which I agree with with this notion of you know pursue what you love yeah you know and then I'm also thinking in the back of my mind like is retirement even a thing anymore like Millennials don't think about it like like retirement is is this is relic of like our parents generation on some level like it was all about like you get the job you work there for 30 years or whatever and then you get your retirement but we're in this kind of digital Nomad you know dispersed workplace kind of economy now right where it's more Project based and there isn't a transactional cost from kind of switching jobs like there used to be right like it's very different so I think how we're thinking about retirement is different and perhaps healthier and we're younger yet so we're not even you know these people are not even at the age where that becomes you know tested but um I agree with you like this idea like you've worked the job forever and now you're going to buy a boat and go fishing like yeah like we have enough evidence to suggest that that's not the recipe well you do and you're on you're on board but it's still it's still I don't I don't think we're as far along culturally as you as as you said I think we still have the idea of that yeah there is a retirement age and I'll get there and I'll I'll have saved up enough that I will therefore be able to do whatever I want forever after that but what I'm saying is that what we lose there in terms of social Connection in terms of stimulation in terms of like having a sense of purpose is actually we're losing a lot more than just just the money side of it so I'm saying if you if you it's really freeing I find it's another cyst it's a really really freeing I find to think of myself I'm 43. I'm never I'm never gonna retire I find that quite liberating but you don't work for Walmart anymore and you're a writer and you're kind of you know you're dictating the course of your career in a similar way that I am and these are very privileged positions there's a lot of people who are in you know kind of gigs where they don't have that kind of agency in autonomy and perhaps their pension or 401k or whatever it is isn't even going to be adequate to kind of create that that retirement experience that you know was something that was achievable 30 40 50 years ago like yeah the economy has changed as well like so yeah I'm not saying finished 30 years of the meat packing plan punch in for 30 more right I'm saying just keep chasing the variables that we know actually make you happy as opposed to so some if somebody is in that type of of professional environment and is like look I'm just you know I work all day long and I contribute to my 401k and maybe my my employer you know matches that or whatever and at some point you know I am thinking about retirement but that's 20 years away or 10 years away like what should I be doing now what should I be thinking about so that I don't become a casualty of what you've just right explain well the way I would suggest to those people to think about it and I think you know and and I think that's a really fair point and I want to just expand on a little bit it's like think about the number of hours in a week think about that number it's a 168. you divide that number by three it's three buckets of 56. if you sleep eight hours a night it's 56 hours a week okay if you happen to be working at the meat packing plant for 30 years maybe you're working 56 hours maybe working a little bit less maybe working up to 56 call the second bucket now let's think about that third bucket and the whole time that you're designing yourself towards that pension that exit that last day that that party with the gold watch let's just cultivate that third bucket see my mom when she retired from her government job she was working at GM as an account and then she went to go work for the Ministry of Finance she retired my dad was still working me and my sister out of the house and she ended up in the swirl of not having the social structure the stimulation the story and that created its own negative problems so I'm saying this take that third bucket of time let's in let's enliven it grow plant seeds volunteering at the library starting to do something in your community do it taking care of a grandchild a lot of people is like taking care of a great grandkid create and cultivate that third bucket so that when you retire from that job that is paying you money you have the four s's in another way really what I'm advocating for is not to not to is to retire the idea of doing nothing that's what I'm really against yeah it's it's putting in the the the lattice work or the structure in your life today and continuously so that through your life till your very last day you are enriched and fulfilled through doing meaningful work and also on top of that we need it we need it look at the world we need it we want we want your we want input we want your artistic Creations we want your energy we want your child care we want your connection we need it we need it and what about your wisdom how about valuing uh the wisdom of you know the our elders you know people who reach that retirement age who have so much lived experience and our culture kind of you know discards them as opposed to valuing them yeah I think as a society we need to find better ways of of you know creating situations in which you know people who are on that cusp of retirement can plug into meaningful ways of of contributing back what they've learned for you know the younger generation 100 you mentioned Arthur Brooks earlier I love his Concept in that in his book from strength to strength of going from Dynamic intelligence to crystallized intelligence and the idea of learning and leaning into roles where Mastery and wisdom can be communicated I will say yeah you know when I started at Walmart there was a lot of people with badges that they turned gold and color they were like you know the 30-year badge the 40-year badge even sometimes a 50 a 50-year badge it tells you a lot about the culture of an organization on how they value their most senior employees as I continue over there over over the um 10 years that I worked there they started to prioritize the simpler and easier metrics the metrics like productivity right and those metrics tend to lend themselves towards younger workers I love it when I walk through a Costco and the badges now say since and the date is the year that they started and you walk through a Costco it's like since 1997 since 1994 since 2001. this is an organization that values and prioritizes education and wisdom to the point where they're bragging about it on their badge because they know that there's an incalculable amount of human knowledge and wisdom that can be passed and traded that isn't just measured in like the number of widgets you can push through the machine per hour it is measured in the idea that you know what to do not how to do it faster and I completely agree with you about the fact that we are generally in society discounting wisdom and intelligence especially amongst older people it's a huge issue massive issue and so for anyone listening to this as part of an organization figure out how you value prioritize and broadcast experience internally and do so in a healthy way there's not enough there's not enough organizations that are truly valuing mentorship at that level yeah yeah I agree and then shifting gears like that's really solid advice for people that are in the you know kind of Twilight of their professional careers but um what is where is your head and and what kind of advice do you give younger people who are embarking you know on at the the beginning of their career right somebody who's looking to enter the you know professional Marketplace or creators people who are aspiring writers bloggers Etc or Executives yeah you used a phrase maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago Rich that was I thought interesting or you said um you know do what you love I just I just heard that phrase come out 10 or 15 minutes ago and that phrase do what you love is probably the most common phrase I would argue in in commencement speeches right to pursue your past to do what you love and I think that that that phrase in commencement speeches is totally wrong I think the phrase should actually be amended extended to do you love it so much you can take the pain and the punishment too there's a wonderful anecdote that Mark Manson tells author of The subtle art not giving a [ __ ] ratchet he didn't want to be a writer he wanted to be a rock star yeah he actually wanted to be a rock star but the idea of lugging amps to smoking nightclubs every Tuesday he couldn't do that and practicing the same like chord progression like for eight hours he's like I'm not into that but the pain and punishment that goes to becoming a great writer I.E sending out like giant responses to Facebook comments and until like three of them he loved that and that was the pain and Punishment required to get to the job of being a great writer which which he absolutely is and so what am I saying is for the younger people they're thinking about what to do the question you should ask Jeff isn't do what is it what I love it's do I love it so much that I can take the long hard road to getting to the point of success meaning do you enjoy the inevitable and necessary hard years and hard times that go if someone was listening to this right now saying I love lugging amps to to smoking clubs and Tuesday nights and I'm really into practicing chord progressions well there you go you might be the rock star you might be the rock star but finding out what pain you like to go with the thing that you're Desiring is equally important what's your preferred mode of suffering there you go right like what are you willing to suffer for um yeah I like that I like that lens on that so my mind turns to the young person who who is like yeah but I just don't even I don't I don't have enough life experience yet to even know how to answer that question well and this is where I get back to I do a lot of things in in 10 decade increments because if you're born today your lifespan is over 100. so if you're born today your lifespan is over a hundred okay so if you're listing this right now it's just a fun number to play with to think of the idea that you know knock on wood and barring any sort of you know unforeseen terminal illness or crazy accent let's just think about your life in terms of decades let's think of in terms of 10 decades just as a rubric here for a second hold on with me here you might say I'm not gonna live to 100 just just hang on for a second I like thinking about that because it relieves me from the obligation of trying to figure out what I need to do today or even this week or even this year in favor of a more decade by decade like planful schedule that's why I keep 10 rocks on my dresser beside my bed and I have four of those rocks I'm 43 moved forward and I have six of those rocks moved backwards I move one rock forward Rich every 10 years okay why because no matter what ales or stresses or issues I had the day it falls away in the face of this rock clock I got the idea from the Jeff Bezos like rock clock that they're putting in like some rock face you know it's gonna dong every ten thousand years you know that whole thing the ten thousand yeah I read something well there's something about the idea of conceptualizing time on its longest length that allows you on a more minute by new basis how we live to not feel as worried about it because hey it's just one moment in a 10-year span why is this important because you mentioned you know younger people who maybe at the beginnings of their career who maybe not know what they're going to do who don't know what they love and I say there's a decade for that it's called your 20s okay the first two decades are pretty much for almost everybody pure learning decades you're pretty much learning from zero to five you're learning at home gotta flush the toilet look hopefully before across the street like you know how to pull up your pants then from five into you know how long can you stay you're in the the industrial design educational system uh uh adding in your own Creations on top of it but you're learning and I will say yes we yes a lot of the sort of natural tendencies of if humans are delayed so like people are getting married later they're having kids later Etc but eventually if that continues to happen for this population in the face of AI and everything else it's probably going to happen in your 30s and Beyond okay so then you got one beautiful juicy right perfect decade in the middle your 20s that Third Rock where it is truly I believe about experimentation it's about trying The Quiznos Sub Shop that makes no money it's about going down to New York and living in a in a in a bombers apartment and taking an F train in a different city and I'm not saying I did that in with the foresight that I now I'm describing it with I'm just saying looking back well what a great way to spend the decade trying a whole bunch of different things trying a job in an office trying relationships trying on different identities trying different communities trying different cultures trying different countries that you might want to live in your 20s are a decade to play with all the malleable structure in your life and the byproduct of that is massive amounts of learning massive amounts of learning you've had they have an Epstein on talking about range had Andrew huberman on talking about his you know a remarkable path to becoming where he is now a human lab guess what they have in common wild and totally unpredictable path that ultimately result in a gelling of life's wisdom and and learnings that form a person's identity and help them figure out what they want to do and that decade did specifically your 20s it's like beautiful I love it like yeah you're speaking my love language your 20s are for experimentation it's interesting because when you are in that age group you think everything is so Mission critical and so it's hard to like inhabit that sensibility that this is the time for trying a million different things and not really worrying about it but it is that decade where you don't have a lot of responsibilities you don't have kids you're probably not married like Live Lean and whatever kind of you know way that you're making money like try to spend it on experiences and broadening yourself and lower the bar and try all different kinds of things because this is the years where you're figuring it out right and you should embrace that so so I had Rayne Wilson on the podcast yeah and he went on a jaunt about like your 20s and we made a real out of that and that is like the most viral thing that I that we've ever share I don't know I don't know how many millions of people like watched that and it was controversial too and the people who don't like it tend to be the people in their 20s who are like you don't understand yeah I have it harder than you might imagine yeah and I'm sympathetic to that but also that that is proving my point that when you are in your 20s sometimes you can't see uh you know that for what it's worth it's not until you're older and you reflect back and you're like oh yeah your 20s that's when you're supposed to do all this stuff and like not worry about it yeah and and if you if you're listening to this and you're thinking well you don't understand I'm under a mountain of law school debt and I really right yeah I get it and things will become more difficult when and if you have a mortgage and children and and things that are like you know implanted into it'll become yourself of the opportunity to go on that exploration to really figure out what it is that you want to do and be and you're just delaying the existential crisis that will visit you you know when you're 39 if you're like me right or whenever it is like if you're repressing it and just being like well I'm paying the bills and I got to do this thing like you know nothing goes away like whatever it is that you're running from or or or trying to hide from or pretending doesn't exist will resurface and it will you know it will come back stronger than it than it is when it's in your 20s at a low boil right and you have the opportunity to kind of like explore and and and deal with those things absolutely I love countries that have institutionalized the concept of Gap years right you know we don't have that really in Canada I don't think in the U.S definitely not definitely not right but when you hear about Australians and Brits yeah that's a great structural you know and and it's aligned with what we're saying from a structural level so well the real insanity is that we're supposed to know when we're 18 years old what we want to do with our lives exactly I don't know who came up with that you're talking about yeah Bismarck and like coming up with a retirement age yeah but who decided that you know between 18 and 21 you got to sort it out and know exactly who you want to be you know in a professional capacity in the world like that's just completely insane I know and unfortunately the pressure on young people I know when they don't know they feel bad about themselves like it's just this is like really pernicious I know and it's getting worse because the there's the quote unquote death of liberal arts education right like there's the increased pressure to specialize so that you can produce and have an income at a younger and younger age to sort of pay for the lifestyle that we think we all need it's rough man all right I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about uh talk about balance like when I think about you and your life like you have four young boys yeah but you've written all these books and you travel and you speak you're incredibly productive you're able to you know be a good dad and be a president partner to your wife and everything seems to be like in check right so when it's not as simple yeah sure on a day-to-day basis it's not like I'm projecting of course um but how do you think about like balance oh live a balanced life everything should be in balance and how do you practice this notion how do you challenge traditional Notions around like living a balanced life like talk about that a little sure three things I'll say the last thing I took a marriage course before we got married okay we had a non-denominational uh ceremony and the woman who married us said I would just like to practice my new course with you I usually am going to charge 500 but would you mind just meeting with me for eight Saturdays in a row and I'm gonna take you through this like curriculum that I've developed on like pre-practicing for marriage and one of the exercises that she gave us which I recommend people do before they're married is and there's a lot of good things that came out of this little little course that I still think about today one of them was she said once we got through the conversation of whether we wanted to have children okay that was an important part of the pre-marriage course because that was not to be determined after the marriage but before she then said write down on the piece of paper the percentage of the child care that you believe you will do and then on the count of three flip over your papers and when we flipped over the papers I had written down 25 percent unless they had written down 75 okay so I will say it's going to get me in trouble it's just because let's just be really clear that a big part of all the stuff you're talking about is I'm doing about 25 of the parenting that's because Leslie is the one on call with all the kids during the day especially as we've had babies at home pretty much the whole time and in the evenings um she'll she'll pick them up she'll pick them up from school I will re-enter The Fray around 4 pm every single day and then we're tag teaming it together from then until bedtime but make no mistake who's picking out whether someone needs shoes figuring out the lunches like figuring out the quick it's she's doing 75 so that's one thing I'll say on battle on balance is that you have to decide up front how that is going to work for you and every single couple or every single person is listening we'll have a different way of doing it you know Leslie and I have friends were like the woman says I'm good with my husband just doing the three G's garage and Garden or whatever it was like like everyone's gonna have their own model but just figure out that model is for you before okay then on balance in particular I've got two things to share number one is I I have a dashboard that I draw for myself on the last day of every single month I draw it on a piece of paper nobody else sees it except for me and in the it's a four item dashboard and I use this dashboard as a way to figure out whether I'm in or out of balance on a monthly basis the center of the dashboard is my icky guy it could change but right now I write down helping people live happy lives including myself that's that's my purpose that's what I'm trying to do then there's four quadrants the bottom two quadrants are uh how I do it and the top two are what I do so think of four quadrants the top left quadrant is called strong core everybody's will be different for mine it's writing one article writing one chapter giving three speeches or whatever it is a month and those things could be colored in rich green yellow or red okay then the top right is fastest learning I want to read eight books per month I want to have one unique experience I want to conduct two podcast interviews and for me I have to prepare for those podcast interviews as well are they green are they yellow are they red this is what I do strong core fastest learning below that is how I do it there is what I call best family and best self best family is four or more family days per month right these are things we've talked about before four more families a month four or more date nights per month this is really important in our system if Lassie and I are connected when we miss the date nights there's fracturing we're starting to get chirpy at each other we haven't had time to connect the two of us right and there is a third one that I forget but I color them in yellow green or red bottom right is best self number of workouts number of meditations number of number of of uh of uh runs or whatever I put in the things that I think will kind of Infuse myself again yellow red or green by coloring in this dashboard at the end of my month I find balance because inevitably on every single month there's a bunch of red somewhere sometimes the red is on personal I've gone flying around and I've done all the productive stuff on my work and that's all green and I've read a lot of books but you know I've missed some family dinners and I haven't been doing my workouts and there's some red at the bottom that helps me guide the next month to find balance now I will invest in the bottom a bit more I'm back on track with my you know they're all systems but they're just helpful guidelines now I'm all green at the bottom well I haven't really been written writing a chapter on my next book that's kind of falling off the yellow or maybe that falls off to Red so again this tool helps me find balance because what I'm doing is I'm drawing it just for myself it's just a dashboard I just sent you a picture of it or show it to you after yeah I'm like trying to I'm trying to imagine it but basically what I gather from this is yeah it's really an exercise in getting honest with yourself an objective about your like what your what your kind of tension is versus the reality of what you actually did right so you're very clear like oh I said I was going to do all these things like I fell short here and here and it helps you plan for the next quadrant or period or whatever so that you can kind of course correct or wherever that pendulum is a little bit off in any of those quadrants that are important to you you can kind of think about and plan to do better next time right that's that's and I will never draw a dashboard probably that's fine yeah that's fine yeah but you have your own systems and you you know we talked about in terms of what you eat we talked about in terms of drinking we talked about you we know we know about your your Fitness and your ex so you're doing a lot of things like this already baked in but I I need help and so the dashboard helps illuminate for me how in or out of balance I am and it also is interesting because you know before I had this like four speeches per month or whatever it was like some months I'd have eight and I'd be like wow eight speeches wow this is like so many this is so great and but then it was so obvious that all kinds of stuff falls off and so the dashboard is meant to be like the dashboard of a car like you know it helps you steer yeah which which gauges are in the red yeah exactly yeah I mean that was you know with the speeches thing I mean similar to what Mel shared like when she was just you know in such high demand and they were paying her so much couldn't say no and she was just on the road all the time and just crushing it yeah but then all these other are areas of her life we're starting to you know fall apart because she was never home and she had to like really kind of reconfigure everything to and figure out a new way of like you know kind of pursuing her business in order to maintain her her marriage and her relationship with her kids and everything absolutely in terms of your relationships also at home less than I do a quarterly meeting so I know it sounds like a lot no but but it's it if you plan you publish a quarterly report also and like do you have a deck that you share in advance with each other I actually I actually stole this idea from Professor David Ulrich at the University of Michigan because what he does he told me that every he meets with his wife once a quarter outside of the home he said it must be outside of the home cannot be inside the home this is an important point it has to be like a neutral territory because there's no no one's going to yell or scream at a restaurant okay so you start off with the place you start off with a public place this is like uh tradecraft it's exactly and then you you have four headlines I think he said that the four for him were you know money sex work and family and each person goes down the four items and says so on money how are you feeling about money with us are you feeling like we're good do you want to revisit any aspect of how we're thinking about money let's go through them each one by one and people you meet on a quarterly basis oftentimes it helps prevent fights or arguments in the three months up to it because Leslie and I will say to each other let's just have that let's add that one to our our uh our quarterly meeting so keep a note add to quarterly meeting and then we'll have a topic discuss and then it takes it out of the situations where we're probably gonna have a fight where we're both tired we're both Sleepless it's right at the end of the night and if we bring it up then it's not going to get results and it's going to be messy and and it's going to be ugly so we just the the correlate meeting also acts as a bit of a venting system and a prophylactic right because you're you're kind of like airing it out before it becomes so acute that there's an outburst in a fight wow and a misunderstanding right wow yeah but meanwhile you say you'll never do it yeah I just can't imagine like I I just but you have your wife all the time so you you guys I do you're having a different type of processing what's hilarious Neil is that like in our relationship I'm like much more the systems guy than she is and like I compared to you like there's no system right so Julie is just she's surfing the waves of the you know it's like it doesn't like and it's and she's an amazing entrepreneur and like so talented and she gets so much done and she's so good at so many things and I'm like I have to do one thing at a time and I have to be like all organized and um and and kind of planning around stuff it works we've been together forever and like we you know we're very different people but there's something about like the differential in our energies and approaches that complements each other but I do have a hard time imagining us sitting down and having a quarterly yeah I mean she will be like we need to talk like let's sit down like we need we have to go over this stuff like she's pretty good about that but you do have this it's just not as like scheduled and we have a podcast I've listened to your pockets episodes with Julie I know Julie I love Julie and like you are processing things in a different way it happens different it happens to be public but like those are quite those are quite right we have our private meetings too of course yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean you know I think the point being like find what works for you as as you know as a couple as partners communication is key what that looks like for you it's very structured for other people it might be you know less so but um prioritizing communication around those important things like finances sex Etc you know yeah child rearing yeah family or family is like all those times yeah on you know and on the same page on those things or you're going to have problems and if you're just kind of like whatever about it like you're on a crash course with you know something's going to happen it takes a lot of work so it is when I say like weekly date night too it's like that sounds like a luxury actually it's it's an it's a critically important cause again when you miss it a week or two in a row then you're nosing branches start coming up right you forget that you're you forget you who you were as a couple before you had kids yeah and that is a an identity that you don't want to lose since the kids are going leave yeah and I will say also on this Mo on these models and these this idea of balance one thing that I do think about is I think there's a I don't think of it in a stressful way but I think a timer starts ticking from the moment you have your last child to what from that point to when your first child leaves the house and I think there is a finite amount of time that most families have when all their nuclear family is Under One Roof like to our Point earlier about kids having to choose what they want to do and maybe going off when they're 17 18 or whatever 19. and that therefore forces into a macro level system the idea that this decade that Leslie are living right now is one out of ten again that that's nice that's a nice thing to use where we just have to be present and prioritizing of our family and if there's a decision to be made on X versus y on traveling versus not but accepting versus saying no it has to go towards the thing that is more rare and more sacred and more special and more scarce and that is the time with the family Under One Roof which is a very small amount of time in the grand scheme of things it's the opposite of the 20s right 20s are about kind of being selfish and and investing in yourself and exploration and that child rearing you know decade is really about putting your own selfish desires aside and really investing in in uh you know in in these young people yeah yeah and and what you will gain from doing that I don't yet know right but I expect it to be a fuller richer wiser more informed worldview that enables again a wonderful set of decades after that too yeah well as somebody's further down the line I will tell you that it's not going to pan out the way you've imagined it and there will be lots of you know landmines of course you know and that's that's a nice backward level uh point about every single thing I've talked about from assistance perspective these are helpful AIDS they're not and they're not in permeable tools like they're meant to enable not not force yeah I mean I think for me what I get from what you're saying is is a healthy relationship with control like if you're setting up these rules because you're trying to control your environment and the people around you and the trajectory of your career you're in for like a world of hurt and pain of course and so but if you're building these systems to create freedom and allow you know more expansiveness for you to be in an you know able to like explore your curiosity and like engage with the things that you love um that's great and very different but I do think I do think that a lot of the system stuff it lights up the brains of the people who are who have an unhealthy relationship with control um right including me yeah sure yeah and so yeah that's where it can it can go sideways I think yeah absolutely absolutely yeah no it's it's it's figuring out the balance that works for you and thinking of everything that we have talked about so far today as an offering you know the goal in general is not to be perfect it's just to be a little better than before I think that's something I get from your show this is my favorite podcast rich I love your show I listened to it I think it's wonderful it's beautiful and there's different things I take from everything every time and there's stuff that contradicts and that's okay it's just figuring out what works for you carrying it in your pocket using it for as long as it serves you and then discarding it as you keep moving I do thank you I appreciate that and on the subject of podcasts I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about your podcast I got to get you out of here at some point we've been here forever but not I'm I'm very happy three books yeah um I love the premise of the show the idea is you sit down with these people and you ask them about uh you know their three the three books that impacted them the most I had the the opportunity to be a guest on your show and I loved it you were so prepared and I love that it's very focused in that regard um but I think the thing that is so interesting is that this is like a you know on some level a side project your main thing which is writing books yeah and yet in a very short period of time you've been able to book like incredible guests like you've got Quentin Tarantino and you got David Sedaris and like Malcolm Gladwell and like all these people like your hustle game is on point but I also think it it is illustrative of this principle that we talked about earlier like the Cy Young Thing of like just you know like getting up and taking swings and like like lowering the bar and not thinking about these you know tries as failures and I just know in my own case of running this podcast like I get all up in my head about asking people I don't want to ask people to be on the show I don't want to be you know rejected or I feel like I'm bothering them and like you're just like oh I got hey you know and then you're so generous like you're like I had Daniels on they're amazing you should have you know like you're trying to help me like get these people on um I've like been very inspired by like the Daniels Pat they said no to me but they did your show which is cool and now they're probably going to win the Oscar for best picture but uh I just you know I have a lot of respect and admiration for how you kind of have you know created this this cool thing thanks Rich I appreciate it you know it's uh it's a small podcast compared to the Richmond okay that doesn't matter yeah it's like I know that's not what I'm talking but here's what I'm talking about that I think we're both saying is that different is different is better than better so if you when I started three books it was 2018 at the time there was two million podcasts available today as we speaking in 2023 there are over 5 million so your only chance is to be different your only hope if you for whatever it is you want to do it's to be different different is better than better don't try to compete with like you know a deep intense video based long-form conversational Pockets with this show or Tim Ferriss or Joe don't don't don't go for that it was just go for something different and and the reason I point that out is because typically when I'm sending the guest an invitation they're hearing an invitation that they've never heard before which is hey Dan Quan and Daniel scheiner would you like to come on three books and talk about your three most formative books there is a huge filter in there right away if the person's not a bookish person and I'll tell you there's been some times where I meet a fascinating person I get to the point I'm like so did you read books and they're like no I'm like damn it then I can't ask them to come on my show it's a question that a book nerd typically hasn't heard before and then they will love answering because no one's ever asked them before and Daniel's being Daniels of course picked two formative books together no one belongs here more than you by Miranda July and um and then they each picked a formative book themselves just breaking the constructs of genre once again yeah and they're they're they were wonderful and um and then and then for me it's also just like do you love it so much you can take the pain and the punishment too I'm not paying the punishment that I served myself in this podcast is crazy I am ha I task myself with reading all the formative books that the guest has provided me so you give me the war of Art and the artist's way and the big book I actually buy the big book I buy the war of art I have them on my bookshelf for like beside my bed for like weeks I'm paging through them I'm looking for quotes from this Bill Wilson thing I'm looking I'm looking okay what's Julia Cameron saying in the interviews I'm gonna ask but I I set myself up an almost internable unreachable goal that's so high but guess what I love books I love buying the books I love flipping through the front back matter I like going on Goodreads and finding the most popular quotes I like going into the depths there and then that enables a conversation like we had on three books which is different for you because you've probably been on a lot of conversations with like so tell me about when you were going up the stairs when you were 40 rich and you get that so many times that you don't want to have that conversation yeah yeah so it's just so the podcast has this the issue of the structure it's it's back to the refrain in general here the structure sometimes can disable itself like where I have to yeah but it's just refreshing for the guests like oh thank God like I can do this cool thing and talk about something that I care about and it doesn't have to be about me and I have to tell that same story over and over again yeah and I I I I I and like kudos to Tarantino because when when he came on and then you were in his book yeah you got like I forgot about that like he quoted you in his book I know it was so it was so it was so but I'm saying kudos to him because he's past the point of I think I'm projecting of like I what I got from that was that he just wanted to do shows where he could like just geek out and have fun and like have big nerdy conversations and like that's Kudos that guy not everybody likes that most people if they start asking me questions about like okay so what are the downloads you get and how many followers you have on Instagram I'm like this is not gonna work out because right I don't have Rich's follower account and stuff like that and not comparing myself to you but but it's just the the angle that they're coming in with is not going to enable where we're gonna go which is down a really big artistic rabble on what shaped you from a book perspective and that's just one idea there's millions of videos for Pockets but similar to the Thousand awesome things it's 1 000 formative books collected over 333 chapters it's a finite day it's got a finite time I publish it only on the exactment of every new moon and every full moon okay so I'm this also I don't recommend because it totally screws you up on any algorithmic ranking yeah like you're never on the same day you're launching Like Mondays and Thursdays Mel's launching Like Mondays and Thursdays how many emails I get Mondays and Thursdays and then suddenly it's like Saturday night at two in the morning calendar exactly exactly and so yeah just like the blog like when you get to a thousand books you're gonna come down yeah so how many books into it are you now now I'm about 400 books in yeah yeah yeah yeah so I started in 2018 and it's been a joyous ride um I've learned a lot along the way and uh you know uh what a beautiful world we live in you know uh I I I I was lucky enough to interview Dave Eggers on the show and he said you know uh podcasts are the antithesis of everything wrong with the world today he said they are long they are deep they are cerebral they are Focus they are they are they are pulling our focus into an area they are the anti he talked about podcasts in such a beautiful Way Rich that made me feel so good and it's so true no wonder you're attracted to this medium no wonder it works for you no wonder it's the type of conversation that you have over the years over the guests over and over again about living uh an intentional life because the medium serves that you're not viral on Tick Tock yeah it doesn't work that way um it's a different kind of Engagement but I think that there is a thirst and a hunger out there for something that's that that feels real you know and I think that we're missing you know we talked earlier about you know the the kind of fractured um you know urban lifestyle that we live now where our connection to community is not what it used to be 40 of us live alone Surgeon General says in this epidemic of loneliness increased rates in in in depression and anxiety and suicide this legitimate Mental Health crisis that's been exacerbated by covet of course and covet also uh you know amplifying our our you know our kind of uh um you know lack of lack of analog contact with other human beings like even though we're you know on the back side of that we acclimated to zoom and all this sort of stuff and it's like now I don't even know like like when I try to book podcast guests they all assume it's a zoom and then when I'm like oh it's in person they're like oh you know like that wasn't the case before the pandemics the norm the norm yeah like what's normal now is like our digital interface with other human beings and um and I think you know that's driving people to look for community and connection on these digital platforms and you know if there is a a silver lining it's that like we have this like you know deep-seated need for that campfire experience and on some level podcasts serve that they are an antidote to The Click bait you know sound bite um hot take uh you know kind of media landscape that predominates our you know consumption of of content and you know it's that I think that that aspect of it is really cool well especially if you're doing what you're doing and actually putting out really long form long-form interviews because there is a tendency even within the median that we're talking about being civil to be shorter and more produced and more like there is pressure is even well now podcasting is moving towards that that's what I like yeah like these very kind of like highly produced and that's a different thing and I think there's look I still think we're really early on it's you know I think podcasting is still a really new medium so I think there's room for that and I love those kinds of shows as well like this is a different kind of thing but I don't think that this will ever go out of style you know I think that we will always have a need to hear two people you know in a in a conversation where you know honesty rains you know like I just I just think that that's part and parcel of what it means to be human and if we move too far away from that we'll always find our way back to it somehow I I I I absolutely agree I I have Echoes of Team Human by Douglas rushkoff in my ears i i as you know when I started three books made it so that I come out of the left ear and the guest comes out of the right ear I have chia I'm like I question that decision you told me you told me correctly to change that and what I did was using production we made it sound like the gas was in the front left and and I was you know we still but we still if you listen to three books I've tried to make you the listener feel like you're literally on the couch between us and For Better or For Worse I get a lot of complaints there is some just yeah like some distribution from side to side but not entirely one ear in the other one Dolby thing like exactly I can kind of tell this person's on that side of the room I was doing spatial before Apple got into it yeah yeah that's interesting well I was trying to make it make that connection and for me the podcast is um itself it's it's it's self-success it's not sales success it's not social success there's three s's there's three different kinds of success you have to choose which one you want you have to go for it if if I was trying to monetize the podcast it would it would flop I don't have enough downloads on it to make it worth the while of um a big Advertiser I don't athletic greens is not banging down my door okay and at the same time I have to keep coming back to my bearings I don't look at the stats I do it for myself I do it for a learning vehicle for people that love books or want to love books more it's buy and for Book Lovers writers maker cells and Librarians and I reason I come up with that triangle is because I have to remember that when I don't have you know when I when I don't have some of the other elements that can be very tantalizing and I do think for anything in life we were talking about Daniels we're talking about best picture historically the best pitcher winner whether that was The Hurt Locker or whether that was Moonlight is a box office flop and Alvin and Chipmunks the squeak well or Fast and Furious 7 takes home the cake so decide if you want sales or social or self they're not the same thing right and it's a good exercise like it's a reminder of that right and it goes to that intrinsic versus an extrinsic reward system right so here you are you're like okay I'm doing this thing remember this is why I'm doing it not this yeah all these tantalizing kind of things are out here that could you know motivate me to make different decisions about how I'm running this show but I think that's like a really you know beautiful um you know kind of pursuit of of doing it for the pure um you know intrinsic value that it's giving you and of course it's providing you with material that I'm sure is going to find its way and uh you know the books that you're writing yeah yeah um and on that subject of like kind of community to kind of we're going to end this thing um we're we're like three hours in and then it's like oh by the way like new book that Neil wrote our book of awesome you know like let's wedge that in um the thing you know in this series of of Awesome books that you've written like what is different about this is the community thing like this is really a book written by your readership right and it speaks to that campfire thing like you've created a really you know beautiful Dynamic community of people who love what you do and contributed you know their stories you know around like you know what they feel is awesome in their lives these little things that are the big things and you've kind of compiled this into this book that creates like a connectivity like you know this is not analog these are people who are out in the world who connect with you in different ways but these are the you know interesting cool ways that we're finding to you know cultivate that kind of you know connection the S the social s that you talk about yeah you know I'm 43 and I'm a very different headspace than I was when I was 28. so after my wife left me after my best friend tickled in life I had to sell the house I had to move downtown I lost 40 pounds of distress I stopped eating I stopped sleeping I had black bags under my eyes I started wearing makeup to work because I was so embarrassed of how I looked well you got a hook up for that right like if you have Covergirl days like you know you know you get the go-to source to match I literally was putting back uh makeup under my eyes and I started writing one awesome thing a day and like I said they were bad when they started broccoli flower the last crummy triangle and a bag of potato chips finding five dollars in your coat pocket here I am 15 years later I'm still doing it every single night at midnight thousands of people around the world get my daily awesome thing email it comes at 1201 am every single night still today 15 years later what happened on that website was the comments exploded so I started using the comments as my ideas and then writing the essay below them fifteen thousand comments have been received on that website I put a thing at the back of the first book the book of awesome send in your awesome thing I got thousands of people sending in their suggestions what happened in my own brain which was I created a sun-like dent in my universe that created a magnet for awesome things to come to me if there's something in your life that you want and you're listening to this start it yourself because then people will gravitate towards you when they're looking to do that thing that the pressure and the entries and the submissions created the volumes of this book which now serve me I just guide them I just Spirit them I just I'll take a page from Julie's book I'm just now kind of shepherding this thing and even the awesome thing that probably comes up tonight at midnight I didn't write it I put a byline now in the corner of the person that submitted it because I want those names on there and us to realize and hear and feel like there's somebody else out there that also loves the feeling of the snow falling on your eyelashes or that somebody else there that loves hitting that last string of green lights when you're late for work or there's somebody else that I love that's walking by on this the smell of the bakery it's like yeah it can be a little cheesy sometimes or people are like you know what like I'm not really feeling like Pollyanna like this but you know what there's something so gratifying about exercising yourself from this pressure and screen and algorithmically field existence that we've created and going back to the simple things that connect us because that's what makes us human and that's what makes us special and that's what ultimately leads to a rich and fulfilling life I mean I can't think of a better way to end this podcast than than with that man that was beautiful I love you Neil amazing I love you too rich thank you you are such a wise and thoughtful caring compassionate empathetic human being ah well look who's talking I learned more more from you than you do for me it's like it's a real gift to have your show and your art and your your beauty out in the world it's it's a it's a real pleasure thank you so much for for your friendship and your love thank you so Neil's latest book is our book of awesome but he's got lots of Awesome books out there the happiness equation is the book that goes deeper into the happiness stuff that we talked about his podcast three books you can check that out uh anywhere else you want to direct people neil.blog yeah if you I have I have newsletters that offer all these things up to people that want them in their inbox yeah and uh most of your speaking gigs are like corporate stuff like are are some of them is there like a schedule that of our there's some that are open to the public if you want to come and yeah yeah do your thing yeah there there are like sometimes a literary festival or School those ones will be public or ticketed and then I'll do those but yeah it's it's there's 700 conferences A Day in the United States and so that ends up being the depressed son in that Universe the corporate world um all right my friend well uh until next time appreciate you thanks for doing this thanks Rich I really appreciate yours peace

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 50,015

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: QNT4EIK1f1c

Length: 166min 49sec (10009 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2023