Choose Your Seven Humans Wisely with author Fredrik Backman

0:00My best friend and my wife, if they would have gone on one of the matchmaking websites or something, if they would have put themselves through an algorithm and said, find me a person, they would have never found me. Like never in a million years would an algorithm have said, this lunatic, he's the guy for you. Never. I was fortunate in the way that I stumbled upon people early on in my life that was very different for me. And I found out very quickly that that was a good thing for me. That was like I needed people who were not like me so that I could look at their best qualities and strive for them.

0:53If you're an avid listener of this podcast, you may know something about me, that I'm not a reader. I've actually written more books than I've read. But this conversation with Frederick Bachman makes me want to read. The way he thinks, the way he sees the world, the way he sees humans and friendships and people, it inspired me. I actually bought two of his novels, Anxious People and a Man Called Ove, which was later made into a movie, A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. We live in a world where loneliness is an epidemic, and Frederick reminds us that meaningful relationships are built with intention.

1:31They take showing up again and again and again, even when it's inconvenient. His new book, My Friends, drives that point home. The people who have deep, meaningful connections in the world, they're not lucky. They do the work, and that work is worth it. I wanted to begin this episode talking about Frederick's fantastic viral speech that he gave about creative anxiety and procrastination at Simon & Schuster's Centennial. He is, of course, humble about the video's success, but it's easy to see why his words connected with so many people. It's brilliant, hilarious, and painfully relatable for introverts like me.

2:14And that is a perfect description for the conversation that follows. This is a bit of optimism. Oh, and P.S., if you ever go to Stockholm, Frederick and I reveal who has the best cardamom buns in the world.

2:34This episode is brought to you by Porsche. And like all great brands with great products, it's the people behind the products that make them so spectacular. You already know this. Irrespective of whether people are fans of your books or not, the little video you did at the publishing thing uh went viral and made you a bit of an internet sensation yeah fueled by pure panic my wife has this thing where she doesn't give me all of the information which she finds to be very effective so she didn't i thought my my publisher was celebrating their 100 years simon schuster and they only invited me because they needed like a Scandinavian like they needed to show we have authors from all over the world and at some point someone in a meeting was like do we have anyone from Scandinavia and they were like yeah I think we have a guy my wife also explained to me like oh they're gonna have a thing and I you know and I thought based on what she told me that I was gonna give a speech at a dinner and then I arrived and it was at a theater in the presence of of a lot of a lot of writers and a lot of people that I really really admire and and really look up to and I had prepared a speech full of stupid jokes I don't know how to write a speech good evening my name is Fredrik Backman I'm here tonight because my agent said that this would be good for my career she said I need to learn how to speak in front of people.

4:15It will be fun, she said. So I told her that I write books. I spend eight hours every day locked inside a room with people I have made up. If I was comfortable talking to real people, I would have a real job.

4:33But my agent said, you know, just go up there and talk about the life of a writer. And I said, all right. Being a writer is the best way I know how to get paid for being insane. So it was pure panic what you saw on the video that was just me panicking and thinking this is going to be the end of my time at this very nice publishing house. Well the good news is they hire you for being a writer not a speech giver and the better news is you nailed it but inherently audience is always rooting for who's ever on the stage, I've found. And where things are the best and we most enjoy what we hear is that somebody is showing who they truly are, which is if they're nervous or if they speak slowly, as long as that's who they are, I think people fall in love.

5:21I am here tonight with all of my anxiety because I know that in this room there might be someone who is dreaming about writing a book, dreaming of becoming an author. So I'm here to tell you that I am obviously an idiot. I have no idea what I'm doing but I became an author anyway so you can too and I hope that one day I will be able to tell my agent that the reason that my next book is not finished yet is because I was busy reading yours thank you very much I think that's what happened which is we fell in love with somebody who was very honest about how you were actually feeling in a day and age where we filter everything and everything's performing.

6:06I'm glad if it felt that way. There was a lot of people who told me afterwards, like, it was so good because, you know, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't, like, practiced. And I'm like, well, I tried. It wasn't my intention. It was my intention for it to be good. You know, you walk up on stage and I had a piece of paper with the speech written down. And they said, no, no, we can put that on the teleprompter. And I was like, absolutely not. I'm holding on to the paper that this is my life raft on open sea. I'm holding on to this like I'm holding on to the edge of a mountain. It went all right, but there was a lot of panic involved.

6:48This is also a lot of panic involved. We talked about that earlier, but the reason that I said yes to this, I was going to explain to my children what I was going to do today. and i said well i'm going to be on this podcast and said what what kind of podcast is in there so this incredibly intelligent man who has written these books on leadership and he invites these incredibly smart people to his podcast and they they talk about you know profound things and and they talk about like research and science and and you know the world and the society and you can see my kids looking at me like when are we going to get to the part of why you're here why are you gonna be on it but the reason that i couldn't say no was that my best friend we've known each other since we were teenagers of 30 plus years he's a great extrovert you know always was always a good leader always one of those guys that you followed everywhere because he just had that charisma and he when he was 19 he started working as a forklift driver and warehouse uh fruit and vegetables and uh and then over the course of 25 years he's worked his way up and now he's the head of hr uh for the company of 900 people he talks about you know your books and your writing and how it's affected his view on leadership how it's affected his view on how to be of service to others like he talks a lot about he talks a lot about how he learned that leadership it's not about the position it's about the responsibility and responsibility to others and being of service to others we talk about it a lot um so i couldn't like there was no way that he would forgive me if i said no to this that's very kind thank you what i'm taking away from that story which is so beautiful is how proud you are of him you're glowing as you talk about it.

8:49And as I've been looking at friendship and trying to understand friendship, there's this very interesting observation that we all, I hope, have at least one but a few, a group of people that we can turn to in dark times. When we're at our worst, when we're struggling, we can go to these people and say, I just need to vent. I need your help. I'm not doing well. You know, I hope that everybody has that, that group of friends. What I've found fascinating is that it's a smaller group of friends that we can call to brag, that we can call to say, I did something great. Something great happened to me.

9:25My book hit the bestseller list. I'm so proud of myself. And there's no jealousy on the other side. And there's no envy. And what I find so fascinating is the number of people that we can brag to is smaller than the number of people we can go to in hard times. And so this says a lot, I think, about the quality of your friendship. You said he's such a close friend. You've been friends since you were teenagers that you were talking about his accomplishments as if they're your own. Has it always been like that? Or have you ever had times in that friendship where you were jealous or something he did highlighted an insecurity in you?

10:02No, I think it's always been that we were really proud of each other. I think it was always that we rooted so strongly for each other. he's always been insanely proud of me like for whatever i accomplished and i but i think i really really think that i he was the person who taught me how to be that it was important to be happy for others like that that was a genuine part of the friendship to be to have that to be able to be genuinely happy for each other it's funny that you say that because i have that with him that i I call him sometimes and I say, I can't say, I can't say this to anyone else because I'm going to sound like a, like a douchebag.

10:49I'm going to sound really full of myself, but this thing happened and I'm super proud of it. And we also have this, he can call me once in a while and he'll say, you know, I'm, this thing happened. I'm really, you know, I'm, I'm upset with this person. I just need to vent. Is that okay? And then he just goes off. And then at the end of it, it's like, I know I'm exaggerating. I'm overreacting. I know that. But I have to like, sometimes you need to get it out to edit yourself. And like, yeah, this is not how I'm going to say it to them. But I needed to say it to you first. I think you just summed up the problem with social media.

11:28Which is our initial reaction, which is not the best reaction. It's the venting reaction. It's not the way we actually want to say something to somebody. It's not constructive. But it is necessary for us to get it all out in the most exaggerated form so that we can be calmer and rational again. That I think a lot of people are using the social media, the comments section, as that outlet. Not the friend. if you're married and you're upset you know you have an argument with your wife and you go to your friends and you say you know i i just you know it's this and this and this and this and this and you know and we had this argument she didn't listen and whatever it is your friends will tell you yeah but you know but you are that way like you're she's right about these three things like Like you might be right about this one thing, but the other three things, she's spot on there.

12:24Like you're, you're the annoying one. You're in the wrong. And you have to go like, all right, all right, fine. And then you kind of edit yourself. Yeah. Because they're your editors and you go back and you're like, okay, this is how I feel. You need people around you who edit you. When people have read one of my books and they tell me like, well, I'm excited to meet you because I read one of your books. And I want to tell them, like, you need to tone down your expectations because you read my book. I edited the book for a year. That's the best version of me. And if you didn't like the book, that's still the most you're going to like me.

12:59Because that was all I had. That was the best way that I could phrase this. Like, maybe I rewrote that sentence 150 times before. I'm like, yeah, this is how I feel about it. if you meet me in real life before editing, then that's how I found writing. When I was a kid, I was very bad at being in an argument, at being in a confrontation. I didn't know, like, I always went away like, oh, I should have said that, I should have said that, I should have said that. So writing was my way to find, I was in an argument, I think I was in an argument with my dad. He's very good with words. so he would win all the time because he knew more words i mean he he could like twist an argument and i was maybe six or seven years old and i was like i went into my room and i was really angry and instead of like engaging in the argument i went to my room and i wrote him a letter and i started doing that a little bit with people like when i was upset with them i sat down and i wrote them a letter because then i could edit myself so it didn't come out it came out the way that i wanted it come out that's how i started writing i think i absolutely love this idea as friend as editor and there are people who are better editors than they are writers you know um where they can see the flaws in the argument or they can see how to make the argument better more than we can they have clarity and we're open to editors the good writers are open to editors the good writers know that they won't get it right and they need somebody's input to see the things that we can't see and to think of a friend to have that same clarity and objectivity and be able to see what we're trying to say and for us to be open to an editor rather than to just hire somebody to just agree with our writing um that you said that you learned to uh to be proud of somebody else uh from him did he actually sit down and teach you the lesson or did you just feel his joy for you and and you learned it by example by watching him no with him i think i learned with that that particular thing i think i learned by example uh and and uh still do i mean he's still my he's still very much my role model he's always

15:30you know showed showed me how to be a better person i'm always trying to give me an example he was always the first with a lot of things so he was the first to get a serious relationship we were 22 23 and we would always watch movies we would always end up at you know whatever night it was we were at usually at my apartment and we would watch movies and or play video games he met a girl and and and uh you know after a while they got serious and one night he just sat there and he just looked at me and he said, you know what? I think this is going to be the last time for a very long time that I watch a movie with you guys.

16:15I was like, what? And he's like, no, I've been thinking about it and this is something that we do, but we're going to do other things. Like we're going to go grab a beer. We're going to go grab dinner. We're going to hang out. We're going to go to concerts. We're still going to do all that. but this like tuesday night just sitting around watching a movie i'm gonna do that with my girlfriend now because that time is really important for me to have with her if this is gonna work and i want this to work and he had this really discussion with us that that you know you need to be happy for me for this and um and we would you know we were 22 which was a you know and it was such a mature way of telling your friends like i love you i i but but i have to invest time in her and then a few years later he was 25 and they had their first child and uh we were 25 years old you know you're not the smartest and we were all single the rest of us so and we i remember we were in a room and three of his friends started as a joke and then it went a little too far and then we kind of said well you never you know you never hang out with us anymore because you always have to be with your family now that you have a kid you always have to be with your family and he sat down and he did it in the nicest most compassionate way but he sat down and he looked at us and he says it's not that I have to be with them it's that I want to be with them and he says you know I love you I love hanging out with you but there is no situation where I wouldn't rather be with my kid and And he was so just, it was such a moment for the rest of us.

18:19We were all single. We didn't have kids. We didn't know anything about that. And we all, and remember, and we've talked about it afterwards, like it was such a profound moment for the rest of us in the room. And it kind of, it impacted the way, I really think it impacted the way that we looked at a relationship. Because after that, we were all, okay, that's what I'm looking for. That's the thing I'm looking at. Over the next five, six years, we all met someone. We're still with that person 10, 15 years later. We're still with that person and we all have kids. And we all look at our families the way that he said that that day.

19:04We still, we're all invested in our families in the same way. We all have this discussion all the time that people talk about quality time over quantity time. And I think that's the part where we would wildly disagree. Like all four of us is like, I would rather have quantity. I would rather have a hundred hours with you over the phone than like going on this trip to Las Vegas and watch a Formula One race or whatever, you know, super experience that you could have with a group of friends. I would much rather have a hundred hours with you over the phone. Yeah. He's impacted me tremendously because he's, he's always been the one to do something first.

19:56very often he said something and then three years later i'm like i get it though right i didn't get it at the time but i get it now you were right there's so many things that i'm taking away from this he's also talking about growing up and that our life changes we grow and we have to by we have to reprioritize and sometimes that'll come at the expense of the people who aren't at the place we're at you know as you said you were single he was in a relationship you learned some of the things he was saying. You understand some of the things he was saying only three years later when some of your life caught up with some of his life.

20:31But I so appreciate that level of communication where you tell your friends just so you know, and they get to have the reaction, no, no, no, you know, as opposed to getting angry because it's more passive, which is I think, unfortunately, what most of us do, A, because I think it's easier, and B, because I don't think we know how to tell our friends for fear of disappointing them or upsetting them. and he didn't seem to have that fear no no i think i practiced talking about my emotions because we we were that kind of group of friends um it was always very normal to us to to talk about how we felt especially me and him um and it it so i had a lot of practice talking about my emotions and he also you know he's a great editor he's very good at telling me like yeah you're way off here you know you're talking about honesty he's honest and he was always uh but it was also also this you know that you talked me how to um to view time we live seven hours apart in sweden now because i i moved north so uh we talk over the phone a lot and um so we can text each other like are you we both have dogs so i'll text him like are you gonna walk the dog he's like yeah at 9 p.m i'm gonna walk the dog i'll call them but we were always talking about time like time like he was so clear so early on in life that this is the amount of time i have you know and these are the things that i need to do and i like we're still gonna hang out but i'm gonna have to take a little bit of it he said on multiple occasions that like the only thing i can give you is time like that's what i have like that's that's what i'm that's what i have a deemable precious commodity yeah and and for him it was i can give you time whenever there's someone who loses someone he's that person who he just gets in the car and he goes to their house and he says i'm here and he says if you don't need me for anything i'll go sit in the car but i just i just want you to know that i'm here and at so many occasions he's he's someone lost someone and there's this thing that happens when you lose someone that everyone thinks well i don't want to call i don't want to disturb i don't want gonna intrude in there so they end up sitting there alone and he would say like there are probably people who can stay smart at things or or give you like more profound words at this time or like but i can give you like i can be around i can be here i can do the dishes or you know go get food or or i'll you know if there there's a chore around the house i'll do that like i'll I'll give me something to do.

23:39A lot of people listening to this are I don't want to use the word jealous or envious. Maybe the feeling of longing to have that in their lives. And I know people are asking this. How do I get a friend like your friend? Look who you are and who you become that we have to admit in some way, shape or form whether it's you as a father, you as a husband, you as a friend, you as an author, in some way, shape, or form, you have become good at those things in part because of this person in your life who's been rooting for you since the beginning, who's been honest with you since the beginning, who's been helping manage time since the beginning.

24:21I've been modeling what all of it looks like for you. And I know a lot of people listening to this are thinking to themselves, how do I get that? I want that. There's beauty in what you're talking about this also profound sadness. And click, don't have it.

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26:46How do people get a friend like that? I mean, part of it is just I was lucky. Just the way that I talk about my wife. Well, I was lucky. I ran into someone, and they were my humans. Me and Riyad, my best friend. And that friend group that I still have, those three friends I still have in my life, and they're still my most important people. And I figured out with them, and then I did the same with my wife. We figured out that, okay, there's two things that we need to be aware of here. First, we need to have rules of fighting, if that makes sense. And my wife and I, very early on in our relationship, when we had just started dating, like we we agreed that we would never in a fight no one could say no one could threaten with like maybe we shouldn't be together maybe we shouldn't you know maybe well maybe this relationship is a mistake maybe you should leave me like no one could do that because that's like an atomic bomb in or in in like the discussion is immediately over someone threatens to leave yeah then the argument is immediately over then you won like we set up boundaries for fighting and i think we talked about the way we fought like after the fight we would talk for hours and hours and hours and hours about the fight if that made sense like we would try to analyze each other and we would try to figure each other out and i think it was coming from a place where we understood that we are very, very, very different.

28:43And I think it's the same thing with my wife. We knew immediately going into that relationship, like we are really different people. This is going to be a journey for both of us. When you're young, people tell you that, well, a relationship is a lot of work. And when you're young, you think it sounds unromantic because you think like, well, in that case, it's not true love. If you have to work on it, it's not true love. but that's because when you're young you don't understand that the work is not on the relationship and it's not it's not it's on you the work is on you that's what people mean when they say a relationship is a lot of work the work isn't on it's on me it's i have to work i have to work on who i am communicating better explaining my feelings better understanding me better so that I can explain myself better but also the fact that me and Riyad has we've been friends for 30 plus years um my wife and I have been together for 18 years and we change all the time like we've changed a lot like we've changed immensely it's like the you you find someone you get married and then you have kids like you become a completely different person in some regards when you have kids because then then there's this whole other responsibility that i have to you're unraveling some of the tropes and the and the and the punch lines you know like relationships are a lot of work and to your point it was like yes but the work is on yourself like that's that's not people don't say that um you know i love my relationship because i've been working on myself and i'm a better version of myself.

30:30And that's my definition of a great relationship, whether it's a friendship or a romantic relationship. The youth do the growth yourself. The other persons can only support you. They can't grow for you. And I think when we talk about sort of the sadness that goes along with hearing about a friendship like yours, I can't accept that it's a lottery. I can't accept that it's like some people are good looking, some people are smart, and some people get great friends. Like I can't accept that. The good looking and the smart, that's genetics. that really is a lottery. But the friendship, I know you said you were lucky and that's probably how you feel.

31:07But based on everything you've been describing in your relationship about the choice to do the work and your friend's choice to spend time with his family and his choice to spend time with his girlfriend, I think the way you get one of those friends that you want is you choose to be that friend first. you choose to show up at someone's house and say i'm here give me give me give me something to do that's the work on yourself like first you have to choose to be the good friend your friend made the choice to be a good friend and what he got back was a great friend what's the term you use in business roi return of investment that's why i talk more about quantity time than quality time i think it's a return of investment for me i'm the same way with my kids I know that I'm not a great dad.

31:59I know that I'm not, like I'm aiming to be an okay dad. I know that I, because I live in my head a lot and I'm easily distracted and I have all these things and I'm bad with stress and all of that. But I'm like, if I'm around enough, then I will have time to make up for my mistakes. Does your wife think that you're a bad dad? no i think she would agree that i'm i'm i i'm usually distracted i think she she would say that i'm a good dad because i really try so that's that's because that's her that's her definition she's a better judge of the quality of your parenting than you i would imagine because they're her kids too and she doesn't want you to screw them up no no no she tells me that a lot like you like you you are good like they think you're a good dad because they can see how hard you try to be a good dad and then you make mistakes sometimes and that's all right and you know you mess it up but i think it's the same way with friendships and it's the same way with with my relationship with my wife the thing we invest in is our friendship if i if that makes sense like if we would like i i view i view that relationship as it's it's a romantic relationship it's husband and wife it's all of that but it's also at its core we invested in in in our friendship like hanging out doing things together this whole conversation to me goes right back to where we started on the four-minute speech you gave at Simon & Schuster, which is you tried.

33:42And I think that you're tying together a lot of things. I've said a lot of things before that you're tying together for me. My girlfriend, we were having a fight that went like this. I said, here's what I got right, and here's what you got wrong. And she responded, well, here's what I got right, and here's what you got wrong, and you can see how this goes backwards and forwards. And at some point, like, you know, I interrupted the fight and said, this is not going to go anywhere good. I'm changing the rules. And the rules are, I'm going to tell you what I did wrong. I'm going to tell you what you did right, then you're going to go.

34:15And that's what we did. And within 30 seconds, what we both discovered is we're trying. And I think this idea of letting people see that you're trying, not just tell them that you're trying, but let them see that you're trying. When you show up at someone's house and say, I'm here, give me something to do, meaning I don't know what to say. I didn't prepare anything. I don't have a sense of what right or wrong is in this situation. But I'm here, give me something to do is the greatest indication of I'm trying. telling your friends guys just so you know this will be the last time i come to movie night which is i'm going to try this relationship thing and that's the respect we had for him is was the effort the the visual effort the measurable effort is the most romantic thing in the world in in a romantic relationship or a friendship or a work relationship is effort that someone is investing in a person.

35:16Not that they get it right. And I think you're an amazing father because you're trying so hard to be a good father.

35:28Yeah, and I... I don't know why I'm so emotional today. Like, I have close friends and I have a good relationship with my folks and they're both amazing parents, you know? I don't know why this is touching me so much I mean this is super emotional to me too because we're talking about you know we're talking about these are my most important like my wife my kids and my best friends these are my you know humans I always separate like I always try to explain that I don't there are people and there are humans like humans you have maybe seven humans that you chose these are your and then people are the ones at the airport you can be annoyed by people and still love humans my best friend and my wife if they would have if they would have gone on one of like the matchmaking websites or something one of the apps or whatever it is now it's like i i'm too old for that but i'm too old to understand the technology now but if like if they would have put themselves through an algorithm and said find me a person they would have never found me like never in a million years would an algorithm have said this this lunatic he's the guy for you never i was fortunate in the way that i stumble upon people early on in my life that was very different for me yeah and i found out very quickly that that was a good thing for me that was like i needed people who were not like me um so so that i could look at their best qualities and strive for them i wanted to sort of double click on one other thing which is you're very self-deprecating and there's a difference between being self-deprecating and being uh having low self-esteem and i think you're self-deprecating you accept you i think you find you funny i think your ego is healthy and i think the ability to be self-deprecating in a way that you're is owning either real shortcomings or perceived shortcomings is by by naming it you can say i'm working on it i'm trying you can make it a thing as opposed to not naming it keeping it hidden means it can never be addressed it can never grow and it and that then becomes an insecurity and i i'm fascinated by healthy self-deprecators you know where by putting it as well as way to put it now i i mean i do i think there's a difference between uh i'm i'm no good at this versus yeah i'm i'm no good at this but it's not a giving up it's an identifying and that's the difference i think Low self-esteem is giving up and accepting this is my luck.

38:28This is how I am. Self-deprecation, when it's healthy, is simply identifying something and saying, look, sometimes it goes better, sometimes it gets worse. I'm working on it. You know, haven't conquered it yet, but still doing it. And it probably might take me my whole life and I may never get to the standard I want, but I'm working on it. And I think the ability to put it out there does so many things. A, I think it's super healthy. It also makes you super authentic. it also allows others to support you in whatever journey you're trying to grow in i mean i watched your speech and i was so inspired by it because i just loved that you just put it out there and said this is what i'm going to try and do and here you go i also wonder how much of it is just because you're swedish you know what is it jenta what's it called janta janta the janta law there's a certain part of it so that people know what we're talking about do they teach it at school in Sweden?

39:27yeah it's just a common everybody knows don't pick up yourself never brag, never think you're better than anybody else don't seek attention it's all of these forced humility things and Swedes I know if you walk through the very very fancy street with all the fancy shops in downtown Stockholm like in the Gucci and the Prada in the window, nothing has a logo on it. You know, no conspicuous displays of wealth is looked down upon and talking about yourself and bragging about yourself. I think a certain part of it, sure. And I think it's, to a certain extent, I defend Janta. I think it's, I mean, for some of us, it's kind of good.