The Knot

0:00It seems sort of silly to even say it. all problems can be solved. But it's true, all problems can be solved. If they can't be solved, they're not problems, they're situations, and we simply have to live with them. But if it's a problem, we can solve it. And if we feel stuck, it could be, because we're in a knot. Hey, it's Seth, and this is Akimbo.

0:33I'm back with the second of two podcasts for 2026, this time celebrating my new book, The Knot. You can find the details at Seths.blog slash The Knot. That's spelled T-H-E-K-N-O-T. Here is an hour-long rant plus Q &A that I did with the folks at Purple.Space. Purple.Space is a community online, a couple thousand people, no hype, no hustle, simply supporting each other in the journey to do important work. Every month or so, I show up and do a Q &A. There's also workshops and a lot of peer-to-peer support. This time, we're talking about my new book, The Knot, and the idea of getting unstuck. In my online workshop about the book, The Knot, I talk about Gilligan's Island and why the professor is stuck on the island.

1:27the metaphor is real. We might not know how to make a radio or a nuclear reactor, but we do know how to get unstuck. It's simply about naming the baggage, dropping the baggage, and shipping the work. It's not easy to do, but if it's important enough, problems can be solved. Here's the Q &A. Thanks for listening. I hope you're doing well. Okay, problems are all around us. They're everywhere we look. And that's a good thing because problems can be solved, all of them. And the only way we can possibly create value for others is by solving problems. So the work is to look for problems and to solve them.

2:12The work is to realize that situations are not problems. Situations have to be lived with. Once we can determine with clarity, we have to give up control because if we can announce its situation, can't do anything about it. If it's a problem, we have no choice but to either live with it or to solve it. And I want to share just a couple starter stories to help put this into context. And then I want to lean and engage with each of you and talk through some of the questions that might come to mind, knowing that virtually nobody on this call has read the book yet, but many of you have taken the course.

2:56So the first thing about problems, we get stuck in problems because we make them perfect, because we polish them. The ones that don't make us stuck are gone. We solved the problem of learning how to walk a long time ago, it's not a problem anymore. The problems that remain in front of us, remain in front of us because we carry around a lot of baggage. And we like having that baggage be invisible. We don't want to name it. Because if we name it, we have to confront it. And then we can drop it. Dropping the baggage is about understanding that two things that are directly opposite cannot coexist, and also cause the problem to be solved.

3:42When the world changes, problems get in our way because we are carrying around this baggage. And there are so many varieties of it. I'm just going to highlight a couple. Sunk costs. A new way to think about sunk costs is this. You saved up for nine months. You upgraded. You got the first class suite, the fanciest seat on the plane to fly from here to Brussels. warm nuts, attentive service, you land in Brussels. What do you do now? Do you stay on the plane? Do you stay on the plane because you paid a lot of money for that seat? Or now that you're in Brussels, do you get off the plane? Because all the things that got you here that cost a lot of time or money or risk existed to get you to today.

4:37And you don't have to stay on the plane. because the purpose of the plane wasn't to stay on the plane forever. The purpose of the plane was to get to Brussels. And so every day we get to make a new decision, a new decision based on new information, and we get to make choices. But to do that, we have to refuse sometimes the gifts from our former self. Thanks for that airplane ride, but I'm done with it now. I'm going to go do the next thing. So these entanglements, we can see them. We can challenge each other to see them for us. and then we can make better decisions. And the second part of it, as I wrap up my rant, is purpose.

5:19Not the purpose you're born with, because I don't think you are born with a purpose, but the choices that we make,

5:30the choices that we make exist to help us move forward. Okay, so what is the change you're seeking to make? What exactly is the purpose of this ad, this job, this memo, this meeting? Can we say the purpose out loud? Because if it has multiple purposes that conflict with one another, we're going to get stuck. And so what I'm trying to challenge people to do with this work on the knot is to understand we have agency. It's not necessarily fair. Most people get the short end of most sticks. The system might be organized against us. But when we see the system and name the components, then we have a chance to make a change happen.

6:22Okay, last story, because I've been piling up stories because I'm starting to present this. I want to talk about organized sports, particularly in the United States. In the United States, youth sports seem to be organized to solve the problem of we don't have enough trophies. And so we spend billions and billions of dollars, starting when kids are four years old, often creating trauma or brain injury and lots of skirmishes. we push kids to get trained. We have rankings. We have regionals. We have state finals. We have all-stars. If you're not that good in ninth grade, you don't get to play on the soccer team.

7:04You get to warm the bench and set up the pylons before the game. This system that we built that culminates in the fact that Alabama has its own private jet for moving the staff of the football program around leads to a participation rate among 10-year-olds in the United States of 50 % in organized youth sport. Now let's think about a small country. I don't know, Norway. Norway saw this problem. And in traditional Norwegian fashion, they came up with a solution for it. the name of which is Barnet Rats Vest Stemmest Vlaslislin. And anybody who knows Norwegian can correct me, but basically what it means is you get what you measure.

7:52And there are rules in place in Norway that change the system. Until you're 12 years old, no rankings are permitted. There's no publicity about who wins and who loses. There are no traveling teams. the entire purpose of the program is to increase joy and participation. Well, the participation rate in youth sports in Norway isn't 50%, it's 90%. And you can look at that and say, well, sure, but there's no excellence. There's no high performers. So exhibit A is Johannes Haslak Klebel, who is the greatest cross-country skier who ever lived. His country, with 5 million people in it, won more medals as a percentage of population at the Italian Olympics than any country in a very long time.

8:49So the point is, you have to begin by seeing the problem, naming the problem, understanding what you're trying to accomplish. the purpose of youth sports in the United States, if you measure what they do, is to raise the status of parents. That's what it's actually for. Because if you look at the interventions, that's what it's doing. And what they did in Norway was they looked at a system and said, we're going to give up the status that's granted to parents and instead focus on a different thing. Name the baggage, drop the baggage, do the work. Six-minute rant, New record. Over to you, Saurabh.

9:30Amazing. This was beautiful, Seth. I think what Heath said in the chat is a good place to start. Heath, I'm spotlighting you, and then we'll go to Ken and Jessica. Other guys, please add your questions in the chat so we can come to you. Hey, Heath. Hi, Heath. Good to see you digitally. Hi. It wasn't a question. It was just a line from the book that stuck out for me um which is the aspirational self is not a goal as a trap because you're comparing yourself to a fantasy and i in the last few years i've started differentiating for myself like oh this is something that ideal heat would do but real heat's not going to do that right and like i got rid of my sewing machine because real heat's not going to sew ideal heat would make all kinds of things real heat's not gonna yeah no exactly that was like that just struck out to me yeah beautiful and you know rohan's blog post today had a great riff in it which is never adopt a worldwide metric for yourself you're never going to be the best the single best in the world at anything so aspirational self aspiring to do something that's easily seen worldwide is probably setting yourself up for a trap instead figure out how to compare yourself to the best possible version of who you are seeking to become, given the baggage that you want to drop, as opposed to making Mark Zuckerberg happy, because there's no reason to do that.

11:03Thank you, Heath. Thank you, Heath. All right. Ken, I'm spotlighting you. Just give me a second. Here you go. Here you go. All right. Hey, Seth. Thanks so much for taking my question. A pleasure. I saw it earlier today, if that's the one you want to ask or ask whichever. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. So, yeah. So, yeah, I'm stuck between two career paths, high paying business systems analyst that aligns with my tech and business skills or a lower paying certified peer support specialist role that may be that that is, you know, a bit could be seen as more personally fulfilling. And so I want to preserve my time and energy for the side projects, entrepreneurial projects I want to work on.

11:51So I'm trying to figure out like, how should I decide between maximum income and pursuing meaningful work and creating the freedom to build something of my own? Yeah. Well, naming the question is 80 % of it, right? And it's very tempting to want work to be three things or four things or five things. But when it's time to make a decision, there is one main thing that we have to answer, which is what is work for? This job is not your life. This job is 50 hours a week of your life. What is it for? And there are lots of viable answers, but when you say it has to be for this and, but, but, but that too, it's easy to get stuck.

12:40So what are you willing to give up in exchange to get the other thing. And nobody can answer the specifics of it, but you. And it's always going to be a matter of degree. Like most people would take a job that gives them a stomach ache if they got paid$2 million a month and they could only had to do it for four weeks, right? That there's gradations here, trade-offs here, which is our priority, knowing that we can't get tomorrow over again. And so there isn't a right answer, but we need to be able to say out loud, is work to give me peace of mind? Is work to give me status in my family or with my neighbors?

13:26Is work a way for me to change the world? Those are totally different things. And if you have a job that does all of those things, that's fantastic. But there are very few jobs that do all of those things.

13:43so does any of that resonate with you you don't have to share it with us but yeah no yeah that's great um i yeah i think trying to decide like what i i want to uh what my actual goal is to get to what whether it i'd go with the career or the you know the the one the first career or the other one um trying to figure out like what the reasoning is behind that and what what i'm trying to um Like if it is, you know, like you said, status or, you know. So for me, it would be for the, you know, the business analyst role. It's really it pays much more than the other role. And I do need, you know, the money while at the same time, you know, it's like the other one would be more personally fulfilling.

14:34So, yeah. So there's things I need to juggle and try to balance out. But I want to help you decode this. What if you took half of the increase in salary, half of it, and spent it on support for your household, spent it so that there was no chores for you to do, spent it so that so many other things in your life were cleared up, so that you actually were on the hook to do entrepreneurial things on Saturdays and Sundays, so that you're actually on the hook to do philanthropy work. and organizing the local community group on Thursday afternoons, right? If you committed to that, now the comparison between the two jobs is a little different, right?

15:18Because now the two jobs both pay the same, but one job comes with housekeeping services, time freed up to spend with the Boy Scouts, this, this, this, and a health club. And the other one is a job that at least from the outside feels like it's more fulfilling. Yeah. Right. So what I'm pushing people to do is to really dig deep into why there's a stuck here, because the stock is a choice. It's a choice because the baggage is hard to let go of.

15:56Anyway, think about that and post on the boards, because I'm sure there are people here who want to chime in. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. I just want to say, Ken, like your presence, the calmness and the confidence that has evolved, like I am seeing you grow. It's beautiful. Like keep going. It's amazing. Thank you. I really appreciate that, Sarabh. Thanks. All right. Jessica, you're up next. I'm spotlighting you. Here you go. Here you go. Thank you. Hi, Jessica. Hi, Seth. First of all, I wanted to share my gratitude about this sprint. It really helped me. So I'm currently stuck at the organizing the others and potentially I do think it is also the theory of change.

16:55So there are two questions here. So the first question is that, so I wrote a book, What is School for a Manifesto for Parents? And so I was very clear that my audience is parents. experience um what i've also seen along the way with this work is that i also gained attraction with this school some of the school in the system that um invite us back to teach other school for this school year and also what i experienced is that i gained attraction with the newspaper for the Seattle Times. The reporter has been following my school enrollment article about my school enrollment for the past three years.

17:51That's great. If I can just push you to, let's try to get it more concise so we can get into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I also noticed the superintendent, our new superintendent want to focus on students. So my question is that does the others, organizing the others, does the others limited to the parents, which my book was intended to? Or what is a helpful way for me to look at the attractions and also who are delighted when they heard my thoughts? Yeah. So this is a great work you're doing and a great question. Let's think about purpose again. The purpose of the work is not to reach a parent.

18:47The purpose of the work is to help change the system. yes and so you know if we think about the bike bus which is a great example of organizing the others and now it's in hundreds of cities around the world if we look at a similar movement that has saved the lives of hundreds of kids in Amsterdam it's very similar which is how do you find local coordinators that want to do their version of something that makes the change happen And the change is not get a lot of coordinators. The change is kids feel safe riding their bikes to school. So when you can keep coming back to the purpose, we no longer need to worry about yesterday's tactics.

19:31We instead think about what is the arc that is going to get us from where we are to where we seek to go. And it almost always involves engaging with people who are enrolled in the journey, engaging with people who voluntarily want to come along. So if you have a choice between arguing with a parent who doesn't want to do what you're doing or dancing with a superintendent who does, it's pretty clear where you should be focusing that energy. And then what we're looking for is traction. The traction of how does it lead to this happening more tomorrow? How do I turn somebody from someone who read this into someone who's organizing because when they can then find the next person and the next person then it begins to spread so you're on your way but just keep coming back to the purpose why did the book exist in the first place if you can think about why you did it then you have the arc for what you seek to do next great thank you so much thanks jessica Thank you, Jessica.

20:40Next up is Carlos. Hey, Carlos. Here you go. Hello. Hi. Thank you for the book. It makes me feel like a donkey a lot of times. I'm curious about, you know, why did you write it? And how does it connect with previous changes that you're trying to make with your work? I think all of us know someone in our lives, including ourselves, including that person we see in the mirror, who feels stuck. And we're living in a revolution right now, the biggest revolution of our lives in so many areas. And I just kept hearing from people who felt stuck. I think optimism is a tool. It's not a forecast for how the tomorrow is going to be.

21:35It's a choice about how we're going to approach problems. And if we believe we have agency and we can lean into problems and solve them, I'm in favor of trying to support that work. So it rhymes with my work on marketing and strategy, because both of those things are about making a change happen. In this case, after my conversation with Mel Robbins, I realized I could boil it down, simplify it, and put it into the hands of anybody who has a problem they want to solve. So thank you. I hope it helps. It does. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. From Carlos, we'll go to Carlo. Carlo, I'm spotlighting you.

22:18Here you go. Is there someone named Carl on the phone? Because if we could keep working our way down, that would be great. Thank you. Thanks, Saurav. Thanks, Seth. Can I come into this kind of sideways? Forgive me, Seth. I do have a question. It's okay. Your microphone. Go for it. So the context is, I love what you say, I think, in the intro to the not about most of us working on hard things that can't be fixed and nothing changing. and I'm transitioning as well into trying to do more and more work with companies in that dreaded field called transformation of which I think 80 percent you know of so-called transformation programs fail certainly where the big boys get involved and I'm I guess my question is how to get your take on how brave to be leaning into the idea that there is an acknowledgement that things may not transform, that we want things to change and there is work to do to try and facilitate that.

23:30I don't like the word facilitate, to try and stimulate that. And my way in is scaring me. And it kind of goes around the idea of bringing curiosity and craftsmanship. And I've been playing around with, because it amused me with the idea of a mission statement which I've never liked to bring curiosity and craftsmanship to every builder and leader in the world and then playing around with Nike's lovely mission statement about if you've got a body you're an athlete the brackets being if you work with human beings you're already both of those things. And my gut instinct is definitely to come in with that.

24:15I do have a corporate background and lots of scar tissue and so on, but something's scaring me. And I'd love your take on whether or not to walk straight into the fear or to be a little bit more cautious. Well, let's get to that in two seconds. First, curiosity and craftsmanship are beautiful words and their delightful pairing, I think that almost everybody aspires to those two things. So in and of themselves, you start on the right foot, which is, it feels rewarding and flattering to be offered more curiosity and more craftsmanship. But I'm going to go back a couple steps. Why do most transformation programs fail in big companies?

25:03And the reason is because they want them to fail. They named it a transformation program, and then they set it up so that it would fail. And I tell the story of Netflix, and Netflix transformed a couple times, but in their last transformation, they understood that moving away from DVDs towards streaming was essential. That was the way someone was going to put them out of business. If they stayed in the DVD business, someone else built a streaming service, they were going to go out of business. So they put together a team to do the transformation. But the difference between that transformation and almost every other one is no one from the DVD division was invited to attend.

25:56Not one person, not the head of DVDs was not allowed in any of the meetings. This was critical because as soon as you invite those people into the room, now they bring their baggage with them. And their baggage is very clear, which is they sought safety and control, and they had it. And now you're offering to take it away from them. So everything they do is going to be to undermine what you're trying to do so they can have safety and control. and so when we show up and say i'm going to offer you curiosity and craftsmanship what you're really saying is i'm going to offer you more status because status is one of the two things that people want at work right their freedom from fear for sure don't i don't want to get fired but they want affiliation they want to fit in and they want status they want to move up and so when we show up at kodak which invented the digital camera and then ignored it and went bankrupt.

26:58If we'd shown up at Kodak to the top 1 ,000 people and said, I'm offering you a way to get what feels like a promotion in status, many people would have signed on for that. But instead it was, this is risky, this is scary, and there's going to be this gap you have to get through where your status is going to go way down first. And the number of people who want to sign up for that is low. So the baggage is very clear, Baggage at work is super easy to identify because anytime a company gets stuck, it's because they're holding on to baggage. Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think they're lucky that you're showing up with the bravery you have.

27:39And the last thing I would say is because you're doing one client at a time, you got nothing to lose. Go in full board. If it doesn't work, then next time do it different. Thank you. Go, go, go. Thanks, Carlo. Thank you, Carlo. Next up is Richard.

28:04Hi, Richard. Good to see you. Thank you, Seth. Haven't read the book yet. Haven't taken the class. Just listening. and so my question is i don't know if you're familiar with what used to be called the ben franklin balance sheet but you know on one side of the page he put all the pros and one side all the cons see how long the list is maybe um and i'm just visualizing that and i'm i'm wondering if the knot is a piece of the knot is about putting on one side of the page those check marks that you can put for making the decision one way the how many check marks do you get for you know addressing your neurosis your your i'm not enough your you know those superficial things versus how many check marks do you get on the side of the page for authentic values that you can clearly see when you're coming from being enough?

29:17Is that part of the unraveling process or am I making that up? No, I mean, you're totally on the right track. And Ben Franklin, what a guy. I guess what I'm getting at is when I wrote a book about quitting, it was the first book that was published by a major publisher about just looking at the idea of quitting and should you even consider quitting once i said it it opened the door for all sorts of things to happen with people exploring what that would mean that's what i'm trying to say here i'm saying we invent these external forces that we say are keeping us stuck we invent the idea that we are victimized by a system, even though some people are victimized by that system and other people in the same situation apparently aren't.

30:07So there are definitely unfair, unjust systems. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this feeling of stuck. Once we can say there is baggage holding me here, let me examine the knot. Let me see where the rope is tied and what it's tied around, now tools like Franklin's P &L are totally appropriate. But I just want to help people say honestly to themselves, this is a choice. A friend of mine said to me, I don't like lying to this circle of people. Well, then start by saying you do like lying to them more than you like telling them the truth. Because you've chosen to lie to them instead of telling them the truth.

30:57And the consequences of telling them the truth would make you uncomfortable. That's understood. But you've made the choice to lie to this circle of people. And what I want to help people understand is if a problem is important enough to us, we can find the baggage, name the baggage, drop the baggage, organize the others, and create the conditions for forward motion. And we have more tools to do that today than ever before. And we need a shared vocabulary. And so, yeah, I think you nailed it with this one of many tools. And I'm hopeful from conversations like we've been having in the last half hour that people are starting to understand not that the world is perfect, but that they might have more agency than they want to acknowledge.

31:47I look forward to reading it. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Richard. Next up is Amaya and let me spotlight her first. And she has been leading consistently and generously in purple, leading a group. So I just want to thank you for that. Amaya, please go ahead and ask your question. Hi, good to see you. So I was listening to the prompt about doing one thing at a time and many things over time today yeah and i'm wondering how do you organize that in a daily basis for example if you want to write a book and maybe look for a job and you want to do that like every day right but yeah how do you do that so you don't mix everything that you're working on yeah okay This is a perfect example.

32:43Thank you for sharing it. I want to write a book, but I also need to look for a job. I start writing the book. As soon as I hit a part in the book that's uncomfortable, I say, you know what I need to do? I need to go look for a job. Then I start going to look for a job. As soon as I bump into a rejection or something that feels uncomfortable, I say, no, I got to write my book. I go back and forth and back and forth. It's the backing and the forthing that make us stuck. If instead we say from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., the only thing I am allowed to do is write this book as a professional. And when it gets hard, I have to do it more.

33:19Your book's going to be done within three months. One hour a day for three months, your book is going to be done. If we say, I am committing to engaging with eight people in this professional community every single day, either on a phone call, a meeting, or sending them something, the more uncomfortable it makes me, the more likely it is, then I'm going to find myself in a circle of people where my job is going to get found. But when we do many things, at the same time we're doing nothing particularly well because as soon as the baggage arises we just run and go do the other thing instead and we're so busy traveling we don't get anything done okay so it would be like being specific about time blocking and just making yeah and it doesn't have to be time it can be activities how many things how many words did i write today or how many people did I do something connecting for?

34:21Whatever. But we can be task-oriented, time-oriented. The whole point is we're not traveling in our head. We are fully present when we are working on whatever we're working on. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Amaya. Bob, I am spotlighting you. Bob's camera is also, I'm not sure if you'll be, sorry. Okay. Let me ask his question myself. He's asking, how do I not keep up with my children's mother and just be the father I want to be?

35:01I'm not sure I want to dive into a question like that with so little information. Again, what I would like to do is... Hi, Bob. I think his network is off. We can discuss this on purple then. We'll discuss it on purple. I think, again, what I want to remind people of is there are situations all around us. And I am not saying that they are fair. I am not saying that there are things that we should applaud or want more of. But if you are in a situation, you have to acknowledge that there's a situation that you can't change. And then what are you going to do? And that is so freeing because it helps us realize that jousting against a situation which was fruitless was keeping us from working on the work we actually could do.

35:59And so the whole thesis falls apart if I don't acknowledge there are situations. There are situations. And in Mel Robbins' phrase, let them. if this is going on if your sister-in-law is having a destination wedding and you hate destination weddings and you hate your sister-in-law but you have to go no matter what okay it's a situation you can't change any of those things now what are you going to do and one thing i realized as i was working through the workshop is like situations are not necessarily a bad thing like in in our head it's like you know when we are trying to solve a problem like we need to solve something but once we say okay this is a situation like it's it can be a good thing and that can be a situation as well so next up set two people that i think you would love to chat with uh eva added a comment in the chat i'm adding her and enrica is here in purple and she was very generous to add another she's fantastic yeah awesome so okay so first eva new glasses you look fantastic and new hair i could yeah well yeah that looks great too but i couldn't tell because it was all yeah and enrique i haven't seen you in a long time it's great to see you yeah hi hi Enrica hi community I oh I didn't actually know I was going to come on but I I have a conversation I just made a comment because as the conversation uh has been unfolding what's occurring to me is really how you define the problem and that's so important because And I'm not even talking about how you define the problem versus the situation.

37:54I'm saying, let's agree there's a problem. But then, again, it kind of goes back to your matrix framework that you use when you talk about how we are, again, how we are defining the problem. Do you know what I'm talking about with the matrix? I love matrices. They're all over. Yes. Yeah. It could be expensive or it could be cheap or we can say that it's, you know, rich or poor. I don't know, whatever. So, yeah, that's all that was occurring to me. And it's just I'm just rethinking several things at the same time and playing with how I'm defining it. That's what's going on. No, it's, you know, one of the years and years ago, when I took over the summer camp that I used to run, one of the problems was six times a year, there was visiting day, and the parents would come, and we'd have homesickness for the next five days, which is miserable, the logistics were miserable, it just, it disrupted everything.

39:03So there was all this discussion. How do we make visiting day better? How do we figure out how to get the kids ready for visiting day? How do we use the tiny leverage we have over parents to get them to behave better on visiting day? How do we inspect packages? So they're not bringing some parents are being contrabanded to camp that brings bugs and causes. And then we said, Oh, you know what the real problem is visiting day is the problem. So we just canceled it. Right? As soon as you named what the problem actually is, the problem got way easier to solve. Naming the problem properly makes a big difference.

39:44I think also, sorry. Go ahead, go ahead, Andrika. I was thinking also the, after naming it, the choice, like the agency is just hitting me right in the face. Like you, now that it's named, I think you said, so it is what it is now what and so to be able to take agency and ownership to decide and commit and then follow through with the commitment I think that is the hard part the sticky part but we're also we can see a difference happening so thank you for the work I'm excited to get into it more well it's for you you do the work every day you're terrific both of you thank you both thank you both Enrica wrote something in the chat that I think can be a tagline for the book given what is what now right so succinctly so beautiful yeah alright we have Kato and James Kato I'm spotlighting you give me a second Eva and Enrica just give me a second cool alright thank you everybody these questions are so energizing i really appreciate you showing up hi kato hi mine was more just a comment about as i'm hearing this uh and well i'm just checking if i'm right is that the action of moving in between these pulls i'm imagining there's a string on us and every time it loops and then and then as it pulls more that's so it gets tangled And then comes this thing and this idea that vacillating eventually unchecked, that vacillating will become a snare at some point.

41:31Does that seem like some of what is there? That is a big part of it. And also it takes a lot of time. And when we're busy vacillating, we're not happy. And so back to the one thing at a time, many things over time. It's not easy being a working parent. If you're a working parent and you insist on doing a job where the only way to do the job is to be on the clock a lot, and you're spending your days at that job feeling bad that you're not at home, you're not doing the job very well, you're not doing the home thing very well, and you're not very happy. So we have to make a choice. And the choice is, do I want a job that has these requirements and what comes with that?

42:16and then every minute I'm not at the job, I'm prepared to be totally on duty as a parent. That's one path and that works great. Or do I want a different job for the next 10 years of my family's life where I have way more flexibility, but less status, maybe less pay. But in return, I have four more hours a day at home. That's the choice. But if instead we insist that all the time we're at home, it's okay to be at work and all the time we're at work, it's okay to imagine we're at home. We're not going to make anything good happen going forward. And so we feel like we're stuck in a problem when actually what we're dealing with is the consequences of a choice that created a situation.

43:01Thank you for that. Thanks. And the vacillating action, I'm going to be mindful of, oh, am I creating a tangle here? What is this about? So thank you. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you, Keto. So Keith has an epiphany. So I think I would love to have him talk about it. Here you go, Keith. Is that something that you use if you have a peanut allergy? Keith is surprised that he's spotlighted. Sorry. Why am I spotlighted? I was making an EpiPen reference. I heard you had an epiphany. Oh, oh. No, so the conversation is just making me, it's a reminder that switching our, like, what we respond to from pain, like, I'm really good at responding once something is painful enough.

43:56I'm like, all right, I better do it. I better make that call. I better get that repairman in because the water is up to my knees now. and switching to receiving signals of, is this meaningful? Is this important? Is this going to move me further ahead? I think holding on to that idea is what's been helping me over the last few years move forward, obviously. And so it's just everyone's questions and your responses and people's comments are just helping me remind myself. I don't have to wait for the pain. I can choose I can have agency uh where I can when I can and it's more often than I think and as Bob helped us remember or just let them right just let them and we do us so exactly so I wanted uh that's really important and I want to bring it into something that's life or death which is the work Paul Farmer did in Haiti with tuberculosis.

45:02And Tracy Kidder's book about it is well worth a read. And he did things that no doctor thought was normal. So one of the things with trying to prevent drug-resistant tuberculosis from infecting a community is you got to make sure your patients take their medicine every single day. And in Haiti, that might mean a patient walking for four hours to come to the clinic to get their medicine. And Paul made a rule, which he followed, which is that any physician in his clinic that had a patient who didn't show up, the doctor had to go to their house and bring them the medication. So Tracy walks with him four hours each way to give medication to one person.

45:52this doesn't match the protocols for how a doctor should be efficient what the doctor what the medical community says yeah you know if patients don't do what they're going to do it's on them and what paul said is if i create this unreasonable standard my doctors will work extraordinarily hard to make sure they never have to go on those four-hour walks they will do all sorts of things like say to patients if you come in for your medicine there's free food here for you. And it's not the patient's fault that they don't have access to food. And there's nothing wrong with us supplying the patient with an incentive to do what's going to help them in the long run.

46:35By letting go of the institutional baggage of how a doctor is supposed to engage with a patient and letting go of the status of doctors don't go walking four hours each way for one patient. That's not efficient. Then they get back to the purpose of the work. And the purpose of having plumbing that doesn't leak is so that your house is stable and waiting until it's an emergency doesn't match why you said you wanted to have good plumbing, right? You were reacting. In the case of Haiti and Partners in Health, what Farmer was doing was modeling, it is possible to go to one of the poorest countries in the world and create a TB regimen.

47:20In fact, he succeeded where it was less on a percentage basis than the city of Boston in terms of patients who developed drug-resistant TB. It was possible. It was simply inconvenient. But by demonstrating it was possible, he opened the door to the WHO and other organizations changing the regimes that they brought to TB. Because once we see it's possible, now we're on the hook. And we got to go ahead and solve the problem because we said it was important in the first place. Thanks, Keith. Thank you, Keith. We'll do one more question set and then we'll start wrapping up. Hans has a question. I'm spotlighting.

48:09Yeah, thank you. Can you hear me well? Yes, beautifully. Okay. I'm very sure many of you know the technique. And I've read about it in several books. And only when I tried it out, I found out that in some cases, I asked, yeah, about why is this a problem? Why is this a problem? And then I realized, hold on, where does it stop? I could go on forever. I wonder how you experienced that. And what did you do then? Because sometimes I feel lost. There is no root cause. You can, like I said, can move on forever. I'm sorry. So when you're saying, why am I stuck? Or you're saying, why is the world like this?

48:53Yeah, I mean, why is it a problem that parents visit us? Why is the visit day the problem? Yeah, that's because, you know, and then you keep going and you finally arrive somewhere intuitively. but sometimes you don't. That happened to me. So where do I stop? Where do I stop? This is actually the root cause. I think where you stop is where your stated purpose lies. And if it's not clear or your stated purpose isn't really your stated purpose, you need to change it. So the stated purpose at Camp Arrow 1 was to create a constructive, generative culture for the campers. Camp is for the campers. It is not for the counselors.

49:35It is not for the parents. We serve the counselors. If it helps the campers, we serve the parents. If it helps the campers, we, everything we're doing is to do that, not to make a profit, not to, right. So it's very clear what the purpose is. So now you only have to ask why about visiting day three times before you say, oh, well, we have to cancel visiting day. And if your stated purpose is something that a committee came up with, now you have a problem. So Johnson & Johnson is a big medical company in the United States, and they are very proud of their mission statement. So proud that they have engraved it on giant granite blocks outside of their headquarters.

50:21My friend Simon told me about this. And it's all about helping patients and whatever. Except this is the same company that got in trouble for putting asbestos into baby powder. Because they cut corners to make profits. So that's really their purpose. And they are willing to serve patients as long as it helps them make profits. So we have to keep coming back to, well, what is the thing that you've decided you're trying to solve here? Yeah. Thank you. I think Seth's connection dropped. I'll remove you from spotlight hands. All right. While Seth rejoins, I am spotlighting myself. Yeah. I wanted to.

51:13I'm sorry. I disappeared. I'm back. Seth, you're back. Just give me a second. Let me spotlight you. Here you go. I don't know how I offended the people at Zoom, but I just. Okay. Hello. Are you continuing with answering hands? No, I've exhausted my rant. I'm ready for the next. And at some point, we're going to use up people's time. But I can do this all day. I'm very happy. All right. I wanted to take some time to talk about not chats. And let me just set the stage for you. There are people in our world near us, friends and family, who are stuck. and there are people in purple who can help us you know work through a problem most like my assertion is most problems need attention and love and care you just need a patient human being to sit with you and for you to talk it out loud and seth you have generously created this not chat tool and so like if you can share a bit about that on how we can leverage it in the community that we have, that would be great.

52:26Okay. I haven't launched it to the world yet. Am I coming through? Cause my phone, my phone is still weird. You can see me. Okay. So we're launching it to the public in two weeks, but you get to go first. It's at the not.chat. And when you get there, it works great on phones. You and the person you're coaching both see on your phone, one thing, and the coach can go through step by step and have a conversation with you and you see the prompts on your phone. It's a miracle. I don't know how it works, but I made it work. Anyway, it leads to a conversation of five, 10, 15 minutes, similar to what we've been talking about here, but much more focused.

53:09And what I'm hoping will happen is that first you'll find someone inside Purple to have a not chat with, and then you will pay it forward by doing this one person at a time or groups of three, either in purple or in the real world to have these conversations. It only takes a few minutes, but it helps us drill down layer after layer. What's the problem? Where's the baggage? Where's my agency? What am I going to do now? So it's the not that chat doesn't collect any information about you. It doesn't try to sell you anything. It's super simple and it should work on your phone. Yeah. And logistically, if you are interested in starting a Nord chat, just post on purple, tag the Nord group, say I want to do a Nord chat and a lot of people will raise their hand to join you on Zoom or wherever to do it.

53:58So do that. This has been a lovely set. Let's see, as we wrap up, I just want to thank everyone. The way everyone has interacted on the boards throughout these weeks and being vulnerable like putting real issues up front which takes a lot of courage and you know working with the not bot which kind of like sometimes you know it's it's it's a bot after all but but what i'm seeing is like it takes a lot of courage to put something out front for other people to comment for a bot to comment and to open up a not and a lot of people have so generously participated in the North Sprint. And today it's been just wonderful, like the way the questions have come up.

54:43And I think each of the questions was not just about the person who was asking. Like everyone had something pop up in their head and they were like, thank you for asking this question. I wanted to ask that myself. So a lot of gratitude for everyone. This is such a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of this community. set a closing riff from you as we wrap up the session today. I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful to you, Saurabh, and I'm grateful to the energy and magic and heart of people. Some people on this call I've been working with for 10 or 20 years now and seeing these faces and your progress and the way you're helping other people with their progress, it's just thrilling.

55:28That's why you write a book. That's why you show up in a community. I couldn't do this without all of you. Thank you. Thank you, Seth. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you on the boards. Keep asking your questions. Keep helping each other. See you. Bye. Thank you, Seth. Thanks, everybody.