Greg McKeown - How Essentialism Brings Meaning to Your Life

29:43Now, I knew part of this story, but what he observed was the blinking of her eyes was a different pace. Oh my gosh. tiny micro different improved speed from an hour before and this is the thing that hadn't occurred to me this like literal idea like for the blink of an eye she would fall into a coma and died and and then the plot thickens a little because he suggested immediate hospitalization which she was immediately hospitalized but the treating physician did not believe that she had encephalitis which is what he was now hypothesizing and would rather have treated her for a genetic condition which means managing her death.

30:23And so that the whole time he was saying that, and even when we finally saw micro improvements ourselves for the first time in months, he still didn't buy it. And so if he'd had that decision-making power, he would have shifted the treatment. And I really rather suspect she would have died. So it's been years now, and she is back and she is whole again, and she's well again at the time of this conversation. And all of this to say the following. I know I've shared a few sort of thesis things because I've learned more than one thing from the lesson, but one of them is this. Well, I dropped her off recently for a mission for a year and a half in Brazil.

30:59It's not high risk now in terms of her health is stabilized and more than stabilized. But as I drop her off, I have this kind of essentialist judgment day. I don't know. I don't know if to have a better term, but I could see her whole life flash before my eyes. I thought it was going to be a happy moment sending her off because it's such a good and positive thing. It was not for me. It was extremely painful for about, I don't know, about an hour, extremely painful, much more than I expected. And I had this sort of, this sense of everything that had happened and it was done now, not my parenting, but her childhood is done and all the suffering she went through and all the experiences we went through.

31:38And I thought, did I miss it? Did I miss it or did I, was I there for it? Did I, did I, did I get it or did I, did I not get it? And to what extent did I get it or not get it? And I came out of that feeling relieved from the pain because I was like, no, we were there and I was there for it. And we traveled together, we made memories together and we invested together. But my goodness, what if this moment I was suddenly realizing I had missed it, what would that mean in this moment? And the other thing, the final thing I learned in And that, you know, this crescendo experience of learning is that life is not divided into relationships of 1X, 2X and 3X.

32:19They're divided into relationships of 1X and 10X and 100X and 1000X. And my relationship with my wife, Anna, and with my children, these are the 1000X relationships. Now, there are 100X and there are 10X and all the Xs have a place. and they all, because all people matter, people are certainly the primary criteria to evaluate other decisions in life. Relationships are the very point of life. So there's things that are less than one X important, right? Like maybe the social media or maybe just worrying, or I don't know, any number of things that you could say are truly non-essential. But there are a few things that are exponentially more important.

33:02They are the thousand Xs and they are the test to me of like life itself. Can I live in such a way that I can have deep quality and quantity experiences that are emotionally connected, deeply close, safely attached? This to me is as close to the test of life as I have been able to imagine or articulate. That's really the final lesson that the experience with you taught me.

33:40I'm speechless. I really am speechless. I mean, my job as a podcaster is to listen to you and always in the back of my mind think what the next question is going to be. I didn't. because I honestly feel that this was a thousand X conversation. I mean, if you compare to my experience when losing Ali, there were two phases, two stages to losing Ali. One was when we knew that something went wrong, but didn't know what was going to happen. And then when we were told he was not going to make it. And quite interestingly, it was harder when we did it. I mean, I think most people know by now that both me and my ex and my daughter and all of us as a family, you have a very clear definition of death that doesn't believe that Ali is in a bad place.

34:33But that wasn't it because we still miss him. We still want him in our life. He was really the pillar of our life. But that struggle of not knowing where he was going, what will happen, was probably the toughest 10 hours of my life. And you had to go through that for years. Interesting. My God, you hit my heart when you said, did I miss it? Because you know what? When you're, you know, I hope Eve will be a grandma and you will hug her when you're in your 80s and she will be wonderful all her life. When Ali left, when you lose him, you hate what you missed. Right. So I remember vividly Nibel, my ex, sitting next to me around a week or so after Ali died.

35:25And she was holding a photo album. And she flipped through the photo album and looked at him as an infant and said he was so calm and peaceful, never really cried. The joy of, you know, of any child or any infant I've ever seen. But then he died, she said. And I thought she was referring to then he died because he died. And then, you know, you go through the albums and then she starts to look at his pictures when he was seven and we were at Disney. And, you know, he was so much fun and so kind and always held his sister and, you know, very loving. And she was like, what a wonderful child. She, you know, remembered how his kindergarten and grade one teacher used to, when we would pick him up, she would say, he's so respectable.

36:16You know, which six year old is respectable, right? But that was Ali. And, you know, she recites that and then she says, and then he died, right? Then he looks at his, she looks at his pictures when he was 12 and then his pictures when he was 16. and when he had his band and was so successful and so loved by everyone. And then she said, and then he died. And I suddenly realized that she was talking about each of them, that each of them died, right? You get your child as an infant for a couple of years, you get them struggling with words for a year, you get them, every phase doesn't last and then they leave and do you miss it?

36:56But what really hit my heart, Greg, is that I know the feeling of did I miss him, did I miss part of that because he left. But you're talking about the feeling of did I miss it even through the suffering now that she stayed. And that's so, that's almost enlightenment if you ask me. I mean, this is truly, I always compare life to video games and I say the whole idea is to live fully through the game. It doesn't matter if you win the level or not, because, you know, 40 minutes later, if you've missed the game and still won the level, what was the point? Right. And this hit me so hard. And the idea of you exponentially saying it's 1x, 10x, 100x and 1000x, that will remain in my heart forever, because that's really the way to look at it.

37:52Because truly and honestly, there are relationships that are 1000x. and there are relationships that are a hundred and a hundred is so big compared to the one, right? But the thousand is so big compared to the hundred and I think, I don't know, I really think what you just did is you changed my life forever. This truly is what I've been looking for to drop all of the endless things that I have been doing and honestly not savoring, not not you know not fully being in them just doing them because i have to do them no what you just shared is so beautiful and i knew coming into this conversation about about ali and and so to share that and to make that connection itself is powerful and you went beyond that too that idea of each moment, each phase of a child's life, for example, dying is so real.

38:54And I think that is exactly what the pain was in that moment is, you know, I said to her, we were all in the car driving as we were about to drop her off. And that's when I suddenly just felt very emotional. And I don't cry very much as a, maybe because I grew up in England. It's just, I don't know if that's why, but, but, but I, I just couldn't help it at all through this whole period. And, and I said to her out loud, I'm like, Eve, this is utterly ridiculous that we're dropping you off right now. Aren't you still three, you know, aren't you still three wearing that one dress that you would never, you just wore every day, every day, every day was your go-to dress.

39:35Aren't you still 10? Aren't you still, aren't you still sick? Aren't you still 14 and 15 and 16. And, and, and I really could feel that it was so peculiar, so painful to think she isn't that anymore. And that is done. And now that doesn't mean that, you know, I can't miss the next phase. It's, it's not missing the next piece of course is the, is the therefore what, but, but you've helped to help to thin slice what it is that, that we're mourning in that moment, what it is we, it is done, whether we missed it or not, not those moments are gone now. And what I think was, what I think is beautiful about this conversation is something like this, like, so there's lots of things that are important.

40:29And these things, a few things that are a thousand X, these few relationships, and all of that is true. And I would add to that another criteria, which is what matters most is what lasts longest. I think that's another way of thinking about evaluative criteria. It's like the Lindy effect that we started with books, but applied to relationships like that, which lasts longest. And nothing lasts longer than the intergenerational family, like nothing. Cities last longer than countries, generally speaking. Countries last longer than companies, but companies last longer than houses most of the time.

41:03But family is intergenerational. It's way, way more resilient, way more resilient than cities and countries. And so that suggests where things are most important. But I think one can say, and I don't think it's just a semantic idea, that what matters most of all is what happens next. And I think there's something really deep in that for us, which is, you know, so for you and for I, we've made the choices we've made. it because even though I concluded that in my test in dropping off Eve, that I had spent more time on what mattered than I got it right more often than not, that I hadn't missed it.

41:47That doesn't mean I never missed it. It doesn't mean I got it right all the time. Of course, that's not true. I mean, I'm off track all the time. And if I'm doing anything right, it's that I am evaluating it more often than the average person may be so that I get back on track a little faster. So like, that's the, like, I think there's sort of two kinds of people in life. There are people who are lost and there are people who know they are lost. And it's how quick can you get into the, I know I'm lost phase so that you know what to do about it. My father, my father never knew he could get lost anywhere.

42:20And I have, he gave me that gift, sort of directionally challenged. But I remember distinctly as a child that we would be lost and he would say, I feel it. I feel it's down here. And I learned that he didn't feel, I don't know what he felt. Don't trust that. Yeah, exactly. But of course, the thing is, as soon as you admit you're lost, you know what to do. You know exactly what to do. If you're lost, you stop, you ask directions pre-GPS. GPS, okay, you stop and you put the directions in. In our lives, it's also true. As soon as you admit you're lost, you go, okay, let me sit down and think. It might not be easy to do, but let me ponder it.

42:59Let me look at my life. Let me pray. Let me meditate. Let me examine. We know what to do if we admit it. Now, all of that back to this idea that what matters most is what happens next. It's this. It's like everybody listening, you and I included, all of us. we have some regrets we have things we ought to do differently the gift is this next moment yeah we get to choose again we get to choose now yeah we can't change the past that is true but i tell you something that's so profound to me it this is this is deep man is that we cannot change the past but we can change the meaning of the past and if you can change the meaning of the past I don't know what the difference is between that and changing the past.

43:51I literally don't know what the difference is. The meaning is what describes, like, if you read a book, and the whole story goes one way, and then the next chapter changes everything. and that the person you thought was good was bad or the person you thought was bad was good. Everything changes before as well. The whole story changes. And so it's what you do next that matters most. Whatever people have lost, whatever errors people have made, whatever trade-offs we've made towards the non-essential, let's say, or that we've under-invested in the most important relationships in our lives, which is likely to be the case, it's what we do now, next.

44:31What do we do in the next moment? moment that the now has been measured it's like been measured it used to just be sort of a philosophical idea we all live in the now but but now has been measured in a variety of ways in in by psychologists not least of all and they found that there is a sort of neurological measurement to it and it's about between two and three seconds long that's what we mean when we say now and and so we all live in this perpetual two to three second moment where we have memories and so on the the conjure a sense that there's the time moves forward and is long and and all of this but we live in this micro thing and and and what do we do now right now how can we make a new trade-off how can we start a new life and that and that is to me an empowering part of this this story I think this is profound in every possible way.

45:26Also, by the way, I think it's profound when you said you can change the meaning of the past. Again, on Ali's story, and I know it sounds almost as if I'm trying to tell myself something to feel better about it, but think about it this way. I know for a fact that Ali left our world to trigger me to do what I did with my life, right? I know that for a fact, but it's not a fact. It is not. I mean, when you really, really think about it, I could say Ali left our world to torture me or Ali left our world because the surgeon made a mistake, right? But at the end of Soul for Happy, I basically said when nothing is certain and nothing ever is, you might as well choose what makes you happy, right?

46:20There is really no way you can put this through the scientific method and tell yourself, no, by the way, through mathematics and scientific proof, it turns out that Ali did not leave to launch me on my mission, which helped millions, tens of millions of people find happiness, right? But there is also no way you can scientifically prove otherwise, right? You cannot prove for or against it. So you might as well look back at the past. Like you look back at Eve's story and you say, gratitude is to accept all of life, all of life, including the struggle, the suffering, the joy, the brief moments when there was chocolate and that, you know, small moment when you bit the, you know, the pit of the olive and it hurt your tooth, right?

47:11All of them are experiences. All of them can actually be interpreted into something I can be grateful for. Yes, because this is it, right? Like in that moment, in this now, it's meaning or suffering. Yeah. Oh my God, that's so profound. Man, dropping those words. Listen, people, everyone listening, please. In this moment, it's either meaning or suffering. That's so profound. If you're looking back at a negative experience, you can either find meaning in it or you'll just suffer. And so, I mean, I do think in the final analysis, you have to make up your mind. I don't know if it's even making up your mind.

48:03That's not quite right. You have to detect that there is meaning or you don't detect it and you will be left with suffering. Like, those are the choices. Those are the preconditions. Now, you can deal with suffering in another way where you can try to, which is to numb it. And that really, I think, is ultimately the path of the non-essentialist. Like in a kind of extreme way, that's what the non-essentialist is doing, is they're saying, I can immediately numb the sense of suffering or the sense of being lost. I can just immediately, I mean, that's the promise, right? If I go onto YouTube, so let me be YouTube is my social media, one of my social media vices, right?

48:52And the promise is you can go immediately get something that's exactly through an algorithm has been designed to be most grasping to me, most immediately consuming and not satisfying, not happy, not meaning, none of those things. But that's the promise of it. And so you can immediately alleviate your sense of suffering, at least pretend to, you know, distract yourself from it. And so that's sort of, that I still think is the path of suffering because it leads to what has been called, it's not my terminology, I can't remember who said it, but the dark playground. You know the whole time, this is not the way.

49:35You know this is only keeping you from what you will find again as soon as you stop doing it. And so I really do think it's like this, that is the choice, right? And it's pre, it is pre, how would you say this? Yeah, I don't mean predetermined like in an eternal predetermination sense, like a religious terminology. I just mean, you know, that there is something deeply in our biology and our psychology that means these are our choices, suffering or meaning. And so when I think about essentialism in this higher sense, let me take the conversation here. I think about it. I think about how foolish so many of the philosophies of the last 40 or 50 years are.

50:35I'm going deep into this right now, but like, let's riff on this. So we all, everybody listening knows Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Even if you've ever taken any introductory course to psychology or none, if you've ever read almost any book on psychology, anything, you've seen this hierarchy, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's utilized everywhere. And at the highest point of the hierarchy of needs, he wrote self-actualization, which is a little more than this, but it's pretty much achievement ethic. It's what do I individually want to achieve? And the thing that's interesting to me about that is that's wrong, is not the highest human need.

51:19But what's interesting is that that's what he thought. He thought that was wrong. So before he died, and it's far less well known this, that before he died, he wrote a final book. And in the final book, he updated Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So he changed what was at the top from self-actualization, like achievement ethic, to self-transcendence, which is, you know, it's all about living with a higher sense of purpose and meaning. And it's also embedded in there the idea that you can become truly unified with somebody else. And that that is what you should aspire for is deep, is actually like, he didn't use this language, but like I'm using it now, deep dependence in a relationship.

52:12And that that was the highest aspiration. And it just didn't get updated in any of the literature. And so the thing he's most famous for, he himself did not believe by the time he died. And the difference is not just this interesting anecdote about Maslow. It's that we have been taught to live independently and separately from each other. We've been taught that the language of psychology has emphasized the risks of codependency. Think of the language, codependency. You need each other too much, and that is the problem. To become enmeshed in a relationship, that's not what you want. What you want is not to be dependent.

52:51You want to be independent. And if you ever get beyond that, it should be for interdependence, which is that I am fully whole myself, and you are fully whole yourself. And so then together we kind of cooperate in an almost corporate way, you know, that we have a win-win together, sort of a contractual relationship, and that somehow this is the heightened, highest level of maturity in a relationship. That is wrong. That is actually wrong. We have data, simultaneously data has been created, starting with Balbi. And he, I know that I'm riffing a long time on this now, but forgive me. that so Balby was an English well he was raised in a gentleman's home and an Englishman and he was allowed to eat dinner with his family once he turned 11 or 12 well not eat the whole meal he was able to join them for dessert and he was he went to a boarding school after that and the reason that like the the norms of the gentleman class as it relates to children was directly related to this kind of thinking about what makes a healthy, mature relationship.

54:03If you were emotionally connected with your child, you're going to raise namby-pamby children who can't cope in the world. And that affected not just behavior in families, but in policies too. If you were to drop off even a two or three-year-old child at a hospital, they would go in alone. You would leave them at the doors. If you were allowed to see them, it would be for one hour per week. And Balby became a psychologist eventually, and he was able to articulate what was wrong with all of this thinking. And he was the one that created attachment theory. But that attachment theory is also now, even after he died, has been researched, perhaps a thousand items of academic literature has been written on this, and how it applies to adult relationships.

54:46He wasn't even alive to see that work. But what we know now is that this idea of independence or self-actualization is as wrong as it can be when it comes to actual happiness. What we need is to be, as not my term either, but effective dependence. How different that is than what we've been taught. We need to need each other. We need to know that we are needed. We need to know that someone will be there for us, emotionally connected. And that these things, there's like a crescendo of all these ideas because that's what a thousand X relationship looks like. That's how important it is. but then you need to invest so that you really can rely on each other through absolutely whatever comes.

55:28Greg McEwen, everyone, this is him. Listen to what this man is bringing. Incredible. Honestly, incredible. One of the most interesting debates I always have, Greg, is that sometimes we try, we identify a problem and we try to solve it by solving the wrong problem. that idea of when a couple is dependent and they become needy and jealous and when a child is dependent on the parent and the parent will will think that 15 years from now this child is never going to be able to do anything on their own and so on the answer is no reject dependence while the actual problem has nothing to do with dependence the actual problem is if there's too much of something, it's because of a symptom or a cause that's not in the core of the relationship, the core of the relationship of a child and a mother is dependence.

56:27This is how it's supposed to be, right? This is our, you know, nature really. And for you to say it so bravely, it just begs the question, is your definition of essentialism then that this is all about human relationships, that none of the jobs that we chase, none of the money, none of the things that we buy, not even the experiences and the trips that you can post on Instagram, that what this is really all about, the most essential, the thousand X, if you compare across categories, is human connection. Yeah, it is. But that's an evolution. I mean, it is inherent in essentialism. I mean, when you actually, if somebody reads the whole book and they were looking for that, they would find that at any time that I'm giving an illustration of trade-off, that is how I would express the trade-off.

57:22I felt, I not fell short, I deliberately chose not to get too specific as to what I thought was essential, because I thought, look, that's sort of in the eye of the reader to grapple with. But in the preceding years or the years since writing Essentialism and the research and writing I'm doing now is explicitly on this. It is, well, let me summarize it this way. Like, let's say we live in the loneliest time in recorded history, which is true, right? The data isn't really ambiguous about this. And it's getting worse, right? We've digitized the world on a promise that you can digitize everything that matters, and it still works.

58:14It's like the line from The Social Network where the character playing Zuckerberg is saying, look at this. My goodness, I'm a social outcast at Harvard. it. I'm not socially savvy with people, but my goodness, if I digitize it all, then I can still be popular and cool and connect with everybody. And we even use that language. We adopted the language of connection. Hey, let's connect online. And as if it's the same thing, as if, and we know, I mean, it's not, not only is it not the same thing, and that doesn't mean there isn't a place for digital connection. I'm not a Luddite about this, but the idea that it can replace that it's equal in quality to the relationship in our home.

58:58I mean, I just had on the podcast, I just had the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, just on a podcast just recently, he wrote a book called Tools and Weapons. And he's sort of saying, look, technology can be a tool or a weapon, right? And at least he admits it because my experience in Silicon Valley for the last 15 years is that it's really rare that someone will because everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid of whatever company they're a part of. It's like they only ever expressed the asymmetric bet. This is all going to be upside. It's true for Google. It's true for Facebook. It's true at Apple.

59:29I've worked with all of these companies many times. It's not like I think they don't do good, but the idea that there's no downside is so preposterous. He said it this way. He said for like a hundred years, he said, we've, we have, we have made it easier to connect with people that live a long way from us at the expense of connecting people who live closest to us. And the idea that that trade-off is happening is self-evident once you hear someone express it. And, and so, and so when I, I just think about this non on It's a non-neutral environment that we're living in. and I have come again to hate my phone.

1:00:14Like I really just hate it. I hate having it with me. I don't want it. And it's so complex because there are so many forms of utility that are embedded in it and good things. And I use it for good things too. But I just awakened to how seriously it disrupts the chance of that safe attachment, emotional connection, deeply rewarding relationships. It is, I think, actually anti that aspiration. And so in order to try to increase the probability that I have that in my own home, I literally am putting my phone away far more and for hours at a time and just leave it. And it's We've got to get to a life where those non-neutral actors play a very small role because they're not incentivized to help me achieve that goal at all.

1:01:09They're incentivized to have me consumed at the other end of the importance spectrum. 100%. I mean, so what does this mean to purpose in life that goes beyond human connection? Like listening to you teach me the exponential nature of relationships, you know, it's a no-brainer that in my mind, I'd probably put my daughter and Hannah and, you know, I'd put my mother and I put my, you know, close friends and so on. I'll put those in the 1000X. And, you know, I'll put you in the 500X because I really need to talk to you more. I love it, Mo. I love it. That's so kind. But the question is this, the question is, if you want to simplify the mathematics, that simply means I shouldn't be doing anything else, honestly.

1:01:59I shouldn't be writing more books. I shouldn't be recording this podcast. I shouldn't be working on anything related to artificial intelligence. Because honestly, if it comes to my selfish joy, if you want, I know my 1000x, right? So how do you strike a balance between that? I mean, where does the line reside? Where, you know, is it primacy and recency? Is it, you know, is it I fulfill this first and then the leftover time I allocate to something else? Is it a ratio? What do you do? Well, I'm grappling with it. That's the truth. I'm in the wrestle. And I think that's not a bad posture in life is to be wrestling with it rather than just going along with whatever is the default norm of our times.

1:02:50I don't think it's a healthy choice to be in the, I just do what everybody does, especially now, because I think that there are so many toxic forces that either take for granted, oh yes, family and thousand X, they don't say thousand X, but family, oh, that will always be that. And it's like, no, you're teaching constantly that that doesn't matter, that self-actualization is the top of the hierarchy, that it's just about you achieving what you want in life and that's the way to both be happy and also to make the best contribution it's like this is we're being taught this constantly and and it is literally making people miserable i heard someone go ahead no please mo i didn't mean to no i i was saying miserable while you were saying it too yeah yeah because somebody said this recently to me and i've started doing research to sort of in a sense back it up because i want the academic research behind But they said psychologists have found that there's no difference between misery and thinking about yourself.

1:03:49And so they were suggesting that it literally loads on the same statistical axis. In other words, the relationship is identical. is literally the more you think about self, not reflecting about how you're doing in life, but just being self-oriented, selfish, self-centered, narcissistic eventually, like that this equals misery and that they're just the same thing. And we have now data, I just was listening to an interview with an author, I can't remember the name of the author, but he's gone back and they finally have enough data to show that starting in 2012, which is really sort of where the social media and smartphones collided in a sort of a new way.

1:04:35I mean, of course, when the iPhone first came out, there was no social media attached to it. There was no apps attached to it. So what it was designed to do is, of course, very, very different than what it's become. But at 2012, they can show that from that point, the suffering, particularly in adolescent girls, the depression, all of this is directly proportional. And of course, all this social media, we talk about it being like, I mean, who designed it? My goodness. And what was the criteria? And what did they believe about the world? And forget the incentives, which of course are really unhelpful.

1:05:11You know, we just want more people to click and be addicted more time, you know, be hooked. I mean, all of that doesn't help. But I think even that understanding of the human condition is so questionable. And so then it is literally just led to this suffering in the world. Look, it seems to me that the number of people in the world who are getting the balance wrong in favor of too much family and too much close connection with them and not enough time for other things. What's the what's the ratio? Do I actually know anybody myself who I think is taking is too invested in the key relationship in their life and not interested enough in the people outside of them?

1:05:55I don't know if I can name anybody. So that's worth considering, right? Like, are we solving, do we even need to try and solve that problem? Or it could get too far in that way. I think it's more like this. I mean, I believe each of us has a mission in life, not to select, not even to design, but to detect. I think that's right. it's there and it has to be this it has to be you know like like like uh the the marble thing right cutting away the marble and then the the masterpiece is there like it's there and we have to start saying no to the things that we go well it's not that it's not that it's not this it's not the other and then and then then our real mission uh unfolds and and do i think that that includes more than the thousand X relationships?

1:06:50Yes. I personally do. I feel great mission to be able to reach out and impact people beyond that immediate core. So I think the answer is yes. For a start, mathematically, if you could impact a million Xs, then that of course adds up to a lot of importance. And they themselves are part of their own families and they have responsibilities there. So if I can help people to be able to invest in what matters in their own world, that makes a big contribution. Nevertheless, if I get to the point, if I ever get to the point, me, I'm just talking about me, nobody else. If I got to the point where I succeeded with millions and millions of people out there, billions even and i fail with anna and with my children no that is a that for me is obviously you know like a bill of goods i've been sold a bill of goods i have i've made a fool's bargain and so and so i think it's it's how

1:08:02it is about priority right so the word priority came into the english language in the 1400s it was singular it was one thing it was the priorist thing it was the first thing it stayed singular according to Drucker for 500 years so half a millennia later somebody says oh we got so many things that are so important i think we should just have priority let's just ns and confuse everyone honestly though and i don't i don't even know what the word means now because how can you have very very many, very first before all other things, things, right? Like the whole point of why the word is so useful is that it helps you to what's the priority.

1:08:39And so the priority for me in 2024 is to work in a disciplined way to build routines, rituals, and systems to make sure that my wife and I feel deeply connected, safely attached. And from there, of course, our children from that relationship, because that's the most important single thing that we can do to help them also feel safely attached to us. And that's the priority for me for this year. And does that mean that we won't have this podcast conversation? No. When you get the priority right, when you get the perspective right, things fall into their proper place. And you know at the margin what you'll do so that if there comes a point where I go, okay, my wife really needs me, or even my child really needs me, and I have this commitment on the calendar, I can get rid of the commitment.

1:09:48I can say no. If somebody comes up, if I've designed my life right, when somebody just got a very, very attractive offer to do a keynote, a certain date in the, you know, a few weeks from now, we already have a family vacation planned on those that week, the answer is an easy no. It's an easy no, because it's something already built there, so that you're protecting those relationships in the future so that you're not just reactively making the decision along the way. That's what I'm trying to design. If I can design the system right, then there's still tremendous opportunity to make a difference to other people outside of the 1000X relationships.

1:10:33In a sense, you move into a sort of mentoring role where you say, well, listen, this is what I'm learning. I've got all these things wrong. This is the things that seem to work. let me share so you can learn on the cheap and design and detect a life that that uh that that also really matters so that's kind of how i'm thinking about it what would you say to those who are a different are at a different stage in life or at a different you know level of privilege if you want i mean at the end of the day you know think of someone who really has to work two jobs, right? Or, you know, three jobs. Think of someone, a single mother who, you know, has to really take care of her children and has no time to go out dating or finding another, you know, person in her life.

1:11:19And, you know, think there are so many who don't have the choice to focus on what matters. What would your advice be as they're caught up in just keeping up with life? the first thing I want to say is just like, like, I just feel, I feel a lot of compassion in sort of welling up in me as you ask me that question, you know, because it's, I mean, it's really true, right? Like, I mean, if you go back into the 1820s, which I know is a weird place for me to suddenly go in the conversation, but if you go back to the 1820s, we romanticize that period of time. And, and, and, and some of that does seem like it was, the system built was more essentialist, right?

1:12:02You lived at home generally, you worked in nature generally, there was no electricity. So when you got home in the evening, you would spend time with each other. The level of distraction was almost zero compared to now. I mean, there's something beautiful about that, some of those things, but life was so hard, so desperately hard for almost everybody just to survive. That part doesn't come through when we look back with our current privileged, successful. And I mean, broadly speaking, the success of the whole world now in comparison to that, they had no choices at all. And we are inundated with choices for the most part for most people.

1:12:41Now, so life has been surviving was everything before we are in a new era, but there's so many people who struggle to get the food on the table, to pay for a roof over their heads this week. So many people living paycheck to paycheck. I once coached somebody who was terrified of losing a job all the time and she was really competent. And so I was surprised by it and was like, okay, we'll unpack it with me for a bit. Like why the fear? You've kept the job already for years. You're competent in it. You're devoted to it. And she said, look, what came out? She said, my parents aren't living. I have no siblings.

1:13:25I'm not married. I have no children. I have no extended family. I really don't have much of a community. There was no church. She wasn't going to a church. She wasn't going to any religious community. She said, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. If I lose my job, I'm like two weeks from being homeless at any one time and there's nobody there for me. You know, that's how she felt. Okay, so that's who you're talking about, right? Or at least somebody, it's many people like her. In those situations, I feel that what's essential becomes very different. Yeah, I mean, maybe. So there was a study that was done in urban cities and it was of single mothers and it was asking them what their life was before they had a child and afterwards.

1:14:15And what they found was that is like universally across the research is that they just described that their lives suddenly became full of meaning. Their suffering went down. Their sense of belonging increased. Like actually, even what we would describe, and for good reason, to be a really difficult circumstance to be a single mother in an urban area. What sounds tougher than that? And yet, and yet the meaning sort of made this significant shift in that. That was like suddenly not having to think about self all the time and the exhaustion of that and to be able to devote to somebody else itself was was tremendously helpful and so I think that what's different isn't what is important I think what's different is is how that gets manifest right so like when when my children are young Anna and I are spending all this time I mean Anna more than me but like we're definitely team players working together too you know you're you are you are feeding each child actually feeding them, putting the food in their mouth.

1:15:31The activity is different. I don't have to do that for any of my children now. So the activity has changed, but not who's important hasn't changed, just behavior. Earlier on in my career, it's a tougher set of trade-offs because you've got to just work or you're working 40 hours a week and I'm not in control of my own schedule. So that definitely was a tougher time, but not who's most important. It's just, will in order to serve my family i this is the work that i'm doing for sure yeah and so i think that's the shift and and and i didn't write essentialism or effortless because i think the world like you don't write a book like let me just talk about effortless for just one second to make the point you don't write a book called effortless because you think the life is effortless you write because you acknowledge that everybody almost all the time is suffering and is there a way of thinking or operating in the world that will be a little less hard, that it doesn't have to be hard all the time.

1:16:36And so really, I feel like I have primarily written these books for the person who feels most disempowered, the person who feels most desperate, that they feel they don't have the choices. They feel like they have to do everything they're doing, that they don't have as i say a sense of choice this is who i wrote it for it's not it's not like those people are the afterthought to me yeah i mean in a very interesting way i think i think the you know so of course because of the of what i do i get a lot of people you know i'm so honored that they trust me with their stories and their struggles and their suffering and you know it's it's it's quite interesting because you said two things that I normally say, not so eloquently, but it's either meaning or suffering, I think is very important to understand, right?

1:17:31You being a single mother, or you being the provider, or you being chosen to go through a certain struggle is actually in a way, of course, suffering, but in another way, it's a privilege because it's either developing you, training you, making you a better person, or because it's about someone else that you care about. So, you know, so there is definitely meaning in that. I think the way we frame it in our minds makes a very big difference because if you frame it as, you know, I'm stuck with those kids. I, you know, I'm struggling all the time. This is so difficult. It's very different than I love those kids.

1:18:06I want them to be happy. I want to give them part of my life, you know, and they're worth that part of my life. The other, which, you know, which I always think about all the time and advise people all the time is the idea that the next moment is what matters, right? And it's lovely that you started our conversation by saying everyone is suffering, right? I'm supposed to be a happiness expert. And, you know, I tell people this year is about my book, Unstressable and how to be unstressed and so on and so forth. And, you know, I started the year on the first workday of the year, I get 14 WhatsApp conversations at 6am in the morning, booking my schedule all the way to March 18th, right?

1:18:46Literally every single minute of every single day, you know? And it's quite interesting because, you know, I have other priorities like you in life. I want to get closer, you know, to Hannah. I want to spend more time with Aya and so on and so forth. And it's, you know, it's the next moment that matters because I have to tell you that day, I was almost getting into like desperation. Like, what is this? It's, you know, but yes, I sit back and I look at it and I say, okay, it's not going to be easy to fix January, but we can now look at February and, you know, make sure that March is amazing. Right.

1:19:21And I think nobody is helpless. You know, I think if you sit down and find your priorities around the next moment and do it right, it starts to be better. It may not solve the challenge altogether, but it starts to be better. And, you know, interestingly, one of the things that I really struggled with is because I love slow-mo. I love this podcast so much. It's one of my biggest contributions. And at the same time, you know, it is one of my biggest joys to have conversations like this. But it is quite time consuming, especially with my travel schedule. It starts to interrupt. Either it interrupts a very, you know, tiring trip.

1:20:02or if I'm not traveling, it interrupts my creative flow. So, you know, if I decide that I want to write tonight, I can't because I have to prepare for our conversation and so on and so forth. And I'll tell you what my finding was because I have to say, I went through all of the 18 full-time jobs I did in 2023 and I took away around nine of them, basically saying, I can't do this, I can't do this. It's not the most effective. It's not in the 1 ,000 basically. you know, 1000X impact or importance to me. And when it came to the podcast, I have to say I was like, you know, weekly is a routine I can't keep.

1:20:45Maybe I should make it once a month or maybe I should stop altogether. You know, there are now 280 episodes, everything's wonderful and so on. And then suddenly it hit me that no, that's not the answer. The answer is I find joy in it. I might as well make it essential by growing its impact, which is something I normally don't do. Right. I normally don't tell people, by the way, subscribe, by the way, please tell people about it, by the way. You know, I actually almost dismissively at the end of every episode say, hey, by the way, just do whatever people do on social media just to help me grow this thing.

1:21:19No, this year I'm actually planning to be very specific about it, to tell my listeners and my followers to to grow it so that at least every unit of effort i put in it becomes uh you know rewarding enough for it to be essential you know what i mean and and it's not like you know it's not that it's doing bad it's in the top half percent of the global podcasts it's you know usually in the top five of of well-being but we can reach more we can do better you know what i I mean, and I think all of this is to just say, misery is not going to help with anything. You know, there is meaning in the suffering that we go through, and the next moment is what matters.

1:22:01So you might as well make the next moment work for you to find meaning or to make what you're doing essential or to break out of what is giving you suffering. Well, you're giving an alternative thing here because, okay, So I think the most important idea in Effortless is the final third of the book. And what it's about is the difference between linear results and residual results. Okay. So what's the difference? You can identify something. Okay. I want the podcast to be, I've chosen to do a podcast. All right. The strategic choice is made. I feel I should continue to do it. So when I come to that moment of decision, should I cut it off, eliminate it?

1:22:51No, something in me feels it matters in its own right. And I need a voice in the world and I should continue doing it. I mean, I've literally had the process of thinking you're describing myself, right? Because it's non-trivial. I mean, people podcast, right? And breaking through in the podcasting world is not directly, you know, you can't have like a viral moment in podcasting, right? It's not like you have a viral moment. So it's a slow burn process. And in fact, like the most important podcasting strategy is to continue because, you know, there's just people do get eliminated along the way.

1:23:33And so actually it's quite a winning strategy just to keep going. Okay, but the idea, the difference between linear results and residual results is, it's like a 10x strategy. Because if you just keep on doing the same thing each day, right? A linear result is one in which you put effort in today and get a result today and effort tomorrow and result tomorrow. And really, actually, it's quite profound as you start thinking about it because you say, well, a lot of people are living in a way that they can't get ahead because of this. Okay, so let's connect the dots between your podcasting aspiration and response to that challenge and your question a moment ago about, well, what about somebody who's in a kind of desperate situation?

1:24:22What do they do? So there's an actual example of this in the book, and it illustrates the difference. So Jessica Jakeley, who's a friend of mine, went years ago with a team of people. They went to Africa, and they were there to try and make a difference. so they have an aspiration and they keep meeting these we would call them entrepreneurs right in in the west particularly but but at first they don't really look like an entrepreneur you know they're selling food on the side of the road right so so but that of course is entrepreneurship but they get to know one woman in particular and they just met Muhammad Yunus and gone to a training by him and so they were excited about the idea of the Green Bank and micro loans and so first when they meet her, they start asking her about, well, how does your business work and so on?

1:25:07And she has to sell food today. She has to physically be there in order for, by the end of the day, for her children to eat, maybe her. So, right, that's exactly the kind of extremity that you're describing when you say, okay, well, does it change prioritization? Does that change somehow if you're in that kind of extreme situation. And so every day she's stuck in a residual result. She can't get out of it. They said, well, what would you do if you could take some time off? How would you work on your business, not just in your business, so to speak? And she said, well, listen, I would go and renegotiate my contracts with the people that actually give me the produce.

1:25:48I'd go to the original source, cut out the middleman. That would increase my profit, not enormously, but enough that that would enable me to then start to get ahead every day instead of just always being in maintenance. And so they said, well, how much would that cost? And they work it all out. And it's a$500 thing. And they're about to just give a$500, but then the Muhammad Yunus thing comes in and they say, okay, well, maybe we can give you this as a loan. And that way, 10 entrepreneurs can be helped, right? Because after you pay that back, we'll find someone else and someone else and someone else.

1:26:20And they did that with her. And that's exactly how she got ahead. Somebody helped her to build a systemic solution so that the results she's getting are now easier than they were before. So making something a little easier can have really profound effects, especially if you build a system that produces results, because then you're free to work on something else, a higher level activity. Okay. So that's how that story could end, but there's more to it because that's when they suddenly said, well, if we do it once, what if we, instead of just doing one loan, we could build like a little platform, a website where other people could also provide loans.

1:27:01And we could then expand this way beyond our own income amounts. And this is how Kiva.org was born. So I think they're up to like$1.4 billion of loans now with a 97 % repayment. So it's like a completely transformative model. And that's blessed a lot of lives. And it's a system solution. Now there are residual results operating at many levels. It's residual results for the individual because they can get ahead. It's residual results because it's a loan so you help many people. It's residual because it's a platform that's been created so millions of people can give and millions of people receive.

1:27:35That's amazing. That's the power of residual results over linear. So it's not just how much effort you put in. It's not just ROI, return on investment. It's return on effort. And we want a high return on effort so that you can break through. So now we're coming all the way back to your podcast. You want to break through to the next level of contribution without burning out or without burning out your relationships, your 1000X relationships. And so the system matters. Can you build a better podcasting system than the one you've had before? and and and so you know the the question i would put to you the thought experiment is how can i get 10x results in the podcast with putting in the same amount of effort that i put in last year or even a little less how can i build a system that does that and and so you invest all the energy i'll tell you the answer the answer is very straightforward but it's not my value set right so so think about it this way having a wonderful conversation with an amazing guest is the same amount of effort every time you can't reduce that right it's three three four hours of my time to prep a little to get to know the guest and to do the recording i have to upload stuff and so on and so forth especially when i'm traveling right there is no change in that there is no change in the investment that i have in the editing vladay my engineer to door my producer and so on and so forth.

1:29:03The most interesting side of this is I could turn this whole thing into incredible clickbaits on the internet. I could market it just like capitalism, but that's not my value set. I mean, another alternative, interestingly, is to monetize this podcast, right? So if I monetize this podcast, probably make a million dollars a year, and then I can invest a lot of money in that, in a big team and a big fancy studio and so on. but the trick for me is that i stand for something right i stand for i don't want to be part of that system i want to be contributing from myself with my listeners to other listeners in my mind believe it or not my genius at the end at the beginning of the year was like no i love slow mo as a matter of fact i'm probably going to start another one that's in arabic right but i'm going to actually start telling our listeners very openly, help me grow this thing, right?

1:30:01Don't let me go to the capitalist models, rate it properly, tell people about it. If you enjoy it, get others to listen to it. Because I think this is what it's all about. The easiest way is to fall in the trap of doing things that you don't stand for. Because honestly, you know, sometimes you feel a little jealous. I feel that a little bit when I'm on social media, for example. I'm, you know, my podcast conversations get listened to 10 million times. My books get sold almost a million times. And yet my followers are 142 ,000, right? And you start to go like, okay, so should I shake my hips a little?

1:30:39Because if I shake my hips a little, I'll get another 140 ,000 for my hips, right? And the truth is not to get another 140. The truth is to be true to your values, right? So here's my hypothesis for you. And it's a hypothesis because I don't know, but I'm sort of in a similar enough question myself. It's a hypothesis for me too, which is how do you build a system? Because what you have, this is how I read it. You have pieces of a system. Well, it is a system. Every system is a system, right? You can have an engine. The engine of my car, just because a piece isn't, if a piece gets taken out, it's still a system.

1:31:18Now it's just a system that doesn't work optimally. And so what I think is that you have a system, I have a system, right? Every thought leader has some kind of system. And of course, you want the whole system to be operating on the values that you hold. You don't want a system that violates the values because then it's some other person's system. And it can be self-defeating because it takes away from what you care about. Fine. using within that values, within that set of values, can you build a system that works in a more integrated way so that there's a dynamic equilibrium between the pieces?

1:31:55In my own work, I feel like I have done, I don't know, I give myself like a B or something for the effort I have put into building the system, right? So write a book. Okay. That's one thing. You write another book. Okay. So you have the books flowing like you do. So you've got that working. Okay. you've got a podcast, it's flowing. You have some social media, okay, it's flowing. How do you get it all to work together? That's not a selfish intent. It's not some mercurial capitalist selfish. That doesn't have to be right. It can still be a capitalist solution that has a set of values attached to it.

1:32:35Of course, those things can be done together, but how can you do it so that the whole system works better? And that to me is the 10, that's to me is the residual result I'm talking about is like, okay, yes, asking people, everyone listening to this, people listening to this don't understand. They don't understand unless they have themselves a podcast, how much of a difference it makes to Mo if you go and actually write a five-star review. You don't understand. And you don't understand how darn well hard it is to get people to do that. They can love the experience and they just don't know that the disproportionate value that that review counts.

1:33:10Of course, you ought to go and do that right now. If you thought this conversation was helpful, of course, you have to go and tell not just one person. You have to tell 10 people. You have to do that if you think the content is worth sharing or just useful in the world. You have to do that because that network effect is the only way it builds. So that's your part. I'm speaking to you directly who's listening to this. now back to you, Mo, how can you use this year and probably the year after that to build a system that's the best possible Mo system so that everything integrates? That to me is the real breakthrough difference.

1:33:46That's certainly what I've been working on and conscious of recently. And that gets me excited because every time I invest a dollar of time or money, right, like a unit on the system, on the system rather than in the system, I don't get an immediate reward, but man, I know that something just improved for my 2025 self. My 2025 self is going to thank me. My children are going to thank me. So it's like, how do I build the system to work together as perfectly as possible, including the social media, connecting it in an integrated way. I think that's an exciting game. And I think that's the difference between the one, the linear position.

1:34:35It's so spot on when you really think about, I mean, we're really thinking exactly about the same things, right? Because the reality is, of course, I can maximize so many of the efforts. Like you, each of my efforts, call them products, if you want, like books is a layer, you know, podcasts are a layer, online is a layer and so on and so forth, you know, my memberships and online content and so on, but you develop them separately. And, you know, in a very interesting way, because of the nature of who I am and having so much compassion in me to share a few things that would hopefully reduce a little bit of suffering, I sort of resent the years where I was in the corporate world where I had to sit down and build systems to do business, really, right?

1:35:24I'm telling myself, no, a better use of your time is to finish this book about love and romance. So many people need it or two, right? And it's so interesting. I'm sure you go through the same thing. And then, but I will tell you openly from today's conversation, I think from an essentialist point of view, I think what's essential for me this year on top of what you rightly said is the 1000X, I think what's essential is to get more mileage from the effort that I, not more dollars, don't care. I know what you mean. You want impact. You want contribution. Of course you do. And I think you very nicely put it because I think one of my biggest assets, believe it or not, is not my books.

1:36:11It's my followers. It's people who believe in the work that I do and who don't actually realize that if I, you know, if they take two minutes of their time to write a review or to share something with someone, that that thing would actually be as much contribution as all of the four hours I put to record the episode, right? Because at the end of the day, you know, as the whole mission of One Billion Happy was built, it was if everyone tells two people and each of them tells two people, then very quickly exponential functions will lead us to a billion happy. So it's interesting. What you need is for each person to tell five people.

1:36:50You just need to change that every time you share the idea. You go, everyone can tell 20 people. Don't be too nice, Mo. Don't be too nice. Well, what you just said, more mileage. That's the idea of the return on effort. And the difference between linear, this one per day, it feels so fair. you put in effort once you get results once and residual the difference is is is so great but it's not easy for us to think in residual ways we sort of go to sleep each night we wake up the morning we're re kind of reborn again and it's like i i feel like sometimes i wake up i have to like re align everything again it's like okay now like what am i trying to do in my life and who am i and where are we it's like the devil that's in school didn't we talk about that yesterday day, no, we need to talk about it again.

1:37:45Right, right, right. And there's something about that, but something about the human condition underestimates the power of something that recurs continually, right? So we know this in terms of, okay, if I'm addicted to social media, then I go to social media, even if I'm only going to half an hour down all my social media, yes, well, over a lifetime, it's a massive commitment to this thing. And so we underestimate the power of this, of a residual system. And that's why we underinvest in building residual systems is because we think, well, it's just easier for me just to do this thing myself right now.

1:38:27Like for example, you just said, okay, so I'm going to suggest to you to record a very specific thing that goes on the end of every single note at the very beginning of every single interview from now on, you record it once, you're really thoughtful about it, what the incentive is to the person listening to write that review, to be able to share with people. You think about that very distinctly one time. You design it one time and it becomes an absolute default at the beginning. You create it every single time. You never think about it again. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. So you design it very well once.

1:39:00You don't even have to repeat it after that. It's already on repeat. There's, I think, tremendous power in that kind of, you know, that kind of leverage. Well, we've covered a lot here. We did. This was amazing. I am, I'm very grateful. I really have learned so much. It's so timely. Interesting how the universe, God, whatever you believe, sends, you know, sends you the information you need when you really put it out there and say, I need it. So yes, this is the year of less. This is the year of focusing on the thousand X. This is the year of mileage. This is the year of essentialism. I love your work.

1:39:43I think you're amazing. I really am very grateful for what you shared today. And so openly, I hope Ava and everyone of those that you consider a thousand X will always be happy. I really, you've touched me so deeply and really i'm sure touched so many of our listeners today thank you so much greg it was really wonderful thank you and for all of you listening yeah wow i normally cut conversations short when they are this profound because i ask you to go back and listen to them this time somehow i decided to prioritize myself over you i was enjoying it so much i said i'll keep going and you guys can cut it down into two episodes or whatever, you know, or listen to it again.

1:40:28I think there has been so much learned today, the idea of the exponential difference between what matters and what doesn't matter. You know, it's not that it's something matters at one X and something at two, something matters at one X and something actually matters at a thousand. And I think that differentiation really puts what's essential in mind, you know, the idea of of suffering or meaning that really stuck with me the idea of the next moment is all that matters i think really that could change a lot of things and when you're thinking about the next moment don't just think of survival don't think of just linear i need to go and do the same thing again the next moment but think perhaps of a way to make the next moment exponentially better by building systems and having residual value created.

1:41:20I love this conversation very much, so I'm going to say it very openly. Please make this podcast worth my effort by sharing it with others, writing the five-star reviews, like and subscribe, and hit the little notification button on YouTube. Do whatever it is that you have to do just to please help me share it with more people. Whatever you do this year, I always said 2024 is going to be pivotal in so many ways. It's going to not be an easy year, but it's also a year of transformation for many of us. So whatever it is that you're doing every week, take a little bit of time to slow down. This is the time where you make the decisions that speed you up for the rest of the week.

1:42:05I love you all for listening and I will see you next time.