Ask Altucher! EP06: The Legacy Dilemma - What We Leave Behind and Why It Matters (Or Doesn't)

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the quality of people. you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altucher. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:19This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

1:36So the thing with legacy is interesting is that some people really, like let's say Elon Musk, like his whole point of saving humanity and this and that, or even Steve Jobs creating iPhone, I'm sure because he wants to leave some sort of legacy. People look at Steve Jobs, people will be like, okay, the Apple guy, they created iPhones, iPad, Mac, right? Elon Musk, like, okay, Tesla, PayPal. It's like normal people like me. If I don't have all those ambitions, will I be able to leave a legacy? And should I care about leaving a legacy? Here's the thing. Caring about your legacy is the exact opposite of being a happy person.

2:21How so? because if let's say oh i really want a legacy of being the most inspirational writer and podcaster ever or if i'm elon moz i really want a legacy of like we're gonna humans are gonna be a multi-planetary species because of me that's gonna be my legacy then you're gonna work really really hard for something that may or may not happen and then you're dead and you're not gonna think about it. You're going to be dead. You're alive for, let's say, 80 years. And then you're going to be dead for the next trillion years after that. Okay? And then you only care about legacy, let's say, for 30 of your 80 years, if you live to 80.

3:04So 30 years out of trillions of years. Do you think your legacy is really that important? What if someone built a statue for your legacy, right? Then your legacy, then you will be - But who am I? Why do I care if after I'm dead? Let's say there's, we don't know if there's an afterlife or not, but either way, what do I care after I'm dead? I only care about things when I'm alive. Right. The only thing that would make me care about legacy, like your true biological legacy is the DNA that you spread, your DNA. And so I do care about my children. So for instance, and the only thing I think about there is I don't want them to think I'm some sort of like hero in any way because that's not true.

3:51Nobody's really – when you really know the heart of everybody, like nobody's a hero. But I want my kids to not be sad if I die. So for instance, if I were to kill myself, my kids would be really, really sad and it would maybe ruin their life. Like they would be affected by that forever. Maybe oftentimes when you kill yourself, people who know you or people who are related to you, they kill themselves. There's like copycat suicides. Like I have 5 ,000 Facebook friends and I would say once a month or once every two months. I'm just trying to be as accurate as possible. One of my Facebook friends kills themselves.

4:35Right. And probably because I'm friends with a lot of comedians. And that team said, so that's the only thing I care about with Legacy. Otherwise, why would I want to stress myself out by not only caring about my day-to-day life, but also caring about what people think of me even after I'm not alive? Like, it's already a burden trying not to care what people think of me when I'm alive. If I now have to think about what people think about me when I'm not alive, that is a dreck. Legacy is you just care about what people think about you after you die. Now, you might say, oh, I want to make the world a better place.

5:11That's my legacy. Well, you know what? No matter how hard you try, you're not going to make that much of a difference on the world. If there was no, you know, if there was no Gandhi, would India be free now? Like, would India be free from British rule? A, the answer is probably yes, since the United Kingdom has almost no colonies at this point. So India, all of their colonies would sooner or later be free with or without Gandhi. Second off, I do think Gandhi was a great man and what he really taught was how to have peaceful resistance. But two things. One is many, many people in India would claim that Gandhi held things back like technology.

5:53And so because Gandhi existed - How so? Well, the United Kingdom was more technologically sophisticated and just like the U.S. was always focused on industrial revolution and technological revolution and so on. And when India was no longer in the grips of the United Kingdom, and I'm not saying the United Kingdom should be a colonizer or anybody should be, but I'm just saying probably India would have moved into the first world faster if they were more associated with a first world country. And instead, after the UK left, and I'm not saying one thing, good or bad, about the UK being there one way or the other, but India was torn by religious strife.

6:39You know, Pakistan split off, Bangladesh split off. There was just lots of horrific, you know, killings and wars and battles relating to religious fighting. Technology didn't advance as quickly as it could be. By the way, I'm not saying this. other people from India would say this to me. I've been to India many times. Other people from India would say this to me, that it's not black and white that it was the most amazing thing that Gandhi freed India. I would say the greatest thing Gandhi did was to show that peaceful resistance was possible. And look, I have a chapter about Gandhi in my book, Choose Yourself.

7:16I admire him. But also there's another side, which is on the personal side. Gandhi is, There's claims that he would always sleep in the same bed, nude with his niece or whatever. I don't know all these stories. I don't follow them. But it's like what I was saying before. Like everybody, if you know everybody's thoughts, 100 % of their thoughts, nobody is a hero. But because I said all this, I will say my one favorite story about Gandhi is this one woman was very concerned about the health of her child. She traveled across the country for two weeks walking to visit Gandhi because it was far away.

7:54And she finally sees Gandhi and says, Gandhi, can you tell my son to please stop eating sugar? And Gandhi says, okay, come back in two weeks. And so she has to go home and then she comes back and two weeks later, and Gandhi says to her son, kid, don't eat any sugar. And the woman's like, what the heck? Like, how come you just tell me that? How come you sent me home for two weeks? And Ghani said, well, because first I had to stop eating sugar. And I admire that because unlike a lot of people, like you go to this whole self-help industry and so many people write self-help books that they don't follow their advice themselves.

8:39And I always know whenever I'm always very honest and upfront what I do and what I don't do. So I never give advice. I just say, this is what happened to me, you know, pay attention to it or not. And, and I'm usually, I try to be as thoughtful as possible about the things that have happened to me so I can, and I love writing so I could tell stories about what happened to me. And then you could choose whether, like if I say, don't buy a home, I'll write stories about my bad experiences buying a home. And then I'll look up, you know, facts and statistics about the returns on investments on buying a home.

9:14So I will do the research, but I also will share what I'm doing. So right now, for instance, I can't say don't buy a home. I bought a home. So I'm living in a home that I own. I bought a home three times. And so far, two out of three times turned out miserable. Maybe this third time will turn out miserable. I don't know. You know what they say, right? Like third time is the charm. Third time is the charm. But let me ask you this. Wouldn't a legacy sort of provide motivation? So let's say I'm like, I want to leave a motivation. I want to leave a legacy Like for my children For my grandchildren I want my grandchildren to know me as Okay, let me ask you What would you want your legacy to be?

9:52What do you want to be known for after you die? A great Asian? I'm just joking Jay Yao is the greatest Asian ever And that's his legacy I think mine would be like The person that sort of revolutionized Not revolutionized but sort of make impact in the audio tech industry. Okay, why? Because I just love audio tech that much. I want to... Why not care about what you're doing today on it as opposed to what people are going to think about you a hundred years from now? Right, but because of the legacy, right? Because of the legacy 30 years from now that people will think about, will hopefully know me as, that sort of motivates me to do something about audio tech right now.

10:40Okay, so it's not like you really care about your legacy. It's like if you convince yourself to care about your legacy, then that will help you move forward today. And if you accomplish something today on audio tech, maybe you'll feel a little bit more contentment with your life. I'm not talking about happiness. I'm talking about contentment or well-being. So well-being is a function of doing good things and getting along with your community. having a sense of freedom and I don't know, probably health. So maybe you could say to yourself that if you advance things in audio tech, A, you might make some money.

11:18So that helps your sense of freedom and it's good for your community. So it gives you this feeling of, of wellbeing as opposed to just pure happiness, which is an, I think there's no real definition of happiness. We don't really know what that means. We all know happiness is fleeting, but we don't really know what happiness is.

11:49look as a manager of people as an employer as an entrepreneur and as even an investor in startups i can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

12:32And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

13:08This message comes from Capital One. The Capital One Venture X business card has no preset spending limit, so the card's purchasing power can adapt to meet business needs. Plus, the card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase, so the more a business spends, the more miles earned. And when traveling, the VentureX Business Card grants access to over a thousand airport lounges. The VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureXBusiness.

13:40I think you do have a point in legacy in the sense that I was thinking just now is that what happened after I hit my legacy? What if I did change something on my legacy and then what's next and will I be happy? Jay, think about all of the many athletes. So athletics is an interesting endeavor because you peak while you're still young and alive. So we've had on many, many, I don't want to say many. We've had on several Olympic gold and silver medalists, and we've had on other heroes of their sports, whether it's basketball, baseball, other sports. Yeah, you even talk to - With race car driving, Danica Patrick.

14:21uh but and and often they have to deal with depression right after they you know win you know become the greatest female car racer in the world become the silver medalist ice skater in the olympics because win the gold medal in olympics all these people have been were depressed afterwards and by the way there's nothing wrong with depression like i get depressed we all get depressed to some extent sometimes clinical depression sometimes situational depression but it doesn't, it seems like when you have a great goal, yes, the pursuit of excellence is a worthy endeavor. So, you know, anytime you have any kind of quest or pursuit in order to, if the pursuit is interesting enough, if the quest is interesting enough, then the journey, and I'm not saying the journey is more important than the goal.

15:11I don't believe that, but the journey towards excellence is a worthwhile endeavor. Like you have to improve yourself. You can't just be a great race car driver. You have to be really healthy. You have to have a lot of emotional health, like good relationships, good people supporting you that are around you. You have to be physically healthy, of course, and be in great shape. You have to be psychologically healthy, like to be able to handle loss and to be able to handle frustration along the way. And in order to have all these things, you have to improve yourself in a variety of different levels, physical, emotional, creative, even spiritual, in order to be the best at your sport.

15:49In most cases, some people are naturally gifted and can get away with it. So the pursuit of being the greatest at audio tech is a worthwhile endeavor because it gives you internal satisfaction each day. But I would also argue it doesn't matter. Like you can also find internal satisfaction not doing that, but just making friends in your community, feeling free regardless of what your job or money situation is and having good health. Like that could also make you be a lot happier than people who have a big goal and journey. Right. You talked to, what is his name? Robert something about happiness.

16:29Didn't he say like all this thing as well? I don't know. Robert who? Robert Wartinger or whatever his name is. Oh, yeah. He wrote about happiness. Yeah, yeah. He did mention finding a bigger meaning in life, like in terms of society or community, helping community, helping society. I would argue you should endeavor to be happy almost in this spiritual way where the lack of— the more expectations you have on your life, the less opportunity, the higher the probability is that there are going to be periods where you're very, very unhappy. How so? Let's say you expect that you're only going to get married to a person who is, you know, a beauty contest winner.

17:17So you constantly are asking out beauty contest winners. And let's say most say no, but some say yes. And then you go out with them and you realize, oh, I hate this person's personality. So a good many years of your life might be spent wasted only asking out supermodels to go on dates. And then many more years might be wasted dating supermodels and then you don't like any of them. So that's because you had expectations. So expectations are always going to... When you have an expectation, another way of saying expectation is you're putting conditions on your happiness. It's like you're writing a contract with life.

17:59Like I'm only going to be happy if supermodels date me. So better to have no conditions and no expectations, no conditions on life. Let life do life and let you do you and just roll with the punches. Like imagine life is this big ocean that you're surfing. You can't control the wave. You just get on your surfboard and you try to surf as best you can. And if you surf well, with no expectations on the ocean that you can't control anyway, then you'll probably be happier. I feel like there's a truth in there. Every time I expect something, it's always come out bad. It's always come out bad. If you expect a 50 % financial raise from me tomorrow, you're going to be extremely unhappy.

18:48Your expectations are not going to be met, particularly if it's for tomorrow. But like, you know, there's a formula for this. Like happiness is reality divided by expectations. So the more expectations you have, there's reality. Like let's say you expect to be 90 pounds, but you're actually 500 pounds. Okay. So 90 over 500 is a very small number. Whereas if reality is you're 200 pounds and you only expect it to be 200 pounds anyway, then oh wait, I think I got it reverse. But in any case, you know what I mean. The older I get, the worse at math I get. But okay, okay. I mean, I'm Asian, but I still bad at math anyway.

19:32You're stunning at math. One thing though. Just compare it to your colleagues in Malaysia. Is that real? Is that like math Asia? Like are Malaysians good at math? I mean, technically we are. but I felt like the older I am. So like I felt like when I was 15 years old or like when I was 12 years old, I can do math in my brain very quickly. Like one times 100, I would like 100 or two times 100, 200. But now even the one times zero. That was really good right there. Yeah. Now even one times zero, I have to be like pull out my calculator. Well, how old are you? You're like 28? 35? Jesus, yeah. When did you become 35?

20:12You were 28 yesterday. Six years after I worked with you. So the peak age for a mathematician is 25 years old, meaning that's usually the age when they do their most amazing work that they win prizes for and so on. And so math is one of those things. Some professions, we've talked about this on the podcast, some professions peak at a much older age and some professions peak at a younger age. So you lose math ability after you reach a certain age. Okay. I want to go back to the expedition a little bit. You know, you said like no expectations are better. But I felt like you have to have some minimum low bar expectations so you can push yourself a little bit.

20:53Why do you need to push yourself? I mean like to better myself, to improve myself. Okay. First off, why can't you just improve yourself, health, just because you know that life will be better if you're healthier than if you're not healthier? You know what? I think because I value valuations by other people than from myself. Again, maybe that's an issue. Like maybe you should want to be healthy just for the sake of being healthy. Right. So like if you're sick all the time, you're not going to be as happy as if you're healthy all the time. You know, I think because of my upbringing, my whole life was to grow up pleasing other people.

21:36Okay, well maybe that's a problem also. How do you know that's not just a bad habit? Like, okay, I have a bad habit of eating donuts all the time because I grew up eating donuts. Well, I shouldn't just stick with that because I did that when I was younger. I should try to improve myself so I could be healthier. Yeah, I think I should do that because every time I'm like, I want to be healthy, it's because I just broke up and then I will go to gym. It's like, okay, so I can meet better girls or whatever after. Okay. All right. So yeah, you have some physical needs and they could be easier met if you're a healthy person.

22:13So like, you know, for instance, somebody I know, somebody I'm very close to was depressed for a long time. And he started working out and lifting weights and doing cardio every day in the gym. And through that time, it took about six months or actually, no, and just, I remember just two months later, first off, I could notice he was physically bigger because of the weightlifting. and he was also not, he wasn't saying to me that he was depressed. He was like in, you know, working on his physical health had helped his emotional health or mental health. So again, like you could want to be healthy just for health's sake.

22:56You don't need to want to have a legacy of being healthy or a legacy of, you know, being a great scientist. So he needed to be healthy to be a great scientist. Now, admittedly, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be, a great scientist. I like what I call the absurdist philosophy. So you ask yourself, does life have meaning? And so nihilists say life has no meaning and you shouldn't care about anything because nothing has meaning and just forget it and do whatever you want. It doesn't matter. And existentialists say life has no meaning and you can go for meaning if you want to, but be aware that life has no meaning.

23:43And absurdists are very similar to existentialists, but they say it's a joke to even think life has a meaning. It's absurd. You're just fooling yourself if you think life has meaning, but you might as well have some meaning just for the fun of it. Like do, you know, stay within the boundaries of, you know, the law and ethics, you know, cause that will allow you to do more things in life. And, uh, just for the heck of it, do things that are meaningful just because you can, even though you're aware that they're absurd. So an example might be Admiral Byrd was going on to Antarctica. It was the first expedition to Antarctica.

24:29And he had like 30 people with him. They were all on a boat to Antarctica. Well, their boat got stuck in frozen water and they were stuck and they were in the middle of nowhere. No one was coming to save them. So I think his name is Robert Byrd. I forget his name. Anyway, he and another guy leave the crew of 30 and go in search of someone who could save them. Like maybe there would be an island, like a research facility or something where, you know, hundreds of miles away and where they can get saved. And the other people would have to stay with their frozen boat just because that's where all the food was, all the supplies were.

25:08And they knew that the chances were Admiral Byrd was not going to come back and find them. They knew it. But what they did was they invented games. They told jokes. They made the most of it that they can, even though they knew their lives were probably over and that there was no point in doing anything. They still did things to amuse themselves and to be happy and so on, because why not? Why choose to be in despair when you could also choose to be happy. This is an example. And by the way, they were saved and rescued. But this is an example of like absurdism. It was absurd of them to even think they were going to be rescued.

25:48It was absurd of them to try to find meaning every day in their lives, but they did. Because even though they knew it was meaningless, they found meaning in their lives every single day. And so other than like, hey, we should try to be happy just because. We should try to have fun. Like, I like this idea of not goals or legacy, but we've spoken about this before, this idea of find yourself a quest. Like, it could be a small quest, something that you could accomplish in a day. Like, one time I said to myself, I'm going to try to find some way to play every day. So I would work during the day, but maybe in the evening I would go – this was New York City, so there's always something to do.

26:30I would go to an archery range, or I would go to the gym and play basketball, or I would play tennis, or I would go to a backgammon club and play backgammon, or chess, or go, or poker, or whatever. So I kind of said, what would it be like to play every day? And why did I do that? For legacy? No. I did that because I love to play games, and I never even wrote about this. I never really spoke about it. I only did it for a couple of weeks, actually, because it was hard to find a new thing every day. But it was fun. That was my quest. Every day I had a little quest, like, what will I play today? So do you have a quest right now other than just chess?