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Podcast Episode Summary: Ten Percent Happier — with Scott Galloway
Podcast Title
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Description The Prof G Pod, hosted by Scott Galloway, provides a mix of business insights, provocative life advice, and discussions on contemporary issues, featuring various segments and special guests.
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Episode Overview Episode Title: Ten Percent Happier — with Scott Galloway Episode Description: In this episode, Scott Galloway discusses the impact of work on mental health, the role of luck in success, and how much is enough. This episode is a collaboration with the Ten Percent Happier podcast hosted by Dan Harris.
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Key Themes and Discussions
- Work and Mental Health
- Impact of Work: Galloway emphasizes that work significantly affects mental health due to the competitive nature of the economy.
- Most people spend a large portion of their lives at work, influencing their mental well-being.
- Economic aspirations lead to stress and anxiety, especially for men who often equate self-worth with professional success.
- Work-Life Balance and Hustle Culture
- Is Hustle Culture Dead? Galloway discusses the current view on hustle culture and its implications.
- He argues that while the hustle mentality is questioned, hard work is still essential for success, particularly in one’s 20s and 30s.
- He advises young professionals to be all in on their careers early on to establish relevance and security.
- The Role of Luck in Success
- Galloway acknowledges that success cannot be divorced from luck and acknowledges the privileges that can shape one's career trajectory.
- He reflects on his own journey, noting how recognizing privilege provided a new perspective on his accomplishments.
- Bringing Your Whole Self to Work
- A Cautionary Approach: Galloway suggests that while authenticity is valuable, bringing raw emotions and political views to work can be detrimental.
- He encourages focusing on economic contribution over personal beliefs in professional settings.
- Resilience and Overcoming Challenges
- Getting Fired: Galloway speaks on the inevitability of setbacks, including job loss.
- He underscores the importance of resilience and the need to separate one’s identity from professional setbacks.
- Relationships and Networking
- Galloway highlights the importance of relationships formed in the workplace, especially for younger professionals seeking mentorship and social connections.
- He notes that in-person interactions foster better relationships than remote work settings.
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Key Takeaways
- Work as a Foundation for Identity: Many people derive their self-worth from their professional achievements, particularly in a capitalist society.
- Importance of Work Relationships: Young professionals benefit from establishing connections and mentoring relationships that facilitate growth and success.
- Privilege and Perspective: Recognizing one's privileges can lead to a better understanding of one’s career path and the systemic barriers others face.
- Need for Grit and Commitment: Especially for young professionals, committing fully to their work can establish a strong foundation for future success.
- Balance and Economic Security: Galloway argues that young people should prioritize their careers to avoid the stress of economic insecurity later in life.
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Conclusion This episode of The Prof G Pod offers valuable insights into the complexities of work, mental health, and success. Scott Galloway’s candid reflections on his experiences serve as a guide for navigating professional life while maintaining a balance of ambition and personal well-being.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28Support for this show comes from Aura Frames. Steel is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so orders you now to get it in time for the holidays and support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
0:44Coca-Cola. For the big. For the small. The short. And the tall. Peacemakers. Risk-takers. For the optimists. Pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.
1:22Welcome to the 245th episode of the Prop G Pod. That's right. The dog is in Japan this week. I think it's, what is that? Doja coin or Shiba Uno. Is that the name of the Japanese dog? Anyways, it's probably a hate crime that I don't know that. So in place of our regular scheduled programming, we're dropping an episode of the 10 % Happier podcast hosted by Dan Harris, a former ABC News anchor and the co-founder of the 10 % Happier meditation platform. I found Dan to be a very thoughtful, like relaxing kind of chi guy. I'm like, actually, I'd like to adopt him as my older brother. We're not dropping just any episode though.
1:55This one features yours truly. What a thrill. Enjoy this episode of 10 % Happier. I'd like to be 11 % happier, Dan.
2:10This is the 10 % Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
2:26Hey gang, work can play a huge role in our sanity and happiness or lack thereof. So today we're going to tackle some common and thorny questions with a guy who has been extremely successful at work and now teaches other people how to do so. We're going to talk about questions such as how much work-life balance should we really strive for? Is hustle culture really dead? What's the role of luck in success? How much is enough? And should you bring your whole self to the office, as some believe? Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business. He's also a serial entrepreneur.
3:03He's founded nine companies, including Profit, Red Envelope, and Section 4. He served on the boards of directors of the New York Times Company, Urban Outfitters, and Panera Bread. He's the best-selling author of many books, including The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post-Corona, and his latest book, which is called Adrift, America in a Hundred Charts. He's also the host of two podcasts, Prof G and Pivot. The latter, Pivot, which he co-hosts with the legendary tech reporter Kara Swisher, is a must-listen for me. I'm a regular Pivot head, so it was cool to meet Scott, albeit virtually. In this conversation, we talked about why work is such a big factor in determining our mental health, what the number one retention factor at work is, how capitalism pushes us toward living to work rather than the other way around, why he believes men's self-worth is so often and maybe too often based on their ability to earn, where he stands on the idea of bringing your whole self to work, how to get over getting fired, his thoughts on side hustles, work-life balance, and whether remote work will stick around post-COVID.
4:11Why he says being in the office is very important for younger workers if they want to get ahead, especially younger men. Why, despite the fact that he has made a great living, he still has economic anxiety. The rare moments when he's able to relax and tell himself this is enough. His self-described addiction to the approval of other people. And we talk about the fact that Galloway has some critics, how he handles that while retaining his willingness to go out on a limb and say some pretty controversial stuff sometimes. I should say before we dive in here that this is the first in a four-part work series we are launching.
4:50For the next two weeks, I'm going to be talking to guests about issues such as imposter syndrome. I actually jointly interviewed an expert in imposter syndrome with my wife, so that's coming up. We also will be doing episodes on managing conflict at work and whether it's actually possible to be mindful at work. We are reviving the title Work Life, which we used the last time we did a work series here on the show. There's also a work life challenge available, complete with videos and guided meditations over on the 10 % Happier app. Just a quick note here that if you're listening with children, there are a couple of curse words included in this episode.
5:30Scott Galloway, welcome to the show. Great to be here. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I feel like I know you because I listen to Pivot all the time. So, of course, I don't know you, but I have like a parasocial relationship with you. It's really, and I don't know if you find this, Stan. Oh, actually, I'm pretty sure you find it, but the way people greet you, you can sort of 70 or 80 percent of the time guess what it is the medium that they know you through. If they high-five you and they just kind of yell at you, it's a video or from TV. If they come up to you and want to have a really long, thoughtful conversation or they write, I open an email, it's two pages and really thoughtful.
6:11It's from something you've written. But if someone comes up to you and just starts speaking to you as if they're your friend and you're not even entirely sure you should introduce yourself because you think, oh, maybe I just forgot who this person is, it's from the podcast. Because there's something about physically being in someone's ears and speaking to them, especially if they listen to you a couple of times a week, they feel as if they know you. They feel as if you have a relationship and it's really nice. People are really friendly and it's almost like you start the conversation at letter C.
6:38They start talking about something that is important to you, but definitely the medium is the message. I completely agree. I've seen that play out in my own life in powerful ways. You've written about and spoken about a whole range of subjects, but I'm in particular interested in what you've said about the relationship between work and happiness. And so let me just start with a broad question. What role do you think work plays when it comes to our overall mental health? Well, just on a pure logistical basis, we live in a competitive economy. So you're going to spend, and this isn't aspirational, But most of the, and there's some proximity bias here because most of the people I hang out with are young MBA students who are very ambitious.
7:21But the majority of people aspire to some level of economic security. And then you couple that with constantly bigger, better deal or how you're feeling economically or physically being thrown in your face through social media. People have pretty ambitious goals for themselves economically. When I survey my class at NYU, I'm not exaggerating. I think 95 % expect to be in the top 1 % by the time they're 35. And I've never met anybody who's been able to do that without being smart enough to inherit wealth without full stop, just pretty much working all the goddamn time for a while. And so just logistically, the tone, the approach, the reward, the things that make up those hours are just going to have a huge impact on your mental health by virtue of the fact that if you are ambitious and you want to have relevance professionally, you're going to have to have a period in your life, the better part of probably 20 years, where you're spending the majority of your waking hours at this thing called work.
8:24So it's going to have a huge impact on your mental health. Just logistically, then you go to, do I have purpose? You're also constantly being measured against your peers. We're in a capitalist society. We believe in winners and losers. Some people get promoted. Some people don't. Some people get recognized economically or psychologically at work. There's a lot of non-economic compensation. So your mental well-being and also your success at work, especially if you're a man, you know, men are pretty much judged kind of one-dimensionally in our society. And I would argue that it's the extent that they've been able to garner influence and power based on their professional achievements.
9:05I think that's loosely speaking how we are evaluated as men. And so if you are not doing well at work, also I think a lot of men feel correctly a need to be providers. And I'm not saying women don't feel that same need, but I think it manifests itself in different ways. But men feel in our society that if they are not, and I relate to this when I've had professional trouble, the worst thing about the stress, the most stressful times I've had in my life was when I felt like I was failing professionally and as a result, failing as a father. That's where I thought, okay, you know, before I had kids, when I screwed up professionally, I can go, if I need to sleep on a friend's couch, I don't need that much money.
9:44If I have enough money to occasionally go drinking or, you know, whatever it is, or buy my Banana Republic clothes or whatever I was wearing at the time, I was going to be okay. Once you have a kid, if you're failing professionally or not living up to what you think is your potential, you've let down a family. You've kind of cosmically screwed up, right? And in addition, you're around a group of people. Your social network sometimes as a young person is work. The best thing you can do to increase someone's retention is if they have a friend at work. It's where you establish a lot of friendships.
10:15We don't talk about this because there's been a lot of abuse, but one in three marriages, one in three relationships begin at work. So what are you talking about? You're talking about how a capitalist society judges you. When you're a man, it kind of comes down to, all right, this is full stop. Your worth is a man in our society, correctly or incorrectly. It's your social network as a young person. And it's kind of evaluating or saying, this is your worth or lack thereof. And I think some people have the presence to say, I'm going to work to live, not live to work. But capitalism is largely trying to nudge you to say, no, you're going to live to work.
10:52And the evaluation or the scorecard you get every day from work is, you know, it's impossible to ignore. And whether those relationships are healthy or unhealthy, the environment you're in, huge impact. I don't know. I mean, I'm blathering on here, but you think about divorce. 70 to 80 % of divorces are initiated by the female in the relationship, the wife. And a lot of that is initiated by economic stress. People think the number one source of divorce is infidelity. It's not. It's money or something related to money. So in a capitalist society, a lot of mental health begins and ends at work. It's hugely impactful on our sense of self and well-being.
11:36And Dan, I'm not a social psychologist. Where do I have this wrong? I'm open to pushback here. I'm not hearing anything I personally disagree with, although I will just call out at the risk of virtue signaling here that, you know, you and I are having this discussion as to straight, white, wealthy, older men. And so there are obviously going to be things that we will miss. I think that's right. And it's interesting you say that because it's about perspective. And I think one of the ways I'd like to think I've matured and gained perspective is that my kind of self-worth comes from, I'd like to think now it's that I'm raising two reasonable men that are 12 and 15, and I'm hoping that they'll be good citizens, good dads, good partners.
12:20But the majority of my identity comes from work, full stop. It's just where I've always gotten my reward, my self-worth, for better, for worse. And, you know, whatever the reason, that's where I get my worth. And my rap up until the age of 40 was, check my shit out. I was raised by a single mother that lived and died, an immigrant who was a secretary, upper, lower, middle-class households, got into a good school, started businesses, economically, can you believe me? How incredible am I? That was my rap, and I believed it. And then about the age of 40, I started realizing, okay, let's kind of break it down.
12:59I was born a white, heterosexual male in California in the mid-60s. What did that mean? I mean, I got to go to UCLA and Berkeley because the admissions rate at UCLA was 76 % when I applied. And by the way, it was$400 a semester. So I got free college at one of the greatest universities in the world, one of the greatest credentials in the world. I came at professional age in the 90s where processing power and the Internet were coming online. Then I got an MBA at Berkeley with a 2.27 undergraduate GPA from UCLA. Berkeley let me into graduate school. and then I came out of graduate school in the 90s with the greatest gale force wind in history called the internet and processing power.
13:45I mean, it's like I couldn't have had more advantage and it never dawned on me, never dawned on me to ask the following questions. Why aren't women raising venture capital? Right? We just didn't even ask these questions. We thought, oh, they don't want to or we fell into this Jordan Peterson bullshit of like, oh, they just don't want to or they've made other decisions? No. It's because 40 to 60 % of all VCs went to one of two schools, Harvard and Stanford, and they were all white males. And they just saw other white males as the people they'd want to back. Never stopped to bother and ask, why aren't people of color raising money?
14:18Oh, well, maybe they don't want to. No, it's because it's harder for them. And so my entire perspective has changed to like, I'm proud of my accomplishments. You know, it's very easy to credit your grit and your character for your achievements, and it's easy to blame the markets for your failures. But the real shift in my outlook has been a function of recognizing that, no, I didn't overcome anything. I was born on third base. Do you think, I mean, I feel the same way about my own life. I think it's hard to argue with that conclusion. Do you think if you had had that kind of perspective earlier on in your life and career that it would have been helpful or Or would it have led to some sort of complacency?
15:01It would have been helpful in that one of my big regrets. I think I'm at that point in my life. I'm a naturally glass half empty kind of guy. I struggle with depression and anger. So I have trouble matching my mood to my blessings. And I'm very cognizant of it. And one of the things that I regret is I should have been kinder as a young man and as a young leader. I was in a position where I was able to raise a lot of money, start companies. None of them were big, but, you know, hundreds of employees, not thousands. But I was in a position where I had some economic success, a position of influence, and I was never a mean person.
15:36But with just a little bit of effort, I could have made a lot of people's lives much nicer on a daily basis. Take an employee into a room and say, you're doing an amazing job. Throwing some money at some people that I knew needed some money. Expressed to people in my life how much I cared about them. You know, as you get older, you recognize like when you're in a position of fortune or privilege, it's just not that goddamn hard to really move the needle and make a lot of people's lives nicer. And I didn't do that. I was all about, you know, just totally focused on me and how awesome I could be.
16:08And I think I would have been happier. I think it would have been more rewarding for me. And I just would have been a better citizen if I'd had more perspective on just how fortunate I am earlier in life. I don't think it would have changed my motivation. My motivation comes from some pretty base things. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. And my mom got very sick when I was in graduate school. She called me and said, I am really not doing well. My mom had cancer. And I came home and quite frankly, just walked into the worst weekend of my life. I couldn't take care of my mom. Started calling, trying to get her a nurse.
16:42Nurses were 55 bucks an hour. Couldn't find a hospital that would take her because we had shitty insurance. and just felt like just emasculated. Like, okay, I'm a guy who's been given everything. I knew that at that point. And I can't even take care of my mom. It was just so humiliating. And what I realized was that I need more money. And it sounds very crass, but that's really when I got my shit together. I'm like, okay, I didn't decide to be wealthy. I don't think you can make that decision. I think a lot of it is luck. A lot of it is out of your control. but I decided I am going to try really hard.
17:20And that was exceptionally motivating. The humiliation of not being able to take care of my mom was incredibly motivating. And I would say that if I had what my kids have now, I wouldn't have what I have. My motivation isn't I want to change the world for the better, where I'm so talented that it just happens. My motivation came from like failure and humiliation and a recognition that if I wanted to take care of someone who had taken care of me my whole life in a capitalist society, I needed to get my shit together. And it was very motivating. And then the second real motivator came just kind of 10, 15 years later when my first son came marching out of my girlfriend.
18:03And I'm like, okay, you want to live in New York with kids? You got to make a lot of money. I think people hear this and it's pretty crass, but I think people can relate to it. Your ability to take care of people in your life, whether it's your parents, your kids, a lot of it comes down to economics. And you can make decisions to move to a lower cost neighborhood and have a decent life. But I was told, you know, I was vain enough or self-absorbed enough to think, no, I should be able to have it all. I've been told my whole life I'm talented. And, you know, that's the reason my kids of immigrants are more successful.
18:38If you look statistically, it makes sense that I have a certain amount of success. Kids of immigrants see the risks their parents took. They see how hard they work. They see what money can provide or what an absence of it means, and they work hard. You know, there's a reason why the Gettys and the Carnegie's no longer rule the world, because when you grow up with a lot of money, you just don't have that fire. So for me, it was, if I'd recognized my privilege, I think I would have been a nicer, kinder person, a better citizen. But my motivation around success came from a lack of economics. Coming up, Scott Galloway talks about why, despite making a great living, he still has economic anxiety.
19:15Why he believes we're hardwired for a competitive instinct. His addiction to the approval of others. The rare moments when he's able to enjoy himself and say this is enough. Where he stands on the idea of bringing your whole self to work. And how to get over getting fired.
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21:54I find your honesty refreshing and I relate to pretty much all of the things you said, specifically the stuff about kindness. That was a huge deficit for me and something I'm still working on. And you're right, it doesn't take much work. I also relate to the stuff about motivation. And I'm curious, has your motivation shifted over time or are you still driven by this kind of primordial fear and anxiety insufficiency of your youth? It's a thoughtful question. So it's shifted a bit. I got lucky. I started a bunch of businesses. Most failed, but I live in a society that doesn't embrace failure, but it tolerates it.
22:33If I started a business that didn't work, I was always able to raise money, find good people and try again. And that's one of the amazing things about American society is that it gives you another shot at the plate. And I got lucky a couple of times and connected with the ball. And so I have economic security. So I don't have that same fear, but I still have economic anxiety. I still just wake up every morning a little bit worried about money. I can tell you how much money I have in my checking account right now. This has never left me, this fear of being broke, fear of not being able to take care of people.
23:02So I still have that. What's changed for me as I get older is, you know, I believe there's going to be a moment in my life where I look into my son's eyes and I know that our relationship's coming to an end. And I just cannot get over how fast that end is coming. I got out of graduate school yesterday and 31 years later, it's literally a blink. Decades have become years. Years have become seasons. And I think, Jesus, I've got so much I want to do. I want to get more secure with myself. I want to love more people. I want to raise responsible sons. I want to experience shit. I want to do new things.
23:39I want to be admired and relevant. It used to be a desire for economic security so I could do amazing things. Now it's like a desire to have important, meaningful relationships before it all ends. But I hear a couple of things in there. For sure, I think it's quite healthy to be aware of mortality, especially in the right way, if it's going to put you more in the present moment and increase the degree to which you value your relationships. but there's another thing i heard in there as well which i say without any judgment because all of the words that issued forth from your face could have come out of mine this desire for relevance i wonder about that in myself and i'd be interested to hear more from you like what is that all about is it just death and wanting to make a mark before we leave or is it filling some unfillable hole.
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24:35Yeah, I think a lot of it is instinctual. We're born with a competitive instinct such that we'll attempt to run faster, jump higher, be stronger such that we can attract mates and have relevance with our peers in the tribe. So competition or a competitive nature is just hardwired into us and it's healthy and it's the reason why the next generation is going to be smarter, stronger, faster. That just naturally comes out of us. We want to be the best. We want to be better. We want to be better than the person next to us. So some of it is natural. I think everyone has a certain amount of addiction in their life, which is how it manifests or what the substance is.
25:12Some people are addicted to trans fats, THC, alcohol, money, sex, whatever it might be. I'm addicted to the affirmation of strangers. And that is I care way too much. You know, when this podcast is released, I'll read every comment. And I will care what dog lady 3013 thinks. And I get huge reward out of strangers validating me. And there's nothing wrong with that to a certain point, but I'm addicted to it. And that kind of validation from strangers. You know, I write books. The day my book comes out, I'll check the Amazon rank 30 times. You know, whenever I'm on media, I immediately go on and there's so many different metrics now for approval or not approval.
26:03And these are strangers. None of them are concerned with the condition of my soul. None of them are going to take care of me when I'm older. I'm not going to meet 99.9 % of them. I don't need them for anything. They don't really need me. And yet I'm addicted to and feel reward and depression based on their view of me. Some of that is good, but I've never been able to break the wheel of that cycle. I'm blessed with the people around me. I kind of love me unconditionally. At least I'd like to think so. And I feel the same way about them. But the thing that is the addiction, and I don't know what it is.
26:38I don't know if it's instinctual. I want to impress other men. I want to be attracted to women. I don't know what it is. But it has not eased as I've gotten older. And I'm smart enough to know how pathetic it is. but I'm not smart enough to figure out how to abate it, how to diminish it. I care way too much about what other people think of my work and of me. Yeah. Well, yet again, you're saying stuff that I really relate to. This isn't a new condition. St. Augustine talked about panting after honors. And there was another writer from way back when, whose name I can't remember, who talked about the desire for fame being like drinking seawater.
27:17It'll never quench your thirst. You just can't, you can't fill that hole. And so a big part of life is figuring out what actually scratches the itch for you. What really does it for you in a fulfilling, abiding way. And fame can, this desire for fame, as you said, can be useful, can provoke you to do good things. But if it's all that's there, it's hard. Yeah. It's, you get older, you start to appreciate that life is finite, which is, I think it's a blessing. I like what Nietzsche said, find the moments in your life where you felt the most reward, the most content, and then try and figure out the attributes, the context, the people in those moments and draw a line to them and try and recreate them.
27:57And I love affirmation and reward and doing good work and making money, but it's never enough. It's never enough. It's fun for a moment and it creates a higher bar. I would describe my 30s and 40s is my decade of more. I want more St. Barts. I want more money. I want more affirmation. I want more fabulous situations with more fabulous people. And I did more. And every time I got it, it was awesome for a minute. And then it was like, oh, now I have a new bar. Now I have to figure out even more interesting people and more exclusive surroundings. And Anne Rice, she wrote about vampires that could never actually get any sort of real satisfaction.
28:42They were always hungry. Their hunger was insatiable. And the only time, and this is a little bit of virtue signaling, but it's true. The only moments where I thought, okay, this is kind of it. There is these random moments with my boys where we're watching, we're living in London now, we're obsessed with Premier league football and they'll both come into the living room or something. And one will just sort of naturally flop his legs over mine, you know, like not think of anything like I'd love and trust this person so much. And I just feel so comfortable being close to them and he'll throw his legs on mine.
29:20And then my dogs come in, you know, dogs, they're just such wonderful creatures and they're so affectionate and the dogs will come lie on us. And it's basically like a pile on and it just feels very natural. And that feeling, that's the only time I've ever thought, okay, this is enough. Finally, the box is checked and something resembling indelible ink. I can't imagine how this moment would be more. That's the only time I've ever felt that. And I think a lot of it is because I know it's going away. You know, I don't know if you get those things on Apple, where they take photos from your photo roll and they set music to it.
30:00And they're so rewarding, but so emotional because as humans, we're drawn towards scarcity. And that is sugar, salt, fat. We couldn't find these things. And so we're just wildly drawn to sweets and meat and fats because our instincts haven't caught up to institutional production. We aspire to have a Birkenberg or Ferrari because there's only a certain number of them made. The ultimate scarcity is kids. Because when I see this thing and it brings up, you know, trying to do a handstand or my 12-year-old trying to do a handstand when we were on vacation together, I'm like, he's gone. Never going to have that kid again.
30:41He's going through puberty now and is totally different and rolls his eyes and isn't as fascinated with me and doesn't want me to show him how to do a handstand. I mean, And so those moments where you're like, okay, this is it. This is it. It's going away. I think that's part of the reason that I get so much satisfaction from them now. And I throw the question back to you. Like, where is that moment? That moment for me is in the company of my boys and my dogs. The exact same thing for me. I have an eight-year-old and three cats and a happy marriage. and those moments, they're incredibly powerful.
31:21And one of the life skills par excellence, and you're modeling it here, is to know how and when to tune into that, savor it, and keep coming back to it in your mind because this is a mental skill. It's not a factory setting, it's a trainable skill. And this, for me, is a huge part of the power of meditation and Buddhist practice, which is it wakes you up to these things you might otherwise never notice. And that waking up, it's a double-edged sword because there's the sadness of knowing it's all fleeting. But the positive edge of the sword is you get to enjoy stuff before it evaporates. So what you're talking about, everyone talks about being in the moment, right?
31:59And our whole life, at least growing up, we're trained not to be in the moment. We're trained to put off the moment or at least sacrifice the moment for future better moments. You know, don't go out, don't be with friends, whatever it is. Don't drink, don't play video games. sacrifice. Do I really want to get up at 7 a.m., get on a train, go to work, you know, proof of document, whatever it is, right? What we're really focused on is trying to make better future moments. Get to the next thing. Deadlines. I'm a very deadline-driven person. Get the book done. The deadline's coming. As soon as I get off this podcast, I'm going to start writing and editing.
32:38Planning for future moments. And then you get to a point where you can maybe enjoy stuff and you have a tough time slowing down and being in the moment. I mean, I do. I have a really tough time just saying, okay. And that is one of the wonderful things about getting older. When I was writing my book, Algebra of Happiness, there's so much conflicting data. But the one piece of data that cuts across cultural and geographic boundaries is that when you have a level of happiness on the y-axis and age on the x-axis, it's a smile. You know, kind of zero to 25 is Star Wars, beer, college football game.
33:13Most people are generally pretty happy until like the age of 25. If you live in America and you come from a decent amount of privilege or you're smart and you have your act together, childhood and young adulthood is just, it's fun. 25 to 45 are what I call the shit gets real years. You find out the distinct of what your parents or your high school teacher who took an interest in you told you. you probably aren't going to be senator or have a fragrance named after you. And you face tragedy for the first time. Someone you know and love and who loves you immensely gets sick and dies. I mean, it's just like shit you're just not ready for.
33:52You can never be ready for. And then you find out that work is hard. You have some economic stress. You find out that kids are stressful. You know, it's not all a Hallmark Channel thing. You find out that relationships are really hard. You know, maybe you have a divorce. I mean, it's almost impossible not to have serious, serious stress and disappointment between the pressures of work, managing relationship. Jesus, kids. Oh, my God. No one tells you how awful babies are, right? They all pretend that it's all just some big lifetime channel thing. No, it's not. It's ridiculously hard. And then what's weird is it rebounds dramatically.
34:35And your kids grow up. They become less awful. You hopefully have some economic security. You have some friends and relationships. But what you have is typically people start getting better at being in the moment. I remember going out. I used to go to the same deli every Sunday night, a deli called Junior's Deli in the Valley. And my mom would order the same thing. She'd order Kipper's eggs and onions, and it would come with a salad, like a little side salad, nothing big. And she'd reach across the table and hold my hand and go, look how beautiful this is. And want to marvel at her Kipper's eggs and onions, like it was some work of art.
35:15And I remember thinking, what the fuck is she talking about? I just didn't get it. And now you find yourself in the same moment. I went into Hyde Park a few weeks ago in London, and it was one of the rare sunny days, and they have this rose garden there. And I made my boys stop, and I'm like, oh, my God, look at these roses. You just start finding pleasure in things you never would have thought of before. You just never would have appreciated. I mean, I'm in Miami Beach, and I'm walking. I went out, and I took my shoes off. I'm like, I just can't get over this sand. I never thought that way when I was a younger man.
35:54So there's this wonderful thing. And the faster you can get there, the better. And that is finding joy and reward and wonder in stupid little things. Or not even stupid, little things. And I'm really trying to lean into that. I'm trying to become my mom and marvel at the salad people bring me. And it's really wonderful. As you get older, it gets easier. You cannot explain this to young people. I don't get it. It looks like a salad to me, but that is really rewarding. And you see it across these studies, the cohort that should be the least happy. Old people, because they're the least healthy, are the happiest.
36:35They're the happiest because they have managed to slow down and admire the salad. A dying Warren Zevon said, enjoy every sandwich. Amen. You've been very patient with me peppering you with personal questions. If you're okay, I'd love to put you in Prof G mode and get more advice about sort of navigating the work world while maintaining some degree of sanity. There is an expression, bring your whole self to work, yay or nay, good idea or a bad one. Bring a ton of grit and commitment. And when you're young, go all in on work. Don't have a side hustle. Work is about the last 10%. Try and be there five or 10 minutes earlier than anyone.
37:13Really try and act like an owner. think, okay, what if I own 10 % of this company? What would my decisions be? My first job was at Morgan Stanley right out of UCLA. And I didn't deserve the job, but I rode crew in college. And the guy who ran fixed income said, Oarsman get an automatic hire because they're willing to kill themselves. And like from day one, I knew I wasn't as well educated, not because UCLA is not a great school, but I basically smoked a shit ton of bot and watched Planet of the Apes for five years. and they were more skilled than me. They were better educated. And I thought, okay, I know what I'm going to do.
37:47Every Tuesday morning, I'm going to go into work and I'm going to stay till Wednesday at 6 p.m. I'm going to work the night through. I have no dogs at home. I have no spouse. I was living with my mother. I was mentally strong, physically fit. And I'm like, I'm going to send a signal. I'm going to work 36 hours straight every week. And I kind of established a reputation as that crazy guy from UCLA who would come in Tuesday morning and leave Wednesday night. And it came at no cost to me because I was able to do that at the age of 23. That's just not hard. And the thing is, the majority of people can do it.
38:21They've just never tried it. So they think it's impossible. No, it's not. It is amazing how strong you are when you're young and you don't realize how strong you were to your older and you're not that strong anymore. But I think professional success is about, for an extended period of time, really going all in and working really hard and showing everyone around you. You can sort of control how talented you are through learning and going to graduate school. But for the most part, the one thing in your control is how hard you work and how much you commit to things. So the first is bring your whole self in terms of grit and energy, assuming you're ambitious.
38:59Some people are like, no, I want balance in my life. I get it. I think there's very little balance if you want to be economically successful. And I'm not saying that's the right way, but it's my way and the majority of people I know want to be influential. In terms of politics, in terms of what it says about you, don't bring your whole self to work. And what I mean by that is we have trained young people to believe that we give a shit what their political views are at work. And if they voice concerns or things that offend them, they'll be called leaders and people will come up to them and say, thank you for voicing that.
39:35And then there'll be memo to self, fire this person slowly but surely over the next three years because they're a pain to work with. And that's not a nice thing to say. It's too bad. And if you face injustice in work or you see an opportunity to help people from underrepresented communities, by all means, go at it. But we've trained a younger generation of people to bring their full self, including their thoughts on the world, their thoughts on politics to work. And that is not what work is about, in my view. Work is about an organization that creates economic value. It should be a good citizen in the community.
40:05But I look at work as a platform to develop economic security for you and your family. And you can have friends there. You can make a difference from a social standpoint. But young people are bringing their emotions, their political views, their sensibilities around what offends them. And I find that, generally speaking, that's not going to pay off for you. If you get laid off, realize it might be a little bit about you. Okay, let's be honest. They laid off 10 % of the workforce. You were in that 10%. For whatever reason, you were unlucky in the wrong place at the wrong time or they just decided you weren't very good.
40:42But it's mostly about things beyond your control and mourn for a little bit and then forgive yourself and move on and realize it wasn't about you. I've been fired before. I think most people get fired. Everyone's had disappointment and been fired. And the key to success is your ability to mourn and move on. It's not an evaluation on you or your worth as a person or your character. It's usually about the situation that you're in for whatever reason. And one of the things I say, the key to success is your perseverance and your resilience. Give yourself a few days, maybe in a couple of weeks to feel bad about yourself or be angry or whatever.
41:17And then immediately put together that list. I'm going to hit LinkedIn. I'm going to call my friends, get out there, get up, dust up, and do whatever you need to do, whatever you have to do to essentially look in the mirror physically and metaphorically and say, I am the answer to a firm's problems. I'm going to add a shit ton of value to this company before you go into an interview. And prepare, but make sure you understand and believe that. I can make someone else's life wonderful. Right? Think of all the wonderful things about you that you can bring to a relationship. Are you strong? Are you affectionate?
41:55Are you someone who can make someone laugh when they're down? Can you partner with someone really well? Are you handy? Do you give great advice? You can make someone else's life wonderful. But don't think that disappointment is just like the endgame indictment on you, especially at work. So much of this shit is out of your control. Somebody you may not even meet has figured out that, oh, we should lay off 10 % of anyone with this title, or we no longer need a social media group. So yeah, bring your full self in terms of grit and commitment, but don't bring your full self. This isn't about you.
42:34And for God's sakes, don't think that if something bad happens to you at work, it's an assessment of your full self. No, it's not. No, it's not. Coming up, Scott talks about his thoughts on side hustles, work-life balance, and whether remote work will stick around post-COVID, why being in the office is important for younger workers if they want to get ahead, especially younger men, and what is at the heart of his willingness to go out on a limb and risk blowback when he gets something wrong.
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43:49This message may be shocking to many millennials. If you are one, you might want to sit down. Right now, loads of people are searching the following on Depop. Low-rise jeans, halter top, velour tracksuit, puka shell necklace, disc belt. You likely placed these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in yourself to dust them off, there are a lot of people who will give you money for them. Sell on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Where's the line between the grit that you're calling for and hustle culture and, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk calling for us to crush it or Elon Musk saying we have to be extremely hardcore.
44:34Where's the line there or is there a line? So I don't like hustle porn, especially the notion that quit your job and move to Seattle and offer to get coffee for Jeff Bezos. I mean, well, okay, boss, if you're a single mother, you can't quit and go get, I mean, some of it is so unrealistic. And people have commitments. People have kids. People have issues around health or taking care of parents. So I also hate the idea of side hustles. I think if you want to be economically secure, take every ounce of energy professionally, figure out the right arrow and put wood behind that arrow. If you have a side hustle, it means your main hustle isn't working out.
45:10And as quickly as possible, you should get out of that main hustle and make the side hustle your main hustle. And there's probably exceptions to that. But successful people I know are just kind of all in on the one thing. And in my 20s and 30s, I did very little but work. And it came at a cost. I lost my hair. My first marriage ended divorce. And to be blunt, it was worth it. And my economic security now and my sacrifice then, my lack of balance in my 20s and 30s means I have an extraordinary amount of balance now. And I'm hugely grateful for it. And one of the things I think is a bit of a myth is balance as a young person, if you're professionally ambitious, I just think that's sort of ridiculous.
45:55You know, everybody knows of someone who is great at what they do, makes a lot of money, has good relationships with their parents, has a good relationship with their spouse, donates time at the ASPCA and has a food blog. Assume you are not that person. And the time to go all in, if you are ambitious on your career, is when you're young. Because things like kids and spouses and aging parents will demand time as you get older. You also just aren't as physically capable. So that's the time, I think, to really go all in. But where you don't want to be is in your 40s with kids and economically strained because it'll really impact relationships.
46:36It'll be really hard or feel like, oh, God, I'm just getting going professionally. I don't get any time to spend with my kids. I don't get any time to enjoy raising kids with a partner that I care about. I don't get any time to do interesting things. So I think 20s and 30s is all about pretty much going all in and establishing that relevance. And I get a lot lot of pushback from younger people and we have a new generation of kids who value balance more, that's fine. You need to adjust your expectations and your lifestyle then. That's fine. Move to a lower cost city, you know, work to live, not live to work.
47:12That's one way. If you're ambitious and almost every young person, when you really start asking them questions around what their expectations are economically, where they want to live, how many kids they want to have, it is really competitive out there. And so I don't like this idea of side gigs. I think it's unrealistic to tell people to quit their job and move across the country. But yeah, in your 20s and 30s, it's about work. Remote work, thumbs up or down? It's situational. It's probably the most enduring feature of COVID. We're just not going back to the before times. And that is, show me a guy who's demanding everyone or tried to demand six months ago that everyone return to office.
47:52And I'll show you a guy that has someone who takes care of his kids, is wealthy enough to live close to work, and was successful in the before times. And they just assume, oh, that's how we're going to work moving forward. So I think it's an enormous unlock and opportunity. And I'd like to think there'll be an informal or formal classification of a new type of worker, and that is the care worker, someone who's taking care of parents, someone who's taking care of kids, someone who's maybe managing their own health or mental wellness, someone who lives an hour and a half away from work. And I think that corporations should make an accommodation to try and ensure a certain amount of people in their organization qualify to be quote unquote care workers and you make special accommodations for them.
48:35I think that's an enormous unlock and I think it'll add a lot of benefit to our society. You're a single mom, you're raising two kids, can we establish this person as a care worker and we make additional accommodations and try and invest in making sure their career has trajectory, a similar trajectory, even if they're only able to get into the office two or three days a week. Having said that, I think remote work is a real negative for young people. I think when you're establishing relationships, mentors, colleagues, a third of relationships begin at work. I mean, we don't like to talk about it because there's been some very well-publicized instances of abuses of power, but one in three relationships started at work.
49:16It's where you meet people. Where do you meet friends when you're not bumping off people in person and there's a certain loss of creativity? The office is a feature, not a bug for a young person. Who it's especially important for is young men. Young men need guardrails. Their prefrontal cortex literally doesn't evolve or mature as quickly as young women. I needed my boss at the age of 22 to pull me into a room and go, don't be a fucking idiot. Don't say things like that. I needed the discipline of having to get to 515 Figaro Avenue in downtown LA or to 1251 Avenue in the Americas by 8 a.m. I needed that discipline.
49:56It stopped me from smoking pot and drinking every night. I needed mentors. I needed to learn how to read a room. And I wasn't going to get that over Zoom. And I think young men especially need that. So in terms of growing up, getting professional skills, finding friends and potential romantic partners, you know, the office is a feature, not a bug. So what I tell young people is find a job that offers you an opportunity to go be around a lot of people. All studies lean to the same place. Your happiness is a function of the number of deep and meaningful relationships you have. And economics and professional success us facilitate relationships and make those relationships easier or give you more time to really enjoy those relationships.
50:42But the place you really establish a ton of relationships at a young age is this weird thing called an office. So for God's sake, when you interview with a company, one of your questions should be, do you have an office? Because, and also just economically, and this is situational, if you decide you want to snowboard the rest of your life, you don't need that much money, fine. Find a remote work job. But if your job can be moved to Boulder, be clear, it can be moved to Bangalore. You are going to make less money. If you want a remote work job, you are going to make less money and you're going to have less professional trajectory.
51:17And you know what? It might be worth it for you. But I think the majority of the people who probably listen to your podcast or that we know who are young want to get better at what they do. They want a great income trajectory. And I would say that actually being in the office is a feature, not a bug. And you made a reference saying stupid shit when you were younger. And it just reminded me of one of the many things that I like about you is that you try stuff. You will try a joke that may be on the bubble in terms of appropriateness. You will make predictions pretty fearlessly. And you get, you know, sometimes you get stuff wrong and you get criticized.
51:55And one of the things I see in your public utterances over and over is the willingness to say, yeah, I made a mistake. And that seems like an important thing to model. That's generous of you. You know, I say with my media, my goal is to provoke a conversation not to be right. I have a newsletter called No Mercy, No Malice. I got 350 ,000 subscribers. I wrote a post last weekend called More Babies. I'm fascinated by the fact that 50 % of Western nations are about to go into population decline. and since i was getting on with you the standard narrative was population was a bad thing and we were going to have the world was going to collapse under population explosion and more emissions more climate change not enough food to go around you know the population bomb was coming the majority of the data i've seen is it's in fact the exact opposite and we're not only going to have population decline we're going to have population degradation and that is by the turn of the century with current trends, we're going to have six times as many people over the age of 90.
52:53It's the fastest growing cohort. And we're going to half as many kids under the age of five. So we're going to literally end up with nursery schools. They're going to be like zoos with a bunch of seniors peering inside, looking at this creature they don't see in the wild. The majority of Nobel Prizes, the majority of amazing companies we talk about have one thing in common. The companies were all started by people in their 20s. Look at great art. Look at great rock and roll. The young brain is more risk aggressive and more creative. And if we end up with a nation where we have one worker for every retired person, our economy is going into structural decline.
53:28Name a Western economy that's experienced population decline, Japan, Italy. I'll show you a place that's gone into a permanent recession and doesn't have the money to make the transition to climate change. So I believe that we have to figure out a way to provide more economic security, whether it's childcare, whether it's lower cost schooling, help around housing costs for young people to encourage more people to have children. And anyways, I wrote this out. I thought it was very data driven. Oh, my God, Dan, the blowback I received. And I felt a little bit attacked. You're saying women are just baby machines.
54:06Did you produce The Handmaid's Tale? Let's start referring to you as a climate terrorist. And you want more young people to support your mythology of capital. I mean, just people came after me. And I didn't mind it as much as I would have minded it because I thought we're catalyzing a conversation. That's what we're here for. Scott, such a pleasure to meet you after all this time listening to you. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Dan, thanks. You have a face for TV and a voice for podcasting. You kind of bring it all. I appreciate that. There you go. Thanks for your time, Dan.
54:44Congrats on your success. Appreciate it. Right back at you. Thanks again to Scott Galloway. It was cool to meet him. Thank you as well to everybody who works so hard on this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justine Davey, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman, and Kimi Regler is our managing producer. We get our scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure over at Ultraviolet Audio. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands delivered our theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for the second installment of our Work Life series.
55:16We're going to talk about imposter syndrome, which I think more accurately is called the imposter phenomenon. And I interviewed this expert jointly with my wife, Dr. Bianca Harris, who has a pretty bad case of imposter phenomenon. So you'll hear that on Wednesday. Thank you.
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From the publisher
We're sharing an episode of Ten Percent Happier where Scott discusses the impact of work on mental Health, the role of luck in success, and how much is enough.
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