Episode 280: Shane Parrish: Clear Thinking in Everyday Life

24:22So you can't see outside. How fast is the ball moving? Well, if you're holding the ball on the train, it's not moving at all relative to you, but to somebody watching the train go by, it's moving at 60 kilometers an hour. It's the same as us. I mean, we're a few blocks away and how fast are we moving? We're not moving at all, yet we're moving 18 ,000 miles an hour around the sun right now. So it depends on how you look into the problem, but the source of all mistakes in decision-making is blind spots. And how do we eliminate blind spots or reduce blind spots? We can probably never fully eliminate them, but we can dramatically reduce them by shifting our perspective into the problem and taking a different lens into it.

25:02Fascinating. I'm glad you mentioned best practices because reading the book, I think you said best practices are average. However, your weekend email that we get is all about learning what other people have mastered to help us be better at what we do. So what do you think in general about best practices as a decision-making tool? I think you need to understand best practices. And there's a saying that young man knows the role, the old man knows the exception. And I think that that's what you're looking for with best practices. Most people just get best practices and they continue in that lane, but you have to try something new if you want different results than other people.

25:42You have to be willing to look like an idiot. Again, that goes against our social default. We don't want to stand out. We don't want to look bad. And if we're right, there's an asymmetric payoff, right? I was talking with a friend who worked at an organization. He saved them like$20 million with one of his initiatives. They gave him a$2 ,000 bonus. And so he risked a lot. He risked a lot by doing something completely different than everybody else. And he might've lost his job because he took a big chance and his upside was two grand. So the payoffs don't make sense and they don't make sense to us either.

26:14There's a lot of reputational payoffs. And so there's limited upside and almost unlimited downside. So we don't want to do this stuff. And I think that we can be better than that. I think part of the email that I sent on Sundays is about inspiring people to be better. It's about timeless wisdom. And it's, I wouldn't say best practices based, but it's things that you can adapt and use in daily life and work. So sort of mini story you just told was about taking a risk. What role do you think self-confidence plays in thinking clearly? Well, two things about taking a risk, right? So going back to positioning, which is a counterintuitive way to think about decision making, but the position you're in at the moment you take risk is going to make that risk almost non-existent or really high.

27:06So if you are in a position where you can fail, where you can withstand pain, where you can go through the inevitable ups and downs, you're in a much better position than if you need everything to go just right when you take a risk. And so I think that that's one aspect to it. The second aspect is you need the confidence to act in the face of that social dilemma in terms of what if I do fail? Can I withstand looking like an idiot? Can I do these things? And what gives me the confidence to do that? And there's earned confidence, there's unearned confidence, and then there's a different way to look at confidence.

27:43So I'm going to give you all three. Earned confidence is you're an expert. You've done the work. You know the exceptions. You know the ins and outs. You know the nuances. Unearned confidence, you've sort of read a Wikipedia page or a Google document and you think, I've got this figured out. And the difference between those two is basically if you think of the difference between a chef and me at home cooking. So we can both get the recipe. And if everything goes right, it might even taste the same. But the minute something goes slightly wrong, the chef can just taste it. And they know instantly, oh, there's too much salt.

28:17You didn't use enough high heat. You started the wrong way. The oven's off. It wasn't baking at the right temperature. They just instantly know because they've done the work. And that's a good way to think about those two types of competence. The other is like, how do I have confidence about doing something that I've never done before? And I think the example I give in the book is about cliff jumping with my son. And we were sort of on the lake and this was about three or four years ago now. And we climbed up the side of this mountain to jump off this cliff. And it's about 20, 25 feet. And before we got out of the boat, I was like, Hey, like if we go up, we can't come down.

28:52Like this is a one-way door here. the only way down is we jump or I have to throw you down. You can't climb down. It's way too dangerous. You fall climbing down. You're like dead. You go into the water the wrong way. You might break a bone, but you're not going to die. And he's like, yeah, yeah. You know, all the confidence in the world. And then he gets up there and he looks down and he's like, whoa, I don't want to do this. I can't do this. And he starts panicking. His breathing changes. And I'm like, oh gosh, like, how do I work through this? I've never done this before with somebody else. And so I was like, okay, let's step back from the edge for a second here and let's get our breathing under control.

29:31First of all, get our physiological body response under control. Second of all, let's think about all the hard things that you've done that you've never done before. Well, you went snowboarding down a mountain before, but you had never done that. you managed to go through a pandemic. Other people haven't gone through a pandemic. What are the things that you can come up with that you've done for the first time that you were scared of? I remember when you were like two, you were scared of going down a slide. You were scared of walking. You were scared of all of these things. And yet you've overcome all of these challenges, all of this adversity.

30:10And so, you know, he starts building up that internal monologue. I've done things for the first time. I don't necessarily need to be able to know that I can do it. And I was like, the other thing I want you to do is you're looking at this the way a lot of adults look at it. And you're looking at it in a way that keeps you in place. And I'm going to tell you this now, because this is what parents do. This is what adults do. They look at where they want to go. And they're like, I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to have, I don't have the confidence to get to the ultimate destination. His point, he's looking down.

30:48His confidence is like, I don't have the confidence I can make it to the water. And I was like, we're not going to think like that. You're going to look out and you're not going to look down. And the only confidence you need is the next step. You don't need the confidence to make it to the bottom. You just need the confidence to take the next step. And that next step is the one off the edge. You can take a big step, but don't look down. Because the minute you look down, this is, as adults, this is when we catch ourselves procrastinating, endlessly doing research. All of these things are just excuses not to start, right?

31:22We're thinking about if it's not perfect, I'm never going to be able to get there. I want to make it perfect before I start. The world doesn't work that way. It's messy. It's full of false starts and mistakes and all this mess. And if you're waiting for the confidence to get to the outcome or build the company that's like $10 million a year in revenue, you're never going to have that confidence. The confidence comes from can I start? Can I take the first step? What is the first step? And action creates its own confidence. And so if you need confidence, most people go to inaction and reading and thinking and talking, and they get all these rewards and they confuse that with actually doing.

32:04But confidence, real confidence, earned confidence comes from doing, comes from taking the first step. It can be a baby step. It doesn't matter. Just take the first step. And so to come back to the story, he looks out onto the horizon, takes the first step. And 25 seconds later, he's back up, jumping off, basically like going backwards. That's super cool. I bungee jumped one time. Terrifying. But it made me think of the story you just told because it was exactly the same thing. It's like, okay, you're going to get up on the bridge and you're going to go out on a little jumping platform. Then you're looking out and the person's telling you, okay, if you don't jump on three, I'm going to push you.

32:39That's what they tell you, at least where I was. What's the next thing? And so I jumped and you fall and fly back off on the bungee cord and fall back down. It's terrifying. It didn't do it again, but it was the same thing. One thing at a time. I think I was interested in doing that until I watched this video once of like that going wrong. And I was like, no. You talked about habits earlier, Shane, but how important to clear thinking are good habits? Well, habits are neutral. If you think of a habit, it just reinforces what you put into it. It's almost like a thermos. And so your habits are super important because they almost become rituals into positioning yourself, into getting into the right environment, into doing the things that you want to do.

33:21And I have this saying, which is, don't tell me your priorities, show me your calendar. And so if your habits align with where you're going, that's a great thing. And if they don't align with where you're going, that's a bad thing. And how do we know if they do or don't? It's like, are you getting the results that you feel like you should be getting. And if you're not, your habits tend to be part of that. What sort of habits get in the way of this? Well, there's eating, there's sleeping, there's drinking. These are all habits that people have that sort of lead to positioning. There's investing in your relationship, which is also a habit if you want to.

33:53I relate this to my kids in terms of like, well, are you studying? When are you studying? Is it ritualistic? Because whenever you need discipline or whenever you need willpower, you want to make it a ritual. So it requires less and less willpower and eventually just happens. So with my kids, it's like they come home from school, they shower, they come downstairs and they start studying and that's the ritual. And it took about, I don't know, three weeks to a month to make that happen. My kids get a lot of homework. I like the fact that they get a lot of homework. I understand not every parent thinks that way.

34:23I think it's amazing. They get about 90 minutes a night and it was always this battle when they first started school. And the battle was basically like, I don't feel like doing it now. And I'm like, I don't care what you feel like. It doesn't matter. Your homework needs to be done. Got to go to work. Some days I don't feel like going to work. Everybody else does the same thing. Like this is an important life skill for you to figure it out because I'm like, what really differentiates people in life is the best people do it when they don't feel like doing it. And I'm going to show you how they do it when they don't feel like doing it through habits, through rituals, through sort of automatic rules.

34:56And these rules will power you through when willpower fails you. And so I'm like, we're just going to try this thing for a few weeks. Bear with me. And I'm going to make sure that you get it because you're young. And the time they were 12 and 11 when we started this and they come home. I was there every day after school when they got home. I'm like, okay, go upstairs, shower. Here's a little snack after school. You get this little time, right? And the time is the commuting time. And the time is sort of the shower time. And then you put your clothes away and then you come downstairs and you sit down and you get to work, and you do your homework.

35:28And it required no willpower because they were still at an age where I could just tell them what to do. And that is like a genius age for parents. I can't do that anymore. But we did this for like three weeks, and then I didn't go home one day. So I wasn't there when they got home, and it was totally intentional. And I was nearby, and I sort of walked in around the time that they would have started studying. And what do you know? They've showered, they're sitting down at the table, and they're studying. And I was like, this is brilliant. And I was like, how do you guys feel? And they're like, oh, we're just doing what we've done.

36:01So now at this point, it's a habit. At this point, it's a ritual. This is what we do when we come home from school. And what they're not doing is saying, should I do this now? How do I have the willpower to do it when I don't feel like doing it? Well, you just do it. I had a strength and conditioning coach once. You'd always say that the days you don't feel like training are the days that you get better. 100%. And so like, let's make this real for adults and turn it into something that we'll probably talk about later, but automatic rules for success. And so I used to work out two days a week, three days a week.

36:35I hate working out. I don't know about everybody else. Maybe some people are super motivated. It's a chore, man. And so I would have these days where I'd be like, I'm tired. There's a lot of work to do. And I would start making these excuses and these excuses become a negotiation with myself, which is like, hey, I'm not going to work out today, but I'll do extra tomorrow. And these are like little lies that we tell ourselves. You're not going to do extra tomorrow, just FYI. So tomorrow would come around and I'd be like, yeah, I really don't feel like going to the gym today either. Got a lot of stuff.

37:08And you just sort of convince yourself that what you're doing is the right thing. And then I was like, this is crazy. I'm going to apply an automatic rule to this. And the automatic rule, I'll come back to where the automatic rules came from in a second, but the automatic rule is I'm going to sweat every day. I'm going to work out every day. And the duration and the scope can change. But the fact that I work out, the fact that I sweat doesn't change at all. And it is entirely successful. It's been life-changing to so many of my friends, my family who have taken this and made it a rule. It's so easy to follow.

37:44Let's go back to where rules come from. So I was with Daniel Kahneman in his penthouse in New York. and he was on the phone and he ended up getting to the end of the conversation. And he said, my rule is I don't say yes on the phone. I'll get back to you tomorrow. And he hung up the phone. And I was like, whoa, tell me about this. What is this rule? And he's like, oh, social pressure. I felt, I always feel obligated to say yes to people. I never want to disappoint them. But he's like, what I've learned is that I end up doing things that I don't want to do to please other people and who's the person that's least pleased by that?

38:22He is. And so at the cost of making himself unhappy, he was making other people happy. And he's like, I also don't want to argue with people. And I don't want to be in a situation where I have to defend myself. Or when you say, I can't make it that day, you might be being polite and sort of not super confrontational. Oh, well, we'll just make it another day. And it turns into this big discussion, this big argument. And now all of a sudden you're getting frustrated and they're trying to find a solution to something they don't think is a problem. And they eventually get frustrated too, because they're sort of like solving the wrong problem.

38:57And he's like, so I created this rule to get me out of this situation. You know, my rule is this. And he's like, there's a weird thing about rule. People don't argue with them. And I was like, what other rules do you have? He's like, none. I was like, this is the most powerful thing. I was like, with all due respect, this is probably the most powerful thing you've come up with. Cognitive biases are amazing, but this should win you the Nobel Prize because this is incredibly powerful. Why don't we use this all the time? And so I started playing around with this and I started testing it with friends.

39:30I had one friend who was trying to eat healthier, but he was in sales role. So he's always at the restaurants and he's relying on willpower. And eventually everybody loses the battle with willpower. So he gets to restaurants. It's late at night. After long days, lots of travel, he's away from his family. He's in an environment where he's around people who might be in their home city, but for them, they're outside of their environment. It's an excuse to drink and eat and do all these other things. And he's like, it's such a hard environment to be successful. And I'm like, well, if rules work anywhere, they should work here.

40:01Let's try it. And I was like, we're going to create two rules around this. And the two rules are you don't eat dessert and you always pick the healthiest thing on the menu. And I'm like, these are rules. You can't deviate from them. It doesn't matter what's on the menu. You just pick the healthiest thing and you never have dessert. And we'll skip the drinking part. We'll tackle that later. And so a few weeks later, he calls me up and he's like, this is life-changing. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, nobody argues with me about what I do because I tell them, this is my rule. He's like, it doesn't matter how tired or stressed or anything that I am.

40:39I've now circumvented basically like a lot of my emotion out of this. So I've created this rule that hijacks my brain. He's like, I don't understand it. And I was like, well, of course, because you've been taught to follow your rules your whole life. You've just never been taught to create rules for yourself that work to your advantage. But nobody has to tell you to follow the speed limit every day or to do your taxes the right way every day, or you're surrounded by all these rules. People tell you these rules once and your brain just processes this in a way where it's like, I can't argue with the rule.

41:11I follow the rule. Well, we create our own rules. And the weird thing is we don't argue with the rules and we don't think about the rules. And so these are so powerful because they get us out of these situations where we would require thinking in order to do the right thing. And if we go back to emotion, ego, social inertia, situations where we're less likely to think. It's like, well, can we create rules or structure or an artificial environment that allows us to do the right thing even when we're not at our best? So the first thing you want to do is position yourself so you are at your best.

41:49So these have less of a pull on you. But if you're not at your best, how can you create friction? And this is so powerful. And so anyway, long story short, guy ends up losing a ton of weight. I tried it with another friend of mine who I think you guys know, Brent Bishore, he read an early copy of the book. We had a conversation. He implemented this. Literally, I get a text from him once a month going, I've never been healthier. This has changed my life. I am so grateful to you. He is an amazing person. And he was doing the exact same thing I was doing. He was negotiating with himself about working out.

42:23Now he's like, I sweat every day, every single marker. It's so amazing to see this in action and how powerful it can be. And these are examples of rules that I've used or friends have used and tested. But really, the big benefit to this is you can create your own rules. And when you're in these social situations and you're like, my rule is I don't eat dessert. People might say something once, but if you say the same thing the next time, they won't push back on you and you don't push back on yourself. You're absolutely right, Shane. Yeah, no, it's so good. I've got the same rule, sweat every day.

42:54I got that from Lulu Lemon's founder years ago. That's one of his mantras, sweat every day. Chip Wilson, I think. And I've got a rule for not drinking. But what you said about social pressure, when it's a rule, when you just tell people, I don't drink as a rule, that's it. The conversation is over. Whereas, no, I'm not drinking tonight. Oh, come on, just have a beer. It's a completely different conversation. Not drinking tonight turns into a willpower thing, a stubbornness thing. And the social part of you undermines all of that because you're like, oh, it's just easier to have a drink. And then all of a sudden one drink turns into three.

43:27Like I have a rule when I go give talks and I go to conferences, which is I don't drink past nine. Nothing good happens past nine with people you don't know. And nobody argues with it. It's really funny. It's just sort of like this thing where I'm like, Hey, my rule is that I don't drink past nine. So I'll have a drink at dinner. And then, you know, I'm done. And then that way I can sort of like get the social aspect of it that comes with that camaraderie that people have around alcohol for some really strange reason. And then in the flip side, I end up with none of the trouble that sort of comes from that, because it's like, this is just not going to go anywhere.

44:02You mentioned problem solving, and I'm guessing Randall Stutman, who were both big fans of his work, has something to do with your thoughts on this. But how important is spending time on defining the problem before solving a problem. Randall is one of my favorite people. And that man is a genius. We had a conversation a few years ago. I was doing this at work, but I think he explained to me why it worked. So you ever do something and you're not quite sure why it works. And his level of insight was like, well, here's why what you're doing works. And I always, I hit on this a long time ago at work because one of my old mentors said to do this as well.

44:41and I don't know if he'd ever heard of Randall or got the idea from him, but good things sort of like triangulate. And I was separating problem definition from problem solution, because what I found was people would solve the wrong problem. And my only thing that I was trying to do is like, how do we solve the right problem? And Randall explained to me that the separation, again, this is the use of an artificial environment. You're creating constraints. you're using those constraints to avoid pitfalls and those pitfalls get people in trouble. And Randall said, well, here's what happens when you have a bunch of smart people and you go into a meeting to solve a problem.

45:22Well, the ego comes out, somebody says something plausible that sounds like it is the problem. It's like a reasonable approach to the problem. And then everybody jumps into problem solving the problem solution mode. And then before you know it, you end up solving the wrong problem. And all the energy you spend solving this wrong problem comes at the expense of solving the right problem. And I was like, I never really understood what was going on until Randall told me that. And I was like, I think I hit on like the right thing to do. And it was very successful, but I had no idea why it worked. I was the line cook, right?

45:57I was that cook at home who followed the recipe and was like, this turned out amazing. I have no idea why all these flavors work together, but they do. So let's make this again. He's like, what you really need to do is take that hour long meeting and break it into two half hour meetings and space it out over a day or two. And you're not only going to get a better problem definition, you're going to get closer to the actual problem. You're really going to allow a lot of people in the meeting, because remember, if we go back to the source of all bad decisions is blind spots, which comes from Peter Kaufman, you're going to get the people who don't want to contribute on the spot or the people who need to think a little bit more about the problem.

46:36They're going to contribute now too, because they're going to go back and they're going to email you the next morning or the next night, or they're going to go for a walk and they're going to think about it on the way home. And they're going to have a unique insight into this problem that you didn't see. And that unique insight is going to be important. And then the other thing that Randall sort of hit home for me was that the person who makes the decision, A, it should be a person, never a committee, should be responsible for defining the problem. Never let anybody else define the problem for you if you are responsible for the solution.

47:06Everybody can provide input into the problem. Everybody can provide a unique perspective into it, but you're the one responsible for actually defining what the problem is. And you should own that. And when you own it, you have accountability around it. And then another way to get better information out of people while we're on the topic of meetings that a lot of people find super useful. You know how everybody shows up and they've sort of like, there's maybe this three-page document to read before the meeting, background information on the problem. And everybody goes in and they just basically paraphrase the exact same thing.

47:39What are they doing in that moment? Well, they're signaling to other people that I've done the work, I deserve to be in the room. But they're all saying the exact same thing. They're saying the thing that is in the document that everybody by definition who's in the room should know. So if you're the leader of this meeting or you're the person responsible for defining the problem in the context of this or any meeting that you lead, you have to change the signaling value from signaling that you've read it to signaling unique insight into the problem. One way to do that is what do you know about this problem that nobody else in the room knows about it?

48:14And what am I doing there? I'm shifting my perspective and I'm giving you a social reward or a status reward. If you want to talk, if you want to have input, you need to tell me something unique. You need to tell me something valuable. Now, all of a sudden, our meetings are a lot more productive because the information we're talking about is a lot better. We can assume that everybody's read the document. If they haven't, they shouldn't be in the room. I mean, that's a different problem to solve. I have a separate question for you. I'm curious, because in the book, you talk about that you value time over money.

48:49How did you determine that? If you talk to anybody near the end of their life, they would give up all the money that they have for more time. And time is this weird thing. You can't see it. You can't feel it. I mean, once it's spent, it's gone. And you can sort of buy time in the sense of you spend money to get time, or you might be able to get a little slightly better medical care and maybe extend your life. But you can't really get more time, but you can get more money. Money becomes leverageable. Time is leverageable in order to make money. But at the end of the day, if you're 90 and you have$10 million in your bank account and you're about to die, you deploy all of that money for an extra week of life.

49:40An extra week with your great grandkids, an extra week with your kids. You would give all that money away in a heartbeat. When I thought about that and then I looked at things that I was doing with money, what is it I really want money to do for me? Why do I want this money? What is important? Of course, there's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you have these basic standards, but what do I really value? Well, I value time. I value somebody else doing these things. So when I make money, I want somebody else to do these things that I don't want to do. Why? Because that allows me to do more of what I do want to do, whether it's take a nap, whether it's go to work, whether it's go for a walk, it doesn't really matter.

50:21So when I looked at why I was working and what I was trying to accomplish, I was really just trying to buy time. And that was ultimately sort of why I left the intelligence agency. I wanted more control and more freedom over my time. Really good answer to that question. That's something that we think about a lot, the relationship between time and money and how to make those trade-offs. Well, if you look at this sort of happiest wealthy people, and I preface that with happiest, because a lot of rich people are not happy. Wealth includes happiness by my definition. There's a difference between rich and wealthy.

50:55Wealthy includes health and relationships and happiness and all these other things, whereas rich is just money. And if you look at the happiest wealthy people that I know, most of them spend money on things they don't want to do. And they have other people doing those things for them and that makes them happy. And I think that there's a really good lesson in that, which is if you don't like mowing your grass and you have millions of dollars in the bank, then why are you doing that? You could be playing with your kids. You could be out for a walk with your partner or your spouse. You could be having a nap.

51:31It doesn't really matter what you're doing. It just matters that why aren't you using that money to get more time? We had a guest a while ago, Ashley Willans, who talked about her research on this, on how people who prefer time over money are generally speaking, happier people. Totally. When you think about it in reality, for anybody who works on an hourly wage, every minute they're sort of buying their own time. They're not doing it because they could be making more money. And if you think of any entrepreneur, it's the exact same thing. And this sort of dawned on me as well, which is the curse of the entrepreneur, if you will, is that your brain never shuts off.

52:09You can always be doing more. There's nobody else responsible other than you to make all of that happen. And how do you reconcile that with like, I have to go home and I have to be there for my partner and there for my kids and doing all these things. And on the flip side, you're like, I'm giving up all of this opportunity by doing that. And these things are real struggles for people and they're important trade-offs to think about. But when I think about the things that are important to me, it's like a really short commute to work. I don't want to spend a lot of time in my car personally. What does that mean?

52:40Well, it means I spend more on housing. Well, I'm okay with that. I'm okay spending more money on housing because what am I doing? I'm buying my time. And how am I buying my time? I'm buying my time in the sense that my commute's five minutes and not 45 minutes or, you know, in Ottawa, it's probably like 60 now. It's crazy here. Great topic to talk about, especially on a podcast about decision-making. Speaking of which, your podcast is incredible, first of all, and you do a great job curating content for people who want to understand, I think, as you say, the best of what other people have already figured out.

53:14We try and do something similar for financial decision-making. How do you think people can curate the information that is best for them? Sherlock Holmes had this thing about this sort of memory attic. The furniture you put up there is the furniture you're going to move around. And if you think about this in terms of information and who you follow and what you're consuming, the quality of the information you consume is going to be the quality of your future thoughts. So you can't put junk food in your head and expect to have unique, penetrating, timeless insights. You're going to have junk. And the worst part of you is going to get reinforced.

53:58If you just need to see this, go look at your reels on Instagram and watch how you sort of get manipulated into consuming your time and the world looking like you think it should look, not the way that it is. Looks very much like whatever you've signaled you like before through watch time and likes. The way that I think about this is one of the most important environments that you have to curate your physical environment, but your mental environment. We don't think of our mental environment. And our mental environment is who we hang out with, who we spend time with, who do we admire, who do we want to be like, or parts of us want to be like them, or parts of us want to be like parts of them.

54:42Who are we listening to? Who's got space in our head? Who's got free access to us? And what does that look like? And are we getting high quality, not information we agree with. That's not what I'm talking about. Are we getting high quality signal into our head? And is that information curated? And curated means it's not just there by default. When you sign on to Instagram or you sign on to Twitter, it's like, follow these accounts by default. No, don't do that. You need to be careful about every person that has access to your inbox, every person that has access to your thoughts. Think about reading a book.

55:26There's a big difference between reading a book by a journalist and reading a book by a practitioner. What is the difference? It's the quality of information in the book. The journalist tends to be high level, these lessons that sound good, and maybe they're useful for you in the context of what you're doing. But the practitioner tends to have, here's all these little stories and all these little nuances and all the ways this goes wrong. And well, which do you think is more dense? Which do you think is better for your brain to reflect on? Because what you're going to do is you're going to take all these thoughts and you're going to eventually reflect on them and try to make sense of something and try to make sense of the world.

56:02and you want all of these things to be high quality information, not low quality information. You can't put junk food into your body and expect to be healthy. The same thing goes for your mind and your brain. And you talked about that in your book in referencing a number of people that have had high quality signal influence on your life, so much so that you said you can't even identify where their credit goes anymore because it's pervasive in your brain. Can you perhaps talk about a few of these people? Totally. And just before I get into that, because this sounds weird to people and I've had more than a few people point out these comments, it's like, when you take an idea and you make it yours, and by make it yours, I mean like, Cameron, you could have come up with the idea, but I start practicing it.

56:50And then 10 years goes by, well, it's my idea. I no longer remember that it came from you, but it totally came from you. And so I will point out none of the ideas in the book come from me. They're all from other people. These insights belong to other people. If I've done anything, it's just sort of combine them in perhaps maybe a unique way that resonates with people. And there's been so many people in my life who've influenced me and how I think about things from my parents to Peter Kaufman, to Charlie Munger, to Randall Stuttman, to Cat Cole, to Mike Lombardi, to Warren Buffett, to Todd Coombs.

57:27Like there's so many people that I've taken little bits and pieces from and I've used that and I've tried it and I've refined it and I've synthesized it, reflected on it and made it my own. You know, in the words of Montaigne, I've taken the best of what other people have figured out and I've sort of digested it and chewed on it and made it my own and making it my own. It becomes part of me and who I am, but that doesn't mean that it started that way. it. Final question, Shane, how do you define success in your life? Oh man, right now, success is time freedom and being useful. And when I say being useful, it's sort of time freedom to me, being useful to other people and making the world a better place.

58:12And one of the ways that I want to make the world a better place is through being useful to other people and helping them become the best versions of themselves. Time freedom is that I can say no to everything that I don't want to do. I never feel obligated into doing something. And I control my own sort of destiny, if you will, and passively stable on that front. And those are sort of like my internal sense of success, my external success. And then as a parent, obviously, I want to spend all the time I can with my kids and be the best father that I can possibly be. Great answer. The book is Clear Thinking, Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results.

58:52go buy it. It's a great book. And Shane, this conversation made that book better. It's fantastic. Thanks for joining us. Thanks Cameron. Thanks Ben.