#719: Walk & Talk with Greg McKeown — How to Find Your Purpose and Master Essentialism in 2024

27:30It's not goals. It's beyond that. It's like who you can be, what your most important relationships can look like. And it's sacred, right? Like that's how I feel about that. And so that's all the most important centering part of it because literally if you don't get clear on that, Nothing else matters in the system, right? If you execute superbly on things that end up not being what your life needed to be about, then it doesn't matter. Efficiently doing what should not be done at all, of course, is like, it's a form of madness, right? Like it's, you're speedily going the wrong direction. So from that, I've identified, let's say, five or six roles in a goal that goes with each of those roles.

28:17And so my worldview includes the idea that I'm a child of God, that you're a child of God. So one of the most unbelievable things to me, one of the benefits of my church membership is that every person who wants one is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can have a specific blessing that somebody gives you personally to you that nobody else ever gets to read. And it's like, we literally think about it, not metaphorically, like it's like literal scripture for you. And no two are the same. I've only ever read mine, Anna's, the children's, and my grandfather who died, and grandmother who died because you can read your ancestors once they've passed away.

29:02And my grandfather gave it to me, he was a patriarch. Every thousand people makes up what's called a stake and every stake has a stake patriarch. And the only thing they do is give these patriarchal blessings. They're the only blessings that are recorded. And this is like, whenever I think about what it is, I'm just like, my goodness, how would you go about thinking about life without this document? Because this is like precise and specific revelatory insight into who you are, who you were before you came, who you are here, what's possible, what relationships are going to matter, what weaknesses to think about.

29:38and it's like, this is the centering document. So a version of this, when Stephen Covey's talking about, hey, we need to create a mission state for your life and company and so on, he's describing, let's say something like a watered down version of what he's actually using every day. I see, I see, I see. So this was adapted, sort of a secular version of the blessing effectively. Yeah, and if you want the kind of language he used for this, So we think of life after this as having not heaven and hell, but like a series of heavens, let's say, or something like a different kingdoms, a celestial kingdom, a terrestrial celestial, like described sun, moon, and stars.

30:20And so he said to me once, he said, look, I think about my work professionally as a terrestrial mission. It's like I'm trying to bring a certain amount of light, like the light of the moon. But there's this whole other light that's way brighter. How long is your blessing? Is it two pages long? It's like two to three pages. ah wow okay so it really gets really covers a lot yes and it's a different range i mean some people's could be as short as half a page but i remember meeting somebody had one that was eight or nine pages and it really doesn't matter because what it is is a portal what i just described with a portal all reading every book is potentially a portal right it takes you there in time and place and that's what makes you know fiction especially so powerful you suddenly experience this whole of the world.

31:04But I really think that that's a way of thinking about scripture that isn't obvious to most people, even people that sometimes are like reading scripture all the time. It's not words. It just opens up the possibility. So like I've read, let's say I've read my page like, I don't know, like say, let's say it's 500 times or something. It's probably more, but two weeks ago when I read it, suddenly a phrase, a way that it's phrased suddenly opened up to me. And I was like, oh my goodness, I bet that means that. And it's like, it doesn't matter. The words are just the vehicle. And it's as soon as I'm ready to like understand something more that suddenly the particular word is open.

31:43However, that sounds, I don't know how it comes across. Nobody else has to believe or think or see it the way I do. But like, it's a fact that is an experiential fact that that is what happens over these years. I got it when I was 13. So whatever, I've had it for, you know, more than 30 years. And even now I'm like, oh, that's what it means. And this is what I need to do differently in my life. Oh, that's where my weakness lies. And that's how I need to improve. And so this is a very centering tool to guide all of life. And I think, yeah, that's the difference between that and trying to read 200 self-help books for all, in some sense, regurgitating the same set of potentially terrestrial ideas.

32:28It's like this document to me helps. It's like better than me. It's better than my thought. I'm trying to figure out a higher set of thinking that's won me. And, you know, it's self-transcendent rather than about self-actualization. It's not me setting a goal for me and I'm going to achieve it. It's, oh man, I'm going in the wrong direction. This is what I'm supposed to do. And the whole idea, for example, of the biblical term repent, it was translated from a Greek word that doesn't really mean what people think of when they hear the word repent. What it means, it comes from metanoia. It means see life, yourself, life, God, everything through new eyes.

33:07And it's that idea of new eyes and new breath and seeing that newness of sight. That is what the goal is, right? And so the repentance isn't about shame. It's about let go of the old thinking so that there's something new and better. And this higher, we've talked about before, the idea of light. And it's lighter and lighter and lighter till eventually some perfect day in the future. But it's like more light produces more light. And as long as we're following that light, it gives us more and more. And bringing this now back to you for a second, it's like, I see you doing this in your life. I see it.

33:44You know when it's happening because you feel more light. And you know when it's not happening, just like I do, because I'm like, yeah, I feel myself. I'm being pulled into the, not away from the good into what I want. I have a goal now when I'm doing keynotes. It's probably not the most high goal, but I like, I really wanted to work out how to get standing ovations. That hadn't been my journey. That hadn't been my story. I'd get great feedback, it'd go really well, but not standing ovations. And I'm like, man, what are you doing? And so like, I feel like I should know how to do that now. And so that consistently happens.

34:16And then the event yesterday was really distinctly different because they'd had everyone read the books ahead of time. And so for the first time, it never happened before. I walk out on the stage and they gave me standing ovation at the beginning. And I've seen it happen to others, but it never happened to me before ever. And I thought, you know, like in that moment, like it was a really, just the whole conversation was enriching and good. Like I was doing the right thing and it made difference to people and all of that. But imagine if you just are living in that, breathing that in every day, You can lose track of your way so easily.

34:50And there's a risk of that, right? There's a risk of that for me. There's a risk of that for you. There's a risk of that for anyone in a certain, consumed with, what do we call it? I could call it bro culture. That's what I would call it. Where we're just consumed with a certain set of ideas and a certain set of what winning looks like. Well, just consumed by groupthink, right? Or sort of group trend, right? Or whatever the success du jour happens to be. Maybe that's going viral on TikTok, whatever the hell the shifting sands of supposed favor and adulation appear to be right well and you just named it right like the shifting sands like in my life i'm like in in the last i don't know if is it as short as five years in the last 10 years i feel like what success means has changed in some ways and not in a good way like in a shallower way and in in oh you mean in general in the world.

35:42Yeah, I think so. I look at it and I go, I go, yeah, I don't even want these things that are being talked about, the influences, you know, influences I'd never even heard of. They weren't influences eight years ago. And now this is what to do in life and this is how to be. And I'm like, this just feels like a bad 1980s motivational speaker or something like that. And I'm like, I think I could get really lost if I pursued all of this shifting sands as you describe it. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Momentus. Momentus offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more.

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37:30Let me come back to the blessing in the two pages if you don't mind because I'm really grateful that you brought this up. And it resonates very deeply for me because I actually use different types of poetry for this, but the pages change, which has some upside, I would imagine, but also some downsides. But if you're looking at, say, as I might, the poetry of Hafez or other, they're generally mystics. They don't need to be from the Islamic traditions. they could be from any tradition, but they resonate a lot with my lived and felt experience for a multitude of reasons. So I will flip to a random page and that is the page, right?

38:16That is the page that I use as the mirror, so to speak, or the lens through which I look at my life or whatever I'm contemplating, the goals, the troubles, whatever it might be. And it's incredibly helpful as a way to grease the skids to get unstuck, right? Because if you're in a pattern of thinking that has not solved whatever puzzle you're trying to solve, then oftentimes more thinking of the same kind is not going to do a hell of a lot. So having this type of jolt of novelty slash unexpected, in my case, words is very helpful. But I do see the benefit of something more comprehensive and more consistent.

38:58So maybe the life mission is one approach. I will say, and this isn't something I've talked about, that I've been single, as you may or may not know, for the last year plus, maybe a year and three months or something like that. And I wrote down what I was looking for. I also asked my ex, who I'm still very close with, if she could write down what she thinks I need so that I could provide it to, say, a potential matchmaker or people who might want to help. And what I found was that description of what I need certainly applies to a partner, but it applies to a lot more than a partner. So I found myself reading that quite consistently.

39:38And it applies to much more than, I mean, just isn't an appropriate word, but just the partner piece. It applies to so many other aspects. So indirectly by accident on some level, I've ended up also with some document that I read on a regular basis. One of the not just popular now, but popular forever questions is, okay, you know, like, how do I meet the right person? You know, what would I want in that person? And some questions you lose just by trying to answer them. Okay. Yeah. Please say more. Because it's the wrong question. Right. It's framed the wrong words. And so you can get, you know, people can spend years and years on a question like that.

40:22So let's say a better question is maybe not surprising. It's like, how can I be the right person? Who do I need to be? And then that means that some point you attract people like that to you. And so the, your probability of meeting somebody that actually is the right person for you increases, but that seems like what's happened to you. like you say, almost without design, but it's like, oh, actually that list looks a lot like what I need to be and how I need to orient myself in the world. So what the patriarchal blessing is to me is that the highest possible ideal that I can have. And so I think that that's the question for everybody.

41:08It's like, given all the tools we have, all the insights we've ever heard, all the best and highest wisdom that we have come across thus far, what's that highest ideal? And to focus on it and to have mechanisms where you come back to that more often than not, more days than you don't, so that that becomes the guiding force of your life. And so I think that there probably is some process right now where you say, let's take the poetry or the best list. And I'm going to try and write down like, uh, these are the things that it's not, what do I want? It's what is the highest truth I've ever come across.

41:52Even if it's really inconvenient for me, what's the closest thing I can articulate as to the purpose of my life. And I do think that really without doing that, when we don't do that, I don't know, man. I just don't even know what I'm doing when I don't do that. It's like, I can respond to a lot of emails. I can travel a lot. I mean, when I look back at 2023, I think, man, I did a lot of things and I just need to be really grateful for all those things. But sometimes I'm like, did you do what really meant at the most in the whole year? Did you? And I don't want that to be true for 2024. What comes to mind for me also, actually, I haven't thought about this in a while, but it was from a conversation I had on the podcast with General Stanley McChrystal.

42:36And I'm going to paraphrase here, but he said something along the lines, and I've heard this elsewhere since, but the purpose of life is to find the purpose of life, something along those lines. And the reason that that came to mind is I would imagine, I'm just visualizing myself here, that if you have something like the patriarchal blessing or four or five pieces of poetry. So Wild Geese by Mary Oliver would probably be in my short list. As an example, if you have a handful of things that you have decided, even for a year, even for just say the next year, are going to be effectively your personal mission statement, something like that.

43:17Directional documents. Yeah, your directional documents. Just having that directional document, I would imagine, gives you a certain... peace of mind or ability to exhale that makes it less likely that you're going to chase as many shiny objects and get as easily distracted as you would otherwise. Does that make sense? Just the act of gathering that and having that, I see having an impact on your state and also your behavior above and beyond what it does when you check it each week. Does that make any sense? Does that make sense? Of course. Yeah. Because... It's not like you're lost in the woods.

43:55Do you have a compass or not? Like, even if you haven't figured out how to get to where you're going, like, do you have a compass or not? And if you have a compass, you're going to feel a hell of a lot better, even if you don't use it. Well, so like, literally, I guess this is actually true that, that if you, there's like a piece of research about this, that people were given the task to walk in a straight line. And they, they found that if they were in a wilderness where there was no point that they could look to, they literally walked in circles. They didn't know they were doing that. And so the only way to actually go forward is to pick something on the horizon.

44:31There's the mountain. There's a thing. I'm going to that. And then you could walk in a straight line. And so that's so strange because that means that there's nothing inside of us that knows exactly where to go physically. I mean, that's true for me when I'm driving. I'll tell you that. That's absolutely sure. So I think that it's beyond a goal. It's what's the direction? What's it all about? I'm going to fix on that for a while. And then I'm going to strive to live that. We're going to see how that goes and whether that reveals another higher insight. You know, so if Wild East is your poem of today, maybe in five years, there's a new poem that you go, oh, that's a higher truth for me.

45:08I'm going to hold on to that and walk towards that and see how it goes. So, so yeah, I mean, this could all sound ethereal to people, right? When they say, oh yeah, but I just got to get on with the actions of today. But man, the risk of skipping this part of the process is you just go in circles for years and years. There's a big difference. I read this a while ago. There's a big difference between 20 years of experience and the same year lived 20 times that you don't learn the lessons because you're just going in circles and you're just rushing, rushing, and actually not getting closer to what the purpose of life really is.

45:46I have a question for you, Greg, which is self-serving as a lot of my questions are, I suppose, but But the personal is universal, right? That's my pitch. So I imagine you've been exposed to thousands upon thousands of people, not just through Essentialism and your other books, but also through the church and your various communities. and what I'm very curious to know is when you think about the people who come to mind as secular but who are good at in some fashion doing what you're describing it could be what do they have in common as the question or it could just be if you think of one or two of these people how do they approach this the word that comes to mind I'm worried it might sound I don't know almost trivial because it's like, oh yeah, well, we know that word, but it's like, it's truth.

46:46It's like willingness to speak the truth, meaning not that they or any of us have some monopoly on the truth. Obviously we don't. Obviously truth is beyond us and our expression needs to be as close to what we understand the truth to be as possible. Otherwise it can't be corrected. We can't engage and proper communication with other people. I have a few thoughts about this. One, I think that telling the truth is like whatever the consequence is for telling the truth in the immediate moment, it is the path to your best possible future. That speaking the truth and listening to other people, like as soon as you start speaking the truth, you start having truthful conversations with people.

47:34And if you can do that in what I would describe as the spirit of truth, which is different than just saying what you think is true, I think this. And then it's like you're trying to say the truth, but in a spirit of truth. It's like, am I doing this in the right spirit? Am I just doing this to win the conversation? It's like there's a, I'm doing it. Could you, I understand winning the conversation as a description, but what would the antonym of that be? In other words, saying it in the spirit of truth, what does that look like or feel like? It means that the intent of the conversation is to discover together what is really true, not to make your point to win and so on, right?

48:14Like, so the intent of the conversation changes. And so let's describe the absolute ideal of this. The ideal of this is I am trying to speak the truth by the spirit of truth. That is, as soon as I've spoken it, I'm open to being wrong. and I'm open to not just being wrong, but I'm open to learning because like, then you say something back to me and you go, well, this is, well, this is how I see this. And hopefully me being true makes it easier for the person I'm talking to, to be truthful. And so then they share something and I go, oh my goodness, I have not thought about that way. Oh, that makes me think of this.

48:46And, and so it's, you are trying to say what you think is true, but now let's see if we can expand the parameters of truth that we together can have previously. Like there's more truth that's going to come out in this conversation. I think that's what the spirit of truth looks like. Then the ideal, of course, is that when the other person speaks, now I want to make this safe so they can speak the truth to me, whatever that is, even if I don't really want to hear it. So I have to listen with the spirit of truth. And so that becomes the symbiotic communication. And I would say that most people have experienced it occasionally, rarely, but they have experienced because when you get into this kind of communication, time sort of evaporates and we're not worried so much about ourselves anymore, how we're coming across, who we're not judging them and so on.

49:34It's just, you know, it's back to portal communication. It's like, and I think what I'm describing now, it's taken me a long time to understand this or to articulate this, but I think this is the one true way of communication. It was Anna Karenina, you know, opened the brilliant line, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way and happy families are happy in one way. There's like a single way of doing it right and a thousand ways of doing it wrong. And I think that's communication too. And I didn't know that until fairly recently, but I think that's right. That every other form, when we're trying to speak to impress or when we're trying to weasel out of responsibility, right?

50:12Like I've done that in my own family. Oh, well, no, I meant to do it this way. Or I tried that way, you know, defensive. This isn't communication. I don't know what it is. I don't have a word for it, but it's anti-communication. I think speaking with truth, the spirit of truth, listening in the spirit of truth, that magic happens then in that. You make each other better. You edify each other. You understand each other. You can sort of rejoice in it. I mean, I have to assume that you have had moments like, well, many moments in podcast conversations when they're at their best. It's like, it's beyond any agenda.

50:46And so the people that I'm thinking of in my mind have the courage to speak the truth. And that's non-trivial. And in my own life, I have to get better at it and having the courage to do it, whatever the consequence seems to be in the moment. And then immediately open myself up to what they're going to say, because it'll surely bring a response from somebody else and have the risk it, the real vulnerability. Is there anything else that comes to mind if you had to add something else to the answer of the question of what you see in some of the secular examples who seem to really be able to travel the road less traveled in the way that we've been discussing it.

51:31Anything else come to mind? It doesn't have to be specific to any type of patriarchal blessing-like document or compass per se, but just someone who is in general good at operating kind of top-down, if that makes sense, as opposed to like, here are the thousand things that I could do in a reactive sense. And then let me try to pick a handful of those as my priorities. People are very good at operating kind of top down. It's hard for me to get out of the thread that I'm on about this because, because what I'm learning is that, I mean, we've talked already about this idea of sort of the highest aspiration.

52:08You're looking towards something bigger than you, self-transcending. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, is wrong. it's wrong like maslow said it was wrong and nobody updated the documentation oh i can't wait this is this is new to me all right so so before he died before maslow died he wrote a final book in which he updated his model and just no one i don't know why i don't know what was going on precisely but it just got ignored and some reason that model just as bit is in every single psychology book that's ever been written and it's everywhere everywhere the highest need is self-actualization and he changed that before he died to self-transcendence but that's the highest ideal and my goodness that's a big difference a huge yeah they're not even not even similar species no then really not they really are different in kind self-actualization is like what i was briefly describing before as bro culture and maybe that's not a precise terminology but it named something for me of like, yeah, it's just about you, Greg McKeown, looking like he wants to look, really like he wants to feel, getting what he likes to get.

53:19It's just more for me. Yeah. I mean, it's an individual achievement. Yes. It's achievement ethic. And the data shows that achievement ethic as a value has increased in society over the last few decades significantly more than any of the other, let's say the other virtues. And of course, I think achievement is a virtue, the desire to achieve, but it's of course just one of many. And so self-transcendence is kind of what we're talking about. And it certainly leads me down this path of, yes, it is about the relationships. It really, really is about that. Because if you have a model of self-actualization and then you try to be in a relationship, well it's not going to work that's a summary point it is not going and it's not going to work because that's not what a relationship is and by the way like this is big in my mind and one could argue that the biggest insight that's that's come about in psychology and in psychotherapy over the last 50 years is this growing understanding of what a relationship is, what love is, and particularly the idea of safe attachment and the attachment theory.

54:36And so at risk of riffing too long on this subject, let me just... I got nowhere to go, man. And actually, Greg, just so we don't lose track of one thing, for people who may not be familiar with the term self-transcendence. If you could just define that at some point, could be brief, just so people have an idea. And self-actualization, I think people probably can infer, but self-transcendence. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for the attachment stuff and I'll bring it back to self-transcendence. Okay. One could ask a question like, what is a relationship? What is love? What makes a healthy, strong, resilient, successful relationship over decades, right?

55:15Like what does that look like? And it's a really non-trivial question, especially when one considers what for something like 50 years we have been actually taught. And the data now is increasingly showing that that is wrong. So that really matters. But like what we've been taught, first of all, like go back with me to how people thought about raising children in like, you know, let's say 1910, 1920, like this in England, right? The center of the world, probably still in terms of economic power and political power and so on. And like, what would the perspective of that relationship? And John Balby, he's in an upper class home, in a gentleman's home.

55:57He's allowed to come and eat at the family dinner when he turns 11 or 12 just for dessert. Prior to that, he's not even allowed to eat dessert in his own family. And the reason is because there's this idea that children should be seen and not heard, that if you were to show emotional connection with your child and are overly loving, you're going to raise namby-pamby kids and they're not going to be strong in the world. And so in that perspective, the reason it's so non-trivial is that that defined policy and behavior in the broadest possible sense. So for example, if your child needed to go to hospital, like I mean like a two-year-old three-year-old you are going to drop your child off at the door you will see them if you see them you'll see them once a week for one hour and all of the nursing staff in the hospital will treat them also in this same regimented way non-emotional non-connected way in fact Balby who is shipped off to boarding school and so again he's separated from his family of origin and connection and he's not safely attached to them.

57:05He didn't have that language yet, but that was it. I mean, eventually he goes on this journey. He creates this documentary. It's something like, I don't remember the name precisely, but it's like a two-year-old goes to hospital. It might be a three-year-old goes to hospital, something like this. And he videos the experience of this child and the separation anxiety that they experience and how terrifying it is for them to suddenly be in this hospital unwell, don't know anybody and so on. And they they create this video. That video was almost banned. He was almost kicked out of whatever the agency was that was managing psychological institutions in the UK.

57:39He almost got kicked out of it for having this theory that eventually he calls the theory of attachment. But over time, I don't know, more than a thousand studies have been done since on his work. And over time, his insights have been really strongly plauded and it's grown. And so now we have attachment theory. What that means is that especially in years one to three, whatever level of attachment we have with our mother, with our father, it finds us in really significant ways for the rest of our lives. And if we were insecurely attached, then it also makes it extremely hard for us to have deep and proper relationships with people all through our lives.

58:16It's like massively influenced by those early years. Now that was phase one, but phase two, he died before he ever got to see this, But another set of researchers picked up the baton and started looking into whether the attachment theory that everyone thought applied only to sort of these infants could also be true with adult relationships. And the answer to that question is a resounding yes. And that every argument, every fight that adults have with each other and in intimate relationships, especially let's say every fight is about the same blasted thing. And what it's about is described by a different professor as like a primal cry or a primal scream or something.

59:05I can't remember the term now, but what that primal desire is. Do you really see me? Do you really know me? Are you really going to be there for me if I'm desperate enough? And that's what it's always about. Every other argument is about the same thing. Do you really see me? Can I be securely attached to you? Are you securely attached to me? And so, okay, now contrast that with self-actualization. The whole argument of self-actualization. If you think self-actualization is the highest need in life, and then you get into a relationship, you start creating this kind of language in the psychological industry.

59:40You start saying, if you need the other person too much, you're codependent. You create language around it. You say, well, that's just enmeshment you're struggling with. What you need is to be independently happy, independently secure, independently invulnerable, independently strong. And then together, then you're going to create this great dynamic relationship. it. I can think of people, I don't really want to say it, even though everybody knows these people are global icons who are in a relationship that looks about as toxic as a relationship can possibly look in which they describe that they're in.

1:00:12They say we're in this bad marriage. We're in this terrible, but we're going to stick it out because that's what love is. It's like, you go make yourself happy and you go make yourself happy and then we'll be happy together. It's a global manifestation. I feel so bad for the couple and all the people involved by it, but it's like this manifestation of a bad paradigm that we have been taught. What you want is exactly the opposite of that. It's like, no, we need effective dependence where we actually feel deeply connected, deeply seen, emotionally safe, attached. That's what we're really going for.

1:00:50And so bringing this now back to the question of self-transcendence. Self-transcendence means multiple things. So I don't want to oversimplify it. It certainly means giving yourself to something bigger than yourself. It certainly means that transcending yourself, trying to live for something beyond us. And it includes, definitely includes in his definition, being able to be unified with other people in deep relationships. And so that's not the whole sense that he meant by that term, but it's certainly included in it. And that is to say, you can't have self-transcendence if you haven't learned how to, like they go together.

1:01:33You have to be quite developed in order to be able to deeply connect with others. You have to be very vulnerable because my goodness, you have to cry out as it were to say, I feel so unsafe right now in this conversation. I have to speak truth about this. And I'd rather just, I'd rather say, oh, you just don't like me. Or you just are like this are you instead of the vulnerability the truth of this is how i feel this is what's going on now let me listen to you let's fight this out but let's have as our intent we're going to actually deeply connect with the other person. I see an overlap between these two terms.

1:02:10Yeah, let me hop in with a couple of thoughts that are popping to mind and then a couple of questions. So the first is that if we end up publishing this, for people who are listening, I would imagine what you're describing on some level as its core has truth, right? So you can be truthful and communicate your needs and so on without trauma performing or using performative vulnerability, which I think has become very fashionable, especially in places like Austin, where you meet somebody, you're two minutes into meeting them at a party and they've already told you about their worst childhood trauma and are just offloading these horrible things as a means of theater almost.

1:02:54It's just become like a Portlandia of here are the bad things that have happened to me and let me be vulnerable. But I feel like what you're describing is very different in the sense that there's a core of truth to it. And you can still be independently strong in a million different ways and effective in a million different ways while still doing that. right? I'm just trying to say that to myself as much to anyone else. It doesn't have to be this overly sort of bemoaned, drawn out, protracted confession of weakness or something like that. It can have a component of vulnerability, certainly, but there's also a core of strength in my mind because it requires a certain core of strength to be consistently truthful and to solicit truth, right?

1:03:41That is not easy. is truth not performance. Yeah, exactly. And then the question that I wanted to ask is thinking about, say, attachment and self-transcendence and relationships and so on, what order do we put these in for people who are listening or for myself, right? Although I think I've actually made tremendous progress on most of these fronts in the last handful of years, but how would you suggest someone approach this? In other words, if they're thinking, all right, well, self-transcendence is the top of the ladder by Dr. Maslow in his final writings. I'm up for that. That makes sense to me.

1:04:16And they want healthy, interdependent relationships. And they recognize that the sort of Gordon Gekko slash go, go, go achiever culture in the US, while it produces a lot of GDP and other things, doesn't always, well, actually very rarely produces stable well-being in most people. And the question then comes up, which is, in what order do I tackle these things? Should I read a book on attachment theory and do that first? And then maybe look at Maslow's stuff and then look at something else? From a brass tacks perspective, if somebody's like, yeah, you know what? You're right. If I look at myself, truthfully, honestly, I have deficits in these areas and I want to try to make the leap.

1:04:58I want to work on these things. How would you suggest someone do that. Maybe you can give me your two cents. There is a book. Let me look at the cover really quickly. I think it's just called Attached. We have The New Science of Adult Attachment, etc., etc., which has, I guess, two magnets in the form of a heart on the cover. Pretty good cover. I'll give it credit. The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help you find and keep love by amir levine md and rachel sf heller ma 19 437 reviews 4.7 star average i have not read it so i can't speak to this but i know a number of friends have read this and found it helpful but i'm speculating here so what would you say well i can start with myself in just being i suppose truthful about how i'm seeing it but the answer to the question what's my one priority for 2024.

1:05:56It is to help my wife, Anna, and I to feel safely attached, deeply connected. And I would say there's a lot more right with our relationship and marriage than there is wrong with it. And actually, I think there's a lot of goodness in it, right? We married 23 years, we have four children, we work together, we're communicating in all sorts of ways and I think successfully. But I now understand there's this additional gear and I think, yeah, that's the difference. And so one of the books that was recommended to me is a book called Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. And I think I would say that she's done maybe more than anyone else to bring this adult attachment theory, I think she calls it EMT, to the therapeutic process.

1:06:45And so I think that's a pretty great place to start is to read what she's written. She has a process, a series of conversations. I want to also suggest Sue Johnson. She's actually been on the podcast and was beyond impressive, exceeded every possible expectation I could have had. So I'm glad that you're mentioning her. I think that's the place, but I think that is an answer to that question. The only thing I'm concerned about as I try and answer that is to what degree am I reading my autobiography into other people's lives? You know, like, I mean, I'm sort of coming at this with the, there are a thousand X relationships.

1:07:21That is, if there's a purpose to life, it's that I'm using a quote and I want to tell you where that's from in a second. And so therefore, my most important relationship is Anna. And therefore, as I'm understanding what really creates these disproportionately great relationships is this attachment. There's a logic that gets me here, but of course, somebody else is coming at it. Their lives are so different to mine and different starting point. They have different ending points. I want to be careful about that. But I don't think what we've talked about today is the kind of thing that people regret, you know, like if you pursued this, you're not going to use the deathbed test.

1:07:59You're not going to be like, my goodness, I can't believe it. I can't believe that I really figured out the most important relationships and I really invested in them seriously. And I got attached to them and, you know, struggled with them and improved them. Like, you're not going to regret that journey. It seems to me. No, no, definitely not. What was the quote? Was that, uh, you alluded to a quote? Yeah, this is something, man. And so, okay, so I'm writing a new book, doing new research, doing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge inadvertently. And so what I've learned is something like this.

1:08:35We live in the loneliest era on record. More surface interactions is not going to help at all. So we have to learn to connect deeply with a vital few people and that that is sort of the work of life. Okay, so that's part of what I've come to as I've been doing all this research and this thinking. So I posted something about that in these subjects on social media. And one of the people, one of my friends that follows this said, you know what? This is something I just read that's right on that theme. So that's how I got connected to it. I think it's Eric Newton, I think is his name. And Eric Newton took to Twitter.

1:09:12So, Harry took to X and he wrote up a story of what's happened in his life recently, which is heartbreaking, but also life-changing. And he says, he starts off basically saying, look, this is, I've wrestled with whether I should share publicly something that's so private. It's a bit tacky to do that, but still really glad that he did it. Okay, so I just pulled it up. I'm just going to read a few little bits from it. He said, I lost my wife to cancer last month. Our daughter lost her mother. I'm hesitated sharing any of this, but there is something I want to record. Fair warning, this is mostly about love.

1:09:53I'm devastated. A hall has opened where I thought my identity lived. Our daughter is doing the same in her toddler way, asking questions, slowly understanding what's happened, grieving in stages. We had a delightful life together, full of intense highs and lows. but two elements that were vastly more important to us than any of this, our extraordinary little daughter and the quality of the time we all spent together. Aubrey and I fell in love early and fast, but we fell more in love during the time she was convalescing than I thought was possible. Facing death every day allowed us to set aside the silly things and focus on what matters.

1:10:29The privilege of knowing and loving her so deeply outpaces every other experience I've had is the one thing that matters. Okay, I've considered whether to share any of this. Obviously, it's tacky to make personal tragedy into a public spectacle. But I wanted to capture something that I've learned. Okay, I'm skipping here. She says this. We had an epic love affair, and yet we reached a depth of intimacy while Aubrey was on her deathbed that we'd never had access to before. That depth of love wasn't available to us any earlier for whatever reason, but it is available. I want to make it available to everyone by reminding you it exists.

1:11:06Aubrey shifted into a deeper love about six weeks before she died. During her time in the hospital, her one regret was that she hadn't spent more time deepening relationships with the people she cared about. She said, the only thing that matters at all is the quality of the relationships with the people we love. Focus on that. I know it sounds trite in a tweet, but I can guarantee you with absolute certainty that when you're dying and you will die, these are the only things you will care about. Aubrey realized this deeply in the most fundamental way because she was running out of time, so she put it into action.

1:11:40It was mostly instinct at first, but by the end, her deeper way of loving had become very conscious and intentional. Her change was palpable. She softened and opened. She began to be with those around her in a kind of total surrender. We all felt that she was experiencing us without a filter somehow. We were seen and loved. It was beautiful. It was overpowering. It was humbling beyond measure. As she did all this, those around her began to learn how to do it as well I learned Being loved that completely is overwhelming in the best way It's probably all any of us ever crave I've tried to carry that love forward ever since Loving that deeply is a practice It's like anything Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's very hard But it's always worthwhile The key to this kind of love is necessarily different for everyone I only know one way Complete surrender to the inevitable death of yourself and those you love I'm not writing this to proselytize any given path I simply want to say out loud that it is possible to love with a depth and breadth that I used to think was fiction progressively deepening love is the goal an end in and of itself if there is a point, it's that that's incredible I'm just sitting with that for a minute what a gift to write that down for people also to absorb well to read yeah so I reached out to him and so he's already responded we're just going to schedule a time and i'm going to try and get you know more of that story and the details of it because i think that deserves to be told you know like when i read that that sort of is reinforcing and crystallizing of all these other themes i've been describing it's like yeah he just he said it and he said it out of his suffering produced that level of clarity and it's like look if i don't understand that and then i make my goal list if I don't understand that and then I just go to email, if I don't understand that and I just react and just do what I think of the people think is cool or good.

1:13:43Oh, they think, I mean, I shouldn't use this example. I don't know why I'm using this example. I love skiing and so do you, but like, Oh, if I'm just going skiing because other people think it's cool to go skiing, if I'm traveling because other people, I think other people think it's cool to travel. I could spend my whole life doing that and really just miss it all miss this miss what eric's dated quick maybe mundane recommendation get off social media for a while folks or ask yourself before you post or actually let's rewind before you do something if you could never tell anyone about it outside of maybe your family or closest friends via a phone call if you could not post it if you could not put this on social media or in a newsletter or on a blog or pick your channel YouTube would you still do this and if the answer is no don't do it as an exercise you can always go back to the the heroin feed of fake social reinforcement on social media that's always available but at least as an exercise ask yourself that question I've done that and part of the reason I have no social apps on my phone.

1:14:50And that's been largely true for two or three years now. If you don't have, as you mentioned, like if you don't have these sort of foundational directional documents or tools, given the tools at hand, given the information deluge that is only going to accelerate exponentially with AI and disinformation and so on, that is going to, this year, 2024, it is going to at least 10x, probably 100x, I mean, it is going to multiply so unbelievably. If you do not have these guardrails and these sort of operating principles in place, you are going to lose, right? What you'll lose is personal, but like you are going to lose whatever.

1:15:32Then that could apply in a lot of different domains, but the technology has you completely diagrammed and defeated before you ever step into these domains. There's like billions upon billions of dollars of data science and research and so on that has gone into ensuring that your willpower will not be sufficient, particularly if it doesn't have a trained fixed point in the distance to come back to the being lost in the wilderness analogy. as my job interview some of the top performers in the world, hundreds of them. And the change that I have seen for those people in that subset who are already, I think most people would agree, in the top 1 % of 1 % in terms of worldly achievement, the dramatic handicap that I've seen, the dramatic reduction in productivity that I've seen among those people who have succumbed to the siren song of social media specifically is jaw-dropping is truly unbelievable just in the last 12 months what i've observed it really seems to be going parabolic so in any case i'm gonna stop giving my uh scent of a woman speech i listen i like that speech and i think first of all that's right and you know it's the persisting, right?

1:16:58Like, I mean, I don't even love the term like matrix for various reasons, but it's still helpful too. But like the matrix is so consuming and it's so much bigger than me. And it's so much in that sense, more powerful. Now it's not, if I am conscious of it and can step out of it and can, you know, make it, you know, like all of this AI and all of it perhaps makes a good servant, but it certainly makes a poor master. And if I'm not conscious that it is either already my master or is trying to be, then it's already over. You know, like if I'm like, oh, it's fine, it's easy. It's like, oh, okay, well then I already lost the game, the battle.

1:17:38If you don't realize you're in a game, you've already lost the game. But let me ask you, when you're talking about the priority, your priority, top priority, the one priority, and I'm going to make mistakes with the wording, but it was along the lines of fostering and cultivating secure attachment with your wife, if I remember correctly. For a lot of people who may be listening, certainly for me also, when I think about that, I'm like, yes, yes, and yes. And also, typically, if I had a primary goal, let's just say I'll pull out something that's less lower to the ground, in a sense, that makes it easier to use as an example.

1:18:17Write a screenplay. Let's say I want to write a screenplay this year. That's one of my top goals. Okay, great. Then I can work backwards from that and say, okay, well, what are the sort of antecedents? How long do those take? Who do I need to interact with? How should I block those out in the calendar? And then I can execute something resembling a blueprint, right? Or a Gantt chart or something like that. With your top priority, how do you ensure that you're taking meaningful action related to that top priority? I know exactly what you're saying. I mean, this is the advantage of a concrete goal is that a concrete goal almost immediately presents the plan or elements of a plan that almost immediately start to arrive.

1:19:02Okay, well, if we're doing this, we would have to do A, B, and C and so on. And that's one of the reasons goals are so powerful and so scary too, because if you get your mind set on the wrong goal, then you'll be consumed with it and maybe going in the wrong direction. Okay, so how do you do it? If the goal is a relationship, it's really different, isn't it? Because it's not about achieving checkpoints. And the very nature of the relationship is that it's symbiotic. But I think that the way I've been thinking about this is like this. I like this intent, the language that I've chosen, because it's something that it's a metric in and of itself.

1:19:38And so it's an immediately testable metric. Do I feel that right now? Does Anna feel that right now? And then of course you could go from that to each of my children. Do we feel it right now? And if we don't, let's talk about that because now we're having the real conversation. Is that feeling one of calmness, lack of fear that you are not withholding? What are the characteristics of feeling the yes? Equally attached. Yes. Right. Yeah. I'll give you the words to mind and then maybe by the end of the year, I'll have better, more precise ways of describing these things. But yes, I think it's really safe, not just sort of safe, really safe.

1:20:21I'm safe to say what I really think. It's safe enough to hear what you really think and not take it personally so that there's just space somewhere in the world to be able to express all of that that we don't express in any other situation. It's a little bit like this idea that you want your, like, remember somebody, a psychologist describing this. They said, if your children are acting out at home, but not at school, like they're doing well at school, but not at home, you know, the teachers are going, oh, they're so great here. And you go, geez, they're not so great with us. It's actually just exactly what you want because they're safe to be able to act out at home so that we don't have to be everywhere else.

1:21:01Didn't see that coming. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And so it's a similar way, I think, in a safely attached relationship is like, You can act out a bit because you need somewhere to be able to do that. You can say all your fears. You can say all the nonsense. So I think that's sort of a test of it. If you want to build beyond there, I think it's, and this is, I would say, the biggest test for me is, can I create enough time every day for that so that it's not just a bit here and a bit there? You know, like normally happens, in fact, because just in the same way as if you leave exercise and you leave your relationships, it's just like, well, we'll just let that happen.

1:21:42However, it does. Then you end up with bad relationships and ill health. And that's what normally happens. I mean, that's like when I ask people what's essential that they're under investing. And those are like basically the two most frequent answers is not exercising, not eating well. And my relationships, you know, my most important relationships are struggling in some way. So it's how do I create like, let's say one to two hours per day, not watching TV, not together, not doing things, not even just talking about, hey, what happened today and what's going on and updates and there's loads of that, but enough time, uninterrupted time.

1:22:21So you actually get to get to the other subject. Because whenever I do that, whenever we do that, it works. I mean, the difference is conversation. It's, it's, you know, conversation starts at a pit, right? It's trivial. It's present. It's like, okay, this has happened in the news and Jack's going to work right now. And he just got back and I just, it's updates. And then as you go down, it becomes more vulnerable, but it also becomes more essential. And so you have to have enough time to have those conversations. So that's, that's the piece that I'm like, man, I have to really be willing to make the trade-off.

1:22:56For distinction, and this is a question, because I've developed this, as I'm sure some listeners have this acute allergic reaction to the word processing. You've heard this word, I'm sure, used when it's let's talk about all of the difficult emotional things. I would imagine what you're referring to is some version of what people might call quality time where you're getting past just the triage of updates, right? For instance, a friend of mine, he's been on the podcast quite a few times, Seth Godin, has found that preparing meals, he had cooked for his family as his kids were growing up a lot.

1:23:33And his kids would help with some of the prep where they'd just stand around the kitchen island. And that's when the kids would volunteer a lot. And it was in that type of setting. So they were doing something or he was doing something, but it kind of provided a safe container for all of that to happen. But it wasn't like sitting down in two chairs opposite each other, plumbing the depths of like deep emotions as a conversation, if that makes sense. So I'm wondering when you say making the time, like what forms that time takes? It's quantity and quality. It really is actually making a sacrifice, making the trade off.

1:24:10So examples. Yes, yes. The way you're saying, Seth Godin example, I think is included. Okay, so with my children and with Anna, when I travel, I will take somebody with me. And so that just provides a lot of potential for, you know, rifting it. A lot of surface area. Exactly. And then suddenly kind of spontaneous. I mean, conversations are like that. They're so random. But there's method in the madness too that suddenly something more sensitive comes up. And now you're talking about that real subject. And so I think it is, there is a structural piece too. for me with Anna it's okay this the date night actually structurally insisting it happens once or even maybe you get to twice a week and you you're sort of forcing the space to exist possible conversation and it can be all sorts of things but it's a structural piece and I think that that's non-trivial space never happens in our life no never you know if I go back into like 1820 kind of time frame, like so pre-industrial revolution.

1:25:13And I'm not trying to romanticize it. I think that must've been so hard to live then. I cannot even imagine surviving was so, so, so hard. You mean you don't want your five-year-old being a chimney sweep? Yeah. I mean, honestly though, right? But what they did have an advantage over us is that the sun went down and there wasn't electricity. And so you could not escape the people in your life in the way we can. It wasn't default. It was defaulted in favor of you, you're facing each other. There's not a phone to face. You got a few books, maybe probably have the Bible. If you have a book and then you have a few other books and you're going to read from those books and you're going to talk about them because once the sun is down, that's what you have.

1:25:58That was a forcing function that we've just completely lost. I talked to somebody one time, here's what I was doing. I was working on a TV show based on essentialism. And so we were doing like the, trying to kind of create the pitch deck for it. And, and we'd selected these people and we're talking to her. She's very professional together woman. And like maybe even non-emotional, even in the interaction and the conversation, the coaching session, we were having this speed coaching session. And then quite unexpectedly, completely unexpectedly for her, she burst into tears, just right in the middle of conversation.

1:26:32It surprised me too, but it shocked her, like does not do emotion. And it was because she was reflecting on her relationship with her husband, I think, and how basically their relationship had become both of them in the bed on their phones. and that that had become so consuming, not an exception, but the rule of the relationship. And it was like, goodness, there's no connection. It's just, you know, that's so different than what you would have had in 1820. You know, like there's no phone, there's no technology, there's no, it's not there that that whole system was, was gone. So, so anyway, I do think, you know, right.

1:27:12That never exists now. You have to create space. And, and so that's the structural element. I would say to me is that I travel with my children and I have started saying, okay, like once a quarter, we go away ourselves and it's not just, Hey, we're going on a little vacation. It's like, we, we are trying to go deliberately. Let's talk, really, we're here to talk. Let's talk beyond the things we get to normally. And, and look, we got miles to go, but we just got back from the last one. And it was, I mean, that was an amazing, it was an amazing trip, but it was so helpful. And so we scheduled the next one and it wasn't three few months later, it's probably about six months later that we'll go to that specific location again because it worked so well.

1:27:53And so it's, you know, I think it's the daily scheduling, it's the week structure, the monthly structure, quarterly structure, right? And all of these things, I think once you start exploring them, you're like, okay, well, that's what you would do with other goals as well. But it's not getting it done. You're not trying to get it done as you are with other goals, right? Checking it off the list. Project is complete. This relationship is not a means to an end. Relationship is the end. It is the end in and of itself. And, you know, so that's how I think it's different. So, you mentioned, you know, the 1820, and I just wanted to say that I have spent a lot of time in South America and Africa and some very rural locations.

1:28:45And I've then gone back and visited these places after cell phones and very slight broadband penetration, and then post-broadband. I've been able to see what has happened. So those places have resembled in probably more ways than not the 1820s you described, right? Tight social bonds, in part because that is the entertainment they have, and very little electricity. So also life tends to slow down. People are communal at night. They wake up, they go to the farm very often. And then as things are introduced, for instance, I went to two different villages in Northern Ethiopia and was chatting with one of the interpreters who was helping this group.

1:29:32And he was mentioning that one town was really unhappy and the other town was very happy because I was commenting how I found Ethiopian people in general to be very upbeat and to smile easily and so on. And I asked him why that one village was unhappy. And he said, well, they got satellite television introduced and now they see the Kardashians and reality TV and they know how much they're missing. Literally, that's what he said. Not in those exact words, but more or less that. And then if I look at, for instance, some of these places in South America as another example that I visited, which now have, say, Starlink and other means of readily accessible, easily accessible 24-7 broadband, they are suffering from all of the same distractions and issues now, the fracturing of social bonds, the isolation, not to the extent that you see in a city like New York City, of course, but you're seeing the same phenomenon.

1:30:31And so much like sometimes people have heard the expression you know it's the economy is stupid on some level like it's the tools stupid like you you don't assume you are fundamentally flawed there's there's always a lot of self-work to do and there's the project is never finished but also let's look at the occam's razor contribution here to a lot of these issues and so much malaise and sense of discontent which is the tools so like turn off the tools or at least ration the tools and see what happens And then I would say, just to kind of bring this full circle, that this conversation has been super, super helpful for me.

1:31:11It's given me a lot to think about. Also, I'm still thinking about the patriarchal blessing and what my version of that could be, something that I revisit on a regular basis. So I'm actually fortunate that I'm spending time right now with a friend of mine, my only male friend who is incredibly well-versed with poetry, or at least younger male friend. So I can visit his mental library to see what he matches for me. So I'm thinking about that. And then also, once again, about systems and structure for not just busy CEOs, but for almost anyone who is barraged with the sensory overload and uninvited inputs and stimuli that anyone listening to this is, without structure, without putting things in the calendar, without a plan, the most important things are not going to take care of themselves.

1:32:00you're not just automatically going to have time and a program for self-care for the gym for your most important relationships it's not going to happen accidentally or at least the odds are against it so the better plan is to plan that's it right there is how do you stack the decks in your favor because they're currently stacked against you and i'm not making a plug i'm just expressing the reason i did it right the reason i wrote effortless after essentialism was i'd be like you have to build a system that makes it the default that you'll do the essentials and not do the non-essentials and i already said that in essentialism actually but it was like it didn't get people didn't hear it they just heard oh yeah you got to do the essential versus non-essentials and and then i hear the feedback over years and years well i'm so hard to do and it's like it's like yeah you aren't doing it because you figured out what's essential you figured out what's non-essential but then you didn't maybe realize the system is so built to make the non-essential easy immediately at your fingertips addictive and so on so now you go how do i it's not easy to build the system but you build a system that makes the execution easier than it would otherwise be so on that strongly recommend that everybody read effortless.

1:33:21I'm going to reread it. And I will also say that there's a corollary to what you just said that I've found helpful. And that is one way to make the default easier is to make not doing the default harder slash painful. Exactly. You want to make the non-essential hard to do. So in my case, for 2024, and I've done this for a few years now, but looking at my top relationships, right? I don't have my own nuclear family right now. I mean, I don't have progenies, I'm trying to say. So I'm looking largely at my, yes, yes. So I'm looking at my family, my mom and my immediate family, parents and so on, siblings.

1:34:03Then I'm looking at my closest friends and I'm blocking out time in the calendar, getting commitments for say trips or people coming to visit, et cetera, making it happen and putting in, in my case, right? let's just say these are trips, sunk costs so that it is actually painful for me to undo the thing that I know is good for me. Does that make sense? And I might write a blog post on this because it's been on my mind for six months now. I've been talking to friends about it. It's just like choosing the right sunk costs, like sunk cost and sunk fallacy can steer you in the wrong direction, but you can actually use it to steer you in the right direction.

1:34:40And that's something that I've thought a hell of a lot about. No, I like that so much because you're right. You know, I generally talk about it in the worst sense. But if you were going to design humans for success, you probably would want it to be true that the thing you've committed to, you want to stay committed to, right? Like you probably would want to design where people tend to continue to do the thing that they've been doing because they have invested so much in it. in a way it's like when they changed divorce law in the uk originally of course it was intended in a certain way and and i think it was maybe even well intended i would say because you don't want people to be desperately stuck and certainly you don't want anyone ever to be in an abusive relationship and then they just cannot get out because the laws are so strict so there's obviously scenarios in which that helps but the disadvantage is that it incentivized this kind of like no fault divorce, it's like, Hey, I'm just, I'm out now.

1:35:40And because self-actualization is the priority, it's always, always easy to think that's going to lead to greater happiness. Even though the data suggests that people that divorced like five years later, the majority wish they weren't and that they hadn't and that they could go back and change it, but it's obviously too late now. And, and so it's just interesting to think about what you're saying about like, yes, committing, doing things where you, you go, I know it's the right thing. How can I commit in a way that I will be following through even when I feel like getting out, feel like I would rather not do this thing now.

1:36:15It's like, no, you do want to be locked in. Yeah, for sure, man. Well, Greg, this has been so much fun. It's nice to hear your voice. And where can people find you if we end up publishing this and we'll talk more about it? You know, there is a single thing. It took us way longer than I thought it was going to take to build this. It's totally free. It's like, literally takes people 10 seconds to sign up for it is where to start with essentialism and with effortless and it's uh you go to greg mckeon.com it's right there on the home page it's a 30-day email program you get a whole workbook that goes with it completely free easy 10 seconds to sign up and it answers that question where do you start how do you how do you spell your name dear sir oh yeah that's fair enough g-r-e-g g g g mc k e o w n so g-r-e-g m-c-k-e-o-w-n dot com right there on the home page people can sign up and they'll get an email every few days but they can also just get the workbook print it up and work through 10 lessons carefully curated combining the best all of that published written work beautiful and i'm going to dig back into your writing as well.

1:37:21That's on my to-do list. Successful experiment. I enjoyed doing this. I appreciate you being game to mess around with it. No, I love it. I think it's a really smart move for you to do it. You got so podcast, right? I mean, I have my podcast too. I know it hits you. It comes at you so fast to see content. You're always trying to create content mode. It's nice. If you can walk and just build it into your natural routine. This is actually an example of trying to do the thing that is unlikely to happen by itself or on its own. And that is, I've realized a lot of my constraining physical issues, right?

1:37:59My principal physical ailment that affected my last year was this peraminal stenosis at L4, L5, just some lower back issues. I mean, there is no just to it. It's been kind of cataclysmic in its implications for my sleep and for many other things. However, what I've concluded, I'm on the mend, but what I've concluded is it's directly, the pain is directly correlated to sitting time. So the more I sit, the more it hurts, the more consistently it hurts, the longer it hurts. And I looked at the driving forces or the different converging trends related to say podcasting, several of which lead to the creation of basically fixed television studios, right?

1:38:44Most podcasters, if they're aiming to be highly competitive and to feed growth, are building studios, legitimately building what would be recognized as television studios. And that is antithetical to my reasons for starting the podcast, number one, right? So the characteristics, including mobility, sort of ease, and ease of lightweight production, those are the opposite of what is happening and what I, on some level, feel driven to do because I am competitive. So I have to be aware of that. It doesn't always serve me. It can serve me, but it doesn't always serve me. And so I asked myself this question.

1:39:20I asked myself a lot. I should probably ask myself more often, frankly, which is what if I did the opposite? Not just what if I did 20 % less, not doing TV studio light, but what if I actually did the opposite? So what would the opposite look like? Well, instead of sitting in a fixed location, I would be moving. And I would double down on lightweight so that my production would actually become more lightweight, not more heavyweight. And let me test that for a month and sprinkle it in and see what happens, right? Because I can always go back to the other. But from the perspective of trying to think for myself and not succumb to group think and also just external pressure, but also trying to not just avoid pain but produce wellness in my life this is an experiment worth running so i have thoughts on this now it's number one is and i'm not trying to be commercial in saying this you are describing an effortless strategy right like it's inversing it saying it's like literally it's like judge judge castania do the opposite we literally think Like there is seriously this idea that better is harder.

1:40:31So therefore, okay, we, oh, well, look at all these people. Look at what they're all doing. Oh, I have to have the studio. Mine needs to be better than their studio and cooler than their studio. We have to have all the, it's like, well, that's one strategy. And maybe that is, maybe that's the way, but what if, is there an effortless way to do this that actually supports what I really want in my life? I love that you're doing, I love you're going in the other direction. And the other thing is, do you have a walking desk yet? so i do have a walking desk and i really want to be outside and or around people yeah so i'm messing with that but but yes i do have a walking desk i love my walking desk i'm on it right now this whole conversation i've been doing it that way we could have good audio on my side but i'm still going i don't want to work unless i'm walking now i literally just think it's so much better for my mind of course it's better for your body but it's just i feel healthier mentally when i'm doing it so kudos yeah what fun man it's really nice to hear your voice and this has been also very personally helpful for me to think about the upcoming year so i uh really do i really do appreciate it tim it's been a genuine pleasure really man well all thanks to your proactive outreach so final thought on that is like what I want you to feel forget like all the self they sound like attachment stuff like what I want you to feel about me really is like this like I just feel a sense of like I want to be there just Tim for Tim this is spawned in this fun thing and having this conversation in a way that's that that's helpful to your podcast and also of course this is it's helpful to me I'm sure in various subjects in various ways right reach of your audience like I get that this is spawned into this but like I want you to feel that amongst your group right you've got your group of people and your people that Greg is like one of these people in your world who's not looking for something from you but is concerned about you and that's really for real for real for me like that's my intent and that's what I want you to think the day you feel the worst you need to text me I want you to be able to feel safe on that day to go, Greg, I'm here.

1:42:47This is the worst. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I take that to heart. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. We'll talk again soon, man. Take care. Bye-bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

1:43:27It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guest guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

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