Why chasing the algorithm leads to burnout with Mark Rober

0:00This episode is sponsored by Toyota. Expression shows up in ways we don't always notice. It's not just what we say, it's the choices we make, the things we surround ourselves with, the way we move through the world. Even something like the car you drive can be a form of expression. Toyota's new all-electric family leans into that idea. The CHR, for example, has a bold, distinctive design, something that stands out a little in a good way. While the BZ and the BZ Woodland each bring their own personality to the table, It's a reminder that the things we use every day don't have to be neutral. They can actually reflect who we are.

0:35Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places.

0:44This episode is brought to you by Walmart Business. Here's something I've seen over and over in high-growth organizations. The leaders who actually transform how their teams operate aren't the ones with the biggest visions. They're the ones who ruthlessly protect their team's time and attention. And yet so many of us are still losing hours to the basics, like procurement, ordering supplies, chasing down purchases that should just happen. That's where Walmart Business comes in. It's built to simplify your operations, a huge assortment of business products, everyday low prices, and fast, reliable shipping and fulfillment.

1:19You can manage all of it on your schedule, online, in-store, or right from the Walmart Business app. It's Walmart. built for your business. Get your team focused on what actually moves the needle. Sign up for a free Walmart business account today at business.walmart.com. This episode is sponsored by Study.com. Life can be messy and complicated, and it can be hard to work towards finishing your college degree when other responsibilities get in the way. Luckily, Study.com is designed to help you earn college credit online and on your schedule. They offer over 220 online college courses that help students make progress towards completing a college degree in a flexible and more affordable way.

2:01Knock out your general courses like English, math, and history, and study on your phone or computer for just$95 a month. Study.com courses are fully online and self-paced and designed to transfer to over 2 ,000 colleges and universities. It's a great way to earn your college degree at an affordable price and on your own schedule so life doesn't get in the way of your education. Go to study.com slash podcast to browse courses and get 10 % off your first month when you sign up. That's study.com slash podcast. This is what I tell people when they want to be, I want to start my own YouTube channel.

2:37I was like, great. There are like a thousand great reasons. There's only two really bad reasons. And the two really bad reasons are to get rich and to get famous. Because you'll never be rich enough. And when you get famous enough, you're like, why did I ever want this? Mark Rober is one of the most successful creators on YouTube. His channel has almost 75 million followers and over 16 billion views. He is posted once a month for 15 years. Each one is carefully built, deeply thought through, and driven by his own curiosity. His goal is to help people, especially kids, fall in love with science.

3:17Mark is an engineer and a scientist by trade. He spent nine years at NASA and then five years at Apple. And somehow he's brought that same patience and rigor to YouTube. When I talked to him, Mark had just announced live at the TED conference that he's launching a full science curriculum for third to eighth graders and is giving it away for free to all teachers. He is full of excitement and energy about what he's doing. He still writes every script himself. Every video takes weeks. He doesn't seem to chase trends or let the system push him around. And somehow it's working. Spectacularly. So I want to understand how he does it and what it actually feels like on the inside.

4:05I'm Molly Graham, and this is Work Life, where we untangle the messy human side of work. So Mark Rober, welcome to WorkLife. Great to be here. It's so nice to see you. So before you were a successful YouTuber, you worked at NASA for nine years. And seven of those were on the Mars Curiosity rover. Correct. And I think it's like such a hard timeline for most people to imagine because from what I understand, you worked on something for seven years. And you didn't actually know if it would work when it landed on actual Mars. Yeah. I'm so curious like what that time and that project specifically kind of taught you about time and investment and success.

4:48Yeah, it's a good question because it is very interesting where it's like there's so many things you can put a lot of work into. And you could see at least – yeah, maybe you don't fully hit your goal, but you hit 80 % of it and that's pretty damn good. But when you're putting a rover on Mars, it's kind of binary. Yeah. It like either works or it's in like a smoldering heap or you miss the planet, which has happened before. So, yeah, it was like seven years of my life. Like I had a kid. Like I lost my mom. You know, so many like that's just on the personal life. I got my master's degree. And then, you know, at work, you have 14-hour days for like lots of times because Mars is on a time.

5:35The stars literally have to align. So you can't just launch whenever. It has to be a specific window. And so for it all to come down to just like seven minutes going from the upper atmosphere at 25 ,000 miles an hour down to like a comfortable four miles an hour, that's seven minutes. Either it works or it doesn't. And that first picture we got back from one of the Hazcams, it's low res, it's black and white. It's like 300 pixels by 300 pixels. The first picture we got back was just the shadow of the rover dominating the Martian landscape. I'll never forget that the rest of my life. We're all sitting there.

6:11It comes down like line by line, like blip, blip, blip, blip, blip. And it's like, yeah. So cool. And my hardware, by the way, is still working to this day. So fingers crossed. Seven years of work and you have no idea. And then you find out in seven minutes that it's actually. Yeah. And then, all right, now let's get to work and let's like explore Mars and learn some cool stuff. Yeah. That's so crazy. So you left NASA and then you worked at Apple for a bunch of years. But while you were working at Apple, you started posting on YouTube. Well, actually, while I was working at NASA, I started posting on YouTube.

6:46Oh, really? I didn't know that. No, 15 years ago. 15 years ago. So, yeah, I had a Halloween costume with like an iPad in front and iPad in back. And if you do a FaceTime chat, it looks like you have a hole in your body. So that was like my first. And it went kind of viral. I had like a couple million views. I was like, well, this is a cool feeling. I have more ideas. and that was back before you knew you could make money off youtube or it was like a thing i just wanted to barf out these cool ideas i had and so it's basically been one video a month since then so i went from there and then i worked at apple for five years i didn't quit apple till i had 10 million subscribers and it was still me and a tripod and like i had no one on my team up to 10 million subscribers and now with crunch labs and everything now the channel has 75 million of subscribers and we have like 140 employees 140 employees it's grown so much so I am curious because like YouTube is a platform where I think there can be a lot of like pushes like or nudges like it can you know push you to post daily right like the algorithm changes and it kind of like can screw with your business but you just haven't like followed that you've just posted once a month for 15 years.

7:58How do you actually like stay grounded in what is right for you when an algorithm is sort of like messing with you? Yeah, it's an interesting point you make which is that like as a person who uploads content, it's like I am part of the algorithm. Like the algorithm can train you because you do this one thing that gets hot. Sometimes people do this. They do one video that gets hot and suddenly now that's their whole channel and they become the scrub daddy guy in the kitchen because that's the video that went viral you know across all their other you could have been the halloween costume guy exactly um and so i don't know i think it partly comes down to like my initial motivation and this is what i tell people when like they want to be i want to start my own youtube channel i was like great there are like a thousand great reasons there's only two really bad reasons and the two really bad reasons are to get rich and to get famous because you'll never be rich enough.

8:56And when you get famous enough, you're like, why did I ever want this? And so it's like, you know, but there's a thousand, maybe you want to get, you want to sharpen your creative skills. You want to be a better storyteller. You just want to feel creative. You want to learn a skill. Like those are all great reasons. And so for me, it was never about being rich and famous. So it was like, why would I care like I'm gonna stick to what feels good to me and and you're right like I've done one video a month and there was a time where they wanted vlogs and daily uploads but we just have a radical sort of focus on quality over quantity and like that's true now for the business this is true for class crunch labs what we're doing like just everything is quality over quantity and sometimes I don't do sometimes it's like 10 videos a year because you know what those two just weren't quite there.

9:48And I don't know, like at the end of the day, that's what makes me happy. And I don't know, I think quality will win out over quantity in the long run. Every time, you want to maximize the area under the curve. Quality is the metric that you kind of want to shoot for. And yeah, it's worked out. That's been my North Star and it will continue to be.

10:13This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can change everything. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes and find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn Build Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates and finding your next great hire. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business.

10:52In fact, LinkedIn found that its users are 24 % less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash worklife. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is powered by AT &T Business. If you're running your own business, you know that the Sunday scaries are real. You're thinking about the invoices, the client calls, the inventory, the list that never actually ends. And honestly, we usually don't think about our internet or our phone service until it isn't working.

11:35Sometimes a simple glitch can feel like a total catastrophe. That feeling of powerlessness when your tech fails you is the worst. It's a reminder that our connectivity isn't just a bill we pay. It's the backbone of everything we do. AT &T Business gets that. They know that for a small business owner, good enough isn't good enough. You need reliability that stays in the background so you can stay in the lead. If you're tired of the friction points and just want a provider that understands the stakes, check out AT &T Business. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com.

12:16This episode is sponsored by Toyota. There's something powerful about momentum, that feeling when things are moving forward, when you're not stuck, you're not waiting, you're just going. That's true in life and it's true in how we move through the world. Toyota's new all-electric vehicles are built to support that kind of momentum. Whether it's the quick acceleration of the CHR, the versatility of the BZ, or the capability of the BZ woodland. And with access to a growing network of chargers, including Tesla superchargers, it's designed to keep you moving, not slowing you down. Because capability isn't just about power, it's about removing friction.

12:51Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places.

13:04So quality is your North Star, but did you, I mean, you say you sort of have to like know what you're trying to do or what your goal is. Like what was yours when you first started and has it changed? Yeah, I think fundamentally I have focused more towards especially getting young folks excited about science and education. Was that the Halloween costume purpose? No, no, no. The Halloween costume purpose is my life goal is to be on Gizmodo, this tech blog that's now defunct. I remember it. You remember Gizmodo? That was my life goal. Like that was the peak amount ever for me. Okay. And then it happened on my first YouTube video.

13:40I was just like, well, I better come up with more life goals, I guess. Okay. But fundamentally what hasn't changed is, you know, to make a video go viral, there's a simple trick. And it's not a cop-out answer. The answer is to make a viral video, you just have to evoke a visceral response in the viewer. That means it can make them feel happy. it can make them feel you know sad angry you see that a lot it can make them feel vindicated it can make them feel feel blank right so what i do a lot of times is i'll just make something that hasn't been seen before because that will evoke you know world's largest nerf gun world's largest jello pool sending a a satellite to space you can upload a picture to for free and get a space selfie back with the earth photobombing you like this is stuff no one's seen so that has been my sort of north star and um i think if you focus there then you know you're just gonna make content that will resonate with people and like that hasn't changed so it's still it's still evoking that visceral response generally in a way sharing a cool idea because like the biggest compliment you give me is like oh that's so obvious why didn't I think of that before like I love hearing that because that's like the peak of creativity it was in front of everyone the whole time and so it's like it's at the end of the day it's sharing ideas getting people addicted to that aha moment oh I love that that feeling and that way you know then now I've started a little fire and now they'll go out and find more ways to get that feeling themselves do you actually get the feedback a lot that that was so obvious and I wish like I am literally trying to imagine the squirrel jungle gym or people being like I thought of filling a swimming pool with yellow too but I just didn't do it it depends on the idea but like I mean certainly I suppose that was truer earlier on like the iPad idea as an example or I went to a zoo once and I flipped my phone around and put it up to the um the glass of them like the monkeys the primates yeah and and you record so they could see themselves on the screen and they'll come up and give you this incredible footage they'll come up and look at themselves but you're recording them like anyone could have done that on the glass right and even now when we do a big build to the extent that we can build it with just junk like we just and this is going to sound provocative so just don't get alarmed when I say this statement but we stole a car using a baby monitor and like a hundred dollars worth of parts it was a friend's car to prove because like it's called a relay attack half a million cars a year get stolen and security through obscurity is bad security.

16:22So bad guys know this, but good guys don't. So we're going to make a viral video that shows we're not going to give all the steps. But basically, you know, we're not using, you can get these for like$15 ,000 on the dark web, but it's cooler to kind of make our own and be like, this is as simple as this is. So to protect yourself, just don't put your keys by the front door or put them in like a metal tin. And now you're going to save yourself. But like, again, even now, all this later, we have all these resources. but to the extent that we can do it with simple, with simple tools, it resonates so much more.

16:54You get more of a visceral response. Yeah. I love it. Okay. So you're, you may not remember this, but you made a throwaway comment on a different podcast about having a constant need for approval and using that as motivation. I am really curious about to hear you just talk a little bit more about that and how you managed to keep it healthy, particularly, you know, given a platform like YouTube or the work that you do that's so public. Yeah, I think so. I grew up in a household where it was like creativity was really encouraged. You know, I mean, my mom had the most, um, she had the most impact on my life by like a very, very comfortable margin, but it kind of was a household where it's like um it do do the right thing and like that's when you get the most support and the most love right so I think you're really it impacts how you sort of go through the world and I think that's a blessing and a curse right I think and sometimes it can make me feel like I have everyone all Oprah on me here I'm just great it's cool it kind of makes you feel like you have to earn the love you know and so that can be a double-edged sword right um yeah and less so with the public i don't feel it as much like parasocially with like people who come up to me on the street like it's less that it's more in like interpersonal relationships which is something i think everyone can relate to where it's like you know you can just relax a little bit and don't feel like because it could be almost like a nervous energy where it's like I got to be the best possible partner you know and then I hold myself to like an impossible standard and so it just takes a really good partner which I have uh to just like get you in a good spot so it's a team effort does it manifest in your work I think I don't not in a negative way I think it manifests in my in my work in a good way I feel like the negative can be interpersonally where you get like but how do you use it in a good way though well just like I want to make cool shit you know that like people like I'm excited to share a video yeah and I think some people will be like I don't care at all what anyone else thinks and and that I think can lead to you don't push yourself as hard right so like in my work I feel like it is a it's healthy like I want even last night I did a TED talk last night and I was like talking to my partner I was like oh it's good but it's like I wish oh this one did I would she's like you don't get to say that and I was like she's like you slayed it and I was like that's true but also what got me to this point is that constantly being like that was good and I can appreciate that it was good and I can look back on what I've done and I don't do it very often but if I do I'm like yeah that's good but it's constantly like but what's the next goal what's the next mountain and I think some point I mean that's what the role of dopamine in your brain I have a pretty dopaminergic brain but not to the point like Mr.

20:08Beast is a buddy of mine he's a YouTuber and he is a very dopaminergic brain where it's like that I think you can go too far on that spectrum yeah I do feel like I have a It's dopaminergic enough that pushed me to do stuff, but I can enjoy the weekend and enjoy what, like, I've done. Well, I'm so curious because, like, he has this quote that's like, you can be me or you can be happy. And then I heard you say on a podcast that you feel like you're further from burnout than you've ever been. And I do think in your industry and world, there are just a lot of folks that burn themselves out or make themselves really unhappy by chasing certain things.

20:48but you haven't done that. Like, why? Even from whenever you heard that, I'm even further from burnout, right? After last night. Yeah, especially after last night. But I think that's what it comes down to. It's like trusting my gut, focusing on quality. You know, I've given this analogy of just like keeping the treadmill at a speed that I can maintain. Because it's like exciting when you start doing this. And this happens a lot where someone gets some views and they hire a team and now they have a team of 20. And basically what they're doing is they're cranking up the treadmill to sprint speed.

21:28And it's exciting at first. But the dopamine wears off. That's not a bug. That's a feature of the way our brains work and how we've evolved. But you're still sprinting. And that's what sucks. and that's what burnout is i think is when you're still doing the work but you're not getting the reward for it and so for me the trick is like look keep it keep it at a jogging speed again like i didn't quit my job at apple until i had 10 million subscribers right i didn't start my job or my company crunch labs where you build these boxes we ship them to your door kids get to put them together and like they're really fun toys that teach them the science i didn't start that until I had enough subscribers and I could pay for it all myself to fund it, to get it off the ground.

22:12And so it's like, I will take risks, but they're like calculated risks and in time. I'm never like betting the whole system at any moment, right? You sound like you have like a, like a sustainability compass too. This is it. I think that's a good way to phrase it. It's like, you know, when I say maximizing area under the curve if like that's your goal and you're tracking progress views revenue you know our metric is brains reached uh you know you can get vcs on board and that's why i was afraid to even take funding and they're going to want to pump this up and do all the things and get 2 000 employees and that's great like this but then what happens is everything's lame and sucky and then it goes down like this so that's less area than just like sustained growth over time yeah and i do like i focus a lot on i'm very protective of my mental health and in the sense of just like trying to keep it really healthy and balanced and this is why i've never built like a community like you know the rober crew or something like i feel like that's to each their own but like that's a parasocial relationship that i don't think is healthy like i love meeting people on the street who have been impacted by the videos like I love that but this idea of like forging this community that I'm talking to every day and they have input on my personal life and I don't really know them to me seems like super obviously unhealthy at least for my brain yeah same with like you know I've never bought a Ferrari or I lived in a I've rented a three bedroom townhome for until like a year ago like i've never had that also seems very obvious to me of like if you spending a lot of money and being flashy about it is like duh that's not going to bring you happiness right so like certain things i feel like it's not like i try harder they just seem glaringly obvious a bad idea yeah and and and maintaining and really like kind of optimizing for for long-term happiness and sustainability feels very clearly the right thing to do.

24:22This episode is sponsored by Rula. When you're going through a difficult breakup or a tough time at work or just dealing with the anxiety and stress of everyday life, the last thing you want to do is scour the internet for therapists who take your insurance. A lot of online therapy won't accept insurance at all, which means taking care of your mental health requires paying out of pocket or signing up for a pricey monthly subscription. But Rula does things differently. They partner with over 120 insurance plans, meaning the average copay is just$15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price point that actually makes sense.

25:00With a network of thousands of therapists nationwide, Rula can help you find the right one for you based on your needs, preferences, and state requirements. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash worklife to get started. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash worklife. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. This episode is brought to you by National Business Furniture. You can find them at nbf.com. What your workspace looks like says a lot about the way you work and can make a big difference when it comes to productivity.

25:41The truth is our surroundings can impact how we think, how we feel, and who we become while we're in them. Your workspace can affect engagement, productivity, and maybe even retention. That's why getting your workspace right matters. It's proof that you value your team. National Business Furniture believes that every business deserves furniture that lasts, service that cares, and a partner that gets it, all on a budget that works. That's National Business Furniture's commitment to you. Find the right furniture for you and your team at nbf.com and use the promo code POD10 to save 10%. That's nbf.com.

26:19And experience the better way to buy office furniture. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can change everything. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes and find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates and finding your next great hire.

26:58With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, LinkedIn found that its users are 24 % less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash worklife. Terms and conditions apply.

27:29you seem like someone that just like knows yourself really well and maybe like has always does that ring true for you kind of i think it's grown over time i i would almost say like like um i'm i'm pretty good friends with jimmy kimmel now and he like plucked me out of obscurity i had like 70 000 subscribers and he brags to his staff that he was the one who found me not the other way around because usually it's the staff and they're like you know I did a show a couple times coming on and doing some like showing some bits and stuff and they're like he really likes you and then like I was like you say that to everyone by the third show I was like I think he does like me and he since told me and now we're like working together on a couple Netflix shows you know we've done a lot of projects together and he says like he's like I knew you were a star And like, I still don't even see what he sees in me.

28:24So like, part of it is like, when you say I'm sure of who I am, it's like, I kind of am just heads down. The next step is always like really, my crystal ball is pretty good. One year out, two years out, it's three years out. It starts to go hazy, but one and two years out, it's incredibly obvious to me what the right move is. And that's true for running the company for the channel. So in that sense, I'm sure. But as far as like, if you asked me to predict 10 years, I have no idea. I don't have some vision of myself. I always think at any moment, like I've peaked and this is it. And I had a great ride.

29:00I would be so grateful. So like, that's it. But in the meantime, I'm just going to still keep moving one step at a time at a comfortable pace and wherever it takes us, it takes us. It's so interesting to hear you say that. Cause I've heard you say before that you just know what the next rock is, but like every story you tell, it just sounds like you are a very long long-term thinker or you've always had this long-term mindset, but maybe that's the sustainability thing. I'm just curious. Cause like you, like, I think it's like principle-based living, right? Like if you live by certain principles and you choose the rocks, you step on to cross the stream based off those principles, I can't tell you which rock I'll be on and what it will look like.

29:43But I think if you just continue to make those choices, like it has to lead there. It's sort of like this concept of emergence with like where it's like you have you know cells in your body that all add up to create this thing or bees in a beehive they there's no mastermind masterminding that whole beehive these incredible things it's just each bee has a very simple set of decisions they make and when you multiply that by you know a hundred thousand to a million bees each one doing that thing you get this incredible output you know in nature we call it emergence and so i think that that applies to an individual's life and if you just make all these decisions based off a few simple principles that are sound like good shit's gonna happen and that's how you decide on the next rock that's how you decide on like what's next for you is just like yeah at this point like the north star for what we're doing at crunch labs and class crunch labs is just to reach as many brains as possible yeah and just infect them with a passion for curiosity and and for learning and just how good that feels yeah and that's the north star and so at work if you know we're talking about things with the employees and it's like we want a certain thing does that help us reach that goal if so super easy yes if not lower priority and the same goes with my life and you know the choices i make as things get busier and busier like what what will maximize that and and that's the north it's not it's not revenue it's not any other metric it's just like how can we reach more brains with this message we're doing something right so let's scale this up in the most like responsible way possible we're not gonna just go crazy with it but like let's sustainably scale this up and that's why i'm really excited about class crunch labs is you know we've had to which is our initiative which i announced last night in the ted talk it's basically a free school curriculum third to eighth grade exceeds all the state science standards but it it uses all the tricks i've learned over the past 15 years of how to hide the vegetables because the problem is so much of the curriculum that's written is by folks who mean well but they've never had to earn a view They've never had to learn how to effectively hide vegetables in engaging content.

32:07And the biggest problem with science, if you talk to any educator, it's less about the curriculum. It's the motivation gap and getting kids to care about it. And we know how to do that. 75 million subscribers and 16 billion views later, we know how to do that. So we're taking that formula. Me and 50 other very talented, some of the best science teachers in the country are making this curriculum. And then, most importantly, even though it's going to cost$60 million, we're making it free forever for all teachers. Open source, anybody can have it. And we've raised$10 million, but we've got$50 million to go.

32:40So if anyone's watching this, send people our way. We'd be interested in this. Yeah, I saw you tear up on stage when you announced it. And I know that you've always said you wanted to be a high school science teacher. I will be, yeah. Well, I mean, in some way you are the world's science teacher. I know that's true, but also like I'm halfway through getting my teaching credentials. Like I'm going to do it. Yeah. I started like in 2018 and then things got really crazy. And so it will happen because teachers are the best. Like it's the most important job on the planet. They're my favorite people.

33:14If I'm at a party and there's like an agent and, you know, some investor, a lawyer and a teacher, I mean, obviously it won't be the lawyers, but I'm immediately like, okay, me and the teacher are going to go to the quarter and we're going to chat like they're my people yeah and they did it's the most important job on the planet so it's like i'm i'm like reinforcements are on the way like we're going to team up they're the hero this isn't them playing a video like we team teach right and it's gonna be it's gonna be really freaking cool it's so amazing well mark grover thank you so much for making time for this of course so fun it's been so fun to get to know you and i'm i'm so inspired by what you announced last night and just what you're doing to empower our teachers.

33:56Thank you so much. I really appreciate the platform. Like this is a big deal for us. No, it's incredible. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. That was so fun. Mark is such an interesting person. There were a lot of takeaways in that conversation that I'm going to be thinking about for the next couple of weeks. But honestly, the biggest one that I took away was this idea of sustainability. And Mark talked about it in like a bunch of different dimensions that I actually think are all really important. He talked about this idea of like putting the treadmill on a speed and an incline that you feel like you can keep doing for a very long time.

34:36And I think even thinking about that in years is kind of crazy. First of all, the idea of walking on a treadmill for years, but actually like you can just imagine how in a system like YouTube, you really need to do that if you're going to try to make this a long-term sustainable business. And I think that's so hard to imagine. What does that mean for you? Because what's sustainable for you is going to be different than what's sustainable for someone else. But it really is kind of grounding to think about what would let you keep doing something for years and years and years. The other two types of sustainability that he talked about, though, that I thought were really interesting, because you've definitely seen bad examples of this are number one, company building sustainability.

35:21So like he talked about the fact that he didn't leave his job until he had 10 million subscribers and he didn't hire employees until he knew that he was profitable enough to sustain them. And that is something that I've seen a lot of founders or a lot of creators make the mistake of sort of like getting ahead of their business. And then somehow either the financial weight or the operational weight actually crushes sort of what was working for them, what made them happy. And then the last kind was financial, right? Personal financial. He talked about not buying the big house until you know you can afford it, not buying the big fancy cars and the outward signs of wealth that honestly can get really addictive for people in terms of just this outward sign of success.

36:06And I just thought across all of his dimensions, it was such an interesting set of examples to think about what does sustainability mean for you? What helps you build the life and the time that you want?

36:22That's our show. All right. See you next week. Work Life is a production of Ted and Pushkin Industries. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter and Leah Rose. Banban Chang is our story editor. Mixing by Hansdale She. Ted's executive producer is Daniela Balarezo. Constanza Gallardo is the executive producer for Pushkin. Special thanks to Roxanne Hilash, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tansika Soongmanivong, and Ashley Murphy. If you like the show and want more, come join the discussion on my Substack Lessons. I'm Molly Graham. Thanks for listening.

37:15This episode is sponsored by Toyota. Expression shows up in ways we don't always notice. It's not just what we say. It's the choices we make, the things we surround ourselves with, the way we move through the world. Even something like the car you drive can be a form of expression. Toyota's new all-electric family leans into that idea. The CHR, for example, has a bold, distinctive design, something that stands out a little in a good way. While the BZ and the BZ Woodland each bring their own personality to the table, it's a reminder that the things we use every day don't have to be neutral. They can actually reflect who we are.

37:50Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant.

38:32This episode is sponsored by the Amazon Kindle Scribe. Up until now, people have had to choose between the focus that comes from writing on paper and the efficiency of laptops and tablets, which might come at the cost of distracting pop-ups and notifications. The Kindle Scribe's exciting new AI features are designed to streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency, but what's not on it is just as important. Scribe comes with no email, messaging, or social apps, so you can unlock your best focus. Use Scribe's AI Notebook Insights to ask your notebook a question and instantly comb through handwritten notes for fast answers, or pull up and mark PDFs with PDF markup right on your screen, no printer necessary.

39:13The Kindle Scribe makes it easy to keep your notes organized with everything you need in one place without having to sort through paper files or type notes on your laptop. I love how the Kindle Scribe brings my notes to life while making them impossible to lose. I know what I'm working on moving forward. What are you working on? Kindle Scribe.