Simple Life Changes That Lead To Big Results - George Mack

what's the busy trap the busy trap is the idea that we're busy today because we were busy yesterday and we'll be busy tomorrow because we're busy today and it's this never ending busyness that we get busier because we're busy now weirdly I was looking at Google Trends earlier and if you look at the word busy from 2004 it's like the Apple stock price it just each year we get about 10% more busier and we're constantly hitting the peak every single year of people searching the word busy right so business is getting busier yes right and what do you mean when you say that you waste yours not being able to waste ours so this is a quote from Amos tersi who was Daniel canan's writing partner on thinking fast and slow and when you hear it it's like as a writer like why didn't I write that that is so good you waste years by not being able to waste hours and it's this idea that because we're so busy we never get round to actually asking the bigger questions we're constantly on the C+ tasks rather than the A+ tasks and one of the memes I posted with this essay it's two guys working extremely hard like being super busy and there's one guy in the corner who's like you're right Lads um can I give you a bit of help and he goes we're too busy and the guy is carrying a wheel and these guys are carrying everything but they're too busy to realize that there's a wheel out there and I think T's point with that is by having a few extra hours in your schedule you may change your annual Direction here or there but if you're constantly compressing everything into some kind of Maxim efficiency um you end up wasting years as a result why is the busy trap a trap why do we default to busy as opposed to defaulting to lots of spare time I think well there's to quote the philosopher Molly May there there's only 24 hours in the day Chris which is a Lie by the way which is a lie not not having to go Molly but there's actually 16 hours in the day like I find the fact that we talk about 24 hours when we sleep for hours is absurd it's like confusing your Revenue with your profit it's putting up the Shopify screenshot it's like how much did you spend on other things there so you have let's say 16 hours a day and that's pretty Lindy like that's been consistent throughout human history our experience of time meanwhile the amount of activities we can now do the amount of content that gets uploaded to YouTube Every Minute the amount of slack messages that are coming through the amount of emails that are coming through the digital the beauty of digital systems is it's so high Leverage the as your sat here right now there's probably 5,000 people watching a clip of Chris as we speak in the next couple minutes and that at the digital level for yourself is a constant problem because you only have 16 hours in the day yet there's things that are constantly coming through and unless you're proactively trying to put systems in place you will just get destroyed by The Busy trap we also learn in school to do work without questioning the work so one of my uh old essays was this point around a lot of the behaviors from school that you were rewarded for you ultimately get punished for later in life and a lot of the behaviors at school that you were punished for you ultimately get rewarded for later in life and it's this sad change of Affairs I realized my age from like 20 to 29 was just trying to rewrite what I learned from 10 to 19 so it's been a cluster [ __ ] and one of the behaviors that you were pun for in school that you get rewarded for later in life he's asking why are we doing this does this make sense is this the most important thing to be working on if you said that in your like year 10 algebra class it doesn't go down well shut up ma yeah exactly but what did go down well is if you just complied and took the schedule as it came through and I think you basically have these digital systems compounding on top of these weird or or let's say incorrect behaviors that you learn at school yeah and what what about the Trap element of busyness why does it sort of continue to why does it cyclically make us more prone to being busy in the future it everyone's experience cleaning out their inbox and you realize you've not cleaned out your inbox you've just essentially chopped off hydra's head and another head has reappeared so the more you almost try and defeat busyness ultimately the more busy you become come actually my number one test for myself because I've been this guy still am this guy recovering busy guy it the number one test I have for myself is I know I'm too busy if I don't know what the most important question is right now what you mean by question the priority the thing I need to be answering um and the irony is if you don't know what the most important thing to do in your life right now is or the most important question to answer or what the number one focus should be you've actually just found it so that's quite a beautiful thing within itself so if you are concerned that you're too busy whenever I'm concerned that I'm too busy and I go I've not figured out what the most important thing to focus on right now is I've just focusing on what is the most important thing to focus on right now is what to focus on yeah what are some other uh signs that you're too busy like what when you think back to the times when you've been drowning in busy work what are some of the other things that come along for the ride I think it's it's so it's a funny a funny message I got sent me other day when I posted this from my friend Phil and he was saying how the essay hit him and he asked himself this question which was let's say he set his five goals for the week and he said if I got them done by Tuesday how would I feel or what would I do and he goes I think I'd go in this full-blown anxiety of what do I do for the rest of these few days and the irony is he goes that problem means that it just stretches out throughout the week versus if he just said to myself how about I Sprint get everything done by Tuesday then I'm relatively three Wednesday Thursday Friday day but this busyness you con because you're so busy you constantly need to stay busy you're addicted to that feeling you're like the rat when the cheese comes out um when I whenever I found I'm too busy is I know that um Peter duer has this great thing great thing called the activity trap which is essentially the idea you have your activity and you have your output and your activity is just inputs going in the system doing things replying to messages clicking buttons and moving around and feeling like you've done something but often at the end of the day nothing's happened so the activity trap is if you stress activity you don't necessarily increase output whenever you whenever you stress output so the end result you'll always you'll always improve output but you'll often actually ironically decrease activity so the biggest thing for me is if I'm sat there at the end of the day and I'm feel exhausted I'm like what's actually got done yeah well yeah not what did I do what got done yes because what I did doesn't actually always result in something being done on the other side what was that Andy Groves quote that you told us uh in Miami it's yeah it gave me goosebumps this one uh the quote is people there's so many people working so hard and achieving so little what's that mean to you it's it's the typ a personality trap which I easily fall into where you end up exactly what my friend said earlier where they would rather get their five goals done for the week on the Friday so they constantly feeling busy then actually done sooner um what it means is there's so much inputs going into the system without any outputs and because we're so busy we never actually get time to question the outputs that we're producing there's another element of this especially for people that work in offices right the demonstration of effort you know you're not crank widgets you can't see the bucket of widgets to be cranked the one you're cranking in the bucket of widgets that you have cranked today so how do people demonstrate their work their effort their optimizing for signals of busyness which is always being the quickest person to reply didn't you tell me that some dude in your slack Channel he was the only guy in the entire company that checked slack on Christmas day yes yeah he's incredible that guy Bradley um so yeah I mean Slack's a problem itself um I was thinking and I'd be surprised if we don't look back 5 to 10 years from now about how broken slack is because sometimes Al Che slack like a social network I'm just like refreshing the feed just to see going on what's going on even in channels that you're not supposed to be supervising you just happen to be because you're an admin so Sam Caracus the guy that could have butchered his last name there but [ __ ] it uh the guy that runs levels he said it was a study recently where the average Tech worker checks slack every 7 minutes which is quite an absurd absurd idea for people that are trying to increase outputs to be constantly moving things just messages and bits back and forth what about energy how does sort of energy flows throughout the day play into the busy trap yeah I I think the the lore I found with my own personal energy levels is that if I don't get like proactively schedule things in that increase my energy they'll never happen and if I don't proactively defend things that decrease my energy they will eat up my calendar it's kind of like running a business it all all it's almost at the laws of physics that your revenue is trying to go down every day and your costs are trying to go up every day and it's exactly the same with energy and I weirdly found this when I was traveling or when I'm going through super stressful periods of life that the natural idiot brain that I have is when I have imagine your energy levels like inflows and outflows like an engineering system whenever there's lots of energy outflows on the system I.E I'm super stressed I.E um I'm traveling right now the natural weird thing that we do is to turn off all the energy inflows to give ourselves more time to work on the outflows the outflows and then you end up completely burnt out whereas actually what you need to do is crank up the energy inflows more to deal with the higher cost on the system last week I tweeted there's no such thing as being overworked only underr rested yeah how much truth do you think's in that I I think it was it was one of the I forgot which president it was who said that I never stand up when I can sit down and I never I never work sorry I never work stood up when I can be working sit down sat down and I never work sat down when I could be lay down and even Churchill when you think about grinding like Churchill World War II like that's some like Sigma serious Sigma grind set right there like the Apex and him like taking multiple naps throughout the day um how that's one of the reasons how he managed to work throughout the nights um and yeah that concept of there's no such fers underr there's just um sorry there's no such fingers being overworked there's just underr makes so much sense from a utility perspective it might not necessarily be true but it reframes it I think anybody it's one of those things that probably doesn't work in theory but does work in practice where you can pick that apart as a p little aphorism but if you actually think about what your felt experience of being a very busy person in the world is like have you ever been overworked when you haven't been underr rested has there ever been a time when you've gone wow I'm rested but also overworked no almost never because of the busy trap because of the fact that you continue to Loop yourself back oh well I'd better reject all of the things that give me more energy by meditating or breath work or getting up early or going for a walk or going to the gym or spending time with friends or turning the airpods off for 5 minutes today you don't do any of those things so it's it's kind of a a sort of a self um answering question which is that those two things are the same for most people they're not the same in theory but in practice they are being overworked and being under arrested are the same thing they're two sides of the same Co and you can have scenarios where you've not worked in weeks but you've been on Tik Tok N9 hours a day still not under still not rested still not rested and you can have other scenarios where you've worked the hardest you have in your entire life but because you've got those energy inflow systems dialed um you don't reach the same burnout that you would and it's another uh hidden and observable metric problem too right that what you're trying to optimize for is quality of life clear thinking great ideas opportunity to to have leverage on on what it is that you're coming up with where does that appear on my slack analytics on my balance sheet it doesn't even really appear on my [ __ ] whoop data but the number of emails that I sent uh the uh reduction in my total number of unread messages the all of that stuff super easy to quantify so you're sacrificing the thing you want clear thinking for the thing which is supposed to get it which is clearing out admin tasks yeah it's quite horrific how much time we waste like one of the experiments is to go back to your Google calendar this time last year and look at certain things that you did and you'll often realize that most of it was a was a complete waste does any of this matter I mean there's always that power law that exists I heard yesterday that even Warren Buffett in one of his shareholder letters said that I think it was only 12 of his Investments that really moved the needle for burky have away which was about 4% so even the die like the best allocator in this case of capital rather than time only 4% of his bets were were correct so and and that's him spending so much time thinking every single day and if you're then so busy we're not even going to get past the the 1% or at least I'm not you said bringing a Victorian factory worker mindset to the age of infinite Leverage is like bringing boxing gloves to a drone War yes um one of my favorite lines I think I need to FX this idea out more but this was kind of a aism to myself I try and paint on the back of my eyelids which is this idea that let's say you have quote unquote type A type B personalities I don't know if it's an actual thing but just for the uh utility of categorizing them you have type A personalities that are they have a what feels like a work ethic problem they constantly feel lazy but it's actually a work ethic problem it's actually a leverage problem disguised as a work EIC problem and type B personalities have a they think they constantly have a leverage problem but they actually have a work ethic problem and you'll be able to immediately bucket those people uh inside your head immediately yeah I uh I think a lot about trying to dial back busyness you know both of us are kind of permanently fighting this entropy on a morning well what watch maybe time block the morning and protect it like go through some of the tactics that like from a strategic perspective that you've used personally to try and defend the busy trap so go back to cocaine kale phone everybody should know that by now two separate phones I'd say the the busy trap for me probably the easiest thing is having a big three so I got this from the concept of 4,000 weeks and having a big three of things I need to do and then everything else just goes to the everything else section and the idea of only being able to have three tasks on the big three makes you prioritize things by definition I think ultimately the opposite of the busy trap is prioritization which is such a difficult skill when there's infinite things coming at you yeah if there's so much that you could be focused on and permanent notifications this ambient sense that you're falling behind Oliver burkman has this beautiful sentence where he it's in the productivity debt essay that he does because he says I just have this vague sense this vague fear that I'm falling behind and I think that that kind of really encapsulates at least for me the if I take too much time off and here's the brutal thing you realize that you have become your own Taskmaster in many ways you know you complain about the prison of your busyness but you realize that you're the god that's holding the keys to it you've locked yourself in and thrown them out um you know perfect example of this if I spend a ton of time uh working and working and working and all I can think about is oh God it would be so cool to just have like a couple of days and I do I play pickle ball and I have fun with my friends and I go and do this thing and about 10 hours into the first day of that I think I really could do with getting a bit of graph done what if I just you know there and then you smack up with a little bit of slack or you get on an email or you do you know you you complete a little bit of work so yeah we are the prison guards of the jail that we're complaining about in many ways which actually I think when people fully realize this which everyone listening will have done because we've spoken about it a lot and they're all reasonable there's a lot of shame that can come along with that too which adds another layer of difficulty on top you say God you know I'm choosing to do this to myself I don't need to answer my boss's email at 11:00 p.m. at night he's not expecting it I think it's even illegal in France or something they made that law right where you can't you can't contact this is stinks of a thread of you um that you can't contact workers outside of their hours of work I think they it might even be like how China uh used that streaming service to stop kids from playing computer game might be like cold turkey or frozen turkey but for work email or something but yeah they're just they're trying to have this sort of um Workers Health act where people don't work outside of it uh but it's you it's always been you and then you realize oh God it's me and then you think God how shameful am I that I'm wasting my life I'm choosing to do this to myself and then you start to layer all of these stories on top yeah I came up with this idea of the midwit review the midwit week review which was previously i' done like end of week reviews and be like a [ __ ] three hour session there like 60 different points and my midwit version now is for each area so like Health life work are what were the three wins this week and then what are the three things that would actually move the needle for each one and then you mean when you say move the needle I can play it in terms of Leverage in terms of prioritization because otherwise unless you really think about each action I put that thing in the essay which is if you don't have 20 minutes each day to think about what's the most important thing you probably need an hour so getting another note to myself and what I mean by move the needle is I think probably one of the the underpinnings of the busy trap is that you never really write down your hypothesis like a scientific experiment you never say Okay of these so there's option one I can do today I can reply to this slack message or the all these slacks option two I could build out this new marketing funnel that will take me two hours option three I could go see my parents whatever it is like in terms of that and then actually mapping out okay according to all my different priority areas what's that's going to deliver it's much woer in life I guess but from a business perspective we very very rarely ever go okay here's the five decisions we can make how much time is each one going to do we anticipate each one will make um each one will take and how much revenue or profit will this thing make and it's only of this thing yeah but we're having to play Within the observable metric Paradigm again yes like look what we're defaulting to saying ah quality of life ah time with parents ah the sanity of the internal texture of my mind H profit I can see that on a balance sheet in other news this episode is brought to you by momentus they make the highest quality supplements on the planet I've fallen in love with their way isolate protein powder which you'll see actually doesn't even have the seal on it because this is my one from home if you've been struggling to hit your protein goals mti's grass-fed way is a super convenient and tasty way to get extra protein into your diet which will promote lean muscle mass and help with your recovery plus it's NSF and inform Sports certified meaning that even Olympic athletes can use it because that is how rigorously it's tested what you read on the label is what's inside the product and absolutely nothing else best of all there is a 30-day money back guarantee so you can buy it completely risk-free and if you do not like it for any reason they will give you your money back plus they ship internationally you can get up to a 32% discount sitewide off everything including that protein by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to Liv mous.com slod wisdom that's Li I m o m n us.com slod wisdom uh so you've been in the US 3 weeks now MH yeah no more more actually because you did Miami yeah um we've been talking a lot about differences between the UK and the USA what have you come to believe about that so I my biggest takeaway from being in America as a Brit is it's like finding out my dad had a kid with another woman that I never met and we meet for the first time and I'm like you're kind to me but you're not me it's like he spent a bit more money on you he made you believe in yourself your mom was clearly much nicer or Kinder and you go oh Americans like we're kind of the same but it's like Brits with self-belief Brits with self-belief is what Americans are is is one of the different there there's lots of pros and there's lots of cons for both but that was my overwhelming overwhelming takeaway the second biggest takeaway I have is that Brits don't really truly realize how impactful the British accent is until you leave Britain and the metaphor I came up with for describing the British accent to Brits is Imagine everywhere else in the world there's a salmon famine right and the British accent is like selling salmon and the only place in the world where there's an abundance of salmon is in the UK so if you're there using that it basically gets you nothing in the UK but you suddenly leave or go outside anywhere else and you're ex anywhere else and they think you're smarter they think you're more attractive um yeah Americans often ask me when they talk about that and I do think it's true that uh Brits have an unfair advantage in America of being seen as more learned uh everyone presumes that we're part of the aristocracy or something um and they often ask me well what do you think of American accents in the UK and that was a really interesting question I was like I actually don't know I think it's like certainly for me on girls it's like kind of sexy it feel that that feels exotic in some way uh definitely energetic overly enthusiastic and excitable um especially when you've got one American in a bunch of Brits when you're the Brit in a bunch of Americans oh you know everyone's just sort of excitable and first line Cocaine Energy but when you drop one American in a a like Newcastle or something oh my God who is that a nuclear warhead surrounded by a bunch of Swords um yeah I think since being here you know it's made me reflect on the UK I I hate being disparaging about the UK like it's the country that gave me and you start we both went to University there we both had our first jobs there we both built businesses there uh I think we're both in one form or another still registered you'll be on company's house and some vestigal old [ __ ] thing I hate I I really wish that I didn't sort of talk badly about it but you sent me a tweet last week and I've been watching bald and bankrupt Awesome YouTube channel um I invited him on the show he replied he said he'd love to but he's actually trying to actively wind down his uh public exposure so he said he keeps getting asked for too many selfie photos in Tesco uh and he does strike me as the kind of man that probably doesn't want to be Overexposed you know he was doing for the people that don't know this guy who does kind of like dark tourism stuff he got trafficked across the border into Mexico he was detained in a Russian jail for a while and then he decided he was going to take on the final boss of dangerous places which was Seaside towns of the UK and um he just travels around sort of looking at all of these these bad places and um you sent me that tweet last week which I think Nails it which is the UK has the sixth largest economy in the world but people are confused the UK doesn't have the sixth largest economy in the world London has the sixth largest economy in the world it just has a really poor country attached to a very rich city yeah and then there was another one which was us universities um so I think in the top 10 universities in the world the UK has three and the US has three yet the US outputs five times those us universities fi output five times the number of entrepreneurs that those UK universities do so in theory these people are as intelligent as one another um across like I think it's Oxford Cambridge and another univers May dur maybe yeah and um what's interesting when you go across Global university rankings and outputs of entrepreneurs in the study that was shared the UK University that which was Oxford so that's the number one for entrepreneurial output was 50th across the whole world despite the fact we ranked so high in education yet actually transforming that into entrepreneurship doesn't seem to happen and I wonder again whether that's the self-belief thing you also see this weirdly and I could be mistaken here I have this bias that I think Brits are fundamentally more funnier than Americans however way more great standup comedians that are American then British like we have Ricky jaas we have Jimmy Carr and then in terms of global appeal outside of that there's not a huge amount more and my theory behind that is so why do you have the funniest people yet not the the biggest standup comedians out of those names there and I think the same crb crabs in a bucket mentality that makes people so funny because we can shoot people down and shoot ourselves down is the same thing that makes it ABS absurd as a concept to go and get on stage and say I want to be a funny person like that in the UK so I think the funniest guy in the world right now is probably in a Gregs in Wigan or he is in a pub in Portsmouth and because of that crabs in a bucket mentality Americans are way more likely to get on stage and go I want to be a funny person because that's part of the American DNA meanwhile the Brits who I think are actually funnier don't end up doing as much entrepreneurial as well urial yeah but you know even within that that sort of self-belief it's one and the same I think it's agency it's the preparedness to go against the grain uh and you know this I I'm we're going to talk about uh subprime audiences later on um but you know this audience is like I would guess I would say like it's full of like A's and Double A's of people especially the ones from the UK and I think the reason that this resonates I'm not saying it to disparage the UK I don't think either of us are but to kind of reassure the people for whom they feel a little bit like uh square peg in a round country sat in the UK you know some normal Town you're in [ __ ] Wakefield or Carlile or middesboro Rochdale wherever you are uh and you think God you know this is the sort of conversations I really love to have this is the kind of thoughts that I think about and I really want to have Big Dreams for myself and then I I just really struggled to resonate with the people around me I really really failed to do that and I think I wish that I'd had when I was younger more reassurance that I wasn't the problem you know there no value judgment people that have big dreams people that don't have big dreams but there's nothing inherently wrong with you having those dreams and there's no reason that you should be castigated or have the piss taken out of you because you want to do something different because you don't intend being born living working and dying within the same 20 M radius of of you know where your parents grew up yes but even at a walking around level you see this so if you walk around America there's Flags everywhere mhm kind of pride in the nation if you walk around the UK and you see a flag you go oh [ __ ] edl member there might be a Nazi which is unless there's a football tournament then everybody does it that's the weird Paradox of the UK yeah so it's even at that level you see this kind of Pride at the nation level and at the UK it's almost like this weird autoimmune condition do you have any idea why the British football team uses Three Lions rather than the St George's cross don't know isn't that interesting because I don't think Scotland does and I don't think Ireland does and I don't think Wales do and I can't think of any other team actually the uh England cricket guys will do the same thing there must be a reason someone will be correcting me in the comments as we speak um but that's yet for the Americans that are listening British national pride like BNP British national pride and it's not that but like it's just it doesn't exist and then you come over here and it it is nice it's nice to hear that people have got have got pride in their country so the the probably the critique people have of us right now is that we're critiquing Britain way more than we are critiquing America but I'd also point out that's part of being British you're way more naturally to critique yourself and to critique other people and I do love that side of being British because you're way more self-analytical um I think in ter in terms of other differences between the UK and the US that I've noticed in terms of benefits for Brits is because Brits like take the piss out of one another on average way more um it means that you do have maybe that lowering self-belief but you're almost a bit more antifragile so if people do say a remark you've already cracked a joke worse than that in the past or your friends have particularly and I think the more Northern in the country you go the more it is the further away from London that you get the more piss you have taken out of you exactly whereas in America I think people are a lot more could be more fragile to comments like that whereas the Brits the same way I always say another difference there's two big differences that I think explain the differences between Americans and Brits so one is simple AB test of when you meet an American and they're super enthusiastic and excited and the Brits aren't if you actually go historically back there was a simple AB test which is when the boats came and said hey does this Promised Land far far away we can't show you a video because videos don't exist yet you may die on the about do you want to come and visit this crazy land the Brits were the ones who were like what a ridiculous idea that is I'm going to stay here I'm staying in skas and the Americans were the ones who were like yeah bring it on and that AB test fundamentally explains it as well as when you think about it um historically Americans have apart from Pearl Harbor and that was quite far away from America let's be honest have never had an attack on their Homeland in recent history 911 KN count um the 911 yeah yeah there you go that's one example but comparing that to the bombing like World War I and World War II like the whole cities completely destroyed um so there's definitely more like scar tissue built up that makes Brits I think a little bit more grittier in some regards than Americans as well yeah I don't know man I'm pessimistic yeah I can tell it's for certain people I had this discussion with Piers Morgan Pi was like I like I like people bringing me back down to to Earth I I I like the the mockery and stuff I'm like Piers that's great for you it doesn't seem to work too well for me like my desperate requirement for validation and reassurance from the world like wasn't being very satiated in Stockton yeah right or Newcastle uh and then you come over here one of the best things and this is something that anybody anywhere on the planet should do and this is one of the coolest life hacks I've taken since being in America and you've seen me do it to you and you've like toe called at a bunch of parties which is when in America at least in my group of friends you are the new person in a group your friend that knows you and knows the group will introduce you and tends to do it in the best 30 second showreel of you that anybody could give you know got this amazing marketing agency he's a phenomenal writer and he's pivoting he's kind of champagne homeless at the moment he does all of these things and like that's a really lovely gesture it's your friend it's an opportunity for them to do something nice for you it gives you the best impression on the group and it reminds you about what your friend kind of says about you behind your back when you're not there and it's like it inflates you a little bit and makes you feel good and warm and stuff what would the equivalent be if you were a British friend being introduced to British Friends by a British friend it would be your worst ever story correct certainly the northern again this is the Norther thing this this is George [ __ ] himself last week like you know Ian still has wet dreams like you know um yeah it is like the introduction side how we introduce one another I've definitely found Americans much better at selling themselves immediately whereas I think Brits often downplay themselves immediately there's a big difference there in terms of like ever so slight cultural differences one of the reasons why I think America has been so successful so far and one thing Britain could improve upon is if you look at human beings I think what makes human beings if you put one human being in a jungle um it's that classic phrase that you put one human being in a jungle and you've just introduced prey into the environment but if you put a thousand human beings into the jungle you've just introduced a apex predator of which the world's never seen before so the only thing that really makes special if you look at us we don't hear that well compared to our animals we're not that fast we're not that strong we're pretty [ __ ] across the board but our ability to cooperate is what makes us unique it's the classic Steve Jobs thing of if you look to um I think it's energy efficiency in movement humans are so far down the rankings like there's so many animals ahead of us in terms of to do a mile how much energy they need to burn but if you look at a human being on a bicycle human beings have just blown blown through the charts and he has this great quote which is the computer is the bicycle of the mind and if you then go back to well ultimately the only thing that makes us unique human beings because we're [ __ ] about everything compared to other animals is our ability to cooperate if you have a more enthusiastic society that supports one another more you can cooperate more which means that you'll then have way more economic output because in a certain country that's more optimistic that goes I've got this idea a lot of naive Americans are like great idea let's do it tomorrow whereas PE a culture that's more maybe cynical um means that those ideas don't happen which I think explains why across these universities we have essentially the same IQ levels the same intelligence levels better accents better accents more salmon but 5x the number of entrepreneurs in America in other news this episode is brought to you by Gramm with grammar you no longer need to spend hours on emails now you simply write an email with all of the grammatical errors literally all of them left in then use grammarly's app to fix it and make sure that it matches your tone it's literally like magic and it will have a massive effect on your productivity plus when you sign up for grammarly premium you get Advanced suggestions so your writing is always personalized consistent and matches the right context every time honestly upgrading to gramly Premium saves so much time and makes you sound way smarter than you are it's the writing equivalent of having a British accent so sign up to upgrade to grammarly premium and level up your productivity by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to grammarly.com Modern wisdom that's g r m m r l y.com slod wisdom what was that thing another person so two guys that I wanted to have this conversation with first one uh bald and bankrupt Ben that's fine like he wants to take a step back second one Tom blumfield guy that founded monzo which is where I got the thing from swinging a miss another one for me I got I got rebuffed twice in the space in the space of a day it's interesting both the founder of monzo and the founder of revolute so the two you'd argue the most successful UK companies that have come out recently both of them are having huge issues with the UK I believe so Tom obviously wrote that piece about the UK culture and how he's trying to fix it and I think the founder of revolute is either left or wanting to leave because of the regulation that exists there so two of our entrepreneurs Tom lives in SF now right he's part of white combinator um what else do you do you learn anything else from that Tom blumfield article he wrote it on [ __ ] Tumblr Oh really that that blog post that blog post is on Tumblr oh wow yeah who knew that CEOs of a internet Savvy internet startup bank and 13-year-old girls posting emo photos Al that's the like horseshoe HHO around I mean the probably the the other takeaway I would say is Vision so I always look at let's say and again a lot of people who listen to this podcast might hate these places but the one thing you can give them is when you go there you kind of get a vision so whether that's Austin whether that's Dubai whether that's Miami whether that's um Singapore whether that's Al Salvador right now um even Saudi Arabia you may not like those places at all but when you're there or you kind of see what they're do and you go kind of get where you going there's something happening whereas with the UK I think fundamentally that's probably one of the problems right now is that you don't fully know where the country's going yeah that's a really really great problem a great great Point uh I reached out I got Dominick Cummings email I got his I got his personal email address so I've reached out to him so last time we were on the show we spoke about um how the uh head of cyber security for the UK government job roll title was at 65 Grand a year someone's now made the meme of that original screenshot with I think it's the like Tik Tok yeah some some person who's might be high of Cy secur at Tik Tok it's like 360 Grand a year it's like wow the the contrast is is there yeah I don't know man uh part of my live show is me saying that I want to make enthusiasm great again uh and reimport the American enthusiasm back over to the UK uh that being said no matter where you're from I think that you have the opportunity to be the enthusiastic person and I I've been really getting into um direct communication instead of Shadow sentences recently and a lot of the time I I think to myself what would have happened 10 years ago if in the northeast of the UK the group of friends that I had that were around then Darren Johnny Yousef like those guys um what if I'd gone to them and I'd said look like I want to make a real hard left turn in terms of the sort of demeanor and the way that I view the world and I've heard about the fact that more enthusiastic groups of people seem to do better they have a five times increase in entrepreneurial success and you know we have the same levels of skill better accent more salmon why can't we deploy this I I really want to try and cultivate the most positive friend group that we can why don't we just try this why don't we like pretend to be British American or like British Saudi or whatever the whatever you want to be why don't we try and do that and I wonder how much direct communication in that sort of a way in a safe space where there isn't one person in the corner that's always going to default to gay like if because that person everyone it's like a a regret to the mean it's like regression to being mean you know what I mean like the meanest person in the room is the one that everyone defaults to because that person always seems less naive they seem a little bit sort of more sardonic and and and smart and cool and again if you're American and this is I don't like being around those people at all go to the UK for a couple of weeks and they are everywhere but yeah uh Tom Blum Field's article on on Tumblr about the difference between the UK and the US I think is fascinating and that just as a frame what a phenomenal frame to say the UK isn't a successful economy London is a successful economy that has a poor country attached to it what do you so to flip the script though um so we don't get lots of angry Brits what do you we already do what do you miss about the UK or you think the UK has his strengths Over America because I would say America definitely has greater blowup risk like I could easily imagine a scenario where the US goes to Civil War quicker than the UK does I would imagine that there's many more people many more entrepreneurs that have gone B bankrupt in the US because they're just swinging for the fences a lot more uh it's my belief that most people who do things like entrepreneurialism from a good standpoint are more risk averse than they are prepared to deal with risk so most people actually need to crank that up they need a little bit more encouragement um things that are problems in America is is certainly that there are blind spots that many of them have there's an entitlement that a lot of Americans have too you know think about the fact that as you're coming up through school maybe less now when America is the most you know misogynistic xenophobic place on the planet but for the most part up until maybe about 5 or 10 years ago children were promised the what the American dream is still alive and well Blue Sky Thinking helicopter Vision will loop back by end of week and if that's what you've been told as a child and then you arrive in adulthood and you're not given that you throw your toys out of the prom this wasn't the world that I was told and I think that that's why the entitlement and the victimhood culture is more um propagated in America and it isn't in the UK because all hopes and dreams that you had for a life that was remotely good are just Stamped Out of You you to so many people in the UK and this isn't a knock to so many people in the UK success is getting a solid graduate job at 23 on 35 40 Grand a year and then slowly climbing the corporate ladder to make six figures by 40 and then to retire with a solid pension toward the end of life the British dream yeah that is the British dream and it's just it's much more on a set of train tracks there's fewer uh variations and again that is a perfectly acceptable perfectly successful life but more people slot themselves into that because they don't think about stuff going in other directions I think the opposite problem occurs in America which is kind of the Paradox of choice why I can do anything I want I basically got 50 countries attached within one big continent I can go wherever I want I can work there I can use the same currency I can speak the same language I've got the light all of the things what should I do I don't [ __ ] know way more homeless people yes way more prescription drugs I I wrote about that in the what is neglected by the media but will be studied by historians that I think five of the top sorry the top five news networks in the US either the number one biggest Advertiser or the number two biggest Advertiser is a pharmaceutical company which as a Brit sounds absurd and there's only two company two countries in the world that that's allowed New Zealand New Zealand in America yeah so that's definitely a difference but I think one of the things that you mentioned there is that ability for each state in America to have a lot more control and it feels like if you don't like what's going on in this state you can move to a different state and you can run these AB tests whereas in the UK as you mentioned London has this strangle hold it's that thing I used to say to Americans when I was explaining the UK is in the UK in the US if you want to get into Tech you go to San Francisco if you want to get into Finance you go to New York if you want to get into entertainment you'd typically go to La if you wanted to get into politics you'd typically go to Washington in UK it's London London London London and obviously that's changing Manchester's beginning to Boom a little bit but if we could begin to decentralize things a lot more that Newcastle could go you know what we're going to be the AI capital and if you come here we're going to have all these incentives that fascinating oh yes [ __ ] got it there we go all right [ __ ] why do you say that adults don't exist oh [ __ ] hell this is um probably my most when I had this idea somebody asked the question of if you could have something on the billboard for everybody to see what would it be and it would just be adults don't exist and it's just a big mistake of mine having not that much agency growing up and still at times trying to improve it where you constantly think there's this Adult class out there and again it kind of comes from the education system of teachers you have these teachers and they've kind of figured out life and they' given you all this advice and they they these are adults and I say there's kind of two red pills that make you realize that adults don't exist so the first one is when you go to college or university and one of your friends or people that you know who's just so like all over the place unintentional hung over all the time doesn't know what they want to do with their life and they go thinking of becoming a teacher and you go hold on were all my teachers or were a significant amount of my teachers that person who just didn't know what they wanted to do and I put them on this pedestal so it's this kind of low agen mindset of thinking that there's these Emperors out there that are wearing these beautiful clothes and there's these CEOs there's these politicians but actually the more High agency perspective is realizing that they're just grownup children like they were a sperm cell that fertilized an egg that came out screaming that looked at things around them learned this language and puberty kicked in and then they're a quote unquote adult and the other realization you have is when you're 15 you meet like a 25y old you go wow 25 that's like old that's an adult and you you become 25 and you go I still don't when am I going to become an adult when I become an adult and you realize oh 30 is the same and I think it'll just be the same all the way throughout so there's these adults just don't exist yeah I have this sort of undue respect I think and I place an awful lot I I did for a long time similar to yourself place an awful lot of credence in uh Authority uh I think this is a big British thing too you like Brits love a queue love queuing can't wait to queue um and that sense that the people in charge know what they're doing ah they've got it all sorted uh you know think about America think perfect example of this perfect example not to bring it back to the UK US thing look at the uh first dose vaccine uptake in the UK compared to with the US I think first dose in the UK will probably by now be 96% it was at least 92 a couple of years ago so 96% I think the US it wasn't even 23s H so there are so many more people on this side of the pond that are prepared to say I don't think the people in charge know what they're [ __ ] doing yeah I have distrust in our officials in the people that say that they are Beyond us I wonder whether this is at least in part Downstream from having a monarchy you know your highness it's someone that is raised above us highness right you're literally positioning yourself this is an Alex or Connor ISM um yeah argued with pi Morgan about this um yeah I put a lot of undue uh weight in the words of people who knew no more than me and it's that same thing about business uh degree lecturers at University like these are the people teaching you about business what is the outcome you want to be successful at business okay if you were successful at business would you be teaching business in a UK Newcastle University probably not I'd probably be busy running my business uh like not everyone's Scott Galloway swanning in to give a a like Community speech once every quarter and saying that he still teaches at NYU St like an honorary position for Scott Galloway yeah yeah meanwhile he paid 14 mil in taxes last year like he's got proof in the Ping but yeah I think it's idiots all the way up and it's the same for any industry that you care to care about whether it's status whether it's Athletics whether it's podcasting whether it like any of the people that you respect probably don't have that much of a clue about what they're doing they all fumbled through the way the number of people that I've met that have a really well constructed thesis first principal fundamental view of why they do the things they do how the world works why they've got to the place that they are almost everybody just stumbled into it that was that thing from my live show that uh adulthood is like being pushed down a set of stairs at age 18 and trying to catch your feet until you die just permanently building it as you go like oh [ __ ] we're in the air like all right we put a wing on the plane and let's get a propeller and let's do this thing yeah I come back to one of the problems with adulthood as well is during childhood there's these Milestones that you have not being able to talk like being able to talk walk I guess it's the reverse order then first grade second grade third grade or you have these big birthdays every single year that people celebrate gcses in our case a levels uh or middle school high school whatever they have out here and then adulthood and it's pretty much mortgage wedding like death funerals of other people kids maybe kids mortgage wedding kids funerals of funerals of loved ones then your own funeral so there's so few Milestones what's really interesting is co then acted as a quite an interesting Milestone now whereas when you talk to people about Co there's a before covid moment and an after Co moment and I actually think it's quite it's interesting when you get to experience other cultures for the first time you go of course that's such a better way of doing things so in the Jewish Community they celebrate uh B Mitzvah which is a big coming of age when you're 13 and I think there should be some kind of B mitzah for turning 25 because your brain kind of fully develops when you're 25 and it's when it's 25 yeah I know still struggling um it's when the rail guards of Life are like fully released at 25 as well you have some friends who are in prison you have others that are like selling NF online you have this person who has three kids and it feels like 25 it's that Benjamin Franklin quote of the average person dies at 25 and isn't buried until 75 I think we should probably do more milestones in adulthood because if not you end up to loot back the conversation to the start in the busy trap and it just before you know it it's you've run you've run through everything without any Milestones we'll get back to talking to George in one minute but first I need to tell you about ag1 90% of Americans are not getting the nutrients didn't think I was going to catch that did you yes 90% of Americans are not getting the nutrients that they need every day to be healthy ag1 provides daily nutrients and gut health support in one comprehensive convenient and tasty daily drink the average supplement is tested for 10 contaminants ag1 is tested for 950 including pesticides heavy metals toxins and more plus it's NSF certified for sport meaning even Olympic athletes can use it so there is guaranteed no ban substances or unsafe contaminants if you're not sure about trying it there is a 90 day money back guarantee so you can buy it use it every single day for 3 months and if you do not like it they will give you all of your money back that's how confident they are that you love it right now you can try ag1 and get a free one-year Supply vitamin D3 and K2 plus five free ag1 travel packs with your first purchase by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drink a1.com wisdom that's drink a1.com SL wisdom I had this take where I want wanted to normalize girls getting uh a single round of IVF with egg freezing for their 21st birthday I think that if you could instantiate that into culture I think that that would result in an awful lot more freedom for women and I get a lot of criticism for being like way too Pro male apart from all of the Pro male people online who think that I'm way too Pro women but uh I think that this is just a win for everybody I don't know anybody who loses it's not a fertilized egg so the abortion Community debate doesn't have a problem with it presumably unless they have a problem with every period that a girl has which I'm going to guess maybe someone does but um 21st birthday don't buy him a watch don't buy them shoes don't buy them a holiday to zanti with their friends I mean it's more expensive this is you know high it's a significantly bigger investment but uh I think that it just opens up so much and that would be another milestone in some way and it would be the the best insurance policy that you could think of and it would help to combat uh declining population declining birth rates like it's just that 21 Peak fertility fantastic quality of eggs one round of IVF is going to get you God I don't know what you get at 21 I've never even seen data run it like maybe like 15 20 viable eggs that you'd get pop it away put it in the fridge and then you're 38 and you've worked on your career for a long time or you're 29 and your partner and you are having fertility whatever you it's just it's straight up optionality and uh I think that that you just thinking about where are we missing Milestones I'm going to freeze my sperm I've got a legacy sperm by the way uh I did a ton of research and spoke to a bunch of friends that are like in the IVF World Legacy sperm in America at least is what it seems to be the number one you how much it is to get 25 years of Frozen SP your your sperm two separate uh units of Frozen sperm five grand wow five grand for a quarter of a decade a quarter of a century to freeze your sperm for and I was like why why 5 grand is not a nominal amount of money like it's a big amount of money why wouldn't I just come in a cup yeah I'm just picturing someone like youf trying to do his own home keeping in the freezer to DIY save the don't DIY it's in there next to the Ben and Jerry's well Bill Amman I think had this idea I could be butchering it but it was along the lines of rather than pensions uh the government would when the child's born put money in the S&P 500 or some kind of ETF and by the time they're 65 it will be millions and you could almost guarantee that across every single citizen versus them having to slowly but surely realize when they're 36 that they probably should start contributing toward the pension but again trying to get these ideas to be tested you would need looping the conversation round again multiple States particularly in the UK to be able to do that I don't think it'd be very very difficult I think to get that through the house of parliament what is your contrarian take about whether money buys happiness or not so everybody's probably heard the question does money buy happiness and then there'll be a big debate either way but the correct way to actually answer that question is to say that is the stupidest question that I've ever heard and it'll explain why so we can use an example here let's say you've used 95% of your salary to get this crazy Penthouse in New York to show off to everybody and you realize in the first night that your next door neighbor's P Diddy and it's just having these like wild loud ories all night and it's just beating his wife in the corridor outside yeah a nightmare to live next to right in that case did money buy happiness actually money might have bought misery let's say you then go on Amazon Prime and get those air plugs silicone ones that mold to your air that block out all noise and it cost you $10 well in that case a little bit of money bought a lot of Happiness so the problem with this phrase does money by happiness is it implies all money is created equal and all happiness is created equal and you can see if you ask the question so when people ask you that question the best question to reply with is does money buy good Investments well I know some people that have bought depends what you inredible stocks really early on and I know some people that have bought dcoin two3 and a terrible time so ultimately it completely depends on what you've invested in so the actual re what the question's trying to get to or what the real answer to the question should be is that strategic money buys happiness and unstr money can buy misery or strategic money can buy happiness and unst strategic money can buy misery exactly the same of Investments so the reason why this question exists is because within itself it's a presupposition it presupposes that all money is created equal and it presupposes that all happiness is created equal when it's not it's a completely individualistic thing like an investment what is a way to strategically spend money and what is a way to unst strategically spend money the the honest answer is and this makes it into a terrible YouTube clip but the honest answer is is that it's so personalized to the individual by definition um it's complet what may make one person happy with one purchase may make another person happy with another purchase I gave you a pickle ball paddle that's brought an awful lot of Happiness if I gave that pickle ball paddle to Zach it would become a door stop yes so it's looking at the um cost of thing service product experience and impact that has on your of the person utility yeah I mean Zach said the other day at yours that you guys have a sauna that you spent a little bit of money on and he says that is an example of strategic money can buy happiness yeah uh it's very interesting reframe on the question and we've spoken about this before I think both of us are fortunate that we have a low materialism set point and I've always thought about this as a competitive Advantage for people so if you grew up in a household that was uh gifts and um public presentence and stuff were kind of displays of affection if large things were made out of birthdays and of Christmases and that there was sort of keeping up with the Jones's mentality maybe Mom or Dad D were always looking to improve the car and stuff like that that's fine but it is likely that as you grow into an adult you will tie an awful lot of your selfworth and your place in the world to the possessions that you have or your ability to provide possessions to other people or maybe the way that they give gifts and possessions to you as a a show of their love and affection and again hidden versus observable metrix it's very in a society that is obsessed with more more more it is a radically revolutionary thing to say that I have enough and I have always seen of all of the different mental pathologies I've got and it's a [ __ ] laundry list the one of the ones I'm most glad that I don't have after alcoholism and and sort of substance stuff is uh a need for materialistic possessions to make me feel satiated and and satisfied and enough so if you are the sort of person that doesn't have that if you don't have a drive to get more possessions in order to make yourself happy you can basically see that as your happiness burn rate is way lower it's 10 times less 100 times less than somebody else and you could have been brought up or born with the predisposition where you had to have the newest car you had to have the fanciest bag you had to always be flying away on holidays is it fun yeah but basically that means that your operating costs as a human are way higher yeah it's it's a good point reminded of uh I forgot who said it might be Coco Chanel of the best things in life for free and the second best things are really really really expensive um but yeah the more the more the more I've realized as I get older is yeah the money by happiness question is so absurd and all it comes down to is how strategic you can be with your money when it comes to you you said it was personalized when it comes to you what are the places that you have found a disproportionate uh investment leverage where when you spend a dollar on it are you getting 10x return in terms of your money for happiness uh air plugs go back to L not because I'm next to Diddy but earplugs um especially when I'm traveling around because if I have one bad night sleep and I get these silicone moldable ones that I exchange each time it's like $5 to $10 a week which sounds like quite a hefty budget but it's definitely way more than any like materialistic purchase that I've made essentially anything that makes me feel better throughout the day or speeds up time what sorts of things um paying for access to a sauna I can regularly go there for example or if I'm looking at an option where I'm staying that's slightly nearer a gy I thinking through just based I always come back to like one of the things I think about is like high leverage relaxation so look at things that recharge you that give you the most amount of energy and what has this the lowest cost or the lowest energy to produce that um so those two things in particular being able to see friends um getting like Dicky gave us this at my birthday because I've never experienced until I came here the difference between Ubers and Uber Comforts and in America that the Uber can be any car that pulls up whereas an Uber Comfort you're getting this like comfy little Tesla and it's only an extra $2 sometimes for the journey um depends on the ride and that is like an example of a little bit of money there strategic money but if I'm going somewhere like today and I'm in like a nice Tesla beforehand and I can think about what being in the chat about versus if I'm in like a clapt car that's breaking down it's a bit more of a problem yeah those are those are really good ones Dicky had a you can go all the way down to the very bottom which is uh exec XL which is a big Yukon or an Escalade or something and you realize when you actually price it together for the number of people that are going especially if you're going XL it's like maybe twice as expensive but you feel like you feel like P didy right but with without the the violence without the violence yeah you feel like P didy in his he day uh that's great I'm trying to think about other stuff for me certainly paying for uh assistance with things that I want to do so you're talking about high leverage uh recovery going to the gym is great going to the gym with the trainer yeah you leave with more energy than you went in with it doesn't sap your willpower there's just somebody there that's tell tell you what to do same thing would be true for going to a CrossFit class you know paying for a CrossFit membership like yeah you know the gym or Planet Fitness or something I can get that for 13 a month okay but how much of your energy is it sapping or how much of your willpower you're having to use to get yourself into the stage where you can get some energy back like you're spending energy to get energy whereas if you're going to a CrossFit class or a Barry's Boot Camp or you get a PT or you do whatever uh last night I did a breath work class I think it was $15 yeah $15 for a breath work class for an hour I did as much breath work last night as I did all of last week an hour of breath work last night and I think I managed to get four 15 minute sessions in last week and it cost 15 bucks so I think externalizing motivation that's a big one for me um good quality coffee uh like nice nice coffee nice water stuff like that and these are for many people Goods that would push their spend to uh income show up a little bit but uh yeah you can get an awful lot of Happiness out of quite low spend and you'd be surprised at the places that it comes from yeah the obvious answer is things that you use a lot as well so shoes laptop laptop laptop Riser yeah why have you been obsessed with Roger federa and jovic and Nadal because you just won't shut up about them a this is so good so this came from Matthew SED and for me this is I've always enjoyed like self-help help and self-improvement but there's a part of it that always felt a bit icky and this metaphor kind of explains my problem with it and Matthew SED is a big tennis fan and he talks about he would go and watch Tennis and it was such a unique point in history because you had the three goats at once so in football you had arguably the Two Goats at once you had Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in tennis you had jovic Nadal and federa and obviously in the self-help world or that space it's like this is the way or you see these Instagram reals and it's like if you do ABC this will happen and what's beautiful about this metaphor that s tells is you have he used to watch at Wimbledon the warm-up courts so he'd turn up and Nadal's there and Nadal is like full on Goggins like biceps bulging screaming as he's hitting the shots in warm up yeah warmup sprinting up and down to get himself into the Zone like going as hard as he can then you have jovic who comes out who's almost an emotionless like robot who's just laser focused on getting the job done watches him warm up he's like hold on these are the two goats at the same time completely different way of doing things then feder turns up and you can hear him laughing before he arrives at the court he's triing like trick shots he's doing dinks he's laughing with his friends he's just finessing the ball left right and center and these three and obviously there a debate between them but these three are arguably the three goats of there at the exact same time give or take and had completely different philosophies to doing things and that goes to show and I've always now took that metaphor whenever somebody gives me oh you need to do things this way or this is the way this gets done and realizing okay that's the jovic way of doing it that might not apply to me or that's the Federal way of doing it or that's the Nadal way of doing it ironically Nadal actually had the most amount of injuries which is um one thing you could take into consideration But ultimately there's no the way as shown by those three there's completely different ways of achieving essentially the exact same output in other 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with your first box by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drink LM nt.com sodern wisdom that's drink LM nt.com SL modern wisdom I wonder whether one of the reasons that people look for one siiz fits all answers to questions is that if there's three potential answers to the question that then puts the owners back onto them to work out how to do it right what people want is a reliable set of inputs that can get them the outcome someone else got they don't need to go what is the way for you to get the outcome it's the same thing again it's what are you focusing on inputs or outcomes you want to get the outcomes but if someone says here is the answer there is no answer there are multiple different ways and here are some principles and you need to work out it's like I [ __ ] I paid $500 for this course I've paid $500 dollars for the productivity course and you're telling me that it isn't that I need an external brain but I might do and it isn't that I need to do space repetition but I might do and it isn't that I need to do time blocking but I might do uh yeah I think a huge hesitation should be placed on saying this person achieved success and did this thing therefore doing the thing that they did will cause me different person different disposition different background different set point to get the same outcome that they did I think it then comes down to the scientific method it's we live in the enlightenment period it's only been what not couple hundred years or so that we've had electricity had all the things that we take for granted now and that comes out the Scientific Revolution and applying a scientific frame to viewing these problems of okay that's the Nadal way of doing it that's the jovic way of doing it that's the Federal way of doing it how about I'll try this see how that goes I'll try this see how that goes try this and see how that goes and then judging based off the experiments how it worked personally for you you're seeing this huge boom in nutrition right where for the last 50 years it was like there's this diet there's the only banana diet there's the vomit three times a day diet and now it's actually what's probably the best diet for Chris is different to what's the best diet for George etc etc etc and I think we'll just find out more and more with time that personalization is more and more important than we think but as you mentioned then it's hard to sell that so it's not as gimmicky it's not as easy to get people into a funnel that buys the 699 course because it's often a lot more personalization and the people need to have a lot more agency over their existence the work is put back onto the person who needs to do the work yes but it's the truth it's the way yeah yeah I I think that you're right we also had this discussion in Miami uh about why hard work is something that people often pray at the altar of and I'm one of these people right you know hos being on the show Goggins Joo Etc I don't disagree hard work is a very reliable route to achieving success but I think that optimizing exclusively for hard work causes you to miss an awful lot of the higher leverage uh roots and also maybe some of the more personalized ones too there's very few problems in life that aren't made easier by working harder but there are other higher Leverage higher return less painful roots to achieving the same outcome those are less reliable though right like hard work will almost always get you closer to your goal working harder will almost always get you closer to your goal incrementally uh therefore it's like a um moderately effective but highly robust drug that I could give you to deal with some malady that you're dealing with and then here's five other options four of which won't work at all but one of which will work 10 times better than you just doing the hard work thing and maybe hard work sits sort of alongside it you kind of loop them in as as a combination um but yeah I think that's one of the reasons why praying at the altar of hardwork is something that's so uh it's so pedestalize because when has anybody ever worked harder and it hasn't helped at least a little bit so it's the Panacea but it's actually only working at sort of a a a ceiling capped sort of rate and there's way more effective versions that you could look at alongside that or outside of that that isn't just okay just get up earlier go to bed later spend more time in front of the screen what's an example for yourself that's more productive or impactful than hard work or things that you often neglect because you're too busy working hard that often is a bigger lever reading so I asked myself this question during my end of your review I think I asked aren what are but I don't realize are and that's just such phenomenal question because you're starting to see where am I putting investing into hard work kind of reliable but could be not so useful and where am I not seeing the penny stocks that have got a THX potential upside so for me sitting in front of the computer when I'm not working or when I'm low on energy makes me feel like I'm working it makes me feel like I'm busy I actually don't really get anything done uh being on slack being on emails and taking calls for the most part very very low Roi does move me incrementally closer to the goal of whatever it is that I'm trying to do uh stuff that is productive but I don't realize it uh going for a walk without my airpods in and without a phone uh reading which huge reading and writing probably should have been in there focused reading and writing massive massive upsides um going for coffees with uh friends uh and going for dinner with people that come through town for a short period of time so uh next week we're going to go for dinner we're going for Nut pudding with Brian Johnson and uh a bunch of his a bunch of his friends and it's like you know it's a Thursday night it's going to be one of the last nights that you're here like do we really want to spend the time with people we're not too sure but I can almost guarantee that I will come away from that evening with an amazing story or some cool insights or a new friend or something cool so I just think saying yes to more novelty is a good a good start one I'd add on to the list that's really matter that I think when we discussed the UK issue earlier and I know you chaed to like young guys a lot or in that space about feeling lonely or the loneliness epidemic one of the things that doesn't feel productive I'd say is like the the most productive thing I've ever done is whenever I'm on social media which is by definition often quite unproduced time or it's like I describe Twitter now I was like swimming through sewage searching for gold and every day I'll get a bit of gold but I'm covered in [ __ ] and it's like that's the tra that's the trade off that I kind of make with social media platforms now and one of my friends recently was saying um how he's not got a circle like himself where he is he's got his old friends he's not got a circle like himself and he goes so I might start um going to like a yoga class or um a CrossFit class and see if I can meet these people I go that's definitely better than doing nothing but the odds of it of that is quite slim relative to online so I go back to how me and you met right I I I think I was sat on the L and I dm'd you so it was just like uh hey mate and what did I mention something about Chrome extensions you said I see that you're coming to my office you're coming to my place of work in a couple of weeks time let's exchange Google Chrome extension right so that in terms of finding people who produced like something cool online and dming them like hey I thought this is awesome if you ever here let's do something together the amount of people that do that is so slim I bet even and the mistake people make is they'll go right and this will gr car down yeah they'll go yeah they'll go um they'll try and punch way above their like relative standing and I mean the F the good news is that even if you do that even someone like you you probably get so many DMs I know I get quite a few but 99% of it is absolutely shite so if you can even provide some value you're immediately in the 1% but I think the mistake that young people make or that I made is that you then try and punch you try and punch upwards so you try and go oh um let's find the guy who's got two million ABC or's got all this like my dream whatever but actually what you want to do is meet Pierce so when we both met there was basically C you had relatively nothing really nobody just like now it was back my favorite period of Chris when he would be interviewing some of the like world's most hardcore Niche philosophers on the trolley problem so I'd go on his Instagram story see like the trolley problem with some doctor at Cambridge and then the next Instagram story was two for one tonight at Voodoo get your Jager bombs in at this price then boom back to the troll like the Batman Clark can single feed yes so um so just finding people like that and dming them by the way the only PE people will then the Imposter syndrome will kick in it's like well I don't make any content or I don't have a following honestly it doesn't matter all you need is a bio that says this person isn't [ __ ] weirdo so like just some kind of nice Savvy bio and a little bit of content on there and that's I think all you need and you're better off finding peers than trying to find people you're fans of because you're always going to have this like vertical weird relationship whereas if you meet people early on you can then grow together which is way more enjoyable because if let's say you're 20 now and you try and become best friends with you you're much older you they're going to you're not going to be going to like I beefer with them it's going to be you're going to be boring relative to them so finding peers that are on your level and it's so easy just by scrolling through social these days and people do not do that don't forget as well that if you find somebody that is at your level yeah they are going to be dealing with the same problems that you are now me at 36 I can still remember like most of the problems I had at 26 but at 16 I can't remember any of them I don't know what my mindset was like at 16 I can't even put myself in that that theory Ali abdal I keep coming back to this I don't know where he said it he said um you want to teach people that are about two steps behind you because you can't remember the problems of someone that's 10 steps behind you so he has this idea of permanently sort of laying a trail of breadcrumbs and you basically get to lay and follow the trail of breadcrumbs when you're with somebody that's on that same level as you right you're similar age bracket similar sort of background similar sort of desire for where you want to go in life the the only thing really that you need to optimize for two things first one being Vibes when you spend time with them are they a sofa friend or a treadmill friend do you feel energized and revitalized and and regulated after you've been with them or do you feel a bit [ __ ] irritated and you're like God like I need to chill out after that that was like antagonistic or I didn't like this it just something felt off like how do you feel post content Clarity like post conversation Clarity and then the second thing are you are they optimizing for growth do they have a personal growth vehicle that they're moving along with basically are they prepared to change because if you want to be someone who changes and you're around someone who doesn't change it's always going to struggle because you're always going to be suggesting new things they're going to feel like it's a value judgment on them and they're going to feel like accused a little bit uh and you're going to feel held back so vibe and personal growth velocity if you can match those two things you've got a great set of friends that you'll continue to grow with and it's so much easier to do that online so going back to the the reference of my friend who was like I might go to the CrossFit club and by the way that's not like a bad way to do it it's just the brick and mortar way of doing it more I had this idea the as you were talking about it that the finding someone online who you can tell you're going to get on with is a targeted strike from a sniper right it's one of those drone drone bombs that hit an individual going to CrossFit class is carpet carpet bombing yes and hoping hoping for the best that being said I do actually think that uh spreading the like you know in a typical CrossFit class maybe there's 20 people in a typical gym there's 100 like that's a there's a pretty big net there so you are probably going to find mean dude run clubs Jesus Christ The Run club that Noah runs here raw raw dog run Club is [ __ ] huge and if you the sort of person that at 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. wants to stand outside of a pizza truck and set off on a 4.5 mile Loop that's a you've selected for a very unique sort of category of person there so the more unique that it is but if it was like a I don't know random yoga class yeah something that's the barrier to entry is a little bit lower you're actually going to be selecting for a broader range of people yeah or like a networking event is probably the worst example right any conf any professional conference so I I go back to if like what's really interesting is we now caught up where 10 years ago saying you'd meet people saying you'd date somebody online you was like this absolute basement dweller weirdo and now it's completely at the whole dating market and more than 50% of people meet online and I'm convinced the numberers higher but people lie so but weirdly if you start talking about making friends online it still has this stigma that dating online 10 years ago did but it's purely just of like this momentum that exists but I I go back to I I reckon it's going to change with jenz I think that's probably one of the most reliable or the highest conversion rate way of meeting people that are high signal the problem is that that locks people into only having online friendships if you never but it's if you never transition out that and that's the problem with Gen Z yes the genz problem is that they're locked in to online friendships without transitioning them or graduating them to to being in the real world but yeah I think uh it there was an analogy that I remember realiz ing when uh I was thinking about pickup Artistry like forever ago and and lots of guys were doing Day game and Kyo escalation and stuff in the UK and um there was an ick there's still an ick I think that many girls have around guys that say that they've actively learned um sort of communication around dating um if you Rebrand it actually to I've learned direct communication or nonviolent communication which actually has the worst branding in the world like nonviolent communication NBC is like phenomenal as a modality [ __ ] awful as branding because it's like you learned nonviolent communication what's the subtext of that that you had to fix your violent communication like that that doesn't sound particularly great my point being if there's an ick that some women have around a guy that has purposefully gone out and learned how to communicate well with women because maybe it sounds a bit Macky of ellan am I being manipulated here uh but I believe that the real underlying is oh so you naturally don't have the talent to be able to do this and you had to learn it which is absurd because it's like saying oh you go to the gym so you're not naturally jacked and in shape or you train at hitting the golf ball so you can't just walk up and hit it everything is trainable right and almost no one but when you're talking about Charisma it almost feels like personality it's a natural outgrowth of who you are and playing around with that is bad is sometimes seen as bad when it comes to friends and friendship how like despondent and and feeble does it sound as a 25-year-old guy or girl to say I need to consciously work at having friends I need to find friends I need to go out and find them you think well what's the subtext of that oh you don't already have friends what's wrong with you what's wrong with you that you as a grown adult who lives on their own and has a degree does doesn't have the perfect group of friends already and I realize that's just a total [ __ ] fallacy especially if you have high standards for who you want to be friends with especially if you're non-typical with the sorts of relationships that you want to have with your friends or the way that you want to spend your time or the lifestyle that you aspire to have yes and I think one criticism people will give is oh I don't want to I'm not like an influencer I don't want to meet influencers and that's the natural way to shoot down that thing the key thing with this is actually on the fewer followers often the better like you want to just I love people who I find and they posted some incredible essay on the sovereign individual it has five likes and I'll see their location oh he's in Amsterdam I go okay I want to meet this guy I go hey man love this one of the best things I've seen on the internet this week and then we have a back and forth and I go I'll catch you in Amsterdam and I know with like 99.9% certainty we're probably going to get on most of the time there's obviously exceptions you meet people who are very different to who they are online but this idea that oh therefore you're meet it you're having to go after people with followings or create content that reaches lots of people it's really not the case and you can you can narrow things down so much more specifically and you just so obviously are right but there's just this ickiness that exists and it's just this constant thing that exists in humankind where new technology comes along and we have this ickiness to people that use it naturalistic the same people that mocked it are the same people that are then using it in 10 years later or or their kids are using it and they have no memory of mocking it in the first place oh God CES all the way down from the start of electricity to the wheel probably the first guy that created fire they were other human beings going why do you need fire mate yeah it's all the way down so just don't take the opinion seriously it's one of my least favorite things about people who are unduly critical of uh different strategies new technologies uh and Ardent that this is something that's wrong who in future end up using it and don't you should be forced at [ __ ] gunpoint to issue a retraction about that thing and I keep bringing this up because it's always in the back of my mind do you remember that WhatsApp photo of the single squaddy walking down the Streets of London that was forwarded a million times and it was like uh martial law is going to be implemented in London during the middle of covid you're going to be locked in your homes at gunpoint and this is the way that it's going to work I got this thing sent and it just got propagated around I'm like uh you can forward a message on WhatsApp but then it went onto the real internet Facebook posts and Twitter threads and a breakdown of how it was all going to work there were these tanks rolling through Miami Beach and people sharing it like the uh World Health Organization are going to have health passports and there's going to be digital ID and it's going to be a surveillance State just like it is in China all of those people that posted all of that stuff what the [ __ ] happened what happened oh well because we pushed back so much that's why they haven't been able to instant because CLA Schwab he really wants to do but he hasn't yet and because of how you know the revolution resistance we push back gets like no go [ __ ] yourself it didn't happen you made an insane you wasted my mind space cuz that's still stuck in my brain and I can't get rid of it right you owe me an apology yep so it comes back to the forgetting Paradox right we forget more than we forget because by definition we've forgotten it therefore we never realize how much we actually forgot in the first place ironically when you messag me yesterday saying what do you want to chat about I go let's chat about the forgetting Paradox and I searched it and we actually ched about it on the last show so it was the most ironic thing ever that I forgot that we spoke about the forgetting Paradox so that constantly exists and it's there's a meme online of like the new current thing and there's constantly a new current thing in society's Consciousness and it rips so fast it's it's comes through and it's gone it comes through and it's gone it's what everyone's willing to fight on the street or on the the digital Street shall we say on Twitter about and then they'll forget their opinion or completely change their opinion remember cone 2012 yeah good example good example people will completely forget and it it's like things that fade away they when things fade away you don't notice they're fading away because by definition they're fading away and if you did it wouldn't be fading away so this is constantly happening throughout I mean one idea you could potentially build is some kind of Chrome extension which just keeps a track of people's opinions on the new current thing on chain and then whenever they digital dig Ledger of all your my opinion on uh the the war that's going on it's like you click on it and you go okay here's your opinion on the last five War you really supported this Iraq war thing that's on chain but without that we never really reflect and we're constantly dealing with the new thing so we never actually have any reflection mechanism to see what people's past predictions were because we've moved on so fast there was this question around if the vaccine um if the vaccine came out uh when let's say Trump got elected and he beat the election busted Biden and it was seen as the Trump vaccine would we have had a flip where the people on the left would have been more vaccine hesitant and the people on the right would have been more Pro vaccine who knows um I think there was a Democrat who said that um I won't be taking the Trump vaccine when he was when Trump was doing the classic thing around I created the vaccine before he got hosted out so it's really interesting these opinions that constantly Chang the new current thing I did this um there's this image I found of the biggest talking trends of 2022 and it's all the usual political hot beds here today gone tomorrow here today gone tomorrow and of them all of these most most heated talking points for that year the most consistent one that lasted throughout the year was Wordle a novelty game that ultimately disappeared so you've got to be strategically I think a lot more strategically ignorant with what you want to consume what do you mean when you talk about strategic ignorance strategic ignorance is essentially this idea so you have the terminology ignorance is bliss which is such a weird upside down Nan worldview that we calling something Bliss as an insult and you essentially you essentially realize that there's so much things you can pay attention to in the modern day there's so many things constantly getting uploaded that you have to be ignorant and there's this oh well are you're ignorant about this and it's like well what do you think about the situation in jibuti or what do you think about the situation in Santini or what do you think about the situation in Jaan and they go what and what you'll realize is they don't even realize these countries existed and they have no clue what's going on there and they didn't realize that jaan's a country that I invented so so you essentially realizes everybody's ignorant but some of us are looking at the stars so essentially you have what I call low agency ignorance which is kind of just top down like you're just reacting to what's on the news feed constantly and by definition you're only ever going to consume not. not not 1% of the world events because it's just the way of the world and then you move on to the next current Thing versus high agency ignorance is at least going listen I'm going to be ignorant but I'm going to try and be intentional about what I'm ignorant to who I'm going to consume what I'm going to listen to so we're all ignorant but some of us are looking at the stars so something arises and you go yep that's another post about X thing that's going on I know that other people think that this is important but it just doesn't resonate with me so I'm not going to invest a tiny amount of time or no time at all and give my opinion I'm just going to let this one sort of Slide by yes yeah Douglas Murray had this idea about normalized saying I don't know yeah I have no opinion on that I'm not I'm I haven't I don't really know about that thing what do you think tell me and I think that the internet has kind of demanded that we all have an opinion on whatever the topic of the day is and we all get dragged into it but ultimately you know probably nothing really that contributes to the situation like what do you really know about epidemiology what do you really know about Middle Eastern politics would you really know about border immigration and you can you know if you're treating news stories like the Kardashians where you just get to foam finger away for whoever your favorite team is or you just want to talk about it because it's it's gossip fine but if you want to have a meaningful conversation and if you want to get emotionally charged on one side or the other about it you you need to be strategic in your investment of understanding about it because otherwise you're just allowing yourself to get ragged around by whatever the new story of the day is like there is a huge cohort of people for whom every big story is their big emotional investment over and over and over again and it must be [ __ ] exhausting like I got criticized for not commenting on covid I didn't have anything to say on co could it have been done better in retrospect absolutely could it have been done better at the time yes were there some things that were [ __ ] ridiculous absolutely all of the things all the way down I'm like look I'm not the guy for this okay I did a we did one episode which was lockdown hacks which is how to work from home with Johnny and Yousef and I was like you're the guy for I'm the guy that's my area of expertise you want me to teach you how to be productive from a home office absolutely I can teach you how to do that but you quickly realize they're not when people go yeah but what's your opinion on it this is a serious topic and then you ask them about another serious topic that's maybe 10 times more serious than what they're not considering right now they were ignorant all along so you basically realize everybody's ignorant some of us are doing it strategically and some of us are doing it unstr by just reacting to random events that are going on talk to me about why only the weird Behavior survives so I was at a a funeral and it's a northern funeral so it's a mix of like everyone's emotional but everyone's also laughing at the same time and I realized when people were telling stories at the funeral about the person is the only stories they would tell was about this person's irrational weird eccentric behavior that made them them and I kind of realized that all the normal stuff at the job and um and made the cup of tea and certain words that they would use obviously by definition nobody mentioned that at all the only thing people would bring up was the crazy stories about that person what separated them as individual and I realized that all essentially normal behavior is forgotten so when you're trying to fit into the tribe which so many of us try and do and get rid of our individualism because we think it's weird or or whatever the irony is that come the only thing come a funeral time or come once a few years later when people think about you the only thing they can really think about is the weird idiosyncratic behaviors that you have and this desire to fit in with the tribe means that we end up leaving the only thing that they ultimately remember I've told you that story about Salvador Daly right I told did you this is this is [ __ ] great man I researched Salvador Dary for that Ted X talk I did forever ago and um my thesis basically was that Salvador was an unbelievably unique human his parents had a child 9 months or 10 months before he was born called Salvador who died during childbirth and they were adamant that the actual Salvador was a Reincarnation of his dead brother so that was how he came into the world that was how he started Life by age 10 he'd found out that he was a masochist and used to throw himself down the stairs for fun just enjoyed pain uh he once needed to be wrenched out of a deepsea diving suit mid presentation on stage he was suffocating because he just tried to do this thing he fell in love with this woman he was married so was she they both left their Partners to be together and he literally considered her Divine he thought that she was his Muse that had been sent down from the Heavens to inspire him in his work so immediately as soon as they got together he bought her a castle that he wasn't allowed to go to and he had to send formal letters of requests like you would to royalty in order to be able to visit her non-fungible non-typical guy right every different bit of Salvador Daly needed to be expressed in its fullest form in order for him to be able to be him because as brilliant as they were Michelangelo didn't do Dary and Leonardo da Vinci didn't do Dary and Van go didn't do Dary in order for us to get everything that he had to offer the world and the universe he had to embrace all of the things that were fully him and had he have compromised on any one of the different bits of idiosyncrasies and weirdnesses that he had the world would have been fundamentally less because we would have been depleted of what his offering was and I think that when you see it as your duty to bring to the world that which only you can I think that's a a really beautiful reassurance yes only you can do this you can't look Salvador you can't be da Vinci much as you try much as you may have established patterns of success societal Norms the way you've dealt with past trauma your fears about shame and mockery your guilt about not being as successful as you want or your your concern for the future or your regret about the past the only way that you can contribute to the world that which only you can is by being the thing that only you can be but the mistake I've made is when I and I'm high on the weird scale is then when I feel that weird thing that I want to do or say come up is I'll go oh no I'll do the normal thing because I want the social benefits of that but the realization I had at that moment of that actually that's not even true all the the social benefits in the short term But ultimately people completely forget about the behavior whereas when you do the weird thing or the idiosyncratic thing or The Eccentric thing in the short term they might be the immune system kind of goes oh Jesus Christ what's that but long term that's the only thing that people ultimately remember you for anyway so all the social benefits so the social the only reason you was actually making the trade in the first place was because you were scared if you showed your weird side you wouldn't get the social benefits but come funerals come like long-term history the only thing people remember is the weird things I remember one of my friends Nike had a birthday party on and it was kind of 2021 it was very um shallow relationships at that point I was trying to get the most amount of people to attend my birthday party it was ridiculous and loads of people didn't attend but my friend Nike um came all the way from London to York to be there and I was like we've had so many other interactions of like chatting about the weather or the football but the that's the irrational behavior that I remember what's what what are some other good examples of irrational behavior that from your life or people around you that you think Will Survive it for me it comes down to I have this terminology called like non-fungible humans so people now know the word nfts so money is it s fungible a little Chimp on the blockchain that has a silly hat fun non fungible so nonf fungible essentially means something that's completely unique can't be traded out and you quickly realize that everybody in your life who are your favorite people are fundamentally non-fungible I had this realization with Yousef I go why do I like Yousef so much I go he's so non-fungible he's so uncommon amongst UNC commmon men and signs of non-fungible people and people listening to this will go check I'll think about the person who's non-fungible in your life and they'll have this checklist it will be they have isms so they have their own language so like for example say what you want about these people you've got like Elon Musk has musk isms Conor McGregor has McGregor isms Charlie Munger has Monger isms like TR Trump has has their own uh language that they they get words that they use or phrases that they use that makes them fundamentally different it makes them non-fungible you have stories about them right there's so many stories that that person produces because by definition they're living whether you like it or not some kind of authentic existence but in this definition to be fun we ultimately completely delete the whole the whole memory stack about us which is quite ironic because the only reason we were doing it in the first place was to to make people like us and they don't even remember it my favorite irrational behavior of Yousef was that he was doing he was practicing no weight no bar Olympic lifting in a airport departure Lounge during a like in front of a packed group of people because he just wanted to move so he was there standing up with a pretend barbell above his head better one is what's the one with his b oh God I mean this is on the internet this is I think the most played video I slept on the floor for six months to see if it would fix my back and um he was he'd only just got into a relationship with Amy as misses maybe three months or like not a long time before nowhere near a long enough time to be like I in fact I think he was doing it when they met I don't think that she'd everever stayed over at his house and he perilously close like ni to the bottom of I'm not going to like I'm not going to get into a relationship with you or stay in this relationship that I've been in for 2 months if you make me come around to sleep on the floor I'm not sleeping on the [ __ ] floor Yousef and he was just well okay well we can stay at your house and I'll come home and I'll sleep on the bed because he wasn't prepared to break this experiment so just outstanding but I me you know this is just personal experimentation I think and it it kind of comes back to that positive reinforcement thing we were talking about with your group of friends that if you want to be around people that give you great stories that have different interesting things that are going on that show you a different perspective in the world the behavior that you want to encourage needs to be encouraged and if someone does something new or strange I mean you can laugh about it doesn't mean that you need to be even Pro it but you need to be able to accept like dude I can't believe you nearly made your Brand New Girlfriend sleep on the floor at your house like you would in this brand new relationship like I I wouldn't have done that that would have been crazy that would have you you can give the criticisms you want but be accepting of the fact that they've done it and he's like okay that's reinforcing that person to go and be themselves and that enriches the color and the you know like uh darness of their existence enriches yours it adds flavor and it it adds excitement and stuff like that three or four big ideas from the last few months subprime audience what's that so people know in 2008 you had the great financial crash that happened and a lot of it was these subprime mortgages that were getting sold on which were basically just junk mortgages people that couldn't afford to ever pay off those mortgages it was trash mortgages that were then getting sold on on mass and as a result people were buying them the whole credit system was propped up and the whole thing Came Crashing Down and I think there's a similarish thing going on right now with creators and influencers where a lot of them have like subprime audiences where it's just they've created content that they themselves don't like to attract an audience they don't like and now the audience is beginning to no longer like them as well um it's yeah when I think it comes back to the hidden visible metrics idea that when you're optimizing for likes views clear width metric and forgetting about the depth metric so there's a big difference between this video got played 10 million times and this video got played a thousand times by 100 people it's so significantly different I think one of the ideas I have for Twitter so I would like to see percolate or happen is right now with Twitter or a lot even Instagram a lot of these platforms you have a like as the currency in the comment I guess but let's you if you look at the like the problem with the like is it's completely like infinitely fungible like I can like as many pieces of content and the problem that then means is I could release two pieces of content one piece that gets a million likes one piece that gets a th000 likes and the million likes was just this cool thing that was here today gone tomorrow but the th000 likes one there's 200 people in that that have read that thing 10 times and have glued it to their wall and like get emotional when they speak to you because it was so impactful to them MH but when I look at the screen I go well I need to do more of this one because look all the likes it's getting yeah and I had this idea of probably stilling from dating apps which is the concept of like a super like these social networks should have where you get one super like per week and it means that there's more value in a specific thing because then you could actually gauge the success based off that W this is the best thing that someone saw this week yes and then forget about everything else and just go up purely off that you can kind of see it with Twitter now with bookmarks versus likes is kind of a better indicator and you can imagine a phase where you could then customize the algorithm more that you're getting more golden likes I would way rather have my algorithm optimized for Golden likes well even now you could have it optimized for bookmarks yes right I mean this is sahill in the ISIS group that we're in iron sharpens iron Squad yeah uman uh John he he mentioned I think he posted some tweet in before that had done relatively okay in terms of numbers but just had this absurd number of bookmarks on it and you go that's good and that's it's kind of similar to your idea of uh after a while it doesn't matter how many retweets it gets it matters who retweets it yeah uh you're just optimizing for depth rather than width I just love the idea the subprime audience idea I think is so phenomenal because from the outside it looks like it's full of A's and Double A's but when you get in there it's C's and double C's and a good indicator of a subprime audience well the good indicator of a subprime mortgage is the person selling it wouldn't have bought it they wouldn't have done because they know it's junk and a good indicator of a subprime audience not always the case but a good indicator is the person creating the content wouldn't consume it that's Max content R right would you consume your own content if not don't post it and I think a lot of creators or people that uh certain people may have issues where it comes down to that fundamental problem well the problem is that you can gain popularity and win on the objective metrix Thing by creating content that you don't care about and you can lose on the objective metrix Thing by creating content that you do care about but what are you optimizing for and it again it just everything's [ __ ] hidden in observable metrics all all over again um but yeah I you know one of the things I was really not pleasantly surprised by because you can tell in the comments section uh a lot of the time but the comment section also selects for a very particular type of people and blah blah blah uh the live shows that I did last year and we're looking at the ones for winter this year as well every single person caveat that almost every single person that came to those live shows I would have happily gone for a coffee with I bet they're interesting people they're into cool stuff they've got like a cool story they're working on things that to me was the the biggest reassurance that the direction of the content that I'm making which I'm interested in and I get captured by this is a topic that we should talk about because it's in the news maybe I should do a bit Diddy Diddy videos are getting you know two million plays maybe I should talk about Diddy well all right but really does it matter am I going to Care do I want an audience of people that's here for Diddy gossip um maybe but do you want an audience of people who are here for Diddy gossip then Paris Hilton gossip then Kim Kardashian gossip then blah blah blah because after a while if you keep on spinning that up you end up surrounded by people that aren't like you and that consume content that you're not interested in because you've Pro this is basically the subprime audience is the um it's the exit liquidity of audience capture like that's ultimately what you end up with if you keep on winning the game of audience capture you end up with a very successful audience of people who aren't like you and Aren't don't like the things that you actually like because all that you've been doing is feeding them red meat and the the worst thing with subprime audiences is the hidden metric sorry the visible metric are the people who've had a successful strategy with of it which are the ones that have huge content creators that wouldn't consume their own content But the irony is there's a load of hidden ones that are also pursuing the same strategy and because it's so shy and never actually getting any form of takeoff versus going back to uh my content Riser of would you consume your own thing if you do that you are guaranteed you have at least product Market fit with yourself and then you can kind of bet there's at least some of a weirdos or maybe aund a thousand 10,000 whatever that are going to also fit just due to the law of large numbers but when you have the opposite when you're posting things that you wouldn't yourself consume it might be the case that the total address ball Market is zero it's like creating a product idea where you don't want the product and ultimately nobody wants the product did I I think I Tau you about I asked people on the internet who use the word grifter for the people who use it what does this mean to you like what is the word grift because you know there's lots of that word gets thrown around an awful lot it's kind of like anybody who monetizes anything kind of but then there's some people that monetize and don't get called a grifter so I was like okay well it's not a word that I particularly use I'm typically on the receiving end rather than on the the the like say saying end and I asked and the best uh definition that someone gave was if the person selling the product wouldn't use it or buy it themselves that's a grift like would you use or buy this thing yourself if you weren't being paid for it or you wouldn't own it M and you know for all of the criticism there's a lot of skepticism I think around podcasts advertising influencer advertising in general at the moment that's the best heris if you want to be immune to criticism about the partners that you work with about the views that you hold about anything that you do like just partner with people that you you use their products like you know I we gym shock I can't get a sponsorship from Crocs yet but whoop like all of the things I talk about I used so even if people have a big problem with it you're at least in some part insulated from it go well [ __ ] hell I like it like I like an at sleep you know like I I I use momentous protein you know [ __ ] shoot me I'm not I'm not complaining about you and what bedding you you go to bed in the only difference is that you're not talking about it so yeah I think that's and it's similar to your um the subprime audience thing is similar to The Golden Rule of the internet thing that you've got yeah the golden rule of the internet is is if you run enough AB tests you'll eventually end up with a porn site all roads will lead there if you keep going okay we'll start with this thumbnail or we'll start with this intellectual topic and we'll AB test it if you don't have a point of guidelines that things that align in the sand all roads will ultimately lead to a porn site one thing that you said to me ages ago that I liked was you have almost brand guidelines that act as this wa room/ board and then you're willing to AB test within that but it never goes outside of that but I think a mistake that can happen is you never put those in place and just let the ab tests decide everything and then you just kind of drift over SK so you need to balance the the art with the science because if you go pure science you will ultimately end up with with a porn site and if you go pure pure art then you end up with something that's probably too ineffective yes you need to play Within the rules I mean yeah you know we have um the method that we use for testing thumbnails on back catalog videos that are over the over 3 months old uh that those get qced so the copywriter who already understands the uh brand guidelines that we have gets another person to come in and okay it to ensure that it really really is just a second set of eyes do you know what it's like you write write a marketing headline one day and you go that's pretty great that and then someone you work with goes uh swinging a Miss there I don't think that that's quite quite right you need a second set of eyes on top of I think all marketing copy I think it's pretty much impossible to get marketing copy right with just one person like you always need a second because you woke up that day you were underslept or overslept you had a really great gym session and you're caffeinated and everything's amazing you the Uber Drive is your best friend now and you get in you go yeah this headline is f fantastic you go uh no you even you would look at it in seven days and go what was I thinking about that uh Ash negative what's that it's a concept I got from I think Eric Weinstein originally which was the there's the Ash and mgram Conformity experiments so the ash Conformity experiment was a famous experiment there's questions around the validity of it but the idea itself is quite fascinating which is you would have multiple lines like a b c white lines and imagine a would be 4 cm long B would be 6 cm long and C would be 3 cm long and you'd put people in a room and you'd say what's the biggest line and it let's say nine out of 10 are actors and they go first and then the final one is the participant and what would often be found if the nine would vote for C or a even though the biggest line B that person would often vote in line with everybody else and Ash negative or Ash positive is whether somebody in that scenario would go against the consensus of the room so it's quite a a useful bit of Sor is Ash negative Ash negative would be somebody who fails the test therefore called truth so Ash negative would be well I think bees you guys all said a or C or a I think it's B and therefore that person would be Ash negative but Ash positive would be essentially the person who kind of looks at it I think it might be B but then goes it's a or it's C or they're so Ash positive that the crowd distorts their own perception to even even see even realize it that's like uber Ash positive right and it's a useful naming Convention of being able to split certain people that you know and you go oh that person's pretty Ash negative and it's quite useful because you know if I'm asking feedback from somebody will they give me honest feedback or if they're in a certain situation that the Crowd Goes one way which way will they go and I've thought about that how do you actually create more and more Ash negative people it's quite a it's an interest it probably should be taught at schools it's an interesting idea yeah well Outsourcing your thinking to the crowd is always going to be a quicker root like you know that's why we read books someone lives an entire life they condense that down into 80,000 words you read it you take away five things that you care about the most you've outsourced your thinking to them but if you are uh totally at the mercy of other people's opinions then you end up in this sort of Ash positive like uber Ash positive scenario I had this idea from a text message thread that I was in about a month ago and I was talking to a a guy over a text and we were debating about somebody else and he had a very negative opinion of this particular person and I remember thinking like I don't have the same negative opinion but there's a part of me that's scared to say that I don't have the the this negative opinion because if I do I'm maybe going to uh deplete in the eyes of this person that I want to like me and then it made me realize people don't want to hear what they want to hear people want to hear what you actually think M and I stuck to my guns and you know skirted around my people pleasing nature said actually do you know what it is hasn't exactly showered himself in glory recently I really love his takes on xw Z and the response was like well I think he's a dick I was like right okay that's fine and then I reflected and thought unless it's something that people really care about me saying like you know Saddam Hussein actually an all right guy like unless it's a really outlier flow conversion um unless it's a real outlier opinion or something that they're very very uh precious about almost saying something perfect another perfect example of this hosi um would Alex's wife prefer it if he got dressed up to go to dinner in a nice suit and a shirt and all of the rest of it on the short term yes kind of because it's probably nice to not go to dinner with someone who's always in a beater and shorts but in the long term she is more attracted to a person who wants to wear what he wants to wear than wants to wear what she wants him to wear and that's the same people don't want to hear what they want to hear they want to hear the truth from you they want to hear what you really think and that it takes a lot of like confidence and sort of self-belief to be able to say I have faith that my opinion is sufficiently right that I can stand on my own two feet about whatever this thing is that I think and that this person is not going to reject me for just saying what I believe and it kind of comes back to the subprime audience thing the observable and hidden metrics thing the non-fungible humans thing that would you rather get to the end of life being a popular and successful caricature surrounded by people who don't really know you or like who you are deep down because you've never shown it or would you rather be a little bit less popular but actually maybe more popular by doing the thing that you do yeah because you're going you're never going to be connected to the things that you say or the opinions that you hold or whatever it might be I realized this with um like dating with girls and stuff you know like let's say you're flirting back and forth with somebody and they ask what are you what are you up to today or what did you get up to last night or uh like show me your outfit today or whatever you know just like normal flirty [ __ ] and uh you go well you know could send a photo from the archive of me looking all dressed up or I could send a photo of me walking down the street in Crocs or whatever it is that you're doing at the time you go well if I send the photo of me that's me dressed up I may get positive reinforcement because it's me looking cool or maybe I've done my makeup or I've done whatever it is but that compliment isn't actually going to land yes it's going to get the outcome that I want which is someone to think X Y or Z of me but I'm not connected to that like they're going to give praised to a previous version of me but I've lied I've lied in order to try and get the outcome that I'm looking for I'm not actually connected and they don't see me and any praise that they give me doesn't land with me so it's like two Google translate things not talking the same language to each other but somehow like saying oh and we understood each other at the end of the day again that's an example of only the irrational Behavior survives right yeah the guy that refuses to not wear a beater and shorts to go to dinner uh what have you come to learn about incentives something that we've both been pretty obsessed by recently I think incentives are the most underd discussed topic when it comes to the news when it comes to society when it comes to at the individual level so few people talk about the incentives and once you understand the incentive you begin to understand everything a few a few like aphorisms on this is uh never as your Barber if you need a haircut cuz guess what he'll think you need a haircut um you as soon as you go oh what's the incentives of the system and then begin to understand that a lot of frustrations that people have with individuals or Society begins to make sense so there's what one famous example of I think it was FedEx that Monga talks about where FedEx were having huge problems of getting deliveries done on time staff were working way over into the next Day deliveries were late and somebody had the genius idea to stop paying them per hour and start paying them by the shift or when the work was done and all of a sudden it was no longer a problem and there was another example of the in Greece where apparently they had it where to deal with congestion they created a system where people with their license plate ended in an odd number they could drive this day and then the next day even numbers and all that happened was people would then gain the system so rich people would just buy two cars you ended up with more congestion on the [ __ ] road so whenever you see the uh whenever you see the incentives you'll often have a Insight in what the outcome is going to be what was that British criminals dying thing oh yeah this was I think it goes back to understanding history of this when you the fascinating thing of Australia was essentially where we just sent our criminals colony is wild what so one of the reasons why I love understanding history because you begin to realize how absurd reality is the current day is and so there's a story from when the Brits were moving prisoners I believe over to Australia and they were originally paid per person getting on the boat and back then like there wasn't great HR policies they didn't treat people particularly well and it was something like 33% would die on The Voyage from Britain to Australia but the people are already paid they don't give a [ __ ] then when they changed the system that they would get paid for when the people arrived in Australia the survival rate went from 66% to like 99% so again all you've done there is change the incentive system looping back to the beginning of the conversation things that are sometimes more important than hard work things that are more important than being busy is actually understanding the incentives of the systems that you're operating in and one tweaking one tweaking somebody's incentives that's working for you or is in your life the compounding impact that can have is absolutely absurd never attribute to conspiracy what is more easily explained by incentives and incompetence from nval yeah that explains so much of modern politics that explains so much of people making horrific um or inhumane business decisions um wherever there's incentives I I always have this idea which is one good razor that I'm trying to implement is whenever somebody tells me something that goes in line with their incentives kind of massively downplay that idea and don't just download it because in the past I've done that somebody will go somebody who lives in this city will tell me why this City's great and I'll go oh I'll download that piece of information and then 3 years later they leave the [ __ ] City and I go hold on you told me this was amazing and you're no longer here versus when they tell me the opposite so when they tell me why they hate the city or let's say they're talking about their partner or their job if they're going against their incentives and identity the level of truth that's probably in that is so much greater than when people are going in line with their incentives is that qu a classic phrase of never oh um I I think I wrote actually it was there's two two things you should never try and do try and defy the laws of physics and get somebody to understand something that their salary depends on them not understanding or what they're paid for people will not swim against their incentives on average sausage fests talk to me about sausage fests sausage fest okay um [ __ ] it I don't know what to say on sausage fests next go next one well I think that you know this came out of our Miami trip which was a 20 person how many people came uh it was no it was like 14 14 of us but it's in Miami yeah and at least half of them are from the UK yes uh so we realize that sausage fests are underpriced underpriced assets yeah uh well basically I think the realization is more sausage fest is obviously a crude terminology for it but essentially the idea is I think it's both a male thing a female thing a individual personality thing but when you're I think as you get older what tends to happen is people particularly men I think it's particularly a male problem they stop hanging around their friends because they've got their relationship they've got their kids and guys are just busy and we're not really emotional we don't care for one another and guys get lonlier and lonely and lonelier and I'm convinced it's because they stop hanging around like one of the reasons the suicide rate is so high is because they stop hanging around their friends and I also think it's it often benefits their partner as well I I had this realization once when I was with my friend Ali at a bar in Manchester and we're chatting away and I could see these girls kind of like looking over like oh maybe these guys will talk to us and I just start burst out laughing cuz I'm in the process of breaking down Jim shark's negative cash flow conversion cycle and I go if only they could hear what we were talking about they'd immediately find us so unattractive but I think guys and girls sometimes need depending on their personality type obviously some people get it from different means need that synchronicity where they can get the thing that their partner would find so unattractive out of them mm in that nerdy environment and by the way this is so true I think with the the reverse as well I imagine if the girls are doing a girls night and one of the girls is like oh can Danny come yeah and he's like just completely ruins the vibe and the girls can't fully let their hair down I think that ability to let out you're in a nerd is uh have you seen um Ryan long did a sketch which was the guy that brings his girlfriend everywhere and it you know it's so [ __ ] clever man like I love that world of sketches Shane Gillis is doing it really well but Ryan I think is sort of gold standard for it at the moment everyone knows the person the the dude whose girlfriend either doesn't like him to go out on his own or the couple that kind of just always seem cemented together they're just never never really apart even if it's supposed to be a boy's night or whatever and it's the guy who brings his girlfriend everywhere but this guy is part of a criminal Trio that's about to try and rob a bank so he turns up and the girlfriend's with him and the other two dudes are like why did you bring Stephanie he goes no she's fine man you know like she's fun and then she starts complaining about the fact that she needs to wear all black she's like why do we always have to wear all black like you know can we not add a little bit of coloring and they say right we've got to put the tights over our heads so that they can't detect she said I've just done my hair I'm not wearing that tight and it's just oh [ __ ] phenomenal idea and it's true it's true I I sausage fest are underpriced what's the equivalent what's the female equivalent you can't really say this without coming up with something that'll get you [ __ ] cancelled there's no equivalent I'm sure that there'll be some words on it's definitely a male thing where when you're young you want to hang out with a few similar like-minded men and then obviously as you hit puberty you want to be around um dating and then as you get older actually the thing the reason why I think a lot of men are depressed is because they stop hanging around there's some really good evidence to suggest that um one of the reasons that men suffer more men are hit harder by divorce not just financially but socially I think the the biggest predictor before uh suicide for men over the age of 40 is divorce uh there deaths of divorce and deaths of Despair one of the main reasons being that men often subjugate their social networks because women are better at keeping in contact with close friends and then the wife's friend group becomes the husband's friend group and then when the divorce happens not only does the husband lose a wife he also loses his entire Social Circle because their original loyalty lies with her yeah and he's now in this sort of weird scenario where he's been marooned from the most important relationship he had and all of the other anciliary relationships that would have helped him to uh weather those storms Robin Dunbar talks about the fact that you know he's got this dunbar's number but it's really interesting when you break it down properly it's been on a show twice and he talks about these sort of concentric circles going up and I think it's like maybe a thousand or even 5,000 people that you can have that are kind of you know the name or you're aware of who they are or whatever it might be he's got this 150 number but the real important one is the most the tightest Circle in the middle which is five says that you can have around about five close friends really close friends and in order to sustain a relationship with one of your close friends you need to spend I think it's two hours a week in contact with them uh ideally in person uh but a relationship a committed relationship takes up two spots so you go from having five friends to actually only having three friends plus plus your partner that's how much attention needs to be paid on that and this is on average there people that can have 10 close friends I'm sure or one or whatever nonone uh but yeah when you realize okay how am I uh subjugating my friend Circle for the relationship and I mean it's the meme is as old as time that your boy uh spend all of his time with you when he's single gets into a relationship disappears off the end of the end of the Earth and then 6 months later breaks up and he's like boys I'm back yes but the reason why I think it's a underpriced sausage fest are underpriced assets which I never thought I'd say out loud is that they're seen as so lame even the terminology is quite lame but It ultimately makes that individual happier because they can get their nerdy weird self out that their partner gets really finds them maybe a little bit icky when they talk about Jim shar's negative cash flow conversion cycle um so they get that out they have the insurance policy if anything ever happens to their relationship that they still maintain these incredible friendships that they have and ultimately the relationship's then healthier because they've got this they've got some a bit of aone time and attraction comes back but it's crazy how often that's sacrificed and when you see the suicide numbers it sounds ridiculous then link everything back to that but I would be surprised if that plays a small factor to say the least I tell you why sausage Fester underpriced is a valid like we had skin in the game in my Miami so it was George's 30th month ago month and a half ago or something in Miami and 14 guys come over and we have this big Villa and everyone's staying there and we have the most non-typical Miami 30th which included group breath work EF foiling at 800 in the morning pickle ball and it was a Saturday afternoon and we' done the breath work thing we got up and maybe gone go-karting or something like that earlier on so he'd had the the typical sort of morning and then it's 1:30 p.m. beautiful Miami weather in the middle of April and you think right okay 14 lads who are all aged between 25 and 38 or something and you go right they're going to go send it they're going to go to Soho Beach House they're going to go to downtown and I've got the contacts Justin's there he's like I can sort you out at 1 Miami tonight you're like where do you want to go what you really want to do you want to do you want to do an early dinner here and then you want to because the club start picking up at around about 11: all the rest of it and we've got this huge plan of different things that we could do and we piece it together and all the rest of it I can't remember who it was I don't think it was me but someone so and we've been talking about this for an hour all of the different things and all the guest list been sorted and all the rest of it and someone just went boys do you uh do you feel like just staying in the villa and chatting [ __ ] and that was it for the rest of the night yeah we took a little trip to Little Havana came back maybe went we did go for dinner we went for dinner on the nighttime and then that was the day we nailed out of everything else so yeah we put skin in the game for the sausage fest uh like Camp yeah for skin in the game uh where should people go they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing yeah if they want to keep up to date with everything I'm doing uh Twitter's always a good spot TW uh George d-mac someone's got George ma the bastards and then by the time this is out my website should be live so that's just George dmack essays and a few little nuggets on there and where's the mailing list uh George dm.com you'll find the newsletter list on there as well hell yeah appreciate you man Bo thank you so much for having me thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my fulllength three-hour long podcast with Eric Weinstein right here