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Stop trading things that matter for ones
00:00:02
that don't. This is from James Clear. If
00:00:05
you already live a comfortable life,
00:00:07
then choosing to make more money but
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live a worse daily life is a bad trade.
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And yet, we talk ourselves into it all
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the time. We take promotions that pay
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more but swallow our free time. We
00:00:18
already have a successful business, but
00:00:20
break ourselves trying to make it even
00:00:22
more successful. Too much focus on
00:00:24
wealth, not enough focus on lifestyle.
00:00:27
And this is kind of goes back to the
00:00:30
hidden and observable metrics thing that
00:00:32
me and George Mack talk about
00:00:34
whereby the more observable and
00:00:37
quantifiable uh and socially rewarded a
00:00:41
particular metric is the more uh acclaim
00:00:44
that it gives you. the more status that
00:00:46
it affords, the more that you're going
00:00:48
to lean into that and you know quality
00:00:51
of lifestyle, you know, like real what
00:00:54
is the day-to-day existence of you like
00:00:56
how happy are you? How much spare time
00:00:58
do you have to do the things that you
00:00:59
care about that is very hard to flex and
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it's very hard to measure as well. But
00:01:05
your bank account is pretty easy to
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measure or the value of your house or
00:01:08
the number of bedrooms that it's got or
00:01:11
the growth of your company or your job
00:01:13
title. All of these things, super easy
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games and too much focus on wealth, not
00:01:19
enough focus on lifestyle is a just a
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nice reframe. You know, it reminds us
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what are you trying to accumulate this
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wealth for? Presumably to afford
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yourself the kind of lifestyle that you
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enjoy. If you've already achieved a kind
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of lifestyle where you are happy and you
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then worsen that in an attempt to make
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more money, the bar stool is upside
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down. You're sacrificing the thing you
00:01:38
want for the thing that's supposed to
00:01:40
get it. Uh and then Oliver Burkeman
00:01:42
again says just because you're at the
00:01:45
top does not mean that you're enjoying
00:01:46
life. The upper ranks of corporate life
00:01:49
are dominated by insecure overachievers.
00:01:51
People who are driven by a deep sense of
00:01:54
inadequacy and are not having any fun
00:01:58
even though they've supposedly won this
00:02:00
very competitive race. So again, the
00:02:03
people that you admire, the people at
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the top of the totem pole, do you really
00:02:07
want that life? Are they having fun or
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are they dominated by insecure
00:02:11
overachievers? These
00:02:14
inadequate the productivity debt riddled
00:02:18
people. Is that really who you want? Uh
00:02:20
and then I kind of tied this to I I
00:02:22
molested a quote from um Nasim Talb
00:02:26
where he says there's two types of
00:02:28
people in the world. Those who don't
00:02:30
know how to make money and those who
00:02:31
don't know when to stop. And I changed
00:02:34
this to the Matthew principle of
00:02:35
self-improvement, which is there are two
00:02:37
types of people in the world. Those who
00:02:39
don't know how to improve their lives
00:02:41
and those who don't know when to stop.
00:02:43
And people who can improve their lives
00:02:45
will always struggle to be around people
00:02:48
who can't. personal growth and
00:02:50
self-improvement is liberating and it's
00:02:52
fulfilling and it's exciting, but it is
00:02:55
also a trap, I think,
00:02:58
that convinces you that you're an
00:03:01
unfinished article who doesn't need to
00:03:04
start enjoying life yet. And you can
00:03:07
defer happiness until you've reached a
00:03:11
certain level of development. You say to
00:03:13
yourself, "I'll really start living when
00:03:16
I finally mastered this new meditation
00:03:18
technique or got to singledigit body fat
00:03:20
or hit six figures a year income or
00:03:22
bought that new house or read a 100red
00:03:24
bucks or grown my channel to a million
00:03:25
subscribers or whatever. And personal
00:03:28
growers like you have probably learned
00:03:31
that a sacrifice reward dynamic is
00:03:35
useful and it is useful in the micro,
00:03:38
but it's malignant in the macro. We
00:03:41
teach ourselves that we need to do the
00:03:43
tough things first so that we can enjoy
00:03:45
the fun things later. And if that's go
00:03:47
to the gym before, watch some YouTube, I
00:03:51
think that's fine. But if it's complete
00:03:53
and arbitrary amount of life improving
00:03:56
before actually feel like we can let
00:03:58
ourselves enjoy life, it's not fine. And
00:04:01
the perennially difficult balance of the
00:04:05
personal growth is between being and
00:04:08
becoming. It's between feeling enough
00:04:11
and wanting to be better. Between a
00:04:13
desire for more and a satisfaction for
00:04:17
what you already have. You want to leave
00:04:19
it all out on the field of play. But you
00:04:21
realize if you're constantly driven by
00:04:23
desiring more, it's difficult to take
00:04:26
time to enjoy the process of playing the
00:04:27
game. And it's tough. I think to be
00:04:30
honest, this is the personal growth
00:04:33
problem. It's the most common question
00:04:35
that was asked at the live shows that I
00:04:38
did last year and the Q&As's. How do I
00:04:40
know if I'm working hard enough? I I I
00:04:42
feel like I'm sacrificing the thing I
00:04:44
want, which is happiness, for the thing
00:04:45
which is supposed to get it, which is
00:04:46
success. I I I'm in this sort of lonely
00:04:48
chapter thing, and I'm grinding away,
00:04:50
and I have faith that this is going to
00:04:51
be good for me in the long term, but I
00:04:53
also don't want to look back in 20 years
00:04:54
and realize that I basically just
00:04:55
sacrificed my youth and my verility and
00:04:57
and and all of the time that I had.
00:05:00
And it's anxietyinducing. people don't
00:05:03
like it and it's tough. It is very very
00:05:06
tough to basically let go of that desire
00:05:09
for more for maximizing. Um but one
00:05:13
solution that I quite like that I got
00:05:15
from Sam Harris last year was to
00:05:18
basically try and string together some
00:05:21
moments of peace and gratitude wherever
00:05:24
you can. So just 30 seconds five times a
00:05:28
day really putting your mind where your
00:05:31
feet are. So taking a deep breath
00:05:36
in and allowing your mind to focus on
00:05:38
the peripherals of your vision
00:05:41
and think about something that makes you
00:05:43
happy. Think about how how the things
00:05:46
that you have now are only once things
00:05:50
that you dreamed of having. Think about
00:05:52
how insane it would be if you from 5
00:05:55
years ago could see this newly improved
00:05:59
texture of your mind or quality of your
00:06:01
life and clarity of your thoughts and
00:06:04
realize that all of the striving and
00:06:06
pushing and grinding is indeed
00:06:09
satisfying. But if you can't have fun
00:06:13
now, you're never going to have fun. You
00:06:16
have to have start having fun now. You
00:06:18
must begin enjoying life right now
00:06:22
because it is only ever going to be
00:06:24
right now. You cannot continue to push
00:06:25
this thing down the road. And the reason
00:06:27
that I like that idea from Sam, it I
00:06:29
think originally called it a realistic
00:06:31
path to enlightenment, which are these
00:06:33
moments of peace like mops. Um, and the
00:06:37
best way that I found to do that, I'm so
00:06:39
bad at this, by the way, which is why
00:06:40
it's, you know, is why I think about it
00:06:42
a lot. Um, I have post-it notes around
00:06:46
the house. So, there's some next to the
00:06:48
back door. There's some on the window in
00:06:50
front of where my sort of computer sits.
00:06:52
And uh it just asks me little questions
00:06:55
like, "Are you as present as you could
00:06:56
be right now? Uh what went well today?"
00:06:59
And each time that I see one of those
00:07:01
post-it notes, I try to take between
00:07:03
sort of 15 and 30 seconds to have, okay,
00:07:06
mind is resting where feet are. And what
00:07:07
I mean by that is I'm not distracted.
00:07:09
I'm not ruminating about yesterday. I'm
00:07:12
not thinking about tomorrow. I'm not
00:07:13
concerned about what's going to come.
00:07:14
I'm not fttting about what's happened. I
00:07:17
just think, okay, like, can I do just 15
00:07:20
seconds or 30 seconds? And when I look
00:07:22
back on the day, those
00:07:25
moments often appear in the top five uh
00:07:29
things that's happened, like really just
00:07:31
taking a moment. So, that's weird.
00:07:32
That's like gratitude at the end of the
00:07:35
day for being grateful during the day,
00:07:36
which is very nice because that's a sort
00:07:38
of self-reinforcing cycle. the more
00:07:40
gratitude you do, the more easy it is to
00:07:42
find and the more grateful you are for
00:07:43
your gratitude. So, uh yeah, maybe the
00:07:46
post-it note or maybe you want to use
00:07:47
reminders on your phone to sort of um
00:07:50
trigger you every few hours or something
00:07:52
throughout the day, but that seems to
00:07:55
work for me. And this balance the the
00:07:57
other thing as well to say is that this
00:08:00
is a very hard thing to strike a balance
00:08:02
of. So if you are someone that is trying
00:08:04
to improve yourself, uh that has big
00:08:07
dreams and big goals and all the rest of
00:08:09
it, accepting this is the cost of doing
00:08:12
business. This isn't some personal curse
00:08:14
that's been bestowed on you that you I'm
00:08:17
having to suffer with this thing. God,
00:08:18
how feeble and and and malignant and
00:08:21
broken am I? How how uniquely cursed is
00:08:24
my particular setup? No, this is how
00:08:27
everybody feels. This is every single
00:08:29
person that wants to do a lot, that
00:08:31
wants to know that they should enjoy
00:08:32
life, but also wants to leave it all out
00:08:34
there on the field of play. This is just
00:08:37
part of the
00:08:39
course. Hopefully that makes it seem a
00:08:42
little bit easier to deal with. I'll
00:08:43
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00:08:44
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[Music]
