The Exchanges

Q just wanting to raise visibility and create opportunities or bring more opportunities in. So it tends to be, like, raise visibility, bring in opportunities, grow the business, leave a legacy. Tends to be with, with non-fiction. I'm curious, with your cover in the title, What was the process with, how did, how did you end up there where you're publishing a cover and a title that you're not crazy about?

A Well, the subtitle came first, actually, so I had the turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results, and I loved it, and then the title was like 10 people basically brainstorming a title from my agent to the editors to people who work at the publisher, and we're just back and forth until, you know, we're like, Like, weeks away from printing. This is where it gets really tricky, right? So it's like, in everything in my body, and I'm writing a book about decision making, you know, I'm like, this feels push, and I'm like, trying to pull back, right? I'm like, slow down. Like, it doesn't matter if we hit this deadline. It doesn't really matter. But they're like, no, we've got the book, like, you're booked into the printing queue. You're like, this is happening. And, you know, effectively, it's like, we will take over. One way or another. And the book is no longer yours. And you sort of get this message and it's like, well, I want to slow it down. I want to test it. I want to sort of like figure it out. And I want to come up with different options. Didn't have time to do that at that point in time. So the process sort of like you get to a certain point in that, you know, had that been three months earlier, I totally could have stopped it before it was sort of like booked into printing before we had the buyers buying it. Before the bookstores have bought it, before the sales ag…

AI assessment note: “we're just back and forth until, you know, we're like, weeks away from printing”

Q of our households, my personal happiness, how easy things are. And so one is the, the, the downside is in one sense is very quantifiable and the upside in the other case is very hard to quantify. And in, in some cases, the consequences of it are, are quite lagging. And so You're faced with briefcase with cash in it. And Hey, isn't this a bit much? We're all tired.

A How do you balance that? My uncle taught me this thing when I was a teenager about how he used to price his business. So he was a, he ran a plumbing company. What he did was basically the first 75% of hours were priced at a hundred percent. So the regular rate, but 75 to 80, he would increase the rate 80 to a hundred. You'd increase it and over a hundred percent of like a normal work week. Then he'd increase it even more. And he was super transparent with people about this. Like, I'm really busy right now. I hate to give you this quote, but to do the job properly, here's what we'd have to price it at. And he's pricing it at like a 150 because he wants them to say no. He doesn't want to be the one to say no. He's like, I'll figure out how to do it for this price. And he's like, was so surprised by the number of people who said yes, in part because of his honesty.

AI assessment note: “My uncle taught me this thing when I was a teenager about how he used to price”

Q world of people who are like, we all live in a world where we're too busy and we have too many distractions coming our way constantly. How unusual is it to sit down with a group of thoughtful people and read and reflect on a common document and then say, okay, what assumption should we be rethinking here? And I would be thrilled to see more leaders adopt that practice.

A I think it's brilliant because it doesn't assume people have read it before they come in. It gives people time to read it and discuss it. One of the things I noticed when I was sort of running meetings like that is that people would come in and they would have read sort of like the first couple paragraphs because they didn't have time, not really their fault in some ways. And then they would signal that they've read the document by rephrasing some of those first, and everybody would just do the same thing. And I'm like, you're all just saying the same thing. Like, We can assume this is knowledge, but then you can't actually assume that people have read it. So I like the approach of sort of like distilling it down to something digestible, giving people time to get on the same page, allowing the time in the meeting. Most meetings don't need to be as long as they are anyway, and then everybody's talking from a common base.

AI assessment note: “I think it's brilliant because it doesn't assume people have read it”

Q Well, that's funny. That's good. I mean, I wonder about that story. What do you, I mean, that's, that's sort of a, not really right, is it? Because if that, if the guy, if the fish don't bite, you're not going back to that store.

A Well, I, I think it sort of goes back to that organized morality and that this sort of one-off Are we playing a multiplayer game? Are we playing a, a one-time game? And it was interesting. I was traveling with my kids this summer, and we sort of went to this, uh, tourist trap, and we ordered a bottle of water without even thinking, and it was eight euros. And I was like, oh, well, let's work through this problem. And we're sitting there at the table. Like I was like, we just, we just got, you know, um, we just learned something here. Like, let's, let's pay attention to it and try to get the kids to learn a little bit. And I'm like, well, what would the difference be if this restaurant was full of local people? Do you think that they would do that? No. Okay. So if it's full of tourists, how can they do that? Well, cause they probably will never be back. And so you can get away with this, not saying is right. There's no sort of moral judgment on my part here or wrong. Um, but you can get away with it. Whereas if you were serving to an audience that is not a tourist place or a customer base, you can't sort of get away with that type of behavior because you would go out of business because people just wouldn't come back. But when you're the place in town for this particular type of piece of cake that the town is known for. You know, everybody goes there, and you order cake, and the…

AI assessment note: “Are we playing a multiplayer game? Are we playing a, a one-time game?”

Q own sense of value from the inside, and here are three things to do that. So now you start to change, and I guarantee you, as you start to change, you create a totally different context in your intimate relationship with a much greater possibility of having appreciation and respect be a cornerstone of your relationship because you chose to shift from victim consciousness to creator. Does that make sense?

A Oh, it totally makes sense. I think that's great advice. Shifting gears just a little bit here, going back to, you had brought up EQ and BQ, and I'm curious as to how we develop, hone, augment, accelerate our sort of EQ, uh, and like, tell me a little bit about BQ, but more in terms of like EQ, uh, what is it that we can do to consciously improve or be aware of where we're at? And what is it we can do to develop that in a way that's going to bring us closer to To other people to have more meaningful relationships, to be more empathetic towards them and more sensitive to maybe the context in which they're operating.

AI assessment note: “Oh, it totally makes sense. I think that's great advice.”

Q Can you give an example of what you're thinking of?

A Well, if I, if I think of myself as the type of person that likes to go to the gym, or I go to the gym every day, and that this is part of my identity, then I would assume that it becomes easier for me to go to the gym every day, and obstacles would sort of like, I wouldn't see them. Whereas if I don't think of myself as somebody who goes to the gym every day, every obstacle becomes much larger, so that we have a visual perception impact. Also a self-talk impact, and so is how I'm talking to myself changing the information I'm getting from the world, or is the information that I'm seeing from the world changing how I talk to myself, or is it some sort of relationship between both of them?

AI assessment note: “if I think of myself as the type of person that likes to go to the gym”

Q Right. It was so severe. She had to have, uh, an IV treatment, uh, for many weeks. I think it was at least three weeks that were, it was delivered at home by her mom to get rid of it. How did, how did you treat yours?

A Uh, doxycycline. Yeah, so I just did a cycle of that. I mean, it seemed to instantly, not instantly, but over a period of maybe two weeks, like it went back to You know, gradually, like, I had facial paralysis on half my face, and, you know, so it started with, uh, I could stand again, I could open my jaw a little bit more, the last thing to come back was sort of the facial paralysis, and it was scary. I mean, uh, it was really, and it was scary that you had to be an advocate of your own health, too, in a system, um, which you don't know how to navigate, which I also thought, you know, as a parent, you feel as somebody who shows up at a merge with, like, A face that doesn't work. You also feel it in a different way. Um, is there any lifespan effect of Lyme disease after treatment?

AI assessment note: “Uh, doxycycline. Yeah, so I just did a cycle of that.”

Q Yeah, that's right. You were saying, this is so good. I like outcome over ego. Do you have for yourself a Articulated like outcome mantra that you go back to like, okay, this is the bigger outcome I'm aiming for. Does that make sense? Like, like a true north outcome. Have you, do you have that or?

A No, I don't think so. I mean, I look at this as like positioning over predicting, like I don't, I can't predict the future. I just want to be positioned for multiple possible futures. And then inside the company, like inside the people that I work with, I'm trying to, and consciously trying to empower them more and more and more and make myself Redundant to the point where I can start working on things that are two or three years in the future and less day to day and trust. Um, even though people will make mistakes, they don't need to check with me. They can just run with that. And that'll give us the velocity that we need to sort of, uh, allow us to do it. Cause we have a very small team and I want to keep it small. Like I don't want to I have no ambitions on having like hundreds of people or big staff or any of this stuff, because none of that matters or impact matters. And what's going to cause the most impact I think is by empowering people to, to do their thing and unleashing their potential. And it's going to be a different type of potential than sort of like I would unleash in myself.

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so. I mean, I look at this as like positioning”

Q You're talking about seeing what everyone else is doing?

A Yeah. Well, it, you know, I wouldn't say envy, because I, I don't necessarily think it's envy, but like, wanting more for yourself. And, you know, the comparison is part of wanting more. It's like, well, somebody has this thing, and, you know, I want this thing. It's not because you want this thing. As an individual, like, you don't even think about it. It's like somebody's got a Rolex, and all of a sudden you want a Rolex. It's like, well, no, your watch tells time, and The Rolex isn't going to do anything for you other than, you know, 30 grand or whatever it is. Rolex, if you're listening, I'll take any watch you want to send me, but I use a Bremont. But like, that drives the world forward in a way. Do you know what I mean? Like, maybe I'm wrong about this.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Well, it, you know, I wouldn't say envy”

Q I would agree with that. Um, I was trying to answer your question. How should, how should teams make decisions?

A No, this is too important though, right? Because not everybody, uh, in, in, When people, a lot of people agree with it, but they can't change it. So they're part of a committee and the committee is making a decision, even though everybody on that committee might think it would be more effective if one person, uh, signed their name to the decision, which also would increase the accountability of the process, believe it or not. Um, because often what I've found with group decision making is that, um, when the decision is correct, everybody in the room was responsible for it. And when it was wrong, Everybody in the room tried to convince them not to do it. And so there's no sort of like learning that happens from these, but in, in, in the real world, a lot of organizations still insist on making decisions as a group. So the question was sort of like, how do we make more effective decisions as a group? And, and I think that you answered that beautifully. And the second question is how do we, how do we illuminate the insights in a group setting when we are making a decision as a group? How do we, Find ways to, um, surface unique insights into the problem, um, that we might not know. Do you have any experience with that?

AI assessment note: “it would be more effective if one person, uh, signed their name”

Q before breakfast. And so, trying to figure out how do I stay sane and healthy, and how do I help this organization I lead and support the leaders I work with, it's taking a ton of creativity, but also just a ton of perseverance for me right now. Are you finding the same thing that, like, you're, you're using everything you know, and still having to invent stuff like crazy?

A Yeah, it's been such a unique experience, and I'm super fortunate, right, so my worries are about productivity right now, so just to put everything in context, like, you know, I'm very lucky, but it, it's been really challenging in a lot of respects. One, like, I have this self-challenge where, you know, I'm my own harshest critic, right, so my productivity not being where I want it to be, or the team not Moving in the same direction with the same velocity it was before. I take it very personally, and I'm trying to be more kind to myself in that respect, but there's also, like, I find there's two types of days, right? There's days when, like, they've all blended together. There's no weekends. There's no weekdays. It's just, you know, days when I sort of shower and work out, and then days when I, like, I just don't do any of that stuff.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it's been such a unique experience, and I'm super fortunate”

Q we be reallocating problems, right, across these different institutional forms? That's a question you can't touch, really, with, by running regressions necessarily, other than to identify the places where it's not working, right? But you can use models to help you kind of think through, what if we made this a market, right? What if we made this a democracy, right? What if we handed this out to an algorithm?

A Yeah, it sounds like we're using multiple models to sort of construct a more accurate view of reality. We might never, ever be able to understand reality completely, but the better we understand it, the better we sort of know what to do. And yet it strikes me as odd that we're often, one of the ways that we learn to apply models unconsciously is through school. And it's usually like a single model, right? Like you're reading a chapter in your grade 10 physics book on gravity, and then you get gravity problems. And then you know that I will apply, you know, uh, this equation to this problem. It's almost an algorithm, right? I know what the, the variables are that the school is going to give me the variables and I'm just going to apply this. And we're taught with this sort of like one model view of the world. Um, why are we taught that way? And why is that wrong?

AI assessment note: “sounds like we're using multiple models to sort of construct a more accurate view”

Q I was like, this is amazing. You're on the exact same wavelength as me, and this is what you do for a living, right? You, you rethink things. You also ask the Farnam Street community and your whole audience here at the Knowledge Project to rethink a lot of their convictions. So where do you start your rethinking cycles, and how do you know when it's time to enter one?

A I think, like, I've just summed this up as, like, outcome over ego, and so I usually try to wrap my outcome, uh, or wrap my, my sense of identity or, or ego in the outcome, and that's something I learned when I was working for the intelligence agency, right? Like, it wasn't about me having the best idea. It was like, who's got the best idea? Because that's going to get the best outcome, and then, You sort of grow up in an environment where that becomes, I would say the norm by and large. It's hard in a knowledge environment though, right? Because you have so much of your, your worth. You, you want to contribute to something. I think there's a biological need to contribute to something larger than us. And if your identity, you're not mechanically making something, you can't see, there's nothing tangible to what you're producing. Then you, you, you effectively are a knowledge worker in one way or another, and then you're paid for your judgment. So if your judgment isn't right, what is it? And then what you do is you, you, you force your way, right? Like you You don't intentionally sabotage other people, but you only look for confirming evidence. You, you're not open to changing your mind because your sense of identity is tied to being right, because that's how you contribute to the organization.

AI assessment note: “I think, like, I've just summed this up as, like, outcome over ego”

Q that help illuminate the human that you're with. Um, I find That I get really, really curious. I know what it would be like for me, cause I'm in, you know, much the same situation. I know what that feels like in me, but I don't know what that feels like in them. And that's the thing that has to awaken my curiosity. What does that feel like in you?

A Is that the right question? Like, uh, I don't know. Like we have such, the way that I'm thinking about this and totally like push back if this isn't right is, um, we're often taught, I think a large part of the problems that we experience in life are because we suppress our emotions, right? We don't allow ourself to feel them. We push them down and we sort of hide them and then they bubble over every now and then, uh, whether in a relationship or, or whatever context. And we push them down again, and we never actually just allow ourselves the experience of feeling them. And I think now is an awesome time being at home with not only your kids, but your, your partner, your family, even your close friends, right? And trying to work on your ability to feel your own emotions, but then your ability to give other people space, comfort, and security to feel their emotions without, um, Without having that jeopardize, or maybe it's psychological security, right? Without feeling like that's going to jeopardize, um, their relationship with you. And part of that comes down to, I think the freedom to explore the emotion without being held to almost what you're saying or feeling, because we're so like, we're so quick to jump on other people. Oh, you said this and you said that, or, um, and we're so Since we don't explore our own feelings, it's really hard to explore them with other people, bu…

AI assessment note: “Is that the right question? Like, uh, I don't know.”

Q difficulty or conflict, taking a pause and asking what's my best or highest intention shifts your state of consciousness. Periodically, whether it's the start of the day or a week or some new venture or some new adventure, it can be helpful to reflect on, you know, what's your best intention. But it's really organic, and it's, in a way, what I want to say is, what works for you?

A We're sort of part of this always-on go-go-go culture. Uh, we're busy. Uh, our minds are busy. There's always something we're thinking about that is, is sort of not the present moment, right? The grocery list, the kids need to be picked up. There's a million projects at work. I have to text this person back. I need to email this person and we're striving, right? We're striving for, uh, either if we're, if we're conscious, we're striving for things that we want to pursue. And if we're unconscious, I feel like we're striving for things that other people want us to pursue. So we're playing life by somebody else's scorecards, but this striving individually might, uh, be detrimental to us, but it also pushes us forward as a society. So I see sort of like pros and cons to it. What ways does this striving sort of help us? And in what ways does it hurt us?

AI assessment note: “What ways does this striving sort of help us? And in what ways does it hurt us?”

Q I thought that they would have been before I did it. And I only know them because I did it. So there's sort of like these emergent, there's, there's emergent knowledge, frankly, um, that Relied on a decision. So, I mean, how often is that the case where we have to make one decision in order to learn the next thing or to even learn the benefits of that thing?

A That's beautiful. I mean, it's sort of, it sparks so many ideas in my head. Not only like not everything can be proved and the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. And so like, but you also have in my head going on is like Apple versus Google, right? Where Apple takes this very aesthetic. You can't prove that it's better. You can't prove the fact that there's symmetry in the motherboard in my iMac, uh, makes a better product. And whereas Google takes a more analytical, purely analytical view, which is like which shade of blue gets the most clicks. And I think these things sort of like merge, uh, and you have to, they're, they're on a continuum, obviously. I don't know if it's definitely either or, um, but I do think that there's some choices in life where you, you, you want to be sort of Maybe less rational about the evidence and more emotional where you're making relationship choices based on, uh, things that you feel more so than reasoning, not to say that you shouldn't reason, uh, but that the weight of that decision might, the balance on where you are on that spectrum might change.

AI assessment note: “it sparks so many ideas in my head... Apple versus Google”

Q to those uncomfortable emotional states so that when we feel boredom, anxiety, fatigue, loneliness, whatever the case might be, do we escape that discomfort in an unhealthy way by getting out of our heads, turning on the TV, uh, you know, reading the, reading the news, uh, going on email or Facebook or whatever, or do we deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that, that propels us forward?

A A couple of things you said there strike me as really interesting, and maybe you can pick up on one of these threads, which is like, one, we, we sort of have habitual responses to things, even though we control them. You know, when I'm looking at Facebook in line at the supermarket or something, that's a, you know, it develops a habit. And then the other thing that you said that really struck me was how, when we shame ourselves, our identity becomes within that shame. And then that becomes self-reinforcing because if you tell yourself, You're always distracted. You're always the person, uh, that does this. I mean, that just becomes more and more of the case. That's what you see, what you expect, and you become powerless in a way. I'd love to hear you sort of like riff on those two things.

AI assessment note: “I'd love to hear you sort of like riff on those two things.”

Q share is, is problematic. And then How do you distribute it? You know, do you have welfare? Do you have guaranteed universal income? Do you have, uh, federally employed, uh, guaranteed jobs, et cetera? These are all redistribution questions, and, and, um, no, A, no easy answers, and B, this is the main grist for politics. Are the differences of opinion on this subject one of the very most important?

A I want to come back to get your opinion on universal basic income in a second, but before we, we sort of move on out of the economic cycle and the role of the government and the fed and investor psychology, when I think about that intuitively, I think about it as a nation state, but we also operate in this global economy where tax rates on businesses make it more competitive for one country over another, um, where interest rates make investment in one country more More prone than another. How do you think about that? Not only from the individual, like United States point of view, but then in the global sort of world that we live in.

AI assessment note: “I want to come back to get your opinion on universal basic income in a second”

Q nervous system to have some answers and they are not available and no amount of tail chasing is going to make them available. We are going to live into them. So what can I do today, tomorrow, next week to try and plant some of the seeds for a better future? In some way. How can I, how can I be learning more about now and coaxing tomorrow into being?

A That's a really good way to look at it. I know when I wake up in the middle of the night now, like my brain is on fire and like getting back to sleep is super tough cause it's just like all these things you want to do and even sleep I'm finding a little harder, right? Because I have to be such a steady and not everything is normal, but everything's going to be okay. Influence for the kids and at work and I'm always on. And then when the kids go to bed, I can like turn off a little bit, But then it's like, holy cow, like there's all these things I've been denying, or not denying, but like avoiding all day, and then they rush into your mind, and, um, it's a really interesting place to be, and I love the idea of self-compassion, and being like, that's okay, like, uh, it's understandable, and you're, you're trying to grab on to all the things that you want to control, and all the things that you want to be true, and I'm trying to make sure that At least from my perspective, I'm not seeing things that I want to happen, and more sort of like just being open to what is happening, and that's really tough sometimes.

AI assessment note: “I love the idea of self-compassion, and being like, that's okay”