Adam Robinson: A Chess Master's Guide to Finding Clarity in Complexity - Classics Series
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Human creation of all types goes through four stages. I call them the four I's, the letter I. So the first I is intention. You can just, I want to go to Mars. I want to throw a surprise birthday party for my best friend. Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Set an intention. And really I could write a whole book just on that part, but okay, that's pretty basic. Set the intention. Then second I, imagination, right? We imagine, okay.

What's this going to look like? What's going to Mars going to look like? Or what's launching my startup going to look like? Or a birthday party for my best friend? Or a dinner date with the person I love? Whatever it is, imagine. And then the third eye is ingenuity. Okay, I've imagined what I want to do and I know what I want to do. How am I going to pull this off? Okay, if I'm going to get a rocket to Mars, I guess I'm going to need some rocket scientists and I'm going to need some funding.

Welcome to What Got You There, where curiosity leads to wisdom. I'm your host, Sean Delaney, a former professional athlete turned executive life coach for high performers and author of two books, Masterpiece in Progress and Insights of the Ages.

This podcast is a journey into the minds of exceptional individuals to uncover the key lessons and wisdom they've uncovered while scaling the heights of success in business, sports, investing, and everything in between. For the last 10 years, my journey has been one of unwavering dedication to the mastery of peak performance and the art of transformative personal growth. My mission is clear, to be a catalyst in unlocking the vast potential that resides within people. As

As a coach to CEOs, investors, executives, and athletes, I strive to unlock the limitless potential within each individual, guiding them toward a life rich in purpose and fulfillment. Now, I hope this podcast will do that for you. And if you're interested in finding out more of what I do, head to whatgotyouthere.com.

Today on the podcast, I revisit one of my all-time favorite conversations with Adam Robinson. Now, Adam is the co-founder of the Princeton Review. He's a rated chess master. He's also an advisor to large head funds and financial institutions. And the breadth and depth of Adam's knowledge and curiosity is on full display in this conversation. And it's a reason he's one of my favorite thinkers on the planet.

Now, three things you will definitely learn from this episode are the ideas Adam feels have most impacted his life, how to get people excited about your vision, and the four stages of all creations. Please enjoy this conversation with Adam Robinson, which took place in May of 2022. And as always, you can watch, listen, and read the transcript at whatgotyouthere.com. Adam, welcome to What Got You There. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. Great. Very much looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, I've been really lucky. I feel like over the years, I've had some really in-depth, mind-opening conversations. But what I love about the conversations with you is you always up-level whoever you're talking with or to. And I hope we can do that with the audience, provide them some practical rules that they can apply to their own lives. But I would love to start with a concept that you opened my eyes to, and that's around inhalation and exhalation. So...

There are all kinds of books on productivity, how to get more out of your day, how to be efficient, how to manage your time. And time is a more fluid concept. And I'm talking actually about a practical, on a practical level. So I divide up the rhythms of my day and even weeks and months and years with the notion of inhalation and exhalation. And even in a conversation, right? Like I'm speaking now.

So I'm exhaling. And then you'll start speaking and I'll shift into inhalation mode. I'll be listening, reflecting on what you're saying as I prepare to exhale again. I work in the world of ideas and making them a reality. And so it starts, any idea starts with an inspiration, right? So you consume information with an aim to inspire.

as you say, up-level, get inspired, and that's the inhalation phase. Then you've got to work out the inspiration, the logical ingenuity parts of it, and actually implement it in the world, this exhalation stage. And that applies for me even geographically. For example, I'd bounce back and forth between LA and New York. And in LA, I'm in the mountains of Bel Air. It's very actually isolated.

And so there I go to be alone and just inhalation mode. And I just came back to New York. So now I'm in exhalation mode, things to do. So I think it's a helpful metaphor for people to navigate the rhythms of their day. And for example, even within a day, when I wake up, I'm in inhalation mode, getting ideas, getting inspiration. So I wake up every morning at 3 a.m.,

And because I like quiet time. And so from three to about 630 or seven, fully inhalation mode. And then it's time to start executing on those emails or that presentation I have to give. And if you think about it, even someone like Buffett who reads nonstop all inhalation mode because his exhalation is very big. OK, we're going to buy that company. Good. And then and then back to inhalation mode.

And so it's a very helpful metaphor for navigating the rhythms of your life and your energy levels and everything. You know, so it's really not, how do I get the most use out of my time? It's how do I divide up my time? Like right now, I'm feeling kind of lazy. I don't mean in this moment, but someone might say, oh, but I'm feeling inspired. Okay, then just do inhalation stuff, then exhalation. I'm wondering for you.

Yeah, no, I'm just curious. Do one of those, do they have a greater benefit for you? Like you mentioned around ideas. Is inhalation, do you view that as your strength? Yes. Short answer is yes. And like strength as in an edge in the world. So I've really cultivated that part because the execution, I can now pass that off to people that that's their strength on the executing and exhalation. But there's a part of execution that,

that I never realized until recently, Sean. And I had always, I say recently, in my life, only about six years ago. So I'd always lived in a world of ideas. And I succeeded on the basis of those ideas. And I was very much an introvert. And literally one day, I woke up without, there was no catalyst, about six years ago. And I woke up and I went, wow, there are people in this world. I could have a lot of fun. And I'm

It was really an epiphany. And I was wide-eyed about people the way a child would be walking into a candy store, like, oh, boy. And so I set out to really engage others in the same way that someone might train for the Ironman and CrossFit or train to do this, to shoot free throws. I trained to engage others, really, really went about it systematically. And

If you want to do anything in the world, Sean, it's going to involve other people. And this doesn't matter whether it's on a personal level or on a professional level. Really, it's the ability to get someone else excited about the vision that you've created. So somebody says, yeah, I want to do that with you, Sean, whether the person is an investor or a friend or whatever.

Really, that's the key is getting people excited about your vision. They go, oh, yeah, I want in on that. I want in on you. And so that was really a big shift for me. And so you asked about ideas. I'd like to offer, talk about up leveling, a framework for you and anyone listening is that all human creation goes through four stages. And I say human creation. It includes problem solving.

Because problem solving, I don't like the state of affairs now. So I've got to create a better state of affairs. And so all human creation doesn't matter whether you're creating a birthday party for your best friend or launching a company or whatever you're doing. Human creation of all types goes through four stages. I call them the four I's, the letter I. So the first I is intention. You can just...

I want to go to Mars. I want to throw a surprise birthday party for my best friend. Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Set an intention. And really, I could write a whole book just on that part. But OK, that's pretty basic. Set the intention. Then second eye, imagination. We imagine, OK, what's this going to look like? What's going to Mars going to look like? Or what's

launching my startup going to look like, or a birthday party for a best friend, or a dinner date with the person I love. Whatever it is, imagine. And then the third I is ingenuity. Okay, I've imagined what I want to do, and I know what I want to do. How am I going to pull this off? Okay, if I'm going to get a rocket to Mars, I guess I'm going to need some rocket scientists, and I'm going to need some funding for that company. Okay,

Or if I'm throwing a birthday party, where am I going to, the ingenuity phase. And the fourth phase, the fourth I is implementation, right? I know I need rocket scientists. Which ones do I go after? Or I know I want to do a birthday party for my best friend. And what restaurant do I do it? And then enrolling the restaurant in your plan. Like, hey, we'd like to throw a birthday party.

I realize you don't stay open after 10, but could you once this one time and enrolling others? So inhalation and exhalation and the exhalation is very much on the ingenuity and the implementation phase. To tie that into the previous thought about success in life always involves others. And the most success, think about someone like Elon Musk. He's able to excite everybody about anything. You could say, hey, I'm going to,

I think I'm going to go camping in Canada. Everyone goes, oh my God, what's going on with camping in Canada? Let's all go camping in Canada. So he's really mastered that, that ability to get people excited. And again, it doesn't matter whether you're trying to get someone excited about going on a date with you or invest in your company or someone to work for the company that you just started.

the ability to get others excited. And that always involves images. Wow, yes, that would be cool. And then the listener plants him or herself or the audience. Oh, yeah, I could see that happening. Yeah, let's do that. Let's go to Mars. Let's go to Canada and camp. Probably be a wild time with Elon Musk, but camping in Canada. So there, so that ties those thoughts, right? And I think everything's pretty simple in life, actually. You boil it down.

And you have to boil it down so that you can function at the highest level. When you think about the highest achievers, they're always really simple people. They've got like one or two ideas and they're just working it to death. And everyone else is really complicated. You just heard Adam talking about what the highest achievers are doing to uplevel in their life. So what are you doing to uplevel your abilities and compound your most important skills?

I'm Sean Delaney, and when I'm not interviewing game changers on the podcast, I've been helping peak performers in finance, business, and professional sports reach the pinnacle of their fields for over a decade with my executive performance coaching. Now, my coaching is for those who really are looking to get to the top of their game, where we're going to merge professional excellence with personal fulfillment.

And with my coaching, I provide tailored strategies that sharpen your decision-making, navigate unknown high-stress situations, enhance your focus, and expand your potential. Imagine what it would be like having an ally dedicated to your success, providing you with clear insights, challenging your perspectives, offering strategic advice, and developing your confidence. This is the transformative support I offer to help you reach peak performance consistently.

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adam i would love for you to exp expand on simplicity because i feel like today we see so many bullet point blogs tweets where it's like here are the rules for success and you study someone like munger or like buffett take a simple idea take it seriously yeah the years my favorite quote yeah that is my favorite quote so it's the years of thinking and that they've put towards that simple idea that they're taking seriously i'm wondering

How do you get to the other side of complexity where it is simple, right? Oliver Wendell Holmes. Yes, I know that quote too. So I'm wondering how you think that through. So, yeah. So you just quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes, right? His famous quote, I don't care anything about the complexity of on complexity.

Sorry, the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'd give anything for the simplicity on the far side of complexity. And Stephen Jobs wrote about that, right? He said, simplicity is so hard to achieve because I was about to say that you have to say no to so many things, but really it's not that. And even Buffett said that. And with respect, because...

He's Zeus, right? And there's no one better. He's such a genius. And he said that the most successful people say no to many things. And I would reframe it. I'd say, actually, you're saying yes. The couple of things that are so important, you're not saying no to that. I'd love to. And then focusing on that simple thing. And the simple thing really is the ability to focus on a single thing or two.

is also a real superpower edge. Because most people, they, okay, that's nice, that one thing, but if that's good, why don't I just add a couple things to it? Boom, you've already lost it. Yeah, you read about anything. It doesn't matter whether it's sports, science, or entrepreneurs. They got a couple of key ideas that they just keep applying, and they get really good at applying it. And you don't need a lot of...

If we were Batman, we wouldn't need many gadgets in our utility belt, right? He's got all these little gadget things. Hey, you only need one or two, right? I said once, I think it was on with Tim Ferriss. I said, you only need one hammer, like Thor's hammer. That's it. Yeah, that's really good. And then you, over the years, you really hone that hammer. You get really good at it.

And then really their genius, the top achievers is just waiting for the opportunity to use the hammer. I'm wondering about, you mentioned being able to chisel away and get to that excellent hammer as years progress here. And so I'm thinking about what that exploration period is like, right? Like you've done such a miraculous job in that apprenticeship up to mastery. And I'm wondering for someone who's trying to reach that level of mastery,

How do you approach those early days where, or should you be testing more things to really chisel away? Or is it singular focus? Well, so I think there's a natural process that goes on. That's such a, really a profound question. And I, when I was setting out on this journey life, I didn't,

It wasn't like I had any path, really. It was just a lot of stumbling around. I go, oh, I'm pretty good at this, or why don't I try that? And then you begin to call and realize what you're good at, what you enjoy spending your time on, the people you enjoy spending your time with. And slowly something begins to take shape, a career or a life path or a mission, really a mission. And then as that begins to take shape,

Then that provides a North Star and a winnowing away of everything else. Because you go, okay, I kind of like what I built here. Is that going to fit in? Is that going to up-level what I have here, which is working pretty well? And then you get really ruthless about it. I think it's an organic process like that. And I think, not I think, I know, you have to be mindful about it.

Initially, there's some casting about and you don't know what you're good at yet or what you like doing. And then the world presents opportunities of one sort or another. So there's that sort of mix between what you're good at, what you like to do, and the opportunities that are presented to you. But you get the sense that if any of the greats had chosen something else, some other field, they would have been really good at that field too.

Maybe not like, shoot, Michael Jordan was not a great baseball player. I was pretty good. It's silly to move away from basketball, as it turned out. And it's the same drives and the principles. And a lot of it is self-management. Yeah. And I think you just keep coming back to it. Just gradually, incrementally, you just get better and better at it.

The thing you discover you're good at and love to do. Similar to Joseph Campbell's Follow Your Bliss. You said something a second ago that just piqued my interest. You said it's something they keep coming back to. You're such a beautiful thinker. I would love to know, what ideas do you keep coming back to? Wow. Okay, that's, I've never thought about that. I'm just going to throw out some things as they occur to me spontaneously right now. So there's the notion of who am I in the world? What statement is Adam making?

making to the world. I say statement. And so if you view the world as a conversation and everybody's doing their thing, so conversation is a metaphor, obviously. And so Buffett saying a certain, is adding something to the global conversation. So is Elon Musk. Everybody, for better or worse, is making a statement to the world about what they view as important. And then now,

If everybody is saying X or many people are saying X and they're not really adding to the conversation, like, yeah, I agree. I'm with X. I agree with that. And then the question is, what are you saying to the world? For example, you, Sean, who are you in the world?

And actually, even in our contact and even that you have this podcast, I have an idea of who you are in the world. Right. And sharing knowledge, for example, very important to finding best practices. Oh, that's wisdom. I want to share that with people who, like me, are a seeker. And so I think that's been a part of my journey, like ideas, knowledge.

is what am I saying to the world? And I think more in terms of frameworks. So let me throw out some frameworks and ideas, right? So I give you the framework of inhalation and exhalation. Here's another framework I like. Everything, every moment, every encounter is an invitation. For example, right now, there are other invitations I'm receiving right now, like the couch behind me. It's inviting me, hey, you want to use this moment to take a nap? It's

And I decline that invitation because I'm spending it with you, right? And anyone you meet, that person is an invitation. Could be an invitation to, hey, want to have a coffee? Or, hey, want to get into an argument with me? There are people that that's the invitation of the moment. And...

or an opportunity, or anything is an invitation. And then you have to decide, do I want to accept that invitation? Or maybe I should make a counteroffer. No, I don't want to get into an argument with you. I declined that invitation to fight, but I will counteroffer with an invitation to discuss this or whatever. And so you have to be aware, rather one, the person, the individual, I have to be, I, Adam, have to be aware that

of what others are inviting me to do. And most of the time, they're not even aware of it. Or they may be aware on one level, but not on multiple levels. And I have to be aware of what I'm inviting them to do. I'm generally more aware of what they're inviting me to do than they are. Actually, for example, most people, I invite them to have fun, to play. And it's really, that's another key theme of mine, idea, that

The goal in life is to play. That's the highest gratitude for the life we've been given, play, and the importance of play. And I said once that we have to learn how to take serious things more playfully, playful things more seriously. You think about sports, there's nothing important about kicking a ball on a field. In fact, it seems ridiculous if anyone didn't know that that was an organized game.

but we take that silly thing kicking a ball around very seriously. And so really play is the hedonist philosophers in ancient Greece talked about pleasure being the highest goal in life. And they meant spiritual pleasure, by the way. And I would say play, which brings me back to my epiphany about six years ago of others. You can't play alone. And for example-

So notice that my ideas, Sean, are actually things that I live. They're not ideas. I'm actually living the idea. So I go to a restaurant and I arrive before my date and the waitress comes over and I'll say something clever, some clever banter to invite her to play with me for this little moment. She'll either detect the invitation and accept it

She may detect it and not be interested. Again, just to play, no other agenda, right? Not like flurry, like to play. So really I get into a cab. Okay, I guess Ben, my stepping into the cab, same framework, is an invitation. I could close my eyes for the 20 minutes it's gonna take to get, I could pick up my cell phone. My cell phone is inviting me to check my email messages or whatever. And there's a person in the car saying,

Maybe it would be fun for me to play with this person. I'll make some random offhand comment meant to engage playful banter, right? Some kind of play. And the person will either be preoccupied with driving and don't want to interfere with their, really their driving and or will decline. That's okay. Okay. That person declined my invitation to play. What can I do? I could, again, there are all kinds of invitations in every moment. And again,

And even life itself is an invitation. The grand scheme of things, your life, certainly you, Sean, and my life is an invitation, make of it what you will. And for me, the revelation about five or six years ago was play. You want to do anything, you're a master quoter. One of my favorites was Churchill. He said, war is a game played with a smile.

This is during the horrors of World War II, right? War is a game, play with a smile. And if you can't smile, step aside. And again, the most serious things you have to approach playfully. And you're not making light of it. It's precisely because it's so serious, you have to be playful with it. Here's another, you say the ideas that, and again, my ideas are not in here, I'm living them. The notion of the playful state is the powerful state.

And you're watching the old Bruce Lee movies and you watch him moving around. He's playful. It's not serious. Or Muhammad Ali, like dancing around. Okay. They know, Ooh, if I get hit, I'm in trouble. And yet they're playful because they know that's the most relaxed state and the most powerful state. And,

Yeah. So those are some of the important ideas that I live and trying to support that they're not like ideas. Like you mentioned these big, thick books, like how to do X, Y, and Zs. Oh man, if I had the time to read that book, and even if you did, really, I'm not going to mention any names, but there's a very big, thick book written by a very successful person about how to live life. And if it's that complicated, if that's big and thick, the subtext message to the reader is,

I'm screwed because there's no way I'm going to have a hard time understanding that big, sick book. There's no way I could remember it in real time, day to day. It's no good having the ideas in your head and you're not using them as we camp in Canada with Elon Musk or go to Mars with him. So, yeah, it has to be ideas you can use. I'm wondering for those ideas you can use, how do you get to that understanding around play?

Does it take years of almost doing the opposite, right? Like going through that pain in order to come to the other side? Yeah, so I don't know. That's a really very profound question. I don't know. And give me a second. I'm going to process this. I think most of the time that does become the consequence. In other words, there's got to be a better way of doing things, of living, than...

pain and suffering, being serious. And ah, which brings me to another one of my ideas, which is, again, it's not ideas like in your head, but life principles. If you're not getting the results you want, change what you're doing. It's really that simple. And just keep changing and tinkering until you find something that works. And once you work, you find your hammer, stick with that. And you'll see that we keep circling back to the same few ideas. It's really...

not that many ideas or principles. It's really a mindset. For example, Sean, when I sat down to have a conversation with you, I have been equally excited for this moment. Now, people listening don't know that Sean and I have been dancing for like, what, five years? Yeah. We got a way to do this, right? Okay. And here we are doing it, right? Yeah.

Wow, I just want to change the thought. Talking about the principles. Oh, yes. But it's really a mindset. And so when I sat down today to have this conversation, my only goal was to play with you. That's it. Play. And if I'm going to talk to an investor looking for funds, my goal is to invite that person to play with me.

And by the way, that signals a lot that I'm confident enough in what I'm doing. I'm not even pitching the person. What the hell? He's not even asking me for my money. He just keeps telling jokes and we're having a great time. What the hell? I want to spend more time with this dude. And really that, again, it comes back to getting people excited and so they want to spend time with you. Yeah, I want in on whatever Sean's doing. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Let's do that. Or Adam or anybody. Elon, Elon.

It's not thinking so much as just having ideas simple enough that you can use in your day-to-day life. And again, in real time. No good being a principal up here that you don't kind of actually use it. Absolutely. I'm wondering for you, because you do think so deeply and you get such clarity around your ideas, what do you make of the epiphany six years ago? What do you mean by make of it? Yeah, because you said it kind of came out of nowhere.

It was such a life-changing realization. It was a complete pivot, totally different from anything I'd done in my life ever before. Now, there's been a lot of work around the creative process. Bear with me. I'm going to get to the point. And there's a great book that I'm going to recommend. I think I mentioned it with Tim. It's The Act of Creation by Arthur Tesler. It's a big old thick book, but one very well worth reading, The Act of Creation.

And so don't be daunted by the sickness. It's really a very interesting reading. So much work has been done, the creative process, by which I mean like solving a problem. And so it involves usually like you attack the problem logically and you think it, think it, think it really, really hard as much as you can.

and it's such a daunting problem or challenge and you've thought it through and then all of a sudden one day you're taking a bath or you're walking with your best friend or camping in canada or you're doing something and all of a sudden boom it just occurs to you out of nowhere and so the epiphany was related to a prior process and because you're unconscious the whole time has been working on it even when you're not working on it right oh your unconscious is working on it there was no

It wasn't like I had set myself a question I was working on and I went, oh, yeah, play. That's what I got to do. I just have to play. And in fact, invite others to play. Not even necessarily with me, but in their own lives. And that is the highest form of being. And if you think about it, at the end of the day, what's civilization for?

to free us up so we can play more. That ought to be the goal. People get caught up in this or that, and they're not having fun. I just use the word fun. So if one were to look at all the interviews of Warren Buffett, all of them over the decades, more in his public speaking, but also in his letters, stuff, right? The shareholder letters and stuff. There's one word that recurs more than any other, fun.

He's having a blast. It's real clear. You're just having a blast. If you're not having a blast, there's something wrong. And anyone who's not playful and really looking forward to their day, when I say looking forward, I mean it like this. When I'm by myself, I'm in inhalation mode. Then when I go outside, in a sense, it's a kind of exhalation.

But also, I can't wait to walk out my door because I know there are lots of people out there I can play with. Even passing strangers on a street, just raise an eyebrow, just acknowledging another human being in it. That little half second is a form of play.

And really it's a whole philosophy. There's a term for it. It's called homo ludens, the Latin phrase, right? There's homo sapiens, which is the intelligent animal, which we have to question these days. But homo ludens is the animal that plays. But in fact, all, actually most higher animals play. And in fact, if you look at how, say, a lion cub plays,

learns how to be a lion, like an adult lion, it's by play. Right? And so play is great learning mode. But it wasn't really, it was an epiphany. I just, there was nothing attached to it. So it was night and day for me. A life lived in my head, in ideas, and pretty serious. I would have a good time, but

And then it shifted really one day. And it's just everything I do now is related to that. Well, I appreciate the articulation into the creative process and aha type moments and how you need to let that subconscious mind go to work. Can you even go further on how you think about using the unconscious or the subconscious mind? That's such a good question. So really, I'm just pausing for a second to

Which entry vector into that topic I'm going to choose. So the way to think about it, we exalt our conscious minds, right? And we go to grade school and high school and college and grad school, spend a lifetime developing our conscious minds, logic stuff. And we're proud of it.

as individuals, right? When we acquire a certain facility using our minds, conscious logic and stuff. But at the end of the day, it's pretty clunky and as a tool to grapple with reality. And reality is actually very complex. Now that sounds like you're rolling your eyes. What the hell does that mean? Of course it's complex. But in fact, it's so complex that we actually don't deal with reality. We deal with the construct of it.

that we can grapple with. And there's a dude, his name is Donald Hoffman, who wrote a book, really brilliant book, called The Case Against Reality. And that really we've evolved with a good misunderstanding of reality. I say misunderstanding because it doesn't represent, but we can function at a very high level. So I say all that by way of preface,

that there's no way logic in our conscious mind can cope with the amount of information and complexity of the world. Just no way. And also, our ideas can be mistaken. But I'll tell you what's not mistaken is feeling states. Feeling states. So how do we tap into our unconscious mind?

And I'm going to share it with you because you asked me. And I don't think I've ever articulated this before. Now, the trouble with our unconscious mind, which is really the supercomputer, right? Your unconscious mind, like everyone talks, oh, you only consciously use 1%. I don't know how they come up with that number. But whatever it is, it's clear your unconscious is way more powerful, right?

Think of your conscious mind as like a simple abacus, or you could do simple arithmetic, and your unconscious mind is this super complex, like a parallel processing neural net that could deal with thousands of variables simultaneously. No problem. Again, if you think about it, our conscious minds

evolved relatively recently in like logic and stuff. What? I don't know. 2,000, 2,500 years, Aristotle and logic and stuff. We've gotten a little better, but not really. It's not like we're that much wiser. But meanwhile, there's the untapped unconscious mind. And so how do you train the unconscious mind as consciously as say you would train a

at a sport or playing the piano, but how do I get in touch with the instrument that is my unconscious mind? And I've done it through my body. So I don't process ideas in my head, process them in my body. And I'm not talking about mere muscle memory.

Like, oh, you remember a movement, right? Without being conscious. Like, I don't know how I did it, but yeah, I remember the movement. Like stick shift. I remember as a teenager running around and driving a stick shift car, but then I hadn't ever encountered one again for like 10 years. And I get into the car, because I'd always driven on a Mac after that. I get into a stick shift car and I just, my muscles remembered what to do, even though my head didn't. And so your entire body remembers

your sensory apparatus, your muscles and everything, they're processing all the information, whether it wants to or not, it's just processing it, right? Our conscious mind, we have to filter out so much, right? We don't have much of a working memory. And so I say all this, punchline coming in about a minute. So when I'm reading something or reading a poem or reading an idea or looking at a

a financial formula. I'm actually processing it in my body. And so when I encounter a new idea, I notice how my body feels in relation to the new idea. And then I go, oh, yes, that works. And it takes you a while to find the words and the ideas to support it. But really, it's kind of infallible. There's a Einstein theory.

not comparing myself to Einstein, but she talked about kinesthetic awareness. And I think he was getting at the same thing, that really you have to know in any given situation, again, even reading a book or an essay or whatever it is, a 10K report, whatever it is, allow your body to process that.

And along with your head, I'm not saying don't use your head, but I don't use my head too much. I actually more rely on my body. And that's the unconscious mind. But then it's doing whatever calculations it needs to do. So there's a fellow, Daniel Temet. He's a mathematical savant. And I remember seeing a document around him. I guess he's in his early 40s now, something like that. And when he was five years old,

He had a brain seizure, an epileptic fit or something. He had a brain seizure and it rewired his brain. So before, normal five-year-old kid. Afterwards, he's a mathematical savant. Boom, the next day. And so, for example, I could ask him, Daniel, what's the... David, but it's a DT. What's the 17th root of four? Not the square root. What's the 17th root of four? He would just go, oh...

point one, six, and just reel it off like that quickly. And you think, wow, he's like doing all that in his head. No, this is his process. It's so cool. So he's being interviewed on this documentary. And they said, how the hell do you do that? And he said, well, every number counts.

is sort of a colored blob. The interviewer said, what? He said, well, think Play-Doh. So the interviewer says, so what's the number eight? He's throwing out a number, right? I can't remember what he said exactly, but he went, oh yeah, eight. I kind of like the number eight. It's sort of a bluish ball and there are two yellow sort of ear-like things on it. That's eight. And it

If you were to ask him a year from now, what's eight? He'd say exactly the same thing. Oh, I told you, it's that blue thingy. The tube yellow. And what's 12? Oh, 12. Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of black. There's some red on the bottom and green on the sides. Okay, so get this. So how do you do your calculations? He said, I just see the shapes that kind of mixed into each other and out pops red.

a new colored blob. And I'm just reading off what the blob is. He has no idea. It's not like he's doing calculations you and I would understand really fast. He's not. He has no clue how he's doing it. And clearly that's his unconscious mind. And I mean, it's really incredible. So I think that's a really important, like anyone interested in maximizing who they are,

The instrument that they've been given, born into this world with, body, head, the emotions, all of it, making the most use of it. You really got to train the unconscious because it's so powerful. And for me, the access is through my body. And I think that's a pretty easy one for most people. Adam, I'm wondering for you, I know your background with chess. Did you have an intuitive kinesthetic feeling around pieces on the board?

So it's interesting. No, I didn't. And I say interesting because one of my non-gifts is being able to visualize. I can feel things right in my body, but I have a hard time visualizing them. So there's a kind of chess that's called blindfold chess. And the world record, imagine thinking how complex a chessboard is. With all the pieces, you're playing a game. There are lots of things you've got to remember.

I think the world record is by a guy named George Koltanowski, who was good, never like a world champion or something. But boy, his blindfold chess, I think his record for blindfold chess is like 424 games simultaneously. Imagine this. In his mind, he's walking to the next board. He's got his eyes closed. So he's not actually walking. He's in a seat. He goes, okay, board number 217. And you see it perfectly. Yeah, it's remarkable.

remarkable. I don't have that. And like, I'm actually kind of, it's hard for me actually to visualize board, even one board in front of me, it was kind of hard to visualize. And I, even though I've acquired, I'm pretty good chess master and to get much better, I'd really have to train it. But actually I, I, I don't have, you really have to be able to do that to be able to really visualize. So I, there are mental shortcuts I use to,

to do that, like I'll verbalize things and I can remember the words, but I can't actually remember the sequential things as you say. So the answer is no, I actually have a hard time doing that. But you find workarounds. Well, I'm wondering for you then, did that weakness, did that turn into a strength for you within chess? Oh, so here, it's so funny. You should talk about weaknesses turning into strengths. I think all the greats

That's what they did. Oh, my ears are peaked at that. Yeah, they took a weakness and turned it into a strength. Okay, I'll give you an example. Wayne Gretzky. And so Wayne Gretzky, I said the Edmonton Oilers, I think was his team. Anyway, he entered the NHL. And he obviously to get the NHL, you're pretty good, right? You get to the professional leagues. You're very, very good.

And he realized physically, there's no way I'm going to last that long in this game.

Because he's, by like normal human standards, pretty big guy. I don't know, 6'1", 6'2". He's not that big. And there are lots of bigger guys. And hockey is a brutal sport. So he's thinking, okay, I got to develop a style of play that minimizes the amount of hits I get. So his weakness is the lack of strength. I think he was like the weakest man on his team, like in the weight room. Like, wait, wait.

So his style of play evolved out of that weakness and he became the best ever, right? The great one. And it evolved out of like, okay, avoiding contact with others. And for me, we talked about simplicity. I have actually a very limited working memory. I can't think of too many things at once, same time. I know many people, I remember like dozens of things. I have a hard time functioning.

And because remember, you're thinking, you're conscious thinking, you have your working memory and it's the ideas. And the more ideas and things you're trying to think about, the less processing power you have left over to kind of deal with it. And I was always really keenly aware of that. I was trying to simplify things down to like one or two or three ideas max. And then I can really go deep on those ideas. So the weakness that I can't,

Thinking too much at one time forced me to simplify things because it's the only way I could act, operate. Really, you'll look at anyone. For example, Bruce Lee. One of my favorites. Mine too. Yeah. Mine too. I know his daughter, Shannon. She's really devoted to passing on his legacy. And so Bruce Lee was not a big guy at that time.

And he was physically as strong as you could possibly be, probably pound for pound of any human being ever. So what could he do to deal with that weakness? Small? Very strong, but not strong as much bigger was speed. So he focused on developing his speed. And I don't know if you've ever seen Bruce Lee videos slowed down like 10x. Mm-hmm.

but even when it's slowed down 10x, right? So it's still hard to follow. When it's 10 times slower than he's actually moving, wait, in other words, his fist is going out and come back so fast that even when the film is slowed down 10x, you have a hard time following it. That's how fast he was. And of course, power is, velocity is a component of power, right? His weakness, right? Lack of size,

I don't know, five, seven, something ish. And he was, again, pound for pound, super strong. But if he was up against a guy 250 pounds, he's not as strong as that guy. But he was probably 20 times faster. So the power advantage he had was he's 10 times more powerful than the bigger guy. Yeah. Muggsy Bows, right? The basketball player was 5'1". Wow. That's a pretty big weakness. I say weakness in professional basketball. Yeah.

But for him, it was a strength because all the other players now have to play his game. Like he was always getting fouled because you didn't see him because they're 7-1. And so one thing he developed because he knew he would be fouled a lot is he was the best free throw shooter in basketball. He was like 90 feet because, okay, I'm going to get that ball. There's going to be a lot. I'm going to be at the free throw line lots. And I want to nail every single shot.

I think it was, we threw a percentage was like 93 or something. I can't remember exactly. It's distant memory, but so there, his weakness lacked height was his strength. Your weakness forces you to find workarounds and those workarounds are so powerful that you're,

better off than someone who didn't need to work around. Adam, there's a story of yours that I think provides some really interesting insights and it's around weaknesses and workarounds and it's your freshman year in homeroom playing a game of chess. Oh yeah, yeah. Can you just tell the story and I'm more curious of what it led to. Boy, that brings back memories. So it's a freshman year in high school.

And again, take a simple idea. All these things are going to come back to us. And freshman year of high school, it's the first day. And then it was homeroom. And homeroom is usually 20 minutes of nothing. Administratives, no one pays attention. When a plane, when they tell you how to seat balance everything, no one's paying attention. Right.

And yet they have to go through the motions. Home room was that. First day, and the kid in front of me, I can't think of his name right now. Anyway, kid in front of me, I was in the second row. He was in the front row. He turns around, because we got 20 minutes to waste. And it's a little magnetic chess set, like about that big, really pretty small, like, I don't know, six inches by six inches. He turns around, and it's with the board set up, it's little magnetic pieces.

And he said, hey, you know how to play chess? And I said, yes, I do. Of course, my father had once explained the rules, but I had never played a chess game. It's like someone who says, you know how to play baseball? And you go, yes, I do. Yeah. Like you looked at the rules in a book and you saw a couple of games. I didn't know anything, really. I knew how the pieces moved. I knew what the concept of checkmate, but I didn't know anything else. And so he beats me in like five or six months. I just...

And he kind of gloated. And I said, oh, I won another game. And he beat me in another, probably the same five minutes, probably saw in the same stupid trap. And every day that week, that's how we would spend homework. Line a game or two or three. He beat me every... And at the end of that week, I resolved by the end of the year, I'm going to beat him. But I'm telling you, that was the sole goal. By the end of the year, I want to beat this kid. Because all I cared about back then was swimming. And I was training four to...

a max four to five and a half hours a day, seven days a week, most of the year. So my only goal was I'm going to beat this kid. I just, he was so gloating about it. Like, no sir. So I went to the local bookstore and they hadn't, I think I'm going to buy a book on chess. Like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm 13 years old. So I buy a book. The only, they had one chess book. It was called Profile of a Prodigy. And the people who are listening to me talk right now

I don't care about Adam's chess, but the story is very interesting and you know it, Sean, right? So about how a simple thing can lead to really cool things in your life. So anyway, it's a book, it's called Profile of a Prodigy. And it was a book on the life of Bobby Fischer. Now, this is four years before he was to win the world championship. So there's a book on his life story, but he's not even a world champion yet.

So I pick up this book and it's a biography, but at the time he was 25 years old. That's it. And again, four years before he was going to win the world championship. So I pick up this book, again, not knowing it. It's not a book how to play chess. It's a book about a chess player, but it was the only one in the bookstore. I lived in Evanston, Illinois, right outside Chicago.

where Northwestern is. So anyway, so I pick up this book and I read this story about this chess player dude, Bobby Fischer. I didn't know who he was, but I was so impressed. I thought, wow, he's the best chess player ever. What did I know? It wasn't like I was a student of the game, really. And back at the book, there were 75 games that he had played. He had started playing when he was, well, he actually started when he was six.

but in tournaments and stuff where there are records of it, when he was, I think, 11, 10 or 11. He's now 25 years old, 14 years worth of games, and 75 of them were in the back of this book. So we're getting close to interesting punchlines for those of you listening. So the games are without any explanation. It's just a list of the games. The way, if you were a music student, here are 75 songs, the lyrics written by John Lennon or whatever, right?

And I would play over the games. I didn't know anything. Didn't he say, oh, this is why he made that move. I just played over the games over and over. So I'd come home from my second workout in the afternoon to get home and I'd eat dinner and spend like three or four hours at night playing over those games. I didn't know what I was doing. And again, my only goal was I'm going to beat this kid in homeroom.

And then there was another book actually that came out about the same year called My 60 Marrow Games. And this was by Bobby Fischer, where he actually annotated 60 of his games. Again, people who are listening now, you're going, oh, who cares about these games? Okay, well, I was so impressed by those games. Again, I don't know anything. I've been playing chess, which is to say with the kid in the homeroom, for a couple months. And I said, oh, I got to find all of his games.

So there were 60 in the second book, but a lot of them were duplicates. So in book form, those two books were the only two books that had as games. There are about 100 games. So every weekend, I'd take the train to downtown Chicago and go to the public library, and I'd go through back issues of chess magazines. There's also a library in Evanston. I would go through that, but I'd gone through other magazines. So imagine like prospecting for gold. I would read through

hundreds of magazines to spot a game that he had played, say, five years ago. And I'd write it down. So now I have a notebook of about 700 of his games that he had played that I had personally transcribed. And I just play them over and over. And I started to get good. But then it became really good. And it turns out my chess team was also very good, my high school chess team. And when I was a junior, so it's just two years later, I'm with...

seven other guys flying from Evanston to New York City for the high school nationals. And again, I never had a coach, never any books on how to play the game. All I did was just play over his games, right? It's kind of not an efficient way to learn. And anyway, so it's now the high school nationals. There's seven of us. The top four of us will be a team consists of four players. So the top four of the eight, sorry, there's seven others. There are eight of us. The top four are

of us would be the team from Evanston High School that would represent Evanston, right? The top four scores by the end of the tournament. So this is actually a very cute, fun story, even if you don't care about chess. So it's an eight-round tournament. And after seven rounds, we were so far ahead of the next place team that we went out and celebrated. It's not to sign around. So we were three points ahead of Stuyvesant, which is a high school in New York, and which is a whopping big league.

because only four scores count. So we had three already going into the final round. Stuyvesant, if we just won one more game, we're national champs. The best Stuyvesant could do, and they'd have to win every game, it's very hard, would tie us. So our first board, a guy named Harold, draws really quickly.

So now we're three and a half points ahead of number second place team. I'm getting to Bobby Fisher in about 60 seconds. One by one, every one of us lost. So in the final round, out of eight points, we scored a half point and eight potential points. And Stuyvesant won every single one of their games, which is very hard to do.

Because the odds are 50-50 that you're going to win a game, right? It's one half to the fourth. The odds were one in 16 that they would win every game. Anyway, so it was such a fluke. And we'd celebrated the night before because we thought, yay, there's no way anyone can catch us. And we'd lost by half a point. By the way, the PS is next year we won. And we set a record that stands to this day. We can crush that. But anyway, so it's now the next day.

It's we've just lost the national championship. Like, oh, I'm not going to say this, but really pissed. So the rest of my team flew back to New York. It was a Sunday, right? It's actually Easter Sunday. The rest of my team flew back to New York, sorry, back to Evanston from New York. And I stayed in New York because my parents lived in New York. Actually, I was living in Evanston going to high school there. My parents lived in New York. So it's Easter Sunday. I'm 16 years old.

Then I was spending with my mother and it was a beautiful April day. And we head towards Central Park and we were at 34th and 6th. I don't know if you, there's no New York. It's a very busy intersection near Macy's, not far from the Empire State Building. Very busy. And it's Easter Sunday. I don't know, probably in that quarter, 10,000 people, right? Like packed. So we're waiting for the light to change. And to this day, still, I don't know why.

My eyes travel slightly to the left, so diagonally across the Macy's. And in that sea of people, I spot Bobby Fischer, my hero. And he was a recluse, like spotting him...

What are the odds? So I turned to my mother and said, Mom, I know I said I would spend today with you, but I'll see you later. So I'm dashing across the, you know, like dodging cars like I'm like a cop, like chasing. Because I have like a few seconds because you get lost in the crowd again. He was 6'3".

6'2", 6'3". So he was tall, but I still thought, oh, you're going to lose him in the crowd. And I'm never going to get this chance again. But my hero, all he'd done for the last three years was play over his games. So I'd run up to him. You might think somebody would say, oh, my gosh, Mr. Fisher, you're my hero. You're like, I think you're the best, right? They'd gush something like that.

But no, I've been playing his game so many times. That's all I did that I knew each one of them by heart. So I had all these questions. Right. And here's the dude who played the games. Since that, Mr. Fisher, in 1962, when you played Ryshevsky in the U.S. championship, why did you play Pawn to King Rook three? I'm with sense. He looked at me like I'm some alien. Right. Like, how does this kid know who I am?

A year later, he was the most famous person on the planet. Number two was Muhammad Ali. So when he won the world championship, he was literally the most famous person. But this was a year and a half before. And so no one would have recognized unless you played chess. So here's this kid who not only recognized me in the crowd, but is citing a game off the top of his head that I played like years and years ago. Yeah.

And he said, "Well, I don't know. I'm going to have lunch. Want to join me?" Just like that. I said, "Yes, I would." And he was my mentor after that. The next year, before we won the national championship, we had to fly back to New York, the team. And he was preparing for the Spassky match, the world championship, which is a pretty serious time. The world championship is on the line. And I got to spend two weeks with him as he prepared.

So I was with him in his room as he studied Sebastian's games two weeks. And we played a lot of blitz chess, which is like you have to finish your entire game in five minutes. And because I knew all of his games by heart and all his openings, in fact, in some ways, I'm a little better than he did. I would play his own moves against him. And so he's really playing himself now.

So at a certain point I would wonder or something. And yeah, anyway, so that's how I, the only reason it was worth not addressing someone listening to this is how a simple passion to throw yourself into really throw yourself into, and then you're open to possibilities and that really amazing things can happen. And so, yeah, it's a really special moment for me that I had earned that

Because I knew all his games by heart, right? I had earned, it wasn't just that I was a fanboy. Well, this kid knows everything I've ever played and I know only a few of those games have been published in books. How the heck has he done this? So there, you know. When opportunity meets preparation.

Yeah. That has me thinking, Adam, you've been remarkable at understanding the impact of questions and asking incredible questions. So this is going to be a little bit out there. I'm wondering though, say you were someone's current day Bobby Fisher and your 13 year old self runs into yourself on the street corner of 34th and 6th. What is the crucial question that 13 year old should be asking of you?

But see, I don't... Okay, it's an interesting question. And I don't know that a 13-year-old or anyone would get that interested in what Adam has to say or do because it's such an eclectic path that I've had. And... That's why I see so much beauty in it. So maybe anyone has said, what's the common denominator? You've done so many different things. What links it all? And that would be an interesting question for me. But that's a really good question. You think about...

to the power of questions. So the first time I met Buffett was at a fundraiser. It was a sit-down dinner, 12 of us at a fundraising dinner. And I'm not going to mention any names or anything, but it was a fundraiser. So I'm not going to say what it was for, but it was, sorry, 10 of us with Buffett. And each of us paid a fair amount of money for the fundraiser to have this dinner. And each of us got

to ask one question. The whole dinner, that was it. You could ask one question. And not surprisingly, everybody asked him investment questions. Yes, Warren Buffett. Let's ask him about investing. I think it's something he knows about. And so it's my turn. And the reason we only got to ask one question is that we'd paid a lot of money to have dinner with Buffett. And everybody else, everybody at the dinner knew that everybody else

would like start to hide the conversation if you could start to talk right i mean i wouldn't know but everybody knew that somebody there would start to like really engage too much and we'd pay to hear buffett speak yeah that was the rule one question so everybody asked about investing this and that and i asked him my question was this what keeps you up at night this is a man who's thought about the world very deeply there he's been through a world war a depression

many economic cycles, many cultural cycles. He's seen it all. And really one of the wisest men who ever lived, really, he and Munker. So I said, what keeps you up at night? I remember his saying, oh, let me think about that. And because he's seen it all, not much keeps him up at night. And

So yeah, I think the question that you ask anyone in that kind of situation, like that you just asked me, is it's a non-obvious one. And it's an authentic one. And when I met Fisher, who literally was my hero, I mean, not the last three years, but spend, I don't know, three or four hours every night playing over his games. And I wasn't trying to memorize. I just, they were so beautiful. But I knew them all by heart, as it turns out.

So when I went up to him in that moment, I was authentic. There's something else in that moment, actually. And this is a really important to go back to your early question about the ideas you live by, right? Is that my attention was totally focused on him. If I had thought for us, if so, there was no room to be self-conscious. And when I was with my mother, a hundred yards away,

I didn't hesitate for a second. I didn't go, okay, wait, there's Bobby Fischer. Okay. I said, I run a day with you. Let me think about this. It was like, boom. And then when I was with it, when I immediately ran up to him, my dude, this is my Shiro. I wasn't, it, it didn't even occur to me to think about myself like, Oh, what would he think if I ran up to him and asked him something? Like I, I literally wasn't aware of myself. I was only aware of him.

And the question I had, by the way, that was one question. I had hundreds of questions because I knew all of his games. So that was just the one that spilled out of my mouth first. So that brings me to a really powerful notion, like inhalation, exhalation. This is another powerful notion that your attention should either be in one of two places, at the task at hand or on the other person in front of you. You're either alone working on something

And if you're not, you're with someone, that person is your full attention. And then, and that was another epiphany for me. Well, actually, I've always been that way. But about the power of that, like right now, my attention is on you. So I don't know, I have no idea what you are thinking about me. So there's no self-consciousness.

And so sometimes people say, Adam, wow, you seem so confident in public situations. But confidence would mean I was aware of myself. I'm not confident and I'm not confident either. I'm only aware of the person in front of me or the task at hand. And so when we encounter, when we become aware of a negative emotion, fear, doubt, anger, any kind of negative emotion,

It's a reminder to refocus your attention on the person in front of you or the task at hand. It's really just do that. And other things will take care of itself. And if you combine that with that earlier notion about inviting others to play, now if someone's in front of me, they have 100% of my attention and I'm just looking to have a good time. Play. And with no agenda other than the play itself.

There's a line I love. I can't remember who it's attributed to, but this makes me think of it. And that's ecstasy is attention at its fullest. It's a line I've thought a lot about. That's fascinating. So the derivation of ecstasy, in fact, you're exactly right. Funny you should mention that because ecstasy is to be outside of yourself. That's literally what it means. You look up the derivation is to be outside of yourself. That's ecstasy. And again, ecstasy

My attention is on the other person or the task at hand. So each moment, in a sense, is ecstatic, which reminds me of another, well, it's a Greek word, enthusiasm. And the derivation, people are always surprised, the derivation of enthusiasm, like the etymology from the ancient Greek, means to be filled with God.

that the thews enthusiasm the thews is a derivation from theo like theology theo is god and the the greek word for that sorry the latin is inspiration which means to breathe in god and yeah so you're exactly right on on ecstasy that you're outside of yourself and and to be liberated from oneself michael jordan once said that he never once thought about missing a shot

And he couldn't because he was fully focused on making the shot. Because if you're worried about missing the shot, your attention is totally misplaced. He missed lots of shots, but that never entered his head because he's fully focused on making the shot. If he didn't, oh, get the ball back. Stop them from making the shot. So...

Yeah, attention is super important. I'm even blown away hearing about your 13-year-old self, that commitment, that dedication, that focus. Was that a skill you had prior or was that love for what you were trying to do in chess? Did that bring that out of you?

So it's interesting. Remember, it was a pretty simple goal. I just wanted to be hit in front of that was it was like, oh, I'm going to make the chest team swimming. I was totally dedicated to in a very like, like notice I didn't it didn't occur to me.

to go oh maybe i should find out someone who knows how to get you again maybe there's a chess coach or chess tutor or something no and i didn't actually think about i didn't join the chess team until late my sophomore year like a year and a half later that i didn't i just wanted to be the kid and then oh i really like this uh i like fisher's games and i would just study them and i thought what the hell i may as well play in tournaments so it didn't set out to be any grand goal really then

But yeah, the 13-year-old self. So you asked me something earlier, Sean, and you said about when you're earlier in your career, you're casting about, like, what am I building here with my life? And I had a recollection only a few years ago about something when I was 12. So you mentioned the age 13. So I'm now addressing, I know you have men and women in your audience, right? Listening. Mm-hmm.

I know this is true for men because I was, because I am a man. I don't know if the same thing applies to women, but it's this, and I would assert it, that men know who they are, males know who they are, and will be in the world by the age of 12. 12, four, you're 13. So what, for example, Buffett, when he was 12, his dad took him on a trip from Omaha to New York.

He was 12. This is 1942, right? Depression, World War II, raging and stuff. And his dad takes him from Omaha to New York. And on that trip, takes him among various places, takes him to the New York Stock Exchange. And after that trip, Buffett turns to his dad and he revered his father. He said, dad, I'm going to become the richest man in the world so that I can give it all away.

That was a statement he made to his dad when he was 12. Okay, so get this. And I only realized this a few years ago. So it was a memory. So I remember when I was 12, it was a mid-spring day, say April or May. It was a Sunday and I was walking with my dad. I'm all 12 years old. And I used to have really deep philosophical conversations with my father, always, like hours. Anyway, I'm talking about how much I hate school.

Like I hate school. Why do I have to go to school? Because I always just wanted to be left alone so I could daydream or read whatever I wanted to read. I didn't want to, I kept the doozies. Anyway, so I'm with my dad and I'm talking about how much I hate school. And he turns to me and he asks, so what are you going to do about it? Now he was mean. He meant that as a philosophical problem. Okay. You, Adam, you,

He was saying to me, you're in a situation you don't like and you have to go to school. You're not getting out of that, buddy. So what are you going to do about it? In other words, how are you going to frame this? How are you going to approach this? How are you going to deal with the fact that you're stuck going to school? That was embedded within the question. And I said, and I remember to this day, but I had forgotten the memory. I remember this. So I said, kind of frustrating. I said, I don't know, maybe one day I'll start my own.

Now, I had no entrepreneurial inkling at the time. I'm only 12 years old. It'd be like someone saying, oh, I hate food. And my father said, what are you going to do about it? I don't know. Maybe one day I'll start my own restaurant. But that's what I said. Like for a 12-year-old boy who hated school and it wasn't like, oh, yes, I could do school better. I hated it.

I didn't like it. And I think anyone else would like it. It's not like, oh, yeah, I want to torture kids too. I don't go to school. So I say that without any, I hadn't thought about it. Anyway, so mind you, I'm sharing a memory that I only had about three or four years ago. And, well, you know, because you know me and my background. When I was 25, I got out of Oxford and a law degree. Don't know what I'm doing. And a year later, I had co-founded a company called the Princeton Reviewed.

So I started a school 13 years after I said I was, that still goes on today. Millions of kids have read things that I developed, you know, eons ago. I only, I remembered that memory only a few years ago. And I went, wow, I did start a school just like I told my dad. And it wasn't like a vow, like Buffett, his statement to his father, that was a commitment. I'm going to become the richest, but he was proclaiming that.

I wasn't proclaiming it. Oh, yes, I'm going to start a school. No. And I've asked other, my male friends, and they go, yeah, it doesn't have to be by the age 12. Sorry, it doesn't have to be at the age 12, but by the age 12. And I say this, so if you are a male, and you're like, oh, what can I be doing in the world? That when you were a boy,

You knew stuff about yourself. And I say the reason 12 is so important is to cut off is by the time you hit 13 and you enter puberty, all of a sudden you begin to compare yourself to other people and dating. I got to look good for that. And it muddies the core of authentic proclamation.

Like, as just a boy, I want to do that. Not to prove myself. But yeah, I think it's worth everyone. And it may be true also for girls, women, that the path is, that it's worth revisiting your childhood memories, the things you loved to do. So there, that's another invitation. I'm inviting people to go back to their memories. Okay, let's see. Yeah, I was trying, I always liked writing verses. What was that about?

whatever it is. Yeah, that's beautiful. And such a, I feel like a very important exercise to do that. One of the things you hit on there that just kind of has me thinking right now is around 13, you hit puberty, you're comparing yourself. It's almost like that childlike, I mean, it's just unobstructed, authentic self-expression at that age. And that's how you uncover that through line, those golden threads. Exactly. So well said. That's where you discover the through line because you just stated it. It was very odd, that through line for me

because I was an introvert. It wasn't like, I'm going to start in school so I can talk to others. And this is how much of an introvert I was. So in high school, yeah, I'm on the chess team and I'm on the swim team. But basically those are the only people I talked to. And there were some people that told me after I graduated that they had never seen me speak, not once in four years of high school, not once, just in my own little world. And again, I had that epiphany and I was very much in for my whole life. And then

Something shifted about six years ago. Oh, people. Adam's in a candy store with lots of people. Just have fun. Play. So, yeah, and I'm doing serious stuff in the world, and yet it's all a form of play. With that, one of the things that you've brought in tremendous clarity to, for me in my life, is deciding to not ask yourself the question, what do I want to do? But more importantly, who do I want to be? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And yes. Yeah. Unless you love doing something, right? Like, oh, yes. Like Brady. Ah, football. I love football. I want to be a football player. And yeah, but it then becomes, who do you want to be in the world? Which goes back to that earlier conversation we had about what statement are you making to the world? And the statement I'm making with much of what I do is play is really important.

Everything you do. I mean, philosophically important, not just, ah, you should have a good time. Really, that's the highest form of gratitude for the gift of life is play. Yeah, it's the highest form of reverence. And the most serious things should be approached playfully.

And so anyway. Yeah, you mentioned some of the things you're doing in this world are pretty serious and they are. But what I have such a deep, profound respect for what you do is the clarity you can bring to those things where things don't make sense to the majority of people. Somehow you're able to find clarity there. I would love to just hear you talk through this. Well, I mentioned before about my weakness, the weakness, the trait that comes out of a weakness is that I actually don't

have a hard time understanding complexity, things that are really complicated. So I'm always taking complexity. Really, I have like a Cocoa Puff brain. Reduce it down to something that I can understand. And because I, in that process of distilling it down, I get to really core truths that are denied to people who can deal with complexity. But that complexity is really unwieldy.

And which is why you need, again, whether in performance sports or art or anything, boil it down to a few things and then you can really use those things very well. So, yeah, it's all about distilling. And like I distilled the creative process or the human creation, like, OK, let's boil it down. OK, and it.

much of it comes down to deconstructing it and looking at it in the simplest possible way. So I remember as a boy, my father, again, we had these deep philosophical conversations, eight and go. And I remember he was saying something and he said, if you can't explain it simply, you really don't understand it. And

And so language use, and most people explain things really in complex ways. I alluded to a very thick book by a very famous person on how to live your life. And couldn't you boil that whole thick book? Give me just a few rules that I can use. And so it comes from a really ruthless distance on language.

on making things simple enough so that I, Adam, can understand them. I figure if I can understand them, okay, then other people can. So yeah, that's like when I started The Princeton Review with my friend, John Kantzman. And I had no idea what I was doing when I started. I don't know, maybe I'll tutor a couple of kids a day, write novels on the side. And it grew into what became The Princeton Review. And so really,

Actually, now that you say it, I'm just thinking about this for the first time ever, is that it's the same thing that I threw myself into the chess. You just throw yourself into it and you just keep digging, digging, digging. And from that, you get some core, really few core principles. And then you realize, wow, this is think about it like this. When Wayne Gretzky was playing hockey,

He was playing a very different game from everybody else on the ice, right? Same with Michael Jordan or anybody in any of those, or Bruce Lee fighting. He's fighting, his fighting is very different. He's actually than whoever his opponent is. Yeah, you just get the idea there. They look at things very, these grades are very simply. And yeah, because it's the only way actually you can function at a very high level.

And one of my favorite questions, which I stole from Steve Cohen, the Mets owner, and I was talking with him about something and he's Fred. Well, how would you know if you were wrong? No, sorry. He said, what would you need to see to know that you were wrong? And there, that's a boom question. And because...

Most people, when they're presenting ideas, whether it's to buy gold or invest in this or buy NFTs or whatever it is, they have a view and they're trying to convince you to do something. And always the question is, okay, well, thanks so much. I go, what would you need to see to know that I should be shorting gold? They don't have an answer to that question. They haven't thought it through.

So that's a great internal check. What would I need to see to know that I was wrong? And of course, you know about confirmation bias. And so human beings are designed to look for information that confirms what it is they already believe. I'm doing exactly the opposite, always in real time. So once I form a belief, I am now actively looking to disprove it. I don't, if I believe X,

i said i believe that gold will go up i've done the analysis gold will move higher i don't look for information to confirm what i already know what would be the be a waste so all i'm doing is i'm looking up i'm looking at very specific things what would i need to see to know i should be shorting gold like interest rates just spiked gold's going down but the dollar just jumped two percent

this week, goals going down. Like I have very specific things and you can do that even in your personal life. Like what would I need to see to know that this person, like I think this person is committed to what I'm doing or what we're doing. What would I need to see to tell me that wasn't the case? And to, again, it's anti-confirmation bias. So I think that's a really important another tool to add to our Batman utility belt. When we go camping with Moss in Canada. Yeah.

I hope that this question is really fascinating to me. I hope you don't view this as two in the weeds, but you do such a good job at deconstructing these timeless principles. And I'm just wondering for you, like, are you capturing these? Are you writing them down? So you revisit or once you reach a deep truth, you just know it and it's just in your head. Remember, it's not in my head. I'm living it, right? It's not something I have to remind myself. I actually...

So for example, this is a really good example. This is actually a very profound topic. So all of your questions are really good, being in the weeds with you. Let's say I'm talking to somebody and I'm telling them this, for example, like when I saw Bobby Fischer and it changed my life in a pretty significant way. And like how often does somebody bump into their hero, right?

And that person was a famous reckless. I'm like literally one of 10 people in his whole life that he ever let in because he massively distrusted everyone, unfortunately.

And anyway, oh shoot, now I lost train of thought. What was I talking about just a second ago? I was asking in terms of when you're deconstructing these ideas, you live them as opposed to just having them. Oh yes, okay, now I remember, now I remember the train of thought. Sorry, again, Adam Kokopoff on the last train of thought. So go back to, so if I, someone listening to that story might go, if they were right in the room when I was saying it,

They might say, well, Adam, there are no coincidences, right? How often have you heard someone say that? You know, there are no coincidences. Okay, so the person asserting that, do they live their life by that statement? Like if you actually believed that there are no coincidences, and I'm confessing to you now that I don't. So for example, if you said, Adam, what are the odds that you would bump into your hero?

I'm in crowded New York City, and I wasn't even living in New York City. I was living in Evanston. And he would just happen to show up when you're on a corner that you almost never are on with your mother, crowded. And I would say the odds, looking back on it, were 100%, which is another interesting topic. Maybe we'll get to it. So they say there are no coincidences, but they don't actually live their day-to-day life by that.

And so any idea that I get, I ask myself, can I actually use this in real time? So for example, I've told you that, and you know this from other times we've spoken about this, about creating fun and delight, like inviting others, be playful and invite them to play with no agenda.

So how do I live that life? So there are times when somebody says something and I want to go, you know, get big. Oh, that's not true. And I will find myself in that moment in real time going is what I'm about to say going to increase the fun and delight in the situation? Or is it going to do the opposite? There are a lot of times I catch this. Oh, yeah.

I can't say that even though I'm really tempted. And so, yeah, there are lots of times I go, I want to say or do something. And yet I know it violates that principle. By the way, I'm not perfect at times when I do just go.

But don't. But as often as I can, as a human being, other things equal. I ask myself, so there, I optimize around maximizing the play in any given situation. That's what I'm optimizing for. And so someone else might be optimizing to get noticed or this or that. And I'm not judging those, whatever, but I'm very optimistic.

clear about optimizing around something. So if an idea doesn't help you live your life or help others that you can share, live their lives, like you started this off and said, well, let's, we're going to up levels here in this conversation. We've actually discussed lots of things. So I don't write them down. I live them.

But I don't think there's much to be said, really. I think that all that can be said about life, in other words, that would constitute, this is all the wisdom that is known, can be reduced down to a very few simple, like not much to be said. And then everything else is sort of a corollary of those few principles. So yeah, I think it's about just living and doing so mindfully. And do you really...

this is so cliche but walk the walk or rock guitar or what you know what i mean like do you actually embody that principle mindfully in real time minute to minute and i i it's so really vitally important like in anything you've read of munger and buffett but they are absolutely living that day-to-day minute-to-minute that's how they live their lives

There's no doubt. So I think that's really important to live mindfully around optimizing whatever you're trying to optimize in the world. This gift we've been given. And really as a planet, I mentioned that I'm doing some serious stuff in the world. So one of the things that I'm doing is I pose myself the following question. And it's a pretty serious one. So what if humanity, our species, was...

at a critical existential crisis right now. That if we don't get this moment right, this moment, next few years, we are likely gonna spiral down into a very bad situation, like possibly the end of our species. Pascal, French philosopher mathematician, he said something known, of course, as you know, Pascal's wager. Like he chose to believe in God

Because it's a four by four matrix. I believe in God or I don't. And God exists or doesn't. So again, you go through the matrix. If I believe in God and he exists, yes, good for me. I'm lucky forever. If I believe in God, but he doesn't exist, no foul, no harm. If I don't believe in God and he doesn't exist, no foul, no harm. But if I don't believe in God and he does exist, I'm in trouble.

So you just go through the little four by four grid, math, physics, philosophy. He was. So therefore I choose to believe in God. So here's Adam's wager. Here's my conjecture. We are either at the end of times for our species, humanity, or we're not. And do you believe that or not? And if we are and we don't do anything, we're screwed. In other words, if we are, in fact, if this is like the end of the road,

And I know people, of course, they go, oh, you're just being alarmist in past. We've dealt with very serious things, World War II, depression, lots of serious crisis. In the moment, it seems it's never been worse. And I'm asserting after a lifetime of thinking about things, this is, I can think of no other time in history ever that was this serious. And we don't have time to go into it, but so I am either right in that assertion or I'm not.

punchline coming in about 60 seconds. If Adam is right and we don't do anything, we don't change what we're doing. Remember, you're not getting the results you want. Got to change what you're doing. If we don't change what we're doing, we're screwed. If Adam is correct. If Adam is incorrect, then it's not the end of times and we don't change what we're doing. Okay, it's still not a great world. Clearly, there are big problems. And if we

So if Adam's incorrect, it's not the end of time. So if we don't change, and if we do change, well, that's also good, because things could be improved. So either way, it argues that you should, we as a planet need to change big time. Everyone listening to me right now has this sense that the world is flying apart. There's a great poem by Yeats written in 1917, in the World War II called The Second Coming.

and he said the world is flying apart anarchy and he he said the best lack all conviction and the worst of us are full of passionate intensity and that's like such a description really if you're listening to me right now you should look that palm up the second coming it's very short very very short and that's 1917 so 105 years ago

in the aftermath of world war one which was horrific so i said all that so to now make the following statement or ask the following question if you thought it was the end of times then in other words for our species like as a as humanity we have really messed things up and we have the technology now to do a lot of damage really quickly what steps would you take and you have to get it right

And I've been pondering that question for five years. And I've come up with an answer. Like, well, what would you do if you knew you had to get everyone to change what they were doing? And there was only one, you had one shot at it. Do you remember the movie Armageddon? Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. So in Armageddon, those of you who haven't seen, if you haven't, you're listening, you haven't seen the movie. So it came out like, I don't know, 2000, this comet is headed towards Earth.

And if Bruce Willis and his ragtag team of wildcatters, if they don't stop that comet, it's game over. So they have to stop the comet. And so I look at the world with that kind of urgency and have for the last five years and have addressed it. And I think I figured out an answer. It takes a little while, and I'm about to publish a white paper on it called The Renaissance Project. So...

which is really in your questions your in the weed questions have been so good because really it all circles back to who do i want to be in the world what's and share and there's play and there's a world that's really falling apart there's a lot of pain in the world clearly and it's getting worse every day and really when i think back about history i look back as the difference between now and then

is the technology. We can do a lot of harm really fast, really fast. Genetic engineering just takes one virus to get out. We're all wiped out. We're a new life form. Oh, man. You know, AI is a very serious threat. There are all these technological threats, not to mention the social and political and economic unrest in the world. I've been

Thinking very deeply. And again, here's the proviso to the question. What would you do? And you knew you had to succeed, not make a best effort. Like you had to stop the comment. So there, that's a question I've been working on as deeply as the other questions you've heard me think about. And again, have to succeed, not just good college try. But even though it sounds like a really serious topic, and it is, I'm playful when I think

approach it and I'm gathering resources to, to make it happen. So there, yeah. Adam, thank you for this, for the wisdom, the insights, the details along the way. This has just been, like we mentioned five years in the making. This was a true pleasure for me. I would love to know one final question though. If you could do this long form conversation with anyone dead or alive, just not a family member or friend, who would you want to spend an evening with? Just asking questions of. Wow.

Wow. A bunch of names come to me. Oh, that's so tough. Okay. Here's a thought experiment. I get to meet Jesus Christ and have dinner with him. And today, in other words, I get to talk to him today. And I say, did you, knowing that much of your wisdom has been misinterpreted, would you say anything different?

Seeing the world that you see today, if you could go back and say things differently, would you say things differently? So there, that would be a very interesting conversation. And because here's a man clearly, and he's not the only man in history or woman in history, was dedicated to up-leveling as many people as he or she could. And yet, if they were to look at the world and all the wisdom that they imparted,

Man, it made a difference. Of course, it has those. Every piece of advice is an invitation to accept it or reject it. It comes back to invitation, right? You can only invite people. Here, that's the door out of your jail cell, human being. There, that's the door. You can open it. You can go right out. Or you can choose to stay inside your jail cell that you call life.

You can only point the way. So I'd want to know that because it comes back to me, like trying to help as many people. So given what you now say, what advice would you give yourself? And what advice would you now give me, Adam? So there, that's there. That's, but there, I could think of other people. Adam Robinson, that is a beautiful place to close out what I hope would be one of multiple conversations on what got you there. So thanks again. Yes, I insist. Let's go back in the weeds.

And then we're going to tweet and invite Elon Musk to go camping with us. And what the hell? And ask lots of questions.

You guys made it to the end of another episode of What Got You There? I hope you guys enjoyed it. I really do appreciate you taking the time to listen all the way through. If you found value in this, the best way you can support the show is giving us a review, rating it, sharing it with your friends, and also sharing on social. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Looking forward to you guys listening to another episode.