6 Lessons That Improved My Life - Season 2 Round Up
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

Hey friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive. If you're new here, my name is Ali, and in each episode, I chat to authors, creators, entrepreneurs, and other inspiring people about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that can help us collectively on our shared journey of living healthier, happier, more productive lives. This episode is a little bit special because we've actually reached the end of season two of the podcast. It's been pretty inspiring. It's been great. It's been very exciting speaking to all the guests that we've had

across the last few weeks on the podcast. And so this video is going to be a roundup of six of my favorite lessons that I've learned through the season of the podcast. We're going to be talking about lessons in meaningful living, lessons in entrepreneurship, lessons in dating, lessons in side hustles, lessons in time management and lessons in goal setting. Before we go there, just a few announcements. Firstly, the podcast is not going anywhere. We are returning for season three.

And in the meantime, in between season two and season three starting, we're going to be having some bonus episodes and some Q&As with me. So if you haven't subscribed yet, this is a good chance to do so, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening on any podcast platform. Secondly, we are doing an end of season survey. So in the show notes and in the video description, you'll find linked a survey. We'd love to get your thoughts on the podcast, how we can make it better, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, all that stuff, because we want to continue kind of showing up each week and doing cool interviews and conversations with people.

and trying to provide as much value as we can for you guys. And thirdly, we are actually in the process of building a community around my YouTube channel, around the stuff, around the people that watch and listen to my stuff who are on this shared journey of living healthier, happier, productive lives. And so we've actually started a Discord channel, a Discord community, Discord server, whatever the term is.

the terminology is that the kids use these days. It is called the friend zone and it's completely free to join. There'll be a link in the show notes or in the video description and you can join the friend zone. We've got several thousand people there already. It's super nice and wholesome. We've got a channel for book discussions, podcast discussions, people sharing tips about how to code. We've got like these co-working study sessions. It's really cool, very vibrant, wholesome community, completely free of charge to join. So you can click the link in the video description or in the show notes to join that if you would like.

So those were the announcements. Thank you very much for listening to this season of the podcast, if you've been a listener for any length of time. And now let's roll some of my favorite lessons, favorite moments from this season of the podcast. Let's go for it. Towards the end of the book, you've got a whole section called On a Meaningful Life. People have been trying to answer this question for like millennia. So what's the kind of psychology, research, scientific take on

How do we live a meaningful life? Sure. So a lot of the stuff from that section is taken from... I really like using acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, which has a whole sort of part of that therapy is around understanding your own values and what gives you meaning and purpose in life. And yeah, so I've devoted a whole section to it because I think it's so, so important. And I also think it's important to...

not just do it once, but to keep doing sort of little values check-ins where you just step back, get a bit of a bird's eye view on what's going on in your life at this point, what matters most to you at this point, because it changes, right? What was important to you at 21 might not be the same things that are important to you at 31. So your values change as you go along. But the way that we set it out in therapy is that a value is like

a path that you follow your whole life. There is no end to it, but you just, you value that path. So you want to stay close to it as much as you can. So a goal is something you, once you've done it, you've done it, it's finished. So your goal might be to do a marathon, but your value might be to stay fit and healthy.

And so the marathon becomes one of many possible goals along the way, but your value is to continue to be fit and healthy along the way. So that's the path, is fitness and health. And then there can be lots of hurdles and lots of goals along the way.

But at times, life steers you away from those. So, you know, you might... Life happens and maybe your job is very intense or you have children or whatever it is, and it might steer you away from that path. And so that's why I think it's so important to do these regular...

sort of values check-ins where you go, oh, I'm not feeling quite right. And actually lots of people come to therapy with that sort of sense of, I'm not really sure what the problem is. I just, I'm feeling a bit lost or a bit, you know, life feels a bit meaningless at the moment. And often that's because people have lost touch with what's most important to them or life has steered them away from things that matter to them. Hmm.

And so just getting clarity on what does matter to me, what is the most important thing or things in my life at the moment and what kind of person do I want to be in those areas of my life? Which then allows you to set goals based on the life that you want to have or the person that you want to be. How do you go about figuring out your values?

So there are lots of kind of little exercises you can do. Sometimes you can literally just grab a piece of paper, separate it into little boxes. You might have boxes for family life or lifelong learning or health or creativity. So you can kind of fill those boxes with the different aspects of your life. And then in each box, kind of ask yourself, what kind of person do I want to be in this area of my life? So maybe it's family relationships, relationships

what kind of son do I want to be to my mom? What kind of, or my dad, and you know, what kind of relationship do I want to have? What do I want to represent to those people? How would that show up in terms of behavior and action, you know, daily behavior? And then you just kind of fill it with words or bullet points. And that gives you this,

of what life would be like if you were living in line with all of those values. And sometimes they pull on each other, so sometimes they conflict. You might have this real idea of being a successful entrepreneur, but actually that sucks all of your time and you also want to be a family guy and you want to spend time with your kids. And so often there's this idea, this balancing act where, okay, life has pulled me in one direction and I want to pull it back this way. So it's not about

setting goals and doing them perfectly, it's about always just tipping the balance. You know, I haven't been working out for a while because I've been so focused on work. So I know I'm gonna just kind of come back in this direction a little bit more and balance things out. So it's really just getting clarity.

But it's also not focusing on what happens to you. So it's not saying this is what I want in my life because then things can happen and then you think, oh, failed. It hasn't worked out. It's really not about what happens to you. It's about how you want to be in the face of all the stuff that life throws at us. How do I want to respond to that?

when hard stuff happens? How do I want to respond when I'm in a good place? And stuff like that. MARK MANDEL: Yeah, as you were saying this, I was like, damn, these are some really good questions. I should sit down and answer some of these. So in one of the early drafts of my book proposal, the first chapter was going to be about values and meaning and stuff.

And after doing a bunch of stuff and reading an ACT textbook and things, I realized, OK, let me leave this aside for now. Maybe this is book three or four or five 10 years down the line, 20 or 30 years down the line when I have more experience. Let's stick to the thing that I actually can feasibly talk about, which is productivity and fun and stuff. And so I came across a bunch of these sort of value-finding exercises. So I've kind of figured out what some of my values are, I think. But knowing that--

and then actually using it to change a decision that I would have made otherwise. I haven't really done much of that. Like, let's say someone does these journaling prompts and figures out, okay, I want to be the sort of son that does X, Y, Z. I want to be the sort of parent that does X, Y, Z. How do you translate that into physical, like actual action? Yeah, that's where, you know, the therapy stuff can be really helpful because it's a protected time in the week where you are going to reflect on those values and the things that you want to work on

So they're not necessarily a big problem, but it's in a direction you want to steer to. And so it becomes this place where you're accountable to that and you go and reflect on in hindsight. And that's where it all begins is looking back on things. So you think, okay, here's my map of all these different values I have and the things that are important to me. How am I living in line with them? And how have I been living in line with them in the last two weeks? Or have I? And

When when you look back and you think gosh, I really haven't what what would I need to do? To steer back towards that value or to steer back towards that path and

And then it creates a mini goal for the week ahead, you know, and that's really how therapy works is, you know, you go and you have this sense of accountability for yourself. There are things you want to work on and you see how you've been getting on and you tweak things a bit and you set a new goal for the next week and then you reflect on that again next week. So I think translating kind of ideas and values into action is really about

reflection and planning. So you learn in hindsight, you look back, actually, yeah, if I'm really, really honest with myself in the last couple of weeks, have I been living in line with that value? Whatever it was, enthusiasm, for example. And then, you know, if the answer is not really, you create a set of, you know, specific actions that I will do this week and

to move closer to that. And then the next week you reflect on, well, how was that? Did it move me closer? Does that feel enough? Do I need to do more? Do I need to step back? And those sorts of things. So it's just always balancing and tweaking and never ever doing it perfectly because that's really not the aim.

Yeah, I really like that model of it's like you're steering towards this path that you've kind of decided that this is the thing I care about for now. Do values change much as we grow older? Oh, hugely, I think. Yeah.

for me I I you know when I was I don't know 19 or 20 I never even envisioned myself as as being a parent I was really focused on my studies and learning and traveling and doing all those things um but now that's without a doubt the most important thing in my life so you know that it's only a decade it's only you know um uh you know it's it's not a long time but but when life throws things at you and life changes then you you know what what

what matters to you changes as well. And that's okay. You know, you don't have to be the same person. You learn and grow and you would adapt to that, I think. Nice. So coming back to the overall question of like meaningful life, it sounds like figuring out your values is like a pretty reasonable first step on the path of like, hey, I mean, we all basically know that we want to live a meaningful life, but I think very few of us actually

keep that in mind yeah when because it's just it's it's kind of a bit a bit weird like it's a bit out there to think oh what's the meaning of life okay well let me do some exercises and actually figure this out rather than just dismissing it as oh no one can ever figure that out kind of thing yeah and i think we often look outwards as well don't we we look to you know we're bombarded with media that tell us what life should be about and what our purpose should be and um

it's quite empowering when you give yourself permission to generate your own meaning and say, well, actually, you know, it is up to you what matters to you. And then you can structure life around that. Life's still really, really hard and there are still responsibilities, but how you approach those responsibilities, it's really your choice. And that can be quite sort of refreshing, I think,

to think you don't have to be gaining everybody's approval you have to be looking at well what would life be like if i approved of myself if i approved of myself oh as in like if i were kind of following the path that i've decided is meaningful yeah so if i'm looking for my own approval what what would i be doing you know it's a sort of yes we can get approval from other people but also what would make me really pleased with myself because

those are my values rather than them necessarily being other people's. Can you really dissociate that? Like, you know, let's say I value...

I'm considering applying to Harvard for an MBA. And I keep on second guessing this because I'm like, why am I doing this? I value prestige. I value status. I value these badges of stuff. Is that really me? Or is that what society, plus or minus my family, have instilled into me that makes me feel as if it's coming from within, if that makes sense? MELANIE WARRICK: What's the gut feeling? Do you feel that it's come from outside? MARK MANDEL: No.

I don't feel like it's come from outside. But I also didn't come out of the womb thinking I want to get a degree from Cambridge and Harvard. So there is some level of like, you know, it wasn't a genetic decision. There is some level of like socialization that goes into this sort of stuff. And I guess I wondered to what extent the fact that

I know that probably a large chunk of my identity is socialized to some degree. Does that still make me me or does it make me a product of the society I've been brought up in? And then how do I find my true meaning if...

well, it's society that's told me that a Harvard and Cambridge degree is like a good thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Because we're all a product of our upbringings and our cultures and all those kind of things, aren't we? So, you know, I don't think it's about sort of finding this one truth. I think it's about creating the meaning, holding on to the things that, you know,

what a wonderful thing that would be to do if that was what you would enjoy and find inspiring and exactly. So, you know, I think you can, that's the beauty of it is when you're in a position that you can choose those things, then you can decide, yes, it might be that I've learnt, you know, some of these sort of

ideas around prestige of universities and stuff. But actually, I would really enjoy that. And it would give me a lot of meaning and purpose. It doesn't matter if it came from someone else, if you agree with it, you know? Whereas if you feel pressured and it's not something you want to do, but you feel like you're doing it because, you know, someone will disapprove of you if you don't, then that's slightly different, isn't it? But if it's something you love...

And you would get good memories from. I think it's kind of like, realistically, the reason I go to the gym is not for myself. It's to look more attractive. But I also agree that it's a good thing to do. And therefore, who cares what the prime motivation is? It's a good thing to do. Exactly. You can kind of use all the different aspects of pressure to your own advantage. A lot of thoughts that sparked through that. Have you come across the E-Myth? Oh, yeah. That was a super early read for me. So I...

To go back to sort of starting a business, I was a classic... I was a coffee obsessive. I was like, well, I understand coffee. I'm good at making coffee. I should open a coffee business. And very quickly, it was like, oh...

Then there's the business of business. And how rapidly can I get good at the business of business to build sort of the machine underlying that? And I didn't have time to do anything other than read. And read I did. And so, yeah, Michael Gerber's book, I think, was super, super informative, very relevant to me and further encouragement to work on the business in it, which becomes slightly glib when you say it, but it's so...

So important. I can't, you know what I mean? I can't emphasize enough that the need to get out from the daily of the manufacturing of a business, whatever it is that you make and sell and do into a higher level think or sort of thought process.

To understand the model, the mechanics of them. It's a machine, right? You're tweaking cogs and you're kind of making it work just nice. That's hard. And you need to get good at that. And that has nothing to do with coffee. That has nothing to do with coffee. And everything to do with understanding everything from people through to sort of marketing, sales, economics, finances, reading a balance sheet, understanding the impacts of decisions you make on your balance sheet, on your future, on your cash flows, all of that sort of stuff.

I really enjoyed it, which is fortunate. Lots of people are immediately turned off and go to the safe space of the thing that they know and care about. And that's, you know, not healthy for the business long term. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an insight that so many people have only once they have started a business. Yeah. When you realize, oh, actually, I don't know, like, I guess YouTube is a different example because you do actually make money from it. But like, you know, just being good at making coffee does not make me a good entrepreneur.

owner of a or manager operator of a of a coffee business um and so i first read the e-myth i think in like 2019 or something and i'd had a business at that point i've been going for five years and i was like my god i wish i'd read this book five years ago because all of the mistakes under the sun oh yeah and and the first time i came across that phrase that you know you should be working on the business not in it i was just like my mind was completely blown and now it's just so it feels so standard to me that i almost can't remember a time where i didn't know that that was a thing right and

And even now when kind of coaching YouTubers and stuff, this is the thing I try and encourage more creators to think a little bit more businessy. Because I think creators are very easy at thinking like, oh, it's about the craft. It's about the video I want to make. It's about how it makes me feel, which is fine. But also I think if you want to turn it into a business, there is a level of let's actually approach this from a slightly more businessy angle. I got very interested in the idea of sustainable businesses.

You know because I how do you build a business that that exists outside of the people that work within it? and and this in coffee is a particular challenge because Go back to this and I'll promise to make sense of it You do loads of barista training as a coffee roaster and supply you train loads of people and what you end up feeling is that you're just pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it because You train a bunch of people they leave because they're just there for a little bit and the business itself doesn't retain the knowledge and

And you look at businesses that are hundreds of years old. How did they exceed the will or the ideas of one person and become this thing where they are almost a living entity themselves? And you get into the boring answers of systems and structure, and you build a business that is able to retain knowledge independent of the people that work within it. And that isn't a bad thing. That doesn't strip people of their value or utility. That makes their job easier, more enjoyable, because they can still access that information and knowledge. But when they leave...

The half your business doesn't walk out the door that for me became a very interesting sort of thing to think about of like how do you treat it like a Thing that can learn independently, right? Can you teach a business and we got very interested in this with a bunch of customers of like, okay? We need to stop just training your baristas We'll keep doing that but we need to work with you in a way of collecting and systemizing the knowledge that we are delivering so that it's yours regardless of who's executing it and

And that sounds dehumanizing, but it, but I don't think it is. I think it's, it's about creating actually a much healthier environment, uh, to work in where you don't feel like you, you can't leave because you'd break the business. That's a really, and lots of people have felt that way of like, I can't leave when I want to, I want to do something else, but I feel stuck here because I know too much of this company rests on me. And that's an awful thing to do to someone. It's not good retention. That's a bad, it's a bad thing. Um,

So, yeah, I think not enough people talk about that, the idea of like, you know, be it a founder or key people or, you know, the business itself has to retain information knowledge. It has to have a purpose bound into it to be sustainable long term. Yeah.

I think this is, again, one of those things that you only really start to appreciate once you have a business. And before, when I was reading about businesses, system structure, processes, HR, values, vision, what the hell is all that bullshit? And then as soon as you start like, oh, okay, now I see what's happening. Now I see why I like...

It's, you know, with my first business, it's bad that I am the one staying up until 12 midnight making sure that our book deliveries for our course, which is happening in Manchester tomorrow, have actually arrived because I'm the only one who knows how to deal with the supplier. That's probably bad. Probably bad. And figuring out all these things, like, oh my God, like what started off as...

me enjoying teaching courses for medical applicants now turning into it to turning it into a business is actually a lot of the quote boring stuff which then at least for me became the fun stuff when i realized how much there was to learn and how much of a kind of uh what the learning curve was like and that every new book i was reading i was just my mind was blown like oh my god businesses have been solving these problems problems for decades after hundreds of years there's there is a system behind this and i can learn the system um yeah

Yeah, I think that's the that's the you know, I think for me, though, I read loads and loads and loads of books, but there was still the kind of lag of the conversion of information to knowledge through the application of it. You know, I mean, like it took me doing it, messing it up, doing it again, messing it up to kind of get to the point where, OK, now I truly understand the ideas here and how they work.

Yeah, it's yeah, like it's all it's all well and good to read a book about hiring But until you've done it and made mistakes a bit. Yeah, absolutely And you know like, you know, I come from I suppose a family of entrepreneurs So I was fortunate in that I had in my family people to be like hiring is gonna be the hardest bit You know all the advice they gave me I was like a little bit blase about the time they were it's gonna be really hard starting business is really hard really hard got it great and then you're like a year in you're like this is really hard what

you tell me and they're like, what's wrong with you? And they were like, hiring is going to be the hardest bit and it stays the hardest bit forever. And you're like, nah. And the first, we had some really great first few people and you're like, this is fine. This is easy. And you're like, no, no, no, no. You learn a bunch of awful lessons and, and, and, you know, it still remains the hardest part. And, and especially if you want to, you know, I think that there are businesses out there that still want to find a human, extract the value and,

On you go. You know what I mean? For us, not that interesting. We're interested in development, enjoying where you work, satisfaction, all of that kind of stuff. It's the slightly trite line of like, we want to be the place where you do your best work. But I think that's very true for what we certainly aspire to. But that obviously, it does make things harder. It just changes the challenge and changes the sort of focus. The great lesson from my point of view is that we didn't start with enough because I worked too many hours. Yeah, so I fell for the classic...

What's that can I swear here? Yeah. Oh great. So the hero bullshit of entrepreneurship of like I must grind myself down I'm a fucking hero working super hard I'm doing it right and it's such bullshit and it's such a toxic aspect of all work and I hate it But I definitely worked 110 hour weeks for like months ground myself down to the point of deep misery and there is no quicker way to hate a thing you love than

than to work on it like that. I really love coffee. I definitely got to the point where I was like, I should quit coffee. I hate this. I hate this. I hate my life. I hate working in this. I should just do something else.

Because I worked in a stupid way and I burnt myself out physically and emotionally because people do that because the world says, good for you, get the grind on. You know what I mean? It's your thing. It's yours. Pour yourself into it. You're like, no, don't. Don't do that. That's really bad. What you should do is start with enough capital that you can hire people to work with you, pay them properly, and then work in a healthy manner. Do you know what I mean? Like just have work and home be separate. That's helpful. Turn off. Don't work at weekends or don't work some days a week.

It's very satisfying early doors to pour yourself into a business. It is rewarding. It's enjoyable. But you're just burning through yourself so fast. And so I regret not starting with probably twice as much money, hiring more people out of the gate, and going home at 5 o'clock. Do you know what I mean? Like, just be done. Just turn it off. Go home. Enjoy life. You can build this thing. You don't have to sacrifice yourself for this. The downside is you need more money to start with. So that's the trade-off.

We didn't have that money. We didn't know we needed it. We had enough to buy the physical things, not enough to build the systems, hire the people. And so we just worked ourselves to the bone and it was miserable and I regret it. And it was a mistake. Oh, okay. On that point. So-

I feel like sort of at least in the online discourse around starting businesses, circa 2013 to 2019 was the era of the hustle culture movement saying that, look, you're starting from nothing. Your 20s are for hustling. You've got to grind yourself to the ground, work on weekends, work on evenings to start that thing. Since pandemic, I think, has accelerated this, there's a lot more like that kind of approach of actually sustainability is important, etc., etc.,

But what a lot of the kind of pro-hustle people say is that, look, when you don't have that startup capital, like, and you're working your crappy job and you need to start the business, there is not much you can do other than kind of work between, I don't know, 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. and also work on weekends and all that kind of stuff. And I guess you're just hoping it's just a season of time so that you can build enough money, build a business off the ground, because it will take blood...

- Theoretically, it takes blood, sweat and tears to get a business off the ground from moment one. And a lot of entrepreneurs that I've spoken to who have done that kind of grinding themselves to the ground say that, yeah, it wasn't ideal, it wasn't really a happy time, but without that period of crunch, which for several years potentially, the business wouldn't have gotten off the ground. So I guess my question to you is, do you think that you would have been able to do it in a more nicer, sustainable way? Or do you think it was necessary to put in the blood to get this off the ground?

I think the tricky bit is that if I had had the understanding that I have now and a little bit more capital, then yes, we could have built the same business far more enjoyably. I don't think it would have been a bigger business necessarily, but it would have been a more enjoyable process to do that.

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If any of that stands up your street, then do head over to brilliant.org/deepdive and the first 200 people to hit that link, which is also gonna be in the video description and in the show notes, will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much to Brilliant for sponsoring this episode. - So my whole thing is date like a scientist. So date like a scientist is have some hypotheses, test them,

Bring the data back to me and we will try to understand what that means. And so maybe at the end of our first session, we said, we think you're a maximizer. We think that you have unrealistic expectations of partners. And we think that the next time that you go in a second date and you don't want to go in a third, we're going to push you to go in the third because it's in that third that you will deepen the relationship and get to know this person versus rejecting them for something silly.

If your issue was that you were a hesitator and you weren't putting yourself out there, your next step would be getting a dating app and trying to go on more dates. And so what's the point of a dating app profile? The point is to...

create a great first impression. And so your dating app profile is almost like you walking into a bar and giving off a particular vibe. So if you're wearing a Game of Thrones t-shirt, people are going to engage with you on that. If you're wearing a tutu or a basketball jersey, people are going to engage with you in different ways. And so how do you want people to see you and then respond to you? And so I can get into the weeds, but I'm

Really, your dating app profile should tell a story. It should have variety. It should say, this is me when I'm with my family and friends, and this is what dating me would look like. This is a full body shot of me so you can see what I look like in the world. Here's a clear picture of my face without filters or sunglasses so you know what I look like.

Here's me doing an activity that I love, and I want you to ask me questions about it. So you're really painting a picture. You want to have variety. You want to have clear photos that show us who you are. We don't want to be playing where's Wally and wondering which one you are in a different picture. And really, you're putting yourself out there so that somebody can see who you are, know what you look like, and most importantly,

you're creating a hook that they can grab onto and then engage you in a conversation. Okay. So dating apps. One of my core beliefs is that everyone who is single that I know should be on dating apps and only about half of them are. And there's a few common objections that I get when I try and talk people into making accounts on dating apps is,

Can I just throw a few of them at you and I would love to hear how you... Absolutely. Okay. Let's do it. Dating apps are just for hookups. What's going on there? I work at Hinge. Hinge is really about getting people off of the app and onto relationships. I know that's sort of a tagline, but in the two years that I've been there, I've really found that to be true. We're obsessed with helping people go out on great dates. There are different dating apps that serve different purposes. But if you're someone who's really looking for a relationship...

A, so are a lot of people on certain apps like Hinge. And B, you should feel free to be upfront from the beginning about what you're looking for. So we just ran this fascinating experiment at Hinge where we showed 12,000 different users four profiles. Some of the profiles said they were looking for something generic, kind, compassionate, adventurous. Some of the profiles said, I am looking for a long-term relationship.

What we found is that if the person in the experiment was also looking for a long-term relationship, they were much more likely, 17% more likely to send the person who is looking for a relationship a message because they were like, great, you've taken the guesswork out of this. I want something. You want something. I'll message you.

If the person looking at the profile did not want a relationship, they were 10% less likely to send that person a message. And that actually saves you time on both ends. You get more messages from the kind of people you want to hear from and fewer messages from the kind of person you don't. And so a lot of this is just being bold, being courageous, being upfront from the beginning, whether it's on your profile or the first and second date about what you in particular want to get out of this experience. Nice. Love it.

So objection number two is dating apps focus too much on the superficials. And as a sub point to that, it's mostly guys that I speak to about this. Guys are systematically...

shall we say, shafted in the dating market because there are so many more guys on this app than there are girls. And I've tried it a couple of times and I never get any matches. And then I look at one of my female friends and they're getting freaking 100 matches a day. Like, ugh, as a guy, dating apps are not for me. There are issues where dating apps can reduce you to this two-dimensional image that people are evaluating. And without a lot of context, they might immediately go for looks, right?

One thing that Hinge just released is these voice prompts. And this is a chance for people to be silly. They could do an impression of their favorite cartoon character. They could play you a silly song that they've been writing. They could...

do a celebrity impression, whatever that is. And it's a chance to bring more authenticity to the profile. And so I'd say in general, I think the future of what we're going to be seeing with dating apps is wanting more information, whether it's more video, more voice, more interactivity. So it's not just like, hey, here's a piece of paper with bio data on it that your mom showed you. And you have to say, yes or no, I want to go on a date with this person. But really, it will feel more like,

oh, I've seen you on social media. I get a sense for how you move through the world. I get a sense for what you look like, what your voice sounds like. I have an immediate response to who you are. And so I would say for those people, what can they do on their end to bring their more full self to the profile? And then also in their own behavior on the app, how can they try to give more people a chance? Because if we focus too much on height or

or age, we're actually filtering out a lot of people who could make great potential partners. Okay, so we've got the profile where we've matched with a few people. We've got Hinge Premium, because why not? Such a time saver. This is another thing. This is another hill that I die on with a bunch of my friends. Like, why would you not like, you're making decent money, you work at McKinsey, why would you not pay 17 quid every six months? It just

Vegas, but anyway. I think about that all the time in terms of like, how much would you pay to find the love of your life? And for a lot of people, you know, depending on their pay scale, it's a lot of money. So why aren't you putting money behind that? Why aren't you, you know, investing in some good date outfits, whether it's paying for a dating app, or even I have a friend who

runs an incentive program where if you, it's actually through her dad. If you set her up on five dates, either five dates with one person or five dates with different people, some combination, he will send you this gift basket from nuts.com, which I just think is so funny and random, but why it works is psychologically. It makes you feel like, okay, this person's really serious about dating.

willing to go out with whoever you set her up with and there's an incentive. And so it makes me put in the extra effort to set her up. And so if anyone's listening and feels motivated, put your money where your mouth is and offer an incentive to your friends to set you up. It might just make the difference between them saying yes and them actually doing it. Yeah. So on that note, there was a blogger that I follow. His name is Tynan. He was actually featured in The Game back in the day, the book. Oh.

Oh, wow. He was one of the people in the house. But he ended up growing out of that, becoming like a personal development blogger type guy and building businesses and things. And I interviewed him on one of these streams about two years ago. He had a thing that when he turned 30, he posted to his mailing list saying, look, I'm serious about getting to know someone. If you introduce me to the person I end up in a long-term relationship with, I will help you tick off any item on your bucket list.

And he got a bunch of like inbound that way. And when I heard about that, that really resonated with me because it really was a case of put your money where your mouth is and take this seriously. But then I mentioned it to some people and they were like, that's a bit weird. Dating shouldn't be so systematic and stuff. Like what the hell is wrong with you? I don't know if you get that, like the whole like scientific approach to dating and stuff. Do you get that pushback that like, oh, it's supposed to be more natural than that?

First of all, I have chills from that story because it's so clever. Like I love that it was at the milestone of turning 30. I love those two's email list. I also think tick something off your bucket list is just such an amazing prompt and probably better than money because it like helps you really sit and say like, what's my bucket list and what's holding me back? And maybe even if you don't win that contest or whatever, you still might make progress on it.

But for the general question, yes, people ask me all the time, why are you trying to apply research to something that's organic? And how can you bottle up love? So my response to them, it's actually the first paragraph of my book is that, yes, love is natural and we're born knowing how to love, but dating isn't.

Dating in the modern sense was invented at the end of around 1890s. This is a relatively new concept in terms of the span of human history. And then dating on apps is around a decade old with swiping and all of that being extremely new. And so part of it is just having humility around the fact that a lot of us are just making this up as we go along. This is not something that we know how to do.

Second of all, in history, people would help you, right? There was the matchmaker or maybe your father would have you marry the person next door so that your parcels of land connected or he would trade your hand in marriage for 10 camels. There was all these other people involved. It's actually a really new concept that you on your own define all of these characteristics of your life, including who you marry. And so people need help.

Second of all, there is academic research on this. We talked about this. There's research on attraction, research on do opposites attract, research on what makes for a long-term compatible relationship.

Why wouldn't you look at that? If you were going to make a nutrition plan or a financial plan, you would look at the research. Why is love something that has to defy logic and defy science? And so I'd say, this is something that you care about and you want to find someone great and not get divorced. Why wouldn't you invest in knowing the information out there? It can only empower you and you can take the parts of it that are useful and you can ignore the other parts. One of the things that you talk about

is sort of actively reflecting on a date when you get back from it.

And I wanted to ask, like, to what extent, like, what are the sorts of questions that we should be asking when we get back from dates? And to what extent is like a sort of checklist approach to this a good idea? Because we talk about things like growth mindset and emotional maturity and ability to communicate. Is that the sort of thing like similar to how like if you're hiring someone for a job, you want to have like a scorecard and you want to be able to evaluate each candidate against the scorecard. Is this the sort of person who would be able to do X?

To what extent is that like a decent approach when it comes to dating and reflecting on dates afterwards?

In general, I think that having a checklist is not helpful because often what's on that checklist is the wrong stuff. It's height, income, perceived success. Do we have the same hobbies? I think a lot of times that checklist is based on what we think matters in long-term relationships, which the research shows us doesn't matter in long-term relationships. So as a concept, I would say throw out your checklist,

be willing to date someone who's not your type. It is very possible that the person you end up with, the person who makes you happiest long-term is not the person you thought you would be with. That being said, in my book, I offer this exercise called the post-date eight.

The post-date eight is based on research on gratitude journals. So there's amazing research from many people, including Sean Acor of Harvard, that says if at the end of the day you have to write down three things that you're grateful for, your brain will actually be looking for them throughout the day. So if you're running to make the bus and you make it, maybe five minutes later you forget about it. But if you know that at that night you have to write it down, then you're going to notice it more.

So what we do at the end impacts what we look for throughout. So the post-date eight is the same idea. I've taken what I believe and what the research shows matters for evaluating a date. I've turned it into these list of eight questions. Things like, how did I feel in my body around this person? Do I feel curious about this person? What side of me did this person bring out? And then throughout the date,

You aren't looking at their height and their job. You're paying attention to those things. And at the end of the date, you ask yourself the post-date eight to decide, do I want to see this person again? And so it is a version of a checklist, but it's a checklist designed to help you focus on what matters, not what doesn't. Nice. And I wonder if you can give some examples of like, what are some of the questions in the post-date eight? Sure. So

From all the research that I've done and even the coaching I've done since my book has come out, this one of what side of me did this person bring out is huge because it helps you understand great on paper brings out a bad side of me. I don't want to see them again. That's a really helpful insight. Another one is this idea of do they energize me or de-energize me? So

There's an activity called a penthouse in a basement person. You think in your life, not even in a romantic setting, who is my penthouse person? Who, when I'm with them, do they bring my energy up? Do I feel creative? Do I feel inspired? So for you, who's your penthouse person? Who's my penthouse person? I can think of a few university friends. I think my brother is one of my penthouse people, which is why we kind of decided to start a podcast together. My current housemate is a penthouse person, definitely. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah. So you have this penthouse person. That's another helpful benchmark. And you have a basement person, somebody who makes you feel depressed, down, de-energized. And so just asking this question, did I feel more energized or less energized after the date, helps you understand where that person falls and helps you get closer to finding a penthouse person. Because of course, the person you end up with in a romantic relationship, you want them to bring out that inspired, capable, creative part of you. Mm-hmm.

And so it's really helping you understand what stuff matters, what stuff to pay attention to. And it ignores things like, did I think they have an impressive job? And do we have enough

hobbies in common stuff that people think matters but really doesn't i was trying to work out what age you started various companies and it was like surprisingly later in life than people would initially think people think founders like you know 17 to 19 year olds mark zuckerberg the stripe guys yeah um but you were like 30 something when you started i would have been 36 37 and um yeah i yeah it

most of these sort of podcasts can focus around the sort of very younger guys and yeah you think about the Zuckerberg because the world's incredibly young or I think he's done Ben Francis recently incredibly young so I think that it's yeah I think it's interesting that most people probably think when they get 36 37 they're sort of stuck in what they're doing they can't retrain they can't relearn but yeah I did I just sort of

sort of had a need, had a personal reason why I needed to start working from home and had to suss that out. And I did a lot of stuff you sort of do is listen to a lot of podcasts, tons of podcasts, read a lot online and try and work out and sort of bodge your way through to start off with. So it took me about a year before I got the confidence to jack my job in, but worked evenings and weekends,

Yeah, it must be 36, 37. Yeah. So I speak to a lot of people in their, like, so sometimes even late teens, but like early to mid 20s who say, oh, I don't know what I want to do. I haven't figured it out. It seems like all these other people are sort of like going ahead of me. What was your kind of experiences during school and sort of like late teens, early 20s? And how did we go from that to...

and then then starting a business at age 36 so i left school at 16 um pretty poor gcses um what did i get three c's maybe these e's got two e's for english i do remember that i can't spell i'm not really going to read it either really it's got two years of english left at 16 worked at a shop for a year then worked digging holes in the road for two years as manual labor

Then I think my girlfriend at the time was about 19. She goes, what are you doing? Why are you digging holes in the road? You're too smart to do that. So I wasn't academically smart, but I was sort of quite smart at certain stuff. So I went back to college two years later.

And I thought I'd come out of there and get a job. Came out of college with two, I think it was a BTEC I had. Couldn't get a job off the back of that. So I had nothing else to do really apart from went to uni for now I'm committed. I've given up work. I might as well keep going. So then I got a placement at Bournemouth University, did a degree in marketing, came out of that, thought I'd get a job straight away. No problem. Didn't. I just go and work. I remember I worked night shifts in the petrol station for six months.

and um and then luckily i think it was my stepmom she worked with somebody whose husband worked somewhere and luckily i got a job in marketing finally after all that so i'd had a degree market i had a 2-1 but couldn't get a job luckily i got one uh worked in a marketing team from about i think that must be 1999 something like that worked in marketing for mostly retailers so that was when you were like 25 ish yeah maybe a little bit older 25 26 like that and um

And then I started internet sort of came along. So this was still quite early because I think when I was at uni, I think I finished uni in 96 and the internet was really not really about, you know, I think at university you could go and use some of the computers there and you could access the internet, but nobody really had a home computer with internet in 96. And...

And then when I first got my job, I was just doing normal sort of marketing as a marketing assistant. And then the internet came along. So somebody said, can you have a look at this internet thing? Should we have an internet business? I was working for MFI, which is a furniture retailer at the time. And I sort of said to them, yeah, it looks like you should. B&Q, which is a bigger retailer at the time, had what they call a brochureware site. You couldn't buy, no e-commerce. I said, well, we could beat them. We could overtake them if you give me some money. So I sort of persuaded the team or the board to give us, I think it was £67,000 to start the first website. Got it.

got that built by an agency got that going and then of course I was almost a you know within one year I was almost a gray beard in terms of internet experience because nobody had it so then I moved on worked for some other retailers and then fast forward to um yeah 2000 and what were we 2008 I think it was um I needed to work from home because of a personal reason and um

For shit what I'm gonna do because I lived in the air which we shout and sort out in the countryside I was working in London and going an hour and a half each way So it's three hours of drive a day So I wanted to work from home no marketing jobs of any sort merit in in a wish me area So I needed to create my own business

and uh so started looking around and luckily at the time we were using some affiliates and affiliates are people basically who sit at home and create websites and make money from sitting in their pjs i suppose at home yeah this is something i can do maybe these guys met i met them i went to an affiliate event and uh these guys i thought they're making i knew how much someone someone making like 10 20 000 pounds a month i think holy shit there's loads of money and um

And I met them. I thought they were going to be, I don't know, I'm not saying they're going to be geniuses. But when I met them, I thought they're bright, but they're not like rocket scientists. I thought if they can do it, why can't I do it? So that was basically me then thought, right, I'm going to learn how to do this by myself, by listening to podcasts, by practicing, starting websites, learning, learning, learning. So I used to get home from work at say six o'clock on a workday, have my meal,

with my wife at a time and then go on the computer at seven o'clock. I basically had my computer desk set up in a lounge so I could sit in a lounge, watch TV, had a little mirror set up so I could watch the TV while I was working and work till say 11 o'clock.

do this at the weekends as well. Did that nearly sort of full time for a year until I got to the stage where I started making about a thousand pounds, maybe 1500, 2000 pounds a month. And started thinking, I know how to do this. If I had more time, I could double the amount of work. I would double the amount of money I could earn. And so I remember saying to my wife at the time, I said, right, I'm going to have a crack at this.

I'm going to jack my job in. I'm going to give myself six months. If I can't get the same amount of money I get for my salary within six months, I'll go back and get that job again or get a similar type of job. And I think I had a time, I had a good enough experience that I felt confident I could go back and get a job. So it felt like pretty low risk. And I thought as long as I could earn the same salary,

and I'm working from home it's a win-win I haven't got three hours a day I'm not traveling so that was the goal within three months I was earning more than my salary and then he just kept on going after that yeah I think that's uh when I think when when when people quit a job um

I feel like they often have this idea that, you know, I'm working a 30K job, therefore quilling the job is a 30K risk. But it's actually not because like next week you could probably get a 28K job if you really wanted to. And so really it's not a 30K risk, it's a 2K risk between the job that you currently have and the job that you could pretty easily get if you needed to. And even if you take a little bit of a pay cut, maybe you can't get a 35K job immediately, but at least a 25, 28K job is very reasonable in that context.

And I don't know anyone who's kind of done that and regretted the decision because you're sort of like going all in on yourself and giving yourself that. You're like, yeah, I'm...

I've got to make this work. And if I don't, then it's not the end of the world. I'll just get another job. If you talk about it and sort of practice at it forever, you're never going to do it. At some point, you do have to make that hard decision to do it. But I would never, I never would have done it before I'd been practicing and learning for a year. So evenings and weekends was vitally important. I think if you do that and really do it and start earning money, you build confidence. The more you do something, the more confidence you get. So I was pretty confident at the end of that year.

I said if I double the amount of time I can work on this or triple the amount of time as I probably could have tripled the amount of time I know I will do this yeah so I was pretty confident but yeah I put enough money to one side to pay the mortgage pay all the bills for six months which is not a lot if you just strip everything out of your life apart from the mortgage and the food bills you don't need that much so it wasn't a ton of cash but I put enough money in the bank that had that saved up over that previous year for the money I had earned from it put that to one side that was enough um but yeah

It was three months and I was earning more. Yeah, so one thing I often hear from people is this idea of,

you know, I want to do this side hustle, therefore I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to make it happen. And I was like, hang on, hang on, like, don't quit your job until you've at least done it for a little while in the weekends and evenings. But I guess these days it's sort of become a bit unfashionable to talk about doing the stuff on the weekends and evenings and things. And everyone's like, oh, but like sustainability and like, you know, work-life balance and mental health and all that kind of stuff, rightly so.

But I think there is still that balance between like the people who sort of succeed are the ones who do add in that extra level of hustle, extra level of grind, if you want to use those words. Yeah, I think that you've all got to, you know, to make something work, there's going to have to be a period of time when you have to go outside your comfort zone. You're going to have to work harder than you probably healthily should over a long period of time. But you're not doing that forever. So, yeah.

That was one year, but I worked crazy, crazy amount of hours. I'd done a full-time job with a three-hour drive backwards and forwards to home, an hour and a half each way, and then working in the evening. So there was crazy hours for a year, big deal. It felt like there was such an end goal at the end of it, it was worth it. And then when I started working at home and I jacked the job, I wasn't doing all these evenings and weekends. So there's only one year.

That was pretty easy. In fact, I ended up starting working at two to finish at two or three o'clock. Once the money started rolling in, I was even finishing early to make up for that previous year.

Then I suppose when I started, sure, that was tough. When that kicked off, there was two to three years of that when that was crazy, crazy hours. But now I'm 50 years old. I've given you an example of basically four years in total out of 50 while I've worked crazy hours. That feels doable in my eyes. It feels doable. So when you were making this money or attempting to make this money from the affiliate stuff while you still had the job and you were commuting three hours, what was it that kept you going on?

those those weekends and evenings while you're knackered from a day of work and driving back and back and forth and you get on the computer like What's what's going through your mind? That's was that dream of not being able to do that three hours when I'm sitting in that car because this was the day before in the days before podcast basis living to radio radio with Adverts in driving backwards and forwards into London is pretty you know soul-destroying and you think there's this dream if I met these guys I remember going to this event these guys were there no bride to the me and

I think one of them had an Aston Martin, one of them might have had a Ferrari working from home. And you think there's, that's a dream. So you just think if I just knuckle down for that one year, I've keeps you going to do that. And I thought, and also, you know, there's progress in that year as well. So during that year, you will see times when nothing's happened and,

And then she might have a little win, little win, little win. So you get my little wins all the way through. And yeah, clearly if I don't know money through that whole time, it literally just knuckle down for a whole year. Nothing had happened. That probably would have been tougher than I thought. Yeah. But because there was wins and monies coming in at different times, it's,

it brings it back to the yeah if i keep going i keep going i keep going i'll get there eventually yeah yeah i think in my life uh it would have been around the same time like 2008 to 2010 ish um i had like two distinct moments uh one was when i first started doing freelance web design and made like a few dollars through a paypal account where i lied about my age because i was like 14 i made like 10 through like editing some like my sql code from some of the websites like

bloody hell i can make money on the internet and the second one was actually through affiliates right um i i made this like site that would get people to sign up for love film affiliates yeah which was like the pre-blockbuster pre-netflix era and a friend of mine used his own family's credit cards to sign up for four free trials and i remember getting a check in the mail for 50 quid which was one of those like um electronic checks where it's like tens of millions zero millions zero tens of thousands zero is like tens five i was like

- Bloody hell, I made 50 quid. I didn't have to work for it directly. And it was just having those two experiences of a making money through selling my web design services and then making money through building this affiliate site that just gave me such confidence that this is a thing. You can make money on the internet. I can make money through a business.

And I think it was that sort of formative experiences that meant when I was at uni and started my first business that actually worked. I had the conviction and the knowledge and the experience and having failed at a bunch of things before to be able to make that work. And I guess it kind of sounds similar. It's a similar experience to what you had. Yeah, I think that I'm saying I've said it before. I don't think I'm particularly brilliant at anything. I'm very good at marketing now because I've done it for such a long period of time. But I think naturally at school, I wasn't particularly brilliant at anything.

the beauty of like say working on e-commerce or creating content or doing whatever is if you put enough hours in you can sometimes beat somebody with more talent than you whereas like I don't know football you go to football pitch doesn't matter how much ever you put in if you're not really good you're not going to win right well it's something like this you it can be just through pure grind you can out you can beat other people and at the time most of the stuff that I was earning money through required on seo the beauty of seo is you can see rankings you can check rankings and you know if I just do that a little bit extra there I'll get a little bit of a bump up that I'll bump up

bump, you can see yourself eventually move. There'll be times when you get, you go down as well. So there can be disappointments, but there's sometimes when you get those, you just think more hours, I can beat somebody who's, they're not going to grind as much as I can. I can do more. I'll work more. And eventually you can beat them. We are going to take a little quick break from the podcast to introduce the sponsor of this podcast, which is CuriosityStream. If you haven't heard by now, CuriosityStreams is the world's leading documentary streaming subscription platform founded by John Hendricks, who's the founder of the Discovery Channel and

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and that is only available on Nebula. You won't find it anywhere else. So if you enjoy the sorts of conversations we have on Deep Dive, you might like to see, you know, a whole year before we started this podcast properly, once the pandemic stopped, what sort of conversations I was having with people on Zoom. I've also got a series of videos on Nebula called Workflow, which is where I deep dive into some of my favorite productivity tools. And on Nebula, you also get early ad-free access to my videos and videos from a bunch of other creators that you might be familiar with, like Thomas Frank and Tom Scott and Legal Eagle and Lindsay Ellis. And the really cool thing is that because CuriosityStream loves supporting independent creators,

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So head over to curiositystream.com forward slash deep dive to get the bundle deal. So thank you CuriosityStream for sponsoring this episode. Are you still going on going with the therapy thing or was it like a few sessions? So yeah, so it was an eight week thing and I kind of treated it like

an essay or an assignment or a game or something throughout the whole therapy session i would just be taking notes like frantically on all the important points and at the end i would make myself an action plan and then during the week i would work on the action plan and make sure that i was actually doing the things that were going to help me in some way shape or form so let's say in therapy session one we would identify x or y problem i would think about how can i fix x or y problem work on it during the week and then report back i fixed x i haven't have

haven't quite fixed why let's work on that a little bit more yeah it's very something like productivity bro way of dealing with therapy it is it is it is but i can't imagine doing it any other way yeah and i think i think half of therapy is uh talking someone else listening to them um having them you know tell you things the other half is you need to put in some amount of work to try and change the things that you're unhappy with or um or you know whatever it is that you need to do um so i think you need a little bit of both for sure

So we were talking about like your pre and post therapy self. And you said one of the things definitely is that you've taken the foot off the gas a little bit, shall we say. That reminded me of a story that Derek Sivers writes about in his book. I think it's in Anything You Want, where he talks about how he would always go for a cycle every day and it would take him 40 minutes to go. And he'd be sweating at the end of it. And he'd be like, cool, I need to make my time. It's 40 minutes.

And then one day he decided, you know what? I'm just going to enjoy the cycle ride. It's like, oh, cool. Like, oh, it's spending the roses on the way and picking up a little pebble and like, you know, just like actually enjoying the cycle ride. And he gets back, he looks at the clock and it's 42 minutes.

And he's like damn was I really huffing and puffing and wearing myself out for the sake of two extra minutes That seems a bit weird That's a really excellent analogy of how I feel pre and post therapy. I'm still achieving the same things I'm just taking it a little bit more relaxed and enjoying myself a little bit more and really the amount of output that i'm losing is minimal And that's the realization that i've had which I didn't have before I was under the assumption that

you know, I just have to continue working up until the point that I go to sleep because every night when I go to sleep, I look at my to-do list and there's 10 items on there. And I'm like, well, I could probably bang out two of these right now before I go to bed or I can leave them all tomorrow. The obvious choice is to bang two of these before I go to bed. Let's get that done.

So post therapy, right? Or during therapy, for the first time in my life, I sat down in bed and I watched a movie on Netflix by myself up until that point. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Right? Which sounds crazy, right? I mean, you know, my girlfriend's been telling me to do this forever. My friends have been telling me to do this forever. And I would always think to myself, like, why would I do that when I could work on my to-do list? Like, it's not about being unproductive. It's just, I wanted to do the other things. Like I have this to-do list of things that I genuinely enjoy. Let me get some of them done. - Yeah. - And so now,

I just watch a movie before I go to bed and I do those two tasks in the morning instead of the night before. And I just relax at the end of the day and unwind. Like, why do I need to be on this constant hamster wheel of running, running, running, doing all this time management stuff? I can just take a bit of a step back. And like you said, it'll take me 42 minutes instead of 40. And it's not the end of the world. And that's kind of the change that I'm going through now. Have you come across 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman?

You would enjoy it. It's, uh, we've got it here somewhere. Uh, it's great. It's like a sort of 2022 slash 2021, uh, productivity book inverted commas, but it's, it's not really about productivity. It's, it's, it's more, it's more like a philosophical approach to time management, recognizing that 4,000 weeks is roughly the amount of time we have on this earth. And, uh,

Once we accept the finitude of existence and our own mortality we stop Trying to cram all these things and juggle all these balls and we recognize that there genuinely isn't enough time for all the important things and therefore something they're just gonna have to be put in the bin for now and It's a very liberating an interesting read would recommend and for anyone listening We have an interview with Oliver Berkman, which will also be linked in the in the show notes down below shameless plug very nice and

But yeah, so I've, I found myself having similar realizations where I used to feel bad about like not replying to people. And now I don't feel bad about not replying to people on like WhatsApp or emails and stuff. And emails will be friends or people on the internet watch your stuff. Both to an extent, like friends. I still feel a little bit bad because like it's a friendship to maintain. And I try not to apply productivity bro lens to friendships. Um,

But even friends to an extent to be honest like I used to feel guilty that I have these 80 unread whatsapps and it's all people friends of mine. Even like friends who I should be replying to and I know I want to reply to them but like I just can't bring myself to make the time to do this thing and now I guess what I've accepted is just like yeah I'm just that's okay like

Maybe I will lose out on one or two friendships because I was not sufficiently good at replying to WhatsApp messages. But actually, that's okay. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. And the amount of extra stress it adds to my life to feel the need to maintain a, I don't know, two-hour response time to WhatsApps does not justify... Yeah, it's just not worth it. Similarly with emails, similarly with...

What I found as well is random items on my to-do list. Whereas I used to think of my to-do list as I have to get all these things done. Now I think of it as, as long as I just get the most important things done each day, it really does not matter if all the other stuff does not get done forever, like indefinitely. It doesn't matter in the slightest. It's actually all good. And unless like a tax bill comes along, which is too easy to put off or something like that, there are very few things that...

that are genuinely necessary and important on the to-do list and there's certainly not going to be like 10 to 100 of them like i used to have if i can just do my most important task each day and maybe and maybe one or two other things and i do that every day for a whole year then i'll make so much more progress than if i think of my to-do list as a series of items that need checking off definitely i think there's also a um like thinking switch that you make where

You know, my to-do list used to be something that anytime I'd strict one thing off, I would immediately think, oh, okay, what do I want to do next? Well, I want to start making merch. I want to start a Patreon. I want to upload a new video. I want to write a script for this, blah, blah, blah. So there was always things to add. There was a never-ending incoming stream of things that I could potentially put on my to-do list. And it's like you said, what you need to realize is like, let me just focus on the most important things that I want to do right now. Once those are done, I can think about adding on a new project. It doesn't all have to get done before I go to sleep at midnight or whatever. Yeah.

So yeah, this thinking shift in time management from having to get everything done as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, to just

Taking a little bit less time, but enjoying it exponentially more is something that I've been going through and that I think is really important. I wish I'd known it earlier. I wish I'd experienced it earlier. And yeah, it's kind of a change that I'm trying to make now. Yeah, it reminds me of something that I heard an emergency medicine consultant say once on one of my shifts, which is that,

Don't worry about the list. The list is never ending. The patients are going to keep coming in and there's nothing you can do about that. So just embrace the fact that there's nothing you can do about the list and just focus on the patient in front of you and try and make that patient have a great time and then focus on the next one in terms of priority order, in terms of triage, and then the next one, and then the next one. And stop worrying about the list. It's all good. If we breach four hours, who cares? We'll be all right. We'll be all right. We got this. It's that exact point that there's a never ending list of patients and each one of them is going to come with their sub-signature.

sub list of tasks that need to get done. So yeah. So yeah, just one at a time in triage priority order. One at a time. And one day at a time. Trust in the process. Yeah, so on the goal setting front, I also keep on trying to find the perfect system for this. Like in terms of like personal goals, one of my theories, my philosophies, shall we say, is that setting, like I don't like it when I set goals that are outside of my control. For example,

when I set the goal of, I want a YouTube video that hits a certain view count. - Right. - Compared to, I want to make a video I'm proud of. When I think I want to write a book that hits the Sunday Times bestseller list versus I want to write a book I'm proud of. And that's all fine. But that almost feels like it's, oh, well, I'll just do my best and not worry about the outcome.

Which also, which feels a little bit unsatisfying given a bunch of research around the idea of like effective goal setting and challenging goal setting. And the fact that kind of high performance in inverted commas in most fields, you know, it's not like Michael Phelps is just, you know what, I'll just try my best and see what happens. It's like, you know, so yeah. Any, any thoughts around that tension between our

I'll try my best versus I have this specific outcome I'm aiming for, which maybe is somewhat outside of my control. It's interesting. I mean, there's a sort of sub distinction there between there's the goal, there's the things you can control and things you can't control. But then there's specificity or vagueness in the things that you can control. And I do think that like,

things like doing your best and being proud of things like they're really important values in life but i can see how they're not they're not particularly helpful in this setting because it's sort of completely open-ended and so it's not very smart i know right exactly either you you

can either you will end up sort of not doing what you could have done because you say, well, I was my best, so I don't care. Like, and you sort of, you sort of make it easy for yourself or you do what I think I would do and have done in a lot of my early adulthood, which is like, be convinced that trying your best is really important. And then like torment yourself constantly with like, am I doing my best? Is this my best? Can I, you know, and those kinds of open-ended things seem unhelpful. You, on the other hand, if you say, I mean, this is where I feel like quantity based goals can be really helpful, right? If you say like, I'm going to,

put out this number of videos or this number of I'm going to write this many words by a certain point. Firstly, it's specific. Secondly, it's within your control. And then thirdly, it's kind of

it's somewhat drained of the sort of the qualities of goals are sort of they they go wrong because they're so sort of emotive there's something kind of nice about a very very sort of mechanistic yes goal in that area i don't think it's the whole piece of the puzzle because i do think even though i wrote in my first book about like how positive visualization is largely nonsense and all sorts of things i do think there's clearly a role for kind of

envisioning the having a vision of why you'd like things to be and using it to determine what you do in the in the present but that idea of just being maybe this is like systems versus goals that is that old distinction but it's like it's like the idea of saying like this many words um

or you know just something really sort of that sort of takes out all the all the all the angst from it i think that's really useful yeah well one of the ways i'm thinking about it because i'm i'm i was writing the chapter about this in the book like this week last week um i intended to do this week as well but then time going away like um is yeah like systems i don't know i feel like i feel like all all of this stuff converges on a few central central themes and and

We as productivity writers try to put our own stamp on like a thing which people have been doing for centuries, not millennia. But that aside, what I really like is that if I kind of break down my implicit process of goal setting, because it's never been like explicit. If I break down what that looked like, what it looked like was step number one, setting a kind of destination goal that is within my control, like write a book I'm proud of, which is like this big project, right?

Maybe in my mind, it's like, it would be really cool if it hits the best seller list. It would be really cool if I get invited on conferences and if I, I don't know, get on a podcast because that would be sick. But like, those are outside of my control. So let me just...

not think about those and just recognize that actually it's a, you know, a preferred indifferent as, as the stoics, as the stoics might, might say. Um, so the, the destination goal is within my control. And then I'll break that down into the kind of journey goals, which is more of the system stuff. Therefore, what I like tangibly need to do is that every week or every day I want to aim to write X thousand words or X hundred words. And again, that is within my control.

And then kind of my step three of this three-step process is for that journey goal that like, let's say I want to write 500 words a day to lower the bar of quality as much as possible. Yeah. I want like, I literally write my to-do list, write 500 crappy words for crappy first draft of chapter two. And I find that putting the words crappy in there twice really makes it easier to be like, okay, you know what? This is actually, it's actually doable. Let's do this. Um,

It makes me think of two other things like Dan Harris, the meditation writer and the podcaster talks about doing things specifically meditation, aiming to do them daily-ish and having this built-in fuzziness. Like, cause you know,

whether you did something daily-ish like in a given week you you have a feel like if you did it twice it wasn't daily-ish but it but it reduces this kind of like oh if i break my streak it's all over and i might as well spend the next three weeks not doing anything um so i think that's a an important part of that and then something i've found really helpful i don't know if this is writing specific but like might be just specific to writing but

It's also like not keeping going, even if you're on a roll. So if you say like, I'm going to write 500 words and you write them and then things are going well, you're like, I get another 500 out. It's like actually making yourself stop and walk away. Like that kind of enforced low balling of your, of your aims for the day. And like, that's really, I think for people like you,

I suspect you and certainly for me like that's really hard to do like when the opportunity for a bit more productivity arises and you don't take it yes but there's this amazing old book that I had to like buy as print on demand because it's because it's so hard to get called them how writers journey to comfort and fluency by a psychologist called Robert Boyce and it's like a really in-depth study of academic writers and what caused them to be either productive or non not productive I mentioned him in the book a

one of his big findings was that the writers who made writing into a moderately important part of their lives were did lots more than the ones who made it into a very important part of their lives because then it becomes this kind of intimidating thing and you have sort of all sorts of angst about it and you forget about it for weeks at a time because you don't dare go back into that scary thing and part of that is like you figure out what is your short daily session of writing and

And he said, like, you know, for sort of amateur writers, it might be 10 minutes a day. Even for professional writers, it probably should never be more than like three or four hours. And when it's up, you just you have to stop and like go and do something else, because otherwise you're kind of giving in to an impatient urge to be done with the whole thing that will ultimately backfire on you and cause you to sort of dread returning to the project. That ability to keep important things in.

relatively small in your life. I think it's like, it's really, I'm not saying I'm any good at it, but it's really interesting. Alrighty, that brings us to the end of season two of the podcast. Huge thank you to anyone who has listened, downloaded, subscribed, any of that kind of stuff. And as a reminder, we do have the survey and also the link to join the Friend Zone, our completely free community. And we'd love for you to fill in the survey so that we can help make this podcast better. Anyway, thank you very much for watching or listening. Have a great day and I will see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.