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Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Someday Is Today: Achieve Your Goals And Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks

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Matthew DicksguestAli Abdaalhost
Apr 20, 20231h 42mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 1:38

    Intro

    1. MD

      When I was 22, I, I was robbed at gunpoint. Head on the floor of a restaurant, gun to my head, a man counting back from three and telling me when he hits zero he's going to shoot me in the head. I was sure that I was going to die that day, and I will tell you that I did not feel fear or sadness or anger. The only feeling I was consumed with was regret. I was 22 years old, and I had failed to do anything with my life that I had wanted to do.

    2. AA

      Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where every week I sit down with authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people to find out how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our own lives. Now, Matthew is the author of this fantastic book, Storyworthy. He's also an elementary school teacher in the US. He is also a wedding DJ and an official officiant at weddings, and spent some time in jail, was arrested for a crime he didn't commit.

    3. MD

      Most of the time none of the rules actually matter. Most of them are made up arbitrarily. You know, I'm not proposing people rob, but what I'm proposing is test the world.

    4. AA

      But the conversation took a lot of weird turns. It's kinda hard to describe the stuff we talked about, but I can honestly say this has been one of the favorite conversations I've ever had on this podcast.

    5. MD

      People ask me, like, "How did you do all that and work 50 hours a week?" And I say, "After you're homeless and in jail, and you have a gun to your head, and you think you're gonna be in prison for 10 years, nothing else is hard." You know, I was hopeless, and all you have to do is take someone who's hopeless and give them a little hope, and nothing seems as hard anymore.

    6. AA

      You've got a ridiculously interesting life. Um, [laughs] you know? You've been, uh, and, and, and by interesting I also mean, like, traumatic, uh, in,

  2. 1:38 – 5:43

    Your background

    1. AA

      in some ways. And as we were doing research for this podcast, people on our team were like, "Oh, my gosh," like, "it sounds like he's had a, a really traumatic upbringing. I'm not sure if he's gonna be open to talking about this stuff." And I was kinda chuckling, because you write about this stuff in your books, and you tell this stuff in your stories. Um, I guess, uh, can you... For, for people who might not know who you are, can you give a, a sort of SparkNotes summary of what your life has been and how, how we've kind of ended up, ended up talking to each other here?

    2. MD

      Sure. I guess we're talking to each other primarily 'cause I'm a storyteller, a- amongst other things. You know, I, I'm a novelist and a writer and a columnist. And 12 years ago, on a whim because my friends sort of encouraged me to do it, I went to New York City and told a story on a stage in a, in a competition and won, and suddenly discovered something that I enjoyed and, and thought that I would just become a storyteller who stood on stages in New York and Boston, and maybe I would be daring enough to travel somewhere else someday and tell a story, and I thought that was gonna be it. And, uh, last night I was in New York at the same competition for The Moth, sitting there next to my friend Jenny, and she said, "It's so weird that now you just consult with, like, Fortune 100 companies and, and hospitals, and photojournalists, and all of that stuff." And you know, so today I do a lot of that. I work with just about every type of person you can imagine. It's supposed to be storytelling, and sometimes it is, but as my wife will tell you if she's sitting in the other room listening, I'll get off a call and she'll say, "That had nothing to do with storytelling. You were basically helping that person navigate their life, figure out a way to handle a coworker, you know, navigate a difficult work situation." I work with a lot of people who find themselves sort of in work environments where they can't trust the people or they can't rely on the people around them for advice. So you know, I'm working with, uh, a woman of color in corporate America who can't show weakness in the office because of who she is around and what she has needed to do in order to get where she is. And suddenly this guy who is supposed to be helping with her with a keynote is also someone who understands how to listen, who has lived a life of, you know, many experiences and has some wisdom. And you know, I get off the call and I say, "Well, we didn't talk about storytelling there," but I helped her, you know, figure out how to deal with her boss better, or I helped her lead her team. You know, I'm helping, I'm helping a lot of executives now on just basically leadership, like how do I get an employee that I have to do the things I need them to do? And oddly, because I've been a schoolteacher also for 24 years, I'm able to give those folks advice on how to change the behavior of the people they're working with. So it is a really strange life that I have now.

    3. AA

      That, that resonates a lot because, um, I remember after I read your book, Storyworthy, which, um, I f- was... I, I read, I read it in 2020, and whenever I did my kind of roundups of the year or things like that I always said, "Yep, this was the single best book, uh, that I read in 2020," and it was just sick.

    4. MD

      Thank you.

    5. AA

      Um, and just, like, although it sort of is like a how to, how to tell better stories, it's also, like, just itself an incredibly moving and powerful and inspirational and, like, all of, all of the adjectives type book. And then I re- I remember emailing you, um, being like, "Hey, do you do one-on-one coaching?" 'Cause I like the idea of improving my storytelling. And I think we did one or two sessions about storytelling, and then it immediately turned into [laughs] my weekly session with Matthew is sort of like a combination of life coaching and therapy, and helping me with my book, and helping me, helping me overcome limiting beliefs and stuff. Um, so that, like, I'm, I'm not surprised that that is, uh, [laughs] the vibe that you have when you, when you, when you work with other people as well. Um, I guess w- while we're on this topic, what are some of the problems that... You know, when you're consulting someone who's a leader at a Fortune 100 company, or when you're consulting someone like me, or when you're consulting like,

  3. 5:43 – 8:00

    What do most of your clients struggle with?

    1. AA

      you know, people across, across a wide range of things, I guess what are the common problems that our listeners might be able to relate to that you find come up, um, kind of time and time again?

    2. MD

      Confidence is an enormous problem for a lot of people. I, I find that there's a lot of self-doubt in the world, and there's an enormous belief that everyone is looking at everyone, you know, the spotlight effect, the idea that If you come to work and you have a bad hair day, everyone's gonna know you had a bad hair day. Or if you're in a meeting and you say the wrong thing, everyone will forever remember that thing. And, and that is a debilitating belief that a lot of people have, where they can't move through life without constantly worrying about what happened five minutes ago. And so I work really hard with people to sort of encompass and embrace the idea that no one pays as much attention to you as you think they do. And when you release that worry and that concern, you can become enormously happy and more productive, because suddenly all the things that you're doing to sort of maintain an image that is utterly unnecessary, once all those things fall away, you suddenly find yourself free, both in terms of the bandwidth you have to be thinking about the things you wanna do, but also just frankly, time. You know?

    3. AA

      Yeah.

    4. MD

      I am obsessive about minutes, and I am obsessive about the idea that people waste their minutes on things that no one notices, nobody cares, and don't lead them in the right direction. So that is a real struggle for people, just confidence. It's an enormous problem-

    5. AA

      Mm

    6. MD

      ... for a lot of people.

    7. AA

      So the idea that, yeah, you know, people aren't thinking about you as much as you think they are, uh, most people would kind of nod when they hear that in theory. Um, and I've given that advice so many times, and yet I also then spend inordinate amounts of time worrying that, ugh, that thing that I said at that party where I kind of made a joke and it kind of went a bit flat, was that a bit, like was that, was that a bit weird? It's, you know, and then this sort of translates to everything, like when I'm writing the book, when I'm doing YouTube stuff, podcast guests, like, oh, did the guest think that was a bit weird? Stuff like that. Um, I guess beyond the intellectual understanding that that's probably, like the spotlight effect exists, what are some things that you've found helpful in actually coaching people through the process of actually not caring what-

    8. MD

      Yeah

    9. AA

      ... what people think, if, if that's what we're trying to go for?

    10. MD

      Yeah.

  4. 8:00 – 12:06

    How to stop caring what others think

    1. MD

      One of the things I do is sort of thought experiments with people. I just had one with someone the other day. It, she is a person who is really, uh, invested in her image, her physical image, and she says, "It's just, it's what gets me through my day." And I said, "Let's go back to the last holiday party you attended. Can you think of it?" And she said, "Yes, I remember. It was a Christmas party." I said, "Do you remember what you wore?" She said, "Yes, I had to buy a dress. It was my husband's holiday party for his business, and it was important that I looked good." I said, "Did you spend a lot of time figuring it out?" And she said, "I did, but it was important." And I said, "Tell me what anyone else at the holiday party was wearing that night." And she paused for a long time and then said, "I can't even remember what my husband was wearing that night." And I said, "So do you think that everyone else can remember what you were wearing if you can't remember what anyone else was wearing?" And so that idea of sort of moving through life and either reframing the way you think about things or these wonderful experiments I send people on, which is go grocery shopping in your pajamas. Just go. Go in your pajamas and see what happens, because it's not gonna destroy you if you do it once, and you might suddenly discover that nobody cares what you look like in the grocery store. Now, I'm not suggesting grocery shopping in pajamas is a preferred behavior. It's not gonna help you. But what I'm trying to do is to get them to move through life in a way that you don't have to put your makeup on every day. You don't have to make sure that your tie and your pocket square and the socks that are peeking out underneath the cuffs of your pants, that they're all uniquely aligned. All of those things, when we can let go of them, life just gets happier and easier and better.

    2. AA

      I fully agree. I think that, I think that's great stuff. Um, one thing our viewers or listeners might be thinking is, "Well, easy for you to say. You're a dude. Uh, I'm a woman in corporate America, and I get told when I don't wear makeup that I look tired, and I know that people are ev- uh, perhaps not consciously, but at least subconsciously judging me based on my appearance," and like how, how does that fit in? 'Cause I, I'm, I'm... I imagine you must have kind of talked to people about this as well.

    3. MD

      Yes. I always tell people let's start off with the fact that I'm a white, straight American man with no physical disabilities and no mental illness, so I am genetically the most fortunate human being who has ever existed on planet Earth. I have the most advantages. I've never walked into a room and thought, "Nobody wants to hear from me." I've, I've always assumed everyone wants to hear every single thing I have to say. But what I tell people is, first, if people say you look tired if you're not wearing your makeup, it's only because everyone else in the room is wearing makeup, and if it would all just go away, we would all just look normal, right? So part of the problem is not that you look tired, but you just look different than the other people who are highly invested in their image at this moment. So, so that's sort of a construct that if we could bring everybody down a little, that would help everyone in the long run. But ultimately, it's about performance. If you are an outstanding person at your job, it does not matter if you come to work looking tired because if you're producing results and you are productive and profitable and your people are succeeding, nobody will care if you look tired. And so if you're worried about it, that if I look tired I'm not going to get the promotion I'm looking for, it's probably more to do with what you're doing in your job, because no one has hired you for what you look like, and you're never gonna hold onto your job or be promoted because of the way you look. It is ultimately gonna come down to performance, and we have to embrace that I have to perform well, which is really not even, as you know, not results-oriented for me, but process-oriented. You know? I know the things I have to do, and I let go of the things I can't control. But as long as you're doing the things you know you have to do, those other things fall away.

    4. AA

      Can we zoom in, zoom into that point? What do you mean when you say that you're process versus results-oriented? 'Cause I know, I know that you and I have talked about this, uh, uh, sort of in depth, but I

  5. 12:06 – 14:20

    Being process vs results orientated

    1. AA

      would, I would love to hear your take on it for, for the benefit of the viewers.

    2. MD

      Well, you know what? I've, I set goals every year. I've done it for about 15 years, and I publish them on the internet so people can see what my goals are And for the first few years I was setting goals, the problem I had was I was setting goals that I didn't actually have any control over. So I would say things like, "I am going to publish a book this year," and that was actually one of my goals early on. That's a ridiculous goal because that is dependent upon many factors outside of my control. I can say, "I will write a book this year." I can say, "I will write a book that I deem to be outstanding." I could even write a book that is deemed outstanding by a collection of my friends, right? That they believe is publishable. But to actually get a published book, it requires an editor to fall in love with the book and a publisher to agree with the editor, and an offer to be made and an agent to agree, and all of these things I have no control over whatsoever. So all of my goals that I set, with the exception of a couple, 'cause I'm mean to myself. Like, I set goals-

    3. AA

      [laughs]

    4. MD

      ... about winning Moth StorySlams, 'cause attending a Moth StorySLAM is just too easy for me. I decide to set a couple that are gonna be, be really cruel to me. But most of them, almost all of them are, "I'm going to do a thing, and I'm gonna bring it to the point that I can release it to the world, and then what the world does with it is sort of beyond my control."

    5. AA

      Hmm.

    6. MD

      So I think it's so important for people to set goals that are not dependent upon the whims of other people. 'Cause when that happens, we fail for reasons we have no control over. And I believe in failing. You know, I have... My average goal completion rate for the past 15 years is hovering right around 65%, and I love that number. 'Cause the, if there's ever a year that I get to 100%, I'm gonna say to myself, "I failed to push myself," 'cause I should never really accomplish 100% of my goals, 'cause if I do, I left something on the table. So I love failure. I believe in not accomplishing everything [laughs] you set out to do. I think that is a signal that you have pushed yourself beyond what was possible, and I think that's the way I wanna live.

    7. AA

      What is your... So, i- is it, is it that you set goals at the start of the year? Like, what, what does your goal-setting process look like?

    8. MD

      It starts in December.

  6. 14:20 – 21:29

    Your goal setting process

    1. MD

      So in December, I will look at the previous year's goals and analyze them and decide which ones I'm going to keep, you know, because they need to either continue on to the next year. Uh, pushups, for example, has been a goal of mine for 10 years.

    2. AA

      Pushup. Yeah.

    3. MD

      I know that if I don't set a goal of doing 100 pushups a day for five days a week, I know that at some point I might not do them, but if they're on the goals, I will absolutely find a way to do those 100 pushups. So that's one that I'll ev- evaluate and say, "It must stay." Some will be completed. I'll say, "Good, I did that one. I don't have to repeat it again." Some will... I will look at and say, "My intention was to do that goal this year. I didn't end up doing it 'cause halfway through the year, I decided it wasn't worth it. I didn't wanna do it anymore. It wasn't viable. It wasn't realistic," and that will fall off. And then I'll start looking in December at new goals for the next year, and at the same time, I post on my blog, "Does anyone have goals that they think I should take a look at? Things that I should be doing that I'm not doing?" And that includes my friends who jump in and say, "You're an idiot in this regard. You should really clean this up." It includes strangers who say, "I've been reading your stuff for a long time. Here's an area you've never explored before. Maybe you want to explore it." And it includes people who say, "This is a thing I love. I think you might love it, too. You should probably try to pursue this." And then throughout the month of December, which is always my favorite month, I start collecting those goals, and I start deciding which ones are appropriate, which ones are not, and then what level I will set for each one of those goals. And by January 1st, I post it. And then on June 30th, I always take an evaluation. I'm halfway through the year, where am I? What are still realistic? Have I let go of some because, for whatever reason, the forces of the universe have deemed this can no longer be a goal? And I'm more than willing to add goals on throughout the year, although honestly, I do it very, very rarely. I, I tend to hold what I have and occasionally release a goal if it doesn't make sense anymore.

    4. AA

      So what's an example of some of these, well, some of these goals? Like, what are your goals for this year, for example?

    5. MD

      Uh, I have 52 of them.

    6. AA

      52. Oh, my God.

    7. MD

      I just finished one today.

    8. AA

      Okay. [laughs]

    9. MD

      Yeah, I just finished one today. Uh, my goal this year, and has been for the past five years, is to write 100 physical letters, like hand, like handwritten or typed, that are printed, put in an envelope with a stamp, and mailed out into the world. Uh, and I just finished that this... Today I wrote a letter, and that was the 100th one that I'm gonna be sending out. So, so that's important to me. I have discovered that writing letters is incredibly beneficial in enormous number of ways. Like, so much goodness has come back to me from writing letters that that will always be a goal for me, is to write 100 letters a year.

    10. AA

      What do you mean, so much goodness has come back to you?

    11. MD

      Oh, well, uh, for example, on Teacher Appreciation Day, I wrote four letters to four of my favorite teachers in the world. I found their addresses, and I wrote to them. Yesterday, I had brunch with one of them, an English professor from 30 years ago, who called me up, received my letter, said, "Come and have brunch with me. I'd love to sit down and talk." We talked for two hours, which was beautiful. That's enough goodness. Turns out she owns horses now.

    12. AA

      [laughs]

    13. MD

      I grew up on a horse farm. My children have never ridden horses before, even though they've heard me tell stories about being on horses from my childhood. So in two weeks, I'm gonna take my children up to the horse, to the horses that she owns, and she's gonna let my kids ride their, her horses for the first time in their life. And things like that happen to me all the time. A- another teacher who I wrote to now lives about two hours south of me, uh, on the Cape, on the ocean, has, uh, invited me and my family to come for the day. Now, we can't make it work this summer, but we'll make it work next summer. And so part of it is just you send the letter out because it means something to someone. It's a physical manifestation of your thought, and it's so much more valuable than saying something kind to someone, because they get to hold onto it, and they get to reread it, 'cause there's not enough positivity in the world. You know, I also do things like I send pride flags to bigoted human beings in our country.

    14. AA

      [laughs]

    15. MD

      Like, whenever I hear a... A politician somewhere in the United States sort of standing against same-sex marriage. I have a small collection of Pride flags, or actually I have a large collection of small Pride flags, and I stick them in an envelope with an angry note and I mail it out, and that makes me feel better. Like, and nothing good comes back ever from that.

    16. AA

      [laughs]

    17. MD

      But it genuinely makes me feel good that they're gonna open an envelope or one of their staffers is gonna open an envelope and find a Pride flag in it, and they're gonna have to do something with that. Probably throw it away, but they're gonna have to confront it. Uh, but I just... It's a good goal that I think everyone should have, but that's just one of, I mean, 52. You know, there's lots of writing goals for me 'cause I'm a writer. There's a lot of performance goals, like what am I gonna do in terms of being on stages? I'm building a business, so there's business-related goals. And then there's lots of personal goals, like I have a best friend for the past 37 years that we don't see en- we don't see each other enough. So one of my goals this year was just make sure you see him six times this year. Like, we talk on the phone, we text all the time, but we don't actually physically see each other even though we live 15 minutes apart.

    18. AA

      [laughs]

    19. MD

      So six times this year, every other month, I'm gonna make sure I spend time with Benji. So those kinds of goals mean a lot to me, too.

    20. AA

      When you're, when you're collecting the goals, do you split them up into, like, categories or-

    21. MD

      I do

    22. AA

      ... is it just anything go? Like, yeah, what are, what, what are the categories?

    23. MD

      Yeah. So there's writing, which is sort of my- that part of my business, so all of the writing goals get piled up there. There's a performance or a storytelling goal, which is standing on stages, but also the business that I'm building, which is directly related to storytelling. I have personal goals, which are things like hanging out with my friend, taking one photo every day of my kids, taking a photo of me and my wife once a week because we never take photos together. I have organizational goals. I'm sort of an organizational nut in that regard, so, like, my basement is always a goal 'cause I just can't get ahold of it 'cause other human beings in my house create problems for me. So, and then I always have a list of, like, new goals, like something that doesn't quite fit a category. It's brand new. It's something that's landed this year. I'm gonna see what it's like. And so those end up there, too.

    24. AA

      Nice. Yeah, I remember when we were-- When I was setting my goals for th- uh, no, I think it was last year, actually, when, when you and I first started to speak. I became very, like, "Yeah, I wanna, wanna take art lessons. I wanna get better at guitar and music theory, piano." And I tried all these things, and I actually did take art lessons, like, three times a week for a few months and a guitar-- twice-a-week guitar lessons and twice-a-week piano lessons. And after a while, I was like, "Okay, this is now getting a bit much. It's time for me to drop those and just stick them in the someday-maybe list," because at some point in the future I would like to take art lessons, but at that season of my life, I felt like it was too much and I was rocking up to the art lessons thinking, "Oh, I n- I know this is supposed to be fun, but I'm kind of f- Ugh, why am I waking up at 7:00 in the morning? Like, I've gotta hop on a Zoom call straight afterwards." And kind of the attitude that I was approaching them with was not an attitude of, like, lightness and ease and play, and I, uh... Like, at least for my goals, I l- I like to th- I like to sort of treat them as a bit of a game rather than something I'm taking particularly seriously. Um, I guess w- how-- What's, what's your... [lip smacks] You know, some, s- some people, like your, your, your latest book, Someday Is Today, which is sick, um, is, I guess, on the surface a productivity book, and there are some people that are like, "Ugh, productivity is

  7. 21:29 – 24:24

    Your approach to productivity

    1. AA

      for losers. Productivity is all about just, like, br- grinding yourself to the ground and not having any fun." Uh, but you don't strike me as that kinda guy. So what, w- I guess, what's your broad approach to these goals and to productivity in general?

    2. MD

      I like to think that productivity is really dream-oriented, that everyone should have a dream, and if they don't, they probably do and they're not admitting to it, or they do that terrible thing where they don't actually spend time thinking about themselves. One of the tragedies of the world is we spend all of our time thinking about our parents and our spouses and our children and our business and our clients and our customers, but it's very rare that someone sits down and just says, "I'm gonna think about me for a little while, how I got here, you know, where am I going, what are my goals?" As a storyteller, I'm obsessed with finding stories so I have something new to say on stage. So storytellers tend to be deeply curious about themselves. We're self-centered in what I say is a positive way, just meaning we afford ourselves times to think about us. So in terms of productivity, you first have to have the dream or a multitude of dreams. You have to have a horizon. That's what I like to think of it as. What's your horizon? What's the point on the horizon? But that point on the horizon can be, "I've always wanted to have a backyard vegetable garden," you know? Or I was talking to a client the other day and I said, "Well, what's your horizon goal?" And she said, "I wanna see the 50 greatest movies of all time. There's a list in the world. I have the list, and I wanna sit on my couch and watch the 50 greatest movies." She said, "But that doesn't feel super productive." And I said, "That sounds incredibly productive to me because it's your dream." So when people say productivity sort of grinds you down, I think of productivity as it's the thing that you want to be doing that you should be doing more of. So let's maximize our life, the things we have to do in order to sustain life, in order to get to the things we want to do. So we don't have to think of productivity in terms of work. We can. If you're one of those people who have enormous work dreams and, a- and money dreams and house dreams and vacation dreams, that's great. Like, those are all valuable goals if that means something to you. But if your goal is to sit on the couch more and watch black-and-white movies with your husband and make sure you see all of them before you die, all the ones you're supposed to see, that's a wonderful goal. Let's make sure we maximize your work time, your chore time. Let's take away all of those little black holes of your life that you're wasting and make sure that we use all that so you can get your ass on the couch more often with your husband watching black-and-white movies. I think that's the way to dispel that productivity nonsense, which is we have to grind ourselves. It's just dream-oriented. Choose the right dream, and then productivity will make total sense to you.

    3. AA

      That's nice. I like that terminology, like horiz- what's your horizon goal? Um, and I guess

    4. AA

      We can have horizon goals for different areas of our life. Like I if, if I imagine for, like,

  8. 24:24 – 35:27

    How to use Horizon goals

    1. AA

      my book, the horizon goal is... Or actually broad- more, more broadly, I'd like to be an author who writes books every few years, because it seems kind of fun. Um, and then I guess I can break that down into more concrete steps. Like, is, is that how you approach it? You figure out the horizon goal, then you break it down? Like, what's, what's your process for this?

    2. MD

      Yeah. Well, I like a horizon goal because I think that, you know, if we're thinking about a dream or that thing on the horizon, I think when people define it very specifically, it's a mistake. You know, I originally thought I was gonna be a storyteller who told stories on stages in New York and Boston and maybe somewhere else in the world. And if I had made that horizon point sort of defined and specific, I would have only moved in that direction. I like thinking of horizons because th- it's sort of very wide. It's a distant point that you can't quite see. It's the acknowledgement that the road you're on, the path you're taking might not actually land you in the place you thought you would land, but you'll land in the vicinity. It's an, it's an approximation of the dream. You know, even with sort of a book, I start writing a novel, it always starts with a what if question. And I think I know what the end is gonna be. It never has been the end. I allow the book to sort of dictate where the, where the final moment of this character is going to be, and I just see it as a horizon, but sometimes I go, "Wow, that was quite left of where I thought it was gonna land." But it's in the vicinity. It's not behind me. It's always somewhere in the front. So I like to identify that idea of I'm gonna be a storyteller. But that I'm gonna be a storyteller also allows, because it's on the horizon, to be maybe I'll teach storytelling someday. Maybe I'll be a consultant about storytelling. Maybe, maybe an advertising company will allow me to inject storytelling into their car commercials, which is what I've done, right? All of those things are sort of on the storytelling horizon, but it affords me the opportunity to be flexible in terms of what ultimately is going to happen.

    3. AA

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And if you use that URL, huel.com/deepdive, they will send you a free t-shirt, which are quite nice, and also a free kind of shaker bottle type thing with your first order. So thank you so much, Huel, for sponsoring this episode. This episode is very kindly brought to you by Trading 212. Now, people ask me all the time for advice about investing because I've made a bunch of videos about it on the YouTube channel, and my advice for most people is generally invest in broad stock market index funds, which is exactly what you can do completely for free with Trading 212. It's a great app that lets you trade stocks and funds and ETFs and foreign exchange if you really want to. And one of the great things about the app is that if you're new to the world of investing, you can actually invest with fake money. You don't have to put real money in. They've got a practice mode where you invest fake money, and then it actually tracks what the market is doing in real time. 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Okay, so let's say I have, wh- which I sort of do, a horizon goal of I'd like to be a musical performer of some kind. Um, I... Th- th- this was actually wh- when I, you know, back in, like, 2008 when I discovered YouTube, uh, the channels I was mostly following were the YouTube music cover artists, and I'd watch them play the piano or the guitar and sing along to some cover of a popular song and think, "Damn, that's sick. I really want to do something like that."

    4. MD

      [laughs]

    5. AA

      And I had a few false starts. I dabbled with a few videos here and there over the years, and it was only, like, 10 years later that I was like, "You know what? Let me sit down and teach what I know about how to get into med school," that I actually became a YouTuber. So it, it sort of ended up going in a completely different direction. But I have always had in the back of my mind that at some point, someday, um, I would like to, um, yeah, I'd, I'd like to explore that interest a little bit more. I love the idea of learning how to play instruments myself and learning music theory and learning how to compose and arrange and then singing either myself or with friends to, to popular songs. So that's, like, a vague horizon goal, I guess. Like what would be-

    6. MD

      I like that one Yeah, that makes sense to me

    7. AA

      ... it works. Yeah.

    8. MD

      Yeah. I think if-

    9. AA

      So what do we do next in terms of breaking it down or like, how, yeah, what's the process?

    10. MD

      Well, it sounds to me like you're not quite sure, like, what, you know, path that's g- you're going to take to the horizon, and I, and I like that too. You know, I think the mistake people would make would be, "I am going to get a record contract. I am going to be a lead singer in a rock band with a record contract." That is a bad idea, I think. What you've said is, "I wanna do something in music, and I kind of wanna be a person maybe making music and making people happy with that music," right? But if that horizon means, "You know what? I discovered I'm actually a really good DJ. I don't need to learn how to play music, 'cause I can actually scratch, and that actually fills that need for me." Or it could be, "Turns out I can't play instruments, but what I can do is I can find people who play them really well, and I can help them make better music and become a music producer," right? That's, that's in that general area. And I think it's when people say, "No, I will not be happy unless I have a record contract, and I'm in a rock band, and I'm performing in arenas. That's the only thing that's gonna make me happy," I think that's a terrible sort of approach to life. So I like your approach, which, which is, "I kinda wanna do something in music. I think I wanna play music," but, you know, open to other things. And then I would just do what you're doing, which is begin the exploration. Start walking down the path. You know? All right, let me try-

    11. AA

      Yeah

    12. MD

      ... a guitar for a while, right? My wife wanted to play the guitar, and then she quickly realized, "You know what? The ukulele is better than the guitar. It's easier to play, it's smaller, and I can use it in my kindergarten classroom." So she became a ukulele player. She's pretty good. And then one day I said, "Are you ever gonna sing with the ukulele?" And she said, "I don't know. I'm not that good of a singer." But it turns out with the ukulele, it doesn't demand you to be a good singer, because the instrument is so sort of small and light and amusing that you don't have to sort of sing really beautifully. You can just sing well. So she has become a ukulele player who s- plays music to her kindergarten students and changes the way they learn because of it. Not her original goal, which is, "I wanna play the guitar someday," but it's become this thing, and all she did was she started on the path. She took positive steps forward. Most people spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what they should do to get to the horizon, rather than saying, "Well, this is one possible step I could take. I'm gonna take the one possible step, and if it's not the right one, I will take another possible step." But I cannot tell you how many people I meet who say, "Well, I'm still trying to plot out my thing." And I always say, "All the thinking you're doing about reaching your goal is meaningless and useless, and it doesn't count for anything. If you're just thinking about getting there, you're doing nothing. Take a step forward, even if that means going online and buying a ukulele. That's the first step. Great. You made a positive step today. A ukulele's coming to your home. Think about what the next thing you can do is."

    13. AA

      I love that. Yeah, I was, um, thinking about this exact idea this morning, um, 'cause so every, every morning I carve out three or four hours to do book stuff. And I was working on, uh, one of the chapters around procrastination and how, um, when we're procrastinating from a thing that we either want to do or need to do, often the first step is actually to, to just define what is the next step. 'Cause I think that, you know, you know, in my, in my world where people are struggling to start YouTube channels and stuff, it's always like thinking 100 steps ahead of like, oh, but like, what's my niche gonna be eventually which is gonna allow me to monetize and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, no, man, just like, you know, focus on like, you know, get going [laughs] . Like, what is, what is the next step? And there's a line from, um, the end of one of Brandon Sanderson's books, uh, Oathbringer, where it's like, um, the most im- important step a person can take is just the next one.

    14. MD

      Yeah.

    15. AA

      And I think about that a lot. I think with any goal that I have, what is the next step I can take this week in one sitting that will just make progress in some way? And as long as I'm not wedded to the pace of progress or to the destination particularly, at least it's, you know, it's, it's creating movement, and movement generally for me at least leads to motivation and then makes life feel good and, and all that stuff.

    16. MD

      Yeah, well, your story of how you sort of became what you are was a perfect example of that. Like, I thought I was going to be a person invested in YouTube in the musical realm, and then one day I decided to make a video on how I got into med school, right? Which never would've been your initial thought on how this would ever happen for you, but you remained open enough to say, "Well, let me try something else. I know what my goal is, which is I want to appear on a screen for millions of people around the world in a educational or inspiring way." But your story is exactly what I am talking about. You know, the idea of incrementalism is so important. People don't believe in it, the idea that tiny changes accumulated over time produce enormous results.

  9. 35:27 – 44:20

    Incrementalism

    1. MD

      Most people want a Big Gulp, a magic pill. They wanna instantly have a million subscribers. They wanna have a perfect YouTube video. They wanna have a book contract before they actually write the book or even before they even write the proposal, right? Everyone sort of wants this enormous leap, and if you examine the success stories, which I always believe you should do is, like, just examine the success stories of people in the world so that you can get a sense of what those success stories are. All of them involve tiny, incremental changes piling up over time that eventually produce enormous results. But people-

    2. AA

      Mm

    3. MD

      ... don't believe in it 'cause they can't see it immediately. You know, I just recently started... I learned that people who have better balance live longer. Because if you get older and you don't have good balance, you fall, and those falls put you in the hospital, and old people in the hospital die. You, you know that probably better than I do. And so one of the tricks I learned was when you're brushing your teeth, stand on one foot during the first minute of brushing your teeth and see if you can maintain that one foot, and then switch to the other one. And so I've started doing that, and I've asked people or I've told people this is a really good idea, you know, to help you improve your balance, and someone came back to me and said after a month, "Well, I don't really see my balance improving." And I said, "Well, first of all, you didn't really gauge your balance. You didn't assess your balance on day one to day 30, so it's impossible for you to even say that." But I said, "This is incremental change. You're not even supposed to see it. You're not even ex- supposed to expect to see it. You just have to believe that every single day that you spend a minute on each foot, twice a day if you're brushing your teeth twice a day, which you should be, over time the piling up of small things will produce enormous results. But you can't expect to see the results immediately. And if you do, that's when people fail to sort of make changes in their life that are meaningful."

    4. AA

      Yeah. Yeah, no, I've, I've, I've never really thought of this before, but I, I guess kind of my whole foray into musical YouTube land, like f- in the four, five-year period before I actually started being a qu- proper YouTuber and making this medical school educational content, it was like, on average, one video a year where, you know, one, one time filmed it with phones, another time got a microphone, another time got a camera, another time learned how to edit. I even wrote a blog post talking about my editing process in Premiere Pro for making music videos and how I discovered that if you just put black bars at the top of the page, it, like, makes it look widescreen and more cinematic and all this stuff. And I guess, like, all that stuff was just little steps I was taking in the vague direction of like, "Hey, this YouTube thing seems kind of cool. I reckon music is the kind of way forward." And that meant that when I decided, you know what, let's actually make these videos for medical students, I already had a camera, I already had a microphone, I already had known how to edit, having done it, like, once or twice five years ago. [laughs] And so that, that next step was a lot easier than it is for a lot of my students in my YouTuber Academy, where it's just completely overwhelming from day one, and there's a lot of overthinking that, that goes on in the process.

    5. MD

      Yeah, it's the steps we take that we just have to have belief. Like, I open my book with the word hope. I think hope is so important, the belief that when you're taking steps forward, somewhere down the road it's gonna help. You know, I made the mistake once. Someone asked me, "How did you become a storyteller?" And in a workshop, I said, "You know, when I was 40, I took a stage and I just suddenly found something I was naturally good at. I got lucky at a later point in life that I, I suddenly could do something I didn't know I could do." And my wife was in the room, and she said, "Is that really what you think?" From the back of the room she goes, "Is that really what you think?" And I said, "Yeah, that's what I've been telling people." 'Cause I mean, how do you explain it? I took a stage, I won, and I instantly became one of the winningest storytellers in Moth history and nationally recognized within a year. And she said, "You don't think the fact that you've been writing stories ever since you were 17, that you've written every single day of your life since you were 17 years old, played a role that night in your understanding of how stories work?" And I said, "Oh, I guess that's probably true." And she said, "And you've been a wedding DJ for a quarter of a century. You have been standing in front of people, half-drunk, on a microphone, learning to speak extemporaneously, ridding yourself of every bit of nervousness you ever could have speaking in front of human beings. You don't think that that landed on that stage that night?" And I went, "Oh yeah, I guess that's true, too." And she said, "And you've been an elementary school teacher. All you do all day is stand in front of 10-year-olds and tell them stories so that you can teach them long division. You just entertain kids in order to keep them learning. That is your style of teaching. It's the worst audience in the world, and you perform every day for them." She said, "You don't think that helped?" And it had never occurred to me, but it's that, like, work you're doing that you don't realize you're doing that might someday pile into something that changes your life, right? You became a YouTuber oddly because you became a doctor, and had you not become a doctor, you might not actually be doing what you're doing now, right? And so, like, the work you did, which really I always say was positive forward movement, progress on a goal, regardless of what that is, we have to have hope and belief that the work we're doing now won't necessarily land us in the place we expected, but that the skills and the experiences that we're acquiring will land us in a place. And I really believe the people who take the most steps forward in- irregardless of what the direction is they're taking those steps forward, the ones who are actually doing things every day, positive steps forward in a direction they think makes sense, lands them in a, in a positive place at the end of their life or at some point in their life.

    6. AA

      Yeah.

    7. MD

      But I just don't think people-

    8. AA

      No

    9. MD

      ... recognize that 'cause they don't credit that incremental growth and what it could yield. It's this weird belief that people have that they could actually predict their own future. They have so much hubris that they think they know what next year will be. I love people who tell me they have a five-year plan. I think it's the stupidest thing. You understand it, right? Imagine five years ago if you had said what my five-year plan is. You would never have guessed where you are today, and that has been the same for me for every single five years of my life, and I think it's only because I'm r- constantly, relentlessly finding the next thing I want to step forward on. And all of those things will accumulate to something.

    10. AA

      Yeah. There was a, there was a great piece of advice that I got from one of the consultant physicians that I worked with in my fourth year of med school. He asked me... We, you know, he and I kind of got on. We were in the emergency department grabbing a coffee, and he was like, "Hey," you know, "so what specialty do you want to do?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, I've still got three years of med school. I don't, I don't need to figure it out. Like, I, I don't, I don't really know." And he said, "You know what? If I were you, I would just pick something and start moving in that direction because it's a lot easier to change direction when you're moving than when you're static."

    11. MD

      It's great.

    12. AA

      And I was like, "Oh."

    13. MD

      I'm stealing that and using it forever.

    14. AA

      Damn, that is good shit. [laughs]

    15. MD

      Yeah.

    16. AA

      And then I decided, you know what? Plastic surgery is the way forward, and then I started taking steps in that direction. And then I attended this hackathon where my skills in web design that I'd been doing for 10 years came in handy to, for us to win this prize for this plastic surgery surgical app thing, made friends with a few plastic surgeons, joined a board of a plastic surgery organization, ended up getting hired as, like, a freelance UX designer for medical tech companies while doing my elective, which meant I could make a profit in med. Like, it's like all these random things happened, and I, I d- decided in the end I don't wanna do plastic surgery, and I moved towards obstetrics and gynecology. But, like, just taking steps in that direction led to so many interesting things that I'm just, yeah, really thankful to, uh, Dr. Adcock for that, [laughs] for, for that piece of advice.

    17. MD

      That is great. It is easier to change direction if you're moving forward. Is so great, 'cause most people are just sitting in place contemplating what they should do. I actually-- I've worked with some of your YouTubers. They've come out of your academy, and they've worked with me privately.

    18. AA

      Oh, that's great.

    19. MD

      And the thing they always tell me is, "Ali tells me I have to just make stuff, that I have to stop worrying about what it looks like and what it sounds like. All of that will come, but the first thing you have to do is make a video." And I, every time I go, "He's right. You should post something today." And they're like, "Well, I'm not ready today." I'm like, "Yes, you are. Just put up something." And they're like, "Well, what if it's bad?" I said, "Then take it down. Do you really think people are scouring the internet?" Like, if I watch a bad YouTube video, it doesn't stay with me. I'm not like three days later going, "That lady."

    20. AA

      [laughs]

    21. MD

      "That lady who wasted nine minutes of my li-" That doesn't happen. We just move on with our lives, right? We don't worry about the failures. And so that message that you're putting out there, I hear it all the time. They don't follow it, though, as often as we want them to. I really believe that people hear us, but so many times they sit and wait because of fear, because of concerns of failure, because they don't think they can do it, 'cause they're chasing perfection. The worst thing you could ever do in your life is to, you know, try to be perfect ever, but especially out of the gate. All of those things cause them not to move forward.

    22. AA

      Yeah. Yeah, like how, how, how do we get more people to take that advice, I guess? Like, or, or, or rather, how, you know, in, in your life, how did you get over that initial thing which has now resulted in you being so prolific in like writing and performing and all, all this stuff?

  10. 44:20 – 49:50

    Your early life, homeless and motivation

    1. MD

      I, I guess for whatever reason, I think probably because, you know, I grew up without parents who were sort of paying attention in any way, and, you know, after high school, I had a tough period of life, you know, homeless and jail and violence and things like that. I think because there was never sort of the ability to chase the goal, the process always was valuable to me, 'cause no one was ever at the end with a trophy or a monetary award or even an acknowledgment that I did something well. And so I was never thinking, "I'm gonna go do that thing so that someone will reward me in a significant way." It was always sort of me. You know, I only had me, and so for me, I was always thinking, "I'll just get this thing done, and that'll be a good step." You know, my first novel, I never expected it to be published, but I damn well expected it to be written, 'cause that was all on me. I'm going to write a book someday, and I'm gonna write a book that I think is good, 'cause I had maybe six starts of novels that got 10,000 words in before thankfully I had the, the, the wisdom and the taste to read those 10,000 words and go, "Not good. This is a terrible, terrible book. I cannot continue this one." But I did ha- I knew I will write a book someday, and I secretly believed, actually, I openly believe, that if I write a book, I'm gonna be better than most of the people in the world, 'cause most people say they're gonna write a book, and most don't. Almost no one does, and everyone thinks they will. So if I just write a book, I've already achieved something. That was genuinely how I felt. And once I finished it, I said to my wife, "Well, I'll try to get it published," because you can't write a book and not try to get it published. "But probably not gonna happen," I told her. And I had already started my second one. I said, "Well, I can do one. Now I'll do two." So I'm writing my second novel while I'm trying to get the first one published. Never, ever, ever. And if it hadn't happened, if all I did was had a book that maybe I had bound, you know, had a few copies made for family members, that would have genuinely been a, an enormous achievement for me, and I would have recognized it as an enormous achievement. So I think it was just for me, maybe I got fortunate in the fact that I was ignored for so often that I had to really become, you know, self-assessing. And because there was no authority figure declaring success, I had to find success for myself, which was, which quickly became process-oriented. A- another thing that I really encourage people to think about, I was just doing it with someone yesterday. I think sometimes people see a goal or a, a dream as a linear process, like A to B to C, and I think that's always a mistake too. So I was working with someone yesterday who said, "I want to write a memoir." And I said, "Well, start writing a memoir." And she said, "I don't know where to start." And I said, "Do you have some good moments that you know you want to include?" She said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Well, write those." She said, "Don't you have to start a book at the beginning?" I said, "No, you write something. Just write chapter 15 if that's what you can write today. Like, save chapter one for the day you can write chapter one, but write whatever you can on a given day." And that applies for everything that we're doing. Sort of, you know, as I'm building a business, there's absolutely the next thing I'm supposed to do. But if I don't want to do that thing, for some reason my motivation to, to do that task on that day is not there, I do recognize there are a multitude of other tasks that will need to be completed, so I will go deal with those tasks today. So rather than seeing goals as linear, just see it as it's a series of things that need to be done. And in terms of time management, that helps a lot too, because if your next thing that you have to complete takes two hours, sometimes people will just wait for a two-hour period when there's also like a 10-minute project and a 15-minute project and maybe a six-hour project, but can actually be broken down into 10-minute increments. It does not need to be done in the full six hours all at once. So seeing your dream as stepping stones, but you get to touch whichever one you want at any point, 'cause you're gonna have to touch all of them eventually. That's really helpful. And then I also think momentum is enormous. When people wanna lose weight, what I always tell them is, "Weigh yourself every day," because we're, it fluctuates daily, "and start the day of weight loss on that day when you step on the scale and you suddenly go, 'Oh, wow, that's weird. I lost two pounds yesterday.'" You know, maybe you missed lunch. You did some extra walking. You didn't drink as much water as you did, and suddenly you're two pounds less. That's the best day to start a, a weight loss program, because you've already lost two pounds. Like, you suddenly are excited about something. Excitement leads to motivation. Motivation leads to momentum. So you have to just sort of start building up some wins along the way. So that's... When I'm trying to get people to, like, take that first step to, to do the thing, I give them easy wins. Like, ordering that ukulele is an easy win. If you have the money, it doesn't take much to order it, and that means it's gonna arrive, and that's an easy win, too. That's an exciting thing, you know? And after it arrives, well, do you have a music book? Get that easy win. Now you have a music book, right? And now can you just learn to play in E? Just in E. At the end of the day, you're like, "Wow, I can play in E," right? It'll take you five minutes to learn to do an E, but you just- you're gonna have to learn an E someday. That's a step you're gonna have to touch, so touch that one today. So I think those kinds of things get people moving a little more productively or a, a quicker, you know, rather than sitting where they are thinking about what to do next.

    2. AA

      Nice. Um, I'd love to dive into the whole

  11. 49:50 – 52:55

    Striving vs enjoying the present moment

    1. AA

      idea of, um, kind of making every minute count. But before we do so, um, w- how do you feel... So we, we, we've talked a lot about sort of the pursuit of a goal and kind of moving forward and stuff. Um, in some... You know, I've heard some people say, and I've, uh, I've kind of struggled with this thought process myself, which is that what's this balance between, I guess, striving for the next thing versus enjoying the present moment?

    2. MD

      [laughs] I just had this conversation with my wife.

    3. AA

      Oh, okay.

    4. MD

      I'm working on the proposal for my next book, you know, even though I just had this one come out, and I have another book sort of done. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm way ahead, and yet I was sort of complaining about this book proposal I had to write. And my wife said, "You've published six novels. You've published them all over the country and all over the world, and you have two books of nonfiction now. Can you just enjoy it for one damn second?"

    5. AA

      [laughs]

    6. MD

      "Can you just be happy with yourself instead of constantly thinking you're not good until you're working on the next thing?" And I heard her clearly. What I don't think she understands for me is that it is the pursuit of the next thing that is so joyous to me. Whether that pursuit is the next book or I took my first flying lesson last week, and it might be my last flying lesson, but I wanted to try it, you know? It's always the next thing. I see sort of complacency and satisfaction as stagnation and death. I, I just... I wanna have the widest, fullest life possible with as many things in it as I can possibly fit, so I can have as many experiences while always prioritizing my children, my wife, oddly my cats, those types of things. But when those priorities are sort of taken care of, I just wanna... I want to expand it as much as possible. So, you know, I think that we should celebrate our achievements. I believe in sort of... My friend Jenny just wrote a novel. I think she should have a... She hasn't done anything with it yet, but I think she should have a party that says, "I wrote a novel, and you didn't. Come and have cake." I think... I really believe in that. But I think that if Jenny writes one novel and she never writes another one and she decides to spend the rest of her life watching Netflix and, you know, drinking craft brew on her deck, and that's what's gonna make her happy, I will suggest to Jenny that when she's 100, she will think differently about how she spent those years. Uh, because the joy in- of the completion of a goal that you've always had should just lead to the next joy of the next completion of the next goal you should have.

    7. AA

      This is pretty controversial. I, I, I am- I imagine some people are sitting here listening or, or watching to this thinking, "Fuck that guy. Like, I enjoy watching Netflix for three hours a day, and I don't regret the time that I'm, I'm spending watching Netflix for three hours a day. How, how is he... How can he possibly tell me that I should be spending that time pursuing goals instead?"

    8. MD

      Right. Well, a- again, acknowledging that goals can be I wanna have a vegetable garden, I wanna l- walk more, I wanna spend time with friends, I wanna, I wanna tube down a river more often, all of those things, right? I think what I would tell those people

  12. 52:55 – 1:00:05

    Understanding regret

    1. MD

      is that I had the unfortunate, um, experience of when I was 22, I, I was robbed at gunpoint. You know, head on the floor of a restaurant, gun to my head, uh, a man counting back from three and telling me when he hits zero, he's going to shoot me in the head. And I was absolutely without any doubt sure that I was going to die that day, and I believed I was in the last moments of my life. And I will tell you that I did not feel fear or sadness or anger. The only feeling I was consumed with was regret. I instantly understood that I was 22 years old, and I had failed to do anything with my life that I had wanted to do. That looking back on my life, as joyous as parts of it were, many of it, many of my parts of my life were, I realized how much time I had wasted and how I had not done anything. And so for me, that was a hinge point in my life. Now, it resulted in 15 years of PTSD and a lot of problems. But ever since that day, you know, my approach is, you know, my 100-year-old plan, you know, which is what I would suggest to your Netflix person, "I enjoy watching Netflix three hours a day. To hell with him." I would say, "When you're 100, will you be happy having lived this life the way you're living it now? The 100-year-old version of yourself who's lying on their deathbed, will that person look back and go, 'Thank goodness you spent those days watching Killing Eve, a television show that you have no recollection of anymore'? Right? Thank goodness that you watched all 22 seasons of Dexter because a life without Dexter is a life unfulfilled."

    2. AA

      [laughs]

    3. MD

      My suggestion would be the 100-year-old version of you is saying, "Get off your ass. Are you crazy? You're watching something that is meaningless to you." And remember, I am the person who supports the woman who wants to watch every... the, the best 50 movies of all time sitting next to her husband, you know, enjoying a glass of wine. I'm all for it. But I think what happens is she is taking a purposeful approach to a dream And it has definition and meaning, and I think the 100-year-old version of herself will look back and go, "Thank goodness I watched the 50 greatest films ever made on this planet, and thank goodness I spent that time with my husband, and thank goodness we talked about that meaningful art." But when it comes to Netflix or a phone, I think what most people do is they just follow the path of least res- least resistance. They're just watching for watching's sake. They're just filling their hours with things that are easy rather than things that are hard, and things that are forgettable rather than things that are memorable. I don't think we remember most of the television we watch, and I don't think we value it. Now, I love television. My son and I are making our way through every season's, every episode in every, um, every season of The Simpsons. He's 10. I love watching The Simpsons with my son, and we crack up about it, and we make jokes about it for days later. He still walks around and makes jokes. He thought Aerosmith was a band that only existed in The Simpsons. One day it came on the radio, he goes, "Hey, these are The Simpsons guys." I'm like, "No, no, no. These are guys who are on The Simpsons." Right? These are the moments. This is meaningful use of my time, watching a Netflix show, right? That is important to me. During the pandemic, my wife, my son and I went through every single Marvel movie. We had never watched one, and we often talk about how that was a beautiful way to spend three months in quarantine, watching every Marvel movie. We will always remember that as a joyous time in our lives. But I think most people don't approach the way that they consume content like that. I think they are just thinking, "It's 7:00. I've eaten my dinner. Now I'm supposed to sit down for three hours and watch a television show that I will forget about, and then I will go to bed. And then I'll repeat it the next day. And when I'm 100 and I'm on my, lying on my deathbed, I will be thinking, 'My God, so many more things I could have done.'" Right? David Cassidy, you know, the musician? I just learned that, uh, he's the Partridge Family guy, and he became world famous. David Cassidy is a world famous musician. He died a couple years ago. He was speaking to his daughter on his deathbed. The last thing he said to his daughter and in his life was, "So much wasted time." And that is a world-renowned musician who made music that made millions of people happy, and in the last moments of his life, he was thinking about all the time he wasted. I think that's what your Netflix person is gonna... It's what's gonna happen to the Netflix person. But I understand them. If I was asked to, like, today I just wanna do whatever makes me happy, I'll eat a hot dog, I'll play golf, I'll have sex, right? Those three things. That's it. That, and, and I'll watch The Simpsons with Charlie. And every single day, if I did that, would make me happy on that day. But when I'm 100, I will look back and think, "What the hell did you do? You really spent every single day playing golf, eating hot dogs, having sex, and playing, and watching The Simpsons with Charlie? With all the other things you could've been doing in life, you couldn't have filled a few more days with a few more things?" I think that's what happens.

    4. AA

      This episode is very kindly brought to you by WeWork. Now, this is particularly exciting for me because I have been a full paying customer of WeWork for the last two years now. I discovered it during, you know, when the pandemic was in, on the verge of being lifted, and I'd spent, like, the whole year just sort of sitting in my room making YouTube videos. But then I discovered WeWork, and I was a member, me and Angus, my team members, we were members of the WeWork in Cambridge, and they have, like, hundreds of other locations worldwide as well. And it was incredible because we had this fantastic, beautifully designed office space to go to to work, and we found ourselves, like, every day just at 9:00 in the morning just going to WeWork because it was a way nicer experience working from the co-working space than it was just sitting at home working. These days, what me and every one on my team has is the All Access Pass, which means you're not tied to a specific WeWork location, but it means you can use any of their several hundred co-working spaces around London, around the UK, and also around the world. And one of the things I really love about the co-working setup is that it's fantastic as a bit of a change of scenery. So these days I work from home. I've got the studio at home. But if I need to get some focused writing work done and I've been a, I'm feeling a bit drained just sitting at my desk all day, I will just pop over to the local WeWork, which is about a 10-minute walk from where I am. I'll take my laptop with me. I'll get some free coffee from there. I'll get a few snacks, and it's just such a great vibe, and you get to meet cool people. I made a few friends through meeting them at WeWork, and it's just really nice being in an environment almost like a library but kind of nicer because there's, like, a little bit of soft music in the background, and there's other kind of startup bros and creators and stuff in, in there as well, and it's just my absolute favorite co-working space of all time. It's super easy to book a desk or book a conference room using the app, and it's a great place to meet up with team members if you're gonna collaborate and you all live in different places. They've got unlimited tea and coffee and herbal teas and drinks on tap, and they've also got various kind of after-work events that happen, like happy hours and yoga and a few other exercise type things. And you can also take in guests. So often when guests will come over to visit, I'll say, "Hey, let's pop into WeWork," and we will just work from there for the whole day, and then we'll go out for dinner some time in the evening. Anyway, if you're looking for a co-working space for you or your team, then I'd 100% recommend WeWork. Like I said, I've been a paying customer for theirs for the last two years, which is why it's particularly exciting that they're now sponsoring this episode. And if you wanna get 50% off your first booking, then do head over to we.co/ali, and you can use the coupon code ALI at checkout, A-L-I, to get 50% off your first booking. So thank you so much, WeWork, for sponsoring this

  13. 1:00:05 – 1:08:38

    10 minutes is precious

    1. AA

      episode.

    2. AA

      There's a, there's a great story that you tell in your new book, Someday Is Today, um, about, um, think you had a lunch with someone and they were a few minutes late, like seven minutes late or something.

    3. MD

      Yes.

    4. AA

      Uh, I wonder if you can, you can tell that story, 'cause that-

    5. MD

      Yeah

    6. AA

      ... that's one that's really, really stuck with me. [laughs]

    7. MD

      [laughs] So I always am willing to give fledgling writers 30 minutes of my time if they will meet me in the place that I happen to be, and I was in McDonald's that day, which is actually one of my favorite places to meet writers at some. I like the sort of tearing away of all of what people see as writing, which is, you know, I need to be at a coffee shop with smooth jazz and a cappuccino. I like to put them at a plastic table with a lot of noise and, and Diet Coke. So she met me at the McDonald's, and she was late. And so when she sat down, I said, "Tell me what you're planning, what you're doing." And she started describing this book, you know. And, and it sounded interesting. Like, I was like, "This sounds like a good project," but I just waited for my moment. And then eventually I said, as I always say to writers, I say, "So how much have you written?" And so often, almost always, the answer is, "Oh, well, I haven't started writing anything yet." And I s- then I said to her, I said, "Well, you were seven minutes late today." And she said, "I'm sorry." You know, she ba- "I'm so sorry." I'm like, "No, no, no. My point was not that you were seven minutes late and I was upset. My point was I used the seven minutes that you were late to write some sentences. You know, I turned my computer." I said, "This is what I wrote in the seven minutes that you were late," right? She was a person who believed she could only write in a two-hour block, that her ideal writing time was, like, 10 to 12, you know, that she needed to be in a certain place, in a t- certain mind frame, which is so often every creative person's belief that they only work under certain circumstances ideally. So I reminded her that during World War I, there were men in trenches wearing gas masks, artillery exploding over their heads, and they were scribbling in little books, in journals, hoping that if they survive this battle and the many battles that were to come, someday they might publish something. So thank goodness that the writers of the 1910s did not require Starbucks smooth jazz and two-hour quiet blocks of time for them to get their work done, because that's just not a reality, especially if you actually wanna make a thing. If you want to do something like a vegetable garden in your backyard or write a book or create a YouTube channel, if you actually wanna do it, you should want to be doing it whenever it's possible. So I, I tell all of the creative people of the world, 10 minutes is precious to you. It doesn't mean in 10 minutes I can write a chapter, but, you know, in 10 minutes I can reread the last three paragraphs I wrote earlier today and see if they're okay and clean them up a little bit, or I can write five good new sentences. So it's just the idea that people, they just assume they need these ideal situations in order to create something lovely. You know? Whereas, like, van Gogh was, like, mentally unstable and unmedicated and produced some of the greatest work in the world, you know? But had he been living in 2022, people might have said, "Well, let's get control of some of your mental illness first. Let's experiment with some medication before we get you painting," right? Like, it's always this idea that everything has to be right before we launch, and that's not true. We should just launch. We launch now. We're not the space program. We're not putting people into orbit where we have to be careful. We just have to take steps forward. And, um, as is the case with most people, she really wasn't invested in writing. She was invested in the idea of having written or in the idea that I can quit my job and write from 10 to 12 every day and then have lunch with my friends, and that is the writer's life, which is, as you well know, not the writer's life.

    8. AA

      Nice. Um, yeah, I, I think back to that bit of your book whenever I feel like, oh, you know, I sh- I sh- you know, I should probably do some book stuff right now, but, uh, I've on- I've only got 23 minutes until, you know, until this thing that I have to do, and like, oh, you know, I could go down, I could get a coffee, get a biscuit, just, like, lounge around a bit. I can't get anything done in 23 minutes. I need, I need hours and hours, you know, with my, [laughs] with my flat whites in my hand [laughs] and, like, my Lord of the Rings in my, in my background music to get into the zone. Uh, but I, I love the way you put that, of like, in the seven minutes, I wrote some sentences. And I'm just thinking, like, if I ... I, I sh- I should just have that approach, 'cause, like, when I was, you know, uh, when I was, when I was working as a doctor, um, and trying to do the YouTube thing on the side, I would use those seven minutes blocks of time here and there to write stuff for videos. Like, if I'd be on the toilet, instead of scrolling Twitter on my phone, I'd be on Notion typing out some stuff for a video.

    9. MD

      Yeah.

    10. AA

      Or if I'm waiting eight minutes for a patient's blood results to arrive and there's no one else in the waiting room and there's nothing for me to do, it's like, great, let's open up Notion on the Windows computers in front of me and just, like, type out a few notes for a video. And so many people in my, in my academy ask, like, "Oh, but, like, I've got a, I've got a job. Like, how do, how do you do YouTube alongside a job?" I'm always like, "Look, man, like, [laughs] there are very few jobs where you don't have small, small amounts of time here and there where you nor- which you normally waste scrolling on your phone, where if you wanted to and if you really cared about this thing, I'm not saying you have to, but if you did, uh, you could potentially spend that time opening up Apple Notes and just drafting a few bullet points for, for your next video." And I think I've got that approach to YouTube, but I really don't have the approach to the book, because for the book, I've commit- I've talked myself into believing the bullshit that, like, I need to, I need to have four hours and, like, the appropriate coffee cup and all that crap.

    11. MD

      Yeah. Well, I wrote my fifth novel, almost all of it, in faculty meetings while teaching. Now, admittedly-

    12. AA

      [laughs]

    13. MD

      ... it's a book of lists. It's a novel written by an obsessive list maker, so the book is told or the story is told through list after list after list after list. But I wrote almost all of those lists in those moments of a faculty meeting when something was being said that was irrelevant to me, which was an enormous number of minutes in those faculty meetings. Or I always arrive five minutes early, and I use those five minutes, and as things are wrapping up or we have a raffle at the end of it because that's gonna make us happy, I'd just be writing lists. And the beauty of that was I didn't even n- need to write on a computer. I could have a Post-it note that I'm writing a list on, and that can later be transferred into the computer. I wrote a whole book during meetings. And, you know, I always remind people a book is probably about 5,000 sentences, so like incrementalism, right? Pile up 5,000 sentences and you have a book. I can't guarantee that's gonna be a good book. De- that depends on you and your effort and skill and experience, but it's 5,000 sentences, and if I write seven sentences here, I am a lot closer to 5,000 than I was a minute ago. I really believe that that seven-sentence step forward is a significant one, especially because I know I'll do that 23 times today. I'll take 23 moments in my day to write somewhere between one and 50 sentences, and if I just keep doing that, you know, that is why I have a pile of books, you know? It's ... A- and you know I'm a schoolteacher, you know, I am a wedding DJ, I have a consulting business, I'm launching another business. I, I do a-- I'm a minister, I officiate weddings, I'm a substitute minister at churches even though-

    14. AA

      [laughs]

    15. MD

      ... I really don't have a lot of faith in God. I do all these things, and people... The reason I wrote my book was because people would ask me, "How do you do all that you do?" And I would always say, "Well, if you give me 12 hours, I'll sit down with you, and I'll go through your whole life, and I'll help you out." And no one wants to do that, so the book was the answer to that question. Um, but yeah, same thing with writing as with everything else. People get very precious over how a creative person works or how creativity works, whether that creativity is writing a book, painting a painting, or figuring out how are you gonna, you know, lay out your vegetable garden. Or my son, right? He's a fish- he's taken up fishing this summer. He loves it. He's obsessed with fishing. And, you know, he had his tackle box, and he bought all this gear. And I said, "All right. When you gonna set it up?" And he said, "Right now." And I said, "Well, you gotta go to bed in 10 minutes." And he goes, "I can get some of it done in 10 minutes, Dad." And I was like, "Damn, he is right."

    16. AA

      [laughs]

    17. MD

      Like, I was gonna tell him, "Don't start setting up your tackle box now. Wait for the morning." But he was like, "No, I'll get some of it done. I got 10 minutes before you're gonna make me brush my teeth." That's exactly the attitude you have to have.

    18. AA

      Nice. Love it. Um, so d- just, uh, I... One of the things that also struck me about the book was it seems you have a pretty cavalier attitude towards rules, and I wonder if you can just

  14. 1:08:38 – 1:20:06

    Why you should break rules

    1. AA

      talk about your attitude towards rules. [laughs]

    2. MD

      Yeah. Well, I think rule followers tend to be the least productive people in the world. You know, I think that... Well, it happened to me last night. I was with my friend Jenny, and, uh, she was telling me about how she had made a mistake in her classroom as a teacher, and then she got in trouble. She said, "I got in trouble with my principal." And I said, "What was trouble?" And she said, "Well, I got yelled at." And I said, "Did he actually raise his voice?" And she said, "Well, no. He told me what I did wrong." I said, "So you received feedback from your boss on your performance." So we have to pull back trouble and yelling to feedback from your boss on how to fix your performance for next time, which is a normal thing that happens in a workplace every day. But so often, Jenny's a rule follower. So often, rule followers see the violation of a rule as a potentially dangerous thing that will result in a cat- a catastrophe, catastrophic series of events that will destroy their lives, when most of the time, none of the rules actually matter. Most of them are made up arbitrarily, and most of them are irrelevant. So, you know, I'm not proposing people rob or, you know, commit crimes in any way, but what I'm proposing is test the world in terms of rules. You know, one of my favorite tests, I don't know if I wrote about this in the book, is every time I do extra work as a teacher, I have to fill out a time sheet. Actually, in almost everything I have to do as a teacher, I have to fill out, like, a list of things at the top, a heading, and one of them is my name, and then it always says position. I think I'm supposed to write teacher up there, but I always write the word upright.

    3. AA

      [laughs]

    4. MD

      My position is upright. I've done that for 24 years, and no one has ever said anything to me about writing the word upright, which is a signal to me that that question is irrelevant. Now, it's sort of a rule that I'm supposed to indicate my position on these forms, but by writing upright, I have discovered that that is an irrelevant rule, that that is something no one has ever looked at and no one has ever cared what I do. And so I take that approach to most of my life, which is, let me see what happens if I don't do this thing, because almost always what will happen is someone will say, "You need to do that thing." And I say, "Oh my gosh, you're right. I'll do it next time." And then I know it has to be done. But I will tell you that half of the time in every administrative task I am required to do at work, half the time when I don't do it, nobody ever says a word to me, and it does not affect my job in any way. There's just layers upon layers of rules in our world. The parking lot at my, uh... We have a-- We belong to this lake club. There's a parking lot, and I invent parking spots, which make my children crazy 'cause they're rule followers.

    5. AA

      [laughs]

    6. MD

      But I just park on the grass next to the parking lot 'cause all the parking spaces are filled, and I don't wanna have to go to the auxiliary parking lot, which is far away. And they go, "Dad, this isn't a parking spot." I said, "I know it's not, but who's in charge here at the lake club? It's not the police, right?" And they don't ticket because there's no, like, meter maid here at the, at the lake club. The worst thing that's gonna happen is a teenage lifeguard is gonna come over to me and say, "Excuse me, sir, you can't park there." And then I will say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll go park it somewhere else." Now, I have been doing this for four years. No one has ever said a word to me.

    7. AA

      [laughs]

    8. MD

      I make parking spots up 'cause I recognize that there's no official in charge of any parking lot anywhere on the planet. You can basically park wherever you want, unless you're, like, on a college campus and maybe there's a security. Even then, do they have a tow truck? Are they gonna tow you for parking in the wrong place at the university? At best, you're gonna get a note, maybe a ticket. Most of the time, I'm at a university that I'm never coming back to. Thank you for your ticket. Good luck getting paid on that one, right? Which is another rule that I won't follow. But the problem is, is when we follow all these rules, when we obsess, when we s- obsess in the expectations of others that are unnecessary, we lose time. So I encourage people to just sort of cut every corner you can because your life and your time are too precious to be absorbed with bureaucracy that is utterly unnecessary.

    9. AA

      H- have you, have you always had this, this attitude, like, or can you trace it back to, like, a moment where you realized that this was a thing?

    10. MD

      The moment I can trace it back, [laughs] this is crazy, but it's really true. I'm in kindergarten in Mrs. Dubois' class, and I am building a tower of blocks during indoor recess, and she rings her little bell, and she says, "Recess is over." And I still have a few blocks to put on the tower. And, uh, she says, "Matt," you know, "clean it up." And I said, "Yep, just one sec." I had to finish the tower. And, you know, I'm a kindergartner, so I guess I'm taking a long time. "Matt, clean it up." I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna get to it." And so she comes over and she slides her foot under the tower so that it collapses in front of me, and I'm so mad about it, I say something. I don't know what I say, but it's bad enough to get me in trouble. And the trouble is go to the corner, which was a kindergarten punishment, which is you go stand in the corner with your nose in the corner. And I was terrified of it 'cause only Sean Trudell got sent to the corner-

    11. AA

      [laughs]

    12. MD

      ... like the red-headed demon, and now I'm going to the corner. And I remember I went and I stood in the corner underneath a flag, and there was a pencil sharpener, and I stood in the corner and I said to myself, "It's just a corner. Like, this is nothing. Why was I afraid of the corner? Put me in the corner all day, lady, if I can do what I want." And I suddenly understood that all I will ever have to do in life, at worst, is trade choice for time, which is what I did in high school all the time. You know, I would, I would just do what I wanted with the acknowledgement that at the end of the day I would have to spend an hour in detention where I would just do my homework, which I would be doing at home anyway. You know? So like there was a... Beyond the school there was a stream, and beyond the stream there was a forest, and we were not allowed to go across the stream into the forest. One day I was like, "Well, I'm gonna go in the forest 'cause I wanna know what's there, and I'm just gonna trade time. I'm just gonna trade time to go explore the forest," which is exactly what I did. I went to the forest, I expl- the bell rang. I ran, I jumped the stream. I almost didn't get in trouble. Like, the teacher caught me at the very end. She's like, "Did you just jump the stream?" And I'm always honest. I believe in, like, be honest, don't lie. I said, "Yeah, I went to the forest." She said, "You can't go to the forest." I said, "I know." She goes, "Well, why'd you go to the forest?" I said, "Well, I wanted to see what was in the forest." She goes, "You're not allowed to go to the forest." I said, "I know. You'll give me detention and I'll go do the detention, but now I know what's in the forest." And she lost her mind because she's a rule follower. She can't understand that whole notion of trading choice for time, and that's essentially at worst what will ever happen when you break a rule. But most of the time nothing happens except you go, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll fix that," and then you fix it. But remember, my friend Jenny saw feedback from a boss as trouble and yelling when neither one was actually true. She did not get in trouble. There was no actual consequence. And he did not raise his voice. But in most people's minds, that's what happens when they get called into their boss's office and the boss says, "Hey, you didn't fill out that form. You didn't complete the data in that database." And you go, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'll go do it right now. That won't happen again." They leave and think, "I just got in trouble." You didn't get in trouble. The boss has already forgotten about you. They just need the database done, right? Don't do it again. Now maybe trouble will happen, but test the world. Find where the pain points are. Most of them don't exist. You think there are pain points when really there's parking everywhere. Just take advantage of it.

    13. AA

      Yeah, I think I was very much a rule follower when I was younger because I was very wedded to the idea of being the good kid. Um, and I kind of admire my brother when he, when he, when he was younger because, when we, when we were younger because he was very much not a rule follower and would always do things. And I'd be like, "Oh, but like that's, it's against the rules. He's not..." And he'd be like, "I don't care. I'm, I'm gonna do it anyway." Um-

    14. MD

      Yeah. [laughs]

    15. AA

      And then, and then as I, as I grew older and es- especially once I, I got to university and started working, like, you know, Cambridge University is meant to be this fancy big-ass name university, and like the admin and the organization and stuff was pretty nonexistent in the medical school [laughs] and still is to this, the, to this day. And so we'd end up on these random placements in random hospitals in the middle of nowhere where no one has any idea that we're supposed to be there, even though they're technically the ones in charge of our placement.

    16. MD

      Right.

    17. AA

      And I, I remember there was one time where, um, my mum was invited to the Caribbean to give a talk at some conference, and she had a plus one. And she said, "Do you, do you wanna come along?" And it was bang in the middle of my general surgery placement. And I was like, "You know what? Let's, let's... Yeah, why not? I'll, I'll f- I'll figure something out." My mum, my mum is a rule follower, so I didn't tell her that I wasn't actually allowed to take time off. But you know, went to the Caribbean for a week, had a great time, came back. And I remember being, like, really terrified because the following day was gonna be our end of placement meeting with the head general surgeon, and she was gonna be like, "You know, I've spoken to all the colleagues. We didn't see you on these dates," et cetera, et cetera. And so I was, like, preparing all these, like, reasons in my head and sort of, "Yeah, it's fine. I'll do another two weeks of the placement if you want me to," et cetera, et cetera. And she came in and she was like, "Guys, I'm so sorry I haven't been around very much. I've just been so busy with, like, you know, the patients and, like, this and that."

    18. MD

      [laughs]

    19. AA

      "I'm so sorry I haven't been giving you the time you deserve." [laughs] And I was just like, "Oh my God." [laughs] Um, everyone is making it up as they go along and no one has it together, and a lot of these arbitrary rules and expectations for things, uh, are just that, arbitrary. And now my thought process if I wanna do something is like, "What's, what's the worst that's actually gonna happen?"

    20. MD

      Yeah.

    21. AA

      And if it's just, like, I don't know, a parking ticket or equivalent or a telling off, whatever that is, whatevs. Who cares? If I wanna do the thing, I'll do the thing, and I feel like that's been a, a really useful kinda life, life hack.

    22. MD

      Yeah, what you just said was so important. Everyone is making up everything. It's weird that some people feel like there's sort of an archetypal structured, you know, set of codified rules. You just have to get married and, like, you know, discover that your spouse thinks spoons should be separated 'cause that's a rule that she had when she was a child, and you didn't have that rule, and suddenly you discover that, oh, some people think there is an actual proper way to do something when really we just made up the proper way and you can just make up a new proper way. But that is how they live their lives. My wife is starting a new, uh, program, a new educational program. She's gonna learn to teach, um, children of, who speak other languages, ESOL program. And she said, "You know, they seem really disorganized. I'm worried." And I said, "No, be excited. When you're in a program full of disorganized people, that means there's cracks to exploit. Like, if they can't keep track of their own stuff, they will not be able to keep track of you in the way they should. And that means you will be able to take advantage of that. I love being in a situation where clearly the person on top doesn't know what they're doing, 'cause as soon as that happens, you just know that you can start taking advantage of this rule-breaking, I'm going to take care of myself attitude. Um, she's still, uh, nervous about it 'cause she's a rule follower. She wants to be in a world where there's clearly stated rules. I wanna be in a world where there's clearly stated, entirely flexible, and oftentimes avoidable rules, and, you know, and people who un- who can't enforce those things. So I, I love disorganization. A- I know that I can thrive because I can take advantage of it.

    23. AA

      Nice.

  15. 1:20:06 – 1:29:20

    Your near death experiences

    1. AA

      Um, I'd love to talk a little bit about storytelling, but before we go there, um, can you elaborate on what happened in your gun situation? 'Cause I imagine a lot of people are like, "Whoa, shit-"

    2. MD

      Hell

    3. AA

      ... you had a gun to your head. You thought you were gonna die. Like, what's the... But, like, you're still here, so what's-

    4. MD

      Right

    5. AA

      ... what's actually going on?

    6. MD

      Yeah. I used to not be able to talk about it, you know? It was years of therapy that allowed me to. I was managing a McDonald's restaurant, uh, in Brockton, Massachusetts, real tough town, and, uh, it was after closing. The store was closed up, and, uh, I was at the safe counting money. And, um, I heard the windows break, and I knew someone was coming. And I knew that I was in trouble because the police had come the week before and warned me that there were people, uh, robbing restaurants, and two people had already been killed, including someone, like, in the Taco Bell that I could see across the, across the way. They had killed somebody there. So when I heard the glass break, I knew I was in trouble. And for reasons I'll never understand, I had $7,000 in my hand in the deposit that was to go to the bank the next morning, and I dropped it down the slot in the back of the safe, the one that dropped the money into a box that I could not open, and it said on the box, "Manager has no key." And so when they got to the office, and they put me on the ground with my employees, and they started emptying the safe, they knew right away that there wasn't enough money here, that, like, there's money in the drawers. There's some change, but where is the receipts from the night? And I said, "It's in that box. I can't open it." And they didn't believe me, or they wanted to test whether I really could open it or not, so they beat me first. And then, um, when that didn't work, and I still couldn't open the box, uh, one of them put me on the ground and pressed my head to the greasy tile floor, then put the gun to my head and pressed my head onto the floor with the gun. And he said, "I'm gonna count back from three. Uh, you need to open that box because if I get down to zero, I'm gonna shoot you in the head." And, um, I... It was a terrible moment for me, but oddly this hinge point because I felt all this regret thinking I was going to die. And he pulled the trigger on an empty gun, so it clicked, and then, um, and then, like, I... It's hard to describe, but I sort of, like... I almost became an animal. I tried to crawl away. I could barely breathe. They pulled me back, and they did it to me two more times where they counted back, and each time they said, "This is the real time. Like, we killed people already. We're gonna kill you." So, uh, but each time, despite the fact that I was sort of each time more losing my mind than the last time, it... I was so consumed with regret in those moments, and ultimately they pulled the trigger on an empty gun three times and then left. Um, I guess I convinced them after the third time that he really can't get this box open, so there's no point in killing him, whereas, like, the guy in Taco Bell had resisted, and that's why he died. I wasn't resisting. I was just unable to open that, open the box with the money in it. Yeah, so, you know, it took a long time. I fortunately met my wife. I didn't understand therapy, you know? So for years, I would just not be able to tell that story, hear the clicking of a gun in the middle of the day, wake up in the middle of the night screaming every night with a nightmare, and then eventually I met my wife, and she said, "What's going on?" And I said, "Well, you know, I have nightmares at night." I said, "You know how some people play tennis and some people collect stamps? This is my thing." And she's like, "That's not a thing. Like, what's going on with you is not a thing." So it took a long time. PTSD is a difficult thing to deal with, and it's still to this day, I still have moments, but, but I'm much, much better now. And, you know, I would never, ever wish it on anyone. My goal always in life is I don't ever want that to happen to anyone, but I... what I do want is please listen to what I learned in that singular moment. Like, it was an odd blessing to truly believe you're at the end of your life. I've worked with a couple other people actually who have worked with ne- who knew near-death survivors like me. Now, mine wasn't a near death, it turns out, 'cause the gun was empty, but I believed I was gonna die. And I'll never forget, I was having dinner in a diner one night with one of these guys, and he says, "I know three of you, three people who were at the end of their life and miraculously managed to survive." He said, "All three of you are the same. They're all-- You're all the same in your approach to life. You're all the same on your, like, 'Let's make sure this, this moment counts,' you know? You're all the same on, like, something bad's happening, but at least it's memorable." You know, my wife and I and my kids got caught in a lightning storm in New York last week while we were touring the Intrepid. We left at the wrong moment. We're under a bridge in a lightning storm. There's a pipe pouring water out on us. You know, it... All the Ubers are canceling us, and I said, "You know what? We're never gonna forget this," you know? And my wife was like, "I know you believe that, but can we get out of this situation to..." And I'm like, "I'm trying to get us out, but let's just all acknowledge that we're so lucky to be having a moment that we'll never forget," 'cause so many moments in our lives are utterly forgettable. At least we're having a memorable one. And, um, that's the approach that people have who have sort of faced the end and managed to just, you know, take a step back. So I want people to just learn from it without having to experience it.

    7. AA

      Yeah. Thank you for... Thank you so much for sharing. Um, my understanding is that this is not the only near-death experience you've had-

    8. MD

      [laughs]

    9. AA

      ... and you've actually been, like, brought back from, [laughs] from the grave. Um, well, what, what was the deal with that? [laughs]

    10. MD

      Right. So twice in my life, oddly, I have stopped breathing, my heart has stopped beating, and paramedics have restored my life through CPR. Uh, when I was 12, I was stung by a bee not knowing that I'm allergic, you know, back in a time when nobody was allergic to anything, and I found myself in my house alone- Having an allergic reaction to the bee sting, I didn't even know... I didn't know what was happening because I had been stung by bees before and never had a reaction. It was a particular bee. And, um, I actually-- I oddly called my mother, who was in the hospital having back surgery at the time. It was in the times when you could actually have a direct line to a hospital room. So I called her room and said, "Ma, I can't breathe." And she didn't know what was happening, but she said, "Call nine one one." But it was also in a time when phones were connected to the wall by a cord, and I, I was on the floor on the phone, and I couldn't stand up to hang the phone up to get a dial tone to call nine one one. You couldn't disconnect unless you hung the phone up back then. And so my mother had the woman in the bed next to her call nine one one for her and send the ambulance to my house, and my mother heard me go unconscious, heard the paramedics. They had to break the door down 'cause for some reason I had locked the door when I came in. She heard the paramedics saying like, "He's not breathing. I don't have a pulse." She listened to the CPR. They didn't know she was on the phone, like, screaming. Um, but they managed to get me back. And then, um, and then five years later, I was seventeen, I was in a head-on collision. I went through the windshield of a car, um, got hung up halfway through. And, um, again, on the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance, I stopped breathing. My heart stopped beating. And, uh, paramedics used CPR again to restore my life. The difference though, I know it sounds crazy, the difference is that in both of those circumstances, as traumatic and horrible as they were, I didn't think I was dying either time. Like in the bee sting, I closed my-- uh, like I, I went unconscious, but I wasn't thinking, "I'm going to die." I thought, "Something's wrong with me," and then everything went black. And I go through the windshield unconscious completely. I'm in shock, thankfully, because y- I don't wanna describe the injuries, but they're horrific. Uh, but I managed to pull my head out of a windshield and climb out of a car, and I'm just-- I am destroyed. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I was seventeen and stupid. And, uh, but I'm in the back of an ambulance. Uh, I'm, I'm-- they're getting ready to move me to the ambulance. The snow's falling 'cause it's a snowy day, and I remember the snow was falling in my eyes, and I closed my eyes. And the next moment I'm in the back of an ambulance, there's a woman straddling my waist, pounding on my chest, and some guy's trying to force a tube down my throat, and I'm coughing it up. I didn't know I was gonna die there either. So I can retrospectively look back and go, "Oh my God, I almost died twice." But I didn't feel any regret because I didn't know at the moment that I was dying. So even though those moments should have been wake-up calls to me, they were not because I didn't understand the perilous situation I was in. It wasn't until I was twenty-two and faced with a moment where I actually thought I was going to die that I had that understanding about what it means to not have, to not have done what you wanted to do. So, um, it's odd. Now, my therapist will say, "Those other two moments probably really primed you for the [chuckles] for the moment with the gun." And, and the exceptionally difficult case of PTSD that I had was probably the result of the gun, but also going through a windshield and being stung by a bee and all of that stuff that came after that. He, you know, he pointed out probably rightfully so that you were well-primed for a terrible case of PTSD when that guy put the gun to your head so. But they, they didn't change my life. I did not change my life at twelve, and I did not change my life at seventeen. I did not change my life until I was twenty-two.

    11. AA

      So what did you start doing from twenty-two onwards? Like, what-- I guess you had this realization that, "Ugh, I'm, you know, life filled with, with regret." What, what happened next?

    12. MD

      Well, I had just stopped being homeless when I got the job. You know, I was homeless for a period of time.

  16. 1:29:20 – 1:34:40

    Being arrested for a crime you didn't commit

    1. MD

      I, I was arrested for a crime I did not commit. And when I got arrested, I was jailed and then released on my recognizance, but I immediately lost my job, and then I lost my home for a bunch of reasons. And I didn't have any parents. My parents threw me out when I was eighteen, and I was on my own for the rest of my life. So I was homeless for a period of my life, and then some people who I knew, former employees at a McDonald's that I managed, found out I was homeless and rescued me, took me into their house. And, uh, back in the '90s, you couldn't get a job unless you had a phone, and you couldn't have a phone unless you had a wall to put the phone on 'cause no phones were mobile back then. So once I was living with Mary and Jerry, I was sharing a room with their goat. They had an indoor goat.

    2. AA

      [chuckles]

    3. MD

      And I shared the room with the goat. Uh, a little pantry that they converted to a bedroom for me with the goat. Uh, once I had the phone, though, I could get a job, and so, you know, I had to get jobs because I had to pay for an attorney 'cause the courts wouldn't provide me with one for lots of reasons that are stupid. And so I was working eighty-five hours a week at two jobs. I was working actually for a bank, oddly, even though I was on trial for grand larceny, and I was closing that McDonald's at night.

    4. AA

      [chuckles]

    5. MD

      I know. It's crazy. I actually-- In the trial-

    6. AA

      Yeah

    7. MD

      ... the bank I go to work for is the bank where I was supposed to drop a deposit for McDonald's, the one that goes missing that I'm arrested for. So I'm actually working for the bank that testifies against me in the trial, and I'm working for McDonald's even though McDonald's also testifies against me in the trial. So it's quite a story. But eventually, you know, after the robbery, I have to get myself out of this legal trouble. So I'm already working eighty-five hours a week, but four months after the robbery, I'm declared, um, not guilty. And so I'm free to do what I wanna do. And I immediately, for the first time in my life, I go to college. I go to a community college 'cause they'll allow me in for free 'cause I'm completely poor. And I start, um, I take classes. I join the debate team. I start writing for the newspaper. I'm working at a McDonald's restaurant again now. I'm managing a McDonald's fifty hours a week while I'm going to school full-time and working for the newspaper, and I'm on the debate team. I become the president of the National Honor Society there, and I get involved in student government. People ask me like, "How did you do all that and work fifty hours a week?" And I say, "After you're homeless and in jail, and you have a gun to your head, and you think you're gonna be in prison for ten years, nothing else is hard." I was just so excited to be taking a step forward. And so I got my job at McDonald's, and I went to college. And then I graduated from MCC, this community college, and I did well enough that Yale and Trinity College and, um, a bunch of very well-respected universities offered me free rides to their schools. And so, um, I ultimately, I went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, to get an English degree, and there's this-- there's a situation here in Hartford where you can take a s- class at w- at another school. A consortium of schools exists. So I knew I wanted to be a teacher and a writer, but Trinity didn't have a teaching program, so I did my English degree there. And then through this consortium, I went to an all-women's college, like, uh, one town over, to get a teaching degree. And I went over there, and they said, "Well, first, it's an all-women's college." And I said, "I know, but through the consortium, I am allowed to take a class here, right?" And they said, "Yes, technically you can." They said, "But why do you wanna take five classes?" I said, "Well, I wanna do a teaching program here." And they said, "No, the consortium is really just so if you can't get a class at your home school, you could get it here if it doesn't fit your schedule." I said, "But can I take five classes through the consortium?" There's nothing... Again, rule following, right? There's nothing here in this book that says I can't take as many classes as I want through a consortium. And she said, "So you're gonna take eight classes this semester? You're gonna take five education classes with us and three English classes at Trinity?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "Nobody does that." And I said, "Well, I'm gonna do it." She says, "That's, like, a loophole that you're exploiting." And I said, "Yes. Now you understand."

    8. AA

      [laughs]

    9. MD

      And so that's what I did. I went to two colleges simultaneously through the loophole so that by the time I graduated, I had an English degree and a teaching degree simultaneously. Uh, and but all of it, people-- And I was also working full-time at McDonald's and part-time at a writing center, and I was launching my DJ business at the time. And p- I-- Part of me thinks, "How did I actually do that?" Like, it really does seem a little impossible. But I always say to myself, "I was homeless. I was facing prison. I was, you know, I was hopeless." And all you have to do is take someone who's hopeless and give them a little hope, and nothing seems as hard anymore. So that's how I eventually got to where I wanted to be. Um, but you can see how my life instantaneously changed. I was not going to suffer regret anymore. I was going to maximize every moment I had to get to where I wanted to be as quickly as possible.

    10. AA

      That's incredible. Incredible stuff. Like, um, for, for people who are listening who, like, we, we, we, we glossed over a bunch of, you know, like, arrested for a crime I didn't commit, like the bank robbery situation the second-- like, the first time around, et cetera, et cetera. Um, a lot of these stories are in Storyworthy, and a few, a few of them are in the new book as well, so this is a, a nice little teaser [laughs] that if you wanna-

    11. MD

      [laughs]

    12. AA

      ... uh, hear more of Matthew on Audible or read more of Matthew in print or on Kindle, then by all means, uh, check these books out 'cause, 'cause they're amazing.

  17. 1:34:40 – 1:42:49

    Parting thoughts

    1. MD

      Thank you.

    2. AA

      Um-

    3. MD

      I always... I'll, I'll just add.

    4. AA

      Yeah.

    5. MD

      I just-- I never want people to think I'm sort of special in some way. You know, sometimes people hear that story and they're like, "My God, that guy." And, uh, you know, if my wife was here, she'd be like, "He's not that special." Like, you know, he works really hard, and he's got this weird perception of life that admittedly has allowed him to do all these things. Like, he sees the world in a way that is different than other people, only because, you know, 'cause of moments in my life. But I always want people to know that, like, I really believe everyone can do that. My wife, at our book launch, someone said, "What's Matt's best quality?" And she said, "It is his genuine belief that every single person in the world can do what he's doing if they apply themselves." And I do. I believe that every person can do what I just described. I think you could work 50 hours a week and get two degree programs and, and work for the newspaper and do all this, launch a business. I believe everyone could do it. I'm not sure if you should or if you should even want to, right? And you probably don't need to. You probably aren't homeless, facing prison, no parents to ever help you, no safety net of any kind. Like, I had to do it because of my life circumstances. But it doesn't mean you couldn't, and if you believe that you could do it, then imagine all the other things you could be doing instead. I just, I, I never want people to think that I'm special in some way, 'cause truly, I'm not. I'm a really average guy. I'm an ordinary guy who's applied himself, you know, relentlessly to making sure he gets the things done that he wants to get done, and you can do that too.

    6. AA

      Yeah. I j- I'm just kinda thinking of, uh, I was speaking to a friend the other day who has, has these dreams. Like, she wants to launch a YouTube channel. She wants to, like, have her own freelance business, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, we were kind of talking through it. I was like, "All right, cool. So, you know, what, what are you doing this evening?" And she was like, "Oh, you know, like, from, you know, I'll probably get home from work at, like, 7:00 PM," and then, you know, it takes an hour to cook food. And like, "Okay, cool. And what are you doing from 8:00?" It was like, "Oh, yeah, and then I need about two hours to wind down for the evening 'cause I find that it's like g- You know, I find that, um, yeah, in the evening I can't really concentrate, and I just find that watching TV helps me, helps me, helps me really wind down." Uh, I was like, "Okay, cool." And then, and then she was like, "Oh, yeah, and then I sleep at 10:00 because I need to get my eight hours of sleep, and then I wake up at 6:00, and then I go to work and, and I kinda do this thing." And I was like, "Okay. Um, I mean, sure. That's, that's fine if that's the life you wanna, you wanna go for. But, like, do, do you really need those two hours of wind-down time every night?" She was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I need-- You know, I've, I've, I've gotta have those two hours because then I can't, like, function if I don't have those two hours." I was like, okay. You know, part of me was very skeptical about, is that, mm, is, is that really true? Um, [laughs] another part of me was like, I mean, I don't wanna deny her lived experience, and, um, maybe she's got stuff going on that I don't know anything about. But then I was thinking, like, when you have people who are in a desperate situation, like, you know, uh, single parents raising kids and working two jobs to make ends meet and stuff, those people are not the ones complaining that they need two hours of downtime for their mental health and for their, uh, whatever. A- a- and, and there's this- Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm never really sure how to respond to that beyond, "Okay, fair enough. You know, if that's what you wanna do, then that's totally fine." 'Cause I, I don't wanna get into the territory of like, "No, you're actually wasting those two hours, and actually you could do the thing." 'Cause I don't know. Everyone has problems that I don't know anything about. Yeah. Uh, is, is, is, is that something that kind of vibes with you at all?

    7. MD

      Yeah. Here's what I would've told her, 'cause I get this all the time.

    8. AA

      Yeah.

    9. MD

      I would've said, "You need two hours of downtime, but is it possible only one? Can we try one hour of downtime and one hour of productivity, right?" So we start with that. So you're not taking away everything that she needs, but you're suggesting that perhaps you don't need as much as you do, right? So let's try that for a little while. You also mentioned that you need eight hours in bed every night. So immi- instantly I'd analyze her sleep. I'd be like, "Well, describe your sleep to me." Which I'm sure is, by the way, not eight hours of sleep. I am sure she gets into bed, there might be a TV in the room. There is a phone in her hand. There's a book being read. Uh, she probably doesn't meditate. She probably doesn't have white noise. She probably doesn't have a consistent sleep cycle on the weekends, which is screwing up her ability to fall asleep quickly. She's probably using a snooze button in the morning. She's probably lounging in bed. The eight hours of sleep is probably seven hours of sleep and one hour of occupying the bed in a non-productive way, right? So can we take away maybe an hour of sleep, which is not really... I'm taking away an hour of bedtime, not sleep time. Like, can we recapture two hours? 'Cause two hours, just do the math for her. Two hours every day over the course of a year is an enormous amount of time, and you will accomplish many, many things. I had a friend named Erica who came to me and said, "Matt, I have my third kid now, and I've lost all the time for myself, and I know you always find time for yourself. Uh, you play a lot of golf and poker and ba- like, and you do all these things. How do you do it?" And I said, "The first thing I want you to try, Erica, is I just want you to sleep one hour less. I want you to..." She used to get up at 6:00. I said, "Get up at 5:00. Just get up at 5:00 and, and also use from 5:00 to 6:00 to do all the things you wanna do," which for her was exercise. She had lost her ability to exercise and eat well. "Use from 5:00 to 6:00 to exercise and get your meals ready so that you can eat well for the day." And I said, "And if it doesn't work because you genuinely need that extra hour of sleep, go right back to it." But I just think that we, we establish these habits, and we assume they are musts, rule followers, right? She is a rule follower. She is, "I need two hours to, to wind down." Could it be 90 minutes? Could it be 60 minutes? Could it be 30 minutes, right? And the same thing with the sleep. So I would do that with her, and I would look to recapture an hour or two hours. 'Cause an hour even over the course of a year is 365 hours. Divide that by 24, you've suddenly found days of your life that you can now do, use to, to do what you want to do. But I think people get trapped in the, in that sort of rule-making, habit-forming belief that this is the way they must live, because change is hard. 'Cause, you know, as I've been telling people on this book tour, I believe most human beings follow the path of least resistance. They are water down the mountain. They are doing what people tell them to do, what the universe tells them to do, and what some weird version of themselves in their head is telling them what to do. And I think that the hard thing and the right thing are the same thing, and that the most successful people in the world are the ones who do not follow the path of res- resistance. They pick the point on the horizon that they wanna aim at, and regardless of what is in front of them, that is the pursuit that they have. I think most people don't do that.

    10. AA

      Matthew, thank you so much. This has been a, a f- a fantastic conversation. We were in-- I was intending to talk to you about storytelling, but as usual, we have gone [laughs] in a completely different direction.

    11. MD

      I'd be happy to chat some other time. [laughs]

    12. AA

      And yeah, it would be great to have a part two, possibly in person when I come to the US, or if you're-

    13. MD

      Yeah

    14. AA

      ... ever in London, would be great to do this in person, and we can riff on storytelling, on Homework for Life, and all the different things. And-

    15. MD

      That'd be amazing

    16. AA

      ... so much more to talk about.

    17. MD

      Yes.

    18. AA

      Um, and for anyone who's left this conversation wanting more, definitely check out, um, well, the two nonfiction books of yours that I've read, Storyworthy and Someday Is Today. And you also have these six novels, which I need to read at some point. [laughs] It's like, uh, the nonfiction stuff is the stuff where I, like... Even, even within them, even, even within those you have, like, these incredible stories that often move me to tears. And everyone, every single person I've ever recommended Storyworthy to at least, 'cause that's the one I read two years ago, has been like, "Oh my God, this book is sick." So-

    19. MD

      Yeah

    20. AA

      ... yeah, I just wanna say a massive thank you to-

    21. MD

      Thank you

    22. AA

      ... all that, all that you do, all that you put out into the world. Um, where can people learn more about you? Where can people find out about your stuff if they wanna, if they wanna reach out?

    23. MD

      Uh, if they just go to matthewdicks.com, they can find everything right there.

    24. AA

      All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.

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