Steven Bartlett: 9 Secret Habits That Made Me A Millionaire

Steven Bartlett 0:00 When I called my mother and I said, "I'm dropping out of university," and I was shoplifting those pizzas at 18 years old to feed myself, it was like survival. Like, I was either gonna be successful or I was gonna be successful. There was not a plan B option.

Ali Abdaal 0:10 The guest that we have today on the podcast is Steven Bartlett, and he's one of the biggest names in business right now. Steve went from being a completely broke college dropout to founding a company called Social Chain, which he then sold for, like, ludicrous amounts of money. He was the youngest-ever dragon on BBC's Dragon's Den, which, for the Americans in our audience, is sort of the UK version of Shark Tank, and he's also the host of the ridiculously popular podcast, The Diary Of A CEO, that has interviewed all sorts of really successful celebrities and famous people and also me.

Steven Bartlett 0:35 I've sat with so many people and thought, "I will never be as good as you at what you do. I wish I was capable of it." But I'm able to separate out my admiration and my aspiration.

Ali Abdaal 0:46 And Steve is also a successful author. He's written a book called Happy Sexy Millionaire that I've talked about on this channel, and he's just released his latest book, The Diary Of A CEO: The 33 Laws Of Business and Life. We talk a lot about the things that made Steven successful.

Steven Bartlett 0:58 I spent maybe three to four years working in call centers. I could have gone and got a more glamorous job, but choosing a, a job at that early age that was focused on my knowledge and skills is the reason why I was able to launch businesses and do well at a young age.

Ali Abdaal 1:14 We talk about some of the principles, the strategies, the mindsets, and the tools that he's learned through his course of building multiple eight-figure companies.

Steven Bartlett 1:21 Work-life balance is a load of nonsense, right? It implies that you're trying to balance the scales. You're not. You're trying to find harmony, which is where you feel good about your life.

Ali Abdaal 1:29 Steven, welcome to the podcast.

Steven Bartlett 1:31 [laughs] This is so-

Ali Abdaal 1:32 How does it feel to be in that chair? [laughs] This is a very unusual place for you to be.

Steven Bartlett 1:35 It's so weird. Genuinely, it's so weird. It's funny because before we started recording, I, I asked you, oop ... I asked you if my chair was lower [laughs] because there's something about looking i- at this frame which I find quite daunting.

Ali Abdaal 1:46 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:47 Even though it's, like, my frame and it's my, you know, my backdrop. It's, it's daunting. But I'm, I'm here for it, and I'm excited.

Ali Abdaal 1:53 Nice. I'm so looking forward to diving into, into your story, 'cause you're normally the interviewer, and I've been wanting to ask you a bunch of questions for the last several years since we first met.

Steven Bartlett 2:01 Oh, gosh.

Ali Abdaal 2:01 I feel like I've got, I've got my chance. Um, so to start with, for the two or three people in the audience who might not know who you are, I wonder, can you tell us a little bit about the backstory? And in particular, I'm keen to hear about what your school and university years were like.

Steven Bartlett 2:15 Yeah, so-

Ali Abdaal 2:15 'Cause it's quite an unconventional path to success.

Steven Bartlett 2:18 I moved to the UK when I was a baby from Botswana. I was born in Botswana in Africa. My mother's Nigerian, my dad's English. So my mother's Black, and my dad's white. They're very, very different people. Probably the total opposites. My mother didn't get an education in Africa. I think she left school at five, six, seven years old. Can't read or write. My dad is an academic, um, who went to ... You know, smashed every exam he wa- that was ever put in front of him. So I'm somewhat caught, caught in the middle in many respects of who I am. We moved to Plymouth in the southwest. Only Black family and the poorest family in the area and in my school pretty much. Huge insecurity and shame. They stopped parenting me about 10 years old, which creates this huge void of independence, and in that void, I start experimenting. I learn a lot about myself and what I'm capable of, and that's kind of a consistent theme through my life. School, I decide at some point, and I think because my two brothers, Jason and Kevin, are geniuses, that this implicit narrative that school and grades will correlate to your outcomes, I believed it. And so I knew that going to school wasn't gonna be the way that I got all those things that I wanted to get. Financial freedom, all the nice stuff in life. Um, so I gave up at about 14, 15 years old. I remember the conversation with myself where I realized it was gonna have to be something else. And at the time, I was running these little experiments in school with businesses, and they were working. So my thesis was, when I'm older, these are gonna be the adults with me. So the, the party that I organized, the vending machine deal that I did, these would be the adults with me, so I'll do that when I'm old. And that will be enough for me to get there. Go to university after being ... So I was expelled from school, um, by Mr. ... Let's call him Mr. T. And then I was unexpelled by Mr. Sprinkle.

Ali Abdaal 4:05 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 4:05 Um, he actually said this on TV a couple of months ago. He came on Would I Lie To You? Walked down the stairs, and he said, on Would I Lie To You?, um, he unexpelled me because I made the school so much money. I, I was doing lots of deals for the school. The vending machine deals, the trips, the school trips, the parties. And then I was expelled again in the last, roughly in the last week of school, um, for attendance.

Ali Abdaal 4:26 Oh, wow.

Steven Bartlett 4:27 Wasn't rude to anybody. Always been well-mannered. Couldn't, couldn't do school. Couldn't hand in homework, couldn't listen in class. Had to fall asleep in every lesson. Go to university believing it'll be different. Last one lecture, drop out. Call my mum. "Mum, I'm dropping out." She says, "If you do, I'll never speak to you again." I say, "I love you too." I put down the phone. We didn't speak for many years. Um, at least no, no sort of amicable conversation. Uh, and then started businesses. And then that's, um, for the last 10 years, that's been my life. 12 years. Been my life.

Ali Abdaal 4:57 Ooh. I've, I've been watching your vlog recently.

Steven Bartlett 5:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 5:00 And you're constantly jumping from one thing to another. The to-do list with, like, 34 items on it by, like, 11:00 AM. That doesn't seem like the sort of person that can't, like, focus in school or doesn't wanna kind of tick boxes.

Steven Bartlett 5:13 Yeah. I think there's ... And there's also often a misconception that I don't rate education because I don't love school or university. But school and university aren't education. They are institutions and systems.

Ali Abdaal 5:27 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 5:28 I love education. I fell asleep last night listening to a video about artificial intelligence and rockets, right? I'm s- I'm a self-educated that loves education. If you zoom in on that kid that got expelled, what you'll also see is he stole the psychology textbooks because he was so interested in them, and he dominated the business class so much so that Mr. Hughes kicked me off. Basically, like, almost expelled me in the business class because I wasn't letting anyone else do anything. So if you zoom in, you find someone that is absolutely obsessed with the things he likes-

Ali Abdaal 6:01 Mm

Steven Bartlett 6:01 ... and that is incapable of doing things he does not like. And that is such an important trait. My resi- my resistance to do things that I do not like, I think is such an important trait for, for us all to try and embody. Because what it means is you won't overstay your welcome in relationships, in jobs, in career paths that aren't serving you. And we all have this wonderful sort of internal, um, signal or barometer in- inside our chest that we just ignore. We put it at the very bottom of the priority stack, and we put above it mom's opinion, social expectation, what that girl on Instagram will think. And if that sits above y- the, the signal, and I call it a signal 'cause it is a signal like hunger or thirst. If, if that signal of, "How do I actually feel?" sits at the bottom, you will overstay your welcome in situations that you're not meant to be in. My superpower is quitting with such ease and conviction and peace because the signal that matters the most is, "How do I feel right now?"

Ali Abdaal 6:59 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 6:59 And, and that is useful. Tuning into that is really, really powerful.

Ali Abdaal 7:05 One of the, one of the things that I, um, I took away from your first book, Happy Sexy Millionaire, we can talk about the title of that in a moment.

Steven Bartlett 7:10 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:10 Um, but one of the things I really took away was the quitting framework.

Steven Bartlett 7:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:14 Um, I wonder if you can talk through that for people who might not have come across it.

Steven Bartlett 7:16 I feel like you know it better than me because [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:18 [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 7:19 But I'll, but I'll, but

Steven Bartlett 7:20 I'll pop at it. So the reason I wrote the quitting framework is because I realized in hindsight that I was able to quit things e- easier than most people. Let's take one step back. Why is quitting important? In life, we glamorize starting, right? But my observation was that the advantage I've had, as I've said, was being able to quit fast and e- with peace and ease. And when you just think logically about starting something, right, or saying... It's also the same with, like, saying yes and no to things. In order to start something in life, you actually first need to quit something else. So you can't start a new relationship unless you quit the last one. You, you're not gonna start a new startup unless you've quit the last one. Um, you're not gonna start a new career, career unless you've quit the last job. So quitting and starting should be held in equal regard, and there should be acknowledgement that they have a two-way relationship with one another. They're both the actions of winners. People say quitting is for losers, and they say, like, starting is for winners. In fact, quitting and starting are both for winners. The, and the, the most successful, intelligent people I've ever met have an unbelievable ability to quit things that make no objective sense.

Ali Abdaal 8:24 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 8:25 You're quitting that high-paying job to go and deal, to go and do card tricks at a table in Bristol, Darren Brown. You're quitting that amazing career as a lawyer, um, that your parents are now so proud of you of, to go and spend the next 10 years going up and down the country in pubs and cracking jokes, Jimmy Carr. It just, it objectively seems to make s- no sense. But subjectively, they've reached a certain level of ease. So I, I could relate to myself in the same way in the regard of if you look at what I've quit from, like, stopped going to school 'cause I realized that that wasn't gonna, gonna be, the p- the paper that I got at the end of the process wasn't gonna be enough, especially compared to my brother's. Quit university after that first lecture. Quit my first startup after two years. Quit my second one after about six years. Um, and lots of little quitting in and amongst there. Um, why was I able to quit with, with peace in s- at times when objectively you would think I was a madman for doing so, when I was leaving so much apparently on the table? And so I tried to make a framework, a framework that other people could use to try and make their quitting decisions through. So at the start of the framework, you ask yourself, "Am I thinking of quitting?" It's either, you know, yes or no. So if you are thinking of quitting, the framework begins. And I created these two subcategories which you can define for yourself, which I think is important to do. You're either thinking of quitting something because something's really hard, like it's difficult. And then, which would be, you know, you're running a marathon, and you're on the 23rd mile, and you're doing it, you know, to raise money for a charity, but it's really, it's painful, it's difficult. It's, it's causing discomfort. Or you're thinking about quitting something because it, like, it sucks, and that's more of, like, an emotional, mental thing. It's just, it just doesn't feel good to you on an emotional, mental, psychological level. So let's go down the hard route. I'm thinking of quitting because it's hard. The first question you should then ask yourself is, "Is the hardship worth the rewards on offer?" So you're running that marathon. You're raising money for that leukemia charity. You're on the 23rd mile, but it's worth it. The, the hardship is worth the reward at the end of it. If the hardship is worth it, don't quit. If the hardship isn't worth it, [lips smack] then you should quit. Because the, the worst thing to do in life is to do something that is hard and meaningless.

Ali Abdaal 10:34 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 10:35 Like, those are, th- those are where all the problems happen. When I think about studies of the impact of not having autonomy in your work and working on a production line and not having meaning and purpose in what you're doing every day and how that impacts your health and disease rises in your body, that is the worst situation to be in. Let's go down the other side of the framework. By the way, do correct me because you know this framework better than I do.

Ali Abdaal 10:57 No, you got it spot on. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 10:58 Okay, good. Yeah, good. And we're going down the other side of the framework. So you're thinking about quitting something because it sucks. You're in a relationship. Your husband, you know, the, the, the magic has just left the relationship. You're in a company, and there's problems at work, but you, you know, you haven't yet had the conversation with your boss. The next question becomes, "Do you believe you could make it not suck?" Right. So in the context of a marriage, um, that might mean going to marriage counseling-

Ali Abdaal 11:23 Mm

Steven Bartlett 11:23 ... and having a difficult conversation and thrashing it out with your partner and, um, you know, going through those issues. If the answer's no, it, so it sucks and you think you can't change that, quit. If you believe you could make it not s- not suck, the next question to ask yourself is, "Is the effort that it would take to make it not suck worth the rewards on offer?" So, like, you look at how that marriage might look if you were to resolve it. You believe you can. Is it worth it?

Ali Abdaal 11:51 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 11:51 Is Dave worth it? Is the, is the reward on the other end of that process to fix it sucking worth it? If the answer's no, quit. You believe you could make it not s- not, not suck anymore, but the effort it would take is not worth the reward on offer, quit. If you believe you could make it not, not suck, and the effort it would take is worth the rewards on offer, stay and fight-

Ali Abdaal 12:13 Mm

Steven Bartlett 12:14 ... for it. And that's my simple framework which is intentionally ambiguous

Ali Abdaal 12:19 One of

Ali Abdaal 12:20 the, one of the laws in the new book, um, can't remember which one it is, but it's, it's all about the power of discipline

Steven Bartlett 12:26 Uh, it'd be one near the end

Ali Abdaal 12:27 Um, the discipline equation, yeah, death, time and discipline. And I think a lot of people struggle with the idea of, you know, obviously discipline is good and, you know, there's the Muhammad Ali quote, um, "I," you know, "I, I suffered for 10 years to become a champion," words to that effect.

Steven Bartlett 12:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:41 But then it, it's, it seems to conflict some of the time with like the thing that you're saying of like, "Don't, don't do stuff that doesn't feel good necessarily." So like how do you, how do you square this? Like what is the balance between I'm gonna discipline myself to get through school because like the reward at the other end could be worth it, versus I'm going to actually quit school and do my own thing which might feel better?

Steven Bartlett 13:04 Yeah. So it's, it's so interesting because I've never tried to make the link, but for me there's a really, really clear link between the two. So in the book I started writing a chapter about time management, which is something you know a lot about.

Ali Abdaal 13:17 It's my jam. I love time management. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 13:18 [laughs] And the problem I had, Ali, was, um, I, I started researching time management techniques, looking up how I manage my own time, and I encountered hundreds of time management techniques. And as I'm writing this I'm going, "Okay, well, there's so many," and there's the Pomodoro Technique and the A, B, C, D, da, da, da, and the time blocking technique. I asked myself, "Why is there so many techniques?" If, if any of them worked for everyone-

Ali Abdaal 13:44 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 13:44 ... there wouldn't be so many of them. Kind of like fad diets, there's just a million, endless list. People are writing new ones because the current ones are failing them, so they're going in search of new ones and people are writing new ones. Um, and the reason why the old ones are failing them is because they don't have discipline. Any of these time management techniques would work if you could stick to them, you know? I say that like objectively I think they would. Um, so where does discipline come from? And why does discipline matter? And then I, so I started writing about death because I think you have to under- there's a really important relationship between our time and discipline because we could choose to do everything in a world where time was infinite.

Ali Abdaal 14:25 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 14:25 But it, it is the scarcity of time, the limited amount of time we have, which I talk about in chapter 19 of my first book when I'm talking about the roulette pieces and the, the chips we wake up with every day. We wake up with 16 chips left out of the 24. We've placed 8 of them on sleep. So through that framework it's important to allocate your time with a certain intentionality or you might r- regret the life you've lived. So that's why discipline matters, because I only have 16 chips after spending 8 of them on sleep, so if I don't wanna have a regrettable life I must need discipline. As I go down my thought process here I started talking about death and the fact that if I'm a 35-year-old now, I'm 30 now, but I have 17,000 days left to live roughly if I meet the life expectancy of the USA. Um, so I need to figure out in order to live a non-regrettable life how to be disciplined. Then I started to examine the areas of my life where I possess discipline and the areas where I don't, and I was trying to establish a relationship between the two. Why am I really disciplined with going to the gym now, um, but I'm undisciplined in other areas? Why am I really disciplined with... Um, I was speaking to Simon Sinek the other day and I was telling him about this discipline equation and he was like, "Yeah, but Steve, you know, I don't love putting the bins out, but at 8:00 in the morning I got out of bed yesterday and went and put the bins out." And I was like, "No, that makes perfect sense, Simon." Because the discipline equation to me is, and this is super, super rough, at the start of the equation you have why that goal subjectively really matters to you.

Ali Abdaal 15:53 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 15:54 Like how much that goal really subjectively matters to you, plus the psychological e- enjoyment you get through the pursuit of the goal.

Ali Abdaal 16:04 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 16:05 Minus the psychological dissatisfaction and friction you get in the pursuit of the goal. So if I put that in the frame of Simon Sinek there and what he said about getting out of bed at 8:00 a.m. 'cause he could hear the bin truck coming down the road, I said to Simon, "What is the cost of you not putting the bins out?" There's two costs. Cost A is the bins overflow and then he's got nowhere to put his, as they would say, garbage. Cost B is you can get fined. So the, the reason for doing it is high at the start of the equation.

Ali Abdaal 16:36 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 16:36 The psychological enjoyment you get from it is, is super low, right? And the friction is high. But the why is higher than all of it, so the equation still balances in terms of incentives for you to get out of bed and do it because the f- you don't wanna fine and overflowing bins. And that desire is greater than the friction is.

Ali Abdaal 16:56 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 16:56 And in the context of me going to the gym, I didn't go to the gym for 27 years of my life. I couldn't find the discipline to do it. I was like most people. Like I made the intention. I announced it to the world. I failed. And I did that for three years. I, I announced it to the world. I failed. And then the pandemic happened and I watched as the world was torn apart because our health outcomes were linked to our fitness and our current health. And as I watched that in March 2020 through the screens and watched Italy be ravaged by this, this pandemic and watched it come over from Wuhan and then start to creep through Europe, I realized very unforgettably that there is this tectonic plate called my health which I'd never seen shake before, and I was witnessing it shake globally, vicariously. And everything I'm pursuing and care about actually sits on top of it. My girlfriend, my dog, my cat, my, my businesses that I've built, my podcast, my... Everything I care about is on top of that. So the tectonic plate of my health is my first priority. If you remove my, my, my, my health, you remove everything. You can take my other stuff. It doesn't impact... There, there's no relationship between them really. But the health is the number one thing and that, go- going back to my equation, you can see how that influences the equation. Suddenly the reason, the why for the goal to go to the gym and work out was so strong that it outweighed the friction and f- sin- for the last three years I've gone to the gym 82% of the time which is six days a week roughly Um, and it stuck and it's now it feels to be effortless because the incentive structure is so clearly, um, aiming towards discipline

Ali Abdaal 18:32 Nice. Um, [clears throat] I really like that equation and as I, as I was reading it, um, I was thinking that second component, the, um, the psychological joy of the pursuit of the thing-

Steven Bartlett 18:42 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:43 ... that is the one that my whole productivity philosophy is based around.

Steven Bartlett 18:45 Ah.

Ali Abdaal 18:46 Um, 'cause for me discipline is like... Like having to rely on discipline to me feels like a negative thing. It's like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm suffering, but it's worth it. Whereas when I... So when I, when I read the chapter about health in, in The Diary of a CEO, I was, I was reading this on a flight to Florida to attend a Tony Robbins event and I was in a bit of a like, "Yeah, I'm gonna read the book." And you had that chapter where you talked about health and it's, it's, it's the same stuff you talk about in Happy Sexy Millionaire.

Steven Bartlett 19:12 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 19:12 But it's like f- somehow the reminder hit me so well that immediately I texted my assistant being like, "Okay, I need to take my health seriously. And the system we're gonna put in place is I currently don't enjoy going to the gym."

Steven Bartlett 19:23 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 19:23 "So it's not fun. I appreciate that it's valuable, but for me, that appreciation that it's valuable does not actually move me in the right direction."

Steven Bartlett 19:29 [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:30 "Therefore I need to make it fun. Therefore can we book me a personal trainer and give him the goal that like three times a week let's try and make working out fun?"

Steven Bartlett 19:37 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 19:38 And so we've got the first appointment tomorrow-

Steven Bartlett 19:39 Mm

Ali Abdaal 19:39 ... the next one the, the day after and it was a direct result of s- seeing that reminder where I was like, "Fuck, got to take better care of my health."

Steven Bartlett 19:45 That's so amazing, Ali. That's so incredible. So amazing. 'Cause it's a strange thing to find in this book.

Ali Abdaal 19:51 Mm. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 19:51 I think that, I think it's

Steven Bartlett 19:52 like law number nine about your first foundation, just remembering that everything you've done Ali in your life, like same, same for me, is contingent on that.

Ali Abdaal 20:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 20:01 And-

Ali Abdaal 20:01 If health goes everything else just dies. It's just

Steven Bartlett 20:03 And then so why don't we live our life with that as the first like priority in the list of things? You know? If it is the tectonic play it should be the first thing. Um, but e- even thinking about that through the discipline equation that you can know something, you can know something. I, I was saying to Rich Roll earlier, I know meditation matters 'cause every guest has told me.

Ali Abdaal 20:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 20:23 I don't do it because when I look through the lens of the discipline equation, the, it's not just about the equation itself it's also about how that then stacks against your other priorities. So you could have... The equation can be in your favor but in a world of finite time there might be other things-

Ali Abdaal 20:40 Mm

Steven Bartlett 20:40 ... that are even stronger in terms of forces of discipline. So I know that meditation is good and I wanna, I wanna do it, right? It's like there. The psychological enjoyment of it's maybe not huge.

Ali Abdaal 20:52 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 20:52 The friction's kinda high 'cause it costs you time and stuff like that and it's a bit hard to just think of nothing or whatever the process is. So it's like slightly in the favor of doing it but then in a con- in the context of it's 16 chips left it, it, when I wake up in the morning it's not gonna win out-

Ali Abdaal 21:06 Mm

Steven Bartlett 21:07 ... over these other disciplines. So all of the disciplines are also competing with each other to, to get into the calendar.

Ali Abdaal 21:14 Yeah. And I think when like in, in your case with the health stuff it feels like when there's a clear emotional trigger that is, that's where it takes it from intellectual knowing to actual knowing.

Steven Bartlett 21:23 100%.

Ali Abdaal 21:23 Whereas for me I haven't yet had that with health, um, for some reason and so it's-

Steven Bartlett 21:27 Maybe you need to-

Ali Abdaal 21:27 ... an intellectual knowing. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 21:29 I said this to Rich-

Ali Abdaal 21:30 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 21:30 ... in with meditation I said, "Maybe I need a little bit more pain."

Ali Abdaal 21:33 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 21:34 And I say this to s- I think I sometimes I don't always say it 'cause it's not the most, um, empathetic thing to say in certain situations, but it's become clear to me from doing The Diary of a CEO that change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of staying the same as they say.

Ali Abdaal 21:48 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 21:49 Um, and rock bottom is a re- unfortunately a remarkable driver of transformation and change in people's lives, um, that some of us need to, to be for the why part of the discipline equation to suddenly go shh.

Ali Abdaal 22:05 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 22:05 You know?

Ali Abdaal 22:06 Yeah. I think the same thing applies to, uh, people who wanna sort of quit their jobs and eventually start a business as a side hustle all this stuff. Like for me when I read The 4-Hour Work Week it was an intellectual knowing of like, "Oh, it would be nice to have a side business." But when I saw doctors in real life absolutely miserable 10 years into their career and I was seeing them every day and talking to them and they were absolutely miserable and they, they couldn't leave the job because they didn't have enough money, that was when it became like, like sort of deep a g- a, a gra- deep within a grounding of like, "Oh shit," like I don't wanna be in that position where I'm shackled to a job I don't enjoy and that to me was the idea of hell. So it's like that prompted so much action while I was at university and people would be like, "Oh you're so disciplined you're like building a business on the side or editing videos on the side." I'm like, "Didn't feel like it took much discipline at all it was just like the pain of the, [laughs] the pain of the alternative was just so great I'm just like we're, we're gonna do this."

Steven Bartlett 22:55 What I h- what I hear there as well is like

Steven Bartlett 22:57 the distinction between knowledge and belief.

Ali Abdaal 22:59 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 23:00 One of them was knowledge the other one was belief and as I talk about in the book about like, um, flat Earthers and stuff like that you can show them knowledge you can show them information-

Ali Abdaal 23:10 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 23:11 ... you know but there's nothing that will in the case of someone that believes the Earth is flat the only possible way you could change their beliefs is if you took them up in a spaceship and showed them the Earth with their own eyes because first party evidence that we experience with our own eyes it whether it's vicariously by watching someone you know and care and trust go through it or you go through it yourself is the path to belief change.

Ali Abdaal 23:33 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 23:33 And that's why I say sometimes like maybe you need a little bit more pain or there's a rock bottom you haven't yet gotten to with some of those more stubborn beliefs, um, because all your friends and advice and the podcast and the quotes you've listened to haven't been, been enough. But also when you think about self-belief how to, how to build self-belief and confidence same thing first party evidence looking in the mirror and saying like "I'm beautiful and I'm, I'm gonna be this and that and the other," none of it works as far as I'm concerned. None of that works. It's not stronger than the seven-year-old that told you you're a jackass and that what your dad said to you in the kitchen that time-

Ali Abdaal 24:04 Mm

Steven Bartlett 24:04 ... about your hair. Like that's a stronger group of evidence that's ingrained in your self story so the way that you counteract those stubborn beliefs you don't wanna have is you have to go out there and you have to put yourselves in growth zones where you're gonna be, be confr- where those beliefs will be confronted and you'll be given first party evidence that those beliefs aren't true Knowledge isn't enough, unfortunately.

Ali Abdaal 24:32 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 24:33 It is sometimes when the existing belief isn't super strong and stubborn. But if the sup- existing belief that, like, I'm a bad public speaker and I can't do that is super strong, then the only way to counteract it is with first-party evidence, which you'll get from stepping outside of your zone of comfort.

Ali Abdaal 24:51 This episode is very kindly brought to you by Huel. I've been using Huel, I've been a paying customer of Huel since 2017, since my fifth year of medical school when I first discovered it. And basically what it is, if you haven't heard of it, is that it is a meal in a shake. It's got the perfect balance of carbs and fiber and proteins and fat, and it contains 26 different vitamins and minerals. All you do is add water or milk to the powder. Usually I use water. You can shake it up or you can blend it. I prefer to blend. And then it becomes a fantastic option if you're like me and you're kind of busy and so you don't really have time for breakfast or lunch. My favorite version is the Huel Black Edition. It's absolutely sick. 400 calories. 40 grams of protein for 400 calories. I'm trying to get hench, and it's actually pretty hard to find something that has such a high protein content for such a low calorie trade-off. And so I really like using the Huel Black Edition to start my mornings off. It's vegan, it's gluten-free, it's lactose-free. The Black Edition is available in nine flavors. My favorite is salted caramel. And I wouldn't recommend having every single meal Huel because that gets a bit annoying after a while, but it's absolutely fantastic as, like, one of the meals of the day, especially if you're busy and you're gonna kind of default to something unhealthy otherwise. It's also very affordable, so it actually works out to £1.68 per meal for a 400 calorie meal, which is just incredible value, and actually way cheaper than other generic protein shakes on the market. And it saves a bunch of time because it's so quick and easy to make. And so it's particularly exciting that they're sponsoring the podcast. And actually, we had the founder of Huel, Julian Hearn, who was on the very first season of the podcast. That was a sick episode that got so many rave reviews as well. Anyway, if you're interested in trying out Huel, then head over to huel.com/deepdive, and if you use that URL, A, it really helps me out, but B, you also get a free T-shirt and also a free shaker that comes with your order. So go to huel.com/deepdive. That'll also be linked down in the video description or the show notes. And 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, 'cause 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. So you can see, had I invested £100 into this thing, what would my return have been X weeks or X months further down the line? Once you've got some comfort with that, then it's super easy to deposit money into your Trading 212 account. You can use Apple Pay, like I do initially, or you can use a direct bank transfer. And then once the money's in your Trading 212 account, then you can invest it in basically whatever you want. Now, if you're based in the UK, you might be familiar with the concept of an ISA, which is an individual savings account, which is basically a tax-free wrapper that you can put money in. You can put £20,000 in every year, up to £20,000, and it resets every April, and then all that money can grow and it's completely tax-free for the rest of your life. And if you want to sign up for an ISA, you can sign up for one completely for free also on Trading 212. So if you haven't yet filled up your ISA allowance or at least put some money into your ISA for this year, that might be a good step forward. Also, very excitingly, there's a new feature that they've added to the app, which is a daily interest on your uninvested cash. These interest rates may go up or down over time as the economic environment changes, but the cool thing is that you get paid out every single day if you're into that sort of thing. The app also lets you auto invest, which is a great thing, 'cause then you can automatically invest a percentage of your paycheck into the thing every month. And so if you haven't yet started with investing and you want to give it a go, then you can download the app on the App Store. And if you use the coupon code ALI, A-L-I, that will give you a totally free share worth up to £100. It's available on iPhone and Android, and you can check it out by typing in Trading 212 into your respective app store. So thank you so much, Trading 212, for sponsoring this episode. I did an interview with Professor Steve Peters this morning, who I think has been on your pod as well.

Steven Bartlett 28:16 Oh, really?

Ali Abdaal 28:17 Uh, the chimp, about the

Ali Abdaal 28:18 Chimp Paradox, and we talked a lot about limiting beliefs, goblins, gremlins, like-

Steven Bartlett 28:22 Oh

Ali Abdaal 28:22 ... the limiting beliefs that I, that imprint onto us in childhood that is, that is so hard to shake.

Steven Bartlett 28:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:27 Um, I wonder for you, what are some of those limiting beliefs that you still struggle with?

Steven Bartlett 28:32 [sighs] Limiting beliefs. One of my limiting beliefs, and I don't know how interesting this is, is that I believe I'm not organized. And so that shows up in my life, and I've almost abandoned the will to change it.

Ali Abdaal 28:49 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 28:50 And as my life has become more optimized towards the things that I'm good at, there's less, if we think about the discipline equation, there's less reason to change it. There's less apparent reason to change it. So growing up in my home, it was a total mess, and the doors in my house had holes in them, like big holes in them, 'cause just over the years we just like, as, you know, four kids in a house, parents aren't there, smashed up the doors. Um, it looked like the, the house of a hoarder. That's the environment I grew up in. There's almost something quite deep within me where today as an adult I feel comfortable with mess because I grew up in mess. So I see that reflected in my behavior sometimes, like I'm quite a messy person and it's a reflection of home. So that's one of them for sure. Um, I have lots of other like insecurities and, um, I think a lot of like hard-wired not enoughness-

Ali Abdaal 29:46 Hmm

Steven Bartlett 29:46 ... in me. That's like deep within me.

Ali Abdaal 29:48 How's that?

Steven Bartlett 29:49 Like I think, I think growing up in... You know, it's funny 'cause at the time I didn't know, but as I grew up, as I grew up and I became an adult, I look back on how I felt, going back to that signal of how you feel, growing up in Plymouth in like 1994 where everyone is white, everyone is like... Well, most people are doing okay. Even my street was like middle class nice. Our house was just destroyed at the time. Um, and you understand the value of things by the context in which you see them. So like on a menu if there's three steaks, um, then you'll assume the, the, the top one is delicious and the bottom one isn't gonna taste good and it's cheap, and you'll therefore usually pick the middle one. If you remove the one of those steaks, decision-making changes. Um, in the same way I grew up- In a street full of and in context full of white people who had more money than me. So and had more money than our family. Like the shame of when my dad was dropping me to school in that van in the morning, praying that the traffic lights would turn red as far from the school as possible so that no one would see the car we were driving in or my family. Um, like all those things, you look, reflect on those things and how, like, how enduring that feeling was throughout my life. Like, no, pretty mu- I think there was one kid. I think there's one kid in the like 16 years that I lived in that city, grew up, that knew where I lived. Imagine that. Because when people would drop me home, I would tell them to drop me at the very top of the hill. I would tell them a different street, and I'd get out and walk it. Um, and then there's no way I'd let someone at school come into my house and see that we lived in like, you know-

Ali Abdaal 31:33 Mm

Steven Bartlett 31:33 ... in a mess. Um, and you imagine just that subtle, constant desire to avoid the shame you're feeling and to fit in. Chemically relaxing my hair until I was about 16 years old. Like, if you look at the old pictures of me, which were in the vlog, you see this kid that has like ke- like I have straight hair, and I've like got this fringe, and I've got like the skinny top on with the skinny jeans. All of that shame and insecurity, I think it permeates throughout my life a little bit. But I think it's part of my, my dra- ambition and I'm dri- and my drive, if I'm honest with myself. I think it's why I've-- I work hard, and I think it's why I often ask guests if they're driven or dragged, because I think part of me is being dragged.

Ali Abdaal 32:19 I've sometimes wondered this about you.

Steven Bartlett 32:20 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 32:20 Because

Ali Abdaal 32:22 especially like, you know, you guys have released a vlog now for three, three weeks, and just like every time I watch the vlog, I'm just like, "Wow, this guy is relentless." And in my mind I'm thinking, "You've already made the money. You've already had the success. You've got the, the biggest podcast in the world. Like, w-what are you doing it for?" [chuckles]

Steven Bartlett 32:43 Um, so the reason I pause is because it's very easy to bullshit.

Ali Abdaal 32:50 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 32:51 And I don't want to bullshit, but it's also hard to know the answer.

Ali Abdaal 32:55 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:56 And I think most of us, we get used to giving an answer to that question. But what I care a lot about whether it's true or not. And so I think if I was to hazard a guess at the truth, I would say it's a multitude of reasons. I would say on one hand, there's no greater feeling than doing something that people appreciate and adds value to someone else's life. There's no feeling like the feeling I experienced this morning when I walked into the office, and the girl that grabbed me and said, "I just quit my job." Literally this morning, "I just quit my job, and I told my boss in that job interview why I was quitting, and it's because of your podcast, and I'm listening to this particular guest, it may help me with this thing." There's no metric that actually feels like as good for the human being as that. The ego might love, "Oh, we hit three million sub- that million subscribers." It's funny, I walked into my team that day and go, "I realize none of us care that we hit three million subscribers. I also don't care." It's important that we use this as a metric to understand that we've done, we've done well as a team. But I realize none of us care because we're like feigning, we're feigning caring. Who cares if you hit three million subscribers? It's one more than two, two million nine hu- It's, but it's nice to have milestones where we celebrate. That matters to me. It matters to me that we're creating stuff that's helping people. That really matters to me. On the other end, I do look at the metrics all the time, as I know you do, or at least you did.

Ali Abdaal 34:15 Uh, yeah, I've stopped now.

Steven Bartlett 34:16 Okay. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 34:16 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:17 Okay. But I think when we had a conversation where you-

Ali Abdaal 34:19 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 34:19 ... you, I remember very vividly you telling me that you were like, you used to be like really obsessed with it all.

Ali Abdaal 34:23 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:23 And it wasn't, wasn't great. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 34:24 No, it wasn't. Like-

Steven Bartlett 34:27 It was no good. So that's important. That I do, I still have a bit of that in me where like it matters to me how the episodes perform in terms of numbers. I don't know, I don't know why, but, um, it does. I want the episodes to do really well, and I want, I want things to grow and move forward and get bigger. I want that. Um, maybe that's the shame, like the, the kid again trying to be enough. Um, why am I doing it?

Steven Bartlett 34:48 I believe in life to be happy, you have to kind of fulfill these five objectives in your profession. Number one, you need challenge, right? Things need to be-become incrementally more difficult to the level of appetite that you can take. That's why game, in game psychology, every level gets harder. You, you're not gonna do the same crossword on the same difficulty over and over again. You would lose motivation. Daniel Pink, his book is behind you, says this. They, they do it in studies. If it's the same difficulty, people lose motivation. So when you're building teams, the w- the thing you've got to know as a CEO or as a founder is the depth of difficulty that every single member of your team is at. And if at one point one of your team members isn't challenged enough, they will quit. You're about six months from them asking for a meeting, okay? So keep them one foot out of their depth. And I have this mental model in my head of all my team members, and I actually sat here this morning with one of them, this morning at, uh, nine AM this morning, who I knew was too comfortable. And my conversation with her this morning was, "Give me 48 hours. I'm gonna return you to the state you were when we were working together in New York, where you were out of your depth, because I know that's what you need." She didn't articulate that to me, but I know it is.

Ali Abdaal 35:56 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 35:56 I know the reason why she's like, "Hmm," feeling... This is a, one of my companies, one of my, my, one of my companies, is because she's not out of her depth anymore. Factor number two to be motivated and enjoy your work is, uh, what I call the progress principle. Sense of forward motion. It's one of the laws in the book as well. When they interview people in work and say, "What's your best day in work?" Harvard Business Review found it was when it was on days where people had a sense of progress. This is also what David Brailsford speaks to, um, when he int- entered the British Cycling Team. Many people think of Sir David Brailsford, who took over that down and out British Cycling Team and made them the best to ever do it. They attribute the success of that to the fact that he cared about these 1% marginal gains. 100%, that is a huge part of it. But what Sir David Brailsford said to me, which I actually think is more important because it's the macro tailwind, is when we found those 1% gains, those small ways to improve something, making the water bottle one centimeter bigger, the pillow softer- The important part was the impact it had on people's motivation because, quote, "We felt like we were going somewhere."

Ali Abdaal 37:04 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 37:05 Humans need that sense of we're going somewhere. So if you're a CEO, one of the most important things you should always do, which I try and do a lot with my teams naturally, is constantly remind the team of w- the fact that we are going somewhere. It's a feeling in the room. And so David Brailsford told me that when he could get that feeling into the room of we're going somewhere, because those 1% gains are the easiest to find. It's hard to find a big gain in any pursuit. It's hard to ... In what you do and what I do, finding those 100% gains, it's an accident.

Ali Abdaal 37:36 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 37:36 Focus on the smallest things. Find it. Enjoy the win together, which is like, "Oh my God, we just made this 1% better." There's a track pad glued under the, the table you're at right now, and the track pad is there because me and my team just found a 1% gain last week where during the conversation with someone, sometimes they say amazing things, and I wanna write it down and just remember it because that might be the title, the thumbnail, the description or whatever. And then after the conversation ends, I forget, forget it. My team come up and say, "What'd you think of the episode?" I don't have any notes 'cause I've had to pay attention. So you'll see a track pad under the table where you are now. Can you feel it? Is it there? Maybe it was the track pad they removed.

Ali Abdaal 38:08 Oh, yeah. There's a little Velcro.

Steven Bartlett 38:10 Okay. So-

Ali Abdaal 38:10 That was the track pad that we ... Yeah

Steven Bartlett 38:11 ... that, that was the track pad. So-

Ali Abdaal 38:13 So you can just do a little tap

Steven Bartlett 38:13 ... all I do is I just tap it with my finger. And what it's doing is that system underneath the table is listening to every word we say, and it highlights it. So the AI will highlight it and send it off to my team. So afterwards I have all my notes, and I've just got to tap the bottom of the table.

Ali Abdaal 38:25 Good idea. Let's do that. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 38:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 38:27 It's a great idea.

Steven Bartlett 38:28 But, but anyway, that's an example of a 1% gain-

Ali Abdaal 38:30 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 38:30 ... we found as a team. And when we did that, we shared it with the whole team and it f- and we enjoyed it and we're like, "This is so awesome." And it created that impression that we're going somewhere. We made progress today. That's point number two. So you need to challenge yourself. You need a sense of forward motion. Number three I'm gonna say is, um, I'm gonna say you need to be pursuing a goal in your life that is subjectively meaningful.

Ali Abdaal 38:52 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 38:52 Goes back to what we said earlier.

Ali Abdaal 38:53 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 38:53 If you interview all members of my team, and there's hundreds of people across different companies, but if you just focus on the podcast team where there's 25, 30 people, every single person will give a different reason as to why they work here.

Ali Abdaal 39:04 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 39:05 Holly will say it's because of this. I'll say it's because of this. Will will say it's because of the, the creativity and his love of production. I don't care what your reason is, as long as you've got one.

Ali Abdaal 39:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:16 So y- you haven't got to give them all the same reason. You haven't got to align on reasons. They've just got to find theirs, and you've got to help them find their reason. So that's point number three. The, the ... if the goal is f- feels subjectively worthwhile to you. Number four, which is super backed by science, we just touched on it a little bit, is autonomy and control.

Ali Abdaal 39:33 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 39:34 Feeling like you have control and autonomy of your work. When people don't have that in their work, physiologically they're more prone to disease. Um, psychologically they have tons of, um, really difficult challenges. Um, so having control and autonomy over what you're doing is integral to feeling like a free animal that's not in a cage. And last one, maybe the most important of all, because we can all recount on times in our lives where we had the previous four but didn't have this one and the job and the work sucked, is you've got to be working with a supportive community of people that you like. Um, and that makes all of the other ones better, makes all of the other four better. Notice that I haven't said, you know, I haven't said y- a particular career or a particular, you know, job or anything. If I have these five things in my profession, Steve will be balanced. And I've applied these five things to psychedelics, where I worked for a year, invested in the company, Atai. We took the company public, um, at a big valuation in June 2021, I believe. Um, I've applied it to Huel, to my businesses, to marketing, to software with Thirdweb. Um, I'm applying it to podcasting I guess as a business. Uh, I'm a- I'm applying it to DJ-ing. I'm applying it to the event businesses we, we run. Um, I'm applying it to my production company, which we're doing shows on the BBC at the moment. Um, so the, the, the subject doesn't matter. It's less important than what people think. I think everyone in this room and everyone listening to this now could be, could find their passion in a multitude of industries if they had these five things. The subject matter is less consequential, 'cause I wasn't born to be a social media CEO.

Ali Abdaal 41:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:07 Didn't exist when I was born, so how could I possibly, how could that possibly be my passion? But I have these five things.

Ali Abdaal 41:13 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 41:13 And I've had those five things for a long time.

Ali Abdaal 41:15 As you were saying those five things, those are all five

Ali Abdaal 41:19 things that I talk about in my book as well.

Steven Bartlett 41:21 Ooh.

Ali Abdaal 41:21 'Cause it's ... 'Cause mine is called Feel-Good Productivity. It's about what are the factors that make work enjoyable, and how do we add more of that into our, into what we do. So the framework that, that I use is the three Ps-

Steven Bartlett 41:32 Okay

Ali Abdaal 41:32 ... which is Power, Play and People.

Steven Bartlett 41:34 Explain.

Ali Abdaal 41:35 So Power is autonomy, control. Uh, Power is also the sense of improvement and competence, like you're getting better at the thing. Initially we, we exploded this into, like, 10 different things. We're like, "Ah, 10's too many to remember." And then it was five 'cause we had Power, Play, People, Progress, and Purpose. And we were like, "Oh, but, like, five Ps is a bit much as well," and like Dan Pink has already got the P- the eh. And then we turned it into three, three Ps and just sort of shoehorned in the subheadings in there. And so Power, Play, and People.

Steven Bartlett 42:03 Play. Interesting. Please explain Play.

Ali Abdaal 42:06 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 42:06 So in, um, Power, I fit in both autonomy and is it purpose? I, I fit both of them into there because you talked about the thing being something you ... Well, how did you describe it just a second ago?

Ali Abdaal 42:19 Yeah, so, so for, so for us, Power is, um, kind of a combination of taking ownership. Um-

Steven Bartlett 42:24 Autonomy, control

Ali Abdaal 42:25 ... autonomy, control, and also, um, improvement. Like leveling up.

Steven Bartlett 42:29 Oh, progress.

Ali Abdaal 42:29 Progress.

Steven Bartlett 42:30 Uh, okay. So you put-

Ali Abdaal 42:30 Like getting better at the thing and growing in the thing.

Steven Bartlett 42:33 So-

Ali Abdaal 42:33 Gives you that sense of empowerment

Steven Bartlett 42:34 ... of my five you've put control and autonomy and, um, progress kind of together in Power.

Ali Abdaal 42:39 Yes, exactly.

Steven Bartlett 42:40 So Play, what's that?

Ali Abdaal 42:41 Play is one that isn't any, that isn't in your five. Um, Play is, um, approaching work in the spirit of play. And I think that's not a thing that's required for something to be f- uh, for, for a job to feel meaningful, but it's definitely a thing, you know, that second c- that second component of your discipline equation-

Steven Bartlett 42:57 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 42:57 ... where the, the pursuit of doing the thing is joyful in itself And there was so many stories that we found, like Nobel Prize winners, Richard Feynman, who was burnt out with doing physics. And then one day he sees in the Cornell cafeteria, he sees like a student like throwing a plate up in the air, and he sees that the logo of Cornell University is like rotating at a slightly different rate than like the circumference of the plate. And he's like, "Huh, that's weird. Why is the logo like wobbling at a different like rate than like the, the edge?" And he uses that to model like thermodynamic equations and stuff, and ends up ultim- ultimately winning the Nobel Prize. And he says in his autobiography afterwards that the thing that cured his burnout with physics, because he'd been doing it for such a long time, in World War II his wife had died, was finding that, that sense of play back in it, that lightness and ease that you can approach work with to make it feel-- to make anything that you do feel more enjoyable. So play was a big part, and in fact actually play is chapter one in the book because we were like, "We really want to lead with this philosophy that feeling good makes you more productive. Experiencing positive emotions in your work makes you more creative, makes you less stressed."

Steven Bartlett 44:02 On the case of Richard Feynman there-

Ali Abdaal 44:04 Hmm

Steven Bartlett 44:04 ... what was he experiencing in his work up until he saw that plate? He was burnt out. He was... He-- The work had lost meaning, I guess.

Ali Abdaal 44:11 Yeah. Yeah, because he'd be... So his burnout period was like post-World War II. Like he'd worked on, you know, the US defense thing. He worked on like the nuclear bomb. He'd, he'd, he'd, he had this meaningful goal to work towards. But then, you know, when he got his tenured professorship, he was like, "Uh..." His, his wife had also just died, so obviously that kind of played a, played a role in it. And he was sort of feeling like, "Oh, these equations that once brought me so much joy are now like they all feel meaningless."

Steven Bartlett 44:37 There you go.

Ali Abdaal 44:37 Until he went back to the play thing.

Steven Bartlett 44:39 So if number four in mine was, was subjectively meaningful, a goal that feel-- is subjectively meaningful to you. So that's where you kind of, I fit... That's the play part.

Ali Abdaal 44:48 That is sort of the play part. Um, our final chapter is also about purpose.

Steven Bartlett 44:51 Right.

Ali Abdaal 44:52 Um, and just sort of alignment and choosing goals that align with your core values.

Steven Bartlett 44:56 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 44:56 I didn't-- Initially, purpose was the very first chapter because it was like, well, starting with why. But I think the problem with starting with why, which I will talk to Simon about if I ever meet him [chuckles] I think the issue with starting with why is that it can often seem overwhelming. If someone's in a normal job that doesn't feel that meaningful or purposeful, you tell them to start with why, and they're like, "Well, there's no, there's no purpose beyond the fact that it's a job," and it's like, "I tr- I applied to fifty jobs, and it's the one that I got." And it's quite heavy to start with why in that context. And so we instead we end with why to be like, "Hey, once you've, once you've done all these things to make it not suck, once you've incorporated power and play and people into your work, at that point you've done everything you can, and now let's think about the purpose question for meaningful goals."

Steven Bartlett 45:37 So factualizing.

Ali Abdaal 45:37 Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 45:37 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 45:38 And if at that point it's still not working, then maybe it's time to quit the job.

Steven Bartlett 45:40 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 45:41 Um, and then people is your point about people.

Steven Bartlett 45:44 How exciting. So you've got power. Sorry, in the book you start with play.

Ali Abdaal 45:49 Yeah. Play, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 45:50 Power.

Ali Abdaal 45:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 45:52 Purpose, people.

Ali Abdaal 45:54 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 45:54 I love that.

Ali Abdaal 45:55 And the four Ps.

Steven Bartlett 45:56 I should've done alliteration. I'm so stupid. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 45:58 [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 46:00 Alliteration makes things so much more easy to remember. Fucking... Okay, well it's published now, so I'm fucked. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:06 Well... It's a good book. I've just taken so many notes. I love, I love highlighting and annotating stuff.

Steven Bartlett 46:10 Thank you. Which one

Steven Bartlett 46:11 was... You've read both of them.

Ali Abdaal 46:12 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:12 And it's very rare for people to actually read these books because people buy them and then they just don't read them. Like I'm guilty there. Which one do you prefer, honestly?

Ali Abdaal 46:21 I'd, uh... Hmm. I actually think they were both very good at different stages of my life.

Steven Bartlett 46:27 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 46:27 So the, so the two takeaways I took from, from the first one were basically the ch- the time chip thing, which I still use.

Steven Bartlett 46:34 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 46:35 Um, and also the quitting framework thing, which I still use.

Steven Bartlett 46:37 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:38 Uh, what I took from this one was a reminder to take, take better care of my health. The eleven also laws you have about marketing were really helpful because I'm j- I was like highlighting the shit out of them, being like, "Send to Jacob, send to Allison."

Steven Bartlett 46:47 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:47 This is super helpful. Oh my God. Like friction, adding friction. Yes. And it's like w- it was very specific to business stuff.

Steven Bartlett 46:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:54 Whereas in the first book it was more general.

Steven Bartlett 46:57 General life stuff. It's where I was at, I think.

Ali Abdaal 46:59 Yeah. No, exactly.

Steven Bartlett 46:59 It's where you were at clearly as well.

Ali Abdaal 47:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 47:01 So I think it's like different books hit you at different times.

Steven Bartlett 47:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 47:03 Um-

Steven Bartlett 47:04 Because I'm, I... I've never said this before, but I like-- I'm almost a little bit [lip smacks] shy about the first book now because it doesn't represent who I am now. It's much more, you know, broad and kind of lifey and much more kind of opinions and vibes. Whereas I feel like the second one, the, the new one, is much more technical and much more like, "Here's how to do it."

Ali Abdaal 47:27 Very specific.

Steven Bartlett 47:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 47:28 I like the specificity of it.

Steven Bartlett 47:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 47:30 And it-- And like you weren't, you weren't hedging. You were like, you had an opinion on each one. And I also liked how you named things. And I was thinking, "Oh shit, I should've named more stuff in my book," because [lip smacks] you know-

Steven Bartlett 47:40 Ah

Ali Abdaal 47:40 ... there was the thing where instead of using the word manifestation, you called it like, uh, plan A something.

Steven Bartlett 47:45 Never be, be a plan B... What was it?

Ali Abdaal 47:47 Yeah, plan A.

Steven Bartlett 47:48 Plan... The plan A chapter. There's two. There's one, a negative manifestation.

Ali Abdaal 47:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:51 Like the power of negative manifestation.

Ali Abdaal 47:52 There was another one where it's like plan A thinking.

Steven Bartlett 47:53 You must be a plan A thinker.

Ali Abdaal 47:55 Yeah, plan A thinking. I was like, "Oh, plan A thinking."

Steven Bartlett 47:57 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 47:57 What a good, what a good way of repackaging manifestation in a way, because I don't vibe with the word manifestation.

Steven Bartlett 48:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:02 And I suspect a lot of your audience don't either.

Steven Bartlett 48:04 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:04 But plan A thinking, I was like, "Hell yeah, I'm a plan A thinker."

Steven Bartlett 48:07 Yeah. Well, you did the whole alliteration thing-

Ali Abdaal 48:08 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 48:08 ... so you, you, you beat me there with the whole play, power, purpose.

Ali Abdaal 48:11 We steal ideas from each other.

Steven Bartlett 48:12 Because you can't name my five in terms of the titles right now, but I can name your five.

Ali Abdaal 48:18 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 48:18 Your four. Play... I can do them in order as well. Play, power, purpose, and people. Or did you put purpose at the end, you said?

Ali Abdaal 48:25 I put purpose at the end, and we called it alignment as a like-

Steven Bartlett 48:28 Oh, well there you go

Ali Abdaal 48:28 ... but yes. Yeah. Three Ps.

Steven Bartlett 48:29 Well, I remember yours.

Ali Abdaal 48:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 48:30 So that's the problem. Anyway.

Ali Abdaal 48:32 Uh, yeah, we spent so long trying to do like A, B, C, D, E, and it like autonomy.

Steven Bartlett 48:36 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 48:36 And it was like B for... Like C for competence, D for drive, E for something, and it's like-

Steven Bartlett 48:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 48:40 ... could we go to F, G? And so like no, let's just, let's keep it simple. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 48:43 I really miss that. I really miss the fact that alliteration's important for these new ideas and frameworks.

Ali Abdaal 48:49 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 48:49 [lip smacks] That could've been in the story section, the power of alliteration and the power of threes as well. You know that whole thing about like you're an incredibly loyal, passionate, and empathetic friend. For some reason, when something is in threes, peop- the brain just- I always speak in threes

Ali Abdaal 49:04 Mm. Same.

Steven Bartlett 49:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 49:05 We-- This is our, our whole process for videos, for podcasts, for c- online courses. We always think-

Steven Bartlett 49:10 You just did that in three

Ali Abdaal 49:11 ... what is the three part-

Steven Bartlett 49:11 You just did that

Ali Abdaal 49:11 ... what is the three-part framework? Yeah. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 49:12 You just did that one in three as well. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 49:14 [laughs] It's just so good.

Steven Bartlett 49:15 Video, podcasts, online courses.

Ali Abdaal 49:17 There's, there's a line I heard from a friend who works at, uh, McKinsey, and he said that the trick that all management consultants use is that the client will ask them a question, and they'll say, "Well, there are three reasons." And then while they're saying the first one, they'll figure out what-

Steven Bartlett 49:28 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 49:28 ... the second and the third one are.

Steven Bartlett 49:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 49:31 The power, the power of threes. That's why we put purpose at the end within alignment because we wanted three Ps and not four.

Steven Bartlett 49:36 Oh.

Ali Abdaal 49:36 Yeah. [laughs] And so we have three p- like, in my book, we have three parts, and each part, each part has three chapters.

Steven Bartlett 49:41 Ah, got ya.

Ali Abdaal 49:41 So there's nine chapters in total.

Steven Bartlett 49:42 This guy, this guy's got the three thing cracked.

Ali Abdaal 49:44 Each chapter also has three subheadings. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 49:46 Really? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 49:47 Initially, we had, like, four or five. I'm like, "Nope, simplify. Only three."

Steven Bartlett 49:49 This is getting weird now.

Ali Abdaal 49:49 I know. It's a bit-

Steven Bartlett 49:50 This is a little bit nerdy

Ali Abdaal 49:51 ... it's a bit, ah, it's a bit too meta. Um, one thing that... I ha- I have a bit of a bone to pick with you.

Steven Bartlett 49:58 Okay. Sure.

Ali Abdaal 49:59 Because,

Ali Abdaal 50:00 so I watched your first vlog episode, and I felt very inspired. And like e- everyone on our team loved it, and we sent it around to each other like, "Oh, my God, this is so good. Inspired us to start a vlog." And we were like, "Yeah, this weekly vlog is a great idea." It's like, and initially, like, we tried daily vlogging, like, last year, but, like, daily is too much. It's like we were, we were scr- scrambling for content. But then weekly, we were like, "That's a great idea." And so we're very inspired after episode one, and then I watched episode two, and then I felt depressed because it was just too good. And I was like, "Oh, why should, why, why are we even bothering? Like, what's the point? Our vlog is gonna be nowhere near as good as Steven's." Like, oh, it's fucking Dragon's Den. It's like, it was like half an hour long as well. It's like normally our stuff is really long and if... Well, if he was doing three-minute vlogs, then at least we, we add more value, but so much value in that as well. And I felt that sense of comparison, and I felt like, oh, what's the point? And one of the things that you talk about a lot is, as everyone does, is, uh, comparison. I think, I think it was in the first book, like, comparison is the root cause of our loss of self-esteem.

Steven Bartlett 50:55 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 50:55 So I wonder if you can speak to that. Is, is that something that you, that you still struggle with, this sort of comparing yourself to others and feeling as if, like, ugh, didn't do as good a job as... Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 51:05 I ho- I, I now believe that I... Hmm, do I compare myself to others? Again, I wanna pause to make sure. We all do. I think that's the first thing I have to say is it's human to. And I've thought a lot about this, actually. I'm just gonna go on a little bit of a tangent. I'll come around the houses, then come back. You, when you said that, were beating yourself up a little bit. You go, "Oh."

Ali Abdaal 51:26 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 51:26 Like, um, it's important to... The relationship you have with the feelings you have to understand that all of those feelings are there for survival reasons.

Ali Abdaal 51:36 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 51:36 And your body and your mind is not against you. It's very, very much on your side. The problem is we live in a world now where your body is misaligned with the world we live in. So in the context of sugar, right? Once-- The reason why we have sugar cravings is because if you came across berries on the Serengeti, let's say 10,000 years ago, eating those berries kept you alive, so your brain is attuned to eat more of them. The reason why we struggle to lose weight and lose belly fat is because the amount of belly fat you had correlated to how long you had left to live. You know? So your body has this re- The brain is trying to defend your weight. So losing weight is difficult because if you go for a big run, your body will then overcompensate with hunger and make you eat more, so that's why they often say cardio's not a great way to lose weight. You'll just end up eating more. The body is on your side. Comparison is important, r- really, really important and useful, and it's ingrained in all of us because we don't have time to make decisions about things in the real world. So our brain is using shortcuts, and comparison is a wonderful shortcut to understand what something means, the value of something, and it's hardwired into you to help you to survive, as is your loving of sugar, your need for status. Um, again, important for you to fit into your tribe. If you were kicked out of your tribe, then you would die. Your body would go into self-preservation. Your stress levels would go up. You'd sleep less. You'd live seven years less longer. So all of these things that we fight with, we shouldn't be fighting with ourselves. It's just a case the world has changed, and the body hasn't evolved to, to deal with it. Comparison's one of them. It's, it's ingrained in us. Um, we all have it. I'm sure I compare myself every day to everybody I meet, and I see this guy on Instagram with great muscles, and I go, "Fuck, Jesus, what am I doing over here with this?" You know, I'm doing that at all times, and I have empathy with myself for that.

Ali Abdaal 53:26 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 53:26 'Cause it's important to start with a place of empathy towards that and not, like, self-resentment. Okay? So it's normal to compare ourselves. It's not normal to live in a world where we see 7,000 people a day on a glass screen, and the brain can't compute that information. It's not meant to. It's not normal to have a fridge. The brain wasn't designed in a world with f- with fridges. Do I compare myself? Yes. Um, do I-- How I interpret the comparison is the key part. So I look at things you've done over the years, and I, I go, "Man, that's so dope. We can do that." I look at what MrBeast has done and go, I'm, like, studying this guy.

Ali Abdaal 54:00 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 54:01 And I'm learning, and I'm going, "Man, this guy's the gold standard." And I'm learning from him, and I'm... You know, I write about him a little bit in one of the laws in the book about the first five seconds. And, um, and I look at Rogan, and I go, "Man, this guy just sits there and does no preparation and then just, like, talks about, like, an anthill with, like, this super smart person, or he'll get his mate on from the comedy club. That is insane how he does that." So I hope, I hope that my comparison results in inspiration and not, like, jealousy or resentment or any of those negative-

Ali Abdaal 54:30 Mm

Steven Bartlett 54:30 ... self-destructive, unproductive feelings, and I think that can be a practice. I think you can realize that life really isn't, like, a zero, zero-sum game and that-

Ali Abdaal 54:39 Mm

Steven Bartlett 54:39 ... like, everyone can win. Um, and that from th- from them winning, they, they can, they can teach you something if you're there to listen. Most people lean out when someone is doing well, so they'll, like, they'll attack, criticize, or, um, or try and diminish that because of the, the dissonance it, it creates.

Ali Abdaal 54:58 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 54:58 What you describe there is cognitive dissonance to some degree. Like-

Ali Abdaal 55:03 Mm

Steven Bartlett 55:03 ... what I mean by that is when Something you observe is at odds with your sense of self-identity or what you believe about the world.

Ali Abdaal 55:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 55:12 And it causes the psychological discomfort. If you're going, "That's really good, like we're, we're not gonna be able to do that," there's different ways you can deal with the dissonance. One way is you can say, "Yeah, but he's got a team of 30 people."

Ali Abdaal 55:23 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 55:24 That, that is a great way to deal with the dissonance. It kind of like diminishes what you've seen, and it makes it, makes you at ease, right? He's got 30, yeah, but he's got 30 people. Or you could say something else, right? The harder thing to do, and I think the most important thing to do, is what I call in the book the, um ... Sh- I'm gonna get, butcher his name, but I'll call him the President of Israel did when Reagan, who was his friend, went to that Nazi, um, burial site. And obviously being, being Jewish, watching Reagan, who was meant to be your friend, go to that burial site, when reporters asked him, you know, "What do you think of Reagan going to that where, you know, where there's, there's Nazis buried?" And he says, "When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend and the mistake remains a mistake." What he's doing there is he's doing the hard thing of holding the dissonance separate. Like, holding these two facts it, separately. He's not diminishing it. He's not saying, "Reagan's not my friend," or, "Yeah, but it m- he didn't go to the burial site where the bad Nazis were, were buried." He held the two things together. And in doing that, you ha- you, you create enough space to learn and to observe.

Ali Abdaal 56:28 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 56:28 And for nuance, which is rare in this world. The thing we're all doing at the moment is just diminishing the other side. We're not listening. So going back to it, if you're able to hold that dissonance, it becomes really productive and useful for you, which most of us are not, not able to do, especially if we have low self-esteem or we have those other issues because the dissonance feels a little bit too close to home. It actually says to us, "I'm not good enough." And that's a very deep thing to experience. In the s- in the light of someone else's success, for their success to convince you that you are a scumbag and that what that seven-year-old said to you in school is true about your sense of self-worth is a lot to take. So m- if you have low self-esteem, I think reducing the dissonance by slamming the person, being pessimistic, justifying it away is much more likely.

Ali Abdaal 57:12 So you interview a lot of kind of very successful people. Do you ever find yourself in that unhealthy comparison mode? Or have you gotten so good at the sort of comparison equals inspiration rather than comparison equals envy that it just happens? Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 57:25 I've never sat with someone and thought, "Man, I'm so jealous of you," but I've sat with so many people and thought, every day, "I think I will never be as good as you at what you do. I will never have the knowledge recall, the intelligence, the perspective, the articulation. I will never get there. I will never be." And I, I wish, I wish I was capable of it, but I, I'm able to separate out my admiration-

Ali Abdaal 57:53 Mm

Steven Bartlett 57:53 ... and my aspiration. They are two different things which we often conflate.

Ali Abdaal 57:57 Nice. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 57:57 I can sit with someone and go, "You're the GOAT. You're the best to ever do it. You're so much better than me at that thing," and also not then aspire to become them.

Ali Abdaal 58:05 Sure. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 58:05 Um, and I think actually that's, that's because I, at this fa- chapter in my life now, like I'm okay with who I am. So I can admire. [laughs] I can admire, like I can just do the admiration part without turning it back on myself and saying, "What does that say about me?" And I, I see it in with some of my friends. One friend in particular that I have, if I said to this one friend that I have in particular, I go... They go like, "What are you doing today?" I was like, "I just went to the gym." Immediately they will actually hear that as, "Why didn't you go to the gym?"

Ali Abdaal 58:36 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 58:38 So I can't even have a conversation with them about like, oh, I went... I had, we had it yesterday in the car. She said to me, um, "Oh, where have you been?" I said, "I just ran to the gym and then I da, da." And I watched her face. And immediately she goes, "I'm gonna be going to the gym soon." [laughs] And what, what i-i-in that moment, what happened is she actually, she heard my experience and she heard my discipline, or she heard my goal, and it w- it so... Where she is at in the, her life at the moment is she's quite self-conscious and she's struggling with self-esteem. So she, what she experienced was extreme dissonance, sh- which was, "Why didn't y-," she heard w- Her brain translated it to, "Why didn't you go to the gym? You're not good enough."

Ali Abdaal 59:26 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 59:26 What I said was, "I've just been to the gym this morning."

Ali Abdaal 59:27 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 59:28 And that's, again, it goes back to the interpretation based on our self-esteem for these events. That's an extreme example, but it's kind of the same thing in terms of comparison. That's the extreme example-

Ali Abdaal 59:40 Hmm

Steven Bartlett 59:41 ... where someone can just tell you what they did and you actually hear, "Why didn't you? You're s- you're not good enough."

Ali Abdaal 59:46 Yeah. Nice. That's good stuff. Um, can we talk about your

Ali Abdaal 59:53 buckets? So you-

Steven Bartlett 59:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:54 So filling, filling the buckets in the right order. Um, there's no alliteration there either. [laughs] Um, I wonder if-

Steven Bartlett 59:59 I should have done alliteration. Fuck.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:00 Yeah. So I, I really vibed with that story. Um, I wonder if you can, you can tell the story of how you, how you came to come across these, these five buckets.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:08 Yeah. You know the person that I'm r- referring to, and I have to say there might be a little bit of folk tale to this because this person said it to me, and the, the individual that I'm talking about is, um, they're very good at storytelling.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:21 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:21 But what they said to me was they were in San Francisco, and they might, yeah, they were in San Francisco, and a sweaty man came, came jogging past. And this sweaty man was kind of like short on breath, and he was explaining like that he was building rockets and doing these microchips in these monkey brains and all, building tunnels and all of these crazy abstract things, and then he ran off. And as you hear that story objectively, you go, "That is a lunatic that has es- escaped from an asylum." But in reality it was Elon Musk. And the only reason that when I say it, it was Elon Musk, it suddenly becomes believable, is because Elon Musk has spent his life filling these five buckets. So- Elon could say anything, he could create any ambition, and people would sell their houses to invest in his ideas because he is someone who has five full buckets. The last one of which is maybe in question, but five full buckets. The first bucket is knowledge. He's committed his life. Now, there's actually a side story to this as well, which is, um, when I met a famous monk in New York City, I was with Jay Shetty. For the first couple of years of my life, I was dealing with this kind of mental conundrum as to whether committing my life to building businesses which would ultimately enrich myself, was that a worthier cause than me going back to the village in Africa and saving just one life with the skills that I have, right? Like, what was more of a worthy pursuit? So when I was in New York and Jay introduced me to this monk, and there's this big room of people, I got to ask one question. So I asked that question. I said like, "If I could go to Africa," and I was like 22, 23. I was young. "I could go to Africa and like commit my time to saving one life, or I could carry on building these businesses. Which one is more worthy? Which one should I be doing?" And the monk said to me, "You cannot pour out for others that in which you do not have yourself." And so what I interpreted from that is filling these bu- five buckets. First one is your knowledge, which Elon certainly has a very full bucket. It's important context here as well. This first bucket of knowledge is, is always growing bigger. There's more knowledge to acquire. It's like a bucket that is increasing in size as more knowledge is available. First bucket is your knowledge. The second bucket is your skills. Nothing in life can ever empty these two buckets. The, the remaining three buckets that I'm gonna describe can be emptied. Things can go wrong. You can get fired from your job, professional earthquakes. But these first two buckets, no one can ever empty them, your knowledge and your skills. And skills are really applied knowledge. So when you learn something and then you apply it, we call it a skill, which is kind of what we've been talking about with like knowing something, but then doing it is completely different. You can read about exercise, but then doing-- knowing how to do the squats and stuff comes from the application of the knowledge, which is a skill. These are the sen- most important buckets in your life because when these overflow, they fill the other three buckets of your resources, um, your network, and your reputation. Now, these three things can, can-- these buckets can empty at any time. And if you're young and you're thinking, "Okay, which job should I take?" You should, you should make the decision through this frame because I talk about one of my team members in the very early eight-- stages of my entrepreneurial career who decided to leave our company because he was offered a great job title and a big paycheck, which is reputation and resources. But he hadn't filled his skills and knowledge bucket. He'd kind of like managed to convince someone that he was capable of being a CEO of a very big company, even though he hadn't-- didn't have the knowledge and skills, and it kind of... it's quite obvious what happens there. Life will catch you out if you don't have the knowledge and skills to meet the situation you're in. What I'm fortunate for is in my life, I spent maybe three to four years working in call centers, picking up the phone, calling Dorothy at 9:00 p.m. to sell like, you know, artificial grass, windows, doors, conservatories, kitchens, because it filled up these, this knowledge and skills bucket profoundly. I could have gotten jo- got a more glamorous job, but choosing a, a job at that early age that was focused on my knowledge and skills, not that paid me more or that had higher status amongst my friends, is the reason why I was able to launch businesses and do well at a young age. So I would just im- impress upon people to really focus and prioritize those first two buckets, especially when you're young and especially when they're empty.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:51 Yeah. This is a, a thing that I've, I've heard from a lot of, um, a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, I ask the question of if someone's young and they wanna start their first business, what do you recommend? And a lot of people say that if you wanna start a business, it is very worthwhile getting a job at a startup first-

Steven Bartlett 1:05:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:07 ... that has like fewer than 10 people because you will learn so much stuff, and you're being paid to learn.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:11 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:11 And the objective of that is for you to just, you know, as you would say, f- fill up the, those buckets or, or like add stuff to them of knowledge and skills.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:18 And then when you start your business, you're way, way more ahead of the curve than if you just quit your job, start a business completely from scratch, and now you're having to fill the, the s- the skills and the knowledge while also not having any money coming in. That's like a harder place to be.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:31 Hundred percent, and it's like the cheapest way to fail, right? It's the cheapest way to observe failure. We talked about how beliefs are first, first party. Experience them yourself with your own eyes, like you saw your doctor friends unhappy. Um, and we talked about the importance of like, you know, beliefs coming from experiments you run, being outside of your zone of comfort. A startup is that e- environment exactly. Cheapest way to fail, cheapest way to get that information, to see it as close as you possibly can. In a big corporate, you might be cloaked from it. So many people, so much responsibility, the failure kind of happens somewhere at the top and it's, you know, you don't see the consequence of it. And also sometimes there's not a consequence of it in a big corporate. You know, it doesn't cost the company their, the lights. Um, but in a startup, you get all of that without the failure being, you know... It's a lo- low-cost way to fail. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:17 Hmm. Nice. Um, law 22: You must become a Plan A thinker.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:22 Interesting.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:23 What is a Plan A thinker?

Steven Bartlett 1:06:25 Um, I describe Plan A thinking as-- Really interestingly, I'm like making a bunch of connections here because it kind of links back to what we said about discipline and prioritization. You know, our time is competing with a series of other things that we want to do. Um, the problem is the s- studies and the stats show that if you give someone in a study an alternative, you give them... you even let them think about an alternative, they are less motivated for the primary objective. So the studies that I talk about in the book are they get people to sit down and they say, "This is the goal. And if you do this goal, you'll get a candy bar," let's say. Then they ask the people to do the task. In a second study, they say, "Sit down. This is the goal. If you complete it, you get a candy bar. But just think about another place here on campus that you could get a candy bar." Just the thought of where else they could get a candy bar distorts their motivation and reduces their motivation towards the goal. So the, the evidence is really clear. When you have a plan B, it only detracts from your motivation and your commitment towards the plan A. Plan Bs are detrimental in the context of motivation towards a plan A. Um, and I reflect on my own life and, again, I didn't have a plan A. When I called my mother and I said, "I'm dropping out of university," and I was shoplifting those pizzas at 18 years old to feed myself, um, it was like survival. Like, I was either gonna be successful or I was gonna be successful. There was not a plan B option. I couldn't-- I didn't have anywhere else to run to.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:59 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:59 So I think that focus, and, you know, I talk about, um, the story of the plane crash in the book, which is always one of my all-time favorite stories. Um, that focus enabled me. It was just at 10% more wind in the sails towards where I wanted to go, and sometimes 10% is the difference.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:16 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:16 It was just that, you know, on that day where it's really difficult and there's so many reasons to quit, and if I had a comfy place to run to, that would've played on my subconscious and maybe tempted me to run, to run to that soft c- comfortable place. Not having that put that energy back into the mission, and that's kind of what I speak about when I'm talking about plan A thinking. It's, it's removing the alternative so that you can use all of your energy towards the main goal.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:40 Yeah. There's a remarkable power in focus. Um, we've found this in our team recently, like it's so tempting. There's the infinite list of things that we could do, and then we'll be like, "Yeah, let's do all of this stuff." And then it's like we're making 1% progress in like a dozen directions. But when we focus in like the one or two things that really matter, then we're able to make more progress in those areas.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:01 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:02 And so one thing we've now done, we work in six-week cycles, and every week-- uh, every, every six weeks, everyone on the team just picks one quest.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:09 Interesting.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:09 The, the one thing that they're gonna do in the next six weeks that's gonna move the needle in their particular area, which we've, we've, we've found super helpful. Um-

Steven Bartlett 1:09:16 I love that.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:16 Again, when, when I, when I look at your vlog and, and see what you're up to, doing loads of different things. Um, you've got the various companies. You've got the podcast. It seems like you're out at like random times of the night. Three podcast guests in one day and then like a 3,000

Ali Abdaal 1:09:30 people or like in the evening. There's a lot going on. How do you think about where you're spending your energy and focus?

Steven Bartlett 1:09:37 So I have to say that I'm struggling with it.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:40 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:40 So I think it's important because I think, I think it's important to be honest. Like I've overextended myself definitely in my life. I've done-- I've taken on too many things, which probably means six to 12 months ago I said yes to things I should've said no to. I like deferred them to a future Steve who I didn't appreciate. I didn't appreciate the context he was gonna be living in. So I've definitely overextended myself. Um, I definitely struggle with it. I can do it in bursts, but I can't do it consistently. I can't be consistently intense.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:10 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:11 So this chapter of my life is very intense. I came off the back of Dragon's Den. Problem with Dragon's Den is it can takes my, all my time away, so everything has to fit into the residual time, and the residual time isn't enough to record my podcast, to run the businesses, to invest, to do all the things I have to do within media and what- whatever else. So I'm struggling with it. Um, the struggle means sometimes I'm falling asleep at 3:00 a.m. and I'm like, I'm tense. I'm like, there's like an angst to me. Like I'm tense. My brain is ba, ba, ba, and then, you know, I'm trying to have a relationship as well, so I'm struggling with it. So there's a problem here. So I want, I wanna say that because I don't want anyone to think I've got it cracked. Um, the important thing that I can do to control it is to have a clearer framework of, of what I say yes and no to, um, which goes back to our discipline equation thing and also goes back to this quitting and starting thing. Like you've got to be able to say no to a lot of things in order to say yes to them. Saying no and yes have an equal importance in life. And then the bigger overarching thing, which I think most people are aware of, is there's actually just a few, a couple of things that I'm, I should be doing with my time, and they tend to be the biggest things and the smallest things.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:22 Hmm. What do you mean?

Steven Bartlett 1:11:24 So as a CEO of a company, there's two areas where you can a- where only you can do the thing that adds value. So it's like the big stuff, right, like strategy and all that stuff. All the stuff in the middle, everyone else can do. There's people that can do that. And then the small thing, and I say small because it seems small, not because I think it's small, which is going over to Berta's desk and saying, "Happy birthday." Coming from me, that means a lot to Berta. I realize that.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:51 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:52 And no one else can go over to Berta's desk and say, "Happy birthday from Steve," and create that same impact that I have on her, which is like letting her know that I know it's her birthday and it matters to me and that. So I do the really big things, and then I do the really small things. And also within that, there's-- I have like very limited amount of skills, and this is not me being like humble or whatever. I'm very comfortable with the fact that most things I'm bad at. Maths, organization. I said to you, messy operational stuff, process stuff. I'm bad at all of that stuff. I never do it. I never try. Finance-related stuff, don't even look at it. Not my problem. Thankfully, my older brother works in my company full-time now, so... And he's a math genius, as I think I explained earlier. But there's this little thing here where that's me. That's where, that's the thing that Steve is good at, and that should be the thing where I'm allocating most of my proverbial chips in a day. My 16-- Well, let's say I'll give nine hours. Maybe say I'll give 12 hours to work a day. My-- I should spend those 12 chips in work doing that thing that only Steve can do, which is hard to explain, but it's kinda like linked to marketing. It's really an understanding of human beings and like, um, yeah. And visionary, vision stuff like knowing, knowing- It's a philosophy thing. It's like I talk about the, in the philosophy section in the book, like that philosophy towards work, which is the one percents, the experimentation. Giving that philosophy to a team of people so that we, we, we find the right answers before other teams is my thing. Team culture and team philosophy, and then the marketing bits I'm good at as well. But nothing else.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:34 I don't need to be good at anything else.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:35 'Cause you've got, you've got the podcast, you've got Flight Story, you've got Thirdweb. You invest in a bunch of companies-

Steven Bartlett 1:13:42 Yeah, like Fund, um-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:42 ... which require you to get input on them and attend board meetings and stuff like-

Steven Bartlett 1:13:46 Huel. The, you know, we do, do a lot of s- I'm on a couple of boards-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:50 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:13:50 ... that matter to me. H- healing company. Um, I did Atai for a year, the psychedelics business for a year.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:55 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:55 And then, yeah. Those are like my professional things that are occupying my time. And then Diary of a CEO. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:02 Yeah. [chuckles]

Steven Bartlett 1:14:02 Which we said at the start, which is like, yeah, takes a lot of time.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:06 So I guess my question is why bother continuing with Flight Story and Thirdweb and investing and all this stuff? It w- I mean, from the outside it seems like Diary of a CEO is the, the main thing, but obviously you're less public about the what, what goes on with the other businesses.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:22 It's a very good question. I have a disease of-- I have the disease of entrepreneurship.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:31 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:32 And I have the disease of self-belief, and I have the disease of curiosity, and as those three things collide, you need an antidote to the disease, which should be focus and saying no to things, and the someday shelf where I think I talk about my first... I don't even know where I talked about it, but just the shelf where you have a great idea and you believe you can do it, and you believe it matters, and you just fucking put it on the shelf.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:55 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:56 And then if it jumps back off the shelf, you pick it back up and you put it back on the shelf. And then if it keeps jumping off the shelf maybe for 12 months, then you go, "Okay. Right, guys. Right. Pri-priority." Um, so with that, with those three diseases, disease of entrepreneurship, the disease of self-belief, and the disease of curiosity, um, when things happen, I have a desire to build in that, in that area. So when the blockchain conversation began, I had a real desire to build. It's the same reason why I went into, uh, Atai Life Sciences and spent a year working on taking a psychedelics bit business public and learning about all of the clinical data around psilocybin and magic mushrooms and ketamine and ibogaine and what-- going through all of it, that research paper, and then figuring out how I could use that to tell the story of the mental health movement through the lens of psychedelics and constructing everything. I remember writing the script for the IPO video. IPO, it's worth 3.2 billion, and I was fascin- This is what... When I was talking about these five principles of loving work, it doesn't matter the subject.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:49 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:50 Subject is inconsequential. What matters is that, um, that I care, and that's why, because I have that disease and sometimes I can't, I can't quell, quell it, so it turns into a company.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:02 Huh.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:02 That's what happened with Flight Story and Thirdweb. I, I love marketing. I love psychology and business. I used to steal the textbooks for psychology. And what is psychology and business? It's marketing. That's what it is. And with Thirdweb, I was fascinated by, fascinated by the blockchain, so I built, started a company there. Called the smartest guy I knew, started chatting to him about it for six months, and then that led to Thirdweb.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:27 If you had, let's say, I don't know, an extra 500 million in the bank-

Steven Bartlett 1:16:32 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:16:33 ... to what extent would... How would, how would you change-

Steven Bartlett 1:16:37 Such a good question

Ali Abdaal 1:16:37 ... how you spend your time?

Steven Bartlett 1:16:38 Such a good question. Um, [laughs] I would, I believe I would... And I might be lying to myself because we all bullshit ourselves sometimes.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:49 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:16:50 I believe I would stop... Hmm. Okay. So if it was right now, if you give me 500 million right now in the bank, um, versus I wasn't currently doing anything and I was starting from zero, two different answers.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:09 Sure. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:09 Let me answer if I was starting from zero.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:11 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:11 If I was starting from zero and there was nothing in my life, there was no podcast, there was no businesses, Thirdweb, Flight Story, all of it's gone, I would start a media company that does pretty much what Diary of a CEO is doing.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:21 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:21 And I'd make it, um... I would have loads of podcasts all around the world with lots of different wonderful creators that I believe are making the world better and have important opinions to share, and I'd be running one of the biggest media companies in the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:34 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:34 That's what I'd be doing. Because I say this because doing the podcast is my ikigai.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:39 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:39 And so I would just do more of that. And for anyone that doesn't know what an ikigai is, it's a sort of Japanese phrase for when you find the thing that kind of provides you with the most fulfillment in life when it meets these four criteria of... And I might butcher this, so help me here, Al- Ali, 'cause I know you know it. The first one is something you believe you can be good at. [lip smacks] The second one is something that pays you. The third one is something you enjoy, and the fourth one is something that you believe is of service to others. Now, doing the podcast is the first thing I've done in my life that really feels like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:14 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:14 It feels like it completes the ikigai. So if you gave me 500 million and I had none of these other things going on in my life-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:20 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:18:20 ... I would do more of that.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:23 Okay. What about scenario two, where you do have all the, all the other things?

Steven Bartlett 1:18:27 I would take s- the money-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:28 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:18:28 ... and I would invest it [chuckles] into my companies.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:31 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:31 I'd back myself.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:32 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:32 I'd invest. I'd get 100 million today, and I'd put it into Flight Story, um, and make that the greatest marketing business in the world, the greatest sort of agency in the world. Take another 100 million, put it into Thirdweb so we win that game we're, we're playing there-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:48 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:18:48 ... within Web3. Um, I'd take 100 million, I'd put in Diary of a CEO. Um, and within Diary of a CEO, we have this really nice philanthropy charitable initiative. I'm doing this initiative with the Red Cross at the moment called this Cash Card thing. So I'd invest in that for refugees in disaster-stricken areas.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:04 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:06 I wouldn't need the rest. I'd, I'd, I don't know, put it in a bank or put it in a, a high growth fund.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:12 At this, um, this, uh, Tony Robbins event I was at last week, it was, uh, Business Mastery.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:16 It was-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:16 Something, like... It was, it was really good.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:18 Um, interesting. Very interesting

Ali Abdaal 1:19:20 from, like, a meta perspective of, like, how he does events and stuff, but also some genuinely, like, really helpful, like, advice on growing businesses. And one of the main objectives of the o- of the event was to take people from being operators to owners, where an owner can have freedom from fl-flexibility, can grow the bu- can-- Their businesses can grow, they can build the empire, but they've got operators in place for the various teams and stuff doing the doing.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:46 And one of the things he was saying, um, was sort of splitting up people into three archetypes. There's the archetype of the artist who believes in the work for the sake of the craft.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:55 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:55 There's the archetype of the manager/leader.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:57 There's the person who loves to build systems, and then there's the archetype of the entrepreneur who loves the thought of building something from scratch and taking risks and making, making all that happen. And I very much resonated with the artist thing, where my answer to if I, if I won the lottery, I'm like, "Great. All I'm gonna do is learn cool stuff and make videos about it," 'cause that's my ikigai. But it sounds like for you, if you won the lottery, you had, like, the, the lottery times five. It sounds like you're more the entrepreneur and that you-

Steven Bartlett 1:20:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:20:23 ... you enjoy the idea of, like, building companies and taking the risk and growing them.

Steven Bartlett 1:20:28 Yeah, and I, I'm, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur, but I, I can resonate with what you said about the artist as well, because if you look at The Diary of a CEO Live show, where we spent £700,000 and we made £700,000, so we broke even. Um, it took several months of my life. There was no financial reward on offer. But I love music. Same reason I've, I started DJing a year ago-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:53 Mm-hmm

Steven Bartlett 1:20:53 ... two years ago now. Um, and I love the creative element of creating something that makes people feel something. So if you observe what I do on a daily, if you observe the conversation me and Will, who produces the vlog, had last night. I mean, we were sat where you're sat, right? So we were sat there, and what I'm talking to Will about, I think a lot, is, like, the creativity, the story arc, the art, the... How I was talking to him about Dave at home, or, like, the 16-year-old in Zimbabwe who clicks on the video, and the experience and the way we want her to feel. And that's, like, one of the things that I do in all my companies is I'm, I'm-- Like when you see our trailers for the podcast or whatever, I'm heavily inv- Ant is the genius, right? Ant is a genius. Give him the credit. Um, but I see every single one and I, and we obsess over every single one. If you came to my live show, it's like... I mean, how do I describe it? 40-person choir on stage with a huge band and visuals, and the new show we've got sound effects and we d- I've spent the time on, like, the lighting effects to immerse you, so you think you're going through the seasons of life. So the room gets cold, then it gets hot. And then, um, and the projections across the wall, and the violinist and the orchestra for this show that we've got, and the choir, and I've picked every song and, and, and how it all comes together to tell a story that makes you feel something so deep in your chest that you wanna cry or you wanna stand up and, you know, almost-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:25 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:22:25 You know, that's the stuff I love. That's the stuff I love, and it links to my d- love of psychology somehow. Um, I'm not good at, like, drawing or painting.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:35 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:22:35 So when I thought of artists, I thought of, like, drawing or painting or these geniuses you see, like Fred again..., who's like da, da, da, da, da, da, and is, like, a musical genius. I'm not that, but I love things. I love knowing how the things we create impact humans at a profound and deeper level. If that's creativity, if that's what artists do, then I can resonate with that. Um, where, when I look at Elon, I see, like, an engineer entrepreneur.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:23:02 When I look at myself, I see someone that, like, loves music and, and the way that you can change a story arc to make someone feel something, um, and to move them in a way. So my team know it, like titles, thumbnails, uh, trailer stuff, story arc of the episodes. Any video any of my companies have ever made for any announcement ever, um, I do the storyboard.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:25 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:23:26 I do, you know. And he's laughing. My-- Will is laughing in my team 'cause I'm, like, obsessed with it.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:23:32 So whether I'm good at it or not is another question, but I love it. [chuckles] You know, whether I'm good at it is, I don't know. But I-- 'cause art is such a subjective thing, but I love that stuff. [sniffs] And I actually, I actually never related to being a creative. I never thought I was creative, ever. But it's from-- And I don't even know if I'd quite call myself a creative yet. [sniffs]

Ali Abdaal 1:23:54 Hmm. Oh yeah, I don't vibe with the word creative either. I've al- I've always thought of myself as not particularly creative. I think I just take ideas from sources and connect them and apply my own synthesis to it, which some people say is creativity, but it doesn't... Like, to me, creativity feels like drawing and art, which I've, I've always been bad at.

Steven Bartlett 1:24:10 Mm. If I wasn't an entrepreneur, the next most obvious thing for me to be is, like, a movie director.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:17 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:24:19 Th- that's like... Or it would be a therapist. Now, there is actually... I, I actually did g- spend many hours looking for a course I could do on a psychology c- degree that I could do that would allow me to become a therapist.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:33 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:24:34 Like six months ago.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:35 Oh. [chuckles]

Steven Bartlett 1:24:36 Not like, not like, not like when I was younger.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:37 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:24:38 I mean, like, I'm, like, looking now for these, like, out of uni... Where you don't have to go to the university, you could do it at home. Because I'm so fascinated by people and why they do what they do-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:48 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:24:48 ... as you can probably tell if you listen to The Diary of a CEO, that I thought, do you know what? It would be good to have some kind of qualification in that. [lip smacks] So if I wasn't a therapist and if I wasn't an entrepreneur, then I would be a movie director because I love d- how you can tell a story that makes someone feel something, how you create that story arc and surprise and... Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:06 Interesting. Um, final couple of things I wanted to ask you about. Uh, one is that, you know, something that

Ali Abdaal 1:25:12 I struggle with is, that I'd love to get your take on, is when there's lots of stuff going on, um, and It can sometimes-- Like, like balancing that with, for example, the relationship with my girlfriend, seeing my friends, seeing my family-

Steven Bartlett 1:25:28 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:28 Those things that are not in the work category, but the work category can just take over because of all the trips and all the cool stuff going on and all the, "Oh, this person's in town. Let's grab dinner with them. Oh, no, that's date night." Like, do you find-- how, how do you manage that balance between the work stuff, which is obviously continues to explode for you at a ridiculous level, with like real life, like friends, family, relationship?

Steven Bartlett 1:25:52 How are you doing with it? Struggling?

Ali Abdaal 1:25:55 Uh, I am-- I think I, I was struggling. I've, I've created rules.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:01 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:01 Like Mondays and Thursdays is always date night, and that's non-negotiable.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:04 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:05 Even if like I, I've, I've had to say to her, "Even if Elon Musk is in town and wants to go on a podcast and my girlfriend can't do like anything other than the Thursday night," I'd be like, "Cool."

Steven Bartlett 1:26:13 You're-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:13 Let's prioritize-

Steven Bartlett 1:26:14 You're lying to my face. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:26:16 Since when do I tell lies anyway?

Steven Bartlett 1:26:17 You are lying. [laughs] You are lying to my face.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:19 Um-

Steven Bartlett 1:26:19 If Elon was in town and wanted to come on my podcast, I'd be like, "Babe." [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:26:22 Yeah, it's like, "Baby, [laughs] it's gonna-"

Steven Bartlett 1:26:23 "You can come and watch. We can do-- We can eat while I do it."

Ali Abdaal 1:26:26 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:26 Like. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:26:28 So I think I've, I've been trying to figure out like what are the rules because I find having rules in place makes it easy to say yes or no to things.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:34 But again, it's a, it's a constant battle, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:36 It's okay to say it's a constant battle and you struggle with it.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:39 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:40 I, I feel the same way. I really struggle with it and I'm trying to make sure I've got a different decision framework for different goals in my life. In some areas of my life you think about productivity as we would define it, you know, within society. So if you think about productivity and then you can measure it by certain OKRs or metrics or whatever.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:57 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:26:57 And then I've learned over time to apply different measurement

Steven Bartlett 1:27:00 framework to my relationship with my girlfriend, which is no framework at all.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:03 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:27:05 No, no measurement at all. And, um, and just going back to the like poker chip analogy, the whole idea of you get these 16 chips if you've spent eight sleeping. You don't wanna p- You need to place them intentionally against your values and the things that matter to you. So we both agree that our girlfriend and our relationships really matter to us. So focus on the allocation that you're giving to the thing that matters to you and make sure it's in balance with the allocation of the other things that matter to you. And when I say balance, that doesn't mean it's equal, but it means that you achieve harmony.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:35 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:27:36 So balance, work-life balance is a load of nonsense, right? It's a load of like-- It's really unhelpful because it, it implies, like imposter syndrome is a really unhelpful frame. It implies that you're trying to e- balance the scales like 50, 50 grams on each side. You're not. You're trying to find harmony, which is where you feel good in this context. You feel good about your life.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:56 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:27:57 You know, you don't feel like you're sacrificing anything that's integral to your contentment and happiness. That's what I'm trying to do. I don't have balance at all. I'm not trying to find balance. I'm trying to make sure I'm in harmony with my relationship and that is an ongoing dialogue and that's ongoing check-ins to make sure that harmony is there. Um, but it's a struggle and it comes in seasons. This is what a lot of people have taught me is that you don't have work-life balance, you have seasons of life. And in this season of life you might be over-indexing or over-prioritizing this goal more. But then when you become a dad, Ali, as I'm sure we will both become in the next, you know, five, 10 years if we want to, um, you're gonna go into a different season of life and then it's gonna shift a little bit and that's okay. You know? That's okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:46 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:28:46 And I would also-- I think it's important because there'll be some people that are listening to this that are like happy workaholics. Fine. Good. 'Cause the key word there and the North Star is the happy word.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:58 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:28:59 So if you're a happy workaholic and you genuinely know you're happy, you're not being dragged by an insecurity that you're, you're, you're quenching through this obsession with work. If you're a happy, peaceful, content, fulfilled workaholic, all power to you, you're killing the game. If you're an unhappy workaholic, there's a problem and you're out of harmony.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:17 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:29:17 Um, so also have empathy for yourself if you're a happy workaholic because the world will try and de-demonize you. "Oh my God, Ali, you're so toxic." But fuck 'em. Listen to the signal inside of you. Like, am I happy? And I think I'm a happy workaholic and I've created a harmony-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:34 Mm

Steven Bartlett 1:29:34 ... with my girlfriend where our relationship is good and I, and I can be intense in the way I wanna be in, in, in my work, um, most of the time. Right now, I mean, I've overextended, as I said.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:51 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:29:52 But most of the time as me and we, we zoom out on the, you know, the four years we've been together, we're good.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:57 Nice.

Steven Bartlett 1:29:59 Does that help at all?

Ali Abdaal 1:30:00 It does, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:00 Okay. Good.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:00 It's helpful. I think that's sort of how I think about it as well. Um, sort of almost like, you know, balancing on a tightrope. It's, it's less-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:08 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:30:08 ... about being rigid, but it's actually about like swaying one way and another way-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:11 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:30:11 ... and then rebalancing when you notice you're-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:13 Checking.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:13 Yeah. Just making sure.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:14 You'll have a bad week.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:15 Huh?

Steven Bartlett 1:30:15 You'll have a bad week.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:16 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:16 And you'll know you've had a bad week-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:17 Yeah, because it's like-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:17 ... in terms of like you're just fucking hell, I've paid no attention to each other.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:20 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:20 We feel disconnected. You can, you'll feel the frustrations lingering in the relationships.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:24 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:24 Something will happen in the bedro- like in the bedroom or the kitchen and it'll become so much of a bigger issue. But it's actually because last week you were really disconnected.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:31 That check-in process is so key.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:33 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:34 Are you a good communicator with her?

Ali Abdaal 1:30:36 Um, I think we are-- have definitely gotten better at that over time. Um,

Ali Abdaal 1:30:41 we have like check, relationship check-ins and stuff-

Steven Bartlett 1:30:43 Really?

Ali Abdaal 1:30:43 ... which are good systems 'cause I like systems. Um, as does she, which is nice. Uh, and you know, where we ask questions like, "How's the relationship been for you this week? What's or what are three things, uh, that you appreciate about me this week?"

Steven Bartlett 1:30:55 How do you do that? Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:55 Oh, we have, we have a Notion page with a template.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:57 This is out of control.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:58 It's been going on for the last two years.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:59 You have a Notion page?

Ali Abdaal 1:31:00 We've got the toggle. It's actually really good and she was the one who put it together rather than me 'cause you know, I was... It's so good, yeah. And it's like, you know, "What's, what's one thing I did that made you feel loved, appreciated or respected?" And then so the first half of the review questions are like, you know, the, the nice stuff and then it goes on to, you know, "What's one area in which, you know, you felt I did something that made you feel a little bit bad? Even if it's really minor, you know, let's just talk about it." And in those check-ins, the stuff that would otherwise feel too minor to bring up day-to-day because it's like, "Oh, it's minor." It's like, "I'm not gonna bring that up."

Steven Bartlett 1:31:29 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:29 It's like those little things, there's a good chance to bring those little things up and to discuss them in the, in the light of day. And usually we find that like having, having a couple of days distance from it, like when the thing... If, if the thing is very big, we'll discuss it when it happens. But if it's not, you know, we'll discuss it in a relationship review over dinner at like a nice place, like...

Steven Bartlett 1:31:48 I'm really c- curious here.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:50 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:31:51 Who adds to the Notion document and when?

Ali Abdaal 1:31:53 Hmm. So, uh, we ha- so we... It's a shared Notion workspace-

Steven Bartlett 1:31:56 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:31:56 ... where we're both on it. And when we know it's a review day, so Monday, so like every other Monday-ish, we try and do that's the review time. In reality, it ends up being like once every three weeks or so. Um, so one of us will take the iPad or the laptop or the phone, worst case scenario, and then if it's a laptop or an iPad, I'll type because I type faster. If it's a phone, we'll just sort of pass it around and take turns because phones are annoying. But we find-- So we, we've got like the notes stretching back the last two years because we've been together for two years now. And it's, it's, it's really nice looking back and we sort of like note down any sort of major disagreement we have and call it a gate. Like, you know, there was, I don't know, France Gate and like Tenerife Gate and, you know, stu- stuff like that where it's like, oh, it's interesting to look back on these big arguments that we had and like the less- the, the takeaways from them to make the relationship better.

Steven Bartlett 1:32:43 So interesting. And then is there a conclusion to each question? So if you say, you know, "You said this to me in the kitchen-"

Ali Abdaal 1:32:48 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:32:48 ... "last week and it really irked me because it triggered me in this way."

Ali Abdaal 1:32:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:32:51 Do you then write a conclusion next to it or anything?

Ali Abdaal 1:32:54 Uh, we write action points.

Steven Bartlett 1:32:55 Action points, okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:55 Yeah. It's like in future, this is the thing. Like there was one time we went on holiday together. I thought it was gonna be a working holiday because I was like, "Hey, I've got, I've got my book deadline. This is a work holiday." She was like, "Cool. You know, that makes sense." Turns out my definition of work holiday is I work 14 hours a day and we [chuckles] we grab dinner together. Her definition of a work holiday is we work for four hours in the morning and then we go and go sightseeing. We only realized that like five days into the holiday. And so our action point from after the conversation around that was, okay, before every holiday, we're just gonna align on expectations.

Steven Bartlett 1:33:25 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:33:26 And I was, I was chatting to Mark Manson a few, a few weeks ago in LA, and he was like... 'Cause he traveled around the world with his fiancée, and he was like, "Oh man, the main thing is just expectation alignment."

Steven Bartlett 1:33:34 Bro, that's life.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:34 So I was like, "Dude."

Steven Bartlett 1:33:35 That's what Mo Gawdat, the thing, that episode that I did with, the first one with Mo Gawdat taught me-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:39 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:33:39 ... so clearly and profoundly. He said, "We're happy when our expectations of how our life

Steven Bartlett 1:33:44 is supposed to be going are met."

Ali Abdaal 1:33:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:33:46 And from that you can deduce we're unhappy when our expectations of how our life is supposed to be going are unmet. So met expectations equals the billionaire in Mayfair getting a medium rare steak when that was what she or he ordered. Unmet expectations would be he ordered or she ordered medium rare and it came, I don't know, bloody. Like it doesn't matter the fact that you're in a, a super bougie Mayfair restaurant getting a m- you know, Kobe beef, A5 Wagyu steak. Unmet expectations, you get unhappiness. When you go to Botswana, where I was born, hot bowl of rice, expectations met for some of the people back in that, in the village that I was, was born in. Um, uh, the objective situation matters less than the subjective meeting of expectations.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:33 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:34:34 Unmet expectations in work, in your team members, in your relationship, in yourself will, will result in unhappiness, and that's so important to understand because then you can influence it. You can work on, as it relates to yourself, this is why gratitude is so powerful. Gratitude is l- for me, it's like an adjustment of one's expectations. Um, I, I have this really fond memory of getting... I'm not sure if I've shared this on a podcast before or s- or somewhere else. Uh, this fond memory of I didn't get on a plane and fly other than flying from Africa to the UK until I was like 21. So we didn't do holidays in our family. The, the money wasn't there. And I remember getting on that plane when I was 21 years old with my business partner at the time, flying to Thailand in economy, and just being captivated by this concept of being in this tin can, and we were gonna attempt to fly to Thailand. And I'm looking at the like safety manual, and I'm like, "Oh, it's amazing." It's so, such an incredible experience. I was so happy on that flight. Fast forward five, fast forward five years. I'm flying 50 weeks a year in 2019, fly- flying business and first class, and all I'm doing is rushing on the plane, throwing my bag up and pulling my laptop out as fast as I can before it takes off so I don't lose Wi-Fi. And then that day I, I encountered the lady next to me on the plane, who's probably on like a honeymoon or some... [gasps] She's like putting on the slippers, and she's going, "Dave, Dave, look at this catalog," and they give you champagne, and she's picking it up, and she's sipping it. And she's old me, and she's experiencing the joy that I used to experience when my expectations were exceeded. And nothing has changed in my life other than my expectations have increased.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:36:09 And with that, out the door has gone my joy. So what I can do now and what I do now is when I get on the plane, just before I step in, I touch the top of the plane, and I take a moment before I step on and just remind myself of the absurdity-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:22 Mm

Steven Bartlett 1:36:22 ... that I am, am getting in this plane. We're gonna fly it somewhere, and I get to sit in this comfy chair that reclines. And when they bring over the cha... Oh, that's so incredible. You can influence your joy if you manage your expectations and, you know, as it relates to relationship, the curse of... The, the source of all unhappiness in relationship is unmet expectations.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:45 Hmm. That's the one.

Steven Bartlett 1:36:47 You can, you can do something about that.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:36:49 We need to compare more notes on this relationship thing, though.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:51 Mate, I'll, I'll send you my, uh, my-

Steven Bartlett 1:36:52 Notion

Ali Abdaal 1:36:53 ... my review template. Yeah. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 1:36:54 Please. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:36:55 Um, final thing is how... So to what extent do you get criticism, and how do you cope with it?

Steven Bartlett 1:37:02 All the time. It's an occupation.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:03 You're a very public figure. I think like with, especially with the Dragon's Den stuff, you kind of became more mainstream than like a personal improvement business podcast-

Steven Bartlett 1:37:14 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:37:14 ... would normally get you.

Steven Bartlett 1:37:15 It's an occupational hazard my friend said to me.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:37:18 The bigger the podcast gets, I look over at Rogan and what he's been through.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:21 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:37:22 And I go, "Wow. Uh-" It's, yeah, it's a lot for like r- what Rogan's been through. I just couldn't imagine what anyone going through. But it's an occupational hazard, and with the claps comes the boos and, and all that stuff. And I think the important thing is doing everything you can to stay true to yourself.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:43 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 1:37:43 Because then in the context of any feedback, whether it's positive or negative, you're anchored to something. If that makes sense. You're anchored to your own, like, your own certainty in your intentions and your values and why you do what you do. So even when we put out an episode with Mo Gawdat on the podcast about artificial intelligence-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:04 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:38:04 ... and I get-- I got, like, significant criticism for that because, um, it can be seen as scaremongering.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:13 Oh, cool.

Steven Bartlett 1:38:13 So a lot of people-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:15 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:38:15 ... thought it was scaremongering-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:16 Right

Steven Bartlett 1:38:16 ... or clickbait or whatever else.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:38:18 Um, I believe in the message. I believe in what we said and what we did, and I know it's coming from a good place. So when we receive that, that critical feedback, um, I can, I can receive it, um, knowing that we acted in line with, um, our own personal integrity, if that makes sense.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:38 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:38:39 So that is the pursuit, is like making sure why you're doing what you're doing is, is true to yourself, 'cause then it's easier to, um, proceed forward regardless of feedback. It's difficult.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:52 So what do you, so what do you tell yourself? Like, like if you see something on Twitter or something, like, do you, do, do you feel the sting initially, and do you t- tell yourself a story? Or like how, how does that go?

Steven Bartlett 1:39:00 It depends. It depends, it depends what the feedback is. So when Dragons' Den airs, um, you'll get like a lot of people saying a lot of things. And I think at the start I would ch- I was more tuned into it. I was more tuned into like reading the tweets.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:16 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:16 As time has gone on, I've realized that I need to put systems and processes in place that you'd, as you'd call it, to make sure that stuff doesn't infiltrate my peace.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:26 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:26 Which me- for me means don't read stuff, don't search stuff, friends don't send me stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:32 Haven't searched my name in any search engine or any way you can search yourself in about a year now.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:39 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:39 Um, and trying to focus on the feedback that you know is, whether it's critical or positive, the feedback you know is potentially valuable, um, as much as you can.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:53 And I-- this practice is more increasingly important as, like, you reach more people.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:39:59 Knowing where to look for feedback and knowing where not to look for feedback, I guess.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:02 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:40:03 So.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:05 Thank you.

Steven Bartlett 1:40:05 But does it sting? I mean, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:06 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:40:06 ... of course. Like I'll, I could, I could look, open up a comment section on like my own Instagram and someone says something. Um, and you, your, your initial instinct is to argue with the thing, to try and like argue with the thing or to understand or to maybe win them over. But as time has gone on, the distance between experiencing, seeing the thing, and it, my exper- my response and emotion to it has reduced.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:35 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:40:36 Um, which means that I can see something and go, "That's not true." Like I saw an article that said I was-- said, um, [lips smack] "Steve is gonna release a line of boxer shorts with his name on it." And I remember like my s- like someone had sent it to me. People don't send me stuff because they know just not to send me stuff. Like I'm just trying to keep focused here. And I'm thinking, "I'm gonna release a line of boxer shorts with my name on it?" And they're like, "Yeah, you registered the trademark for The Diary of a CEO." And one of the categories in which my team had registered it was like clothing. So the, like the newspaper ran with a story that I was coming out with a, a, a underwear line, like a box, like a boxer short underwear line with my name on it. And you read that, and then you like understand that that's gone out into the world and people believe that now-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:20 Yeah

Steven Bartlett 1:41:20 ... that I'm coming out with boxer shorts with my name on them. Um, [lips smack] and that it will influence people. But you also reflect and go, "There's nothing I can do about that, and that is okay." It is-- It comes with the territory.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:33 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:41:33 And the choice I have here is to completely remove myself from the universe and go to Bali and like where I love, love to go, um, or to carry on doing what I love to do. And the choice I make is I wanna carry on doing what I love to do.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:47 Brilliant. Steven, I think that was a great place to end this. Just

Ali Abdaal 1:41:49 wanted to say firstly thank you for being gracious and being interviewed on the pod-

Steven Bartlett 1:41:53 Oh, it's great

Ali Abdaal 1:41:53 ... sitting in that seat. And I think also, like, you know, your work is just so inspirational to me, to my team, to basically everyone I know. We sort of share the, the podcast episodes around. When the vlog started, we were all sort of like watching that together because it's so inspiring seeing what you're building and the huge impact that you're able to have. But I think on top of that, like there was, there was one comment w- when, you know, you and I were both speaking in Sharjah in the UAE a few months ago, a year ago, something like that. And you came and joined me and Gordon, my videographer, for breakfast. And he was saying afterwards that, "Wow, what a class act Steven is." Because you were talking to him as much as you were talking to me, and normally with like celebrities and stuff, they, th- they'll ignore like the team members of being, you know, like Gordon's been in a, in a, in a bunch, in a bunch of situations where the videographer is kind of invisible.

Steven Bartlett 1:42:44 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:45 And just the fact that you're so gracious with everyone around you. Feeling, I'm feeling emotional saying this. This is weird.

Steven Bartlett 1:42:50 Oh, you're so sweet.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:50 It's just, it's just so impressive. It's, it's so admirable. And yeah, just wanted to say thank you.

Steven Bartlett 1:42:54 You're so sweet. I, I mean, I don't know what to say. Um, [lips smack] but, but yeah. I mean, thank you so much for saying that. I, um, [lips smack] yeah, thank you for saying that. I'm trying my best, you know. I'm trying my best to, to be a good person, and I, I'm not, I'm not always great at that. Like, I'm not-- I sometimes let myself down. I think about ways I reacted or days where I'm, I'm tired and I, and I, I didn't show up in the way I wanted, but I'm trying my best because it really matters to me what you just said. I'm trying my best to com- leave more people with that feeling that you, you know, your videographer was left with. So thank you for that, 'cause I do give myself a hard time about it sometimes. You know? Like where I am in my life now, it's like, it's like I realize that everyone I meet, I'm meeting everyone they know. Is it, do you understand what I'm saying now?

Ali Abdaal 1:43:39 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:43:40 So the girl that stopped me this morning as I was going into the office to tell me about quitting her job, like, that, uh, um, it really matters that I'm patient with her in that moment and that I listen to her and make her feel, you know, as best as I possibly can. And it f- and honestly, it feels like, it does feel like a responsibility, and it's a responsibility I want to meet. But I, I know I'm like, I'm human, so I sometimes I'll fall short. It's a new responsibility.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:16 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:44:16 You know? Go back 10 years and, and no one would've cared if I'd, I'd done that either way. And they also would never have told anybody if I did that. So it's a new responsibility. It's one I want to meet and it's one that I know is important. Um, and it's a fanta- honestly, it's such a privilege that people care. Like, such a privilege f- that someone would care to stop you and say something nice or to, they would care that you join them or they'd want you to join their breakfast. In the same way that we were saying like it's a re- privilege that you asked me to be on, like to give you a quote for your book or whatever. I hope I never lose that.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:47 Hmm. Nice.

Steven Bartlett 1:44:49 Thank you. I appreciate you so much. You're, what you do is incredible, and the way you conduct yourself as a, uh, with the, the grace you conduct yourself is a bar that I would like to meet. So, um, thank you for having me on. It's an honor that you would have me on, and yeah, your team are a reflection of how wonderful you are, so as is usually the case. So thank you. And thank you for reading the books, 'cause-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:07 Good books. [laughs]

Steven Bartlett 1:45:08 You know. No, but thank you for that. And you're one of those people that, 'cause I've not had much feedback on the book yet, I'd love to know, like that's why I asked you the question like what do you like about them and which would you prefer? I'd love to know more of that off camera, so.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:19 Hmm. I'll send you my annotations.

Steven Bartlett 1:45:20 Oh please. Yeah, I have to take this one off you. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:45:23 [laughs] All right. Good stuff.

Steven Bartlett 1:45:25 Thanks.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:25 Thank you so much.

Steven Bartlett 1:45:25 Thank you, bro.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:26 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.