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ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461

ThePrimeagen (aka Michael Paulson) is a programmer who has educated, entertained, and inspired millions of people to build software and have fun doing it. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep461-sb See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *Transcript:* https://lexfridman.com/theprimeagen-transcript *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact *SMALL CORRECTION NOTE:* When Prime talks about how grateful he is for his amazing wife and family, we show an incorrect photo, so I blurred it. Here's some correct ones: https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1586458511810080769 https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1771638039430771125 *EPISODE LINKS:* ThePrimeagen's X: https://twitter.com/ThePrimeagen ThePrimeagen's YouTube: https://youtube.com/ThePrimeTimeagen ThePrimeagen's Twitch: https://twitch.tv/ThePrimeagen ThePrimeagen's GitHub: https://github.com/theprimeagen ThePrimeagen's TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@theprimeagen ThePrimeagen's Coffee: https://www.terminal.shop/ *SPONSORS:* To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: *Invideo AI:* AI video generator. Go to https://lexfridman.com/s/invideoai-ep461-sb *Shopify:* Sell stuff online. Go to https://lexfridman.com/s/shopify-ep461-sb *NetSuite:* Business management software. Go to https://lexfridman.com/s/netsuite-ep461-sb *BetterHelp:* Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://lexfridman.com/s/betterhelp-ep461-sb *AG1:* All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://lexfridman.com/s/ag1-ep461-sb *OUTLINE:* 0:00 - Introduction 0:42 - Love for programming 10:15 - Hardest part of programming 12:31 - Types of programming 20:08 - Life story 30:12 - Hardship 31:44 - High school 37:30 - Porn addiction 47:16 - God 1:02:59 - Perseverance 1:12:55 - Netflix 1:25:23 - Groovy 1:30:27 - Printf() debugging 1:36:49 - Falcor 1:46:19 - Breaking production 1:49:04 - Pieter Levels 1:53:34 - Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube infrastructure 2:05:36 - ThePrimeagen origin story 2:20:52 - Learning programming languages 2:29:55 - Best programming languages in 2025 2:34:50 - Python 2:35:30 - HTML & CSS 2:36:20 - Bash 2:37:00 - FFmpeg 2:43:42 - Performance 2:46:15 - Rust 2:51:03 - Epic projects 3:04:27 - Asserts 3:13:41 - ADHD 3:21:49 - Productivity 3:26:13 - Programming setup 4:01:43 - Coffee 4:08:47 - Programming with AI 4:51:31 - Advice for young programmers 5:03:03 - Reddit questions 5:10:35 - God *PODCAST LINKS:* - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips *SOCIAL LINKS:* - X: https://x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://instagram.com/lexfridman - TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://facebook.com/lexfridman - Patreon: https://patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: https://t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman

Lex FridmanhostMichael Paulson (ThePrimeagen)guest
Mar 22, 20255h 20mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:42

    Introduction

    1. LF

      The following is a conversation with Michael Palson, better known online as ThePrimeagen. He is a programmer who has entertained and inspired millions of people to have fun building stuff with software, whether you're a newbie or a seasoned developer who has been battling it out in the software engineering trenches for decades. In short, ThePrimeagen is a legendary programmer and a great human being with an inspiring roller coaster of a life story. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's ThePrimeagen.

  2. 0:42 – 10:15

    Love for programming

    1. LF

      What do you love most about programming? Uh, what brings you joy when you program?

    2. M(

      I can tell you the first time that I ever felt love in programming or felt that joy or that excitement-

    3. LF

      Sure.

    4. M(

      ... which was in college. It was the second class in data structures, and the teacher that was teaching, Ray Babcock, he was talking about linked lists. Now, you, you have to learn Java at Montana State University when I went, and so he's off the kind of explaining this whole linked list thing and all that, and then he shows code. And then the code, it's like abstract class node or whatever it was. I can't remember what it was, and then it had a private member, and that private member was of type node. And I've never seen that before. It is a class that is called node with a member that is of itself. And for the first time ever, I was like, "Oh my gosh. Like, there's no end. There's no way to iterate. This is not like a set of 10 items. This is a set of infinite items." And so, like, my mind kind of, like, exploded in that moment. Like, there's actually... You... Like, the what you can express is huge. I can see what memory looks like. Like, I can see this kind of hopping through space, and I just remember being just so blown away 'cause up until that point everything was just, "All right. I have a list of 10 items. I have a list of 20 items," right? It was very rigid and small, and the things I built were really small and trivial. And all of a sudden, I felt like I could build, like, anything in that one moment, and it was so amazing. I just remember sitting in class for what f- I don't even remember how long those classes were anything, but I just remember being just completely, like, profoundly impacted by this notion. And so I just sat there and I watched it, and I had the exact same experience in, heavens forbid, by a software engineering class when we talked about the decorator pattern, where you can keep on constructing these objects in this recursive way. Not that I think that's actually a good idea to do, but just watching that and realizing, like, there's so many weird and unique ways you can solve problems, and, like, you can just... Anything your mind can think of, you can just create that. And I just remember getting just so excited about the possibility that anything is possible.

    5. LF

      Yeah, let's, uh, wax philosophical about a linked list. It is pretty profound for people who don't know a node in a linked list doesn't know anything about the world it's in. It only knows about the thing it's linked to, its neighbor. Maybe that's symbolic, the metaphor, for all of us humans. There's billions of us on this planet, and we only know about our local little network.

    6. M(

      Yeah.

    7. LF

      And it's kind of beautiful, and you realize, like, in that little simple data structure, you can construct arbitrarily large systems and they, they're like roots that go through memory. And then, of course, that's where you get all the programming languages that allow you to, uh, dump junk into memory and have memory leaks and then there- therefore create infinite pain as you try to figure out where that, uh, u- unfreed memory i- is. Uh, for me, yeah, probably... Mm, it's so, so beautiful the way you put that. Li- linked lists are indeed beautiful. Recursion also for me when I finally wrapped my brain around what it means to write a recursive function.

    8. M(

      What was the, what was the thing? What was the, like, the one that taught you? 'Cause I think we all probably... You probably did factorial where you, like, you know, just do, like, a quick factorial of it, and it just doesn't hit home.

    9. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. M(

      What was the thing that kind of made it hit home?

    11. LF

      I don't remember the first. (laughs)

    12. M(

      I remember mine first. (laughs)

    13. LF

      (laughs)

    14. M(

      How do you not remember your first? It was magic.

    15. LF

      Shh... I've had so many-

    16. M(

      (laughs)

    17. LF

      ... that (laughs) just, uh, it, it-

    18. M(

      But you are a Lisp guy. You're probably pretty used to the recursion.

    19. LF

      Yeah, all I remember is just surrounded by a sea of parentheses.

    20. M(

      (laughs)

    21. LF

      (laughs) I mean, that's, that's really probably when I... Uh, in high school, uh, I think it was either Java or C++. Wow, how do I not remember that? It must have been C++. And then college, it was the generic bullshit software engineering classes were, uh, Java, but then the, the renegades, the cool kids were all using Lisp. That's, that's when you're doing the AI, the quote-unquote "AI" at that time. That's, that was Lisp. If you want to write a chess engine, you would use Lisp. And so for me, probably the moment I really fell in love with programming was, was Lisp and writing, like, Othello programs and, uh, chess engines, all kinds of engines that play a game, and then I could play against that thing and that thing would beat me. The joy of being destroyed by the thing you've created... And oh, um, Game of Life, too, with Cellular Automata. That's when I... I built that in all kinds of programming languages. That's less about programming language and more about the system you create, and that just filled me with infinite joy. Uh, having... Now similar to the linked list situation, creating a system where each individual cell only knows about its neighbors and operates in a very simple rules, but when you take that system as a whole and allow it to evolve over time, you can create infinite complexity. So I, I just... Man, th- those are many pothead moments where I'm just, like, looking at the beautiful complexity that, that can be created with Cellular Automata. That, that filled me with just infinite joy for sure. But yeah, the paren- all I remember is parentheses. So my first... Memories of my first are drowned...... in a sea of parentheses.

    22. M(

      Oh, man. Mine is, uh, I have... Well, first off, mine was in Java. So, my first was a little bit more rigid, kind of a corporate, you know, a corporate experience.

    23. LF

      Yeah.

    24. M(

      But, uh-

    25. LF

      Cold, meaningless. (laughs)

    26. M(

      Cold, yeah. I was in a lab. Everyone was using Centos at that, or Cent OS or however you say it. I always called it Centos the freshmaker.

    27. LF

      Yeah.

    28. M(

      And so it was just like I'm in this very cold... (laughs)

    29. LF

      That's nice.

    30. M(

      Thank you. Uh-

  3. 10:15 – 12:31

    Hardest part of programming

    1. LF

      were we talking about? Oh, what was the most painful aspect of programming for you? Uh, like what, what memories do you have of, uh, deep profound suffering in terms of programming in the early days?

    2. M(

      Uh, I would say the biggest one that I can really hold onto had to be one of two experiences. The first experience was when I was at a place called Schedulicity and... Am I not allowed to say the place that I'm

    3. LF

      Oh, you're allowed, it's just-

    4. M(

      ... putting on glass?

    5. LF

      There's... (laughs)

    6. M(

      I'm not sure if they're even operating still at this point, but they're in Bozo-

    7. LF

      There's just something funny about the name, I'm sorry.

    8. M(

      Oh, Schedulicity? Yeah, i- they actually, the name was so bad that when you looked at their, like, paid for s- Google Ad terms that they would make sure that they're at the top of the list, the spellings were just insane 'cause no one knew how to spell the word Schedulicity. (laughs) And so it was just like this, the Google optimizing for that is just hilarious. Uh, but okay, go back to the thing. In the... The thing that kills me the most about programming, what I actually considered the worst aspect of programming is when you know everything. And so when I was at this job, it's just every single day I'd come in, there were no surprises, there was no questions that... I didn't understand the code base. Sure, that's, that's fair. I did not understand all the things about the code base, but I knew I was gonna go in, I was gonna generate some sort of object from the database. I was gonna take that object from the database and I was just gonna map it over and just display it on a web page. There's no creativity, there's noth- there's nothing to it. It's very, like, almost factory line kind of work. And that was a very kind of difficult moment for me, which is... I didn't enjoy programming because, like, I knew everything about it. I already knew exactly what I was gonna do that day. I knew all the hurdles I was gonna have to go over. There was no unknown unknowns, if you will. It was just knowns (laughs) at all times, and it's just, that is, for me, that is the worst part about programming is when you already know the solution and it's just a matter of how fast you can type and get it out from your head to your hands.

    9. LF

      So the absence of uncertainty, the absence of challenge was the pain.

    10. M(

      Yeah.

    11. LF

      That's pretty profound, Prime.

    12. M(

      ... I'm more than just good looks. I want you to know that.

    13. LF

      (laughs)

    14. M(

      (laughs)

    15. LF

      It's a low bar.

    16. M(

      (laughs)

    17. LF

      What do you identify as? I'm enjoying asking the general question.

    18. M(

      (laughs) 38, male.

    19. LF

      Uh, male.

    20. M(

      Husband, a beautiful wife.

    21. LF

      Okay.

  4. 12:31 – 20:08

    Types of programming

    1. LF

      You stream about all kinds of programming, uh, but what kind of programmer are you? Are you a full-stack developer? Web programming? Uh, and maybe can you lay out all the different kinds of programming and place yourself in that, in terms of your identity, sexual identity as well?

    2. M(

      Yeah, I can get it. We can put it all in there.

    3. LF

      Okay.

    4. M(

      Uh, uh, plus, I mean, obviously those two are very-

    5. LF

      (laughs) Connect-

    6. M(

      ... very tightly coupled.

    7. LF

      I have seen you, like, on the border of s- sexually aroused by certain languages. I think you got real excited about OCaml or... (laughs)

    8. M(

      OCaml. Let's go. (laughs) Thank you, Dylan Mulroy -

    9. LF

      Okay. Wow.

    10. M(

      Yeah.

    11. LF

      Did not expect that. That escalated quickly. Anyway, what do you identify as?

    12. M(

      Okay, so let, first you, uh, let's, let's do the previous, or the in between question first, which is the different kind of archetypes. I think that's a really interesting kind of question because if you go on Twitter or you're new, your thoughts are probably that there is just web programming. And maybe there's some other stuff, yeah, like game programming, but you do, like, game programming in JavaScript and on the web. You know, like, there's this very, kind of, very myopic view of the programming world, and I bet if you ask a lot of people these days, like, "What is the most popular form of programming?" They'd probably say, "Web." If you said, "What contains the most amount of repos? How many percentage of repos on GitHub are web based?" They'd probably say, "90%" or some huge number. But the reality is that there's an entire embedded robotics world, you know, you're familiar with the ML side of things. There's networking, there's gonna be just, like, performance operating systems, compilers. There's just huge amounts of variation of all these different type of programming verticals that you can be. And so we often talk about programming in perspective of web, or something that's pretty narrow, and I think that's just a social construct of Twitter more than anything else that it's actually... I don't believe it's that representative of, of the entire kind of programming world out there. And I think a lot of programming's really, really fun. There's some really great stuff. Building a c- your own language is just a very fun experience to do. Every programmer should just do that once, just to have a completely different, you know, perspective on how things work in life. But as far as what do I do, uh, I've always looked at myself as a tools engineer, so when, uh, at my time at my o- all, my jobs typically, I would start off on the UI, and then they'd be like, "Okay, well, hey, we need a library for this thing." So then I'd be the one writing, like, the library. So in 2012, 2013, I was writing a UI library for the web that can behave just like an iPad, so you can pinch and zoom on it, but it's still a webpage, 'cause we didn't have any of that stuff back then. It was a canvas, had to do all the, like, matrixy operations and all that stuff to kind of-

    13. LF

      Nice.

    14. M(

      ... you know, it felt like you're on an iPad, but it actually wasn't on an iPad. And this was iPad 2, by the way, so this is a long time ago. And so every single time I got into a job, it's like, "Okay, hey, we need to do a library." "Hey, can you work on a build system?" So back then, there was no Grunt, there was no Gulp, there was no any of those things, so I had to hand-roll my own JavaScript build system. And so I always fell into these positions of building tools for developers to be successful, and I've always really enjoyed that region, so as I went, uh, on to, say, Netflix, uh, spent 10 years there, I'd say the majority of my 10 years were building things for developers to use that they could be successful at their job. And so I just... I've always really enjoyed that aspect because your share- your stakeholders and the people that use your program understand programming, and they're gonna say, like, "Hey, I need this." And typically the thing that they need, they actually want. Whereas with people, people want stuff, but what they actually need versus what they actually want often are kind of like this weird separation. People, you know, that's like the old Henry Ford quote, "I just want a faster horse," and he's like, "No, what you actually want is a car." And so it's like this, like, you have to play this game of trying to really figure it out, whereas developers, it's like, "I know you know what I'm doing. I know what you want. Let's figure it out together."

    15. LF

      That's actually, that gives you a really nice big-picture view of programming in general, so I, I love the idea of just kind of starting at the interface, like you need to pinch and all that kind of stuff, and then figure out the entire thing that requires-

    16. M(

      Mm-hmm.

    17. LF

      ... to make that happen, inclu- including maybe the side quest tooling, how to make it more productive and efficient, all that kind of stuff, so the entirety-

    18. M(

      Yeah.

    19. LF

      ... the entirety of the thing. That's really cool. Okay, so that mean that would be full-stack, by the general definition of full-stack, meaning, like-

    20. M(

      Perhaps, yeah.

    21. LF

      ... versus, like, systems engine- like, starting at the bottom and trying to optimize a certain kind of specific thing without seeing the big picture of, like, what the end- the resulting interface-

    22. M(

      Yeah.

    23. LF

      ... would, would look like. And a lot of people, you know, in web programming, they never go beyond the front end of how the thing looks. They kind of always assume there'll be somebody-

    24. M(

      Mm-hmm.

    25. LF

      ... some, some, uh, grunt in the shadows, in the darkness of the basement that will implement the backend.

    26. M(

      Some Gilfoyle out there will be doing the backend.

    27. LF

      (laughs) Gilfoyle.

    28. M(

      Yeah, like, I like to call myself a generalist, um, just to kind of give some ideas is, you know, at w- at one point at Netflix, I built the WebSocket connection, so for TVs, how WebSocket works is code I just wrote.

    29. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. M(

      And so I, you know, built the framing thing, and before that, I was doing stuff with memory, and before that, I built a UI for a tool, right? It's just like I can just do the thing. You just tell me the thing to do, and I'll just go do the thing. I don't worry too... I don't try to get super good at one specific activity. Like, I don't want to be a Kubernetes engineer who's the world's greatest deployer.

  5. 20:08 – 30:12

    Life story

    1. M(

    2. LF

      Uh, let's go back to the beginning.

    3. M(

      All right.

    4. LF

      Baby Prime. So you mentioned Netflix. You've, uh-

    5. M(

      I worked at Netflix, by the way.

    6. LF

      (laughs) For people who don't know, uh, who, uh, the Primogen is, he mentions, uh, the fact that he has, uh, been very successful and has worked at Netflix in basically every other sentence.

    7. M(

      Correct.

    8. LF

      (laughs)

    9. M(

      Almost as much as I mention Neovim.

    10. LF

      Oh, great. Tell me more about Neovim. No, please don't. So Baby Prime, at the very beginning, you've had one hell of a life and I think it's inspiring to a lot of people. You've, you've gone through a lot of painful low points. And like you mentioned, you've come out of that to become a successful programmer and a person that inspires a huge number of people, um, to get into programming and just to find success in life. So maybe... I would love it if you laid out just your whole life journey from the beginning.

    11. M(

      So I guess if we're gonna start with this whole journey, I think it's probably best to start when I was about four or five years old. That was the first time I was ever exposed to pornography. Uh, and it's kind of just earwormed me for a large portion of my life. And so I don't think there was a day that didn't go by from when I was a very young lad all the way up until I was 20 some years old where I didn't think about porn on the daily basis. And so it was just, like, every single day, even at that young. And so it's just a very mind-consuming, time-consuming, thought-consuming thing that kind of plagued me from a, uh, starting at a very young age. When I was seven years old, my dad died. Um, that was kind of a really tough period of life. I, I still think about this time that I went over to China and there's kind of some rules that we were given. And one of the rules was just like, "Hey, don't talk about God. And if you do, use the word Da instead." And I was just like, "Okay, Da." And it was, like, the first time I said that word in, like, 17 years or some long time, like, "Da."

    12. LF

      (laughs)

    13. M(

      It was, like, so weird to say that phrase.

    14. LF

      Yeah.

    15. M(

      And I was just like, oh, that was just the strangest thing I've ever said my entire lifetime.

    16. LF

      Yeah.

    17. M(

      It just felt so weird. So kind of rewind, as I got older obviously, was very good at computers, good at accessing porn, of course. Uh, played, uh, video games on the internet. Fun, fun kind of like side quest story. I think the guy's name is LordTalk on Twitch. I can't quite remember his name, but he built this game called Graal, G-R-A-A-L, and Graal Online and when I was a young lad, that, it was just like Zelda, except for it also had a level editor and it had, like, a C-like language and that's how I discovered how to program, is I looked at these symbols and figured out what they meant and then I was able to make things happen in the game. And that was like a, that's my introduction into programming. So thank you that guy, whatever your Twitch name was. But all right, so keep on going. As I got older, I was super bad socially. I was not a very great social person. I... High school was brutal, got made fun of a lot. Uh, really didn't en- I wouldn't say I had a great time during high school. Uh, definitely felt very out of place or offset or maybe misplaced, if you will. I'm not sure what the right word is. And so of course, at that point, I just always wanted to... I wanted to be accepted, to fit in and all that. I did forget to say one side story. After my dad died, my brother, older brother, he got into and started getting into drugs and along with that, he exposed me to pot. So at eight years old, I was smoking some marijuane, uh, for a while there until, like, maybe 11 or 12 and took a break and then again did a lot of that as I got a little bit older, but so I kind of got a, a lot of these exposures fairly young. 16, 15 through 18, a lot of drinking and all that. When I graduated or as I was graduating high school, it's just like I had such sadness, if you will. I was very sad about how everything went, tried to commit suicide. Um, obviously it was a very poor attempt and I'm still here today. I'm very happy about that aspect. I'm glad that I didn't follow through with anything. Had to go to the hospital and all that and when I was done, I just still remember kind of coming out of the hospital and at, like, that moment, it's kind of like something...... broken you. Have you ever read the book, uh, Wheel of Time? It's 14,000 pages or something like that.

    18. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    19. M(

      But right around page 12,000, Rand has to intentionally kill a girl, the main character, and that's like the moment he breaks and he gets into, like, hard Rand, uh, uh, Quindelar Rand, if you will. For those that know Wheel of Time will appreciate all that. Uh, for those that don't, very confusing and I understand. Not the Amazon movie show. Not that, not that Wheel of Time. So, now that we kinda go back onto it, at that point, it's just like something kinda broke in me, and it's just like I just didn't care anymore. So all the kind of social awkwardness, if you will, all that kind of just died away with me, but also so did everything else. And so I started using a bunch of drugs, well, LSD, mushrooms, meth, did a bunch of meth, did a bunch of that stuff, and then went off to college and continued to do a bunch of stuff. I took too much acid to where for, like, quite a few years I had like little squigglies on the side of my eyes whenever I'd walk by high-contrast objects.

    20. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    21. M(

      And so it was just like that whole period of life was just kind of marked by, um, just poor decisions. And then sometime when I was about 19 years old, somewhere in that range, I just had this one evening where it's just I felt the very dramatic and real presence of God, and it was just like I kinda had this choice, like Frodo, uh, on a razor, where it's like, "If I go either way, I'm gonna fall off, and I need to change my life. You just, you get to make the choice now. Do you want to do that or not?" And so I remember going, "Okay, I do, I do want to change my life." Like, "I don't like this experience. I don't like what I'm living. I am still very sad. I still feel very desperate. I still feel all those things. I'm just, like, pretending to be this other person." And then I just went to sleep that night. Nothing changed in my life. Everything was still the way it was. I woke up the next day, the same person, and I was just like, "Oh, that's just, like, such a strange, weird kind of experience." And I just went about my day. And then I remember, I think that evening, I looked at porn, and all of a sudden, I just had a conscious. I had just, like, this deep, profound, like, shame, and I was like, "I've never felt shame in my life," right? Like, "I- I have no idea what's happening now." And then all of a sudden, when I smoked pot, I just felt deep shame. And when I hurt somebody or did something wrong, all of a sudden, it's just like I got a conscious from that evening. That's what kind of my gift was, if you will. And it's just like at that point, I didn't even have a choice. I had to change my life, 'cause for whatever reason, I've kinda been changed in the moment. And so from there, I started actually trying in school. I always kind of joke around that I got a 2.14 in high school. I had a teacher hand-write me a note saying I was the worst student she's ever had, all that kinda stuff. I was not a really great student. And then in that moment, it's just like, "Okay, now life's changed," and I start trying to learn, and I try to become a good student. And it turns out, it's really hard. Like, I was, I was really bad. I still got Cs. Uh, I went and took pre-calculus and failed pre-calculus, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I used to be this smart math guy, and now I'm kind of the idiot failing." And so it's like I'm just questioning myself and all that, and I spend hours upon hours in, in like a studying, uh, math learning center, and then just at some point, years into this journey, I'm like a year and a half into this journey at this point, it's just like something clicks, and I go from being the worst person to just immediately becoming the best. Everything after that is just, I don't know what happened. All of a sudden, I was the best person at math. I started going to my computer science classes. I just really got everything. It's just like everything at s- at just... Years after trying, just all of a sudden became easier. And I'm not sure if it happened over the course of weeks, or when the easier started, but it was just first predicated by just a huge amount of difficulty. And then this is kind of where I started really desiring and loving the process of learning, was when things started getting easier after all those years, 'cause I just was motivated by this desire to do something, not, not thinking it was gonna get any easier. And then all of a sudden, it just started getting easier, and it was great. And that's kind of really where, I guess, I started having the biggest parts of my life change. At that point, I started really, really, really wanting to never look at porn again, 'cause every single time, just such shame, and I really wanted to stop, and that was by far the hardest addiction to quit. Like, smoking cigarettes was also a really hard addiction to quit, shockingly hard addiction to quit, but porn, by far, was just the worst of them all. And then I think about 22, I was finally done with all kind of addictions, if you will, and then for a year, I just, I just worked and all that, and I think right around, maybe it was 21 and three-quarters, somewhere in that range, I'm not really sure where I, I stopped all the addictions part, but, or at least the outwardly addictions. And then at some point, six months later, a year later, met my beautiful wife. Things just started falling more and more into place. I loved more and more work. I loved programming. I started programming like 12 hours a day. I watched the Social Network movie, and after that, I was just like, "I'm doing a startup." And so like that night, I started my first startup, and I was just like so... It was in PHP, by the way.

    22. LF

      Nice.

    23. M(

      PHP, yeah, 5.2 or something like that.

    24. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. M(

      It was great, great times. And I was just so motivated to do that, and I would just program for... Uh, sometimes I'd program for 24, 36 hours straight, and I'd just, like, non-stop, just that's all I wanted to do at all points. I think my wife got a little sick of me. I wouldn't... Uh, she would just be like, "Can you drop me off at school?" And I'd be like, "No, I'm programming." I was not a very nice... You know, I, I didn't-

    26. LF

      Yeah.

    27. M(

      ... think through things that well.

    28. LF

      Yeah.

    29. M(

      And I was just so into it, and I just did it non-stop. And that's kind of, like, how I became me, is that story, if that makes sense.

    30. LF

      Let's try to re- reverse engineer some

  6. 30:12 – 31:44

    Hardship

    1. LF

      of the pain and some of the triumph. You made it sound easy at times. Let's try to understand it better. Maybe when you were seven years old, what do you think about the pain you experienced there, losing your dad? What do you think... What kind of impact did it have on you? What kind of memories do you have of that time?

    2. M(

      ... the best way I can kind of put it is that I just never knew what a dad was. I was young enough that I could kind of maybe repress or just even have the capability of remembering things long term. Because I know most people don't remember a lot from when they're young, and so I'm not exactly sure. I probably was at one of the best possible ages if I'm going to lose a dad, to lose a dad. You know, uh, if you're gonna lose one, if you're 11 or 12, it's like a terrible age. That's what my brother was, and he fell into drug addiction and never got back out. And so I just kind of have more of like a fuzziness, and just kind of a longing that I, I just wish I had a dad.

    3. LF

      What impact did that have on your evolution, on your life, sort of having that longing?

    4. M(

      I think that's why I was so bad, uh, socially in the sense that I was looking for approval, right? Like something, I needed approval. I think a lot of people kind of desire that approval or that loving figure, and I just didn't have that. And so I think I just looked for it in everything else, right? Like if I, to say it, psychoanalyze my actions. During the time, it's not like I was actively thinking that, uh, but yeah. I just always wanted something to fill in whatever that was I felt.

    5. LF

      I think a lot of people listening to this will, uh, resonate

  7. 31:44 – 37:30

    High school

    1. LF

      with your experience in high school. Like being the outsider, being picked on, uh, struggling through a lot of different complexities at home. Uh, what advice would you give to them?

    2. M(

      Man, the worst part about high school is that you're surrounded by a bunch of people your age, and it feels eternal.

    3. LF

      Yeah.

    4. M(

      You don't think... Like the people that are around you, you feel like are the people that will be there for the rest of your life. At least that's what I, kind of like I thought. And I didn't really even realize this until many years later, that they are going to be some of the least consequential people in your life.

    5. LF

      Yeah.

    6. M(

      Which is very shocking to kind of think about, especially if you're in it right now.

    7. LF

      Yeah.

    8. M(

      Right? Like right now, they are the, everything that you're experiencing is, your whole reality. And then one day, it all stops, and then real life starts to begin.

    9. LF

      Yeah.

    10. M(

      And it's just, that's such a shocking thing, and if I could just tell myself that, maybe I would have been a bunch of different person.

    11. LF

      That's so beautifully put. I mean, it is a, it's like a trial run, you know, like at the beginning of video games there's a little tutorial. That's what that is.

    12. M(

      Yeah.

    13. LF

      And actually, that should be a chance, uh, to try shit out, to take risks, uh, because real life will begin where there is more consequences after that.

    14. M(

      Yeah.

    15. LF

      Here you can, you know, if you like a girl, ask her out. Try. Try shit.

    16. M(

      Yeah.

    17. LF

      If you get picked on, hit that guy back.

    18. M(

      (laughs)

    19. LF

      Try shit out. (laughs)

    20. M(

      I'm not gonna condone punching another person, but... (laughs)

    21. LF

      I will. Beat the shit out of him. And uh, take some jujitsu and learn how to take him down, and then, and then, and then that girl that rejected you will be like, "Hmm, maybe I'll give that guy a second chance." Be a bad motherfucker.

    22. M(

      (laughs)

    23. LF

      It's a chance to try stuff out. (laughs) This is a very motivational speech for kicking ass.

    24. M(

      It is true though, I mean, there is something very true about that, that I think especially I, I mean I have no idea what the girls' experience of high school would be like, but as a guy there's definitely a lot of like physical requirements in high school. There's a lot of physical measurement, at least where I grew up. I think that might not be true in all high schools, but if they're filled with boys, it's probably true. And so it's just like, yeah it probably does help to do those things, to go to BJJ, to do any of these activities because even if you don't ever kick someone's ass, just having some level of confidence in yourself is probably a very valuable thing. But just remembering that this is such a short, tiny moment in your life is just like a huge help.

    25. LF

      I mean, the way you phrased it is exactly right. That's what it feels like, that this is, these are the people that will be with you for the rest of your life, and this is the whole world. And so that means that there will be just tremendous amount of impact if somebody picks on you or if you fall somebody low, somewhere low in the hierarchy, uh, in the status hierarchy of this high school, that means you'll be low in the status hierarchy of the world and you're fucked for the rest of your life. And that, that carries a tremendous amount of weight, which is why psychologically it's extremely difficult to be...

    26. M(

      Yeah.

    27. LF

      I, I think it's understated often by parents, by society, how difficult it is to be a high schooler, how difficult psychologically it is, how it actually makes sense that some people would suffer from depression and be on the verge of suicide. It's very, very difficult.

    28. M(

      Yeah. I think it's even, I, you know, people always say, "Back in my day," you know, blah, blah, blah. I think it's genuinely harder today than it's ever been in the sense that when I was a kid, there was a qualification to people, meaning this is a cool guy, this is not a cool guy. Today there's a quantification of people. You have 32,514 people following you, you have 12.

    29. LF

      Yeah.

    30. M(

      Like there, people can visually, (laughs) they can inspect your exact social value on whatever platform you're on, and that has to be just so much harder. And I can imagine that there's a lot of, of just so much weight put on that, that it's just, it feels probably way worse and way more damning to be uncool because you have an exact number of how uncool you are.

  8. 37:30 – 47:16

    Porn addiction

    1. LF

      powerful one that I think will probably resonate with a lot of people. And it's interesting that you say that's one of the hardest addictions, um, to, uh, overcome.

    2. M(

      Let me say it this way. Some addictions have a much bigger societal look.

    3. LF

      Yeah.

    4. M(

      And porn is just not one of them, which makes it super hard. None of your friends are gonna cheer you on. If you go on Twitter and say, "I quit porn," they're gonna be like, "Well that's good for you, but not everybody, you know, not every," you know.

    5. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. M(

      No one makes that argument with meth, right? No one's gonna be like, "Well, not everyone has to quit meth, okay? It's actually a fine industry and people who, you know, are the ones producing it, they're good also," right? (laughs) Like, no one's gonna make that kind of argument. Whereas with porn, you're gonna have, like, a whole thing and friends, friends are gonna think you're dumb for doing it or whatever. And so like, you have a, it's a much more difficult one in, in just, like, that. So it feels accepted.

    7. LF

      A- and I think it's also an addiction you can practice, participate in privately-

    8. M(

      Mm-hmm.

    9. LF

      ... and hide it from the world. There are certain addictions that are harder to hide from the world for prolonged periods of time.

    10. M(

      Yeah.

    11. LF

      And porn addiction is probably one you can just have for many years and then it can deepen. That's probably, like, a serious issue. Boy, am I glad I grew up before the internet. (laughs) Because the, it's, porn is so accessible, so, so easy to go deep into that addiction. Uh, what, I mean, what can you speak about what impact it had on your life? Maybe some of the low points, but also how to overcome it.

    12. M(

      I'd say as far as impact goes, is that you will have such a long and broken look at women. By the very, like, I can... A- again, I'm only speaking from a, a male's perspective that porn in its just, like, most basic thing is that you use another person for your own, uh, desire or your own want. It's not something that is deeply needed. There's no need, there's no, like, need for porn. It's purely a want-based activity or a lust, however you want, whatever word you can fill in there. And it is purely an objectifying activity. Like, someone else is on display for your own enjoyment. And so I think you carry this around. Like, I do think that the women that I dated during high school or the women after high school and college, like, I looked at them as a means to an end. And I think porn greatly kind of shifted that kind of perspective in my head that I did not give the value that was desired to another person. It really devalues, uh, humanity just in general is my perspective of it. And that it makes people into commodities, and I don't think people are commodities. I think everyone has value. And so during that, for me, that's kind of, like, the great effect of porn is that, you know, it's just consumerism gone wild or materialism maybe, you could ask, argue gone wild. And it's extremely hard to quit just like you said, because I can look at porn and then I can go out to lunch.

    13. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. M(

      You know, no one's gonna know. No one's gonna have any ideas. Like, it's a very private, it can be very short session. It doesn't have to be something that takes... Like, you know, you can't take acid then go out to lunch, right? You're gonna (laughs) you're gonna, your whole day is gonna be a very different day.

    15. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. M(

      And so there's a, it's very quick, easy, accessible. And then obviously there's, like, all the, like, the science and s- you know, statistics, like men make worse decisions for some period of time after looking or being exposed to sexualized images. There's the whole dopamine effect that's just like you constantly need more and more dopamine. That's why people typically don't just watch five minutes of porn and call it a day. There's like, you know, the hundred tab joke that's always made on the internet.

    17. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. M(

      It's because you, it's just this, this constant dopamine cycle you're constantly doing. And all that stuff is great to say, and I'm sure statistics and science and all that stuff is really great arguments for some amount of people. But for me, it just comes down to, like, is it really a good thing to do? Like, is it really actually something we want is to value people in such a profane or kind of just, like, disregarding way. Like, I just really think it's just bad for the soul even if all the stats said it was great for you.

    19. LF

      (laughs)

    20. M(

      I still say it's actually bad.

    21. LF

      Yeah. Y- you have to look at the long-term, big picture psychological impact it has on your relationships with human beings in general. That's my more generally than just porn, uh, my problem with the, the quote unquote sort of "manosphere" is I think sleeping with a bunch of women is great, wonderful, but the problem is, is making that the primary objective of your life, similar with porn, is you devalue one of the most awesome things, which is intimacy. That's true for deep friendship. That's true for relationships. And I think porn does that, like, in its purest, darkest form, which is, like, the thing that matters is the sex, not the, like, the deep connection with another human being. And I think a- again, going back to high school and, uh, the, the manosphere, the objective function if it's to get laid, which helps with status and confidence and all, all that is wonderful I think. Again, can be an addiction, but the thing that's even more awesome for a lot of people is a deep friendship or deep intimacy with a, with a romantic partner.... like, that's also fucking awesome.

    22. M(

      Yeah.

    23. LF

      And both of those are great.

    24. M(

      It's subjectively better to have. Like, m- I would say that there's no universe that exists, or there should be no argument possible that exists, that a guy who has meaningless sex has a better or a more meaningful life than, say, me and my wife who've been together for 15 years.

    25. LF

      Yeah.

    26. M(

      We have a very, like, I can depend on her in all circumstances.

    27. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. M(

      Whereas, if you live that other life, it- it- sure, it could be, it could feel great, but it- there's no meaning to it. There's no val- there's no actual real value to it.

    29. LF

      That's absolutely correct. I do think that getting laid can have a tremendous positive impact on the confidence of a young man. I think just there's a certain number of sexual partners from which you can collect a lot of data and you can free you about, like, not to be so nervous about the opposite sex, not to be so nervous about human interaction. And that will allow you to see the world more clearly and to actually find that one partner that- with whom you can be deeply intimate with. Sometimes, like, the nervousness around, like, this societally, uh, constructed, like, value in getting laid can cloud your judgment, and if you just release that by getting laid a bunch of times, then like, you could see th- the world clearly, that getting laid is not as nearly as important, as you said, as finding the right human, including I should put in that pile, not just like a romantic partner, but like, friendships, like deep lasting friendships.

    30. M(

      Well, I mean, I think you're right that our society puts a lot of emphasis on getting laid, and I'm sure that's true among any group of males, uh, throughout any point in history. I'm sure that's a very common joke that's never actually, like, never stopped at any point. So-

  9. 47:16 – 1:02:59

    God

    1. LF

      engineer that moment of you finding God? What is it, 19? 'Cause it feels like that was a big leap for you to escape, to escape the pain, to escape the addiction or the beginning of that journey. Uh, what do you think, what do you think happened there?

    2. M(

      I think it just felt like I just, there was no line that I wasn't willing to cross.

    3. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. M(

      Like everything was fine, and just like, it just all sudden just in that moment, it's just like I had a, I guess, some sort of deep fear and understanding like, "I am going down a path. Is this really the path you want to go down?" And I don't know what the result of that path would be or anything like that. I don't tend to speculate on things I, I don't understand. I just know that in that moment, I had the option, and I just chose ... I, I didn't want it anymore, right? It's kind of mixed in this whole thing where it's just like I had no value. I wrapped up all my meaning or value in having sex or getting laid. I had, you know, all that stuff, all the things we just talked about, like that was where all my worth was, and that is just such a, like a terrible place to have your worth. And it was just like kind of all came to a point, and I can't tell you the day of the week. I can't tell you anything other than it was nighttime, and I was in South Hedges (laughs) e- at Montana State University. Go Bobcats. (meows)

    5. LF

      Mm-hmm. (laughs)

    6. M(

      Um, that's about ... Yeah, that's the sign that we do at football games. Don't worry about it. But like, that's all I can really-... that's all I can really tell you 'cause the night, it, that night was no more or less special than some other night. It's just the specialness was I got at least a chance to make a choice.

    7. LF

      'Cause you find in that advice that you can give to others who are probably, there's, there's probably just an endless amount of people there struggling with porn addiction now, young people. What, what advice could you give to them, how to overcome it?

    8. M(

      For me to overcome it, I had to realize that I was taking something away from my future wife. Some people would be like, "Oh, well you just, you know, once you get a girlfriend then you can stop." And it's just like, no, because you never stopped the problem. You don't stop a problem by replacing it. And so I didn't have a girlfriend, didn't have all that. I just realized that I was truly taking away from something-

    9. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. M(

      ... for my future wife. And I didn't even know my current wife at that time. I didn't... She was not in the picture.

    11. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. M(

      I'm not even sure if she was at Montana State University at that point. And so it's just that's, uh, once I made that realization, I think it went from my head to my heart, which they say is the greatest distance in the universe. I finally, like, got it, and that's really where things changed. So if... The, the ability to say, like, what's gonna help you change and all that, I don't know if there's, I don't think there's silver bullets, right? If someone could offer you a drug... I forget who says this phrase, but there's this really interesting phrase that goes something like, um, he was a very depressed man and he was struggling with suicide and he kind of writes about this in this memoir. And he goes to the, these doctors and the doctors effectively say, "Well, here's antidepressants. It's gonna help you." And he says that, "Well, the problem was is that scientists told me that I could just touch my brain and make myself happy, and that's it. Like, they could reach in, they could configure some stuff, and I'll be happy." He's like, "For me, it was a lot like going out into a field and being able to take a drug to see the rain. I could look out, see the rain. It would fall down, it'd be silvery, it'd be beautiful, but all the crop would still die 'cause there's not actually any rain. I had to discover how to be happy myself." And so for me, it's like the reason why I looked at porno is 'cause I was unhappy. I was trying to find meaning, I was trying to find value in something, right? Something that was supposed to finally give me this ultimate satisfaction, and it just does not. No matter how hard and no matter how much you think it will, there is no escapade, there is no pornography that will ever give you that satisfaction you're looking for. That's the reason why it's addicting. That's kind of like my call to why you shouldn't do it. But how to get out of it? I only got out of it by realizing.

    13. LF

      I think, uh, that's really brilliantly described. (laughs) You knew that this thing you were doing is preventing you from finding your future wife. W- and future wife could mean more even broadly this path to a, to a, to a flourishing, to a, to a beautiful life. I think there's a lot of choices we make that are just preventing us from opening the door to whatever future that we'll take. I think what's really nice to do is to imagine, just like we said with high school, that there are a bunch of trajectories in life where you'll be truly happy, and you need to construct your life in a way where you have the chance to travel down those paths. And there's a bunch of addictions, there's a bunch of choices that prevent us from traveling down those paths. So just believe that you're gonna have an awesome life, and remove from your life the things that are, uh, preventing you from walking down that, that path, which is essentially what you did. It's a leap of faith that, like, if you let go of porn, that a better life is waiting for you on the other end.

    14. M(

      Yeah. I definitely can't say how long it will take, a better life, but for me, there's no way in the universe I could have had the relationship that I have without first making those steps 'cause I couldn't value, uh, like, I couldn't value my wife in the way that was proper for who she was. I would have valued her through the index or the lens that I currently was looking through, so.

    15. LF

      Gotta ask. So I've never done meth. Uh, I've never done meth. I've never-

    16. M(

      That was a great segue, by the way. (laughs)

    17. LF

      (laughs) Oh man, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, honestly, with this interviewing thing. But yeah, meth and LSD, you know, I did ayahuasca. I did shrooms a bunch of times. Oh, and this topic, I should say that, like, uh, there's a lot of, uh, on Twitter and on tech, i- i- in the tech community in general, sort of people speaking negatively about ayahuasca, uh, and some positively. I don't... I think it's- it's such a roll of the dice. Like, uh, I had incredible experiences, but I don't think I wanna recommend it to anyone. It's a risk. It's a serious risks. It really is a roll of the dice, that you could meet your demons and they could destroy you, or you can meet your demons and let go of them, or you, (laughs) you could have experiences like I did, which is, like, never... Apparently, I don't have demons. I'm pretty sure they're somewhere in the basement, but, like, I've never met 'em on drugs. (laughs)

    18. M(

      Yeah.

    19. LF

      I'm always really happy. (laughs) I'm a happy drunk. I'm a, uh, super happy on ayahuasca, just full of love. I don't understand. I don't understand where the demons are, but that's my biochemistry, whatever that is. And for some others, you know, one trip could be amazing and the next one could just completely destroy you and wreck your life. So, um, I don't know what the recommendation from that is. Maybe avoid it? But then all of us die, and life, you know, I, I tend to lean into adventure. But, but drugs is a f- it's, if you fuck with the biochemistry of your brain, you can really destroy yourself in a way that it's gonna torment you. So I would generally recommend that people avoid drugs altogether, probably. Unless you're a crazy motherfucker. (laughs) ... Hunter S. Thompson.

    20. M(

      (laughs) What, what an intro to this topic. Uh-

    21. LF

      I'm sorry, what's meth like?

    22. M(

      La- uh, it's, it's, it's, that's a great intro. I, I, I like, you are very correct in the sense that there is, at least w- when it comes to hallucinogens, there is a wild variance to what you're going to experience, and there is no guarantee. There's no, you know, just because you buy the product doesn't mean you're gonna have a good time. Right?

    23. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. M(

      There's a lot of, uh, personally I find that stuff, uh, to be very ... I believe in the spiritual realm, right? Like I believe demons and angels exist, I believe God exists, and that kind of whole realm is like, I don't know what it opens you up to, but it's much, much different experience. Now some people would be like, "Oh, it's just a bunch of chemicals in your brain, they all get mixed up. LSD just takes all of your pathways and they all go all ... you know, they all get kinda scrambled up in your brain." And it's just like, yeah, the experiences are profound. I had some really bizarre, very cool, very awful, I've had all the experiences in them all. I can just tell you that I, like, I personally always say the same thing. It's like, choices that I made, I can never take back. I would never take that away from myself because I don't know if I would be who I am today without all those experiences going up to it. But if you have not had that experience, I'm on your team, or at least partially on your team, maybe more severely. I don't think you need those experiences. I don't think they're gonna ... You don't have to put yourself through that to make your good decisions or to realize that, uh, people have value, right? You can, you, you don't have to do that. So as far as like what is meth like? Meth is like, if you've ever done cocaine, cocaine starts off with like a 15-minute dance party. Just uh, uh, uh, uh.

    25. LF

      Yeah.

    26. M(

      Like it's just so intense, it's like-

    27. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. M(

      ... so great, and then it's just followed up by like a, like a five-hour like just feeling wiggly, right? I don't know how else to describe it. Uh, meth is like that, except for I didn't get as much dance party or any dance party, but instead I just got that part-

    29. LF

      The full time.

    30. M(

      ... for like-

  10. 1:02:59 – 1:12:55

    Perseverance

    1. LF

      I think is really inspiring is that, you know, you failed pre-calculus, you really struggled in school. Like, you realize that school is really hard, and then eventually you're able to sort of persevere and, uh, I don't know, break through that wall of struggle. Can you by way of advice figure out what happened and what kind of advice you can give to people who are struggling?

    2. M(

      Yeah. I'll- I'll paint it in kind of more clear picture, a very fast speed run of it, is that I took pre-calculus, failed. I took pre-calculus again, failed. Took pre-calculus again and got a C. So I took it three times. Uh, then I took calc over the summer, so Calc One. In that one, at the end, the final, the final was a two-hour final, I finished it in 30 minutes and that was the highest score in all of the school.

    3. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. M(

      And I proceeded to be the highest scorer in all calculus and Diffy-Q. I was the only person out of 400 people to finish the Diffy-Q final, uh, and I got the highest grade. And so I was like, I got really good, so I somehow went from really bad to really good. And so my only... The thing that I did is that I had to win. It was not a option, it was not like, "Oh, you know, this would be really great." It's like, "I will not graduate, I will not finish my stuff if I cannot do this." And so every single day, I got up, I went to my, how- however many hour class it was. Right after that, I went straight to the math learning center, did those problems. When I got home, I just got the book and it had the odd answers in the back, and I would try to walk through the problems over and over and over and over again until I absolutely got it. And it just became this thing where I was just, I- it just, simple rote memory took over, and the ability to just effectively have the times table but for calculus all stuck in my head, inverse trig substitution, trig substitution, doing Taylor, Maclaurin series. Like, all those things kind of just over and over and over and over again. Eventually, they became easy. They became very easy. It's just that I had to cram it in there. And some people, you know, you hear these stories where they like, they barely show up to class and they get As. I've never been that person. I've always been the person that has to sit down, read through everything, and I'm bad at abstract concepts. I like the concrete into the abstract, not the abstract into the concrete. Very bad at talking about things theoretically then trying to apply them, but if I can do it once literally, then it's really easy for me to go into the abstract.

    5. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. M(

      And so it's just like for me, it just, I had... There's no substitute for the hours.

    7. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. M(

      So if you've, if I were to give advice, it's just that you have to have time in the saddle. Hour after hour will make you slowly better, and at first it's crushing, it's defeating, and it's not fun, because you are bad at it. But then at some point, it, you're just not bad at it, if you can just do it long enough, and you'll start getting okay at it. And then at some point you might even get good at it, and when you get good at something, it feels amazing. There's like an exploratory thing, like if you're, if you've ever played a musical instrument, you stop having to think about all the little teeny things you have to do to be able to play something correctly, and you start thinking about how you can explore that space. It's like it, you have, it's completely different problem. And same with programming, programming has an identical kind of feel to it. It's just like, you'll cross that barrier and it becomes magical, as opposed to a chore.

    9. LF

      Yeah, once you cross that barrier, somehow other things become easier. (inhales) But if you want to have a truly successful life, then you find the next barrier.

    10. M(

      Yeah.

    11. LF

      The next barrier. Yeah, I've always been the same. It's everything's come really hard.

    12. M(

      Yeah. I do not, I had, I've had no free lunches. Everything's just been a lot of, a lot of pain and struggle.

    13. LF

      (inhales) Uh, I think somebody said that the, on this topic, that you think "work smarter not harder" is a phrase that you dislike.

    14. M(

      Yeah.

    15. LF

      Somebody on Reddit told me this.

    16. M(

      Yeah, I don't just dislike it, I hate that phrase.

    17. LF

      Okay. Tell me, uh, tell me, tell me about your hatred. How- how do you feel?

    18. M(

      The reason why I dislike that is that there is a kind of a- an- a hidden suggestion there, which is that you already know what smarter is, so just do that. That actually things should be easy. You should just not have to, like, try that hard, you should just do the quick, easy, obvious path, and boom, it's done. It's like, I've never experienced that in anything I've done.... everything is actually really hard, and most of the time, I don't even know what I'm doing. So therefore, I don't even know what smart looks like. And so for me, the only way I can learn how to work smart is by working very, very hard and knowing that there's no shortcuts. And then when I finally figure out what smart is, when I do work smart and work hard, it is that much better.

    19. LF

      I think there's a deep, profound truth to that.

    20. M(

      There's a lot of these phrases that just drive me nuts in our society.

    21. LF

      B- but that one is, uh, s- sorry, that one is really accepted. Let's, if we can just linger on it 'cause-

    22. M(

      Okay.

    23. LF

      ... it really bothers me as well. So one, which is a really nice thing you said, the presumption there is things should be easy. And you're a failure if you don't see the easy path.

    24. M(

      Yeah.

    25. LF

      That's kind of the important thing.

    26. M(

      Just work smart, dawg. Why?

    27. LF

      Yeah.

    28. M(

      Why are you putting in-

    29. LF

      Yeah.

    30. M(

      ... all those hours? (laughs)

  11. 1:12:55 – 1:25:23

    Netflix

    1. LF

      (laughs)

    2. M(

      By the way.

    3. LF

      By the way. No, how did you go from there, from the hardship that we mentioned, from the struggle, from the addictions and so on to a place where you were working at this i- this incredible engineering company and, uh, building cool shit there? So tell the Netflix story.Mm-hmm.

    4. M(

      Yeah, so, you know, I kind of alluded to it earlier that I wanted to do my own startup. So for, I forget how long it was, one or two years, or two and a half years, built a startup, PHP, jQuery, everyone's favorite languages all put together. Uh, you can solve math stuff with jQuery. So I just was like totally into just non-stop doing that. This is like the height of StackOverflow. I was asking really dumb questions on sa- StackOverflow, like, "What is more Pythonic?" And then you get a bunch of up votes and try to steal a bunch of karma away. Like, all the fun stuff to do. Good times, and I was just like so into it, breathing and... I'd just breathe it in, breathe it out, and that's what I do all day, every day. And so it's just like non-stop building of a startup. Ultimately, that startup failed, and so I had to get, you know, go get a real job.

Episode duration: 5:20:07

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