Modern WisdomGREG MCKEOWN | Essentialism Explained: How To Focus On What Matters | Modern Wisdom Podcast 175
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,001 words- 0:00 – 15:00
I was working with…
- GMGreg McKeown
I was working with high-performing, uh, executives in Silicon Valley and noticed a predictable pattern, which is that in the early days, these, uh, companies, they were really focused. That led to success. That success breeded options and opportunities, which, if you're not careful, can undermine the things that led to success in the first place. Uh, you fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, so you're just doing too many things, and they may all be good things, but just too many different things. And so you start to plateau in your progress or fail altogether. As I've studied this, I find that almost universally, people feel stretched too thin at work or at home, busy but not productive, feel like their day's being hijacked by other people's agenda for them. Now, this is, this is like the problem that essentialism is seeking to address or solve.
- CWChris Williamson
Greg McKeown, how are you, my friend?
- GMGreg McKeown
I'm wonderful. Nice to be with you.
- CWChris Williamson
Nice to be with you as well. Could we have dressed any more polar opposite?
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You've got this beautiful suit on, lovely pressed suit with a white shirt, and I am in a vest because it's the first hot day of May in Newcastle.
- GMGreg McKeown
Listen, that's what it is. That's the difference, is that I'm, I'm in California, so I've got no, no reason to celebrate. Well, I should celebrate, but this, uh, you know, beautiful weather. Now, that, that explains it.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a rarity, you know. And you know what? No, anybody... All these people on the internet, I'm allowed to wear a vest if I want to wear a vest to podcast with Greg McKeown. You know?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
If there was an essentialist outfit for today-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... this, this would be, this would be it. Um, so e- essentialism is the word of the day. That's what we're gonna be talking about today. And I, I fear that I might be, um, the, the arch-nemesis of an essentialist, or at least I was for, for quite a long time. So I've got-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. Okay. Why do you say that?
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so I have a very high desire for novelty.
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
I love new things. Uh, one of my-
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... five core values is adventure, which also pulls me toward that, and another one is curiosity, which pulls me-
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... toward that. Um, I tend to work more than I need to. Uh, I enjoy work. I enjoy being busy. I enjoy doing things. And over time, that has led to me adding an awful lot on my plate. Uh, and presuming that I will just be able to up-regulate my productivity or down-regulate my sleep to slot in these extra things. But, and the... To the audience at home, you will know this feeling, right? You will see from the front row seat, you will watch the slippage of your own terrible unproductive- uh, unproductiveness, right? You'll see the, the inefficiencies in your system firsthand, and you think, "Well, I can add that, that project in, and all that'll happen is I'll just have to get rid of those inefficiencies." And you just presume that like a... I don't know, like a, like a system that the oil will be greased sufficiently more to allow it to go in. And I learned, I learned the hard way over a career of 13 years of running club nights and, and being a DJ and being a model and being a podcaster and doing coaching and being... fitness and all this sort of stuff, I realized that you can't, you can't-
- GMGreg McKeown
You can't do it all.
- CWChris Williamson
No. Who knew? I mean, you knew actually-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... which is, which is the question. So why, why don't you give us a bit of a background, essentialism and sort of what you do in your, your, uh, approach to this?
- GMGreg McKeown
Look, I was working with high-performing, uh, executives in Silicon Valley and noticed a predictable pattern, which is that in the early days, these, uh, companies, they were really focused. That led to success. That success breeded options and opportunities, which, if you're not careful, can undermine the things that led to success in the first place. Uh, you fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, so you're just doing too many things. And they may all be good things, but just too many different things. You get pulled a million different directions. And so you start to plateau in your progress or fail altogether. Uh, a- and as it turns out, this is a pattern that a lot of people, uh, well, you just said, just described it a little bit, um, feel the same thing. So, uh, a- as I've studied this, I find that almost universally, people feel stretched too thin at work or at home, uh, busy but not productive, uh, feel like their day's being hijacked by other people's agenda for them. Now, this is, this is like the problem that essentialism is seeking, uh, to, to address or solve.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Can you pronounce that German word for me, please?
- GMGreg McKeown
Which German word?
- CWChris Williamson
The le-
- GMGreg McKeown
The, the-
- CWChris Williamson
Less but better.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Oh, yeah. (laughs) …
- CWChris Williamson
she a singer?
- GMGreg McKeown
Oh, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Or that was, that was at Dido.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, I don't know. Don't know, don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Yes, so you could probably . But JOMO is a, uh, he ought to be a singer. But we ought to make a s- song to it. You can do that. But JOMO is, uh, you know, this, you discover that just because other people do... In fact, you like not doing things that other people are doing. You start to go, "Yeah, that's great for you. You can celebrate it for them, but that's not what I'm doing. It's not what I'm about. It's not what I'm supposed to be doing in my life." And you start to feel this joy and momentum in doing, as I keep saying, what you came here to do.
- CWChris Williamson
Before we get onto... I wanna ask th- the question, which is how do we do that, what are the steps that we can take toward identifying that and getting rid of the trivial many. But that deprogramming, right, of the existing societal norms, the paths of least resistance, your genetic predisposition, your traumas and the coping mechanisms you've got with that, is something I'm swimming in at the moment. And I've got an amazing blog post that I'm going just to send to you after we've f- finished, and I know that I've just completely teased that to everyone that's listening. However, the author of the blog post is gonna come on the podcast in the next couple of weeks, so I've got a big announcement about that. It's phenomenal, just some fella, but wrote the best thing I've read on the internet this year. Uh, and, oh, one of the things the he was talking about there was about sort of deprogramming these societal norms, getting rid of all that stuff. And, um, that FOMO versus JOMO, uh, paradigm that you've just come up with there, to me is present in a lot of different areas of life. So for instance, as soon as you see discomfort in training, physical training, as something to actually lean into, as something that is a signal that you're doing something right, as opposed to a signal that you're doing something wrong. But it takes time to program yourself. You go into the gym for the first time and you do a, a difficult workout, and you feel like you're gonna die.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, you're on the floor and you wanna throw up and you're sweating and your knees hurt and all this stuff happens. And there's some very real physical adaptations that need to happen before you can go, like, fully in. But once those have occurred, and presuming you're doing it safely, the discomfort is the signal of progress, right? And it's kind of the only way you can do that is by learning, "Oh, hang on, this is me moving forward. This is me doing the right thing." And the, the JOMO, as it seems, the joy of missing out, again, is that. It's like, "Oh, I'm missing out. That's fantastic. That means that I'm focusing on what I should be focusing on. I'm not getting swept away with the, the trivial many."
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right to think about those signals that will be new signals so that, uh, when other people are zigging, you're zagging. Uh, y- you know, when other people are saying yes, you're saying no, when other people are saying no, you're saying yes because you're trying to... You're, you're, you're not trying to be like everybody else anymore. Yeah, you, you, you, you can't be distinctive at everything.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) That's such a good call. No, you, you are very, very right. Uh, okay, so how do we do it? Where do we start? You've got me, Greg. I'm here. I'm a nightmare, I'm doing too much. How do I start to bring order to chaos?
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay, so you're asking that question in, like, still a hypothetical way-... um, or you could be. Uh, so, but, but we could do it in a literal way, right? So, we'll just do it with you right now.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm in.
- GMGreg McKeown
You in? Okay, so tell me, first thought, what is something that's essential to you, it's very important to you, but you're, uh, under-investing in it currently? You might even be doing something, but you're under-investing. Go. First thoughts?
- CWChris Williamson
Writing.
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay. Um, w- what, uh, what does success look like for you in writing?
- CWChris Williamson
One new article per week.
- GMGreg McKeown
Um, and, uh, that you're putting out, in your blog, to your, to your newsletter? That's what you want to do. Uh, h- how are you doing it right now? How, how much are you managing to do currently?
- CWChris Williamson
Zero.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) okay, good. So, good. It is an under-investment we've successfully -
- CWChris Williamson
I thought I - I warned you that I was a very good avatar for this.
- GMGreg McKeown
No, no. No, I like it. I like your honesty very much.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Um, okay, so there's, so it's, so th- i- when you say you're not, you're not publishing any, you are not doing any writing at all?
- CWChris Williamson
So, I've been, I've been gesticulating over the- the font size of the website and, and the- the tiny little m- m- things that I know is really a glorified version of procrastination to put me off from actually putting in hard work. I have six half-finished articles, all of which r- require two hours of focused work to be really good, and I really like them. Um-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... but, uh, there's- there's just s- six half-finished meals and they're all in the kitch-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... and they're all in the kitchen.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, I like, uh, well, um-
- 30:00 – 45:00
(laughs) …
- GMGreg McKeown
"Oh, yeah. It's hard, isn't it? Essentialism, though. It's hard, that. Focusing on what's essential and, and not, and what's non-essential, it has to, you know." And in fact, somebody once said to me, they said, "Look, you know, Essentialism should come with a warning: This will be the hardest thing that you will ever do." And for like, a year or two, I absorbed that titl- that, that, like, line, and would share that with people. "Well, the thing, problem with Essentialism, it's the hardest thing you'll ever do." And what a con that is. That's a totally non-essentialist idea. It's like, completely wrong. It's only, it's only the harder thing to do because you're a non-essentialist trying to be an essentialist. Like, you're, you're trying to be an essentialist in a non-essentialist way.... you're like, "I have to do this perfectly. I have to do anything essential, right now."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
This is not what essentialism is about. I think there's a way to do essentialism that's so easy, and that's what we need to do. Let's cut away all these layers of... that get in the way of you actually publishing what you've written. You don't need the fancy website, you don't need the article to be perfect, whatever that means, you don't even have to have 10 of them. Doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be published. (laughs) And then the feedback will come, and then you'll learn something, and then you can progress to the next step. You've got, you've got to have this... and this is only a couple of the things one can do to make them easier but, but that is my primary learning since Essentialism was written.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a very cool way to look at it, and I've seen and heard other people as well say the challenge of The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, you know, especially, I think relinquishing, relinquishing your hand on novelty is something that I want to get into in a second because I, you know, for the people out there who similarly to me like adventure, like new things, new experiences, it just leads to yeses all over the place. Just because you think, "Well, that's interesting. Oh, that's interesting. Well, that could be fun. Well, that could be fun. Well, oh, I could- I could do that." And then you, you post-hoc rationalize it, right? You, the way... this is the, this is the most fucking insidious way that you post-hoc rationalize it, all the non-essentialists listening, which is everybody. Most, the most insidious way that you, um, rationalize doing too much is by hedging your risk.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
That's the most insidious way because it's got a kernel of truth in it. It's got a kernel of truth in it, that if you were to do two things instead of one, you half your risk if that one thing goes shit.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but you then take it to, "Well, if I do 100 things and one of them goes to shit, that's only 1%."
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And you don't realize that the price that you pay for doing 100 things is that you've only gone one unit of distance over 100 things as opposed to 100 units of distance over one thing.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, that's right. And it also, the other faulty... th- the other false assumption in that is the idea that all opportunities, all a- actions, uh, are randomly... like success is randomly assigned to those 100. Right? Like if you ne- if you couldn't understand any cause and effect between anything, you might be best to just do 100 things and you only make an inch progress in all of them, but at least you'll make an inch progress in one thing that's going to work 'cause it's totally random. Uh, that's fine. So, you wanna believe life is completely random? Fine, you go, you live that one out and see how that works for you, right? But on the basis that, and this is the first principle of essentialism, is to explore what's essential, right? It's to actually create space looking for the thing you feel really good about pursuing, the thing that you feel you're best built to do. Uh, and, and, and so, and so in that process, you come to a point of view that says, "I'm, I'm built to do this and not to do that, so I'm gonna go strong on the thing that I am good at, passionate about, I think is relevant right now." I mean, all of those things are risk mitigation techniques, so that you can then lean into something fully that you're actually, you know, is your highest point of contribution. And one of the things for me about that is writing. I mean, there's so many career paths I would have been rubbish at-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
... and failed at, in a sort of capital F way, right? Like just not (?) wouldn't have worked well. I, I went big on something not because I was high... like not, not because I had a high tolerance for risk, because I am actually quite risk averse and I wanted to do things that I really felt strong and good at and so on. And I think that's what we have to do. You have to... ye- yet instead of thinking it's all random, you take the time to explore, figure out what you really can make a great contribution in and then go big in it.
- CWChris Williamson
What about someone that says, "Well, I'm not great at anything"?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, so you can start with, I mean, you know, what we're talking about here is criteria, right? What criteria to use to evaluate what to do. And you start off with maybe like, "Well, what are the things I have no interest in?" Well, don't do that stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Fishing.
- GMGreg McKeown
If you don't like fishing, don't do fishing, right? Just because your mates are doing fishing doesn't mean you have to go fishing.
- CWChris Williamson
Shite.
- GMGreg McKeown
I have lots of people who love skiing, and I always feel this guilt like I need to do sk-... I've got to go skiing. Of course, if you go skiing, you want to be able to go skiing, you know? It's such a fan-... fabulous (???) (mumbles) ... love the snow. You love it. You would love it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
You would love it up there. This is what... you always feel this. And I'm like, "No, I'm not interested."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Not interested, so start with the stuff you're not interested in. Start with the stuff that you go, "Yeah, I... not only am I not good at that, I could not imagine ever being good at that. That is not my thing." So you just start at the, at the extremes, right? The periphery, and move forward. So you don't have to say, "What am I great at?" But you can say, "What am I interested in? What do I think I might have a little bit of talent for?" Uh, you know, (laughs) you look on like, you know, uh, Britain's Got Talent or whatever the talent show is, and you see these people in these... that are just terrible at that thing, and they got high passion, but really low talent for it. And you feel for those people, right? Uh, or you wonder why they don't understand it.... what we're looking for is things that have, you feel some passion for, that you think you might be quite good at, that you th- you could become good at it, uh, e- meets a need in the world. And that overlap, that's where your highest point of contribution can lie. Uh, and then over time, you're developing that more and more narrowly, so that over time, as your competency increases, you aren't just interested in doing the things you're good at, you are looking for the thing you would be the best at, really great at. Eventually, down the journey, it's like, "W- w- could I be the best in the world at this thing?" You know, maybe there, maybe there's just a tiny group of people who can do this thing. Uh, but that's, that's a, that, you know, that's a ... You increase your s-selectivity as your competence increases.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. I like the idea of using inversion and a contrasting effect to work out where you don't go.
- GMGreg McKeown
(clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, (clears throat) it's the same for ... The easiest way to avoid being depressed is to work out not what makes you happy, but how you would make a happy person depressed.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I would fuck up with their sleep, I'd fuck up with their nutrition, I'd make sure they didn't get any daylight, I'd, you know, do all of the different bits and pieces. (clears throat) And you're like, "Oh, yeah. Well, that makes a happy person depressed." Then you go, "Right, okay. What's the im- what's, what's the implication of that?" Um, it's also funny that that's, as you were saying about the different things, that sounded to me like a, "Hell, no." It's like, "Would you go, would you go fishing?" "Hell, no." "Would you go skiing?"
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Hell, no." And as past Modern Wisdom guest and good buddy, Derek Sivers says, it's either, "Hell, yes," or, "No." And that ties into something I actually wanted you to run us through, which is the, the 90% rule. Could you take us through that?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah, well, I think…
- CWChris Williamson
doesn't exist. It's the satisfying of some people who wouldn't have cared if you'd waited a week to reply to them, who maybe you're never gonna see again, who you've maybe never met. Um, play another stupid game. If you want to take it to a, a kind of a little bit more vicious degree, play a stupid game which would be have unprotected sex with someone that you don't know after a night out. That is playing a very stupid game. What's the prize that you win for that when you compare it with the alternative of having protected sex? What would be play a stupid game of texting while you drive as opposed to waiting until you get to your destination? That's a very stupid game to play when you win a stupid prize. What's the prize? It's, oh, well, the lads in the group chat got that meme off me a little bit quicker than if I'd waited and I got to have a little bit of a giggle at the lights as opposed to sit and look out the window or whatever it is. Um, play stupid games, win stupid prizes slots into essentialism somehow for me.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, well, I think that's right because I, I remember working with a, uh, this was maybe, like, 50 of the top leaders from, uh, from American industry. And as I walked into the room (sighs) it's a very... it was a very sort of dark, oak room. It was this very secretive meeting, actually. It was quite interesting. I mean, it wasn't... there was nothing bad being done there, but it was just, like, very kind of elite feeling as you walked into the room. And I liked ev- I liked all the people I talked with there, but the, the, the overwhelming sensation I had in that room was here is a group of people that won at the wrong game.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that mean?
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, one of them was vulnerable at one point and just said, "Look, my relationship with my teenager is completely shot right now, all right? He's almost ready to leave the house and my, I just don't have a relationship with him." It's like, so it's everything's rough between us. And so here he is, he's, he's got up the corporate ladder, but he's won at, at a game that now he realizes didn't matter, or certainly didn't matter in comparison to these relationships that he's taken for granted over those same years. And so I just think there's many of the prizes that people think are the most important things. So I don't mean the total trivia, I think there's many goals people set that, that actually if they were... if they spent a little longer pondering them and thinking about them, they would find, "That's the wrong game. I, I, I won at the wrong thing. I got... I did... I achieved it, I got there, but then it was like, you know, uh, it w- it was, it was unsatisfying when I actually arrived there. That wasn't what it was actually... that is not what the..." Uh, uh, i- it was unsatisfying achievement. That's what I mean by it.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's where the explore before you exploit, uh, importance comes in at the beginning of, of looking at your options, of assessing the things that you want.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yes, and there's, there's a few ways of thinking about exploration, right? One is, one is just, uh, intellectually, here are my options, let me evaluate the options in front of me. A second way of thinking about it is what I think one's highest priority is, which is to protect our ability to prioritize, protect our ability to discern. Yeah, all of us have many, many nonessential voices outside of us and inside of us, right? Just all different... a mind just telling us a million thing, "Oh, you gotta do this and that matters and how... look how you compare to that person and look..." Com- competitions and comparisons and complaining voices and all these voices, right? There's all of this noise.And then there's another voice, uh, one of, one of my friends, uh, in England says it this way. He says, he says, "There's, there's a lot, there's a scared voice and then there's a sacred voice." My distinction would be I think there's many, many scared voices and one sacred voice, right? And we all know that other voice, I think. I think almost all of us have experienced it where we just go, "That's right. That's wrong." And you just know. And nobody else had to tell it to you, you didn't, you didn't learn it from someone. You just, you just know that's the right thing to do in this moment, that's the wrong thing to do in this moment. And if we are quiet enough, that voice becomes the voice that leads us. So exploring what is essential, to me, at its highest manifestation, means tuning into amplifying that voice of conscience that really guides you in the right direction. If you do that today in small ways, you don't wake up 20 years from now and go, "Oh my goodness, I just, I've just given myself 20 years to the wrong goal." That's what I think it means.
- CWChris Williamson
That's scary. You know? That, uh, I tweeted something, I can't even remember where I found it, but it stuck with me for years. I tweeted this the other day, "True hell is when the person you are meets the person you could have been."
- GMGreg McKeown
(smacks lips) Yeah, that's, I, I, you know, I like, I like that sentiment. It is a bit scary, like you say. Um, I, I want, I want... I'll give you a story. So I was, um, I was staring at myself in the mirror, um, dressed from head to toe in a Stormtrooper costume.
- CWChris Williamson
Good luck. It's good luck.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) Well, it was a moment, that's certainly what it was, and I was thinking about buying it. This was like a, you know, pretty close to movie level quality suit.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Right, and I'm in my, I'm in, like, late 30s looking at myself in this mirror and I look... It, it, it was for Halloween, right, and it, I still kind of, I think, I get why I thought that was a cool thing, why it might have been a fun idea. But as I'm staring at the mirror, I, I'm struck by two things completely at the same time. One is there's not one part of me that wants this anymore, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Like, "Wh- why am I even thinking about it? I do not want that suit. I do not want this." And the second, in the same moment, I realized that for 30 years I've had in my, uh, mind the idea that one day I would buy this because 30 years previously, that's when Return of the Jedi had come out, and my older brother, one of my older brothers had said to me, "Wouldn't it be so cool to own, like, a costume right from, you know, from the movies? Like movie level quality costume stuff." And my little, like, young self, influenced by my brother saying this, just, it just, like, caught on. And that little goal stuck with me for all of those years. Now, this is the power of goals. We get that, goals are really powerful. They, they, one of my professors once said, "They're the theory that works." But what he was saying is that they work too well. Once you have a goal, you can get on autopilot, and now you're racing down some path to get something that really you didn't stop to question. So what I'm saying here is be careful that some of the goals that we set aren't Storm- Are they Stormtroopers? You know, should we just have eliminated them already? Could we give up on them halfway because we go, "No, that doesn't even matter. Someone else wanted to do that. Schwarzenegger wanted to do that. I don't have to do that." (laughs) You, you know, just 'cause The Rock's doing it doesn't mean I have to do it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, The Rock is cool. I, um, I absolutely love that. I had Tucker Max on, and he is a man who has gone through about as big of a 180 as you can imagine from this, uh, what, what was it called? Uh, frat, frat literacy or something. He created an entire new literary genre, which was like party boy, party boy stories type thing. Um, and he, uh, he'd gone through this big, and then he's done a decade of psychotherapy and-
- GMGreg McKeown
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... a, a ton of internal work, and this guy is so, so fucking s- uh, aware now and just completely present, speaking his truth forward, just stripping away ego left, right, and center, really, really delivering. Uh, he's phenomenal. I love the person he is now. I would have hated the guy that he was back then, but I love the person he is now. And, um, you see when someone makes such a change like that and you got these weird, like, epochs in your life, right? You've got like the, the kid, then the teenager, then, like, the young kind of 20s, then, like, the mid-20s, then the, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da. And, um, it takes a lot of work, you know? It takes a lot of work to realize that you thought that having a faster car than your mates when you were 19 was a big deal, but now you're 32 and your wife loves you and you've got two kids and a dog that you care about. And because you never questioned whether or not still having a faster, bigger, better car was, it's just, it's like it's just there, it's just a modus operandi, right? And it's just running below you and you kind of don't really realize and the stream just takes you along. I absolutely love, I love that concept. You touched on something actually that I had, I had in my notes I wanted to bring up, which is why is it so hard to cut losses? Is it just sunk cost fallacy? Is it just, "Oh, well, I've, I've, I've got this far with the huge tech company which is destroying my relationship with my teenager, uh, I might as well, I might as well go all the way"? Is that why people have a fear or is there anything else?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, because you, you, you're having to face the potentially poor decision of not having cut it off yesterday or the day before-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
... or the day before that. And so you're more... The longer it goes...... the harder it is to admit that we weren't wise in the previous scenario. Uh, and so, and so yes, of course, we, we want to ... Well, you've h- heard the old metaphor, right, of the, the how do you catch a monkey? You've heard this, right? How do you catch a monkey? Y- y- y- there's a trap and you ... The monkey puts their hand in the trap ... You never heard this?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- GMGreg McKeown
You put ... The monkey puts their hand in the trap and, and they can't ... Once they... once their hand is in the trap, they're holding onto the, you know, the, the nuts in there or the fruit, whatever's in there, and th- because their hand is clenched, they can't get their hand out. Right? Because it's small enough they can put their hand in but not big enough that they can get their hand out, so they want to hold onto it. And I- I thought for a long time that this was, uh, this was just sort of a, you know, made up myth or whatever, but you can go on YouTube and there's somebody who's actually done this. Uh, and it's ... Actually, it's really brilliant little video. Uh, and, and, and they just w- fi- first of all, they just will not let go, and he's completely trapped and the man's coming over to get him, and they will not let go of this, of this thing. And then right as the man actually takes hold of the monkey, he does let go and he gets focused on something else. And that's the key to letting go, is we have to focus on the next, something that's more important to us, something that actually is ... uh, that is a deeper, better version of what we want to be, uh, so that we can let go of these old, these old things that don't matter anymore. Let them go. I mean, th- this idea of not growing up, holding onto the, the 20-year-old version of us, then holding onto the 25-year-old version of us and not ... What ... It's a failure to mature, it's a failure to thrive. We're trying to win yesterday's battle, trying to win yesterday's version of the, of the world. And so, and so I think that, I think that it's ... I- I ... We've got onto the, onto the monkey and catching monkeys, didn't we? So that's-
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
... I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but-
- CWChris Williamson
I know you are.
- GMGreg McKeown
... I feel like, I feel like that ... W- we, we're holding onto all this investment we've made in something and we've just got to look to the next thing that's actually better and it gives us the courage to let go of the thing that we're, we keep holding onto.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. There's a story from Kamal Ravikant, who's Naval's brother, and I had him on the podcast just before Christmas, and he lost pretty much all of his blood in an operation, accidentally. The ... His- the sutures burst on his artery, and he basically bled out and he was anemic and all this stuff happened, in terrible pain. And, um, uh, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, uh, was just about to come out, the second version, and he'd sold tons, uh, self-published, uh, and he was, like, the, the, um, perfect patient zero for who needs drugs. And the doctors were like, "If anyone ever needed opium- opiates, it's you. Like, you are the guy for drugs." Uh, so he's taking 'em and he gets the first proof, m- uncorrected manuscript or whatever it is back, and he realizes that because of the drugs that he's on that he can't view the punctuation with enough dexterity, uh, uh, and that resolution that he needs to, 'cause he wants every word ... It's quite a short book. It's only, like, maybe f- 70 pages or something. And, um, he wants everything. H- he needs to craft every single word, every line break, every piece of punctuation, all the rest of it, and he realizes he can't do it. Um, so y- he just stops taking the drugs.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And he's in pain, but he has something which is greater than his pain. He has the book, and the book allows him to transcend what it is that he's suffering with, right? And I loved that story. And I wouldn't have, I would have never heard ... And I've never heard him tell it on a different, uh, uh, any other podcast. It was just 'cause I was being, like, a bit nosy about the pain that he'd gone through in this recent near-death experience. (laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Scott Barry Kaufman's new…
- GMGreg McKeown
to fall apart, fall away, and we, uh, we can get out of the trap.
- CWChris Williamson
Scott Barry Kaufman's new book, Transcend, is, is precisely about that. He talks about-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, re-doing Maslow's hierarchy of needs and he talks about you can't ... You ... He literally believes that you can't reach your fullest potential without serving others.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And spent-
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, so did Maslow, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Yeah. He was talk-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
He said, um-
- GMGreg McKeown
If he ... Yeah, go on.
- CWChris Williamson
This story about Maslow. Did you hear about his mother-in-law? I think it was his mother-in-law. Um, and he said that-
- GMGreg McKeown
Think I did, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... he said that, um, his mother-in-law was the most actualized person that he'd ever met. And she w- she was, like, just a mum, just a mum living at home, you know?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Wasn't the picture of, of the, the guy on the top of the mountain, you know, just slaying businesses and, and driving fast cars and doing all that stuff. But he said she was the most actualized person that he'd ever met.
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, and towards the end of his life, he rebuilt his own model, but it was just too late 'cause it was already, like, become popularized and everybody ... No one's updated it.... so the top of his model was not self-actualization by the end of his life, it was self-transcendence. And, and that, that distinction makes all the difference, doesn't it? I, I have met so many people trying to pursue a self-actualized life, and you can feel the absence of some... of, of, uh, what, of, of (laughs) what matters so much more than self-actualization. As important as self-actualization is and sort of going after goals and just achieving them, but self-transcendence, where you really are in contribution mode, where you really are in service mode, to a calling, to a purpose that's higher and more important than, than our own sort of proximate concerns, this is such... this is the big distinction, to me. This is the difference that I'm always looking for in people. This is the difference I want to see in myself, the transition to be... uh, to live a life of contribution, not just one of productivity or just of, you know, sort of external worldly success. That that's, that's really what I want. So, I think my- uh, I think Maslow sort of did appreciate that distinction before the end, but then got misquoted-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
... in a sense, for the rest of us.
- CWChris Williamson
What about, uh, are you, um... Do you feel like you're moving in the right direction? Are you still getting yourself towards the top of this newly extended hierarchy of needs?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, I mean, for, f- for me, (sighs) for me when I think about, you know, s- it's an ongoing journey, but when I think about the last almost 20 years now, that journey, that essentialist journey, not just the book and all of that, but I mean, the, the journey of my own life has been a- all about that transition. So, for me, it looks like, uh, it looks like investing primarily in my relationship with Anna, my wife, and our four children, and really seriously investing in it. Not saying lip service, "Oh, yes, they're the most important people in my life," but actually building those relationships. So, when I travel, for example, about 80% of the time, I'll take one of my children with me, uh, so that we have that one-on-one time. Uh, it, it, it means that, it means that instead of joining that book club or going to that, th- the, the lodge or the golfing thing or the tennis tournament, you just say no to all of that and you just try to make your own children like, not just your best friends, but also your best friends, people that you really want to be with and spend time together with. And the effect of all of that has been that the culture that has been created is something really special. So, even as my children now are like, you know, three of them are teenagers, uh, I, I could not have believed 10 years ago that m- my relationship now would be what it is, with teenagers.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Now, I was a teenager. I know lots of teenagers. I understand that journey. I've worked with lots of teenagers over the years, and I, and I've got a lot of respect for, for, for, obviously for young people. I'm, I'm, uh, not knocking them, but it isn't... th- this is just completely not like any of the stereotypical descriptions. You know, our worst problems are like, my, one of my, my teenage son is like, he, he reads too many books. He reads like, late into the night. He reads fiction and he loves it, and it... that's like our... that's my biggest problem with him.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
And I'm not kidding either. I'm lit-... I'm not kidding. They, they're delightful. And they play together and they spend time together. They did. They just spent five hours, this is like a week ago, five hours, uh, up on a hill close to where we live, we live up in the hills, and they were filming, for my eldest daughter wants to be a director and she's do-... taking a film class at university right now and, um, and she's just... I mean she's 17, but she's like, you know, really like focused about what she wants to do and her highest point of contribution. And, and so she went up there and led a... uh, th- th- they took, um, they took, uh, uh, what is it called? Uh, Princess Bride, you know the movie Princess Bride?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
Right. So, it's... she had to redo a scene from any movie and they chose a scene from that movie, the iocane powder scene for those that know this cult classic. Uh, and, uh, and they redid it absolutely scene by scene. It took them five hours to do it. We didn't hear of one problem the whole time. We weren't there, we didn't oversee any of it. The video is brilliant. It's like frame by frame the same as the original. They were all the actors. They had... did the whole costumes. They f- fulfilled it, whatever, I think it was fi-... uh, 50 points. She got 50 points for this. She just got the results back a couple of days ago. That, to me, is like illustrative. That's like a version of what e- essentialism looks like. It, it, it was the natural outgrowth of investing in something 90% more important for years and years and it just now bears this fruit all the time. There's just this flowing of it. And, uh, and so, you know, anyway, I just share that story because, uh, because I think th- this is, this is wh- what, what you just said about Maslow and his mother is no, is no throwaway comment to me. Right? It's, it's like this is where my relationships with my family aren't a little more important than the next most important thing. Like this is it. This is, this is miles above the next most important thing. And I think most people know that, but they get very busy and consumed with other voices just telling them something else and giving them, you know, immediate feedback and positivity. But those relationships, I mean at the end of my life it's completely obvious to me that on my deathbed I will not be saying, "Well, how many books did I sell? How many people did..."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
"How many... How many books did I bo- wri- write?" Th- that isn't gonna be... It's just gonna be those people around you at the ru-... at the ta-... right? Like those people in the room, that small group, that's who it's gonna be about. And so I want to invest now with that clarity, the clarity I will have then.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a beautiful story. The, uh...... premier other essentialist that I know, Ben Bergeron, Matt Frazier's, uh, CrossFit coach, and, uh-
- 1:15:00 – 1:17:46
Their self-righteousness is built…
- CWChris Williamson
- GMGreg McKeown
Their self-righteousness is built upon 12 inches of difference between that story.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yes. Yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
And, and, and, and so what, what's the difference? There's hardly a difference in that story. I mean take the phone out. It doesn't ... You do not ... You can ... You know, people, people had alarm clocks before they had phones, so that's no ex- "Oh, it wakes me up in the morning." Yeah, you can solve that problem with an analog solution. You can have a little alarm clock and the, the first thing you do in the morning doesn't have to be checking your phone. Last thing at night, first thing in the morning, you know? Who's, who's owning who?
- CWChris Williamson
Are you listening? Are you listening everybody out there? This is Greg McKeown telling you what I've told you for two years, and if you didn't listen to me, please, for the love of all that is holy, listen to him.
- GMGreg McKeown
Uh, y- yeah, you know, another thing I think is ... Put, put a little nap in your day as m- as often as possible, even if it's an eight, 10, most 20 minute nap every day.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting.
- GMGreg McKeown
Every day.
- CWChris Williamson
Why? Why?
- GMGreg McKeown
You are, you are ... Because, because people are sleep-deprived, and when you're sleep deprived, it doesn't make you tired. When you're sleep deprived, your, the executive function of your brain goes down, so you can't discern properly between what's important and what's not important, so the business cycle continues. So sleep is ... Of course it's restorative and all of these things, but high performers as a general rule and also as the research supports, Eric Anderson's research about top performers suggests that not only do they spend more focused time working on like one area of expertise, but he also found that the number two, in fact, most correlated item to distinguish the most, the top performers from the average performers is the amount of sleep they got. The, the top performers slept on average eight and a half hours in every 24-hour period, 8.4 if I remember right. And they took more naps as well, uh, because every moment they were actually practicing or doing their work, they were really focused and that's what the sleep and the naps allowed them to do. So it's not just the number of hours you're doing a thing, it's the number of focused hours you're doing that thing. And so, yeah, yeah, take a nap for sure.
- CWChris Williamson
I have a-
- GMGreg McKeown
Here's anoth- here's another thing. I got more.
- CWChris Williamson
I've got a l- I've got a, a, a, what would you say, confession to make before you do that.
- GMGreg McKeown
Go on then.
- CWChris Williamson
I was listening, I was listening to you and Tim Ferriss in the garden today having a little sunbathe which is why I'm slightly pink, so I'm gonna get video guy Dean to bring the saturation down on my, my side of the video.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and I fell, I fell asleep for around about sort of ... It was beautiful, it was real engaging, really interesting-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... but I just. It was just a 15, 15, a little 15 minuter and then I got woken up-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I got woken up by the ice cream van. Um-
Episode duration: 1:31:20
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