The Five Best Books You've Never Read | Nat Eliason

1. 0:00 – 4:45

   Nat Eliason’s podcast origin story: from interviews to deep book breakdowns

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Modern Wisdom podcast. My guest today is a fellow podcaster. Nat Eliason is the host of Made You Think and also the man behind growthmachine.com. I had a few things that I wanted to speak to Nat about today. His ability to retain the information that he reads in books through a progressive summarization method is pretty impressive, and he takes us through that today. He also explains how he's managed to essentially monetize his passion by selling access to his own Evernote. We talk about growthmachine.com and how organic versus paid strategies in the online world are changing and developing over time. And finally, he gives us his five favorite books that you probably haven't read. So stay until the end and find out exactly what Nat thinks you should sink your teeth into as your next read which you might not have seen on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Please welcome the wise and wonderful Nat Eliason. (upbeat music) . I'm joined by the host of the Made You Think podcast and the man behind growthmachine.com, Nat Eliason. Nat, welcome to the show.

   2. NENat Eliason1:34

      Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:36

      So I am a big fan of your podcast. Recently had Robert Greene on talking about Laws of Human Nature, and your guys' summary of that, uh, was a- a big, (laughs) a big help in prepping. It's a big old book, and what you guys do on the podcast really, really helps to condense stuff down. Would you be able to explain sort of what the Made You Think podcast is and- and what the, uh, concept behind it is?

   4. NENat Eliason2:02

      Yeah. Uh, Made You Think started, uh, actually out of another podcast. So I ha- had: (clears throat) had a podcast before called Nat Chat where I was-

   5. CWChris Williamson2:13

      Such a good name. (laughs)

   6. NENat Eliason2:14

      Yeah. Great name, right? (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson2:16

      I love it.

   8. NENat Eliason2:18

      I, uh, I was interviewing people who had come out of college and done something s- sort of like atypical. Uh, and by atypical I meant, you know, not gone to do what I saw a lot of other people from top tier schools doing, like, working in finance, or consulting, or going to work at one of the FAANG companies, things like that.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:40

      Mm-hmm.

   10. NENat Eliason2:40

       So talking to a lot of young people who either went entrepreneurial routes, or were doing like contract work, or ended up being an early m- member in an agency. Things like that that you don't hear about as much when you are going to some of these schools and trying to get more of those stories out there for people who felt like, "Oh, those typical c- career paths just aren't as exciting to me." So, uh, did th- did, was doing Nat Chat for a while and interviewed one of my friends, Neil, who ended up doing like a whole bunch of different things right out of college and eventually became sort of like a internal innovation consultant for Estée Lauder, uh, and then went on to start his own, uh, like beer company, helping people create like custom brews, taking advantage of the, uh, unused capacity of breweries around the country. Um, and- and we had a really good like three-hour-long episode just talking about everything and how he ended up doing what he was doing. And people really, really liked how in-depth we went and how much stuff we talked about. And then we said or we thought it might be fun to do a second episode on a book that we both really liked, uh, Antifragile by Nassim Tallek. And so we just got back on and talked about Antifragile for two hours or so.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:06

       (laughs)

   12. NENat Eliason4:06

       And it ended up being, I think, the most popular episode of Nat Chat ever. Uh, and we s- kind of saw that and we were like, "Well, this is clearly a sign that there's something interesting here." And I was getting a little tired of doing the interview style, uh, of episodes. So we said, "Well, why don't we just try doing a podcast based on reading, you know, tougher books and then talking about the key takeaways from them?" And so we did that.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:35

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NENat Eliason4:35

       And started putting out episodes about books that we were both reading and enjoying. And, uh, yeah, that was sort of the inception for- for Made You Think.

2. 4:45 – 6:57

   Why the book-discussion format works (and tackling ‘Infinite Jest’)

   1. CWChris Williamson4:45

      Uh, yeah. I- I have to say that you're right. And one of the things that you touched on in the Robert Greene, uh, podcast, you guys said that flipping over to the interview style... Or maybe it was one of your other recent ones. Flipping over to the interview style of podcast was something that you think there's enough people doing that in that space already, and I have to agree. Um, I have a bunch of co-hosts that I do this show with, that listeners will be (laughs) familiar with: Johnny and Yusuf. And the episodes that I do with those guys by far outstrip the engagement than the ones that I do even if I get New York Times best-selling author on. And I think it's something to do with the fact that, um, when you just have normal candor between a group of friends, th- a big proportion of people who are into podcasting just like that kind of voyeuristic fly-on-the-wall type stuff. But you're right. You- you guys have tackled some pretty difficult books. Didn't you tackle, um... There's a episode I've got queued up. Isn't it like some ridiculously difficult sci-fi book?

   2. NENat Eliason5:47

      Uh, Infinite Jest.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:49

      Infinite Jest. Yeah.

   4. NENat Eliason5:51

      Yeah. It's-

   5. CWChris Williamson5:52

      Yeah.

   6. NENat Eliason5:53

      ... it's, uh, it's... I guess it's a sci-fi book technically. But yeah, it's a super, super weird like thousand...... page book with 200 pages of endnotes. Um, like most of it makes very little sense. So without (laughs) reading it very carefully, it's, it's not quite like Ulysses level of confusing, but it's up there. So that was, that was a journey, getting through that book. Uh, the episode came together surprisingly well. I wasn't sure exactly what we were gonna talk about. I don't think either of us were, because like nothing really... there's no like huge plot driving the book. It's, it's really a character novel. Um, but it was fun to work through it. And honestly, I think the satisfaction is in having finished it, not necessarily in-

   7. CWChris Williamson6:41

      (laughs)

   8. NENat Eliason6:41

      ... all of the time spent reading it. So (clears throat) it was a good one.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:45

      Yeah, I guess that's probably the same as doing a marathon. Like there's big bits of a marathon that you're probably not gonna enjoy, but once you get across the finish line, it feels pretty good.

   10. NENat Eliason6:53

       Yeah, exactly. Everyone wants to have run a marathon, not to run a marathon.

3. 6:57 – 10:34

   Progressive summarization: the end-to-end workflow (Kindle → Readwise → Evernote)

   1. CWChris Williamson6:57

      Yeah. Perfectly correct. So one of the first things that I wanted to ask you about was your approach to progressive summarization. That's what Tiago Forte would refer to it as, or I guess in a, a more common parlance, it would be how do you remember the things that you read. Um, I know that you have a, a- an Evernote system and you also have like a, a membership sort of, uh, backend to your Evernote, which I think's really super interesting. So yeah, if you could s- talk to us about your process for remembering the things you read and then also explain to the listeners about your Evernote, uh, your little Evernote hustle you've got going on.

   2. NENat Eliason7:33

      Yeah. And to be clear, you know, I didn't come up with this system at all. This is Tiago's invention. And if anyone isn't familiar with Tiago's work, you should check it out. It's at, uh, Forte Labs, like F-O-R-T-E labs.co, C-O. Uh, and his blog is praxis.fortelabs.co. And he's really, I think, one of the only writers in the productivity space who's worth reading. Uh, pretty much all productivity writing is just like the same trash being rehashed a dozen different ways. His is actually novel and interesting and, uh, ultimately much more useful than most everything else out there. So-

   3. CWChris Williamson8:13

      That's a big accolade for-

   4. NENat Eliason8:15

      ... uh-

   5. CWChris Williamson8:15

      ... for Tiago.

   6. NENat Eliason8:16

      Yeah. No, and I, and I stand by that. I, I really... him and Chris Sparks are the only two people who I read in the productivity space anymore. Um, everybody else is not really contributing anything new or useful to the discussion, but they're doing good work. So, and Chris is at, uh, theforcingfunction.com.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:36

      Interesting.

   8. NENat Eliason8:37

      So-

   9. CWChris Williamson8:37

      Yeah, we had to... I actually had Tiago on about three weeks ago. We had him on talking about-

   10. NENat Eliason8:41

       Oh, wonderful.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:41

       ... talking about the digital productivity pyramid. Um, but the final question, I asked him the question about progressive summarization and that was as his, um, buzzer went that he had to go on to something else. So I thought-

   12. NENat Eliason8:54

       Huh.

   13. CWChris Williamson8:54

       ... let's, let's see what happens if we get into the trenches with someone who does progressive summarization, uh, at pretty, pretty high velocity and, and that's, that's you.

   14. NENat Eliason9:04

       Yeah. Yeah. So I, I use it as a way to consolidate and make my book notes in particular more useful. So whenever I'm reading, uh, a book, I'll pretty much always read it on my Kindle and I'll be highlighting stuff as I'm going. So I'm just using the Kindle highlight feature. Anything that looks kind of interesting, uh, I'll- I'll highlight so that I can pull it out later. And I'll sometimes highlight other things, mostly just as goal or signposts for context when I'm looking back at my notes later. I read most nonfiction now with the notes that I'm gonna take from them in mind. Uh, so it's very like strategic consumption, uh, to do it in a way where I know I'm gonna get good notes out of the book that I can use later. So I'm going through and I'm highlighting the things that are interesting and stand out. And then when, uh, I'm done, I use a tool called ReadWise, uh, readwise.com, that can take your Kindle, uh, highlights and then seamlessly export them to Evernote with all of the formatting and stuff coming out really cleanly. So it's just, you know, highlight, highlight, highlight, highlight in new lines with no like weirdness that you get with the other apps. So uh, uh, I'll take it all into Evernote and then I've just got this kind of like disorganized list of my highlights from the book. And then I'll go back through and first I'll like add whatever other signposting I need. So whether that's section titles or chapters or, uh, however else I'm gonna structure the notes

4. 10:34 – 12:06

   The layers of progressive summarization (bolding, highlighting, executive summaries)

   1. NENat Eliason10:34

      so that I can skim through them easier later. And then the progressive summarization comes in, which is going through and adding, uh, anywhere from three to four layers, I guess two to four layers of annotation to the note in order to make the highlights from the book even more useful. So, uh, in its base form, it's just your highlights, it's just the text that you pulled out of the book. Uh, layer two is going through and bolding the parts of those highlights that is, uh, most important. So you might have, you know, part of each highlight that's most important. You might have some highlights that are less important. This is usually the phase where I'll go through and delete some of them too.

   2. CWChris Williamson11:15

      Yeah.

   3. NENat Eliason11:16

      Like maybe I highlighted an idea early on in the book and then later on that idea got explained better and so I'll keep the highlight from later and delete the one from earlier. So I do a bit of cleanup there. Uh, and then once you've gone through and bolded all of the important parts, then you go through again and you highlight the most important parts of the bolded parts.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:36

      (laughs)

   5. NENat Eliason11:36

      So you're only reading the text that you've bolded. You're ignoring all of the unbolded text. And you're going through the bolded text and you're saying, "Okay, of this, what is the most important?" And you're highlighting that, uh, so that now when you skim through your note, you've got these highlighted call-outs of the most important parts of the book that you can easily jump to, uh, to pull out those ideas. And then there's another layer that I don't always do. I think Tiago does a better job of it. Uh, but if you keep coming back to a certain book or a certain note, you can create

5. 12:06 – 15:44

   Nat’s twist on Tiago Forte’s method + monetizing a personal knowledge base

   1. NENat Eliason12:06

      like a little executive summary at the top of the note...... and so that's just, like, maybe three to five bullet points of the most important ideas from the book or from the article, whatever you took the notes from, so that you can really quickly re-digest what, uh, you took away from that piece when you're coming back to it. Um, now I do this differently from Tiago, where Tiago, his method, or the way he does it is, like, as a book or an article gets resurfaced, so as he needs something for an article he's writing or it comes up in a conversation, then he might bring up the note, and then each time he brings it up, he does another layer. So he doesn't immediately go through and bold things. He waits, and then when it comes up again, he'll go through and bold it. Or at least this is how I remember how he said he did it.

   2. CWChris Williamson12:53

      Got you.

   3. NENat Eliason12:54

      Uh, what I do is I do it, I do it all up front after I've read the book, because as you alluded to, I have a product on my site where I sell these notes. So I've been doing it, uh, and I was doing it in a rougher form before I discovered Tiago's work, where I was just pulling out my highlights and organizing them and publishing them as pages on my blog, similar to what Derek Sivers does. And then, uh, as I, you know, got into Tiago's work and learned about progressive summarization, I started doing that to all my book notes. So now I've got, I think, like, 240 books in there-

   4. CWChris Williamson13:31

      (laughs)

   5. NENat Eliason13:31

      ... and they're all annotated and highlighted and everything. So it makes it really quick for me to go back through and pull out, uh, the, the most important takeaways. Yeah, 241 books. So, uh, and then I just sell that on my blog, and you pay $50 and you get lifetime access to all current and future notes, uh, that go in there, which is pretty useful if you're trying to decide, you know, what book to read or if, you know, you read a book but you didn't take any notes and you wanna go back and pull out some important stuff. I've got a lot of, like, the popular ones in there, uh, including Laws of Human Nature, of course, and-

   6. CWChris Williamson14:04

      Yes.

   7. NENat Eliason14:04

      ... Antifragile and all of the ones on, on Made You Think. So, yeah, that's sort of how that all started. And then the other fun thing with it is, since I publish a less annotated version of these notes on my site, my site actually ranks in Google for the titles of a lot of these books. Where if you search "a lot of these books" plus summary or plus highlights, you'll usually find my blog on the first page. So if you google, like, 48 Laws of Power summary, I think I'm, like, in the top three that come up for that. And that, you know, brings a lot of traffic to the site, and then people discover my other articles and they discover the paid version of the notes. So it's a nice little, like, bit of side passive income.

   8. CWChris Williamson14:43

      For sure. Yeah, it's, um, it's cool that you've taken something, this, this sort of evolution of ideas, or evolution of process that we've got here, where previously you were taking notes, then you refined your process of taking notes through Tiago's course. Then that became, that formed the foundation for you to then build a podcast off. Because I'm gonna guess when you're recording Made You Think, all that you really do is go back through your notes for the particular book that you're talking about and move through there, and you've got that as your reference. And then you've created a, uh, income stream off that. Also, you're driving traffic off that. It's like the ultimate evergreen content, I suppose.

   9. NENat Eliason15:22

      Yeah. Yeah, in many ways. And then obviously when I'm, uh, doing my, like, other articles that might reference stuff in one of these books, I've got all of my highlights right there, uh, so that (clears throat) I can just go back and pull out whatever sections that I wanna quote for my articles. So it's really useful for creating other content as well.

6. 15:44 – 18:50

   Choosing what to read (and escaping ‘bad book inertia’)

   1. CWChris Williamson15:44

      I got you. So how do you choose what you want to read? You've mentioned you've got, you know, 240 books, which are summarized. I'm gonna guess you'll have read more than that which haven't been summarized, and you seem to read at a pretty quick, quick pace. How do you choose what it is that you're going to dedicate your time to?

   2. NENat Eliason16:03

      Uh, it's sort of just whatever I'm interested in or if it's Made You Think related, it's whatever Neil and I want to do an episode on. There's not that much science behind it, honestly-

   3. CWChris Williamson16:12

      Got you.

   4. NENat Eliason16:12

      ... uh, 'cause I know the, the biggest impediment to reading a lot will just be reading stuff that I don't wanna read.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:20

      Mm.

   6. NENat Eliason16:20

      Because if I get, you know, into a book that I don't, that I'm not that interested in, then I'll just get stuck and, like, do other things instead. So, uh, I just kinda go with whatever is interesting to me at the time and, and read that.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:32

      Yeah, it's bizarre, that, um, kind of inertia that occurs when you are reading a book that you don't want to read. I know that Naval and Joe Rogan on the podcast that they did recently spoke about the fact that neither of them actually finish books. I think Naval's, like, notorious for just picking up a book, reading a page, finding something he likes, and then going down a rabbit hole on, like, Wikipedia and, and searching blogs for the rest of the night. Um, but for me personally, I find it's a bit of a, an open loop when I've got a book that... So, uh, Thinking Fast and Slow is a perfect example, and it's like, it's so long as well. It's a, it's a monster to get through. Um, I just, I've really struggled to get through that book and I keep on trying. I keep on picking it up, keep on picking it up, and every time I do, my overall reading for the week goes down because I just, uh, there's something (laughs) ... Like, I don't know whether it's 'cause I don't wanna be defeated, um, or whether I just wanna kind of grit my teeth and continue to read through it. But you, you're very correct. If there's listeners at home who are trying to develop a reading habit, uh, I d- have been and continue to at the moment over the, the coming years. Uh, hopefully that will get more and more easy for me as it, uh, the trajectory is suggesting. But yeah, the getting bogged down in a book is a surefire way to make reading an awful lot harder.

   8. NENat Eliason17:52

      Yeah, and I think that people sweat too much early on about, uh, you know, reading good books or challenging books, but it's like, get in the habit of just, like, reading anything first and then you can level up the difficulty as you go. Right? You don't wanna be reading...... businessy books, right, like, James Altucher trash for too long. But if you need to start there, like, there's nothing wrong with that.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:20

      Yeah. And especially before, before bed sometimes for me, if I do end up reading something that's too kind of go-getter and upward mobility, uh, focused, I end up going to bed with my mind absolutely buzzing. So, I think there's definitely a place in there for people to read, I don't know like, autobiographies or fiction or, you know, more narrative-based stuff, I guess, to, to kind of just give, give your brain a little bit of a rest.

   10. NENat Eliason18:49

       Definitely.

7. 18:50 – 19:46

   Growth Machine explained: SEO content marketing that drives compounding traffic

   1. CWChris Williamson18:50

      Yeah. Um, so tell us about Growth Machine. I'm super interested to hear about that.

   2. NENat Eliason18:55

      Yeah, so Growth Machine is a SEO-focused content marketing agency. So we work with, uh, e-commerce and tech companies to take over a decent portion of their blog and their content strategy, to get them, you know, ranked top of Google for everything related to their product and their customers' interests. So, we'll, you know ... I think the best example of this is our work on our own site, Cup & Leaf, which is a e-commerce tea store, and then we've created the Cup & Leaf blog talking about tea and managed to get in the top spots on Google for like, best green tea, best oolong tea, health benefits of jasmine tea, like all of those terms, and then that search traffic translates directly into sales that you're getting organically instead of having to buy ads on the terms.

8. 19:46 – 22:55

   Organic vs paid acquisition: complementarity, speed, and saturation concerns

   1. CWChris Williamson19:46

      Yeah. So the organic versus paid debate is one that we continue to have on this podcast an awful lot. The two co-hosts are big, uh, proponents of paid ... fans of Sam Ovens and of, uh, the guys behind ClickFunnels and, uh, the ... that kind of, uh, I guess ... how would you call it? The more transactional, uh, approach to, to driving traffic. But I, I certainly agree, and I think that organic, if you can get it right, is such a powerful tool.

   2. NENat Eliason20:20

      Yeah, and it doesn't have to be an either/or.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:22

      Yeah.

   4. NENat Eliason20:23

      You know, they, they usually support each other. And organic is slower and more difficult and takes longer to kick in, but if you can get it right, you know, you can potentially be getting ongoing customers for almost free. Right? Like-

   5. CWChris Williamson20:43

      Yeah.

   6. NENat Eliason20:43

      ... it, it can work very, very well if you know how to target the right things. But it's much harder, especially in the early days, to build a business on, because again, it is so slow, whereas you can just turn on ads tomorrow and-

   7. CWChris Williamson20:57

      (laughs)

   8. NENat Eliason20:57

      ... if you know what you're doing, start making-

   9. CWChris Williamson20:58

      Such-

   10. NENat Eliason20:58

       ... start making sales within a week.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:00

       Yeah, start driving traffic. It is, it's, it's one of these things. I, I wonder what your thoughts are on this, coming out from someone who does push, uh, to the optimization of SEO. My concern with the proliferation of paid media at the moment, or paid advertising, is that essentially, anybody can do it. If it's just a formula, and Rory Sutherland was on the podcast talking about this as well, and he said that he thinks Silicon Valley sees everything as an optimization problem, and that-

   12. NENat Eliason21:28

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:28

       ... they presume that if you get the correct combination of numbers on a spreadsheet, the output will be a black figure at the bottom of your balance. Um, and I don't know, for me, there has to be diminishing margins of return as more and more people find ... like, more and more people read Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson, or whatev- whatever their bible of choice for online advertising is. That particular strategy will get rinsed and rinsed down to the point at which so many people are doing it that the market won't respond anymore. What, what are your thoughts on that?

   14. NENat Eliason22:04

       Yeah. Uh, maybe. I mean, ads, I think, have always been here and always will be here, and they will just change how they're being presented to us. Like, most of the money now is going into Instagram ads instead of Facebook ads. Um, obviously it's still Facebook, but there, you know, people are getting better ROI on Instagram now 'cause Facebook ads are kinda played out, and maybe that will change over time. Like, maybe more will move into Pinterest or somewhere else. But I, I don't think it's ever gonna get so saturated that it no longer works. You just have to keep getting better at it, and there will probably always be interesting new areas to check out. But I think it's just like, as long as people are selling things online, there's gonna be ads, and if you're good, you're gonna make a lot of money, and if you're bad, you're (laughs) -

   15. CWChris Williamson22:51

       You're gonna lose a lot of money.

   16. NENat Eliason22:53

       ... you're gonna lose a lot of money.

   17. CWChris Williamson22:53

       Yeah. I, I totally-

9. 22:55 – 28:17

   Book recommendation #1: ‘Peak’ and the anti-hack view of skill acquisition

   1. NENat Eliason22:55

      Yeah.

   2. CWChris Williamson22:55

      ... totally agree. Um, so going back to the books and th- the, uh, content that you've been consuming over the last few years, some of the listeners may be thinking that "I'm pretty interested in getting stuck in." Have you got a, a top five or so that you could run us through? It doesn't need to be of all time, it could just be what you've thought of recently or anything like that. But I think some recommendations might be cool and then we can have a little discuss about each of the books, perhaps.

   3. NENat Eliason23:21

      Yeah. Top books? Um ... let's see. I don't know.

   4. CWChris Williamson23:24

      Or most read. What do you keep going back to?

   5. NENat Eliason23:28

      Oh, I, I re-read very rarely, 'cause I just take good enough notes the first time that I don't need to go re-read it-

   6. CWChris Williamson23:34

      Exactly.

   7. NENat Eliason23:35

      ... um-

   8. CWChris Williamson23:35

      Of course you do.

   9. NENat Eliason23:36

      ... for the most part.

   10. CWChris Williamson23:37

       (laughs)

   11. NENat Eliason23:37

       So I, I'm gonna ... I'm not gonna pick the best five, per se. I'm gonna try to pick a few that maybe haven't been talked about on here as much, 'cause I can make some guesses about what has probably come up before.

   12. CWChris Williamson23:48

       Awesome.

   13. NENat Eliason23:49

       Um, so Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool is probably the best book on learning and skill acquisition. Uh, way, way more useful than any of the like, hacky learning stuff like Tim Ferriss style books-

   14. CWChris Williamson24:08

       Oh.

   15. NENat Eliason24:08

       ... that I think are more popular. I think Peak is actually a legitimately useful, uh, one for learning, for somebody with a more long-term mindset. Um ...

   16. CWChris Williamson24:17

       Is that a prescriptive book? Or I haven't, I haven't read it.

   17. NENat Eliason24:21

       ... aah, it's less prescriptive. I mean, the thing is they're not trying to sell you that you're going to be able to like learn a language in 24 hours-

   18. CWChris Williamson24:30

       Mm-hmm.

   19. NENat Eliason24:31

       ... so they're much tempered in how they frame things. But it's very prescriptive if you know how to read and implement it.

   20. CWChris Williamson24:38

       Got you. I've got, um, Scott H. Young, uh, I've got him on this week talking about Ultralearning, which is his new book, and he references Peak in that. He references Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, who's been on this podcast as well, and, uh, Atomic Habits as well I suppose. But yeah, the kind of desire for people to learn how to learn, um, definitely identifies that most people don't know which is bizarre, right, considering almost everyone in the Western world is in full time education for at least like 11 years or something.

   21. NENat Eliason25:10

       Yeah. Yeah, but it's still a, uh, still a challenge. And I, I think the other thing too that people need to be careful about is that all of this like learning how to learn, uh, skill acquisition stuff, a lot of it is sort of a get rich quick scheme in disguise. And-

   22. CWChris Williamson25:26

       How so?

   23. NENat Eliason25:27

       ... like the old ... Well, because people think like, oh, I could just like, you know ... Or one, they think that the problem isn't that learning is hard and takes a while, it's that I'm like doing it incorrectly, right?

   24. CWChris Williamson25:41

       Mm-hmm.

   25. NENat Eliason25:41

       And so instead of just continuing to make progress in the way that they probably should, they look for hacks and they look for shortcuts and like they get obsessed over the whole 80/20 nonsense and like think they need to over optimize their process instead of just like doing the work and getting good at the skill. Like skill acquisition is really simple, like it's not complicated, but people over complicate it. Like one, to sell stuff, and two, because it's more fun to like spend time trying to hack your learning than it is to do the boring learning stuff, right?

   26. CWChris Williamson26:13

       (laughs) Yeah.

   27. NENat Eliason26:14

       Like you feel super productive re-reading, um, you know, like an article on how to learn and you feel like you're making progress, but it's like, no, you should probably just ... And if you're trying to learn a language, like you should be speaking to someone in that language and literally anything else you are doing is a waste of time, right? Like-

   28. CWChris Williamson26:33

       Yeah, 100%. The principle of, the principle of directness.

   29. NENat Eliason26:38

       Yeah, and I, I think it's just like you gotta be careful with all of the stuff that is trying to sell you that you can learn things like crazy quickly because nobody who's good at anything like learned it really quickly.

   30. CWChris Williamson26:50

       Mm-hmm.
10. 28:17 – 31:49

    Book recommendation #2: ‘Endurance’ and extreme survival leadership lessons

    1. NENat Eliason28:17

       I think it's very good. Uh, I'll say Endurance by Alfred Lansing is very good.

    2. CWChris Williamson28:28

       All right.

    3. NENat Eliason28:28

       Uh, so that's the story of Shackleton and his crew who were trying to do the first trans-Antarctic crossing and end up getting stuck in the ice right at the beginning of the trip and have to survive for I think like almost two years in Antarctica with no additional supplies or anything.

    4. CWChris Williamson28:51

       Two years?

    5. NENat Eliason28:51

       And ... Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson28:53

       (laughs) Oh my god.

    7. NENat Eliason28:54

       And everybody, like everybody outside of them just assumed they were dead because they never made it to their check-ins.

    8. CWChris Williamson29:02

       Yeah.

    9. NENat Eliason29:02

       Um, and every single member of the crew survived, uh, the whole like expedition and rescue mission. It's an absolutely insane book.

    10. CWChris Williamson29:12

        Wow.

    11. NENat Eliason29:13

        Um, so-

    12. CWChris Williamson29:15

        That's-

    13. NENat Eliason29:15

        ... highly recommend. That's probably like my favorite biography I've read. It's really, really incredible.

    14. CWChris Williamson29:19

        That's awesome. Um, have you read, uh, it's gonna f- it's ... So Man's Search for Meaning is one book I guess that kinda comes to mind with regards to that-

    15. NENat Eliason29:28

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson29:28

        ... like turmoil and people going through things, but, uh, The Forgotten Highlander or The Last Highlander I think it is by Alistair Irwin.

    17. NENat Eliason29:35

        No, I haven't read that.

    18. CWChris Williamson29:36

        Um, so this man, if you, if you, um, need a new autobiography style book to read, I really highly recommend this one. So this guy was a Scottish, uh, recruit in the Highlanders, uh, regiment, World War II.

    19. NENat Eliason29:54

        Okay.

    20. CWChris Williamson29:54

        Uh, placed, placed overseas in Japan and then when the Japanese took, uh, decided that they were going to invade and, and actually s- enter the war, he was taken prisoner. He basically had dysentery for like four years straight, worked on Bridge over the River Kwai, was left out in a hot tin box for two days with no food or water to basically cook in the sun, um-

    21. NENat Eliason30:21

        ... it's-

    22. CWChris Williamson30:22

        Yeah, man. It's like, it's like Man's Search for Meaning but extreme. Then he gets, uh, taken to a different, uh, uh, completely different camp, has to be hospitalized number of times. They're not g- not giving anyone any care. He gets put on one of these death ships, which is like basically a tin, a tin can floating out at sea. Then (laughs) , then starts working, gets transferred somewhere else, gets, starts working on a new bridge, and gets hit by the blast of the bomb from Nagasaki, and survives that as well, and then stays silent for-

    23. NENat Eliason30:55

        Wow.

    24. CWChris Williamson30:55

        ... stays silent for 40 years. And it's kind of I guess like a memoir. It's also a call-to-arms to, a call-to-account the Japanese government for the atrocities, 'cause there was, the Germans were held to account but I think, I don't think the Japanese were so much but, as is evident by Alistair's book, there's some pretty big sort of scary things that went on. Um, but yeah, that is like re- It's a easy read as well. It's very narrative-based, but like if you ever want to have contrast in your life and just to think like, (laughs) "I'm so, I'm so fortunate to just have a drink whenever I want a drink and two legs that work and, like, bowels that stay inside of my body," like... (laughs)

    25. NENat Eliason31:42

        (laughs) Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson31:43

        Yeah. It's, um, it's a good, (laughs) it's a good one. So-

    27. NENat Eliason31:46

        Sounds good.

    28. CWChris Williamson31:46

        Yeah. Uh, so what's next?

11. 31:49 – 39:54

    Book recommendation #3: ‘The Sovereign Individual’ and the limits of decentralization

    1. NENat Eliason31:49

       Oh yes, that's two. Uh, let's see. Next, I'll say Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. Uh, that's a really, really, really phenomenal books, uh, it's a really, really phenomenal book. Uh, I think, like, it will change how you think about government and individual autonomy, so it, and money-

    2. CWChris Williamson32:20

       Interesting.

    3. NENat Eliason32:21

       ... and power and a lot of things. It's, I think when it came out, it didn't get that much play, but it's having a moment now because it basically predicted a lot of stuff that's going on in crypto and the crypto economy.

    4. CWChris Williamson32:35

       Mm.

    5. NENat Eliason32:35

       So it's really big in like the Bitcoin fanboy space.

    6. CWChris Williamson32:38

       (laughs)

    7. NENat Eliason32:38

       Um, but it's like, it's a legitimately fantastic book and y- you will, uh, I think, think about government and individual sovereignty differently coming out of it. Um, the, it's a little, like, dry and hard to read at times so-

    8. CWChris Williamson32:54

       Mm-hmm.

    9. NENat Eliason32:54

       ... you may want to listen to the Made You Think episode first (laughs) -

    10. CWChris Williamson32:58

        Yep.

    11. NENat Eliason32:58

        ... just to see if it's like interesting before you try to force yourself through it-

    12. CWChris Williamson33:01

        Yeah.

    13. NENat Eliason33:01

        ... but it's very good.

    14. CWChris Williamson33:03

        Got you. Again, thinking about, uh, going back to the Naval and Joe Rogan podcast, you can tell I've listened to it twice in the last, uh, the last few days, it's all I've got in my mind.

    15. NENat Eliason33:10

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson33:11

        But he's talking about, um, the future of social media and how the, uh, process for crypto, the decentralization of crypto has paved a, a way for future technologies to proof themselves against being taken down, and he talks about, he, he predicts that at some point in the future you will have decentralized social networks where it can't, there's no one site, or there's no one host, and it can't be taken down and it will be a little bit more like the Wild West and, and stuff like that. So I think people thinking forward to this sort of stuff, to understand individual sovereignty and obviously that's Jordan Peterson's whole shtick, right? And he's sold like millions of books off the back of that this year.

    17. NENat Eliason34:00

        Yeah. You know, I hope that's right, but I think that humans tend towards collectivization and monopoly and centralization, not decentralization. Like, I think that deep down people would prefer decentralized models for things. Uh, or sorry, I think on the surface people say they want decentralized models for things-

    18. CWChris Williamson34:23

        Mm-hmm.

    19. NENat Eliason34:23

        ... but their revealed preferences always trend toward centralized. Like, I, I be, I'm kind of, I'd be very surprised if we actually get the hyper-decentralized world that a lot of the crypto community, and it sounds like Naval-

    20. CWChris Williamson34:42

        Mm-hmm.

    21. NENat Eliason34:42

        ... are prophesizing.

    22. CWChris Williamson34:43

        Mm.

    23. NENat Eliason34:44

        Because like you will inherently have disparities in power and any, like, collection of power is going to result in, like, centralization of control within-

    24. CWChris Williamson34:58

        (laughs)

    25. NENat Eliason34:58

        ... that power.

    26. CWChris Williamson34:59

        Yeah.

    27. NENat Eliason34:59

        Right? And like-

    28. CWChris Williamson35:00

        It's a communism problem-

    29. NENat Eliason35:01

        ... the, the idea that you would have a-

    30. CWChris Williamson35:02

        ... all over again, right?
12. 39:54 – 50:59

    Politics as tribal identity: why nuance collapses (Trump, tribes, and ‘package beliefs’)

    1. NENat Eliason39:54

       Yeah. You know, I would've felt more that way three years ago-

    2. CWChris Williamson39:58

       Mm-hmm.

    3. NENat Eliason39:58

       ... but I actually think that Trump has been really good for the, like, American sense of democracy because if anybody, like, sits down and tries to make a list of all the ways their life is worse with Trump being president, it's gonna be a very short list, right? Like, I really can't come up with a few things that are the direct responsibility of, like, Trump policies that have affected me on an individual level. And, like, the country is still going pretty well, right? Like I- I would agree that international policy and st- or like international relations and things like that have taken a hit, but I think everybody was like so terrified of what would happen with this, you know, seemingly insane person being in power-

    4. CWChris Williamson40:42

       (laughs)

    5. NENat Eliason40:42

       ... and the answer is, like, not much, right? Like the- the tariff stuff now kind of sucks because I mean like we sell tea, right, and our tea prices went up 25% importing them from China, but like the- these are all kind of like edge casey things, right? It's not like we got into some crazy nuclear war with North Korea. It's not like, you know, there are Nazis marching in the street like I think some people legitimately thought might happen, right? Like president has actually remarkably little influence on our lives and that should be kind of refreshing for how much we allow ourselves to get wrapped up in the insanity of some of that political stuff.

    6. CWChris Williamson41:17

       (laughs) Yeah, you are right. Do you think that people are very quick to ch- to personify these roles? Obviously their main actual problem was with Donald Trump's personality. I think there was a, uh, NBC or maybe one of the more, maybe like a, a Vice News article or something, a video that they did online where they went around before the election and they were showing particular, uh, campaign objectives or particular policies that was it to voters from the opposite side and saying, "This is what, this is a, a Hillary policy, blah, blah, blah." And they're going, "Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Classic Hillary, classic. Love it. Love it." And then at the end they go-

    7. NENat Eliason41:59

       Yep.

    8. CWChris Williamson41:59

       ... "Actually, all of those are Donald Trump." And you could see the cognitive dissonance occur (laughs) -

    9. NENat Eliason42:05

       (laughs)

    10. CWChris Williamson42:05

        ... in people when they're like, "Oh, h- h- I, I, I like the policy," but the per- with the- the- the NPC programming just like triggers. So is that because-

    11. NENat Eliason42:14

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson42:14

        ... we've got, you know, like The Bachelor and- and, uh, like Pop Idol equivalents and stuff like that where everything's personified and it's all about the person's narrative and story and that often can actually detract away from the objective measures?

    13. NENat Eliason42:30

        Uh, yeah. I mean, I think that's part of it. I think too, like humans are inherently tribal and we need some tribe to feel a part of. And most... and also importantly, I think we need some tribe to be an enemy of, right?

    14. CWChris Williamson42:42

        Yeah.

    15. NENat Eliason42:42

        And if you... and I actually think that it's a useful exercise to think about your, like what tribes you choose to identify with and then which tribes you choose to like, fight against, you know, intellectually or emotionally. Or like, what will you allow yourself to be triggered by-

    16. CWChris Williamson43:02

        (laughs)

    17. NENat Eliason43:02

        ... is kind of a worthwhile exercise because if you don't pick what you're, what's going to be like your enemy, then your friends or your community or like whatever news you let through your filter is gonna pick it for you. Um, and like politics is just the easiest one, right? It's super easy to hang out with all of your liberal or conservative friends and like shit on the other team-

    18. CWChris Williamson43:26

        Yeah.

    19. NENat Eliason43:27

        ... in the same way that, you know, you'll just shit on the other like sports team. And you're like... No- almost nobody arguing about politics has any impact in the political sphere at all, right?

    20. CWChris Williamson43:37

        (laughs)

    21. NENat Eliason43:37

        Like everybody getting up about the news, like it doesn't affect your life. Like, it's not gonna change how you behave day to day. Like, you're not gonna go do anything about it. Like, this thing that you're getting so pissed about, it's not gonna like... You're, you're like, you're not gonna do anything. You're not gonna run for office. You're not gonna go like petition at the local courthouse or whatever to get something changed. You're just gonna like bitch about it on Facebook. (laughs) So-

    22. CWChris Williamson43:58

        Yeah.

    23. NENat Eliason43:58

        ... it's like, it's, it's just a fun bonding thing more than anything, right? And it's a way to show that you're a member of the group, because everyone's always trying to feel out what tribes all the other people around them are in. And a really easy way to show what tribe you're in is like how you feel about political stuff, right?

    24. CWChris Williamson44:17

        Yeah, yeah. Because it... Downstream from that, it suggests that there's more implications people can draw about your personality. I was speaking to Caleb-

    25. NENat Eliason44:25

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson44:25

        ... Caleb Jones the other day, who's a massive non-monogamy advocate, and he said, you know, non, non-monogamy, uh, leans left, lots of libertarian friends, but doesn't smoke weed, doesn't drink. And for his other friends, that's like, "What, you don't smoke?" Like, they can't believe the fact that he doesn't smoke weed because it doesn't fit the profile.

    27. NENat Eliason44:50

        Yeah. Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson44:51

        Which is, is, is hilarious.

    29. NENat Eliason44:53

        People aren't comfortable with that. (laughs)

    30. CWChris Williamson44:54

        Uh, yeah. Again, I was talking to Robert Greene and he was saying about how not, uh, not allowing people to put you in a box and not allowing people to categorize you, uh, sort of one dimensionally is one of the best things that you can do, not only to hedge your personality, your interests in life, but also just to come across as a bit more of an enigma and a bit more of a multi-layered, multi-faceted, interesting individual. I don't think anyone wants to look back in the life and feel like it was a, a trope or (laughs) like a cliche. "I, I... My life was really good, I was a caricature of myself."
13. 50:59 – 56:06

    Final quick-fire book picks: ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’ and ‘The Denial of Death’

    1. NENat Eliason50:59

       Yeah, exactly.

    2. CWChris Williamson50:59

       ... of that was shit. Um, so final two books. Nat, we'll do quick fire.

    3. NENat Eliason51:04

       Okay. Quick fire, uh, final two books. Uh, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. I would say... (clicks tongue) Hmm. I'm trying to find a good one here. Um...

    4. CWChris Williamson51:16

       With 240 to choose from, I imagine that's probably not actually that easy of a choice.

    5. NENat Eliason51:19

       Yeah, yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson51:20

       Does it feel like having to pick one of you, one of your favorite children?

    7. NENat Eliason51:24

       Maybe, yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson51:25

       Like, I gotta pick, I gotta pick my favorite kid here.

    9. NENat Eliason51:28

       Good. Well, if you, uh... So I've got all of my notes ordered by rating up on my site, so if you go to, like, natalyson.com/notes, you can see 'em all. But I'll throw out... Gödel, Escher, Bach is amazing. It's-

    10. CWChris Williamson51:41

        What was that, sorry?

    11. NENat Eliason51:41

        It's, uh, Gödel, Escher, Bach-

    12. CWChris Williamson51:44

        Okay.

    13. NENat Eliason51:45

        ... by Douglas Hofstadter. He was one of, like, the early pio- pioneers in terms of thought in the AI space, and it's, it's one of the most intellectually challenging books I think I've ever read.

    14. CWChris Williamson51:57

        Wow.

    15. NENat Eliason51:58

        Uh, the writing, the writing is very easy, right? It's not difficultly written, but it requires, like, grasping and trying to work with ideas from, like, math, physics, logic, biology, and also these, like, tricky philosophical ideas about what is a brain, what is a mind, like, is there an eye, all of that.

    16. CWChris Williamson52:19

        Wow.

    17. NENat Eliason52:19

        Uh, and it's written in this extremely beautiful style that merges, uh, artwork by MC Escher, uh, narrative little fables in the style of, like, Lewis Carroll, and then more, uh, more, like, prescriptive nonfiction writing that brings it all together. It's a very cool book. Uh, there's really no other book quite like it.

    18. CWChris Williamson52:41

        That's awesome. That sounds really, really cool. Would you recommend... Is Kindle sufficient for that, or does it need to be the physical copy?

    19. NENat Eliason52:49

        I don't think there is a Kindle version. Uh, and if there is, I wouldn't recommend it. I would definitely read the physical version so that you get all of the art laid out properly, so... Because, like, there's, uh... So a lot of the ideas in it come back to this idea of, like, strange loops and, uh, recursive relationships between ideas or functions in a computer, things like that. And so some of the narratives are themselves recursive and nested in these odd ways that require you to see the physical layout in the book to totally get what's going on. I think on a Kindle, it'd be really hard.

    20. CWChris Williamson53:21

        Yeah, I got you.

    21. NENat Eliason53:23

        And then last one I'll throw out would be Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. That's another super interesting one. It, it's basically just about what it sounds like, that almost everything we do is about or is in some way related to our uncomfortableness with death and trying to create, you know, these pyramids, these sculptures that will outlast us at our, in our, in our feeble attempts at immortality, so...

    22. CWChris Williamson53:49

        Ah. I was speaking to Carl Sedestrom. Do you know Carl? He, uh, was the guy who-

    23. NENat Eliason53:54

        Nice.

    24. CWChris Williamson53:54

        ... guy who did, uh... He optimized one area of his life every month for a year. He basically immersed himself in, like, the life hacking world, um, and he optimized one, one month was sex, one month was money, one month was productivity, one month was, like, relationships or fitness or whatever it might be. And, um, his sequel book, which was about happiness, and he said, uh, he was pretty much certain the overarching principle between both books was that the reason people are trying to optimize their life so hard and the reason that people are searching for happiness is in an effort to stave off their thoughts about death. And it sounds... (laughs) It's such a morbid, like, bottom line to put to a book, but I do think that-

    25. NENat Eliason54:40

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson54:41

        ... I do think that our fear of the end drives so much of what people do. I mean, obviously, like, that maximizes evolutionary fitness, right? Like, being afraid of death is, is generally, over the, uh, uh, the course of our evolution, a pretty good thing to have.

    27. NENat Eliason54:55

        Right (laughs) .

    28. CWChris Williamson54:56

        Um, but now in a, uh, a world of abundance, it leads to some pretty, uh, some odd, um, some odd thought loops occurring.

    29. NENat Eliason55:05

        Yeah. Seriously.

    30. CWChris Williamson55:07

        For sure.

Episode duration: 56:06