The Harsh Truth About Money & Happiness - Sahil Bloom

Chris Williamson 0:00 Happy New Year, man.

Sahil Bloom 0:01 Happy New Year.

Chris Williamson 0:02 How did you spend it?

Sahil Bloom 0:03 (laughs) Well, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old, so I'm guessing our New Years were a little bit different. I, uh, I went to bed at 8:30, um, after a little dance party with my two-and-a-half-year-old little guy.

Chris Williamson 0:13 Okay. Well, I had norovirus, so I was in a three-piece tuxedo at the New York Athletic Club running back and forth from shedding my brains out in the toilet.

Sahil Bloom 0:21 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:21 So...

Sahil Bloom 0:22 But you were in New York, so we were actually like a few miles apart, but we were having a very happy New Year's-

Chris Williamson 0:25 I could have come to your toilet.

Sahil Bloom 0:26 Yeah, we... (laughs) It could have been my toilet.

Chris Williamson 0:28 It could have been great.

Sahil Bloom 0:28 Although, we would have been asleep, so you would have had to run to the toilet.

Chris Williamson 0:30 Me and the two-and-a-half-year-old sharing a bathroom together-

Sahil Bloom 0:32 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:32 ... at 3:00 in the morning.

Sahil Bloom 0:33 Yeah, we actually have someone that does that on a frequent basis, so you wouldn't, you wouldn't have been alone. That's good.

Chris Williamson 0:37 Yeah. Uh, just if you do have a stomach bug, my advice is don't wear an outfit that requires three minutes to undo.

Sahil Bloom 0:44 Have you ever seen the Family Guy episode where Peter gets the, uh, pajama pants that have the, like, trap door in the back?

Chris Williamson 0:50 The butt hole? Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 0:51 Yeah, you should have just worn one of those.

Chris Williamson 0:52 That would have been a solution.

Sahil Bloom 0:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:53 But the problem was that the guy at the front, the toilet attendant guy at the front must have thought, "This man... I'm in an, uh, event filled with rich bankers and, and, like, dynasty money and all the rest of it. Uh, probably quite a lot of cocaine going around."

Sahil Bloom 1:08 Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

Chris Williamson 1:09 He must have looked at me and thought, "That is the fucking king of cocaine."

Sahil Bloom 1:13 For sure.

Chris Williamson 1:13 "That man is shoveling some good stuff in there." 'Cause I was back and forth every seven minutes or so. Uh-

Sahil Bloom 1:20 Was it one of those bathrooms that had, like, a person that would hand you a towel after you washed your hands?

Chris Williamson 1:24 Mercifully not.

Sahil Bloom 1:25 Okay, good.

Chris Williamson 1:25 He was outside.

Sahil Bloom 1:26 'Cause that would have been rough.

Chris Williamson 1:27 He was outside. Uh...

Sahil Bloom 1:28 Yeah. That's always a little embarrassing.

Chris Williamson 1:29 Speaking of the new year, though, I saw a tweet from you that said, "You're one year of focus away from people saying you got lucky." And, um, yeah, I, I know exactly what you mean.

Sahil Bloom 1:40 Yeah. That's, um, that's an important concept. It, it's one of those things that I think about a lot, that once you've made it, once you've achieved success, everyone wants to call you lucky. All those people that were, like, in the dark hating on you, all the people that were belittling you when you wanted to go and chase that dream, when you wanted to go do the thing, they're the first ones to call you lucky once you achieve it. And they didn't see all of the shit that you did in the dark, all of the struggles, all of the failures, all of the pains that you came back from, but they're the first ones that are gonna go around saying that you got lucky on the backend. So I think the call to action is, wear that as a badge of honor. When people are calling you lucky, you've clearly done something right, 'cause you know what went on in the dark behind it.

Chris Williamson 2:22 The other one is, "I bet you had wealthy parents."

Sahil Bloom 2:26 (laughs) Yeah, your privilege. I mean, it's... That's been a meme over the last few years, right? It's like, "Well, that doesn't acknowledge the privilege." Um, I do think that, um... You think about your own life, and like the life cycle. The early years of your life are governed by type one luck. Blind luck, right? Like, the base circumstances of your life, acts of God, where you're born, who you're born to, all of those things. But beyond that, your luck is mostly a byproduct of the actions that you're taking-

Chris Williamson 2:55 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 2:56 ... in your life. It's mostly a byproduct of the motion that you're creating and the things that you're building, how you're actually going out and interacting with the world. Idea being, it's very hard to get lucky sitting on the couch doing nothing at home. It's much easier to get lucky if you're going out and doing something.

Chris Williamson 3:11 Yeah, you've got a bracket that your world exists within, and much of that bracket has actually been determined by things that were outside of your control. But within that bracket, almost everything is within your control, and the fact that people can't hold two thoughts in their mind at the same time is where that gets confusing, and you get accused of victim blaming or not fully understanding the challenges that people face, or pandering and not giving people sufficient motivation and giving them a hard enough kick up the ass to get them to go and do the thing. So ultimately, I, I, I think that it's very difficult to please every... anybody, frankly. Uh, but yeah, the, the fact that one year of focus... It, it is, it is absurd to look back as you get a little bit older and find individual 12-month periods where you say, "Wow, the difference between the beginning and the end of that." And it... For me, you can probably track it from the beginning of the year as well. It doesn't happen June to June. Uh, it does tend to happen, uh, January to December. And that's an interesting thing about resolutions. I know it's cool to hate on resolutions, to kind of take a more holistic view and say, "Well, there's nothing, nothing particularly special about January 1st. Why couldn't you have done it on December 31st?" Well, because the human brain is irrational and it uses loads of random motivation. Look at the, um... You'll have seen this. The split times for a marathon.

Sahil Bloom 4:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:32 And they all cluster around important milestones. They cluster around 3:00 and 3:15 and 3:30, but, like, there's not a big spike at 3:37.

Sahil Bloom 4:42 Have you seen diamond pricing?

Chris Williamson 4:44 No.

Sahil Bloom 4:44 Diamond pricing is a perfect example of this. A 1.99 carat diamond versus a 2.00 carat diamond, it doesn't just go up by that tiny percentage. It's a huge leap, because the human mind has this, like, ego attached to the two versus the one. No one wants to give their girlfriend a 1.99 carat.

Chris Williamson 5:02 (laughs)

Sahil Bloom 5:02 You wanna give her the 2.01. So the price goes up like 20% on the slight jump. (laughs) It's that exact thing.

Chris Williamson 5:10 Yeah. Yeah, and I think... You know, I... That's why I, I'm... We're at the start of the year. I'm all for someone carrying the New Year's resolution thing forward, and, uh... Yeah. You can achieve an awful lot in a single year.

Sahil Bloom 5:22 Yeah, and you take the time to zoom out at the end of the year, no matter what. Like, no matter who you are. And part of that's because you have the space to do it, right? Like, because of whatever you're doing for work, it slows down. Whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you work for someone 9:00 to 5:00, you, you actually have space in your life to zoom out and think at the end of the year. And so people do it then. It's natural. And as a result, you have a comparison point that is very natural from year to year because you were able to zoom out on an annual basis. I, I mean, I think about that all the time, of like just how much can change in a year. I have... You... It's very easy to say that things take 10 years. Like, I think Bill Gates was the one that said that most people...... overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And I've often thought that that same exact quote applies to a year. I mean, it will blow your mind. If you actually sit down and are focused every single day for a year, your entire life can change.

Chris Williamson 6:16 Yeah. What's the

Chris Williamson 6:18 problem people have when they look at the scoreboard of their lives and they were kind of hinting toward what it means to live a good life, how you sort of create the constituent parts of that? What, what do people get wrong when they think about that scoreboard?

Sahil Bloom 6:32 Peter Drucker, uh, famous management theorist who you might know, uh, once said, "What gets measured gets managed." And it's this idea that the thing that you can measure becomes the thing that you optimize around, the thing that you very narrowly focus on, myopically focus on. And for us in our own lives, that thing that we can measure is money. It's so easy. You could put a single number and apply it to your entire life so you know your worth, so you can compare yourself to others. And money's measurability is a feature, not necessarily a bug. It's really useful, and as a result it's perpetuated through society. But because it's so measurable, it becomes the entire focus of our lives. It's the only thing that we think about when we try to progress on the life scoreboard, right? R- when we try to win the game, it's the thing that we focus on. But unfortunately, it is not particularly well aligned with trying to build a meaningful, happy, successful life. Uh, it is up to a point very useful as a tool to reduce fundamental burdens and stresses. I know you've had Arthur Brooks on here. He's done a bunch of research around this. At the lower levels of your life, we know you can reduce a bunch of stress by having money. You can take care of the people around you. You can pay for food, shelter, all of those basic things. But once you get past that point, the science is pretty clear that it's not going to be money that drives incremental fulfillment and happiness.

Chris Williamson 7:55 Yeah, it feels like you've spent a lot of time looking at the relationship between money and happiness. What's your... uh, it's too trite to say do, y- you know, being poor can make you miserable, but being rich might not make you happy. Uh, summarize that for me.

Sahil Bloom 8:09 Yeah. Basically, all of the research is summarized around three points. At lower levels, money does buy happiness. At the lower levels of, let's say, annual income, money directly buys happiness. And it's very clear that it does that, because it reduces those fundamental burdens and stresses. Above a baseline level, which you can argue over what that baseline level is. The first and most formative study was Daniel Kahneman. He said $75,000 a year. Then everyone went nuts and said, "No, it's not 75." Then there was one that said $200,000 a year. The number is sort of beside the point, because if you live in New York City, uh, with two kids, that number is going to be significantly higher than someone living in Omaha, Nebraska or Mississippi or a random place somewhere in the world. But the point is that at that baseline level, once you get above it, if you are unhappy and you're at that baseline level, more money doesn't make you happier. And if you're happy at that baseline level, more money is not going to make you happier. So your, your natural disposition at that level is more important, and the other things in your life are what are going to be driving incremental happiness. It's going to be free time. It's going to be people. It's going to be purpose. It's going to be health. It's these other things in life that drive the incremental gains above it. I think Arthur Brooks does an incredible job summarizing this well when he says, "We are sort of like rats. Like, we're s- we're sort of like mice with cheese," uh, where early in our life you ring this money bell and you experience this happiness because you're on that early part of the curve and because it is actually improving your life in a meaningful way. But we create this pattern in our mind that that natural linear relationship between money and happiness is going to continue forever. And we hit the point where it is no longer doing it, but we think it's going to continue to. So we go our entire lives continuing to try to ring the money bell, thinking it's going to bring us those same gains from early, even though it doesn't.

Chris Williamson 10:13 What was that study that you told us about in our chat to do with when you ask people how much money they want to, uh, w- would make them happy-

Sahil Bloom 10:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:23 ... and it continue, continues to go up? Can you explain that?

Sahil Bloom 10:25 Yeah. Michael Norton, uh, is a Harvard Business School professor, and he did this study with high net worth individuals, so anyone worth $10 million up through hundreds of millions of dollars. And he asked them, "On a scale of one to 10, how happy they are?" And they all answered. And then he asked, "How much money would you need in order to be at a 10?" And across the board, whether they were worth 10 million, 100 million, a billion, they all said somewhere from two to five x as much money as they currently have. So no matter what, it didn't matter if they were worth 10 or worth 100, they all said two to five x. And I've gone and anecdotally asked successful people in my own life.

Chris Williamson 11:02 You did it in our group chat.

Sahil Bloom 11:03 I did it in our group chat. I asked everyone. I went and asked hundreds of people this question. And across the board you find this. Like, someone worth 10 million says they need 30, because then they could fly private more. Someone worth 100 says they need 500 because then they would get invited to the cooler yacht parties. Whatever the thing is, we just naturally reset to three to five x.

Chris Williamson 11:21 Mm. Yeah, it's fascinating about the, uh, what's get, wh- wh- what it is that we can measure is the thing we care about the most. And money is just the best game at that. Is, is that an argument to try and gamify the other areas of your life? Should you have a dashboard that's tracking everything else?

Sahil Bloom 11:36 I mean, that's exactly what I'm trying to do with this book. Um, you know, the whole idea of creating a measurable tool for these other areas of life that we know are the ones that create meaning and fulfillment. Uh, we know what they are. Like, I'm not giving you a new answer here. I'm helping you actually ask the question so that you can figure out how to build your life around those things. We know that having meaningful relationships makes you happier and more, more fulfilled. Right? Like, actually the science on this is abundantly clear. The Harvard Study of Adult Development was this study conducted over 85 plus years, 2,000 plus participants, and they found that the single greatest predictor of living a good life was the strength of your relationships. A- and actually, the single greatest predictor of their physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It was more impactful than whether they smoked or drank, whether they had bo- high blood pressure, cholesterol, any of those things. It was your relationships that actually impacted it. But we don't have a way to measure how we feel about our relationships or where they are in the same way that we do money. Or we don't have a way to measure how we feel about our purpose and whether we're pursuing things with curiosity and growth. We don't have a way to measure whether we feel good about our health in the same way, although that's getting a bit better.

Chris Williamson 12:49 Mm.

Sahil Bloom 12:49 But all of these things we need to factor into, like, an overall life wealth score so that you can have them alongside money on that journey.

Chris Williamson 12:59 What's the life razor?

Sahil Bloom 13:02 This is one of my favorite concepts, uh, from the book. So, you know what the, uh, for anyone that doesn't understand what a razor is, a razor is a rule of thumb to simplify decision-making. The most famous razor that people talk about is Occam's Razor. It's the idea that, uh, the explanation, the simplest possible explanation is often the best one. Basically, simple is beautiful. Uh, and in the book, I propose this idea of having a life razor, a single decision-making heuristic that allows you to cut through the noise in your own life, something that allows you to navigate whatever chaos ensues. Uh, to just have a simple way to make a decision in those moments. Uh, and the best example of that, that I've come across was Marc Randolph, the CEO of Netflix, posted this, uh, tweet several years ago where he said, "My definition of success..." And it was all about the fact that every single Tuesday throughout his entire career, he had founded some of the most transformative technology companies in the world, he had a hard rule that at 5:00 PM on Tuesday evening, he would take his wife out for a date. No matter what, started one of the biggest companies in the technology world, he would leave at 5:00 PM to take his wife out on a date. And when I spoke to him, the one thing that became very clear to me was, it didn't have that much to do with the date or any one particular evening with his wife. It had everything to do with what it implied about who he was as a person-

Chris Williamson 14:29 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 14:30 ... what it meant for his identity as a human being, that he was the type of person who left at 5:00 PM to take his wife out for a date, that he had these clear priorities in mind, and it implied things to the people around him. It was ripple creating in his life. We all need a similar idea to that in our own world, something that defines who we are as a person. So my life razor would be that I will coach my son's sports teams. For me, that is in some ways about the type of father that I am to him, that I have to be the type of person that my son wants to be around.

Chris Williamson 15:02 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 15:02 It also means that I'm the type of person that will never sacrifice my integrity or character for the pursuit of, you know, some new thing, some more, because if I do that, uh, my son won't want to have me around. He won't be proud to have me coaching his teams. My wife won't be proud to have me out in the community. The community won't want me around. So, in a moment when I have a decision to make, I can ask myself, "What does the type of person who coaches his son's sports teams do in this moment?"

Chris Williamson 15:32 Mm-hmm. The single ordinating principle thing, I seem to remember two examples, one from Bezos, one from Elon. The Bezos one was every question through Amazon went through the filter, does this make the customer experience better? And I think Elon's was, does this get us closer to Mars?

Sahil Bloom 15:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:50 And yeah, when you think that there's a lot of ways that the world can be chaotic, and bringing that under a single variable, one dimension, does this achieve... does this get us closer to X? Does this make me more likely to be the sort of father that would be able to coach my son's sports teams? Does this make me more likely to be able to leave at 5:00 PM-

Sahil Bloom 16:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:11 ... to go on a date with my wife? That helps a lot.

Sahil Bloom 16:16 Yeah, I mean, uh, the space example is a good one, the Elon example, because, uh, the example I give in the book of, uh, where I started to think about this was from Apollo 13, you know that movie?

Chris Williamson 16:27 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 16:27 Um, so in the, like, climactic scene of Apollo 13, uh, they're trying to re-enter the atmosphere, and they're having to do a manual burn of the engines because the computers are all shut down. And if they come in too steep, they're gonna, like, blow up. If they come in too shallow, they're gonna skip off into space. And they don't have a way to figure out the perfect angle. And Tom Hanks has this heroic moment where he's like, "Well, I just have to keep a fixed, uh, point in space, and if I can keep the Earth in this tiny triangular window that's sitting here in front of me, it's gonna allow us to enter at the proper angle." And that whole concept of, like, keeping the Earth in the window is really what I'm talking about. It's having that one central point of focus that allows you to cut through all of the complexity and chaos that enters your life.

Chris Williamson 17:12 How do people find that out?

Sahil Bloom 17:15 You have to know what matters to you. You have to know what you truly care about. Like, what is your true north in life? And the question I often ask people is, "What does your ideal day look like at age 80?" Really think about that. Like, truly visualize and imagine what your ideal day looks like as an 80-year-old. And who are you with? What are you doing? What are you thinking about? How do you feel? And then think, are you actually taking actions today to create that future? Because what happens is most people will say, "My ideal day is sitting with people I love, feeling healthy of body and bo- body and mind, thinking about things that I care about, friends coming over." And then you ask them what they're doing on a daily basis, and they're basically chasing bullshit, right? They're chasing money, they're drinking, they're, you know, partying, doing not, like, things that actually are not leading to that end that they say they want.

Chris Williamson 18:07 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 18:07 It's like the, uh, the adage of, uh, "Don't tell me your priorities. Show me your calendar."

Chris Williamson 18:13 (laughs)

Sahil Bloom 18:13 Like, are your actions actually creating the future that you are trying to create?

Chris Williamson 18:16 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 18:16 Yes or no?

Chris Williamson 18:17 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 18:17 Be honest with yourself. Be able to look in the mirror. Um, but those things that we want are remarkably similar, but our ability to take actions on them in the present is very different.

Chris Williamson 18:28 Is it a challenge, especially as people who are maybe a little bit younger and their life is in more flux, because the thing that you want right now might be to get a partner? Like, that's really what I want, what I really, really should be focused on. Does this make me more likely to be attractive-

Sahil Bloom 18:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:42 ... to the sort of person I would spend the rest of my life with? Well, after a while, presuming that you managed to be successful in that, that needs to fall by the wayside-

Sahil Bloom 18:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:50 ... and then there's another one, and maybe that's an even shorter window. Like, when your son is 18, I mean, unless you end up going to the Jets or something and you're like, "Wow, this is fucking sick-"

Sahil Bloom 19:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:00 "... I've, like, transitioned again." Um, w- th- that's gonna have to change.

Sahil Bloom 19:05 Yeah. Yeah, your life has seasons, and-... what you prioritize or focus on during any one season can and should change. And as a result, your life razor will change across these different seasons of your life. Obviously, while my son is young, my life razor can be this. As he gets older, when he moves on, when he's, you know, off, and it's just my wife and I again, or, uh, you know, when we have different priorities, that life razor will change just like your priorities and focus change. I mean, my 20s and 30s, early 30s were spent very much in a foundation building season of my life. I was trying to build a financial foundation, which is a great way to use your 20s.

Chris Williamson 19:44 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 19:45 Don't get me wrong. Like, I am not anywhere in this book saying that money doesn't matter, like, that you should, oh, go and move to the Himalayas and just, like, drink warm broth and meditate for 12 hours a day. I mean, if you want to do that, by all means, go do it. I just won't be joining you. I like money. Uh, money isn't nothing. It simply can't be the only thing.

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Chris Williamson 21:04 Mm. Yeah, you had this insight around, um, you need to work hard first before you can start to work smart.

Sahil Bloom 21:11 Yeah. I think that the narrative around hard work has been lost, uh, especially with the current generation. It sort of became a meme to say hard work is overrated, uh, and that you have to work smart. You cannot work smart before you work hard because you have no idea what to work ha- what to work smart on. You just have no clue, right? You don't... It- it's like, um... The way that I think about it is when you're young, the only asset you have is time. It is the only asset you have. You don't have networks, you don't have money, you don't have knowledge, you don't have experience, you don't have wisdom. You don't have any of those things. You have time. So what you need to do is you invest your time to gain knowledge, networks, money, wisdom, experience. Then you can work smart because you have these things. You know where to deploy them for the highest potential ROI, for those extraordinary outcomes. But you can't do this before you have it. And so working hard is the investment of that time to acquire the experience, the wisdom, the knowledge, the networks, the money. And then once you have it, you can deploy it to work smart.

Chris Williamson 22:19 Yeah, another one that I loved from you, "The worst decisions in life are made when you allow your head to talk you into something when your gut already said no." And that, I think... Even if you haven't done the formal exercise of the life razor, you have an idea about where you want to be and (clears throat) there's this little voice in the back of your mind that keeps a tally. You know that, um... What's that game where, like, hot or cold?

Sahil Bloom 22:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:41 And someone's trying to work out what it is that you've hidden in the room and you're going, "Warmer, warmer, colder, colder, colder." And there's just a little radar GPS ticker in the back of your mind that goes, "Hey, you moved yourself further away from the person you want to be today." And if it's poorly defined, I think that probably causes, um, discontent because, ah, fuck, like, what- what is that thing? What is that place I'm going to? I know I moved further away from it today with my actions, but I don't, I can't specifically tell you why, maybe, or maybe I can, but I can't tell you what it was that I moved further away from. I just know that I acted like a bit of a dick today.

Sahil Bloom 23:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:16 Like yesterday, perfect example. I got off the plane and I'd had, like... Fucking norovirus, so a- a bad 48 hours. The plane journey had been long, I'd been traveling and I had to get in, uh, it was all rushed and, uh, I- I wasn't as courteous to the Uber driver as I should be. And, uh, I remember thinking like, "Huh, that, that's not the sort of person that I want to be." So, like, sort of shook his hand and wished him a good day and tipped him and stuff afterward and was like, "Okay, the..." Like, that kind of rids me at least a little bit of this agitated state. Uh, but yeah, the... Everybody knows. Like, you know, you've got this little conscience or daemon or whatever sat in the back of your mind knowing if you're moving yourself further toward that or further away, regardless of whether you've de- designed and defined your life razor or not.

Sahil Bloom 24:05 Yeah, it takes a level of self-awareness to tune into that gut. I think of that gut as, like, your energy in a lot of ways. Our- our mutual friend George Mack has that thing of, like, uh, treadmill or couch friends. Uh, and that's a perfect example of this exact thing, of tuning into how you actually feel about something is a very good way to, uh, make decisions in your life. I- I mean, I think about the number of bad business and financial decisions I've made where I knew it didn't feel good, but I allowed myself to be talked into it by my head.

Chris Williamson 24:40 Mm.

Sahil Bloom 24:40 Like, the initial gut instinct, the energy was, "Oh, this doesn't make sense. This is, this is not good. There's some signal, there's something that's off. I don't feel good about it." But then you start the, like, "Well, I could make this, I could do this, this could happen. What if this..." And you talk yourself into it, and inevitably those things go to shit and it ends up being bad. But you're allowing your head to outsmart your gut. And so I think that just tuning into that more regularly, learning to just listen to that initial gut instinct on something, the energy and what it tells you, is a great razor for life with people, with business deals, with financial decisions, with all of this.

Chris Williamson 25:16 So, yes, but-... more so when you have more experience. Because again, in the first instance, if you're 20, what, what are you... I mean, unless you've had a very experiential teens, what the fuck are you listening to?

Sahil Bloom 25:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:32 Like, what, what experience are you drawing on here? That is where you would look at it and maybe call it impulsivity-

Sahil Bloom 25:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:39 ... sort of irrationality, emotionality, you're not being driven by making thing, logical, illogical decisions. Uh, but yet, as you start to accumulate some, uh, battle scars and some experience and some decades under your belt, I think that's when you can... But again, this is periods of your life, seasons of your life, right? The, the tools that got you here won't get you there, and one of the tools that got you here was being very deliberate, very, um, thought through, uh, very top down. You're like dictating to the rest of your body, "This is what you're going to do. You're gonna push hard, you're gonna train more, you're gonna..." et cetera. And after a while you go, "Hey, uh, body's saying it needs to take a rest, and the last time this happened and I didn't listen to it, I, that was when I injured my knee. That was when that, I got burned out. That was when I got sick and fucking got norovirus at New York Athletic Club." Uh, I think, again, one of those periods where the tools need to change.

Sahil Bloom 26:31 Are you familiar with the concept of winner's game versus loser's game?

Chris Williamson 26:34 No.

Sahil Bloom 26:35 This is one of my favorite ideas for life. Um, so this originates from tennis, where, um, amateur tennis is a loser's game, meaning you win by avoiding unforced errors. 80% of points are, uh, lost on unforced errors. Professional tennis is a winner's game, meaning you win by hitting magnificent shots, by hitting perfect, elegant shots. It is extremely important in life to know what type of game you are playing, and the reality is that most games of life are loser's games. You win by simply avoiding unforced errors, by showing up over and over and over again with reliability, by doing what you say you're going to do, by showing up and doing the boring basics. But the challenge in life is identifying when the game changed, because if you keep trying to play an amateur tennis loser's game but now you're playing professionally, you're gonna get smoked, because you're gonna be trying to play like a backboard. You're gonna be trying to avoid unforced errors while the other person is just killing you with incredible shots.

Chris Williamson 27:40 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 27:40 And so understanding when the game has changed in your own life is really important. Like, early in your life, saying yes to every single opportunity you get is a great game to play, because it's, uh, what allows you to invest your time to gain the experience, to start building that gut instinct, to start building your understanding of it. But suddenly the game changes, and if you keep saying yes to everything, you burn yourself out, you take on dumb opportunities, you're wasting all of your time and energy on stupid 1X time-for-money trades-

Chris Williamson 28:11 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 28:11 ... when you should be focusing on the elegant, magnificent shots that are gonna generate the 10X, 100X outcomes in

Sahil Bloom 28:17 your life.

Chris Williamson 28:17 Have you got any idea about how people can recognize when that's happening to them?

Sahil Bloom 28:22 I think you start to see that the early investments in, uh, in your networks and in your, uh, sort of opportunity sets are compounding. Like, what you start to feel is more interesting opportunities are coming to you at an accelerating, exponential rate. And when you see that start to happen, you need to take a pause in your life to recognize what you start, uh, what you need to start saying no to to open up the space to pursue those big ones.

Chris Williamson 28:54 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 28:55 It's like ventilating your life. You need to breathe space into your life so that you actually have the bandwidth to take on those big opportunities. I, I often think that one of the greatest skills and one of the most common traits of the most successful people I've ever spent time around is that they have the highest tolerance for uncertainty. They are actually willing to tolerate uncertainty for long periods of time. They are willing to be static for long periods of time.

Chris Williamson 29:21 Give me an example.

Sahil Bloom 29:23 Um, Tim Cook, when he left IBM to take a job at Compaq. Like, people don't know this, don't think about his early part of his career all that much, but he spent the early part of his career rising through the ranks at IBM. He was in their, like, you know, executive management program, big company, you know, rising through the ranks at this big company.

Chris Williamson 29:45 But one of-

Sahil Bloom 29:46 Yeah, one of-

Chris Williamson 29:47 ... an unlimited number of fucking people.

Sahil Bloom 29:48 Exactly. And Steve Jobs was recruiting, uh, for a role at Apple and saw Tim's resume, and looked at it and was like, "Ah, big company guy. Probably not a fit for Apple and their more startup culture," and so passed on it. Six months later, he, uh, saw, uh, was still recruiting for that role and saw the resume again, and at that point, Tim had left IBM and the, like, safe track he was on to take this job at Compaq, which was this small computer startup at the time. And at that point, Steve then had this, like, pattern interrupt about the type of person that Tim was. All of a sudden he was like this guy that had taken on something very uncertain, he had done something very different-

Chris Williamson 30:29 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 30:29 ... so decided to have a conversation with him. Obviously now, you fast-forward 20-plus years and trillions of dollars of value that Tim has created at Apple, and it's this enormous case study to me of someone who was willing to tolerate some uncertainty, of doing something different that didn't make sense. It was a pattern interrupt in his life-

Chris Williamson 30:48 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 30:49 ... that sparked this enormous chain of dots that were connected out into the future.

Chris Williamson 30:54 I have a friend who worked for a big recruitment company for a while here in Austin, and they place very, very high-level tech execs-

Sahil Bloom 31:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:02 ... around the world. Uh, and it meant that he was able to have access to some of the first and second round interviews that they did with the best candidates on the planet, and Tim Cook was one of them.

Sahil Bloom 31:12 Huh.

Chris Williamson 31:12 Uh, Susanna was Jickie, Jackie was another one of them too. And, uh, I was asking him this question, I was saying, "Hey man, so what's the difference between, you know, these people that..."... go on to earn obscene packages, and then the best in the world, the people that lead the, you know, FTSE 100 companies. And he said, "Well, I can tell you what the first line of, the first word of Tim Cook's summary was." Remembering that these people, they spend their time trying to find holes, trying to pick holes in, what is it, the psychographic profile, what is it to do with their childhood that's coming up, what is it to do with their work ethic, wh- or they've got an, uh, an inability to deal with criticism, or they're too concerned about the opinions of others, or whatever it might be. And, uh, the first word at the top of the summary of Tim Cook just said, "Rockstar." Full stop. You know, like, in a sea of the best candidates on the planet, there is still a step difference between everybody and then the best.

Sahil Bloom 32:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:09 I thought that was so cool.

Sahil Bloom 32:11 Super cool, and completely consistent with my own experience. I mean, I, I've been very lucky to spend a lot of time with Tim over the years. He's been sort of a mentor and friend to me for the last 10 years. I originally met him in 2014. He was the relatively new CEO at the time, um, and the way that I met him was because he was working out at the gym at 4:45 every single morning before going into the office. He would wake up at 3:45 and send off emails, be working, doing things, get to the gym at 4:45, work out. He was probably getting into the office by 6:15, before any of his employees were probably even awake. Uh, and you think about that, and think about the fact that you're the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world, and you are still doing that. You are literally, on a daily basis, like meat and potatoes, uh, behavior and actions. And then it becomes no surprise that someone like that has been able to do and achieve the things that he's done. I mean, a laser intensity and focus on the things that matter.

Chris Williamson 33:13 Have you ever heard Dana White talk about what it's like being friends with Donald Trump?

Sahil Bloom 33:17 No.

Chris Williamson 33:17 Dude, it's wild. Dana says Trump will come to one of the UFC events and he'll watch, you know, he rocks up, uh, toward the beginning of the main card, and he'll walk out with him and he'll do that... and fucking Kid Rocks with him, or whoever, uh, Elon jumping about in the background. And, um, then he'll watch the fights and he'll, like, shake their hands and do the thing, and he'll leave, and then Dana will be on the way home and he'll get a call w- from Trump 'cause he wants to talk about the fights and he wants to discuss stuff, and then they'll get on to something else, he'll go to bed, and by the time that Dana... Dana is a guy, to me, that seems very, very high energy. Uh, by the time that Dana's gone to bed and got back up, Trump's already on his flight and he'll have messages from him about shit that they spoke about the night before. And I don't know, man, it, it doesn't matter whether you like him or not, whether you agree with his politics or not, for a guy that's 78, 79, something like that, that's fucking terrifying. I don't n- n- ... None of my friends in our 30s are able to do that. And, uh, yeah, that's when you realize that there are builds to people that are kind of inevitable. Uh, Peterson's got this line about, um, uh, like, "Conscientious people are crazy. If you put them in a f- uh, abandoned forest with an ax, they're just running around chopping down trees for no reason." And, um, yeah, that's the kind of Tim Cook-

Sahil Bloom 34:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:37 ... like Trump energy, like just chopping trees.

Sahil Bloom 34:40 Yeah, there's levels to this shit. I always think that. Like, sometimes you just encounter someone and you just realize there's levels to these games.

Chris Williamson 34:47 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 34:47 And I, I have always thought that, like, if you were working for someone like that, you just have to know from the get-go that you are never going to outwork your boss.

Chris Williamson 34:56 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 34:57 And there's something about that, like being that type of person, that just sends a signal to the world through your actions. It, uh, th- You gotta keep in mind, like, Tim doesn't ever, I mean, uh, very rarely does interviews, very rarely s- you know, speaks publicly about his habits or his routines. It's not like, you know, he's not l- he's not a Thread boy, uh, you know, like on Twitter being like, "Here's my morning routine, doing th-" It's just his actions, and you know what he's doing on a daily basis through the output. And-

Chris Williamson 35:24 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 35:24 ... we lose sight of that, right? Like, no one cares about your deep work ritual or your morning routine if your output is shit. No one cares. And at the end of the day, your deep work routine and your morning routine may get you social media likes, but your quality and quantity of your output is what gets you paid.

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Chris Williamson 36:46 For people whose primary job is not talking about what they do on social media or creating content or writing or doing whatever videos about it, I always think, if you're talking that much about what you do, how the fuck do you have time to do what you say you do? It blows my mind. You know, s- productivity, f- business corporate gurus that seem to have an unbelievable amount of spare capacity to do Instagram Stories and to talk. I'm like, "When are you ever actually fucking working?" 'Cause it's my job to make content and I don't have time to do that much stuff. And also very little desire to do it as well, which kind of makes me skeptical about whether you can do the things that you say you can do, or whether you can only say that you can do the things that you say that you do.

Sahil Bloom 37:29 Yeah, it is like, it's, it's the meme of, uh-... social media in general around these things. Like I, the other day, I, someone, uh, posted about start- wanting to wake up earlier in the new year, and I commented on it and just said that for the first six years of my career, I woke up at 3:45 every single morning. Uh, and that was because I was working in finance, I was working an 80 to 100 hour a week job where I wanted to be really successful at it, and, uh, if I wanted to work out before going to the office, I'd be there at 6:30, I had to wake up and go, go to the gym and do that, and I did it for six years. And I still wake up at 4:00, 4:15 in the morning because those early morning hours are, like, sacred to me. And someone replied, I sort of posted my daily routine and how many hours I was at the office, and someone replied-

Chris Williamson 38:14 This is from, uh, what, a decade ago something like that?

Sahil Bloom 38:16 Yeah, this is from, uh, 2014 to 2020.

Chris Williamson 38:18 Yep.

Sahil Bloom 38:19 Uh, before COVID. And, uh, someone commented and was like, "How many of your 14 hours at wa- uh, work were deep work?" And I replied, semi-seriously, actually quite seriously, "I don't even know what that means." Like, I don't know what deep work means. I just had to get a lot of shit done. There was no, like, ritual. I wasn't, like, sitting down with some perfect, you know, coffee ritual, I just had to do a lot of work, I just had to get a lot of shit done.

Chris Williamson 38:44 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 38:44 And if I had been worried about my deep work routine or if I had been worried about, like, needing to cold plunge before doing that frankly, uh, and this is coming from a guy that, I am into stuff like that, I just, I wouldn't have been able to get things done. And so if you're focusing on all those things rather than just focusing on creating incredible output, quality and quantity, you're just studying for the wrong tests.

Chris Williamson 39:04 Yeah, I brought it up with George over Christmas again, probably one of the fav- my favorite things I learned from him last year, I think it's a, a Michael Grove quote that says, "There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little." And, uh, yeah, it- look I, I come from a productivity background. When I first started this show, I was chatting shit about Pomodoro timers and Noion external brains and, and Ebbinghaus forgetting curves and all of that, right? I've been through the ringer which is why I'm allowed to say it. And, um, you realize after a while that it ends up being this weird superstitious rain dance you're doing, this sort of odd sort of productivity rain dance in the desperate hope that later that day you're going to get something do-... and some of that stuff does really help, and you kind of need to go through this process of, ah, it wasn't the, the 15 push-ups before I do my calls, oh, it wasn't... it was this thing, that's the highest point of leverage and I get rid of everything else-

Sahil Bloom 39:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:59 ... and that's the highest point of leverage and I get rid of everything else. You create the sort of very, very high leverage points for each of those individually. But we're

Chris Williamson 40:07 talking about time, what, what do you think is the big question that people have when it comes to time wealth if the two things that people probably realize that they need most in life is some form of money and time when they're thinking about at least objective metrics, why, why do we struggle so much to sort of use our time effectively? Why does it slip through our fingers?

Sahil Bloom 40:29 The lack of awareness of time as your most important asset and your most valuable asset is the most damning problem that people face. I often ask young people, uh, "Would you trade lives with Warren Buffett?" He's worth $130 billion, he has access to anybody in the world, he reads and learns for a living, he flies around on private jets and stays in mansions all around the world, but you wouldn't trade lives with him because he's 95 years old. There's no way you would agree to trade the amount of time you have for the amount of time he has, even for $130 billion. And so you simultaneously acknowledge subconsciously that your time has incalculable value, it's worth more than $130 billion, and yet you take actions on a daily basis that spit on that. You disregard it, you spend time on low value stupid activities, you sit on your phone scrolling around doing nonsense, you don't focus on the things that really matter, you move around like a rocking horse, right? You're, like, rocking back and forth but never going anywhere. And so really recognizing that time is the most important asset, it's not any of these other things, and the way that you invest and spend your time is the most meaningful decision that you're gonna make in your life. That is the first step to unlocking any level of time wealth.

Chris Williamson 41:46 Mm. How do you come to teach people about this? What is it, you've got somebody who for the first time is beginning to think about their time, you're like, "Ha, here's some ways that we can audit how you're spending yours"?

Sahil Bloom 41:59 I think, uh, I offer this in the book, this idea of the energy calendar. So at the end of a work day, look at your calendar and color code activities from the day according to whether they created energy, meaning you felt good during and after them, uh, they were neutral, mark them yellow, uh, or they were energy draining, you didn't feel good, mark them red. So it's green, yellow, red. At the end of a week, if you do that for a week, you have a very clear sense of the types of activities you are spending time on that are conducive to your energy, that means you're feeling good from them, or that are draining, that are, like, killing you in whatever way. If you can slowly work toward a world where that calendar looks more green than red, you are going to feel significantly better and as a result, you're going to create significantly better outputs. We all know that the activities that are pulling us, that we feel drawn towards are the ones where we produce the best outputs, where we produce those, like, 10, 100 X outcomes that actually meaningfully change our lives. You wouldn't do three podcasts a week for the last however many years if you weren't drawn to having conversations with people. I wouldn't have written two newsletters a week for the last three, four years if I wasn't drawn to writing about these problems. You can't fake things over long periods of time.

Chris Williamson 43:13 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 43:14 So leaning into those things where you have energy naturally for them and leaning away from the things that are killing you is a really good way to just naturally reposition your time.

Chris Williamson 43:23 Because you could wait long enough and see what stuff stuck about, because after half a decade, the only things that you're continuing to do... like, training-

Sahil Bloom 43:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:33 ... if you, if you don't like the gym that much, your training is going to be inconsistent over a long enough time period because white knuckling your way through something that you hate just doesn't work given a broad enough time horizon.

Sahil Bloom 43:43 Yeah, you have to find the version of it that...... is authentic-

Chris Williamson 43:46 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 43:46 ... and real for you.

Chris Williamson 43:47 But you can get to this realization sooner by doing an audit on a daily basis. I quite like that and imagine that, uh, many people's calendars, uh, would look terrifyingly red if they were to go back and do it.

Sahil Bloom 44:02 Yeah, and you can actually make real changes immediately. Like, a- and the first thing when I say this to people, they're like, "Well, I just work in, you know, I work in a job, I have to do a bunch of things that are energy draining." I totally understand that and agree with it. When I first did this, I was working in my finance job, 80 plus hours a week, and the biggest energy draining activity for me, still to this day, is the, like, chitchat, phone call, pick your brain meeting. Like, either Zoom or phone call, sitting at my desk. I would rather staple gun my stomach and go to the hospital than sit on a day of Zoom calls. I just, I cannot stand it. And so I had blocks of those that were just all red. But what I noticed was that taking a call on a walk is actually pretty energy creating for me. I actually think the first time you and I spoke, we were both out on walks-

Chris Williamson 44:45 We were.

Sahil Bloom 44:46 ... while we were chatting 'cause we both feel that way. So suddenly, if I just change half those phone calls to walking calls, my calendar goes from being this, like, enormous block of red to more green. And it's a small change that you can make immediately that makes you feel dramatically different at the end of the week, and you show up with more presence on those calls. You're actually gonna have a better outcome on the call 'cause you're focused, you're present. So it's like, I push back against people when they have the immediately cynical, like, "I can't do that" viewpoint on whatever these ideas are, because you actually have a lot more control of these things than you think.

Chris Williamson 45:22 What else did you learn about time?

Sahil Bloom 45:25 (sighs) The amount of time you have remaining with the people that you love most in the world is far more finite and terrifyingly countable than you think. Um, we have all, at different times in our lives, experienced some traumatic event of someone we love getting sick, dying, and those moments are this spark. They're this little, like, flash of light from the other side to recognize that there are things that matter so much more that we're not thinking about on a daily basis, and it sort of shines this, like, light of wisdom onto your path where you are today. And the sad thing is that, for most of us, you see that wisdom, you kind of nod your head, and then you go back living the exact same damn way you were before. And in my own life, my own journey, everything changed for me with a single conversation that I had with an old friend. In May of 2021, I was at a point in my life where things were pretty dark. Um, I had sort of been playing the, the money game, I guess, for seven years to start my career, and I had gotten so narrowly focused on money as the path to me feeling good about myself. Everything was about, okay, on the other side of this bonus or this promotion or this whatever status symbol, I'll feel good about myself. And unfortunately, that narrow focus had led to a lot of other areas of my life starting to fall apart. My relationships, my parents, uh, with my sister. My relationship with my wife, uh, was strained. We were struggling to conceive at the time, uh, which is a, a thing that a lot of people don't talk about. Ki- sort of a, a burden that people carry in silence that, um, is a very solitary journey that was tough and a strain on us at the time. My health was suffering. I was drinking seven nights a week. I mean, there were all these other areas of my life that were suffering, while on the outside looking in, you would've said, like, I'm winning the game. And I went out for a drink with an old friend in May of 2021, and he asked how I was doing. And I said that it was starting to get tough, living as far away as we were from our parents. I, I was super close with my parents, and they're getting older. They're starting to see chinks in the armor with their health. And he asked, "How old are they?" And I said, "They're in their mid-60s." And he said, "How often do you see them?" I said, "About once a year." And he looked at me and said, "So you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die?" And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. I mean, the idea that the amount of time you have left with these people that you love most in the world is that countable, that you can place it on a few hands, was terrifying and jarring, and it sparked real change. Because I was determined to not be one of those people that hears it, nods my head, and then does nothing about it. And so the next morning, I told my wife that I thought we needed to make a change in our life. And within 45 days, I had left my job, we had sold our house in California, and we had moved across the country-

Chris Williamson 48:59 Holy fuck.

Sahil Bloom 48:59 ... to be closer to our parents. And the most beautiful part in all of it was, after two years of struggling to conceive, uh, within two weeks of making that change and being back on the East Coast, my wife got pregnant with our son. And it was one of those moments... I'm not a particularly religious person, but it was one of those moments in life where you just feel like God winked at you. Like, your, uh, things came into alignment and your whole life fell into place as it should. And the story of my life and of this book and of everything that I'm putting out into the world is really a ripple of that one decision to make that change, to prioritize the things that I knew we valued most that had been sitting in the back seat for so long.

Chris Williamson 49:47 Isn't it interesting the bravery component there? Like, it's so important, the uncertainty that you were talking about before, and how much can you tolerate of that? How much can you tolerate of fear and how brave can you be to sort of overcome that?

Sahil Bloom 49:59 Yeah, and I think a big part of it for us, I have to give my wife credit because it is very difficult to be brave on your own. Uh, and she, when I came to her and said that I thought we should make this change, was the first one to say, "We can do this. Yes. Let's go do it." Easily, she could've resisted. She could've said, like, "What are you talking about? We have a good life. We have a house. You're making good money." All of the reasons to stay on the path. And, you know, I often say that the worst thing in the world is not being on a bad path. Being on a bad path, it screams at you every single day to change. Right? Like, you're on a bad path, you have to make a change. It's so abundantly obvious. The worst thing in the world is being on a good path that isn't yours, and that was very much where we were. It was a good path from a societal definition.

Chris Williamson 50:59 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 50:59 But it was not the one that was leading to the place where I wanted to go. Uh, it was like that Japanese proverb that says, "If you get on the wrong train, get off as soon as possible, because if you don't, the trip back is gonna be a lot longer." That was where we were, and my wife was the one that sort of infused me with the courage that we could actually go and do that.

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Chris Williamson 52:29 Yeah, it's an- it's an interesting, I don't know, and a sad point as people become increasingly lonely or increasingly single, that, uh, yes, sometimes you can't pull the pin all on your own, and, uh... It's awesome, dude. I'm so, I'm so happy for you guys. And, uh, what a, like, inspiring story to have had that. The, uh, conception thing I think is so true as well. Read this really harrowing article about, um, the crisis of, uh, childless men. Uh, you know, a lot of the time women have a biological window and, and, uh, you know, rightly a lot of the, um, priority and attention is focused on them. Uh, but the same happening for men, whether it's that they get to an age where sperm count is so low that it's no longer viable, uh, whether they get to an age where they're not able to date quite so easily, or the only partners that they can date now are too old. And, uh, yeah, trying to, trying to conceive and not being able to do it is this weird silent social epidemic that no one really ever wants to talk about all that much.

Sahil Bloom 53:40 Especially men. I mean, it is weird. I- I went on, um, you know Dr. Rangan Chatterjee-

Chris Williamson 53:46 Of course.

Sahil Bloom 53:46 ... in the UK, and I had a conversation with him, and I shared those struggles to conceive. And he said that in ten years of doing his podcast, I was the first man to ever talk about that on, on his show. And I think about it a lot, because, um, it is, infertility is something that immediately gets placed on the woman. When- when you're struggling to conceive, the assumption that everyone has is that there's something wrong with the woman. And that is just not the case scientifically.

Chris Williamson 54:14 Like, nearly 50%-

Sahil Bloom 54:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:15 ... 50% of the cases it's the man.

Sahil Bloom 54:17 Exactly. And stress is a contributor. Your body will not want to, uh, conceive if there are really high stress levels. There's a variety of internal factors that contribute to fertility, and so what-

Chris Williamson 54:28 Drinking seven nights a week I imagine didn't help.

Sahil Bloom 54:28 Drinking seven nights a week does not help. Not sleeping a whole lot 'cause you're stressed or 'cause you're anxious doesn't help. So when I think about my own life and the actions I was taking, uh, I think it's a totally fair assumption to say that I was a major part of it-

Chris Williamson 54:41 It's me. I'm the problem.

Sahil Bloom 54:41 ... if not the only part. I'm the problem, right? Um, and obviously, like also, the back end of that, of like making this change, me feeling this enormous weight lifted, reprioritizing my... All of these things that shifted-

Chris Williamson 54:52 So tired as fuck.

Sahil Bloom 54:53 Yeah. All of a sudden I'm like, "Man, we could have 10 kids."

Chris Williamson 54:55 (laughs)

Sahil Bloom 54:55 Like, really quick, just start going on.

Chris Williamson 54:57 Everyone's pregnant.

Sahil Bloom 54:57 Spread the seed, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:58 Everyone's pregnant.

Sahil Bloom 54:58 Everyone around me all of a sudden got pregnant.

Chris Williamson 55:00 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 55:01 Uh, no, but it is, um... I just think that there's a lot of people out there, and probably some people listening, who are struggling with this right now.

Chris Williamson 55:08 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 55:08 And I held it in silence. We did. And it placed an enormous burden on our relationship as a result, because you're just suffering with something alone.

Chris Williamson 55:18 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 55:18 And if you two aren't talking about it a lot, which tends to happen, it becomes this, uh, weight that you're just carrying.

Chris Williamson 55:24 Did you go to see urology, s- fertility...

Sahil Bloom 55:28 We had n- my, my wife had.

Chris Williamson 55:30 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 55:30 Um, I had not gone and seen anyone. I had resisted it. Um, and this is, you know, me being in a bad place in my life. And the way that I, um, was approaching everything in life frankly was, um, "No, we're young, this is stupid. Like, we have plenty of time." I, at the time, frankly, I was like, I was so narrowly focused on making money as the end, as the, you know, means to me feeling successful and feeling good, that I was like, "I don't want kids." That's a just, that seems like a distraction. Um, it seems like it's, you know, not gonna help me get to this, like, end that I'm trying to chase of making all this money and being this success story in my life. And now I think about it, and, like, it's the only thing I care about. I, like, everything that I do is in service of being an incredible father and wanting to teach my son these lessons that I think are so important in life.

Chris Williamson 56:18 Can I ask a difficult question? Given the challenges that you had conceiving once, what are your feelings about trying to conceive again?

Sahil Bloom 56:28 We will definitely try. I mean, fr- frankly, like, uh, are now going to start trying-

Chris Williamson 56:34 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 56:34 ... um, uh, for more. I, I think that, um-

Chris Williamson 56:38 You know what I mean? Just that sort of maybe PTSD thing.

Sahil Bloom 56:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:40 Like, "Fuck, we-"

Sahil Bloom 56:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:41 "... like, we, we made it. Do I really want to get my hopes up again?"

Sahil Bloom 56:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:44 And then maybe... I wondered whether that was the sort of thing that lingers.

Sahil Bloom 56:47 Yeah. You know, I would say almost the- in the opposite direction, that my wife and I feel such extraordinary gratitude for the fact that we were able to have our son, and knock on wood that he is healthy and happy. Um, and I ju- to me, I'm like, "If we have any more kids-"

Chris Williamson 57:07 Let's run it back.

Sahil Bloom 57:07 ... well, if we have any more kids, I'm like, "It's a cherry on top of this incredible blessing that we have." Um, if it were up to me, we'd go have five. I mean, I love kids. I'm like, this is the best thing in the world. It's hard to imagine-

Chris Williamson 57:19 Absolutely converted.

Sahil Bloom 57:21 Yeah, I mean if- i- it's hard to imagine after you have one that your heart can expand enough to love another thing as much as you love your kid. I cannot... I had been selfish my entire life, and I think that we are all... Even when you get married, you are fundamentally, until you have a child, you are a selfish being. You might love your spouse, but you don't love them more than yourself. You would not, in most cases, uh, like truly, uh, you know, shoot yourself in the head, press the button and kill yourself to save your spouse, in a lot of cases. I really think like that would be more of a question that people would ask. With your kid, if you had a button that you could press and save their life and immediately exterminate yourself, you would press it without thinking about it.

Chris Williamson 58:07 Do you think that it also changes whether you would do the same for your partner now that the kid's there too?

Sahil Bloom 58:13 Yes. 100%. That's a great question.

Chris Williamson 58:15 So you have this- this sort of blast radius that's fed back up from the child?

Sahil Bloom 58:18 That is a great question. I've never thought about it. And yes, 100%. I- like I think about it now. If I could press that button and save my wife and my son, uh, I would press that in a heartbeat. Uh, because I see the two of them and I know, and that's... I think as a father and as a husband, the single best feeling in the world is knowing that my son would be great if I died. Like knowing that if I-

Chris Williamson 58:44 Mm.

Sahil Bloom 58:44 ... am flying home tonight and my plane crashes and I die, my son is gonna have an amazing life.

Chris Williamson 58:49 Mm.

Sahil Bloom 58:50 Because he has the most incredible mom that loves him so much, and he's surrounded by love and support. And that, I think is like the highest calling as a man, to feel that you can leave this legacy that exists beyond you-

Chris Williamson 59:03 Mm.

Sahil Bloom 59:03 ... where your child is going to be okay.

Chris Williamson 59:05 I think as well, you- you're right, the selfish thing is something I've thought about a lot, especially as I reflected on last year. And, uh, every time that I see kids, more and more of my friends are getting pregnant, uh, at the moment in one form or another. And, uh...

Sahil Bloom 59:19 In one form or another? What are the other forms?

Chris Williamson 59:21 Well, like-

Sahil Bloom 59:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:23 ... a- as in they're in- they're in-

Sahil Bloom 59:24 I'm just giving you shit.

Chris Williamson 59:25 ... they're varying- they're at varying stages of pregnancy.

Sahil Bloom 59:28 Ah, I see. I see.

Chris Williamson 59:28 And also varying- varying stages of, uh, how would I say? Announcing it, which is why I'm not saying.

Sahil Bloom 59:33 Mm. Mm.

Chris Williamson 59:34 Um, there's a- a number of people that have been on the show a good bit who-

Sahil Bloom 59:37 You can only be stealth pregnant for so long.

Chris Williamson 59:40 Fuck, dude. I mean, it's- it's starting to show on a- a couple of the- the girlfriends and wives. So, um, a lot of the pursuits that I think me and a good chunk of my friends have done for, you know, the first 15 years to two decades out of university full-time education have been basically just surrogate family building. "I'm going to start this project. I'm gonna create this brand. I'm going to, uh, pursue this passion of some kind. I'm gonna get good at this thing." And you're just pouring energy and care and focus and obsession, uh, and emotion, uh, into this thing which kind of feels a little bit like a baby. People even refer to it. I'm sure you- y- you, at some point in your past, you've referred to your newsletter as like my baby, my writing is my baby. Uh, but it's not. And one of the best things that I can think of is if you do end some worlds in your 20s and put yourself in a position where you go, "Hey, I- I, financially am stable. And I've acquired some skills and I've got some scars, but I- I feel good about them. And I actually think that I'm now ready to sort of pay this forward." That makes the selfishness in your 20s feel way less selfish 'cause you go, "Mm, maybe it wasn't about me just doing things for me." Maybe those were the important lessons that I needed so that when the next generation comes along and it's me that's coaching them, I can tell them exactly all of the different pitfalls that happened, and I know how to deal with this emotional ups and downs and swings and turbulences that they've gone through. And I've got the life experience, and we've got the financial stability, and we've got, you know... I've closed all of the different loops, all of those questions about, "Oh, I wonder what it would have been like to have traveled to Bali and now we've got three kids and I can't go to Bali anymore." (laughs)

Sahil Bloom 1:01:37 And you go, "You f- you went to Bali twice." Like that's f- you've- all of these things have been closed off. So yeah, I um, I love the idea of... And it'll be fascinating to see just how much having kids totally reframes the way that I look at everything that happened before. I think, uh, uh, Russ Roberts says there's- there's two types of people in the world. There's pre-kids and post-kids.

Chris Williamson 1:02:01 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 1:02:02 And he said the two will never be able to talk to each other fully about what life's like.

Chris Williamson 1:02:06 Yeah, I had that feeling, um, when- when my son was born, the first time I held him... And again, this comes from someone who was not a kid guy. It wasn't like I spent my whole life being like, "I want kids."

Sahil Bloom 1:02:17 Doting.

Chris Williamson 1:02:17 And, uh, when my son was born...

Sahil Bloom 1:02:20 ... I held him for the first time and he looked up at me, and I remember just having this sensation that I had spent the first 30 years of my life trying to understand the meaning and purpose of all of this, and then it was staring right back at me. Um, I had this experience actually shortly after he was born where I took him out for a walk. You know, kids like sleeping obviously is a shit show. And he wouldn't sleep other than basically when I walked him around in his stroller. And so I was walking him early one Saturday morning, and I was standing on the sidewalk, and this old man walked up to me. And he came over and he said, "I remember standing here with my newborn daughter. She's 45 years old now. It goes by fast. Cherish it." And I took him back home and I brought him into bed. My wife was still asleep, and the sun was kinda coming through the blinds, and he had this, like, little perfect smile on his face. And I had this sensation that for the first time in my life, I had arrived, but there was nothing more that I wanted. Like, my whole life had been spent chasing some more. There was something, like I needed more money or more promotions or more status or more whatever the thing was. And for the first time in my life, I was just content. Like, I truly felt like I had enough. And it was this idea that we can never let the quest for more distract from the beauty of enough.

Chris Williamson 1:03:41 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 1:03:41 Finding those moments where you truly feel like you have enough, that is what a wealthy life looks like.

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 Yeah. You said, uh, "Expectations

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 are your biggest liability."

Sahil Bloom 1:03:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:52 And that kind of feels like the same thing.

Sahil Bloom 1:03:55 Yeah, if your expectations rise faster than your assets, than the things you have, you will never feel wealthy. You will constantly be on this chase for whatever more you're looking for. It's the, uh... There's that famous story of, uh, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. Have you heard that story? So Kurt Vonnegut, famous American author; Joseph Heller, another famous American author, author of, uh, Catch-22, the satirical work. Um, and the two of them, Vonnegut and Heller, were at the house of this billionaire in the Hamptons. And Vonnegut asks Heller, "How does it feel that just yesterday the owner of this house made more money than your book, Catch-22, made in the entirety of its lifetime?" And Heller replies, "I've got something that he'll never have." And Vonnegut says, "Yeah, what's that?" And Heller says, "The knowledge that I've got enough." And it's that exact lesson, that that is true wealth, the knowledge that you have enough, that you don't need to chase more. And then if you do chase more, it needs to be grounded in something more meaningful than just chasing money. If you are chasing ambition because you're grounded in your purpose, 'cause you want to go and create something meaningful for the world, you want to go create a more meaningful life for your family because you feel like you can spread ideas that will positively impact people, that's a great reason to go and chase something bigger. But chasing more money is just a road to nowhere.

Chris Williamson 1:05:23 Public service announcement. 20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids.

Sahil Bloom 1:05:30 So true. (laughs) Um, that was this viral Reddit post that I think it is probably the most viral thing I've ever shared. Um, it is entirely true in my experience. Um, and the challenge with all of this is a simple fact, which is for 10 years you are your child's favorite person in the entire world. And after that 10-year window, they have other favorite people. They have best friends. They have boyfriends. They have girlfriends. They have partners of their own. They have children of their own.

Chris Williamson 1:06:12 Sports team coaches.

Sahil Bloom 1:06:12 Sports team coaches. You will never occupy that same place in their world. But for that 10-year window, you are literally everything to them. And yet we live in a culture where that 10 years also coincides with the time when you are supposed to chase every more that is out there, chase all of your professional ambitions. So navigating that tension, figuring out how to balance your pursuit of your fullest potential with the desire to be present with your kids during that magic window that you have, that is the fundamental tension of being a parent in the modern era. It's finding your unique balance of those two.

Chris Williamson 1:06:52 Is that an argument to front load the life and wealth acquisition and to really try and send it as much as you can in your 20s so that some of that price, that overhead has been paid a little bit before the kids come along?

Sahil Bloom 1:07:07 I think that it is a couple things. I think, one, um... I'm sort of of two minds on this. One, I think that being present during that window of time with your kids is the most important thing. But two, I think it is extraordinarily important for your children to see you work hard on things you care about.

Chris Williamson 1:07:23 That's interesting.

Sahil Bloom 1:07:24 I think that is the most important lesson I learned from my father, was that growing up I saw him work so hard on things that lit him up intellectually. And the important point there is that you have to be included in the why. Meaning, I always knew why my dad was working hard on things. He always took the time to explain to me what he was working on, why he cared about it, why he felt it was important, why I was part of that mission-

Chris Williamson 1:07:53 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 1:07:53 ... with him. And that always meant that I knew when he was traveling, when he was gone, when he was working, when he was doing things, I knew why. And I-

Chris Williamson 1:08:02 It wasn't that he'd abandoned you. It wasn't that he didn't care.

Sahil Bloom 1:08:04 Exactly. And that's the important point, is if you don't fill the why with the correct reason, your kids will fill it with the worst reason.

Chris Williamson 1:08:11 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 1:08:11 Your kids will fill it with the abandonment.

Chris Williamson 1:08:13 Abandonment.

Sahil Bloom 1:08:13 They'll fill it with the dad doesn't want to be around, dad's never around.

Chris Williamson 1:08:16 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 1:08:17 But you can fill that with the correct reason, but you have to actually think about it. You have to be aware enough to say those things to your kid, even when... My son's two and a half. Is he really understanding it? Maybe not.But he's understanding it enough that when I'm going somewhere, he's saying, "Dad at work." He's, like, looking at me. He's helping me with things. He's helping me pack. He goes and sits at my desk. He, like, tries to type things. He understands when I'm writing stuff. So they absorb a lot more than you think, but it requires being intentional about creating that understanding in them.

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Sahil Bloom 1:11:14 And they see it, right? Like, you can teach... Uh, this is something I've changed my mind on for sure in my own life with my son, which is, you can't really teach your kids anything. You just have to embody the things-

Chris Williamson 1:11:26 Mm-hmm.

Sahil Bloom 1:11:27 ... and they learn from seeing you do it.

Chris Williamson 1:11:28 Yeah. Don't tell them, show them.

Sahil Bloom 1:11:30 And it's true for all things in life, right? Like, it goes back to the Tim Cook and all those stories of what we were talking about. Like, you're not talking about the morning routine, you're just showing the output. Show me the output. And I think about my own experience with my dad, like some of the most formative learning moments I had with him, of what it meant to work hard, what it meant to have discipline, were just observing him do that. I got- I got to go when I was a kid on this trip with him as, like, his plus-one. My dad's a professor at Harvard, and he was giving a talk at this conference in Asia, and my mom couldn't go, so I got to be the plus-one. And it was my first time ever flying business class 'cause I was his plus-one for this thing. So I have, like, movies and food and all this stuff. It's this, like, 15-hour flight, and my dad sat there and worked for the entire 15-hour flight. And when we landed, I turned to him, and I was like, "Dad, you didn't watch a single movie on that whole flight." And he kind of just laughed and, you know, we moved on from it. But I remember that moment so clearly, that for 15 hours, he worked.

Chris Williamson 1:12:28 Yeah.

Sahil Bloom 1:12:28 And that was what was required for him to be the type of person that would get invited to give a talk at a conference, for him to be able to bring his son to something like that. That was the work that he had to put in. And so now when I think about my own experience and things that I want to work hard on, that I want to put my head down, like, I'm in a season of unbalance in my life, right? Like, you have these periods where you have to be willing to embrace the idea that you are in a season of unbalance. You are in a season where shit is just crazy and chaotic, and you have to lean into it. Because worrying about, "Oh, I don't have perfect balance in my day," is- loses sight of the bigger picture, which is, this season of unbalance is required for me to have the season of balance later.

Chris Williamson 1:13:08 Dude, I think about this all the time from a, uh, how much you zoom in to the little duration. Nobody looks at a single minute and says, "I, I, I didn't really balance that minute enough. You know, was I really fully embracing my fun side during that minute?"

Sahil Bloom 1:13:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:13:23 Um, but across a day, we do. We say, "You know, today, I didn't really do enough X or Y." So, but that's not how your life is lived. Yes, if you're not careful, can you get to the end of a month and look back on that month and realize that there was a big missing gap? But really, you should be doing it across an entire 12-month period-

Sahil Bloom 1:13:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:13:45 ... and looking back and saying, "Well, this year, I, uh, I focused a little bit too much on this thing, but I'm glad that that was the case." We periodize. Weightlifters periodize their lifting. They're not trying to max out all the time. They pull back. They do deloads. They go up. They peak for competition, then they lift, then they come back down again, then they go back up. Like, that's the way that life's supposed to be lived. And, uh, it's odd that across a single day, we can get agitated at ourselves for not having enough time for dot, dot, dot. And you go, "Well, you don't need to." Like, what if all of Wednesday is spent on that thing that you think last week you didn't spend enough time on? You go, "Would that be enough? Would, like, one day out of 14 be enough?" You go, "Absolutely." You go, "Okay, well, you're going to have periods of imbalance-

Sahil Bloom 1:14:29 Mm-hmm.