The Top 0.1% Of Ideas I've Stumbled Upon On The Internet

Shaan Puri 0:00 Well, let, let's do it. So part two. Okay, here's part two with George. If you wanted the business ideas, we did that, five banger business ideas that was amazing. I got, like, goosebumps from it. This is part two, where we're gonna do some of your frameworks. The biggest one, I think the one that went the most viral, is about high agency. [upbeat music] You did a thread about one idea, I think, I think you framed it like, "One idea that has impacted my life the most is the concept of high agency." Can you talk about what is high agency, why it matters, and how you spot people with high agency?

George Mack 0:36 So high agency, something I've probably thought about for six to seven years, and it's one of those topics when you search it, it's quite difficult to find online, which is why I then just started writing about it to scratch my own itch. And the way I would describe high agency is if you were stuck in a Third World prison cell and had to call somebody to break you out, who would you call? And that's probably the most high agency person that you know. So, I mean, thought experiment time now. Who, who do you guys think of when I ask that question?

Sam Parr 1:08 My friend Jack Smith.

Shaan Puri 1:09 [laughs] Uh, that's a tough one. Feel like I would just go for the richest person I know, 'cause I'm like, "The money is gonna be the most valuable tool," versus, like, a MacGyver who's gonna break me out of my cell. [laughs]

George Mack 1:22 So Steve Ball- Steve Ball answered that question with Prince William, which I think is not allowed.

Shaan Puri 1:26 Yeah. [laughs]

George Mack 1:26 So it can't be somebody who's, like, a royal family member-

Shaan Puri 1:29 [laughs]

George Mack 1:29 ... but it has to be purely on merit.

Shaan Puri 1:32 Well, you know what, the, the meme you have in the tweet I think is a great visual of this. So Sam, have you seen the tw- I mean, I don't know if you've seen the tweet, but he basically has-

Sam Parr 1:39 Is that the one where, uh, where he tells you, he's like, "If someone says something's impossible, a high agency person will think, 'Well, that's just a story you've told. Now I'm going to overcome it.'" Versus a low agency person will be like, "Oh, that story is true."

Shaan Puri 1:52 I think that's a clue in it, but I'm talking about the, the very first picture that he has in the tweet is basically two guys stranded on an island. One guy ta- uh, and they have these, like, pieces of, you know, w- wood basically that they have from the, from the, from the island. One guy is using the wood to spell help, so that somebody-

Sam Parr 2:07 Mm. Yeah

Shaan Puri 2:07 ... if somebody flies over, they'll, they, or a boat sees help, that they'll come save him, and the other guy just made a, made a boat out of the wood. And the high agency is the guy who'll make the boat out of the wood, and most people just put out a sign for help and they're kind of the victim and they're, they're, they're looking for somebody to come and rescue them.

George Mack 2:22 I, I guess if I had to trim it down, like, I think what's the advert for High Agency that we spoke about last time, would be high agency people or low agency people, are they happening to life or is life happening to them? It's a spectrum, right? Like, there's circumstances, there's, there's different things that go on, but you can immediately plot that X, Y axis in your head of people that you know, of people that are, like, happening to life and people that life's happening to them.

Shaan Puri 2:48 And so why does the, uh, why does the idea of high agency matter so much to you? You said you've been thinking about it for six, six or seven years. That's probably longer than your longest relationship. Tell me why you have [laughs] why you have had such a long relationship with this concept.

George Mack 2:59 I think it's the most under-discussed personality trait, and it's the most probably important personality trait. And it, this most similar concept that I've seen online is, have you seen Paul Graham's Relentlessly Resourceful?

Shaan Puri 3:13 Yeah, well, he just says, like, "I've created YC, I've now seen thousands of founders, and if I think about the trait that is most valuable in founders, it's not intelligence, it's not charisma, it's not, uh, you know, engineering prowess. It's the, you know, the best founders are relentlessly resourceful." And that, that phrase. And he, he also says, like, "Can you describe..." Well, you know, a test is would you describe this person as an animal?

George Mack 3:36 Mm.

Shaan Puri 3:36 Would you say, "Yeah, he's, he's an animal"? And if you can say, "Man, that guy's an absolute animal," or, "She's an animal," when it comes to this, that's the sign of a winner.

George Mack 3:43 Yes.

Shaan Puri 3:43 And I think that's the, the output of a high agency person, is how do you describe them? They're basically, they're an animal.

George Mack 3:48 Yes. And he has a great bit in there of inverting it, which was what would be the opposite, and it would be hapless, which is probably a good case of life happening to them.

Shaan Puri 3:57 Right.

George Mack 3:57 And I think there's a few... There's, uh, four kinda tenets I would say why high agency's probably not a sticky idea as much as it could be, 'cause it ki- kind of has four ideas in it. Which is, one, locus of control, so I have control. Two, intentionalism, so they've thought about the direction that they want to go in. Three, resourcefulness, which is I'm capable of getting the outcome. And then four, high bias for action, which is they've already fucking started the thing before they've even listened to this podcast. They're just constantly moving.

Shaan Puri 4:25 Well-

George Mack 4:25 So those four things

Sam Parr 4:26 And it's, I, I think it's not changeable. It's sorta like telling people, um, they should've started a business before they had children. It's like, dude, like, we don't, I don't like talking about that because, like, you can't fucking change that. Like, you are what you are.

George Mack 4:38 [laughs]

Sam Parr 4:39 Uh, you know what I mean? Um, it's not particularly fun to talk about because I think that on, you're, you ha- you have that scale already set.

George Mack 4:46 I disagree, I think.

Sam Parr 4:48 Go on. Tell me. Change my mind.

George Mack 4:50 Th- there's definitely some truth to what you say, and also that's quite a high agency reply, right? There's definitely some truth to what you say in that I think there is a little bit of a genetic component to it. But theoretically, I think you could make somebody, you could reduce somebody's agency. Therefore, if you can reduce somebody's agency, you could also increase their agency. It's probably like muscle building. There's, there's a genetic, like, component to it-

Sam Parr 5:13 Sure

George Mack 5:13 ... but I still think everybody can increase or decrease their agency depending on the inputs that they put into the system.

Shaan Puri 5:19 I, I had a tweet once that, um, that went kind of viral about this where I said, "One small poker tell for if an employee is gonna be great is if they're willing to spend money out of their own pocket to move faster."

George Mack 5:30 Mm.

Shaan Puri 5:30 "They're not doing it to impress you or to take one for the team, and it's not the money that matters. It's that this person simply cannot stand being blocked or slowed down. Sharks die if they stop swimming." And I said this because we hired this woman in, in our business, and she is so good. We've promoted her two times already in probably two years. She now basically runs a huge part of the business and she's awesome. And one of the things that I noticed is that, not the, not the spending money part, but I noticed we'll be talking about an idea and it looks like she's not listening, 'cause she'll start, like, typing on her computer, and then I'm like, "Yeah, so just send that over to me." She's like, "Yeah, I just did." I'm like, "What?" And she will literally do it before the, the words are done out of my mouth, and she cannot help but taking action. Like, her bias for action is so high that it's almost annoying. Uh, it's so high that you're like, "Hey, can we just stop... Can we just talk first before you go finish the thing?" But on balance, it is so much more valuable to have somebody who's that high action, because they just get more done. They're, they're... She's like 12 people. She is literally like an entire team herself, because she will make decisions very quickly. She'll immediately implement it, and then she'll fix whatever's broken so quickly before the other person has even got out of, gotten out of bed. And I think that that's a, it's a trait that I, that I now look for in the hiring as well. But you said something that's interesting. You said it can be taught. So how do you develop high agency?

George Mack 6:51 Emmet from Twitch has a flowchart that's really cool of, like, literally a question by question by question of how to develop somebody's agency with time. I think I would use the Midwit meme algorithm of how would I make somebody low agency and then avoid that. So if I was to make somebody lower in agency, I would make them hyper-general. I would use no deadlines. I would not break things down into step-by-step instructions. Um, so I would go through the list of how to make somebody low agency first and foremost, and go through that. I'd say it's, it's much, it's much easier to spot in other people as well. So I'd look at who are the most high-agency people that you know, and then trying to reverse engineer the values and behaviors they have, then trying to analyze yourself, because it loops back to the first episode where self-analysis, um, is not that useful. In terms of the job interview questions as well, Shaan, like, one of my favorite ones that I've told a few founders and they go, "This is awesome," of asking for weird teenage hobbies. Because if they can go against the crowd when they're a teenager, so much easier as an adult. It's tough, but it's easier. And I have one founder who voice memed me the other day, and he goes, "I pre-screen all candidates with that," and he said, "The best quality filter of potential people, of potential high-agency people."

Shaan Puri 8:09 W- we, on this podcast, it's a question I ask a bunch is I say, "You're awesome. Like, I'm so inspired by this right now. What... If I had met you or I'd been able to, to observe you when you were 12, 13 years old, what would I have seen? Would I have had any clues that you would become this kind of outlier type of person?" A couple people have said some pretty interesting answers. So, uh, Jess Ma, who came on, and Jess Ma is a super impressive entrepreneur. I think Paul Graham had said, like, you know, the five most, you know, impressive, or if he had to bet on five people in YC, it would've been like Sam Alt and the Collisons, and, like, Jess Ma was one of the five. And she said, like, she's like, "Yeah. Basically, I was, uh, kind of a runt in school. I wasn't that good at class. I kinda got picked on and I was weird. But I created... Like, I liked gaming, and I basically created a server farm for my favorite game. I started charging for it, and I was making basically, like, tens of thousands of dollars renting out server space for this game back when I was, you know, 14 years old." And we had Saeed Balkhi come on. This guy's built basically a billion-dollar bootstrapped business, which is so unfathomable to, to be able to do. And somebody told me that, [laughs] you know, they go, "Ask Saeed about when he was a teenager and he hacked his school's system so he could just change his grade." Like, he was willing to do the work to hack into his school system to, like, be able to change his grade-

George Mack 9:23 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:23 ... versus just study for the thing and get a good grade. And guess what? That's also a guy who basically, like, found other growth hacks along the way to grow his business incredibly fast without needing any capital.

Sam Parr 9:33 I, I was with a guy this weekend, and he's a friend, and he, um, told this story. He's a new friend though, but he told a story about how he got in trouble when he was a kid because he built this thing that allowed him to remote control a streetlight near his home. And then he goes on, like, a, a few hours later to talk about his new business idea, and I remember, like, him getting in trouble for controlling the streetlight near his house and how his mom-

George Mack 9:57 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:57 ... like, grounded him for three weeks, and I'm like, "I'm in."

Shaan Puri 10:01 And by the way, YC has a, a one-page application, and in there... So, so every question in the YC application has to have earned its right to be there. If you're on the one page, there's only, like, seven questions. One of the seven questions is, "Tell us about a real-world system that you've hacked for your benefit." Right? Uh, not s- not literally hacked, but, like, any real wor- any system in the real world that you have sort of gamed in order to do it. They f- 'cause business, a high predictor of relentlessly resourceful, as we talked about.

Sam Parr 10:27 All right, guys, really quick. So back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts, and we created this sorta playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kinda cool. So they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download, and it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends, for spotting different companies that are gonna explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this into a tool and are giving it away for free that anyone can download. So if you wanna stay ahead of the game and you wanna find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist, this is the ultimate guide. So if you wanna check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show.

Shaan Puri 11:20 George, what's the answer for you? Uh, like, did you have t- weird teenage hobbies?

George Mack 11:23 [laughs] Yeah. My, um... It might not translate as well to an American audience, but my dad bet me I couldn't do 10 kick-ups with a soccer ball, and puberty had just hit, so testosterone was in the system. And I-

Shaan Puri 11:39 What, what's a kick-up, by the way?

George Mack 11:41 Like, sort of a juggle with a soccer ball.

Shaan Puri 11:43 Okay, gotcha.

George Mack 11:44 So my dad bet me I couldn't do that. Uh, £10. And testosterone had just hit, like first bit of armpit hair, and I remember thinking, "Fuck that guy. I'll prove him wrong."

Shaan Puri 11:54 [laughs]

George Mack 11:55 So I trained, and I trained, and I trained, and he, he didn't... Cool parenting hack, by the way. He didn't try and push me to do it. He just bet me whether I could do it, and he made sure that he had to see me do it. Anyway, I ended up doing it, and then- I kept doing it more and more, and I ended up in an Adidas advert for a FIFA World Cup. I used to tour around doing tricks at different stadiums. Held, like, three unofficial world records for different tricks and things like that. So, and then ultimately I decided I wanted to lose my virginity, so I stopped doing it.

Sam Parr 12:24 [laughs]

George Mack 12:25 Um, but it was, uh, yeah, really fun.

Sam Parr 12:27 Did it, did it work, giving it up? Yeah.

George Mack 12:30 Still trying, but someday soon.

Sam Parr 12:31 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:32 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:32 Tends to work out that way.

Shaan Puri 12:33 Sam, what about you? Did you have weird teenage hobbies?

Sam Parr 12:36 Uh, yeah. I, I basically... Y- like, small, predictable things. Like, I, I had an eBay store when I was 12. Or I remember in fourth grade-

Shaan Puri 12:44 That's not small or predictable.

Sam Parr 12:46 It, well, y- yeah, like, I mean, things that I think you would expect me to do, knowing me. Um, I also, like, in fourth grade when I, when we had to pick a book to do a book report on, I did How to Win Friends and Influence People. Like- [laughs]

Shaan Puri 12:57 [laughs]

George Mack 12:57 [laughs] Too, too good.

Sam Parr 12:59 Like, I, I was, like, a weirdo. Like, I, I liked, I, I enjoyed the stuff that I like now back when I was 12 years old.

Shaan Puri 13:06 [laughs] That's amazing.

Sam Parr 13:08 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 13:09 That is so funny.

Sam Parr 13:09 You're like, you're like, "Listen up, class. Dale Carnegie said that your own name is the most beautiful word in the English language. So say it with me." You, you know what I mean? Like-

Shaan Puri 13:19 [laughs]

George Mack 13:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:20 Yeah, I was into like that. Were you into anything?

Shaan Puri 13:23 You know, when I first heard this, I felt really bad because I was like, I c- I did- couldn't think of anything special that I did. Mohnish Pabrai was on the episode, and he basically said there's a golden period. He studied, like, I went to his house, he's got this whole wall of books on science and brain chemistry and all that, neuroscience. And he was basically like, "There's a, like, a golden decade, basically between the ages of sort of, like, 10, um, and then about 19 years old, where the brain is optimal for specialization during that time." And so if you look at the people who are great programmers, they usually started programming very early on.

Sam Parr 13:53 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 13:54 Or, uh, great musicians, like age six, he composed his first thing. It's like, "Wow, this is insane." And I felt really bad 'cause I was like, "Oh, shit," like, too late for me, right? Like, what, what am I supposed to do now? I was just kind of a normal kid picking boogers in, in junior high. Like I, I didn't do that. But then I started thinking about it more, and I'm really thinking like, "Was there anything?" And the one thing I did think of was, um, a unique experience I had was, like, I was really into improv early on. I didn't do it a ton, but I did go to, like, our Texas state-

George Mack 14:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 14:19 ... kind of finals with, like, group improv. It was basically me and my buddy, and we would group improv, which is kind of a podcast without a microphone, right? [laughs] Like that's what two people doing improv back and forth is. And then I was in a couple of movies as a kid, and so I kind of was doing this acting improv performing thing. And I think if there's anything, that's what it was. But I wasn't a, a lemonade stand, kind of like eBay flipper type of guy. The only other weird one I did was I used to play this game, NBA 2K, which is common, but the uncommon thing was I never played the game. So I didn't go in and I wasn't, like, dunking and shooting and, like, all I did is I played franchise mode. And I would simulate, I was basically only a general manager. So I would sim- I would simulate the season, then I would do the draft. I would scout all the prospects and-

Sam Parr 15:02 Wait, so you wouldn't actually play, like, the p- like the-

Shaan Puri 15:04 No, and I-

Sam Parr 15:05 ... pressing buttons and moving players?

Shaan Puri 15:05 It wasn't intentional. Like, I thought, "Okay, first I'm gonna build this great team," and so I was just, like, a CEO basically. I was like, free agency and trades and scouting and finding diamonds in the rough. But I got so addicted to that, I never ended up playing with any of those players. I would just simulate. I would just do that for, like-

Sam Parr 15:20 So fantasy league

Shaan Puri 15:21 ... 10 years in there. I was basically a fantasy GM, which I guess is kind of like, that's kinda what being a, like, a CEO or a businessperson is. Like, you're just doing the-

Sam Parr 15:28 Good point

Shaan Puri 15:28 ... part where you're not actually doing the work, so. But my honest answer was, like, I was not, like, elite at any of those things, whereas I think the people who really excel, they tend to show that brilliance early on and become, like, uh, oddly good at something. Their obsession takes over them. I don't think I personally had that.

George Mack 15:43 I love it. Do you want me to give you the rest of the checklist for the high agency people, and you can see who in your life you know?

Shaan Puri 15:48 Yeah. Weird teenage hobbies. What else you got?

George Mack 15:50 Energy distortion field. So if you meet with them when you're tired and defeated, you leave the room ready to run a marathon on a treadmill with max incline. And low agency people do the opposite, so this is the kind of idea of treadmill friends. Afterwards, you've got so much energy you need to go on a treadmill, you can't sleep. And then you have, like, sofa friends who-

Shaan Puri 16:06 That's funny

George Mack 16:07 ... you need to lie down after hanging out with them.

Shaan Puri 16:08 [laughs]

George Mack 16:09 Who's, like, the treadmill friends in your guys' life that comes to mind?

Shaan Puri 16:11 Uh, Sam's like that for me. S- uh, my buddy Suli is like that. Like, I can't, I can't hang out with Suli, and literally our hangout tends to be we walk for like four hours talking. Uh, because we almost have to burn off the energy that's, like, the, the excitement of the ideas and the stories that we're sharing while we're doing it. Um, that's how this podcast got created. It was on, on a four-hour walk with him, and I was like, "You know what I really want?" It was, like, hour three. I was like, "You know what I really wanna do? It's not a company. I wanna create a podcast. I wanna be Tim Ferriss. I wanna wake up and have a, be in a million people's earballs." And that was, like, a thing that came to me when I worked myself into that state.

George Mack 16:43 Mm.

Shaan Puri 16:43 Uh, Ben is kinda like that, my business partner Ben, where he's-

Sam Parr 16:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 16:46 ... like, I could just... I probably do call Ben, I think, eight times a day on average. You know, so we just talk eight times in a day, which now that I say it, it sounds very weird, but it feels very normal. If I didn't have kids, it'd probably be 20 times a day.

Sam Parr 16:57 Who, who, who are yours, George? Who are yours?

George Mack 17:00 Uh, probably three. Uh, Chris Williamson from Modern Wisdom, where we, like, just out all night, we can just go and go and go.

Sam Parr 17:08 And you guys are both similar, like, where Chris is like an a- in a, in a, in a good way, he's like an academic, where, like, he just, like, learns and then just teaches, and I, like, I, you know, I feel that way listening to his podcast. So who's the second one?

George Mack 17:20 David Senra from Founders. Like, he's just fucking, if espresso was a human being-

Shaan Puri 17:25 [laughs] Yeah

George Mack 17:25 ... it'd be David fucking Senra.

Shaan Puri 17:26 [laughs]

George Mack 17:27 So that guy I'd add on there. And then the third one, my old boss, um, Steve Bartlett, who u- who runs the Diary of a CEO podcast. I remember when Steve was running the business, he'd have an office, uh, Manchester, London, New York, and I'd work in the Manchester office. And Steve was maybe there a quarter of the time in that office.

Sam Parr 17:44 And what business is this? Is this this, this-

George Mack 17:46 This was back at his marketing agency, Social Chain.

Sam Parr 17:48 Social Chain.

George Mack 17:48 Yeah.

Sam Parr 17:49 Okay.

George Mack 17:49 And I would open the door, and I'd know if Steve was in that day without seeing him, just off the energy in the room of everybody else's vibe. So those, those three would be my three.

Shaan Puri 18:00 That's a great compliment. How'd you get the job, by the way? Why, why did you join Social Chain?

George Mack 18:04 He had a unique angle that, uh, essentially the UK, you mentioned earlier the UK is the sixth-largest economy in the world. It's not. London's the sixth-largest economy in the world, and then there's a very, very poor list of cities and towns attached to it So he based himself in Manchester and just marketed himself well and just sucked up all the talent that was in Manchester, which is, which is where I was. Do you want the next one?

Shaan Puri 18:23 Yeah, keep going.

George Mack 18:25 You can never guess their opinions. So whether it's the boxer that writes poetry, the advertiser obsessed with the history of war, the beauty queen who reads Nietzsche, if their beliefs don't line up with their stereotypes, they've exercised agency. So when you give them an opinion on ABC, do they fit in a box, or do they often surprise you that they've thought things through?

Shaan Puri 18:43 Right.

George Mack 18:43 Anybody who pop up?

Shaan Puri 18:44 What you're saying is basically they're non-cliche. So like-

George Mack 18:46 And

Shaan Puri 18:47 ... we just had Jack Smith on the podcast. I think Jack is one of these type of independent thinkers where he's like a successful, smart tech guy, you know, almost like has like a more of an engineer's brain. But then he came on and was talking about this like woo-woo energy system, th- healing, en- healing through energy using colors in a scr- in a room that he sat in and how it cured his like whatever. I'm like, "Jack, you're too smart for this."

Sam Parr 19:12 And I never know how he's gonna reply to certain stuff.

Shaan Puri 19:15 Right.

Sam Parr 19:15 Like, I'll explain something to him, and I'm like, "I think you're gonna be too smart-

Shaan Puri 19:20 Yeah

Sam Parr 19:20 ... to b- believe this, but you're open to learning more." That's, that's wild to me.

Shaan Puri 19:24 Or even what he's gonna do, his next move, right? In Silicon Valley, you sell your company, there's two paths. Either you're... I think they, they take you to a room, and they're like, "Hey, here's two boxes. Would you like to become a VC?"

Sam Parr 19:33 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:33 The vest, the vest is under this box. Or you're a founder, and you're now, your next thing is gonna be AI, healthcare, or whatever. Like, it's like cliche. Whereas Jack, after he sold his company, he- he's like spent a year in his garage building like the most ergonomic chair he could think of. It's like you, you could, you couldn't guess what the guy's gonna do next. He was total non-cliche in that sense.

George Mack 19:53 I like it. The next, uh, one, uh, immigrant mentality. If they've moved from their hometown, that's a good sign. If they've moved from their home country, that's an even greater sign, 'cause it takes agency to spot you're in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalize a move, and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.

Shaan Puri 20:09 Dude, that's a great point. That's a great point, and I've moved around to like nine different countries, so I think I, I win.

Sam Parr 20:14 And that's kind of like what you were saying about America, about w- uh, you know, sometimes we, we started out as a, as a country of immigrants, and that's maybe one of the reasons why we kind of have, uh-

Shaan Puri 20:23 Yeah, the seed filter

Sam Parr 20:24 ... outplayed our coverage a little bit, yeah.

Shaan Puri 20:25 Yeah, like what's the, what's the... Keith Rabois, it's like the, the, the people you hire are the company you build. So same thing for countries. It's like if the initial seed population was a bunch of crazy risk-takers who were willing to get on a boat and go to a new land to like establish it from scratch, you're gonna create a population of, you know, people who have that, that same mentality.

George Mack 20:44 The way I've thought about America, the way I've narrowed it down is if you look at what makes human beings special, if you have one human being in a jungle, it's the w- one of the worst animals ever, and we're just gonna get destroyed. If you put 500 of us, we've... you've just introduced a master predator the, the world's-

Shaan Puri 21:02 [laughs]

George Mack 21:02 ... that forest, that jungle has never seen before, 'cause we can cooperate. And America is that on steroids. Because when you go there, the enthusiasm, the energy, the agency, sometimes the IQ isn't there. I'd probably argue us Brits might be slightly smarter, no offense. However-

Shaan Puri 21:18 [laughs]

George Mack 21:18 ... you've got those things, it means you come up with an idea, and it's like, "Yeah, great idea. Let's do it."

Shaan Puri 21:23 [laughs]

George Mack 21:23 Like just the bias to optimism, the bias to action, whereas you have the Brit who's, "Uh, I don't think that'll work because of A, B, C." That's why America's the best, because you can cooperate faster than any country, in my opinion.

Shaan Puri 21:35 The, the, the Doritos Locos Taco did not come from pessimism, right?

George Mack 21:39 No.

Shaan Puri 21:39 That, that's only an, that is a uniquely American idea. You would never-

George Mack 21:42 Sure

Shaan Puri 21:43 ... that idea could not have been born in any other country.

George Mack 21:46 I love it.

Sam Parr 21:46 [laughs]

George Mack 21:46 Last two. Last two. Uh, they send you niche content. So low-agency people look at the social engagement of content before deeming its quality. High-agency people just look at the content. They spot upcoming trends very early. And the final one, mean to your face but nice behind your back. So the social incentive is to be nice to people's faces and gossip behind their backs, whereas the high-agency people, they do the opposite.

Sam Parr 22:08 Where'd you get that one from?

George Mack 22:09 One of my friends Lewis, who's just... I know he'll just say the, the honest thing to my face all the fucking time, and it's so useful to have a friend like that. Um, whereas the low agency, like you j- basically, whenever someone's going against incentives, oh, the agency that requires to go against incentives. I've written this. I often don't go against incentives. And even though I know incentives and I know agency, I still fall for it. It's the Daniel Kahneman thing at the start of the conversation. So to go against the social incentives of pain, I'll say a rude thing to your face that you need, social pain, and also when you're not there, there's no benefit. Actually, all the benefit is to gossip behind your back.

Shaan Puri 22:47 Right.

George Mack 22:47 To do the opposite and swim upstream, you need agency.

Sam Parr 22:50 You're very philosophical, which I think is cool, and it's almost like you have a business just to justify the re-

George Mack 22:56 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:56 ... just to pay, j- just to give you the, an excuse to spend time reading and thinking all day. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:00 Yeah, you're, you're like your own patron, basically. You're like, "Cool."

Sam Parr 23:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:03 "Can I fund myself to sit in a room and, and think of ideas and then invert them, and then think about them again, and then, you know, write them down and share them with the world?"

Sam Parr 23:12 Like, do, do you even like capitalism?

George Mack 23:14 I lo- well, I love compressing ideas, so which is why that I like advertising, 'cause I can use that skill that I have to compress things down. I always loved Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography where he made all his money from real estate, so he could do whatever the fuck he wanted with his acting career, and I think it's slightly underrated doing that.

Shaan Puri 23:30 Sam, did you know I offered to invest in George's business? And I was like, "I'll invest, fair terms. I'll blow this thing up. We grow this baby like crazy." And he was like, um, "That's all good, but there's one problem. If this grows, I'm gonna have to s- like, it's gonna suck me more towards that, and I actually wanna be all in the business of ideas. I don't want this to become, you know, bigger and more, more work."

Sam Parr 23:51 Which made you want it so much more. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:53 That made me respect him so much more, right? I was like, again, it's, that's a high-agency thing to do, right? To be able... Can you say no to money? Like, can you say no to money? Might be like another thing to just add on your list. How many times have you said no to money? George, I've, I've told this story on the podcast before, but you may not have heard it. The highest agency moment of my life was I was in sixth grade, I think. I got put in detention after school, and our detention was you go to the lunchroom School's out, everybody leaves, it's just the 20 kids who got in trouble that day, and you have to sit in silence and do nothing. And they s- they seat you kinda like every other chair diagonal so that you can't really t- you could talk to somebody, but you, it's not very easy to, you can't whisper, you just have to be a little bit loud. And it's me and it's the weirdest kid in our school. There's a kid who had hair down to his waist, and he always wore these, like, weird tattered shirts, and he was just a weirdo. And I s- uh, and people used to pick on him. And so I'm sitting there, and I'm kind of a bully, and I wanted to pick on him a little bit, and I just wanted to mess with him. I was bored, right? I'm in D Hall. You, you, you have two hours to do nothing. And I see on the floor of the lunchroom, there's, like, a grape that was, like, from lunch hours earlier, and it's, like, nasty. It's on the floor of a l- kids' lunchroom, and it's, like, got hair on it or whatever. And I just whispered to him, a- and I was just like, "Yo, I'll give you a dollar if you eat that grape."

George Mack 25:08 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:09 And he looks down, and he's like, "A dollar?" I was like, "Yeah." And then he reaches down, and I'm like, "Oh, my God. He's fell for it. He's going for it. This is insane." He picks it up, and he eats the grape, and I'm, like, grossed out. Uh, my mind is blown. I can't believe he did it. I'm like, "All right. Deal's a deal." I get, get out my wallet. I take a dollar. I hand it to him. And then he took the dollar and he ate it. [laughs]

George Mack 25:31 Oh, wow.

Shaan Puri 25:33 I could not believe it.

George Mack 25:34 Damn.

Shaan Puri 25:35 T- this was, like, 22 years ago or something. I, I still remember it vividly, and I just thought that was the biggest no fucks given moment I have ever s- probably still to this day in my life of, like, f- you know, F you-

George Mack 25:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:49 ... F your money, F the grape. I am going to... Like, he just ate the dollar. I couldn't believe it. No upside in it, but he sent an absolute message to my core.

George Mack 25:57 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:57 Uh. [laughs]

George Mack 25:59 I love it. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 26:01 [laughs]

George Mack 26:01 That, that's ridiculous. Um, where do you wanna go from here, Shaan?

Shaan Puri 26:05 Uh, you got a couple other cool, like, lifestyle things you do. So do you wanna talk about the Kale phone? 'Cause I think this is, like, somewhat th- something that might be helpful for people.

Shaan Puri 26:12 What is the Kale phone method that you do?

George Mack 26:15 Yeah, so again, talking about sticky ideas. So let me pull it up. So I've got them here, actually. I have my Cocaine phone, and I have my Kale phone. So I ended up in... I wrote about this, and then it ended up on Fox News, where it was, like, Trump, Biden, and then George Mack Cocaine Kale phone.

Shaan Puri 26:30 [laughs]

George Mack 26:31 And essentially, what I realized is there's two things that are presented to you in modern society as people get more and more addicted to their phones. There's, one, be a phone monkey and just be on your phone all day and deal with the cortisol and all the stress and mental fatigue that everyone's facing, is option one. Option two is just give up on the phone. Put it away for a week. Have the digital detox. And benefits of that are, yeah, you feel mentally clear. You feel incredible. You're coming up with creative ideas. But if your mum goes to hospital, how's she gonna get ahold of you? Or if you're out and about and you need an Uber, like, "Fuck, I can't get an Uber." Or if I wanna use Apple Notes to write down ideas, I can't do that. So I realized that, that what society presented was either the smartphone addict or the phoneless Luddite. And actually, the somewhere in between, which is the Cocaine and Kale phone. So the Kale phone is, like, all serotonin apps that make you feel good. So Audible, Notes, Uber, Google Maps, stuff that you need for necessities as well. Maybe an emergency number for your mum, wife, business partner if they need to get ahold of you, so you have that peace of mind when you're not on your Cocaine phone that they can still get ahold of me. Worst case scenario, somebody dies. Then Cocaine phone, everything.

Shaan Puri 27:49 [laughs]

George Mack 27:50 Slack, WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. Let's go crazy. Put the Cocaine phone in the drawer. Check it when you need to check it. Then use the Kale phone when you're out and about for a walk. Single best thing I've probably done for, like, my mental health, and everybody who tries it, or a lot of people who try it write to me and go, "This is a game changer."

Shaan Puri 28:07 What is the actual s- uh, other phone? Is it, uh, just, like, a Android phone? Or what, what did you do for the other phone? Is it just two iPhones?

George Mack 28:13 Just another iPhone.

Sam Parr 28:15 But do you have s- two SIM cards?

Shaan Puri 28:16 How do you do the number? Yeah.

George Mack 28:18 I have two SIM cards. So I have a different number in the Kale phone than the Cocaine phone.

Sam Parr 28:23 Oh, got it. Okay.

Shaan Puri 28:24 On- only drawback is that they basically have to have a second phone line, and people have to know to, to reach you there when you need it, but-

George Mack 28:29 It's only your mum, wife maybe.

Shaan Puri 28:31 Yeah.

George Mack 28:31 Right? That's the only people who really need that. And it's just for the peace of mind, and most of the time they won't. And the o- the only time they're gonna do is when somebody's in hospital. But it's having that peace of mind that therefore I don't need to check the Cocaine phone for that incident.

Sam Parr 28:42 Shaan, let me ask you a question. And be honest about this, and I'll answer it, and I'll be honest, too. Are y- do your parents still pay for your cell phone bill?

Shaan Puri 28:50 [laughs]

George Mack 28:51 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:52 I pay them back, all right?

George Mack 28:53 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:53 My dad tells me the amount.

Sam Parr 28:55 Oh, wow.

Shaan Puri 28:55 It's a family plan.

Sam Parr 28:56 Damn.

Shaan Puri 28:56 We've been on it for a long time.

Sam Parr 28:58 I-

Shaan Puri 28:58 Changing it-

Sam Parr 28:59 The same, dude. The same phone

Shaan Puri 29:00 ... can I change it with keeping my number? That's too much work.

Sam Parr 29:02 Same. I am also on my family plan. And so George, when you're talking about getting a new cell phone-

Shaan Puri 29:07 Honestly-

Sam Parr 29:07 ... I'm like, "Fuck no"

Shaan Puri 29:08 ... shout out to everybody who's on their family plan right now.

Sam Parr 29:10 Jesus Christ.

Shaan Puri 29:10 Shout out to everybody whose dad is paying their phone bill.

George Mack 29:13 I bet you-

Shaan Puri 29:13 It's all we have. That's our last connection. That's the last cord that gets cut between you and your parents is the pho-

Sam Parr 29:17 Damn

Shaan Puri 29:18 ... is the phone plan. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:19 I don't even know how to r- like, I've never gotten, like, a, like, a, like, I've always had to call my mother, like, "Hey, my phone broke. I'm gonna go buy one. Will you tell AT&T they gotta put it on, like, the, the plan?"

George Mack 29:29 What, so when you sold the hustle, she didn't go, "Go get your own fucking phone plan." She carried on going.

Shaan Puri 29:33 It's not a money thing. [laughs]

George Mack 29:36 Fair play. Well, there we go.

Sam Parr 29:39 It's not fair play. I don't know. I, I, I-

Shaan Puri 29:41 Yeah

Sam Parr 29:41 ... I don't think you're using that word like I think it should be used. Uh. [laughs]

George Mack 29:43 Especially if you t- yeah, you text your mom saying, "I need to get a Cocaine phone," it's probably not gonna go down too well as well.

Shaan Puri 29:49 So-

Sam Parr 29:49 I, I thought, Shaan, I thought you would have also been on yours.

Shaan Puri 29:52 Yeah.

Sam Parr 29:53 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 29:53 Yeah, for sure. Dude, it, my wife feels it's, like, almost, like, a sign of disrespect that I didn't create, like, a new family plan with us as the core family unit. And I'm like, "Look, it's just a, it's just a hassle, okay? I'm not t- this, don't read more into it than what it is." [laughs]

George Mack 30:05 [laughs]

Sam Parr 30:05 Dude, I'm-

Shaan Puri 30:06 I'm just lazy, okay?

Sam Parr 30:06 ... there's this episode on, uh, on, like, Ellen De- DeGeneres where she's asking Bill Gates, like, "Let's see if you know how much a gallon of milk costs, like,"

George Mack 30:15 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 30:15 "... 'cause, you know, you're s- you're so out of touch." And so when you talk to me about a cell phone plan, I'm like, [laughs] "I don't know, five bucks? 100 bucks? I have no idea." Like-

Shaan Puri 30:22 Yeah, he w- he was like, "Milk, that's like $23, right?" [laughs]

Sam Parr 30:25 Yeah. [laughs] Same with the phone plan. I'm like, "I don't know, 1,000? Uh, I don't know." I, I have no idea

Shaan Puri 30:30 So George, are there any d- drawbacks or like in practice, let's say I wanted to go do this, 'cause the idea is really sticky, it's really viral. Even if you never did it, it's just like sounds cool. But you actu- this, let me verify. You actually live this way.

Sam Parr 30:43 Yeah, fully yes.

George Mack 30:43 Before you answer, I, I gotta run.

Shaan Puri 30:46 Oh, sorry.

George Mack 30:46 I gotta run. I'll leave my... I'll leave all my stuff up. I had a, a 1:30.

Shaan Puri 30:50 Okay, cool.

George Mack 30:50 I'll see you soon.

Shaan Puri 30:50 See you. So you actually live this way, you actually have the two phones?

George Mack 30:54 Yeah. I've done it for three and a bit years, and whenever I doubt it, so I've had incidents where I've lost one phone or had an issue with signal in a certain country, and when you go back to that lifestyle of waking up and downloading social media as your first input into your brain, y- or messaging apps, you c- you reali- you only realize it via contrast of how destructive I think it, that is for the cre- particularly for people who are creative people-

Shaan Puri 31:24 Right

George Mack 31:24 ... or ideas people. Like downloading whatever the worst news headline is immediately into your consciousness, and particularly if you then use your phone as your alarm clock as well, it's, like it's... I've experienced it via contrast. It's so toxic. I can't deal with

George Mack 31:37 it.

Shaan Puri 31:38 I wanna ask you about Lee Kuan Yew, somebody who's been on my list of people I wanna go deep dive into. Sounds like you've read a bit about him or studied him a little bit. What is the learnings from Lee Kuan Yew?

George Mack 31:50 So Lee Kuan Yew was the leader of Singapore. During his reign, he went, he took Singapore from essentially being a third world country with a lot of problems, and you've got China and Japan on your doorstep, which historically not the friendliest, uh, people to have on your doorstep, and obviously part of the British rule, part of the British Empire. Went from there to one of the best financial hubs in the world. But he ran the country like a CEO, and one of my favorite anecdotes about Lee Kuan Yew is how he used to obsess about the airport onboarding experience. And it's interesting, you see, you see such obvious ideas in startups, and you go, "Why don't countries just take this?" The onboarding experience or the conversion rate optimization of a landing page or a website or an advert versus the when you arrive at the airport, what's the airport like? What are the queues like, the immigration queues like? What are the bathrooms like? How clean are things? What's the first few miles from the airport to the city? Lee Kuan Yew used to obsess over everything, would be changing the routes, would be cleaning things up, would be inspecting regularly, seeing how quick things were, because he knew that that is talented people coming for the first time. And Dubai does this incredibly well. You go there for the first time and you go, "Oh, wow. They've looked at everybody else's onboarding experience and five X'd this." Immediately having those magic moments, like designing Facebook or designing Asana within the first few minutes of entering and leaving the airport because it's the fir- you gotta think it's like a stand-up comedian. The first thing as you arrive and the last thing as you leave. So he used to obsess over that. And I remember I went to Austin Airport, and as you go up, to get an Uber, you've gotta go through about three different car parks and your phone signal-

Shaan Puri 33:37 Yeah

George Mack 33:37 ... goes out and you're sweating. I remember thinking to myself, I go, "Lee Kuan Yew would-

Shaan Puri 33:41 You're treated like a criminal. If you try to get-

George Mack 33:42 Yes

Shaan Puri 33:42 ... an Uber in an American airport, you're treated like a criminal. It's like, "Oh, if you're gonna do a drug deal, then go to the third parking garage, fourth floor, behind the fence. That's where you can go get picked up if you're gonna be an asshole."

George Mack 33:52 Yeah, I remember, I remember like being there going, "Lee Kuan Yew would fucking hate this."

Shaan Puri 33:55 [laughs]

George Mack 33:56 And I remember going, that's a weird... I go, I bet nobody came about that thought walking through Austin Airport, so.

Shaan Puri 33:59 [laughs] Lee Kuan Yew's rolling over in his grave right now. So-

George Mack 34:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:02 So that's interesting because I remember-

George Mack 34:04 Listen

Shaan Puri 34:04 ... when I was in my teens, I went to the Singapore, we, we went to Singapore, and the s- if you haven't been, the Singaporean airport is like a mall. It's like an experience. Like, they have like a fitness facility, they have like a movie theater. There's like... It is just a beautiful place. Everything is clean. There's tons of comfortable seating. It is not like a pain the way that most airport experiences are. And I remember just noting that and being like, "Oh, that's weird. Why is Singapore's airport so good?" So it's very interesting that he thought about it as a first impression onboarding experience. Now, like, is that just a cool story? Did that pay off in some way? Like, did the immigration rate go up? Or like what, what changed from that? Or what, what are the things that he did to actually like, you know, turn the country around? You know, what were the big levers that he pulled? So onboarding is one. What, what really worked?

George Mack 34:48 Attracting talented immigration is the single biggest, the single biggest thing from my understanding of Singapore's story that they did, and part of that obviously is the onboarding. And if you look at it, Singapore has essentially no natural resources, so it's not blessed with Saudi Arabia's oil or-

Shaan Puri 35:04 Right

George Mack 35:05 ... like L- LA's beauty necessarily, but just attracting as many talented immigrants. The specifics around the economics as well, I, I don't know as much on, but around taxation and things like that, but it's just a wild case study. I know Charlie Munger is obsessed with Lee Kuan Yew.

Shaan Puri 35:19 Right.

George Mack 35:19 He has this story of Lee Kuan Yew... We're talking about mating earlier. Lee Kuan Yew, rather than marrying the hottest girl in his class, picked the only girl in his class that performed better than him, and he was at the most like elite university at Singapore. He married the lady who's the only one who was smarter than him. So very odd, peculiar individual.

Shaan Puri 35:38 [laughs] Uh, there's another thing he did was around air conditioning, right? Didn't he do like an AC, a big push for AC, having AC in the country?

George Mack 35:46 Yeah, I saw that recently. I think it was Peter Levelz on Twitter that was breaking that down. Yeah, he was obsessed with getting air conditioning 'cause he was convinced it was key to the economic success.

Shaan Puri 35:56 Yeah, like, uh, he was basic- so there was a interview with him. I'm, I'm reading an article now, uh, from Vox. So basically this interview with him and it said, "Was there anything else besides multicultural tolerance that enabled Singapore's success?" And his answer was, "Air conditioning. Air conditioning was a most important invention for us." And basically, I think that if you look at countries like, you know, my parents, they grew up in India, and India is so hot that during the day, during like your brain's most kinda productive hours, they take like a three-hour period where you just stay inside, you just try to sleep. And you even, even, you can't even try to sleep because it's like so hot, so you're just like laying in a cot with like, you know, a fan trying to cool down because you can't be outside. You can't really be productive in thinking right now. You just have to wait out the heat You know, my assistant is in the Philippines, and one of the things that she always talks about is, like, they would have these heat waves, and it's, like-

George Mack 36:41 Mm

Shaan Puri 36:41 ... super hard for her to work 'cause she flipped her schedule. She works in the evening, her time, which is daytime my time, and I was like, "Man, is that really inconvenient for you? Like, how, how does that work for your lifestyle balance?" She's like, "Well, you know, of course it takes some adjusting, but one of the big things is I don't have to deal with the heat because I sleep during the day when it's really hot, and I wake up at the, in the evening when it's cooler, and that's when I work, and I f- I feel better that way." It's also, by the way, why so many great engineers come from, like, the Nordic regions because-

George Mack 37:07 Mm

Shaan Puri 37:07 ... those are places where it's, like, too cold to go outside.

George Mack 37:10 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:11 Too dark to go d- it's, like, dark all the time, and so they just stay inside. They program or they just code on computers 'cause there's not really better options out there, and they develop this, like, amazing engineering talent because during their formative years they just stay inside a bunch of time. And what's the best thing to do when you're inside is, like, play on the computer or play video games and, um, you know, learn to, learn to program.

George Mack 37:29 Just second and third order consequences everywhere you look. It's crazy.

Shaan Puri 37:32 Yeah, exa- exactly. Exactly.

Shaan Puri 37:34 Do you have any other of the, like, kind of key frameworks that really, I don't know, shifted the way you think or you keep seeing pop up that you don't think most people appreciate?

George Mack 37:44 I'd say there's two. One is probably mine and yours favorite meme, Shaan-

Shaan Puri 37:50 [laughs]

George Mack 37:50 ... of the, the Midwit meme which just don't refuses to die. It just c- it's-

Shaan Puri 37:54 Right

George Mack 37:55 ... like a fine wine. It gets better with age.

Shaan Puri 37:56 [laughs]

George Mack 37:57 And realizing how often I've been the guy in the middle over the years, and then trying to come up with solutions to not be the guy in the middle, and then realizing-

Shaan Puri 38:07 Do, do you have any, uh, canonical examples of the Midwit meme of you in the middle, um, that you can think of?

George Mack 38:12 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:12 Like, just personal attacks on your psyche?

George Mack 38:16 Yes. Um, one was when I started to get really obsessed with sleep, uh, when I was, like, 20, 21, and I'd have everything sleep optimized. Matthew Walker had just been on Joe Rogan, so I've got the 10-step checklist routine. I've got the supplements. I've got everything, and I'm there doing the whole, like, two-hour wind down routine. No screens before bed, red light glasses on. I'm brushing my teeth in the dark, and my girlfriend at the time comes in and, like, hits the lights, like, minutes before bed.

Shaan Puri 38:45 [laughs]

George Mack 38:45 Like, blinds me. So, so I'm completely blinded and, like, getting out... I, like... The first row we ever had was that. I was like, "What are you doing?" And I was sat there in bed. So she's imm- of course, the g- like, on the left or on the right. She's immediately fallen asleep within two minutes-

Shaan Puri 39:01 [laughs]

George Mack 39:01 ... without doing any of the shit I was doing. I'm sat there for an hour afterwards, like, shaking with adrenaline of, like, how angry/blitzed I was, and I realized, "Oh, shit." A lot of sleep, for example, I had a phase of insomnia, and a lot of sleep is the more you think about sleep, the more pressure you put on sleep, the worse the sleep is, which is why-

Shaan Puri 39:20 Right

George Mack 39:20 ... a lot of these... If I was, if I was the CMO of Whoop or Oura, the one thing I would suggest them to do, like, coming in as a product thing, would be to never allow you to know the next day's score because this i- this, this is actually probably one of the most toxic things I think we'll see for sleep, of people checking their sleep as well as going to sleep thinking about what score they're going to get.

Shaan Puri 39:40 Mm.

George Mack 39:40 It's the opposite of what you want. That's literally creating an insomniac cycle versus a week later, having a summary of the previous week when you're detached from the result's probably useful. But the next day is particularly bad, so that's a Midwit area.

Shaan Puri 39:52 That's a great one. I think one of the studies about what makes people unhappy or depressed or suicidal, like, one of the strongest signals is this idea of rumination, which is, like, almost like a, uh, obsessive thought loop about yourself and your thoughts. And so once you get in that thought loop, it is very, very difficult to get out. It's also why one of the easiest hacks to feeling better about yourself is to simply just go help other people. Like, it is the ov- o- overfocus on yourself and your own condition is what creates your own poor conditions, and, um, you know, the, uh, it's the same reason my, my trainer says this thing. He goes, um, "Whatever you feel you lack, that's exactly what you gotta give. You feel you lack respect, you got disrespected? Go give respect. You feel like you lack money? Go give money." And, and, and literally just flipping the mindset of, like, I lack to, like, I have enough so that I can give breaks this thought loop of, like, worry and anxiety around certain topics. And sleep is the same way.

George Mack 40:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:49 Health is the same w- same way, where you could literally be, become, like, manic about your own health, and you're stressing yourself out, which decreases your health. And I think a lot of people fall into this trap with therapy and with self-improvement, where they get addicted to the medicine, and it creates-

George Mack 41:03 Yes

Shaan Puri 41:03 ... um, too much thoughts about yourself. You know, the happiest people are the ones who are, you know, that are not doing this, like, extreme introspection all the time.

George Mack 41:11 Yes. The single, the sing... 'Cause I noticed that when it came to decisions, let's say people probably got this right now, like big decision. Do I move to the city or stay to the city? Do I quit this thing or carry on doing this thing? I would have this thing in my head where it would play the, if I thought about dec- moving to the city, it would play the worst case scenario of that in my head, like the amygdala would fire. And then I'd think about the other thing, and the amygdala would fire and play the worst case scenario. And as a result, paralysis, analysis, just kick the can. I'd make the decision to not make the decision. And one of the biggest bits of advice I got was stop thinking about making decisions and start thinking about making experiments. 'Cause I realized there was decisions I was procrastinating on for two years that I could've done both of them 10 times over in the time spent thinking about the thing.

Shaan Puri 41:59 Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a great one. Sam has a nice little one on this called, uh, worry time, which is-

George Mack 42:04 Mm

Shaan Puri 42:04 ... once he thinks something is worthy of an experiment or worthy of trying, right? Which a big difference between your, your, your words there, right? Experimenting with something, I'm gonna try this out. Very different than I'm gonna do this. I have to do this. This is my new, my new thing. I, I choose this. So giving himself a little bit of grace there by saying, "I'm gonna try and experiment," but he says he schedules his worry time. So he says-

George Mack 42:25 Yeah

Shaan Puri 42:25 ... "Cool. What I don't wanna do is make this decision and then reassess it daily and worry about it every single day. Worry about is it working? Is it gonna work? Am I good enough? Is this, is this right? Is this wrong? Am I making a mistake here?" He's like, "So I schedule it. I'll put it on Sunday. I'll literally put it on the calendar. I'll put 30 minutes. That's my worry time. And so I know I'm gonna worry about this on Sunday. I don't need to worry about it today. For now, I just need to do it." I have my scheduled worry time. 'Cause I think when you don't decide when you're gonna worry about it-

George Mack 42:54 Yeah

Shaan Puri 42:54 ... you worry about it all the time, 'cause you're almost worried that you're never, that you're never gonna assess it. And I found that to be a great hack, is to, to schedule the worry time. My trainer says it's like when you plant a seed to grow a plant, the next day if you come and dig it up and you go look at it, "Are you growing yet? Is it working?" You're actually destroying the pl-

George Mack 43:12 Yeah

Shaan Puri 43:12 ... the seed's ability to actually grow. Like, plant the seed, and don't just dig it up every day and stare at it and wonder why it's not working. Carry on. Water it. Give it sunlight. That's all you really need to do from there.

George Mack 43:22 100%. One guy who's completely changed my thinking, and you should have him on the show, like absolute machine of a founder that goes under the radar. Do you know LMNT, the electrolyte company?

Shaan Puri 43:31 Yes.

George Mack 43:31 Uh-

Shaan Puri 43:31 Oh, L-M-N-T? Like the-

George Mack 43:33 Yeah

Shaan Puri 43:33 ... the, yeah, yeah, yeah.

George Mack 43:33 So, like, great, like, they, in five years they're growing, like, banana numbers.

Shaan Puri 43:37 Huge business.

George Mack 43:37 Like hundreds of millions. Met James, the founder. Talk about high agency. We were camping, and there was bears nearby, and I'm terrified of bears, as, as you would be as a fucking human being.

Shaan Puri 43:47 As you should be. Yeah.

George Mack 43:47 But no, James is there. I'm like, "If James is there," like, "he'll handle it. It's fine." Like, that, he'll deal with it. And his way, like, they've managed to scale the way they have, and he's wrote about this publicly, he, he does three weeks on, one week off. Three week on, one week off. So you know the whole, one of your aphorisms or Naval aphorisms of sprint like a-

Shaan Puri 44:05 Work like a lion

George Mack 44:05 ... sprint like a lion-

Shaan Puri 44:06 Yeah

George Mack 44:06 ... don't graze like a cow. And the real- I realized with his philosophy, what he's doing there is he has that one-week assessment period to... 'Cause y- I noticed that when I went on holiday, the first three days, I would be, um, it would take me to the fourth day to switch off. And I think he's baked that in his schedule. First three days, have fun. Then the f- following three days, he's assessing the OKRs, reviewing the numbers, looking at the experiments, plotting out the next three weeks, and then that following three weeks is just a hardcore sprint.

Shaan Puri 44:31 Just do it.

George Mack 44:31 And he's completely redone the work. And it makes sense. Like, we've just downloaded this work week philosophy from industrial age versus really thinking about it, and he's managed to do that for himself and his whole leadership team whilst the company's growing like bananas, and it's factoring in that worry time. Um, it makes so much more sense.

Shaan Puri 44:47 I love that. Uh, yeah, I think that's great. It actually makes me think, you know, Monday through Friday, you know, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, why, right? Even though I'm my own boss, I'm in my own house, and my schedule is a little bit different, I suppo- I, I believe, I suspect that it is not as different as it should be to what actually would be the most beneficial to me in my life, to both my creativity, but also my enjoyment of my life. Uh, 'cause I probably just, I started with the, the normal, you know, 52 weeks in a year, you're gonna work Monday through Friday, you're gonna take your weekends off, and then you're gonna have two weeks, three weeks of vacation somewhere in the between. And then I just tweaked that versus first principles. Like, okay-

George Mack 45:24 Yeah

Shaan Puri 45:24 ... what, if I didn't even know that, what would I have designed? How would I be working? And, uh, I bet there's probably even more I can do on that front, which obviously is a, you know, a bit of a luxury to have, but it's also an intentional thing. Like, some people's goal was to have fancy cars and, and, you know, go to, go to festivals and all this stuff. That wasn't my dream. My dream was total control of my time, have a lifestyle that I truly enjoy that is, like, you know, super fun. So that's, that's the luxury I wanna keep funding, uh, you know-

George Mack 45:53 Yeah

Shaan Puri 45:53 ... is, is that.

George Mack 45:54 And the realization I had from his schedule of that three to one is the rewards of working like a lion have never been higher, like with leverage and code and internet businesses. The ease of grazing like a cow has never been easier. Going back to the cocaine Kale phone, like, so much shit going on. Like, there's always the busy trap you can end up in. And you've got this weird period of time right now where the rewards of this have never been higher, but the actual act of doing it has never been harder. And his philosophy of three week on, one week off, I, I would encourage everybody to just search LMNT three to one. He wrote an essay on it. You should have him on the show. He's phenomenal. And the fact they've done it whilst also growing as aggressively as they have for the whole leadership team, and they all take a week out to be creative and come up with new ideas when they come back, is, uh, phenomenal.

Shaan Puri 46:42 Yeah, that's pretty awesome. By the way, the thing you just said about the, the lion versus the cow, so the, f- if people haven't heard it, the, the, the phrase is, is, you know, you wanna work like a lion, not a cow. The way a lion works is they, they first just wait, and they look for prey, right? They're just observing. They're looking for an opportunity. They're not just gonna run around randomly or chase, like, small insects. They look for a worthy, a worthy challenge, a worthy prey, and when they see the gazelle, then they sprint as hard as they can. They don't walk. They take massive action. They move with speed. They catch it. They feast. They celebrate, and then they rest and reassess and wait for the next challenge. Whereas a cow stands in the field, slowly walking around all day, grazing on this low nutritional, you know, density grass all day. Of course, they're animals. That's how they, that's what they need to eat. That's fine. But in terms of, uh, working, a lot of us work more like the cow. We sit at our desk eight hours a day, minimal, you know, kinda like some low simmer of productivity, and then we don't have the juice to sprint, nor do we feel confident and secure enough to rest, reassess, to celebrate. We just sorta feel this anxiety to be constantly, you know, sort of on, and sort of on is a problem. You're, you're a UFC guy, right? Did you ever see that interview with Conor McGregor after he lost his fight to Nate Diaz? Um, do, do you remember this era where-

George Mack 47:58 Yeah

Shaan Puri 47:59 ... he was on his rise. He's gonna fight Nate Diaz, and this was probably the first opponent that he was favored against. So he was supposed to, you know, he was supposed to get crushed by Aldo. He, he, he, uh, um, you know, and but he beats Aldo. He was supposed to get beat by Mendes, a wrestler. That's his kryptonite. He beats Mendes. And then it's Nate Diaz. Oh, here's a guy, he's lost half his fights, won half his fights. You know, he's not a champion. McGregor has proven everybody wrong. You're certainly gonna beat Diaz, and instead he goes and he loses, and the one reason he lost was his cardio was really poor. He had miscalculated his training, and he, he ran out of gas. And so when he went back to the lab, and he's rested and reassessed and tried to figure out what to do next, he said this great line. He goes, "Yeah, I hired this coach," and they go, "So you're training a lot more now, right, to have more cardio? Like, you're doing more, more, more?" He goes, "No, actually, it was about doing less." He goes, "The thing was, I was never resting my body."

George Mack 48:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 48:48 "The analogy my, my trainer gave me was You're like a, a light bulb that's always flickering. You're just at a dim level, and you're never turning off, and you're never really bright, uh, because you're never resting. You're always doing stuff. You're tr- overtraining, and you're never giving your body a chance to, to recuperate. And so because of that, your training is never peaking. You're never actually shining really bright, nor is the switch ever going off. So that's what they changed. Then he came back and he ended up, you know, winning the, winning the next fight just a couple months later, and his cardio had, had improved in that, that... Most, most people thought in that two months you can't really improve your cardio that much, but he did, and he was able to win that fight. Uh, I always thought that was a wonderful example of this kind of, like, 3-2-1 sort of philosophy, but not in business, but in, you know, sports.

George Mack 49:33 Mm. Yeah, have it... My friend called it rest ethic. It's like-

Shaan Puri 49:37 Ah

George Mack 49:37 ... that's the sticky idea that it needed to be compressed. And he talks about his subconscious as his, like, technical co-founder, so [laughs] like-

Shaan Puri 49:44 Right

George Mack 49:44 ... believing the ideas of his subconscious. And yeah, I think we'll see more and more focus in that area as leverage gets higher and higher, and realizing that there's no such thing as overworking, there's just under-resting.

Shaan Puri 49:56 [laughs] There's no such thing as overworking, there's only under-resting. What do you do to rest besides sleep?

George Mack 50:03 I'm trying to think of anything that's non-basic.

Shaan Puri 50:06 G- Well, that's okay if it's basic. I'm, I'm into simple things that work. If it's just I go for walks, that's great.

George Mack 50:11 Hone- I mean, honest answer would be Kale phone in the morning. Goodbye. So I'm detached from immediate inputs coming through, having a bit of intentionality. Saunas.

Shaan Puri 50:20 Uh, so resting is not just napping, resting is not having a thousand inputs coming into your brain at all, all hours of the day.

George Mack 50:27 Exactly. Like, having time to process things. Like, it's that Christopher Nolan thing of him not having a smartphone. I think there's proba- whilst if everybody's addicted to their smartphones right now, there's probably a little bit of alpha in not being as addicted to your smartphone.

Shaan Puri 50:41 Yeah. I started doing silent Sundays, where basically I just un- I put the phone in a box on Saturday, and I won't touch it all Sunday, which is a s- very small step, but when you do it, you realize the depth of the addiction because you start to have... You know, you're patting your, your pocket every three seconds, or you're going to the bathroom and you're like, "What am I gonna do? Uh, how am I gonna entertain myself in this, like, six-second walk to the restroom?" That's literally how ex-extreme it is for me.

George Mack 51:04 Yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy that we've... That that's happening societal-wide, and we've all... But it's like caffeine. It's what it... The real drugs or the real addictions are the one that's probably just going completely under the radar because we never wanna kick that thing.

Shaan Puri 51:20 Yeah, y- the, the, the real... The dangerous addictions are the ones that are socially acceptable.

George Mack 51:24 Yes. Well, Louis, Louis CK has a cocaine... He has a kale laptop, apparently. He has one laptop, writing laptop, that has no internet, and it's just a, it's just a text.

Shaan Puri 51:32 It's a typewriter. [laughs]

George Mack 51:32 And it's smart because you're not gonna beat, you're not going to beat the world's best data scientist when it comes to who, who've ran all these AB tests. Meanwhile, you've woken up on five hours sleep with a little bit of a hangover, and you think you're going to win. You're not gonna win.

Shaan Puri 51:46 Yeah. We'll finish with this. What's the, what's the how to source your values? This is an idea I've never heard from you. What, what is that?

George Mack 51:52 So I called this Buffett Coin. It may need a stickier idea or a stickier meme behind it, but there's this incredible talk, I think it's Warren Buffett at the University of Georgia. It's my favorite idea of his that very few people have discussed.

Shaan Puri 52:04 It's on YouTube-

George Mack 52:04 And-

Shaan Puri 52:05 ... or how'd you see it?

George Mack 52:06 I think I originally saw it on YouTube. There's a few write-ups as well. And he's giving a talk, and the kids in the class ask him, uh, like, how to be suc- the cliché how to be successful thing. And rather than, like, listing da, da, da, da, da back or how to... I think it's how to be rich, essentially. And rather than listing the cliché thing back, he says, "As a thought experiment, look around at the people in the class right now, and if you could invest in them and get 10% of their earnings for the rest of their life, who would it be and why?" So immediate, Shaan, you could probably think of lots of people, people at home-

Shaan Puri 52:41 Mm

George Mack 52:41 ... can probably think of lots of people. And you think about it, and you go, "Okay, yeah, I'd definitely invest in Jim," or, "I'd definitely invest in Mike." And then he goes, "And then ask yourself why. What is it that that person does, the values that they have, the behaviors that they have?" And you can then see. We spoke at the first episode about it's so hard to see in yourself, but it's so easy to see in other people. So you're kind of hacking the self-awareness bias of, like, you trying to ruminate and improve yourself is probably midwi- wasted effort. But looking at other people, you can see immediately, and then you can try and get your values that way. And then he flips the experiment around and goes, "If you have to short people in your life, so you take 10% of their [laughs] losses, who would you-

Shaan Puri 53:21 [laughs]

George Mack 53:22 ... uh, who would you take and why?" And then you have a list of values to go towards, a list of values to go against. What's beautiful about that is it's not just money. You can apply that for health coin, you can apply that for happiness coin. But using-

Shaan Puri 53:33 Mm

George Mack 53:33 ... that third par- third party awareness perspective is so much more useful than ruminating or analyzing yourself, at least I've found.

Shaan Puri 53:41 I love that. I mean, so simple, right? It's, it's like the answer, the answer becomes incredibly clear as soon as you ask that question. You know, who... If, if you take, you know, wealth or you take happiness, and it's who would you bet on, you could pretty quickly... a couple of names come to mind. Okay, great.

George Mack 53:57 Yes.

Shaan Puri 53:58 Why? Why? Well, because they're this, this, and this. Cool, there's your blueprint. You didn't need the advice-

George Mack 54:02 Yeah

Shaan Puri 54:02 ... from Warren Buffett. Like, the advice was literally hidden in plain sight in the people that you knew right around you. The blueprint was visible. They were like a walking blueprint of what to do or what not to do. I love that. I've tried to use that on the health side because health is probably the one area of my life that I c- uh... And when I say health, I mean not being fat. Health is, like, a fancy way of saying it. I'm not trying to do fancy health. I've tried to be like, "Hey, I'm pretty fat. I should just be not fat," uh, and I should be fit instead of fat. And so what I've realized was, I was like, "Oh, all I simply need to do is just do the things that the fit people do." So instead of searching for, like, which diet is best, or which workout program should I be doing, or what equipment should I... It's like, let's just simplify.

George Mack 54:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:47 Who in my life is fit? And then simply what do they do? And find the delta between what I do and what they do. Oh, okay, at night when I'm hungry, I go grab a bag of chips from the pantry. At night when they're hungry- They drink a glass of water and they go to sleep, [laughs] right? Or in the morning, you know, the first thing I do is I roll over, I check my phone, my laptop, I start working. What they do is they go work out first for 45 minutes, and then they start working. Okay, good. I-- Like, the blueprint is stupidly obvious. It's right in front of me. You know, for example, my trainer came with me on a trip, and so we all packed our bag. And when we all got there, we all look in the bag, and he had a protein powder in there. He had a set of bands in there, and he had a little myofascial, like, ball, like a m- massage ball, so that when he got off the flight, he could quickly loosen up. And it's just-- We looked at all of our bags, you know, business guys who are out of shape. We just didn't even have the shit in the bag. And it's not the tool. It's just simply like, it, he-- It's not like he had to think, "Ah, how am I gonna be fit this weekend?" It's simply a way of life for him. And so the s- the easiest question I have is what's, uh, uh-- is that I ask myself when I'm, like, in a situation is, "All right, sweet. What's a fit guy like me doing in a situation like this?" Instead of, "What should I do? Uh, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna do the, um-- What should I order off DoorDash?" It's, "What's a fit guy like me order at a time like this?" And the answer is a lot easier when I s- simply think of what, what does a person who already has the outcome I want, how do they approach the same situation? And luckily, there's enough people around my, around me in my life where I could just watch and see what they do.

George Mack 56:12 Mm. And I think the key asterisk, the key asterisk I think he gives as well is it has to be merit-based. So, like, you can't just pick the person with the billionaire dad or the ridiculous-

Shaan Puri 56:23 Right

George Mack 56:23 ... ab genetic Francis Ngannou style. The, the better the returns, if you almost look at, like, a company, like, the better returns on their start position that you would bet on is probably the person to study the most. Like, if it's the super skinny guy, then you go, "I'd still bet on his fitness coin." Or if it's the s- the guy from the worst background, but you'd still bet on his finance coin. Those are the-

Shaan Puri 56:42 Right

George Mack 56:42 ... real values you can learn from.

Shaan Puri 56:44 I love it. Dude, George, as I knew, this was amazing. Two parts. Uh, so good. So fun to talk to you, dude. This is why when I launched my new Good Friday, the email series that I started doing on my website, you were the first guy I reached out to because I love trading ideas with you, and you are a just absolute fountain of insightful, interesting things that I think can help people's lives. So thanks for coming on, man. Where should people follow you? Is Twitter the best place?

George Mack 57:08 Yeah. Thank you for having me. Uh, Twitter, go to George Mack, uh, George_ _Mack. Um, uh, newsletter, georgemack.com. And we've helped three different billion-dollar companies get their best performing ads. So if you need help with advertising as well, go to adprofessor.com. And yeah, thank you for having us, Shaan.

Shaan Puri 57:25 Awesome. See you soon, man. [upbeat music]