Malcolm Gladwell: Working From Home Is Destroying Us! | E162

Sorry, now I'm getting emotional. Um... Malcolm Gladwell. Author of five New York Times best-selling books.

Business guru. A rockstar. Journalist.

I just want to explain things to people. It's not in your best interests to work at home. If you're just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live? We want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary. And if you're not here, it's really hard to do that. What have you reduced your life to? The language of happiness has to go alongside the, this question of what contribution you're making to the world you live in.

If you could make an amazing contribution to society, as you have, at the cost of your own happiness, would you choose that?

Oh, wow. We are social animals. Casting someone out is the great sin. It is not conflict that drives people away. It is neglect. That's when you do harm. Sorry, now I'm getting emotional. Um, it's, it's very... I don't know. I... Sorry. If we don't feel like we're part of something important, what's the point?

So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Malcolm, um, first of all, I wanna say thank you. I feel obliged to because your books, um, Outliers, Blink, have been very formative for me as, over the last 10 years. As I was running my businesses and trying to understand certain dynamics that I didn't understand, those books seemed to arrive in my life at the right time. So it's a real honor to, to get to speak to you today.

Oh, thank you.

Um, l- going back then, what are the, what... You know, you've become a tremendously well-known, um, highly acclaimed writer and thinker and podcaster. But when I think back to your, your early years, say, s- bef- before 10 years old, what were the factors that you look back now in hindsight and connect and say, "Ah, that's the reason I ended up becoming the person I am today"?

Oh, wow. Y- y- you mean, y- you say before the age of 10?

Yeah, like sub 10.

Well, I, by, at the age of 10, I had been, I had already lived in three countries.

Wow.

Jamaica... Maybe even four. Well, Jamaica, England, and Canada. And m- it's possible, a brief stint in the United States. So I was well-traveled, um, although, you know, you're dimly aware of these things at that age. Um, and I had a, uh, you know, I have an English father and an... Had an English father and a Jamaican mother. So I was conscious of myself as an outsider, a little bit, um, which I think is very useful. Um, and I was living, in that point, in kind of southwestern Ontario, the kind of, one of the sleepiest, but also most amazing places in the west. I mean, a, a place of kind of, uh, almost absurdly happy people and no crime or dysfunction and, you know, 10 churches in every village. And, uh, a kind of, w- i- e- I realize now, in retrospect, a kind of magical place to have... To g- I grew up without any kind of broader anxieties. So there was n- I was never scared of anything. There was nothing to be scared of when I was, when I was growing up, um, which I think, I realize now was probably an enormous blessing.