back to indexSimon Sinek: Leadership, Hard Work, Optimism and the Infinite Game | Lex Fridman Podcast #82
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The following is a conversation with Simon Sinek,
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author of several books, including Start With Why,
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Leaders Eat Last, and his latest, The Infinite Game.
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He's one of the best communicators
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of what it takes to be a good leader,
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to inspire, and to build businesses
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that solve big, difficult challenges.
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This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
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If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
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at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N.
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As usual, I'll do one or two minutes of ads now,
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and never any ads in the middle
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I hope that works for you,
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and doesn't hurt the listening experience.
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Quick summary of the ads.
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To list some of my favorites,
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and Communication, Will Wright, the creator of SimCity,
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And now, here's my conversation with Simon Sinek.
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In the Infinite Game, your most recent book,
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you describe the finite game and the infinite game,
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so from my perspective of artificial intelligence
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and game theory in general, I'm a huge fan of finite games
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from the broad philosophical sense,
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it's something that in the robotics,
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artificial intelligence space, we know how to deal with,
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and then you describe the infinite game,
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which has no exact static rules,
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has no well defined static objective,
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the players are known, unknown, they change,
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there's the dynamic element,
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so this is something that applies to business, politics,
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life itself, so can you try to articulate
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the objective function here of the infinite game,
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or in the cliche, broad philosophical sense,
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what is the meaning of life?
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Go for the, start with a softball.
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Yep, easy question first.
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So James Kars was the philosopher
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who originally articulated this concept
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of finite and infinite games,
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and when I learned about it,
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it really challenged my view of how the world works, right?
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Because I think we all think about winning
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and being the best and being number one,
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but if you think about it,
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only in a finite game can that exist,
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a game that has fixed rules, agreed upon objectives,
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and known players, like football or baseball,
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there's always a beginning, middle, and end,
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and if there's a winner, there has to be a loser.
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Infinite games, as Kars describes them,
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as you said, have known and unknown players,
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which means anyone can join,
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it has changeable rules,
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which means you can play however you want,
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and the objective is to perpetuate the game,
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to stay in the game as long as possible.
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In other words, there's no such thing
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as being number one or winning
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in a game that has no finish line.
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And what I learned is that when we try to win
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in a game that has no finish line,
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we try to be number, we try to be the best
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in a game that has no agreed upon objectives
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or agreed upon metrics or timeframes,
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there's a few consistent and predictable outcomes,
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the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation,
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the decline of innovation.
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And I find this fascinating because so many of the ways
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that we run most organizations is with a finite mindset.
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So trying to reduce the beautiful complex thing
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that is life or whatever, politics or business,
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into something very narrow,
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and in that process, the reductionist process,
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you lose something fundamental
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that makes the whole thing work in the long term.
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So returning, not gonna let you off the hook easy,
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what is the meaning of life?
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So what is the objective function
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that is worthwhile to pursue?
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Well, if you think about our tombstones, right?
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They have the date we were born and the date we died,
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but really it's what we do with the gap in between.
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There's a poem called The Dash.
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You know, it's the dash that matters.
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It's what we do between the time we're born
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and the time we die that gives our life meaning.
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And if we live our lives with a finite mindset,
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which means to accumulate more power or money
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than anybody else, to outdo everyone else,
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to be number one, to be the best,
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we don't take any of us with us.
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We don't take any of it with us.
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The people who get remembered the way we wanna be remembered
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is what kind of people we were, right?
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Devoted mother, loving father,
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what kind of person we were to other people.
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Jack Welch just died recently,
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and the Washington Post,
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when it wrote the headline for his obit,
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it wrote, he pleased Wall Street and distressed employees.
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And that's his legacy.
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A finite player who is obsessed with winning,
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who leaves behind a legacy of short term gains for a few
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and distress for many.
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That's his legacy.
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And every single one of us gets the choice
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of the kind of legacy we wanna have.
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Do we wanna be remembered for our contributions
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or our detractions?
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To live with a finite mindset,
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to live a career with a finite mindset,
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to be number one, be the best, be the most famous,
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you live a life like Jack Welch, you know?
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To live a life of service, to see those around us rise,
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to contribute to our communities, to our organizations,
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to leave them in better shape than we found them,
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that's the kind of legacy most of us would like to have.
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So day to day, when you think about
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what is the fundamental goals, dreams,
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motivations of an infinite game,
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of seeing your life, your career as an infinite game,
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what does that look like?
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I mean, I guess I'm sort of trying to stick
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on this personal ego, personal drive,
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the thing that the fire, the reason we wanna wake up
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in the morning and the reason we can't go to bed
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because we're so excited, what is that?
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So for me, it's about having a just cause.
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It's about a vision that's bigger than me,
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that my work gets to contribute
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to something larger than myself, you know?
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That's what drives me every day.
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I wake up every morning with a vision of a world
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that does not yet exist, a world in which the vast majority
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of people wake up every single morning inspired,
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feel safe at work and return home fulfilled
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at the end of the day.
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It is not the world we live in.
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And so that we still have work to do
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is the thing that drives me.
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You know, I know what my underlying values are.
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You know, I wake up to inspire people
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to do the things that inspire them.
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And these are the things that, these are the things that I,
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these are my go tos, my touch points
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that inspire me to keep working.
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You know, I think of a career like an iceberg.
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You know, if you have a vision for something,
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you're the only one who can see the iceberg
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underneath the ocean.
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But if you start working at it, a little bit shows up.
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And now a few other people can see what you imagine,
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be like, oh, right, yeah, no,
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I wanna help build that as well.
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And if you have a lot of success,
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then you have a lot of iceberg
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and people can see this huge iceberg
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and they say, you've accomplished so much.
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But what I see is all the work still yet to be done.
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You know, I still see the huge iceberg underneath the ocean.
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And so the growth, you talk about momentum.
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So the incremental revealing of the iceberg
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is what drives you.
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Well, it necessarily is incremental.
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What drives me is that, is the realization,
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is realizing the iceberg, bringing more of the iceberg
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from the unknown to the known,
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bringing more of the vision from the imagination to reality.
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And you have this fundamental vision of optimism.
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You call yourself an optimist.
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I mean, in this world, I have a sort of,
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I see myself a little bit as the main character
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from The Idiot by Dostoevsky,
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who is also kind of seen by society as a fool
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because he was optimistic.
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So one, can you maybe articulate
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where that sense of optimism comes from?
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And maybe also try to articulate your vision of the future
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where people are inspired, where optimism drives us.
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It's easy to forget that when you look at social media
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and so on, where the word toxicity and negativity
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can often get more likes,
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that optimism has a sort of a beauty to it.
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And I do hope it's out there.
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So can you try to articulate that vision?
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Yeah, so I mean, for me, optimism and being an optimist
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is just seeing the silver lining in every cloud.
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Even in tragedy, it brings people together.
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And the question is, can we see that?
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Can you see the beauty that is in everything?
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And I don't think optimism is foolishness.
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I don't think optimism is blindness,
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though it probably involves some naivete,
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the belief that things will get better,
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the belief that we tend towards the good,
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even in times of struggle or bad.
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You can't sustain war, but you can sustain peace.
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I think things that are stable are more sustainable,
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things that are optimistic are more sustainable
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than things that are chaotic.
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So you see people as fundamentally good.
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I mean, some people may disagree
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that you can't sustain peace, you can't sustain war.
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I mean, I think war is costly.
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It involves life and money,
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and peace does not involve those things.
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I'm not saying it doesn't require work,
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but it doesn't drain resources,
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I think the same way that war does.
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The people that would say that we will always have war,
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and I just talked to the historian of Stalin,
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would say that conflict and the desire for power
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and conflict is central to human nature.
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But something in your words also,
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perhaps it's the naive aspect that I also share,
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is that you have an optimism
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that people are fundamentally good.
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I'm an idealist, and I think idealism is good.
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I'm not a fool to believe that the ideals
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that I imagine can come true.
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Of course, there'll never be world peace,
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but shouldn't we die trying?
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I think that's the whole point.
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That's the whole point of vision.
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Vision should be idealistic,
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and it should be, for all practical purposes, impossible.
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But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try,
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and it's the milestones that we reach
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that take us closer to that ideal
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that make us feel that our life and our work have meaning,
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and we're contributing to something bigger than ourselves.
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You know, just because it's impossible
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doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
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As I said, we're still moving the ball down the field.
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We're still making progress.
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Things are still getting better,
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even if we never get to that ideal state.
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So I think idealism is a good thing.
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You know, in the word infinite game,
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one of the beautiful and tragic aspects of life,
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human life at least, at least from the biological
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perspective, is that it ends.
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To some people, yeah.
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Fine, it's tragic to some people, or is it ends, it ends?
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I think some people believe that it ends on the day you die,
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and some people think it continues on.
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There's, and there's a lot of different ways
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to think what continues on even looks like.
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But let me drag it back to the personal.
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Which is, how do you think about your own mortality?
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Are you afraid of death?
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How do you think about your own death?
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I definitely haven't accomplished everything
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I want to contribute to.
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I would like more time on this earth
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to keep working towards that vision.
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Do you think about the fact that it ends for you?
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Are you cognizant of it?
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Of course I'm cognizant of it.
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I mean, aren't we all?
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I don't dwell on it.
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I know that my life is finite,
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and I know that I have a certain amount of time left
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on this planet, and I'd like to make that time be valuable.
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You know, some people would think that ideas
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kind of allow you to have a certain kind of immortality.
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Maybe to linger on this kind of question.
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So first to push back on the,
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you said that everyone's cognizant of their mortality.
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There's a guy named Ernest Becker who would disagree,
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that you basically say that most of human cognition
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is created by us trying to create an illusion
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and try to hide the fact from ourselves,
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the fact that we're gonna die,
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to try to think that it's all gonna go on forever.
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But the fact that we know that it doesn't.
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Yes, but this mix of denial.
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I mean, I think the book's called Denial of Death.
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It's this constant denial that we're running away from.
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In fact, some would argue that the inspiration,
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the incredible ideas you've put out there,
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your TED Talk has been seen by millions
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and millions of people, right?
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It's just you trying to desperately fight the fact
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that you are biologically mortal.
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Your creative genius comes from the fact
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that you're trying to create ideas
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that live on long past you.
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Well, that's very nice of you.
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I mean, I would like my ideas to live on beyond me
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because I think that is a good test
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that those ideas have value in the lives of others.
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I think that's a good test.
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That others would continue to talk about
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or share the ideas long after I'm gone,
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I think is perhaps the greatest compliment
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one can get for one's own work.
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But I don't think it's my awareness of my mortality
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that drives me to do it.
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It's my desire to contribute that drives me to do it.
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It's the optimist vision.
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It's the pleasure and the fulfillment you get
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from inspiring others.
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It's as pure as that.
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Let me ask, listen, I'm rushing.
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I'm trying to get you to get you into these dark areas.
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Is the ego tied up into it somehow?
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So your name is extremely well known.
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If your name wasn't attached to it,
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do you think you would act differently?
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I mean, for years, I hated that my name was attached to it.
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I had a rule for years that I wouldn't have my face
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on the front page of the website.
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I had a fight with the publisher
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because I didn't want my name big on the book.
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I wanted it tiny on the book.
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Because I kept telling them it's not about me,
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it's about the ideas.
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They wanted to put my name on the top of my book, I refused.
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None of my books have my names on the top
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because I won't let them.
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They would like very much to put my name
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on the top of the book,
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but the idea has to be bigger than me.
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I'm not bigger than the idea.
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That's beautifully put.
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But I also am aware that I've become recognized
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And even though I still think the message is bigger than me,
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I recognize that I have a responsibility as the messenger.
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And whether I like it or not is irrelevant.
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I accept the responsibility, I'm happy to do it.
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I'm not sure how to phrase this,
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but there's a large part of the culture right now
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that emphasizes all the things that nobody disagrees with,
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which is health, sleep, diet, relaxation,
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meditation, vacation, are really important.
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And there's no, it's like,
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you can't really argue against that.
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Yes, well, that's the thing.
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I often speak to the fact that passion
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and love for what you're doing and the two words hard work,
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especially in the engineering fields,
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are more important than,
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are more important to prioritize than sleep.
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Even though sleep is really important,
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your mind should be obsessed with the hard work,
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with the passion, and so on.
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And then I get some pushback, of course, from people.
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What do you make sense of that?
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Is that just me, the crazy Russian engineer,
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really pushing hard work?
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I think that that's a short term strategy.
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I think if you sacrifice your health for the work,
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at some point, it catches up with you.
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And at some point, it's like going, going, going,
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Your body will shut down for you
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if you refuse to take care of yourself.
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It's what happens.
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Sometimes, more severe illness
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than something that just slows you down.
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So I think taking, getting sleep,
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I mean, there have been studies on this that,
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executives, for example, who get a full night's sleep
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and stop at a reasonable hour,
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actually accomplish more, are more productive
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than people who work and burn the midnight oil
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because their brains are working better
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because they're well rested.
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So, you know, working hard, yes,
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but why not work smart?
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I think that giving our minds and our bodies rest
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makes us more efficient.
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I think just driving, driving, driving, driving
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is a short term, it's a short term strategy.
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So, but to push back on that a little bit,
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the annoying thing is you're like 100% right
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in terms of science, right?
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But the thing is, because you're 100% right,
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that weak part of your mind uses that fact
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to convince you, like what, so, you know,
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I get all kinds of, my mind comes up
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with all kinds of excuses to try to convince me
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that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing.
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To rationalize. To rationalize.
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And so what I have a sense,
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I think what you said about executives and leaders
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is absolutely right, but there's the early days.
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The early days of madness and passion.
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Then I feel like emphasizing sleep,
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thinking about sleep is giving yourself a way out
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from the fact that those early days,
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especially, can be suffering.
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As long, it's not sustainable.
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You know, it's not sustainable.
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Sure, if you're investing all that energy in something
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at the beginning to get it up and running,
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then at some point you're gonna have to slow down.
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Or your body will slow you down for you.
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Like, you can choose or your body can choose.
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So, okay, so you don't think, from my perspective,
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it feels like people have gotten a little bit soft.
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But you're saying, no.
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I think that there seems evidence
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that working harder and later have taken a back seat.
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I've taken a back seat.
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I think we have to be careful with broad generalizations.
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But I think if you go into the workplace,
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there are people who would complain
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that more people now than before,
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you know, look at their watches and say,
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oops, five o clock, goodbye.
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Now, is that a problem with the people?
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You're saying it's the people giving themselves excuses
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and people who don't work hard.
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Or is it the organizations aren't giving them something
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to believe in, something to be passionate about?
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We can't manufacture passion.
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You can't just tell someone, be passionate.
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You know, that's not how it works.
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Passion's an output, not an input.
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Like if I believe in something
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and I wanna contribute all that energy to do it,
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we call that passion.
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You know, working hard for something we love is passion.
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Working hard for something we don't care about
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But we're working hard either way.
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So I think the organizations bear some accountability
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and our leaders bear some accountability,
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which is if they're not offering a sense of purpose,
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if they're not offering us a sense of cause,
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if they're not telling us that our work is worth more
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than simply the money it makes,
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then yeah, I'm gonna come at five o clock
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because I don't really care about making you money.
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Remember, we live in a world right now
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where a lot of people, rather a few people,
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are getting rich on the hard work of others.
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And so I think when people look up and say,
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well, why would I do that?
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I'll just, if you're not gonna look after me
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and then you're gonna lay me off at the end of the year
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because you missed your arbitrary projections,
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you know, you're gonna lay me off
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because you missed your arbitrary projections,
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then why would I offer my hard work and loyalty to you?
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So I think, I don't think we can immediately blame people
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I think we can blame leaders for their inability
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or failure to offer their people something bigger
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than making a product or making money.
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Yeah, so that's brilliant.
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And start with why, leaders eat less, your books.
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You basically talk about what it takes to be a good leader.
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And so some of the blame should go on the leader,
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but how much of it is on finding your passion?
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How much is it on the individual?
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And allowing yourself to pursue that passion,
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pushing yourself to your limits,
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to really take concrete steps
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along your path towards that passion.
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Yeah, there's mutual responsibility.
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There's mutual accountability.
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I mean, we're responsible as individuals
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to find the organizations and find the leaders
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And organizations are responsible for maintaining
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that flame and giving people who believe
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what they believed, you know, a chance to contribute.
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Sort of to linger on it,
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have you by chance seen the movie Whiplash?
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Again, maybe I'm romanticizing suffering.
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Again. It's the Russian in you.
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It's the Russian. Yeah.
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The Russians love suffering.
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But for people who haven't seen,
link |
the movie Whiplash has a drum instructor
link |
that pushes the drum musician to his limits
link |
to bring out the best in him.
link |
And there's a toxic nature to it.
link |
There's suffering in it.
link |
Like you've worked with a lot of great leaders,
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a lot of great individuals.
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So is that toxic relationship as toxic
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as it appears in the movie?
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Or is that fundamental?
link |
I've seen that relationship,
link |
especially in the past with Olympic athletes,
link |
especially in athletics, extreme performers
link |
seem to do wonders.
link |
It does wonders for me.
link |
There's some of my best relationships,
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now I'm not representative of everyone certainly,
link |
but some of my best relationships for mentee and mentor
link |
have been toxic from an external perspective.
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What do you make of that movie?
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What do you make of that kind of relationship?
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That's not my favorite movie.
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Okay, so you don't think that's a healthy,
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you don't think that kind of relationship
link |
is a great example of a great leader?
link |
No, I think it's a short term strategy.
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I mean, short term.
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I mean, look, being hard on someone
link |
is not the same as toxicity.
link |
If you go to the Marine Corps,
link |
a drill instructor will be very hard on their Marines.
link |
And then, but still, even on the last day of bootcamp,
link |
they'll take their hat off and they'll become a human.
link |
But of all the drill instructors,
link |
you know, the three or four main drill instructors
link |
assigned to a group of recruits,
link |
the one that they all want the respect of
link |
is the one that's the hardest on them.
link |
And you hear, you know,
link |
there's plenty of stories of people
link |
who want to earn the respect of a hard parent
link |
or a hard teacher.
link |
But fundamental, that parent, that teacher,
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that drill instructor has to believe in that person,
link |
has to see potential in them.
link |
It's not a formula,
link |
which is if I'm hard on people, they'll do well,
link |
which is there has to still be love.
link |
It has to be done with absolute love.
link |
And it has to be done responsibly.
link |
I mean, some people can take
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a little more pressure than others,
link |
but it's not, I think it's irresponsible
link |
to think of it as a formula
link |
that if I'm just toxic at people, they will do well.
link |
It depends on their personalities.
link |
First of all, it works for some, but not all.
link |
And second of all, it can't be done willy nilly.
link |
It has to still be done with care and love.
link |
And sometimes you can get equal or better results
link |
without all of the toxicity.
link |
So one of the, I guess toxicity on my part
link |
was a really bad word to use,
link |
but if we talk about what makes a good leader
link |
and just look at an example in particular,
link |
looking at Elon Musk,
link |
he's known to push people to their limits
link |
in a way that I think really challenges people
link |
in a way they've never been challenged before
link |
to do the impossible.
link |
But it can really break people.
link |
And jobs was hard and Amazon is hard.
link |
But the thing that's important is none of them lie about it.
link |
People ask me about Amazon all the time.
link |
Like Jeff Bezos never lied about it.
link |
Even the ones who like Amazon don't last
link |
more than a couple of years before they burn out.
link |
But when we're honest about the culture,
link |
then it gives people the opportunity
link |
who like to work in that kind of culture
link |
to choose to work in that kind of culture,
link |
as opposed to pretending and saying,
link |
oh no, this is all, it's all lovey lovey here.
link |
And then you show up and it's the furthest thing from it.
link |
So, I mean, I think the reputations
link |
of putting a lot of pressure on people to,
link |
jobs was not an easy man to work for.
link |
He pushed people, but everyone who worked there
link |
was given the space to create and do things
link |
that they would not have been able to do anywhere else
link |
and work at a level that they didn't work anywhere else.
link |
And jobs didn't have all the answers.
link |
I mean, he pushed his people to come up with answers.
link |
He wasn't just looking for people to execute his ideas.
link |
And people did, people accomplished more
link |
than they thought they were capable of, which is wonderful.
link |
How do you, you're talking about the infinite game
link |
and not thinking about too short term.
link |
And yet you see some of the most brilliant people
link |
in the world being pushed by Elam us
link |
to accomplish some of the most incredible things.
link |
When we're talking about autopilot,
link |
when we're talking about some of the hardware engineering,
link |
and they do some of the best work of their life
link |
How do you balance that in terms of what it takes
link |
to be a good leader,
link |
what it takes to accomplish great things in your life?
link |
So I think there's a difference between someone
link |
who can get a lot out of people in the short term
link |
and building an organization
link |
that can sustain beyond any individual.
link |
There's a difference.
link |
When you say beyond any individual,
link |
you mean beyond like if the leader dies.
link |
Like could Tesla continue to do what it's doing
link |
without Elon Musk?
link |
And you're perhaps implying,
link |
which is a very interesting question that it cannot.
link |
You know, the argument you're making
link |
of this person who pushes everyone
link |
arguably is not a repeatable model, right?
link |
You know, is Apple the same without Steve Jobs
link |
or is it slowly moving in a different direction?
link |
Or has he established something
link |
that could be resurrected with the right leader?
link |
That was his dream, I think,
link |
is to build an organization that lives on beyond them.
link |
At least I remember reading that somewhere.
link |
I think that's what a lot of leaders desire,
link |
which is to create something that was bigger than them.
link |
You know, most businesses, most entrepreneurial ventures
link |
could not pass the school bus test,
link |
which is if the founder was hit by a school bus,
link |
would everyone continue the business without them
link |
or would they all just go find jobs?
link |
And the vast majority of companies would fail that test,
link |
you know, especially in the entrepreneurial world
link |
that if you take the inspired visionary leader away,
link |
the whole thing collapses.
link |
So is that a business
link |
or is that just a force of personality?
link |
And a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, face that reality,
link |
which is they have to be in every meeting,
link |
make every decision, you know, come up with every idea,
link |
because if they don't, who will?
link |
And the question is, is, well,
link |
what have you done to build your bench?
link |
Is it, it's not, sometimes it's ego,
link |
the belief that only I can.
link |
Sometimes it's just things got,
link |
did so well for so long that just forgot.
link |
And sometimes it's a failure
link |
to build the training programs or hire the right people
link |
that could replace you,
link |
who are maybe smarter and better.
link |
And browbeating people is only one strategy.
link |
I don't think it's necessarily the only strategy,
link |
nor is it always the best strategy.
link |
I think people get to choose the cultures
link |
they wanna work in.
link |
This is why I think companies should be honest
link |
about the kind of culture that they've created.
link |
You know, I heard a story about Apple
link |
where somebody came in from a big company,
link |
you know, he had accomplished a lot
link |
and his ego was very large
link |
and he was going on about how he did this and he did that
link |
and he did this and he did that.
link |
And somebody from Apple said,
link |
we don't care what you've done.
link |
The question is, what are you gonna do?
link |
And that's, you know, for somebody who wants to be pushed,
link |
that's the place you go because you choose to be pushed.
link |
Now, we all wanna be pushed to some degree,
link |
you know, anybody who wants to, you know,
link |
accomplish anything in this world
link |
wants to be pushed to some degree,
link |
whether it's through self pressure or external pressure
link |
or, you know, public pressure, whatever it is.
link |
But I think this whole idea of one size fits all
link |
is a false narrative of how leadership works,
link |
but what all leadership requires is creating an environment
link |
in which people can work at their natural best.
link |
But you have a sense that it's possible
link |
to create a business where it lives on beyond you.
link |
So if we look at now,
link |
if we just look at this current moment,
link |
I just recently talked to Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter,
link |
and he's under a lot of pressure now.
link |
I don't know if you're aware of the news
link |
that he's being pushed out as a potential CEO of Twitter
link |
because he's the CEO already
link |
of an incredibly successful company
link |
plus he wants to go to Africa to live a few months in Africa
link |
to connect with the world that's outside of the Silicon Valley
link |
and sort of, there's this idea,
link |
well, can Twitter live without Jack?
link |
But you have a general, as a student of great leadership,
link |
you have a general sense that it's possible.
link |
Yeah, of course it's possible.
link |
I mean, what Bill Gates built with Microsoft
link |
may not have survived Steve Ballmer
link |
if the company weren't so rich,
link |
but Sachin Ardala is putting it back on track again.
link |
It's become a visionary company again.
link |
It's attracting great talent again.
link |
It went through a period
link |
where they couldn't get the best talent
link |
and the best talent was leaving.
link |
Now people wanna work for Microsoft again.
link |
Well, that's not because of pressure.
link |
Ballmer put more pressure on people
link |
mainly to hit numbers than anything else.
link |
And so the question is,
link |
what kind of pressure are we putting on people?
link |
We're putting on pressure people to hit numbers
link |
or hit arbitrary deadlines,
link |
or we're putting on pressure on people
link |
because we believe that they can do better work.
link |
And the work that we're trying to do
link |
is to advance a vision that's bigger than all of us.
link |
And if you're gonna put pressure on people,
link |
it better be for the right reason.
link |
Like if you're gonna put pressure on me,
link |
it better be for a worthwhile reason.
link |
If it's just to hit a goal,
link |
if it's just to hit some arbitrary date
link |
or some arbitrary number or make a stock price
link |
hit some target, you can keep it, I'm outta here.
link |
But if you wanna put pressure on me
link |
because we are brothers and sisters in arms
link |
working to advance a cause bigger than ourselves,
link |
that we believe whatever we're gonna build
link |
will significantly contribute
link |
to the greater good of society,
link |
then go ahead, I'll take the pressure.
link |
And if you look at the Apples
link |
and if you look at the Elon Musk's,
link |
the Jobs and the Elon Musk,
link |
they fundamentally believed that what they were doing
link |
would improve society.
link |
And it was for the good of humankind.
link |
And so the pressure, in other words,
link |
what they were doing was more important,
link |
more valuable than any individual on the team.
link |
And so the pressure they put on people
link |
served a greater good.
link |
And so we looked to the left
link |
and we looked to the right to each other and said,
link |
we're in this together.
link |
We accept this, we want this.
link |
But if it's just pressure to hit a number
link |
or make the widget move a little faster,
link |
that's soul sucking.
link |
That's not passion, that's stress.
link |
And I think a lot of leaders confuse
link |
that making people work hard
link |
is not what makes them passionate.
link |
Giving to them something to believe in
link |
and work on is what drives passion.
link |
And when you have that, then turning up the pressure
link |
only brings people together,
link |
drives them further.
link |
If done the right way.
link |
If done the right way.
link |
Speaking of pressure,
link |
I'm gonna give you 90 seconds to answer the last question,
link |
which is if I told you that tomorrow
link |
was your last day to live,
link |
we talked about mortality,
link |
sunrise to sunset, can you tell me,
link |
can you take me through the day?
link |
What do you think that day would involve?
link |
You can't spend it with your family,
link |
I told you as well.
link |
I would probably want to fill all of my senses
link |
with things that excite my senses.
link |
I'd want to look at beautiful art.
link |
I'd want to listen to beautiful music.
link |
I'd want to taste incredible food.
link |
I'd want to smell amazing tastes.
link |
I'd want to touch something that's beautiful to touch.
link |
I'd want all of my senses to just be consumed
link |
with things that I find beautiful.
link |
And you talked about this idea of
link |
we don't do it often these days,
link |
of just listening to music, turning off all the devices
link |
and actually taking in and listening to music.
link |
So as an addendum,
link |
if we were to talk about music,
link |
what song would you be blasting
link |
on this last day you're alive?
link |
Is it Led Zeppelin?
link |
What are we talking about?
link |
There's probably gonna be a Beatles song in there.
link |
There'll definitely be some Beethoven in there.
link |
Well, thank you so much for talking today.
link |
Thank you for making time for it.
link |
Under pressure, we made it happen.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
And thank you to our sponsors, Cash App and Masterclass.
link |
Please consider supporting the podcast
link |
by downloading Cash App and using code LexPodcast
link |
and signing up to Masterclass at masterclass.com slash Lex.
link |
If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
link |
support it on Patreon,
link |
or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words from Simon Sinek.
link |
There are only two ways to influence human behavior.
link |
You can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.