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,
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including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last,
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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, 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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review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
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support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter,
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at Lex Freedman, spelled FRID MAN.
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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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that can break the flow of the conversation.
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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, two sponsors,
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and Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency,
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When I first heard about Masterclass,
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I honestly thought it was too good to be true.
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For $180 a year, you get an all access pass
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to watch courses from experts at the top of their field.
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To list some of my favorites,
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Chris Hadfield on Space Exploration,
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Scientific Thinking and Communication,
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Will Wright, the creator of Sims City,
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and Sims on Game Design.
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Jane Goodall on Conservation,
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Carlos Santana, one of my favorite guitarists on guitar,
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Gary Kasparov on Chess.
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Obviously, I'm Russian.
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Daniel Negrano on Poker, one of my favorite poker players,
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and the experience of being launched into space alone
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Watch each all the way through from start to finish.
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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 described 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,
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I'm a huge fan of finite games
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from the broad philosophical sense of something
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that in the robotics, artificial intelligence space,
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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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has the players are known, unknown, they changed,
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there's the dynamic element.
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So this is something that applies to business,
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politics, life itself.
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So can you try to articulate the objective function here
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of the infinite game or in the cliche,
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broad philosophical sense, what is the meaning of life?
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Go for the start with the soft polls.
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Easy question first.
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So James Kars was the philosopher who originally articulated
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this concept 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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The 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, as you said,
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have known and unknown players,
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which means anyone can join.
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It has a 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 as being number one
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or winning 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 time frames,
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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
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because so many of the ways that we run most organizations
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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 what 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 longterm.
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So returning, I'm 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, we just die.
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The people who get remembered,
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the way we wanna be remembered
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is how, 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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Yes, who leaves behind a legacy of short term gains
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for a few 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,
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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 what is the fundamental
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goals, dreams, motivations of an infinite game,
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of seeing your life, your career is 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,
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a world in which the vast majority of people
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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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I know what my underlying values are.
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I wake up to inspire people to do the things
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that inspire them.
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And 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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I think of a career like an iceberg, you know?
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If you have a vision for something,
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you're the only one who can see
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the iceberg 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,
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bringing more of the iceberg from the unknown to the known,
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bringing more of the vision
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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 Dostoyevsky,
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who's 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 you also try to articulate your vision
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of the future where people are inspired,
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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 with the word toxicity
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and negativity 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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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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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, you don't have to, 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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You know, the people that would say
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that we always have war,
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and I just talked to the historian of Stalin,
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is, you know, would say that conflict
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and the desire for power and conflict
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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, you know?
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And I think idealism is good.
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I'm not a fool to believe
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that the ideals 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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You know, 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 perspective
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To some people, yeah.
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Fine, it's tragic to some people or is 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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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
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left on this planet
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and I'd like to make that time be valuable.
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Some people would think that ideas kind of allow you
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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 the immortality.
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There's a guy named Ernest Becker
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who would disagree that you basically say
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that most of human cognition is created by us
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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 going to die
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to try to think that it's all going to 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 is 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
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by millions 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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and 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 optimal, 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 Russian.
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I'm trying to get used to it.
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You're good, you're good.
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You get you into these dark areas.
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You're good, I'm enjoying it.
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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
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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, you know, it's like,
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you can't really argue against that.
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In fact, people...
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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
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and the two words hard work,
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especially in the engineering fields,
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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'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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You know, you get sick, it's what happens.
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Sometimes, you know, more severalness
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than something that just slows you down.
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So I think taking, like getting sleep,
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I mean, there've been studies on this that, you know,
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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, 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 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, it's 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, so, you know,
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I get all kinds of, my mind comes up with all kinds
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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, and so what I have a sense,
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I think what you said about executives
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and leaders is absolutely right,
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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 a sleep is giving yourself a way out
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from the fact that those early days,
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especially, it can be suffering.
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As long, it's not sustainable.
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You know, right, it's not sustainable.
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Sure, if you're investing all that energy
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in something 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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I mean, 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, I think that there seems evidence
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that working harder and later have taken a backseat.
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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 that more people
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now than before, you know, look at their watches
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and say, oops, five o clock, goodbye, right?
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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 and I wanna contribute
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all that energy to do it, 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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is called stress, 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 don't think we can immediately blame people
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I think we can blame leaders
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for their inability or failure to offer their people
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something bigger 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 last, your books,
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you kind of, you basically talk about
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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 to really take
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concrete steps 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 to find
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the organizations and find the leaders that inspire us.
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And organizations are responsible for maintaining that flame
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and giving people who believe what they believed,
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you know, a chance to contribute.
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So to linger on it, have you by chance
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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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Yeah, the Russians love suffering.
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But for people who haven't seen,
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it's the movie Whiplash as a drum instructor
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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.
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Like you've worked 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
link |
as it appears in the movie?
link |
Or is that fundamental?
link |
I've seen that relationship,
link |
especially in the past with Olympic athletes,
link |
with especially in athletics, extreme performers,
link |
seem to do wonders.
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It does wonders for me.
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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
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and mentor 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 |
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 |
You know, 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 boot camp,
link |
they'll take their hat off and they'll become a human.
link |
But the, 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, there's plenty of stories
link |
of people 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 |
It has to see potential of them.
link |
It's not a formula, which is if I'm hard on people,
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they'll do well, which is there has to still be love.
link |
It has to be done with absolute love
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and it has to be done responsibly.
link |
I mean, some people can take a little more pressure
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than others, but it's not, I don't,
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I think it's irresponsible 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.
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First of all, that 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.
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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 the limits
link |
in a way that I think really challenges people
link |
in a way that they've never been challenged before
link |
to do the impossible, but it can really break people.
link |
And jobs was hard and Amazon is hard.
link |
And, you know, but the thing that's important
link |
is none of them lie about it.
link |
You know, people ask me about Amazon all the time.
link |
Like Jeff Bezos never lied about it.
link |
You know, even the ones who like Amazon
link |
don't last more than a couple of years
link |
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, you know, 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, you know,
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 |
People accomplished more than they thought
link |
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 Elon Musk
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 |
Yeah, so I think there's a difference between
link |
someone who can get a lot out of people in the short term
link |
and building an organization that can sustain
link |
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 |
Correct, like could Tesla continue to do
link |
what it's doing without Elon Musk?
link |
And you're perhaps implying,
link |
which is a very interesting question that he cannot.
link |
The argument you're making of this person
link |
who pushes everyone arguably is not a repeatable model, right?
link |
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 |
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 |
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 or is that just a force of personality?
link |
And a lot of entrepreneurs face that reality,
link |
which is they have to be in every meeting,
link |
make every decision, come up with every idea,
link |
because if they don't, who will?
link |
And the question 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 to build the training programs
link |
or hire the right people that could replace you,
link |
who are maybe smarter and better.
link |
And brow beating 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 |
people get to choose the cultures they want to work in.
link |
So this is why I think,
link |
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'd accomplished a lot 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 want to be pushed to some degree,
link |
you know, anybody who wants to, you know, accomplish anything
link |
in this world 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 to create a business
link |
where it lives on beyond you.
link |
So if we look at now, if we just look at this current moment,
link |
I just recently talked to Jack Doris, the 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 as the CEO
link |
of Twitter, 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
link |
in Africa to connect with the world
link |
that's outside of the Silicon Valley
link |
and sort of there's this idea
link |
while 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 where they couldn't get
link |
the best talent and the best talent was leaving.
link |
Now people want to 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 going to put pressure on people,
link |
it better be for the right reason.
link |
Like if you're going to 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.
link |
But if you want to 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 going to 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 |
you know, the jobs in the Elon Musk,
link |
they fundamentally believe
link |
that what they were doing 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
link |
and said, 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, you know, 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, drives them farther.
link |
If done the right way.
link |
If done the right way.
link |
Speaking of pressure, I'm gonna give you 90 seconds
link |
to answer the last question,
link |
which is if I told you that tomorrow
link |
was your last day to live, you 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, 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 of just listening to music,
link |
turning off all the devices and actually taking in
link |
and listening to music.
link |
So as a addendum, if we're to talk about music,
link |
what song would you be blasting in this last day of your life?
link |
Is it Led Zeppelin?
link |
What did we talk about?
link |
I hope that I love.
link |
There's probably going to be a Beatles song in there.
link |
There'll definitely be some Beethoven in there.
link |
Thank you so much for talking to us.
link |
Thank you for making time for it.
link |
Under pressure, we made it happen.
link |
Yeah, it was great.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Simon Sinek.
link |
And thank you to our sponsors,
link |
Cash App and Masterclass.
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Please consider supporting the podcast
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or simply connect with me on Twitter at lexfreedmen.
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.
link |
I hope to see you next time.