#753: Derek Sivers and Kevin Kelly

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5:18 cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal in those cellar. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to sit down with world class performers. From every field imaginable to tease out the habits. routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply.

5:44 And test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads. I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favourites.

6:01 From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. To give you these super combo episodes, and internally we've been calling these The Super Combo episodes. Because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks.

6:17 But to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps They got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode.

6:32 Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash. combo. And now, without further ado.

6:46 Please enjoy. And thank you. For listening. First up. Derek Sivers.

6:52 Former musician. Programmer. Ted Speaker and Circus Clown. Who sold his first company, C D Baby. For twenty two million dollars.

7:02 And gave all the money to charity. and author of books on philosophy and entrepreneurship. Including How to live Hell yeah or no.

7:12 Anything you want. And useful not true. You can find Derek on Twitter. Uh Sivers.

7:20 I was Eighteen years old. And All I wanted in my whole life was to be a professional musician. I mean ideally a rock star, yeah, but

7:30 If I was just making my living doing music, that was the goal. So I'm eighteen years old, I'm living in Boston, I'm going to Berkeley College of Music. And I'm in this band where the bass player One day and rehearsal says.

7:43 Hey man, my agent just offered me a gig that's like $75 to play at a pig show in Vermont. He rolls his eyes and he's like, I'm not gonna do it. Do you want the gig? I'm like, fuck yeah, a paying gig? Oh my god. Yes.

7:59 So I took the gig. go up to Burlington, Vermont, and I think it was like a fifty eight dollar round trip bus ticket. And I get to this pig show in Vermont, I strap my acoustic guitar on and I walk around a pig show playing music. And Did that for like three hours, got on the bus home and the

8:16 The next day the Booking agent called me up. And said uh Hey so uh yeah, you did a really good job at the pig show. We got good reports there. Wondering if you can come play at an art opening in Western Massachusetts. I'll pay you seventy five bucks again.

8:29 Yeah, sure. So same thing. I took a you know, like a sixty dollar bus out to western Massachusetts. Got seventy five bucks for playing at an art opening. And the agent was there and he was impressed, and so he said, Hey look, I've got this circus. And the previous musician just quit, so we really need somebody new and I really like what you're doing, so

8:48 There's a about three gigs a week I can pay you seventy five bucks a gig. They're usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Do you want the gig? I said, Hell yeah. I'm a professional musician now. This is amazing. So I said yes to everything, which is gonna come up later, you know, with the hell yeah or no thing.

9:03 But I think it's really smart to switch. But when you're earlier in your career, I think The best strategies you just say yes to everything. Every pilly little gig. You just never know what are the lottery tickets. So This one ended up being A real lottery ticket for me. Because as soon as I joined the circus

9:20 Again, I'm eighteen, I had no stage experience. And After a few gigs they said, Hey, so the previous musician used to go out and open the show. with this big theme song and get everybody up and dancing. Could you do that? And I said, Yeah, sure. And another gig or two later they said, Hey, the previous musician used to close the show also with that theme song. Could you do that? I said, Yeah, sure.

9:39 And then it was The previous musician used to go out in between every act. And like get the audience to applaud and thank them and introduce the next act. Do you think you could do that? I said, Yeah, sure. And I was really bad at it at first, but I got good eventually. I became like the ringleader M C of this whole circus and I was eighteen years old. So if you were to go to the circus

10:01 It would have looked like my show. And I did that for ten years, from the age of eighteen to twenty eight. I did over a thousand shows. And eventually, by the way got paid more than seventy five bucks. Eventually I was getting like three hundred bucks a show and it became My full time living and I even bought a house with the money I made.

10:19 Playing with the circus and then that led to all kinds of other things. So many huge opportunities in ten years of Stage experience. Came from that one pitaly little Pig show.

10:33 So yeah, the only reason I stopped doing the circus is when C D baby started taking over my life and I had to start turning down circus gigs. But yeah, that was my life for ten years. What did you Learn. That made you better. What were the Lessons learned.

10:48 That made the biggest difference in your performance. as this MC. What were the biggest mistakes that you made early on that you corrected? Either one was fine. Yeah it's kinda the same answer is that At first I was too

11:01 self conscious because I thought it was about me. Like I was going up on stage. thinking that the audience was somehow judging me, Derek Sivers. As if I mattered, you know.

11:14 So I would get self conscious. Uh what they thought of me. And eventually and I think it took Maybe like ten or twenty gigs. The

11:24 Circus was run by a husband and wife team. And Tarleton was the name of the wife. She was the one really kind of out on the gigs and leading the circus.

11:34 And she's the one that like single handedly gave me my confidence that I have today. Like sometimes when People ask me why am I so confident, it's like that's because of Tarleton. That's that's a longer story we get into. But anyway, Tarlton is the one that she just kept pushing me from backstage like come on, you're up there acting like David Letterman like Don't do this whole kind of uh yeah, I'm so cool. Alright, everybody, here's the next

12:00 Act like I think I was trying to be cool because I thought that people were judging me, right? Mm-hmm. And she said, These people came here for a show. Go give them what they came here for. And so one time I decided to go out there and just be Over the top ridiculous. I went on stage and I said

12:16 Ladies and gentlemen, what you're about to see is one of the most amazing things we get. We have an elephant that is going to be coming from backstage and I did this whole like thing in the fast talking voice and Real like pizzazz to it. And the audience and I came back stage and she said, There you go, that's what people come to the circus for. So Now that I've been on stage, you know

12:35 Thousands of times. This really sunk in. You get on stage to give the audience what they came there for. Or even things like this. This interview we're doing. This isn't necessarily for you or me. We could just hang up the phone and talk. We don't need to Is but we're doing this for the listeners. So we're going to give them something that's useful to them. This isn't about me. This isn't about you. This is about them.

13:00 So that was the biggest lesson learned. Luckily I learned that early on when I was eighteen, nineteen and Yeah. Seems like Most Of my

13:08 Friends who are What most people would consider successful in various respects can trace their confidence back to Either. Or both and A specific woman.

13:20 And a specific coach. Or mentor of some type. It always comes down to one or both of those. Oh, Tim, you know I've never told you about Chemo Williams. It's a great name and I wanna learn more. No, I don't know anything about

13:36 This is so up your alley, I can't believe I've never told you this. Okay. Thanks for prodding me. You prompted me with that because you're right. It was a gorgeous woman, Tarlton. And it was a music teacher, Chemo Williams. That

13:49 He but see he changed my life a year or two before I met her. Okay, so imagine this. I'm seventeen years old now. I'm living in suburban Chicago, and I decide to go to Berkeley College of Music'cause I want to be a famous musician. And Just like two or three months before I'm supposed to go. I see an ad in the local Chicago Tribune.

14:09 For music type setting. And I'm wondering like how much sheet music I'm gonna have to be writing, so I call up this classified ad in the paper and I say, Can I ask you some questions about music typesetting? And he said, Sure, well why do you want to know? And I said, Because I'm about to go off to Berkeley College of Music in a couple months. And he said, Oh really? He said, I used to teach at Berkeley College of Music. I said, You did?

14:29 Do you think you can Give me some tips? It said. Here's my address. Come to my studio at nine AM Thursday morning. See ya then. So and he lived like way downtown Chicago in an area I've never been to.

14:41 And I'm gonna Do a little bit. Right now because When I got married years later to the woman I met when I was sitting in Times Square with you.

14:52 He was one of only three people I invited to the wedding. It was Tarleton from the circus. Kima Williams, my music teacher. And my first girlfriend, Camille. Those are my only three guests to my wedding. And Chemo Williams

15:06 Told the story. to my family. He said, You know, I tell people all the time I get all these kids that want you know want to be famous. And I said, Yep, show up at my studio at nine AM and he said, Nobody ever does. Nobody has their shit together to show up when I tell them to. And he said, So I'd honestly forgotten that there was this kid that called from a classified ad.

15:25 That was his way of saying no. No, it was just his hurdle. He was like, Yeah, all right, kid, sure, here's a seven foot hurdle. Let's see how you do. Exactly. So He said, So, you know, my doorbell rings some Thursday morning at eight fifty nine AM and I open the door and there's some Long haired teenager sitting there and

15:43 So now flipping back to First person point of view is Yeah, Kimo Williams is this large black man from Hawaii. That was a musician that attended Berkeley School of Music and then stayed there to teach for a while. And so what he taught me

15:58 In Four lessons. Got me to graduate. Berkeley College of Music in half the time it would take, and here was his thing. He said The reason I wanted you to

16:09 Study with me for a bit. Eight weeks before you go to school. He said, I think you can graduate Berkeley School of Music in two years instead of four. He said the standard pace is for chumps.

16:21 I should get a t shirt made. This is like totally Tim Ferriss stuff, right? This is like I can't believe we hadn't talked about this before that he's the one at the age of like seventeen, eighteen, got me into this mentality. So we're the standard paces for chum. That's the school has to. Organized. around the lowest common denominator so that almost nobody is left out.

16:47 So they have to slow down so that everybody can catch up. But he said, You're smarter than that or anybody can be smarter than that if they want to be So you can go as fast as you want, and here's how. And so he sat me down at the piano. He said, Okay, what do you know about music theory? I said, Well, I don't know. Let's find out. And he you know, he just asked me a few of these music questions, like, Okay, what how does the major scale go? Right? Okay, show me the tritone. Do you know what a tritone is? Okay, play me a tritone in the C major scale. I'm like uh uh uh okay, B and F. He said, Okay. How can you take that and

17:14 What other chord can you make from B and F he said, Okay, that's called the substitute chord. Now what is a resolution? And he would just like boom boom boom at this kind of pace. He was doing all this music theory stuff with me. It was so intense and I was like I had all this adrenaline like a video game. I was like, This is amazing. Okay, keep going. Said, Okay, do that, and this And That was like a two hour lesson that went at that kind of pace. And then he dumped a bunch of homework on me. He said, Okay, now go home tonight and take this big book of jazz standards. Find me all the two five substitutions or uh two five closures. Now substitute cords for that and then Come back next Thursday and we'll do this again.

17:48 So we did that for like four Thursdays in a row. And sure enough, what he taught me in four Two hour sessions. Was Basically like two years of Berkeley College of Music, he compressed it into four lessons. Wow.

18:03 So that when I showed up to my first day of Berkeley I test it out of the first few years. Just thanks to him. He even taught me a strategy. Team.

18:13 Offhand mentioned, he said, you know. I think they might still have a rule in place where uh Those other required courses, you know, that you have to take to graduate he said. I think you could pretty much just buy the books for those and then Contact the department head and just take the final exam to get credit.

18:29 So I did that too. So I uh when I got there all those required classes like, you know, Bach counterpoint. Classes. I wasn't so interested in it, so I bought the book, did all the homework. approached the department head said, Can I take the final exam for this? And he said looked at me weird and said, Okay Took the final exam and got credit without ever having to attend the class. And yeah, that's how I had graduated Berkeley College of Music in two years.

18:51 And on a related note. Could you talk about we've talked about this a bit, but I never tire of it. relaxing for the same result. Because I think this is Such a huge Observation

19:04 That It's incredibly important for type A personalities or or at least for me, because I have a tendency to almost want to burn the candle at both ends to prove to myself. that I'm putting forth The maximum effort. I'm leaving as little as possible to chance. With certain things, you know, and

19:22 But Tell everybody about the bike. About the bicycle experience. Yeah, this was kinda profound. Now, granted, I didn't learn this until later, but yeah, I had been very, very very type A

19:34 my whole life. Even before I met Kemo Williams, you know I mean age of fourteen, it just My friends called me the robot because they would never see me sleep or eat or relax or hang out. I just was like so focused on being the best musician I could be that I would just Practice every waking minute. If I begrudgingly go to a party, you know, I'd bring my guitar with me and I'd be sitting in the corner practicing my scales and arpeggios while everybody was hanging out, getting high. Yeah. So yeah, I've always been very type Ai and so

20:02 A friend of mine got me into cycling. when I was living in LA and I lived right on the beach in Santa Monica where there's this great Bike path in the sand that goes for I think it's twenty five miles. In the sand.

20:15 Something like that. The exact number doesn't matter. What I would do is I would go onto the bike path and I would Get like head down and push it as hard as I could. I would go all the way to one end of the bike path. And back.

20:28 And then back home and I'd set my little timer when doing this. Huffing and puffing, red face red face huffing, but like just it pushing it as hard as I can, every single thrust of the leg just Crash. Of course, you know, that made me quite fun if somebody was In my way on the bike path. Sure. That guy's got places to go.

20:46 But I noticed it was always forty three minutes. I mean, you know, if you know Santa Monica, California, you know the weather is about exactly the same all year round. So Unless it was a surprisingly windy day, it was always Forty three minutes is what it took me to go as fast as I could. On that bike path. But I noticed that over time

21:04 I was starting to feel less Psyched. About Going out on the bike path. Because

21:11 Just mentally when I would think of it, it would feel like Pain and hard work. It sounds like pain and hard work. Yeah, I mean it it was, but you know it I guess at first that was okay and after a while I just felt like uh I don't know, running a bike. Why don't I just hang out and So then I say, you know, that's not cool for me to start to associate

21:30 negative stuff with going on the bike ride. Why don't I just chill for once? Like I'm just gonna go on the same bike ride. But just you know, I'm not gonna be a complete Yeah. So Yeah, I got on my bike and it was just pleasant. I just went on a same bike ride, but I was more like uh standing up and I just noticed that I was

21:50 I was looking around more. And I looked out in the ocean. I noticed there were that day there were these dolphins jumping in the ocean and And I went down to Marina Del Rey to my turnaround point. And um oh no, actually it was when the the Breakers at Marina Del Rey. There was a penguin that was flying above me. I was like, No way I looked up, I was like, Hey a penguin and

22:10 He's shit in my mouth. Was it a penguin or a pelican? Oh sorry, pelican. That would be more amazing. Pelican shit in your mouth. That's incredible accuracy. Was that from like how far away was it? Uh like twenty feet up. Wow. I don't know if he was accurate or I was, you know. Anyway.

22:37 I had such a nice time. It was just purely pleasant. There was no red face. There was no huffing and puffing. I was just cycling. It was nice. And When I got back to my usual stopping place. I

22:51 And it said forty five minutes. And I was like No way. How the hell could that have been 45 minutes as compared to my usual 43? Like

23:01 There's no way, but yeah, it was right. Forty five minutes. And that was like a profound lesson that I think Changed the way I've approached my life ever since. It's because I realise that

23:15 I guess you know What percentage of that huffing and puffing then we could do the math at whatever uh what a ninety three point something percent of my huffing and puffing and all that red face and all that stress. was only for an extra two minutes. It was basically for nothing. I mean, you know, of course we're not talking about me competing in something where the huffing and puffing might have been worth it, but For life. I think of all of this

23:38 Optimization and getting the maximum dollar out of everything and the maximum amount of every second and the maximum amount of every minute. And I think I just take this approach now of going like Or you could just Take the lesson, take most of that lesson and apply it. And be effective and be happy.

23:53 You don't need to stress about any of this stuff. Honestly, that's been My Approach ever since I do things, but I stop before anything gets stressful.

24:02 What are the essays that you're best known for? Is Hell yeah or no. And this has been extremely important for me to consistently

24:13 read. Or listen to. How did it come about and What is the gist of that? There was

24:21 A Music Conference in Australia. that I had told my friend I would Go with her too. It wasn't even like the conference themselves were really expecting me. It was my friend RL Hyatt is uh one of the best publicists I know in

24:37 She was speaking at that conference and asked if I would come with her as like A co presenter in her mentor session or something. So I had said yes. Like six months before. Yeah, sure, Australia. I'm living in New York City and like Yeah, sure.

24:53 And then once it came close and it was like time to book the ticket, I was like I don't really want to go to Australia right now. I'm busy with other stuff. And It was actually my friend. Amber Rubarth.

25:06 Who's a brilliant musician. I was on the phone with her and kind of lamenting about this. And She's the one that pointed out. She said. It sounds like

25:17 You know, from where you're at. Your decision is not between yes and no. You need to figure out whether you're feeling like Fuck yeah. Or no. And I said, Yeah, that's that's really what it comes down to, right?'Cause

25:28 The idea is If you're feeling Anything less than like Oh hell yeah, I would love to do that. Oh my god, that would be amazing! If you're feeling anything less than that.

25:41 Then just say no. Because most of us say yes to too much stuff. And then we let these little mediocre things fill our lives. And so the problem is When that occasional

25:55 Big. Oh my god, hell yeah thing comes along. You don't have enough time. to give it the attention that you should because you've said yes to too much other little half ass kinda stuff, right? So Once I started applying this.

26:09 My life just opened up because it just meant I just said, Nope, nope, nope, nope, no. To almost everything. But then when the occasional thing came up that I was really like, you know what? That would be awesome. And suddenly

26:23 I had all the time in the world. And you know people say this I'm sure you know, every time. People contact you every time people contact me. They say, you know, look, I know you must be incredibly busy.

26:34 And I always think like, No, I'm not. Because Because I'm in control of my time. I'm on top of it. Busy to me seems to imply Like out of control. You know, like oh my god, I'm so busy. I don't have any time for this shit.

26:49 To me that sounds like a person who's got no control of their life. Yeah, no no control. And Unclear priorities. Yes. Exactly. So You asked how it's applying in my life that

27:00 Still just on the little tiny day to day level. Even personal things. God, even People you meet. As I'm dating. You have to do the hell yeah or no approach or People ask you to go to events or God, even you know

27:16 Even people asking to do a phone call or anything. I think, you know, am I really excited about that? And you know, almost every time the answer's no. So I say no to almost everything. And then yeah, occasionally something will come up. Even A little surprise will be dropped in my lap, like this thing that happened just uh Two months ago called the the Now Now Now project, which we don't even really need to talk about. The details don't matter.

27:38 So much, but It was just something that popped up. That seemed really interesting and people really wanted. And luckily because I say no to almost everything. I had

27:48 The time in my life to make it flourish. So for the last like six weeks, all I did full time, like twelve hours a day, was suddenly work on this brand new thing that showed up. Because I could. You know, so that's to me the The lovely result of taking the hell yeah or no approach to life. So I am reading

28:05 A section of this blog post that I wrote about you and your the best email you ever wrote. with the Japanese boxing specialists and so on. And one of the paragraphs that I put here.

28:18 For those people interested, it's just the most successful email I ever wrote, but uh it's everywhere online. And It reads Stranger still at its largest Derek spent roughly four hours on CD Baby every six months. He had systematized everything to run without him. And Feel free to correct that if it needs to be.

28:37 Correct. Assuming that's roughly true. What some of the most important decisions or realizations that made that possible. I love the timing for when

28:49 I read four hour work week because it was actually just after I had done this like complete Delegation. The

28:58 It was feeling the pain. From Everything having to go through me. It was my business, right? A hundred percent. No investors, no nothing. It was me. And so I hired people to help me. It was all me, me, me. So four years into it.

29:12 It was growing, it was really taking off. I had Uh twenty employees, but still almost everything went through me. And it made my day kinda miserable because I'm A real like introverted focused kind of person. I love to just sit down for twelve hours and do one thing without distraction. You're an I and T J Myers Briggs? I'm a hundred percent I and T J. Yeah.

29:34 So I hated Going to the office and being distracted every five minutes with my employees asking me questions. So that's when I just felt such pain about this, like oh I hate this. That I really literally meant I booked

29:50 A flight to Kawaii, I believe. And I was going to Moved quiet and not give my employees my phone number and Literally move. I don't mean like take a vacation. I mean like I am now going to be running C or I'm going to be the owner of C D Baby on a little island in Hawaii and you guys just figure out your own damn problems.

30:08 'Cause I was just s I f was just having so much ps psychic pain about this. But then luckily What lovely coincidence that night that I booked the flight to Hawaii I watched the movie Vanilla Sky. And In Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise is like the owner of this big publishing company.

30:27 But he gets all caught up with these crazy women and It's too overwhelmed with his life and focusing on his own happiness and Or unhappiness and all that. And pretty soon his

30:38 Wrestled away from him. And I thought, oh I don't want that to happen. Like I don't want to just Plug my ears, close my eyes, run away.

30:48 and have my company taken away from me. I need to deal with my problems instead of running from them. So I canceled the trip to Hawaii. And Went into work the next day.

30:59 And Decided to fix this thing. So then next time. Somebody asked me a question. I gathered everybody around. I said okay.

31:07 Everybody. Tracy just asked me, you know Derek, what do we do when a guy on the phone says he wants a refund, you know? I said okay, everybody stop working, everybody, gather around. Okay. Tracy asked what we do if somebody wants a refund. Here's not only what we do, but here's why. Here's my philosophy. Whenever anybody wants a refund Vol we should always give it to them.

31:24 I would just Explain. Not just the what to do, but the why. It was constantly communicating the philosophy. To get to the core of it, and I think you mentioned this in back in four hour work week. There's almost nothing.

31:37 that really has to be you. Like you can almost Get kind of AI. And Figure out how your brain works, how your decision making process works. And just teach it to other people.

31:50 So that other people can do it. And Yeah, that's what I did. For every single thing that ever came my way, I would gather everybody around, explain the philosophy behind it, why we do things this way, why I'm about to say what I'm about to say, and now here's what I think we should do. Do you understand why? Now please write it down. But it it was also important that I taught it multiple people, not just one, and had them write it down. And then the cool thing is I wasn't doing the hiring anymore. The company I had taught other people how to do the hiring.

32:16 Soon My employees were doing the hiring and Then they were teaching new people how to do this thing from the the book and So that really started to four years into the company it was six months of difficult work to really make myself unnecessary.

32:31 But then my girlfriend at the time decided to go to film school in LA. So we decided to follow her down there. So I moved down to LA to be with her. Which is a nice symbolic way to let the company know, like You're on your own. I'm still the owner.

32:44 And in fact, so there there's one little caveat to the thing you said that I was working on C D baby four. Four hours a a year or whatever you said. Yeah, four hours, six months. Is that That's how much time I spent doing this stuff.

32:57 I didn't want to be doing right. The monotony, the bureaucracy stuff. That I had reduced down to almost nothing, like a few minutes a week. But what I was doing from seven AM to midnight every single day was programming like the future of CD Baby. And that's just the stuff that I loved doing. So it was about

33:14 Making my life the way I wanted it to be working on the stuff that I wanted to be working on. And Not doing the stuff. I didn't. If you could have one billboard Anywhere with anything on it.

33:25 What would it say? My real answer if I was taking that literally? Is that I would say. Remove all the billboards in the world and ensure that they were never replaced. You know, have you ever driven through India, you know?

33:36 Yeah. It's so sad. Well I haven't driven, but On my way to the Calcutta ER where I spent a week, I was briefly looking out the windows. You know, even in these small towns in Kerala, like there's almost no space that is left without advertising. So I really admire those places. Like I think Vermont and uh Sao Paulo, Brazil.

33:58 That ban. Billboards. I know that that wasn't really what you were asking, so So my better answer is I think I would make a billboard.

34:07 That would say It won't make you happy. And I would place it outside. Any big shopping mall or car dealer. So ideally actually I think you know what would be a fun project?

34:18 is to buy and train thousands of parrots. To say it won't make you happy. It won't make you happy. And then you let them loose in the shopping malls and superstores around the world. That's my life mission. Anybody with me? Let's do it.

34:32 What advice would you give your thirty year old self? And place us, if you would. For where you were at thirty. And what you're doing. At thirty. Well let's see. I had just started C D Baby at thirty.

34:43 But I think The biggest advice I would give to my younger self More like Knowledge learned like Hey younger self, you should know this now.

34:52 Women like sex. Didn't know that until I was forty. I think I didn't get that. I think through you know like teenage movies or whatever, we're kind of taught the opposite. That's like, you know

35:03 Men always want sex and women don't. I don't know why the the media portrays it like that. But later I found out that's not true. But I think the the more interesting answer is that My advice to my thirty year old self would be Don't be a donkey.

35:18 And that means. Well, I mean a lot of thirty year olds that are trying to pursue Many different directions at once. But not making progress in any, right? And then or or they get frustrated that the world wants them to pick one thing because they want to do them all. And I get a lot of this frustration, like, but I want to do this and that and this and that.

35:36 Why do I have to choose? I don't know what to choose. But the problem is If you're thinking short term. Then you're acting as if you don't do them all this week.

35:48 But I think the solution is to think long term. That you can do one of these things for a few years. and then do another one for a few years and then another. So what I mean about don't be a donkey

36:01 Is You've probably heard the fable about Think it's Burden's Donkey? It's a A fable about a donkey that is standing halfway.

36:09 In between a pile of hay. and a bucket of water. And he just keeps looking left. To the hay. Trying to decide.

36:18 Hey. Or water. Hey. Or water and he's unable to decide. So he eventually falls over and dies of both hunger and thirst.

36:26 So the point is that A donkey can't think of the future. If he did, he'd clearly realize that he could just go first drink the water and then go eat the hay. So my advice to My thirty year old self is don't be a donkey.

36:40 You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience. Right. for somebody listening, if you're thirty years old now, and say you have like Five different things you want to pursue.

36:53 Well then you can do each one of those for ten years. And you'll have them all done by the time you're eighty. You're probably going to live to be eighty, so It's ridiculous to I mean, it sounds ridiculous to plan to the age of eighty when you're thirty, right? But it's a fact that's probably coming, so you might as well take advantage of it. It's like use the future.

37:13 That way you can fully focus on one direction at a time without feeling conflicted or distracted because you know that you'll get to the others in the future. And I think you could also, uh, just to build on that, I agree. I think most people and this is not Something I've Thought up on my own.

37:31 They overestimate what they can achieve in a day or a week. So they twenty items on their to-do list, but they underestimate what they could achieve. in a year or even two years. And Yeah, the way that If for instance

37:43 If you look at a lot of what I've done, much of which ended up being the result of accidental discoveries, but you had the book career. But then you had the Angel Investing start around two thousand seven, two thousand eight, and I treated that as a two year Self imposed MBA.

37:58 And it was like okay. I wanna try this and really focus on it for two years and I'm not going to expect to have any financial return, but just as an MBA, I'm gonna sink this amount of cost into it. Which was identical to Stanford. Graduate.

38:12 School of business at the time and Assume that the network and relationships and lessons I would learn would be worth that two years. And just viewing them as two year experiments. Which I did with

38:25 the TV also, which did not turn out as ideally as I would have liked, although I'm very proud of you know the Taver's experiment. Podcast same thing, right? It wasn't a Three year commitment, but it was also not a one day or one week commitment. It was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. for at least six episodes, maybe it takes me six months and then I'll correct a course at that point. But

38:46 Yeah, you do I think a lot of thirty year olds feel pressured. Or younger, or older for that matter, to pursue many, many things in parallel when if you were just to tweak that slightly and make them serial, the results would be much better.

39:02 Yeah. That's a really hard lesson to learn. We can even say it right now. It's really tough. I even find that now. Yeah. Constant challenge.

39:10 Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now. A lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can, but I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings. And that's

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40:05 There are already nearly half a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long term wealth. So why wait? Visit wealthfront.com slash Tim to get started. That's wealthfront.com slash Tim. This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. Yeah.

40:24 And now. Kevin Kelly Founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. Former editor and publisher of the Whole Earth Review and best selling author of books on technology and culture.

40:37 Including Excellent advice for living. The inevitable. What technology wants. And Vanishing Asia.

40:46 Is three volume photo book set capturing West, Central, and East Asia. You can find Kevin on Twitter and Instagram. That's Kevin The number two.

40:57 Kelly. And on his website. KK.org Kevin, thank you so much for being on the show. It's my honor.

41:05 And I am endlessly fascinated by all of the varied projects that you constantly have going on. But That leads me to the first question, which is when you meet someone who is not familiar with your background and they ask you

41:18 the age old what do you do question. How do you even begin to answer that? What is your stock answer to that? These days my stock answer is is that I package ideas into books and magazines and websites. Mm and I make ideas. Interesting and pretty.

41:37 Well I like the pretty. That's we'll we'll we'll come back to the aesthetic aspect. I think that's a really neglected piece of the entire puzzle. You do have, of course, a background, a lot of people are familiar with your background with wired, but perhaps you could Give Folks.

41:52 A bit of background and yourself. And is it true that you you dropped out of of college after one year? Yeah, I'm a college dropout and actually my one regret in life is that one year in the decade. Oh, no kidding. No kidding. I wish I had just uh even skipped that. But I I do understand how college can be useful to people and I've But for me it was just not the right thing.

42:14 And I went to Asia instead. And I Like to tell myself that I gave my own self a PhD in East Asian studies. Mm-hmm. By traveling around and photographing in very remote remote parts of Asia at a time when it was in the transition from the ancient to the modern world. And I did many other things as well. And for me it was a very formative time because I did enough things that when I finally got my first real job at the age of thirty five. Wow. Which which job was that?

42:49 I worked for a non profit at ten dollars an hour, which was the whole earth catalog. Mm which would have been a like kind of a lifelong dream if I said if I'm gonna have a job, that was the job I want. It took me a long time to kind of get it. But in between that I I did many things, including starting businesses and selling businesses and doing other kinds of things.

43:10 More adventures. And I Highly recommend it. You know, I got involved in starting wired and running wired for a while and I hired a lot of people who were coming Right out of college.

43:23 And they would do the intern thing and then they were good and we would hire them. Which meant that basically You know, after ten years, whatever it was they were This was their first and only job and I kept telling them Why are you here?

43:35 What are you doing? You should be fooling around, wasting time. Trying something crazy? Why are you working a real job? I don't understand it. And I just really I really recommend Swack. I'm a big believer in

43:51 In this thing of kind of Doing Something That's not Productive.

43:58 You know, practically your middle ages. When you're young want to be prolific and make and do things, but You don't want to measure them in terms of Productivity. You you want to measure them in terms of extreme performance. Do you want to measure them in kind of um extreme satisfaction. It's it's a time to to kind of try stuff and and I think

44:20 Explore the extremes. Exactly. Explore the possibilities and there's so many possibilities and there's more every day and It's called premature organization. You You really want to use this time to And by the way.

44:33 Premature optimization is a problem of success. True. It's not just the problem of the young, it's the problem of the successful more than even of the young. But we'll get to that. Yeah. That might turn into a therapy session for me at this precise moment in time, in fact. But when you are exploring that Slack, I would imagine many people feel pressured, whether it's internal pressure or societal familial pressure. to get a real job to support themselves and they're a lot of the decisions are made out of fear. They they worry about being out on the streets or it's a nebulous

45:04 Terror, anxiety. How did you support yourself, for instance, while you were traveling through Asia when when you left school? I totally understand this anxiety and fear and stuff. But here's the thing. one of the many kind of life skills that you want to to actually learn at a fairly young age is the skill of being like ultra thrifty minimal kind of this little wisp that is traveling through time.

45:29 In the sense of wearing How little you actually need. To Survival mode, but it kind of, you know, in a contented mode.

45:37 Mm-hmm. And I learned that pretty early by backpacking and doing other things. And especially in Asia was I could be very happy with very, very little. And go onto websites and stuff and look at sort of like the minimum amount of stuff of food, say that you need to to live, you know, your basic protein and carbohydrates and and vitamins and

45:57 And how much actually if you were bought them in bulk, how much it would cost? I mean, you Build your own house, live in a shelter, a tiny house. You don't need very much. And I think trying that out, you know, building your house on the pond like Thoreau, who was a hero of mine in high school. Is

46:15 Not just a simple exercise, it's a profound exercise because it allows you to get over the anxiety. Even if you aren't living like that, you know That if the worst came to worst you could keep going at a very low rate and be content. And so that gives you the sort of confidence Two

46:34 Take a risk because you say, What's the worst? It can happen. Well the worst happened is that I'd have a backpack in a sleeping bag And I'd be eating oatmeal and Whatever, you know, and that'd be fine. And I think if you do that once or twice, you don't necessarily have to live like that, but but knowing that you can Be content.

46:52 is tremendously empowering. That's basically what it did. It was you know living In Asia where The people around me had less than I did and they were pretty content. You realize, Oh my gosh, I don't really need very much to be happy.

47:07 And did you save up money beforehand with odd jobs or did you do odd jobs while on the road, a bit of both? I did odd jobs before I left. I was travelling in Asia at a time when the Price differential was so great. that it actually made sense for me to

47:25 Fly back on a charter flight. to the US and work for four or five months. And I worked basically all jobs. I worked from working in a warehouse packaging uh athletic shoes. Working in a kind of technical sense of a

47:42 It's really just hard to describe, but it was it was kind of a in a photography related job where we're reducing printed circuit boards down to little sizes to be shipped off to be printed. And driving cars to Whatever else I could find. And

47:57 That At that time. made more money. I could live off of I could live on probably two years. So I didn't really work while I was traveling until I got to Iran.

48:12 in the late seventies and there there was a very high paying job which was Teaching English. Mm-hmm. to the I'm running in pilots who work for the Shah, but I

48:22 had sworn they was never gonna teach English, so I actually got a job. In Bella H helicopter. Who's teaching English is to The pilots but my job was running a little newsletter for the American community there. And I worked there until I was thrown out by the coup.

48:38 That was another story. Now just a couple of comments. So number one, for those people listening who are saying to themselves already Perhaps creating reasons why they can't do what you did now. due to different economic climate or whatnot. It is entirely possible. to replicate what you did. You just have to choose your locations wisely for that for that type of differential. Absolutely. And I should also just mention to people that part of the reason I'm so attracted to Stoic philosophy, whether that be Seneca or Marcus Aurelius

49:07 is exactly because of the practice of poverty, not because you want to be poor, but so that you recognize Not only that you can subsist, but then you can potentially be content or or even in some cases be more content. with a bare minimum.

49:24 So for people who are more interested in that, I highly recommend a lot of the stoic writings and you can search for those on my blog and elsewhere. But There's actually a new age version of that that was sort of popular in a generation ago. Mm-hmm. And the search term there is volunteer simplicity. Hm. Volunteer simplicity. Right. And so the idea is poverty is is terrible when it's

49:44 mandatory when you have no choice. But voluntary version of that is very, very powerful. And I I think attaching names sometimes to things it it makes it more legitimate, but But imagine yourself practicing Voluntary simplicity. And that I think is part of that stoic philosophy. But there's a whole kind of a movement, a lot of the Happy dropouts were kind of

50:05 practicing a similar thing and there was, you know, a whole best practices that resolved a around that You can make up your own. But I think it's to me an essential skill that People should acquire and

50:19 Well when you go backpacking and stuff like that, that's part of it. That's the beginnings of trying to understand what it is that you need to live as a you know, as a being and you can fill that out in any way you want, but that's a good way to experiment. Now you Have become a Certainly a world class

50:37 packager o of ideas, but also at synthesizing and expressing these ideas. I love your writing. I've I've consumed vast quantities of it. In fact I'm here right now on on Long Island where I grew up and I used to sneak into my parents' shed to read old editions of the whole earth catalogue. for inspiration. It was the, I suppose, the equivalent of my internet at the time. And From that all the way to one thousand true fans, which of course you know I sort of shout from the rooftops for people to read.

51:07 How did you develop that skill of writing and communicating. A lot of people associate that with schooling, but it doesn't appear to be the source for you. Yeah. So in high school I w I would call myself a very late bloomer. I I don't recall myself having a lot of ideas. There were a lot of other people and kids in my high school that I was very impressed with because they seemed to Know what they thought and

51:33 We're very glib and Articulate. And I wasn't. I was a little bit more visual in that sense. I I um was trying to decide whether to go to art school or to MIT. 'cause I was really interested in science. So I set off to Asia as a photographer, so it was, you know, basically no words at all. It was just images. And as I was traveling

51:54 And seeing these amazing things. I mean, again, I wanna emphasize that this was sort of a For me, I grew up in New Jersey. I never left New Jersey. We never took vacations. It's hard to describe how parochial New Jersey was back in You know, in the nineteen sixties I never ha ate Chinese food, I never had

52:13 I mean, I never saw Chinese. It was like It was a different world. And then I was thrown into Asia and it was like oh my gosh, everything I knew is wrong. And so that Education. Was Extremely, extremely powerful and

52:30 I think that's the thing. That gave me something to say. And I started writing letters home. And I try to describe what I was seeing. And so f I had a reason to try to communicate

52:42 And That was the beginning of it. But even then I don't think I really had much to say. It wasn't Really until

52:50 The internet came along. Mm. And I had a chance to go on to one of the first online communities in the early eighties. And for some reason early eighties, that is that is definitely

53:03 Yeah, it was early days. Yeah, in nineteen eighty one. And so These were private it wasn't the kind of wide open internet. There were a little experimental fact it was New Jersey Institute of Technology. in Ructur's that had this experimental online community that I got invited on and I we can talk about how that happened, but that was it was just luck and a friend

53:24 And I found that there was something about the direct Attempt. To just communicate with someone else. in real time, you know, just just sending them a message or something. That crystallized

53:36 My thinking is How did it crystallize your thinking? Just not to interrupt, but was it the immediate feedback loop? It was the idea that They have since teachers have since done A lot of studies where they had kids write an essay on something. as an assignment. And then they would also be instructed to write

53:52 some email to a friend or something. And then they would grade Both of the compositions. Mm. And they would find it inevitably The email. That the kids were writing.

54:02 With much better writing. Hm. Because when you're trying to write a composition there's all these You'll We have all these attitudes or expectations or there's there's this kind of a writerly sense. There's there there's all this other garbage and luggage.

54:17 and baggage on top of that. But when we're just trying to send the email, we're just we're directly trying to communicate something and we're not fooling around. We're not trying to be it make it Literary. Literary and all that with just direct stuff. And so the writing there was always much more direct and concrete. Okay. That's the that's the usual thing that happens when you're trying to write is you're not concrete enough, but when your email is like all concrete. And so It was getting out of the whole kind of writerly stuff and just Pure concrete communication.

54:44 That really made it for me. And what I discovered, which is what many writers discover, is that I write in order to think. Yeah. I think I have an idea.

54:54 Yeah. But When I begin to write it, I realize I have no idea. And I don't actually know what I think.

55:01 Until I try to write it. So writing is a way for me to define out what I think. It's like I don't have any idea if it's true. But when I write, I get the ideas.

55:11 And That was The revelation. And so By being forced to communicate online and There was none of this expectation. It was just like okay, this write an email. I can do that. I don't have to write an essay, I don't have to write something nice. I'm just gonna write

55:24 you know, hundred and forty characters. I can do that. But while I was doing that, I had an idea that I didn't have before. And so it was like oh my gosh. This is a Idea generation machine. It's by writing. It's not that I have these ideas and gonna write them down. No no, I don't even have them until I write. I'm so glad you brought that up because I was just recently a few things related to that. I I was reading an interview

55:46 with Kurt Vonnegut, who's one of my favorite authors. For people who aren't familiar, check out Cat's Cradle perhaps as a starting point. hilarious guy. And he at various points in his career taught writing to make ends meet. And he would number one not look for good writers. He would look for people who are passionate about specific things. So th that's that's something I want to reiterate to people who don't feel writerly is that go out and have the experiences and find the subjects, the things that excite you. And as long as you're true to your voice, which is is related to the email point. I threw out my first two drafts of I'd say a third of the four hour work week because

56:21 They were either too pompous and Ivy League sounding? Way, way, way too much. I mean horrible. Or too slapstick because I felt like I had to go to the other extreme and then I sat down and I wrote as if I Or composing an email to a friend after two glasses of wine and that's how I found my voice, so to speak. As a side note, why

56:42 And I think this might be related, but why did you promise yourself not to teach English? I'm so curious because that's a that that can be very lucrative. It's readily available. When you were traveling, why did you commit to yourself not to teach English? Yeah, it's a good question because there's lots of opportunities all around the world and By the way, I recommend it as a way. for people to travel cheaply if you want to support yourself because it is a very desirable skill, we call it for the moment.

57:09 I think the reason why was I felt that I do feel like I was a very good teacher. And I also felt that it was maybe a little easy Mm. But I think the main reason was that I was having trouble imagining myself

57:23 Enjoying it, you know. And I just felt that I would rather try to find something else. Now I think I did one time in Taiwan, which as you know has a whole cram school

57:36 I think a friend a substitute for a friend once And I think that maybe confirmed to my idea that while it was there was sort of like, you know, all I have to do is just talk. I mean, there's really not much skill involved at all. It was fun, but I didn't feel like I was I don't know, I didn't

57:56 feel like I was maybe adding value or something. So I came away thinking, you know I guess I could do this for money, but I'm not gonna be happy. I think it's just the personality thing. I don't think of myself as a teacher. I don't do many workshops or classes. So

58:12 I think a different person might thoroughly enjoy it and I know they do and they have a great time doing it. For me it was just No, for me. Mm-hmm. Got it. No big deal. I think this is an important thing is is that You know, it takes a long time to kind of figure out what you're good for. And part of where I'm at right now and where I got eventually was

58:34 really trying to spend time on Doing things that only I could do and Even when I could do something well, but someone else could do it. Mm. I would try and let that go. That That's a discipline that I'm still working on.

58:46 Which is Not just things that I'm good at. But things that only I'm good at. So that was something I was sort of trying to start early on, which is like, you know, a lot of other people can do this. Mm-hmm. And they're happy doing it.

58:59 So I don't want to go somewhere where It requires more of me. To do and then I'll be happier and they'll be happier. I am currently having and I seem to have these periodically.

59:11 a crisis of meaning phase. And I'm r wrestling with this exact Issue trying to figure out what to abandon, what to say no to, to refine. My focus so I can really focus on the intersection of my unique capability or capabilities, whatever that is.

59:30 and a need of some type. How did you figure that out and maybe we could approach it from a different direction. is your skill set or your your unique skill. And how did you figure that out?

59:43 Well let me tell you the story of how This Realization actually came to me in a kind of a very concrete way, which While I was editing Wired Magazine. Wired magazine is about is is that we would

59:57 Come up with ideas and make assignments to writers. Now some of the articles of word would come from the writers themselves. They would approach us and say, I have an idea. But a lot of the the articles would be assigned from editors. We'd have editorial meetings where we kind of Imagine this great article and then we go and try and find someone to To write it. And um in in that conversation of trying to persuade writers to write an idea that I had.

1:00:22 They would go through a kind of a Very typical. Sequence where you know, I would Have this great idea. Oh, this is a great idea. And and and then I would trying to persuade like one writer, two writers, three writers and they just

1:00:34 Yeah. They didn't like it. They didn't want to do it or whatever it was. And then I'd kinda forget about it, but then like, you know. six months later would come back and say that was such a great idea. I really think we should do that. And then I would go again for another round of trying to persuade people. And then I get no takers. And then I can forget about that. It must have been a bad idea. But then like six months later or a year later, it might come back and you go that's still a great idea. Nobody has done that.

1:00:58 And then I would realize Oh my gosh. I need to do that. Yeah, it's like I'm the only one who can see this. I've tried to give it away. I have tried really hard to give it away. I've tried to kill it.

1:01:10 It just keeps on coming back. And it's like okay And then I would do it and there'd be one of my best pieces. And so it was this idea of like so so I became really an important proponent of trying to give things away first. Mm-hmm. Tell everybody what you're doing.

1:01:25 Basically you try to give these ideas away And people were happy because they love great ideas and hey, do it. It's a great idea. You should do it. And so um I try to give everything away first and then I try to kill everything. It's like no that's a bad idea. And then it's the ones that keep coming back that I can't kill and they can't give away. I think mm.

1:01:46 Maybe that's the one I'm supposed to do. Interesting. Because no one else is going to do it. I mean I've been actively trying to get And then of course if someone else is doing it, uh, you you if you see someone else competing or trying to do it, it's like oh yeah, you go ahead, do it. I'm not gonna race against you. Yeah. There's two of us, you know, you do it. And so

1:02:05 That generosity is actually part of this Your vetting process. Exactly. And so That's when I kind of realized it, but that doesn't answer the question of well, how do you find out what it is? And all I can say Is you know, and I don't Wanna be flipped, but all I can say is it's gonna take all your life to figure that out. Right.

1:02:23 That is fact. Here's what it is. Figuring out is what your life is about. I mean that's what life is for. And then so every

1:02:33 Every Day is actually This attempt. to figure this out and you'll have different answers as you go along. And sometimes there may be directions in that. But that's basically

1:02:46 What it is. You were very transparent about confessing this, but I have to tell you that Even from hanging around a lot of very accomplished people, a lot of successful people that we would be on the covers of magazines. They also

1:03:00 go through exactly the same questioning. I mean, no matter how big of a billion dollar company they have, they They come up to the same thing. Well, you know, what's my role in all this? Why am I here? What am I useful? What am I doing that nobody else can? It's a continuous In fact, as we'll come back to Being successful makes that even more difficult.

1:03:19 Why is that? Because Of the uh what I call the creator's dilemma, which is very much the same Thing is the innovator's dilemma. Mm-hmm.

1:03:29 Which is that it's a true dilemma. In fact it In the sense that there's no right answer. But the question is is Sort of. Is it better? To optimize your strengths.

1:03:39 Mm. Or to invest into the unknown, into places that you' where where you're weak. And Any explored. Yeah, any accountant.

1:03:49 And any business will tell you that it did absolutely make more sense. To take your dollar. You'll get a higher return by investing into What you're good at. Already.

1:04:00 Whatever it is. You move uphill, you You keep optimizing What you know. And That

1:04:12 By far is The sanest, the the most reasonable, the the the smartest thing to do. Mm-hmm. But When you have a very fast changing landscape like we live in right now.

1:04:23 you get stuck on an a a local Optima. You get you get stuck. Mm-hmm. And the problem is is that the only way you can get to a higher More bit place. Is you actually have to go down. You have to have to Head.

1:04:38 into a place where you are less optimal You have no expertise. There's very low margins, there's low profits. You look foolish. There'll be failures.

1:04:48 And If you've been Following a line of success That is Very, very difficult to do.

1:04:56 It's very difficult for an organization. It's almost literally almost impossible for an organization who's been excellent and successful to do. It really is. So Which presents a lot of opportunity for That's where the start ups all the The reason why startups start it's because they're operating in an environment that no sane

1:05:16 Big corporation. would want to be in it's it's it's a market low margins, low profitability, unproven, high failure. I mean it's like who wants to operate there? Nobody. The only reason why startups operate is they have no choice. Right. Yeah, it's the the gift of few options, right? Right, exactly. So so so in terms of

1:05:36 success biting, I think you have to be unsuccessful. Who is successful wants to be unsuccessful. It's very, very hard to To let go of that. Success and so That's one of the things that works against someone really continuing the on this life journey of finding out what they're really good at. Because because here's the thing is that

1:05:56 Successful companies and successful people generally Try to solve problems with money. You buy solutions. And We all know that money doesn't it's not the full answer for innovation. Yeah, basically if you could

1:06:08 purchase innovations all the big companies would just purchase them. Okay. It's it's the fact that these innovations often have to be found out without money, th through other means. Again, that's the advantage to the startup and it's a disadvantage to the successful companies because they got money and they just want to buy solutions. But Most of these solutions you can't buy. You have to kind of engineer in this very difficult environment of low margins, low success.

1:06:33 Low profits. That no one really wants to be in but uh Startups are forced to be. That's also an advantage I would think. for beginners or novices compared to experts. They have less vested identity

1:06:46 Less inertia. To have to Reverse. And that's back to my suggestion, the meeting of why slack and fooling around when you're young. Is so important because

1:06:57 A lot of these. innovations and things are found not by trying to solve a problem that is can be monetized. Yeah. It's in exploring this area without money. I mean money is so overrated. It really Could you elaborate on that because I feel like this is a s a sermon I need to receive on some level. There's several things to say about it. One is, you know, obviously if you're struggling to pay bills and mortgages and stuff, it

1:07:21 There's a certain Amount that's needed. But But here's the thing is that Accumulating. enough money to do things is really a byproduct of other things. It's a kind of a

1:07:32 A lubricant in a certain sense, rather than uh you know, a goal. And great wealth or extreme wealth is definitely Overrated. I've had meals with a a dozen billionaires and They're no different. I mean, their lives lifestyles are no different. You don't want to have a billion dollars. Let me put that way. There's nothing that you can really

1:07:52 Do with it that you can't do with A lot of less money. Wealth itself. In this World where

1:08:01 There is more and more abundance. Even the money for say middle class is less significant in a certain sense in the sense that Maybe there's status. Which is really not needed, but

1:08:14 The things that you want to do, the things that will make you content, the things that will satisfy you, the things that Will bring you meaning Can usually gut. Better. than having money. I mean, if you have a lot of time or a lot of money, it's always better to have a lot of time to do something. And so

1:08:32 If you have a choice between having a lot of friends or a lot of money, you definitely won't have a lot of friends. And so I think There's a way even which Technological

1:08:41 progress that we're having is actually diminishing the role of money. And I want to be clear that I'm talking about Money beyond the amount that you need to survive. But even that reflects back what we were saying earlier, which is probably less than you think it is.

1:08:56 To survive. And so In a certain sense most people see money as a means to get these other things, but there are other routes to these other things. Right. That

1:09:06 and more constant and more durable and more powerful. So money is this sort of very small one dimensional thing. So if you kinda focus on that It kinda comes and goes and If you whatever it is that you're trying to attain

1:09:24 You go to it more directly through other means. You probably wine up of the more powerful Experience or Whatever it is that you're after.

1:09:35 And It'll be deeper, more renewable. Than coming at it with money. And so You know, travel is is One of the great examples is which is

1:09:44 you know, many, many people who are working very hard trying to save their money to retire some day to travel. Well I decided to flip it around and travel when I was really young when I had zero money.

1:09:55 Uh And you know, I had experiences that basically Even a billion dollars. Could have bought And and and it's not an uncommon sight, let me tell you.

1:10:05 for young kind of travelers who have very little money to be hanging out, doing something, and then there will be some very wealthy people on their one week organized tour. Looking at these young travelers just saying I wish I wish I had more time. Yeah, you see it you see it every well, I see it almost every time I go traveling and it and it reminds me of conversations I've had with Rolf Potts and also his book Vagabonding, which I just absolutely love. And it was it was that

1:10:31 book and Walden that I took with me traveling when I had my own And he points out in the beginning of Vagabonding that Many people s subscribe to the belief Along the lines of Charlie Sheen's in the movie Wall Street.

1:10:47 when he's asked what he's gonna do when he makes his millions and he says I'm gonna get a motorcycle and ride across China And Rolf of course points out that you could you could clean toilets in the US and save enough money To ride a motorcycle question. Exactly. And let me ask you this is this is

1:11:08 Maybe tangentially related, but You mentioned earlier that you know you're you're a middle age Uh, your middle ages, middle ages maybe sounds odd, but in your middle age, that's when you optimize. And I find that horrifying on some level because I am so tired. I just turned thirty seven. last week and I'm really tired of certain types of optimizing and the incremental

1:11:31 slogging of making trains run slightly more efficiently on time. Even though like you said. From a strictly financial standpoint, the advice that I would receive from many people and have received when I've asked for advice is Here are one or two core areas you should focus on to Optimize for income and on the flip side.

1:11:51 I'm tempted to approach a kind of not scorched earth, but burned bridges approach where I somehow use creative destruction to force me into another direction to have these new experiences that I crave so much. Yeah. And you, just for people who aren't aware, I want to give I remember going to the first ever quantified self meetup. You're you're part of the Long Now Foundation. You've experimented in so many different arenas and have looked so far into the future and thought on such grand a scale. You know, I aspire to do more of that. What would be your advice to someone? And I know I have dozens of friends in this same position, they're say in their early or mid thirties.

1:12:28 in my particular peer group and they want to explore, but they're feeling Pressured. to optimize this thing that they've suddenly found their footing with, whatever it is. They might maybe they're a venture capitalist, maybe they're in a startup, they feel they should start a new startup. And they want to step out of that. Slipstream, what would be your advice to those people?

1:12:48 First of all I I have to commend your honesty for this and I will repeat that that It is very, very difficult to do. I mean there I think that realization comes to people middle age and they realize, Oh my gosh, you know

1:13:02 I'm kind of on a there's a little bit of a routine here and I'm not really happy with that. I think that kind of Scorch Earth or kind of like, you know, just we'll just set fire to it and we'll walk away. I actually have I think we probably have a mutual friend. I won't use his name'cause I don't know how

1:13:16 The most radical one I've ever heard. for force himself was that he gave up US citizenship. Oh wow. That'll that'll do it. It was like

1:13:29 He was like saying I just feel so I know and And I was like, Oh my gosh, that is so radical. And he was telling me about what is involved in that. And it wasn't for tax purposes because actually before you can do it, the US actually requires that you square up on all taxes. It was like But that was so radical. And I don't recommend that. He's he's doing fine, but I'm just saying that's

1:13:52 That's unnecessary. But I think the advice is I'm probably taking a page from yourself. I don't think it's necessary to um I I think you can experiment your way through this. I mean you can do this incrementally. You can take small steps and do something and then Evaluated. Test how it how it's going, whether you're getting what you want out of it, whether it's working, and then You can do that direction. And that's

1:14:15 Sort of the pattern of people who kind of You have second careers or reinvent themselves, you hear that a lot. And you can do that in a Disciplined. Tim Ferris Way. I don't think that it requires you to kind of walk out and

1:14:30 leave a a burning pile behind. I think it's something that you're going to I'm a big believer in doing things deliberately and I think that you begin by looking at Those areas that you get satisfaction out of in those areas where I often find that people kind of retreat back to kinda the things that they did as kids and really, really miss, you know, whether it's art or other things. And The truth is that you're not r really gonna be able to escape.

1:14:56 All the other things you have going. That's a good thing because that that is part of you and part of what you do well. So you'll probably just you know, bend in a certain direction. And I think the one bit of advice is that you can't You know it's not gonna happen overnight. It's gonna be It took you

1:15:11 thirty seven years to get where you are. It may take you another thirty years to get Where you want to go. And I don't think you should Feel impatient. Maybe that's the word I'm saying, is is that uh

1:15:22 I don't think you should Imagine that you'll have another hat on. with a new label uh you know next year. Just to maybe uh redirect that, and this may or may not be accurate, but in the process of researching for this conversation, which is Sort of an odd exercise, isn't in and of itself, given how much time we've spent together.

1:15:41 But I came across in Wikipedia mention of your experience in Jerusalem And deciding it to live as though you only had six months left. And I wanna touch on that, but one of the questions that came to my mind when I turned thirty seven last week is If I knew I were going to die at age forty

1:16:01 what would I do to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people? And so th I find that constraint helpful and I worry that if I aim at not being impatient in that way then I won't Because I could get hit by a bus that I won't do what I'm capable of doing. Maybe you could talk about and I had no idea, I'm not sure if you would self describe yourself as a

1:16:24 devout Christian, but that's that's certainly written here. Maybe you could talk. A little bit about that experience. Yeah, one thing I would of course warn

1:16:33 People is that. Not everything on Wikipedia is Correct. No, that's why I'm bringing it up. But it is but it is it's true that I got this assignment in Jerusalem, which by the way, if you want to hear the full version of it Listen to one of the very first This American Lives. Mm.

1:16:49 an Iglass and I told the story for the very first time and it's a story about how I got this assignment to live as if I was going to die in six months even though I was like perfectly healthy and I knew that it was a very improbable, but I s I decided to take the assignment seriously and that's that's what I did. And my answer kinda surprised me because I thought that I would kind of have this sort of Mad.

1:17:13 high risk fling, you know, uh do all these things. But actually what I wanted to do was to um Visit my brothers and sisters. Go back to my parents, help out. But then my mom was not well at the time.

1:17:24 But that lasted for three months before I decided I need to do something big so I actually rode my bicycle across the U S from San Francisco to New York where I was going, New Jersey where I was gonna basically um die. And I kept a uh A journal of that and

1:17:39 That question was something that I keep asking myself now, I actually have a countdown clock. Mm-hmm. That um Matt Groining. Futurama was inspired and they did a little episode on the Futurama about and what I did was I took the actuary old tables.

1:17:55 for the estimated age of my death for someone born when I was born and I work back the number of days And I have I have that showing on my computer how many days And I tell you. Nothing concentrates your time like knowing how many days you have left. Now, of course I'm likely again to live more than that. I mean good health, et cetera.

1:18:22 But nonetheless. There is something that really you know, I have six thousand something days. It's not very many days to do all the things I want to do. And so I think your exercise is really fantastic and commendable. And There's two questions. What would you do if you had six months to live and what would you do if you had a billion?

1:18:40 And interestingly. It's the convergence of those two questions. Because it turns out that you probably don't need a billion dollars to do whatever it is that you have s you're gonna do in six months. Right. And so I think you're asking the right question. And and the way I answer it is you wanna keep asking yourself that question every every six months and really try to answer it. And I try to, you know

1:19:05 day by day basis. I learned something from my friend Stuart Brand, who organized his remaining days. Around five year increments. He says any great idea. That's significant. That's worth doing for him. Well last about five years from the time he thinks of it to the time he stopped thinking about it.

1:19:23 And If you think of it in terms of five year projects You can count those off on you know a couple of hands. for even if you're young. And so

1:19:31 The sense of mortality of of understanding that it's not just old people who Don't have very many you know, you're you're twenty year years old, you don't have that many five year Projects to do. And so I think it is that's maybe part of the the philosoph of thinking about our time and whether even if you believe in the extension of life Longevity.

1:19:52 Living to a hundred twenty. You still have to think in these terms of what are you gonna do if you'cause you're you don't know if you'll live. Should be under twenty. What do you gonna do if you have a year? And what would you do with a billion dollars? And what's the intersection of those two?

1:20:08 Does religion play a large part in your life right now? In a certain sense, not in a kind of uh ritualistic sense. I just wrote a book called What Technology Wants. Excellent book. I highly recommend it. It was a technology in the context of the cosmos.

1:20:27 So I think what religion gives me is permission to think about Cosmic questions. Right in the middle of finishing a Kickstarter funded Graphic novel. That's about

1:20:40 Angels and robots and the Intention there was to fictionalize the idea that robots would some days have souls, but these souls would be coming from Angels. And so that there was this intersection of these two kind of

1:20:54 possible worlds of conscious robots. who were insult by Angels and And the reason why this was sort of interesting was that the idea was that The angels that insole us have been trained, they've been given moral guidance, but if you don't

1:21:09 Give me a the spirit some kind of moral guidance then they can wreak havoc and so when we make robots, we're also gonna have to train them to be ethical. Mm-hmm. Um, we you just can't make a Free being

1:21:23 And not train it. So it was a way to rehearse. and think about some of the consequences of technology today. So I think my religion gives me permission to Ask those questions without embarrassment to say What is the general direction of the arc of evolution? What is it pointed somewhere?

1:21:43 How does technology fit into the greater cosmos. What does it mean? What drives it Why is there more of it is this a good thing?

1:21:54 So I think having a kind of I consider this kind of an other view. other view that I I'm sympathetic to

1:22:04 Other world views. I don't necessarily have to believe all the other world views, but I get the idea that If you have an another world view that can be very Helpful. In seeing other worldviews.

1:22:17 Mm-hmm. So people have a world view even though they don't know it, but I have a world view and I know that I have problems. I mean uh really everybody has a religious or a spiritual orientation even If they're atheists, they still have one. And so

1:22:33 There are some assumptions that that are at the basis of it. And I like to question assumptions, including my own assumptions. Mm-hmm. Two things. I can't resist asking and we can spend as much or as little time on this as you'd like, but recently grappling with a lot of these issues that I've been grappling with, some of which are existential, some of which are related to death. limited time on the planet, I've become deeply fascinated by indigenous use of plant medicine. And I've had some very transformative experiences that

1:23:07 are difficult to put into words because they make you sound like a complete crazy person. But is uh very difficult to communicate without sounding like You should be institutionalized. What do you think the role For People who aspire to do the greatest good in the world. What is the role of that type of direct experience? And is it possible to

1:23:34 benefit from that type of for lack of a better descriptor, spiritual experience without a religious framework around it. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a really great question. So my little personal story there, of course, is I was basically I was basically hippie. I worked for the hippie catalog, the Horizon catalog, which was about hippies living in San Francisco and All my friends were

1:23:54 drug taking hippies, but I for some reason Never did. I just had no appetite or inclination. at all for ever taking any drugs or smoking pot or anything. And When I was fifty years old.

1:24:08 I decided that I would like to to take L S D sacramentally on my fiftieth birthday. And and I did. And I arranged with uh I had a guide and I had appropriate setting and I had some acid that I came from a source that was extremely reliable. And it was a sacrament and it was a very profound Sacrament.

1:24:32 Yeah, you can use drugs that work racially and for entertainment and I think that can go somewhere, but I think there's another powerful use for it, which is kind of what you're talking about, which is to Elevate one. Outside of yourself. to

1:24:46 And lose yourself to be in contact with Other things beyond your ego. And I think it can be done and and I think unfortunately Because of the

1:24:55 illegal status that we've had for a long time. the rituals and the practice around that have not had chance to be developed or communicated. Actually trying to find this information was extremely hard. There's one book that I did find eventually. From a guy. who was doing L st experiments while they were still legal. Mm-hmm.

1:25:14 and was able to accumulate enough Wisdom about it. That that would be the one place I would point people to but I think it is important that the context and expectations and the The setting they call it, that that revolves around it.

1:25:30 It's very important. And I do believe that these can be extremely profound and powerful experiences for good. They can remain long after and You know, most people who understand this and don't abuse it understand that in fact The experience was not in the pill, it was not in the chemical. It was a real

1:25:51 experience. And so unfortunately there's so much other stuff circulating the use of these drugs and the misuse of them. that that kind of information is often very, very difficult to find. But I do think Maybe We're seeing a moment now in the US where the second prohibition is

1:26:11 And Pot. Will become legal and maybe we can return to revitalizing

1:26:20 You know, the traditions and the necessary uh settings are around that and expectation that not just Even other synthetic drugs can be extremely powerful in Removing the Ordinary

1:26:35 guards that we have. I mean, we have an ego for our own purpose. We have all these things to keep us, you know, sane in a day to day Functional standpoint, yeah. Right. And so if you remove it completely, you you can become Dysfunctional. But

1:26:49 If you remove it deliberately and with great care you can be opened up. You know, I think there's an expertise there. I think there's a lot of other things that if we have the freedom and the wisdom to not abuse it, I think it can be extremely powerful. Do you recall the title of the book Or how people might search for it. Yes. So this is a one of the many resources that I recommend in my book Cool Tools. Mm-hmm.

1:27:12 And Cool Tools is a big catalog of possibilities. It has about fifteen hundred different items A lot of them were kinda like hand tools, you know, pliers and The grape. Horless. Drill.

1:27:23 But It's much more than that and I include things like What if you wanted to have uh Psychedelic experience that was transformative. What do you do? And I would recommend this book or Or I mean there's lots of other things in it, but

1:27:36 The I don't actually have the book right in front of me, I should. I think it's called um I don't remember. It's okay. I will uh show notes, we will list it as the right one. And there's also a little tiny book that came from England. It was a cartoon guide. That gave kind of a street

1:27:59 uh drugs there were and what each one kinda did and didn't and what the Plus and minuses are without you know recommending or forbidding them, just saying this this is what it is. That information also believe it or not, is really in short supply. It's like, you know, what do you do with this and how does it work and and

1:28:15 Tell me the facts. I don't need to you're a lecture either way, like whether this is great or this is terrible. But just tell me what's going on. As you know, I mean that kind of information sometimes is extremely in short supply. It's very difficult to find information that isn't politicized. Yeah. inaccurate or, like you said, so shrouded in either Fear or irrational optimism that it's almost intelligible and certainly generally useless. We'll put those books in the show notes for people.

1:28:43 I wanna come back to one thing you said. Far, far earlier, and that was related to the pieces that you tried to give away that eventually wouldn't die and came back. Were there any common threads? Any patterns.

1:28:57 in those pieces that you can pick out. as being sort of a a uniquely Kevin Kelly. Theme if for lack of a better term. One of the things that I discovered in my six months of trying to

1:29:10 Live as if I was going to die in six months. Because as I was coming closer to that date which happened to be Halloween, October thirty first. It was I kept cutting off my future. I mean

1:29:21 I may be like you, I I kind of tend to live in the future much more than the past. I'm always imagining I'm saving this for someday when I'm gonna do this. I'm I'm kinda looking forward, I'm gonna do this here. And so I was Very much in the future and then Something that future was being cut. Down day by day.

1:29:39 Why am I taking pictures? I'm not taking photographs because I'm not sure. I'm not gonna be here in another two months or something. So so there's all these things that I'm kind of cutting out. And as I was cutting them out. I had this realization, which was the thing I took away from this thing.

1:29:54 Which was that. I was becoming less human. Mm. To be fully human we have to have a future. We have to look forward to the future. That is hard.

1:30:04 Of us. Is looking into the future. And so After I came out of the and I kind of embraced that and was saying, Well, you know

1:30:13 That future forward. facing that's what I do. That's w that's what I wanna do. That's what I write about. And then thinking about The future. It's very hard because the paradox about the future is that

1:30:25 There are lots of impossible things that happen all the time. And if someone from the a hundred years from now were to come back and tell us things, there's a lot of stuff we're just not gonna believe. It's just like that's just that's crazy. Just like if we went back a hundred years and told them what was going on now, they would say, you know, that's just not gonna happen. I mean, we could even go back twenty years. I could go back twenty years and say we're gonna have like, you know, Google Street Views of all the cities of the world and We're gonna have, you know, encyclopedia that's for free, that's edited by anybody. You know, it's like they would say, You know, there's no way. And I would tell them, you know, most of it's for free. They were saying there is no economic model in the world.

1:31:03 That would allow for that. And there isn't. Mm-hmm. But here it is. So the dilemma is is that any true forecast about the future Who's going to be dismissed. Mm-hmm.

1:31:13 Any future that is believable now is gonna be wrong. And so you're stuck in this. Uh. If people believe it is wrong. If they don't believe it, you know, w where does it get you? You dismiss. And so there was this very fine line between saying something that is right on the edge of

1:31:32 Plausibility. And at the same time right on the edge of having a chance of being true. And what I discovered that was helpful in trying to Get away from the kind of assumptions that bind us to just kind of

1:31:47 Extrapolate. Yeah. Think laterally was to go sideways. one thing just take whatever was everybody knew and say, Well what if that wasn't true? Mm-hmm. What would be an a a good example of that? Or an example.

1:32:00 Like everyone says, Okay, Moore's Law will continue. Mm-hmm. Well, what if Moore's Law didn't continue? What would that mean? What would happen? And you can maybe uh I could say for the audience, but I'll just even to remind me, Moore's Law is what is it, every eighteen months The the size and cost of technology will decrease by fifty percent, something along those lines. Or no, there's speed involved as well. Right. Right now we live in a world where every year the technology is better and cheaper. What if that wasn't true? Right. Got it. What if every year uh starting like you know a couple of years from now

1:32:35 Stuff was better but more expensive. That's a that's a completely different world. Right. I mean everyone assumes that things are gonna get better and cheaper. Mm-hmm. Well what if that wasn't true? Mm-hmm. So you can take kind of assumption

1:32:48 Again, that's something that no one's really examining like uh Well, one of the things I'll write about is the fact that we're gonna have a population implosion. globally. That the global population will drastically reduce in a hundred years from now we'll have less population. Far, far, far less than we have right now. And so All right, I have to bite at that. What because I've thought a lot about this and the uh what they call the Malthusian dilemmas.

1:33:14 Is that going to be, do you think, pandemic related, nucleon related, all of the above None of those. None of those. No. A I coming in the the the the rise of the machines. No. Okay. It's just Pure demographics.

1:33:27 So If you look at the current trends in fertility rates in all the developed countries Everywhere except for the US. They're already Either

1:33:37 Below replacement level? Mm-hmm. So replacement level means that you just Sustaining the Population just replaces itself. If it's below, it means that there's getting less and less. So Japan

1:33:50 All these you know, Europe they're all below replacement. The US is an exception because Only because of immigration. Mm. Uh. Otherwise we would be there and it just would not be any news to anybody. But the real news if people would point to the developing world, but Mexico is now aging faster than the US. China is aging faster because of their one child policy. Of course, Japan is this completely

1:34:12 They're way underwater completely. Mm-hmm. So Even the one exception is sub Saharan Africa. And there's really kind of debate right now about how

1:34:22 fast or whether they're slowing down. But generally around the world, South America, the rest of Asia. The rate in fertility continues to drop and here's the thing. is that the demographic transition That is happening everywhere where people become urban. It's so every forecast shows the urbanity the

1:34:42 Cidification of the population continuing. And I can't think of any Counterforce. Mm-hmm. Stop.

1:34:51 this huge migration at the scale that we're seeing into the city. And as that happens The birth rates drop down. And Even in places like Singapore or other places where they have Taken

1:35:04 Very, very active. Countermeasures of Cash. For having kids, uh Wow. Daycare forever. Bonuses.

1:35:13 None of these work. In terms of actually trying to raise fertility levels. So You have to understand that To go above replacement level, the average woman has to have two point one kids. Well, that means there have to be tons and tons of women who have three or four kids to make up for those

1:35:31 How many people do you know? with that many kids you know living in cities and there's just very few not there's not enough of them. So And this is a projection. Some of these are UN projections. They have three three they have a low, high and and uh medium and the low one It's not good news.

1:35:49 Because there's not a large cultural counterforce for women to have three a lot, you know, a very high percentage of the population to have three or four Kids. in a modern world. And that's why the the population continues to decrease every year. What type of this is

1:36:07 Perhaps a tangent, but One of the uh big debates in my head right now is To marry or not to marry, to have kids or not to have kids. I never thought those would even be questions in my mind. Mm-hmm. And yet here I am and and now they are. What are your thoughts on having children?

1:36:25 This is very broad, but should have children or shouldn't have children, whichever way of answering is easier. Or how to even think about that question. I think people who are privileged, of which you are, should have children because you can bestow so many privileges And Opportunities.

1:36:43 And if the world is to be populated, why not populate it with children who have as many opportunities as possible. I also say from my own experience of growing up one of many kids and having Well, I have three kids. Uh, one of my other regrets in life is not having a fourth. But we were just we started a little bit too late and we were unable to have A fourth, but all my kids

1:37:04 Where we had a fourth two, and I would say that it's a gift to your kids to have more than one. Mm. And I know that From hanging out in China. where so many kids grew up, only children in this really Really?

1:37:19 Miss that there is a total gift of the siblings and brothers to each other that is uh really very profound. Mm-hmm. And there is also I know from My friends who have had lots of kids.

1:37:31 that there is a tremendous amount of teaching from the And that's a lot of what they learn. And that the curve of the amount of energy that you have to expend. Actually after three, uh doesn't really matter.

1:37:46 In terms of the parents. Got it. I have one friend who has nine kids, I have another friend who has seven. Wow. And basically how do they do that? Well the older kids were helping to parent the younger kids. That's the only way that really works.

1:38:00 But that's actually basically they have You know, they have five pairs instead of having two pairs. Right. It's very traditional in a way. I mean traditional meaning reaching back thousands or tens of thousands of years. It it is. Of course, in the old days Made her twelve.

1:38:14 But they rarely had twelve survive. Right. It's like the eighteen hundreds kind of onward. I hang out with the Amish a lot and they still have these very large families. And they all survive. So they have kind of in some sense s sort of an unnatural Mm-hmm. Expansion and one of my predictions again.

1:38:33 Going back to kind of like the assumptions. One of my predictions is that, you know, in America In a hundred years from now, whatever it is, it'll be um The complete countryside is run by the Amish. The Amish take over the entire censuside because they never sell land. They have like eight kids. And then there are always people living in the cities and it's like everybody's happy, you know. You we're all they drive out to the Amish lands, and this is fantastic. They're very happy.

1:38:53 you know, doing their thing and running the farms. And so I had been predicting for years that the Amish would come and start buying upstate New York, and that's exactly what they're doing right now. Why do you spend so much time with the Amish? This is news to me, but very interesting. And how long has that been going on? And does your beard have anything is there any relation. To the I had the beer before my interest in the armor. Should I I could show you some pictures when I was uh

1:39:15 nineteen years old. So those who don't know I have an Amish beard, which means I have a beard without a mustache. The reason why the Amish don't have mustaches is it was At the time that they were kind of adopt their dress code. The mustache was all military men had mustaches and so they were anti military. They refuse to serve in the armies. They don't even vote. So is their kind of rejection of the military by shaving off their mustache. I hang out with the Amish because their adoption of technologies is like

1:39:44 seem to us totally crazy because first of all, they're not Luddites, they're complete hackers. They love hacking technology. They have something called Hamash Electricity, which is basically pneumatics. While these farms have a big See?

1:39:59 They don't have electricity, but they have a big diesel generator in the barn that pumps up this Compressor. That sense. high pressure air tubes then tubing into their barn into their homes. And so they have converted

1:40:11 Like their sewing machine and washing machine and stuff. To nomadic. Okay. Seems like a bit of a a sidestep of the word of God. Exactly. So they'll have like they'll have horse drawn buggy's and horse drawn's farm implements and the horses will be pulling This diesel generated combine. You're thinking, what are they doing? Okay, right?

1:40:33 But in fact. If you look at our own lives, and I've done this many times, I can ask you, Tim, or you can ask me, there'll be some weird thing, like we don't have T V in our house, but I've got internet. It's like, Well, what is that about? So we all have these things, but here's the difference is the Amish Do it collectively. Hm. They're very selective. They're selecting their technology collectively.

1:40:55 As a group. And secondly They have to articulate because they're doing collectively, they have to articulate what their criteria is. A lot of us are adopting We try this, we try that. We don't have any kind of like logic or reason or

1:41:09 theory or framework for why we're doing stuff. It's just it's just one a parade of stuff. But the Irish have a very particular criteria. Their criteria is There are two things that they're looking for. The main thing they wanna do and the main reason why they have all these restrictions like coarse and buggy and all this stuff is that They want

1:41:28 To have these communities. Very strong communities. So They notice that if you uh Have a car that you'll drive out and shop somewhere out of the community or you go to church somewhere out of the community or whatever it is.

1:41:40 But if you have a horse and buggy you can go only fifteen miles and so everything has to happen. Your entire life ha you have to support the community. You have a community within fifteen miles You have to visit the sick and you have to shop locally, so You're Shopping with your neighbors.

1:41:54 So when a new technology comes along they say, Will this strengthen our local community or send us out? And then the second thing that they're looking at is with families. So the Goal of the typical Amish men or women is to have every single meal with their children. For every meal their lives until they leave home.

1:42:14 They have breakfast and they have lunch. And they have dinner. So Breakfast. And lunch is the they go to a one room schoolhouse and they pedal back for lunch. Their parents had with them.

1:42:24 And that means that the business is ideally in their backyard. They have a lot of like shops and stuff. If they're not a farmer, they have a back yard shop. Which is actually has to be kind of clean ish because it is in their backyard. Right. It's like not my well, it is in their backyard. So they really are, you know, they really want to make sure that they're they have metal working shops and stuff which they really try to keep non toxic and work because it's in their backyard.

1:42:44 And so that means that they can come home for lunch, they have breakfast to lunch. So they're they're on the premises and they have every single meal with their children till they leave. And so They say well will this technology allow us to do that. Will it help us do that or will it work against that? And then like right now they're they've been deciding whether to accept cell phones or not, even though they don't have landline phones.

1:43:07 So they're basically they're going to ex well, some of them are going to accept cell phones. And they do that by There's always some Amish early adopter who's trying things. And they say, Okay, Ivan Bishop says you can try this, but we're watching you.

1:43:21 We're gonna see what effect this has on your family, on your community. You have to be ready to give it up any time we say that it's not working. And they do this in a kind of Paris by Paris, so it's very decentralized. Mm-hmm. And so they try out always trying out their technologies and they're always looking to see Is this strengthening the families? Is it strengthening the communities? If not, we don't want it.

1:43:43 And what if you I have two questions, I guess. The first is, since you're normally, as I understand it, based on the West Coast in Northern California. How do you get out to the Amish or is there a separate community closer by? And then secondly, what have you incorporated into your own life or your your own family? That originated from the Amish. Yeah. So I don't get to see them as often as I want, but actually when I go east I have some contacts

1:44:10 that I will exercise and I would try to get like to stay overnight and go to church in a buggy or something. And this is Pennsylvania? Well actually Pennsylvania is the heart of it, but actually there are more communities in Ohio where my brother lives. Oh no kidding. Iowa. There's a lot more happening in New York. The Pennsylvania are the kind of Ground zero. But in fact there are

1:44:34 Bigger, more extensive communities outside of of Pennsylvania. I didn't realize that. Yeah. The Amish diaspora. It is what I'm saying, they literally are just buying up farmland. They're they're expanding. They're constantly expanding. They have a very small attrition rate, very large families. They all are buying farms and stuff for their for their children. And they never sell. And so they also don't move into areas as a

1:44:58 They have a minimum number of families that we need to move in at once. But what did I learn from then? Well one of the things that We had particularly when we had younger kids was kind of technological sabbaticals. Mm-hmm. Or Sabbath, I should say. Mm-hmm.

1:45:12 And I've now seen other families who aren't even religious adopt that same thing, which is Once a week. Are you Take a break. From

1:45:23 Either you can define it however you want it, the screen or the keyboard or connectivity or something. Then you step back. And you do that not because it's like terrible or poison, but because it's so good. You know, there's lots of people who are kind of like they're gonna drop out from Twitter. They're kind of like, Oh, this is like detoxing like detoxed or something. I think that's entirely the wrong way to think about it is you want to take breaks from this not because they're toxic, but because they're so good. It's like

1:45:50 You want to step back. So that you can re enter it in with a renewed perspective, with a renewed appreciation, with having spent time looking at it in a different way. And I think that kind of rhythm of having Sabbaths and then yearly sabbat uh vacations or retreats and then Every seven years or whatever is you take a um I think that kind of

1:46:13 Rhythmic disconnection or Sabbath, I think is Very powerful, something that that works very well. And it was something that we had in our family. I take Saturdays off, as it turns out, is my screenless day. I really try to make that a weekly occurrence and it's incredible. I the the the effect that that it has, the sort of galvanizing effect of just a a mere twenty four hours, not even that.

1:46:36 If you just consider the waking hours. Every seven years a vacation or sabbatical of how long? In your case or your family's case. Yeah, partly because my wife actually is granted a sabbatical from the company she works for, which is Genitech. It's one of the two companies that actually have a Official. Sabbatical.

1:46:54 For all their Researchers at least. And It's very meager. It's six weeks. Mm-hmm. Sabbatical is basically a European annual vacation.

1:47:06 Right. It's three years. That's a big thing. So yeah. So we're do something different. So this year we're taking one in We're going to Camp and National Parks. for one month of it and then the other two weeks will go to Asia. But We haven't been to a lot of the national parks. I'm gonna do a different kind of project than I haven't done before and

1:47:29 we'll do some kind of car camping. We haven't really done a big road trip like that. So it's all new for us. What is the longest in the last few years that you've gone without checking email? Oh, probably Two weeks. Got

1:47:43 In China. How do you manage that? Well, but not easy. It was like Just I was unable to pick it up because China was blocking Google. Make it more challenging. And I was in some remote places and so even the connection was hard, but it was like they weren't They weren't letting me get it. I'm not a mobile person. My first smartphone was an iPhone five and um I still not using it properly. I use it for phone calls. Yeah, I don't I don't use my iPhone as an input device either. I just it drives drives me nuts. But uh I can't type.

1:48:19 When I travel I like to to leave everything, you know I'm s I I spend a lot of my time sitting in front of a computer I'm kind of like the the Zen, you know, walk walk sit sit. No wobble. So like I'm here I'm like really online. And then when I leave this

1:48:33 Studio. I don't want to be connected at all and I won't be. And I'm not checking email and I'm not checking this other stuff. And I can go days Typically I'll go days without checking. Even in the US if I'm traveling. And then if I'm overseas, I will go probably yeah three or four days before I get the email.

1:48:52 That's pretty typical. Let me shift gears just a little bit. I'm looking at longnow.org. I recommend everybody take a look at it, the Long Now Foundation. And Humans are generally, I would say, pretty bad at thinking long term. Uh certainly when it comes to habit change. Very, very high failure rate with long term incentives. You're gonna get diabetes in twenty years, for instance, as opposed to You'll have more sex if you have a six pack.

1:49:16 when it comes to diet. But the Long Now Foundation, I just want to read a few things on this website for people. So the Long Island Foundation was established in nineteen ninety six, written as zero one nine nine six to creatively foster long term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next ten thousand years. Then you have the 10,000 year clock, which is a monument scale multimillennial all mechanical clock is an icon to long term thinking. The Rosetta Project, building an archive of all documented languages. Long debts.

1:49:43 Featured bet is here, Warren Buffett, Protege Partners L C public arena for enjoyable competitive predictions of interest to society with philanthropic money at stake, and then revive and restore Which is bringing extinct species back to life. So there is a lot here. Can you Explain to people I've greatly enjoyed many of the seminars.

1:50:02 And speeches of the Long Knot Foundation, I'm a supporter. I suppose I've even spoken there on stage and Love the email synopses that Stuart Sends out. What is the function of the Long Now Found when what is the value?

1:50:16 The Lone Elf Edition is kind of reacted. It's it's reacting to the very inherent short term bias that our society, particularly this technological society, particularly say the Silicon Valley exhibits which is um often a focus on the next quarter, the next two quarters, the next year. Results.

1:50:36 needing to be immediate. You know, instant satisfaction. If something's not on Netflix streaming, we don't even wait for the D V D. very fast pace, short term. Thinking and also

1:50:49 somewhat blinded by the fact that we don't have a lot of a sense of history either. Yeah. we're kind of ignorant about what's happened in the past and so the term the long now came from Brian Eno who noticed that We have a very short now, which is like the next five minutes and the last five minutes.

1:51:06 Mm. And so the long now is a way to is an attempt to kind of expand that so that we As a society and as individuals would Try to think about Things at a generational or civilizational scale. So like How about like working on something?

1:51:22 That might take longer than your own lifetime to accomplish. So you start something now, then maybe Make it so that it might take Like the cathedrals of old. What if we were trying to make something that, you know

1:51:35 might need twenty five years to accomplish How can we do that? So we're trying to encourage people to think In that perspective, to take that perspective. And then to maybe move in that direction. We're not

1:51:50 Necessarily saying we have to have like the Asimov's foundation where we have to have like a master plan for the next hundred years and we're going to plan out the future. No, we're agnostic about what it is that people make. Or do we have to do it?

1:52:05 We're just saying that It would benefit Thinking about the long term. Some people who advised do counseling to individuals about kind of thinking about the long term in your own life, even though you might want to act kind of locally and be spontaneous.

1:52:22 But you do want to kinda keep in mind the fact that, you know, you'll be around for a while, whether it's putting some savings away or working on a skill that might take some time more than the six months or a year to

1:52:36 or you know, whatever it is that you can have both perspectives. And so we're not attempting to get rid of the need for people to survive, the need for companies to have a profit. This year. We're saying there can be Additional perspectives. In addition to that, we're

1:52:53 We commit to like a program of science research where It's pure science and the results of the say in mathematics. is one of the most profound things that we can invest in, even though most of the things in the beginning seem to be non utilitarian. They don't have any purpose, but we know

1:53:10 from our own history that you know in twenty years They'll pay off in some way or other. And so Being able to kind of Construct a society so that we can

1:53:21 Allow The rewards. of long term investment, long term thinking, long term perspective. That would make us a better civilization. I'd love to

1:53:35 Perhaps jump into some rapid fire questions. And they don't have to even be rapid. Uh but But just some fire questions. Or the qu just some fire questions. The questions will be rapid. The answers can be as short or as long as you'd like. What book or books do you gift or have gifted the most to other people outside of your own books? There is a Short.

1:53:56 Graphic novel. By Daniel Pink. Called Junko

1:54:02 Uh-huh. And it's career counsel advice. It's Aimed at young people. It's a graphic novel. It's a cartoon basically, and it's aimed at young people as trying to teach them how to be in become indispensable. Mm-hmm. And I've given that away.

1:54:15 to young people because it's For me the best summary of again it's not like how to become successful it's how to become indispensable to That's right. It's uh Adventures of Johnny Bunko. Or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. I have that on my uh bookshelf back in San Francisco, in fact. Yeah. If you know a young person who is just starting out

1:54:34 Hand him that book. It's Very easy for them to read because it's a graphic novel. It's non threatening, it's fun. And it'll give us like five great Principles for

1:54:46 Starting out. And helping them kind of orient themselves as a in the working life. for someone who's facing a lot of the same questions, let's just say. So you have graduates asking the

1:54:57 What should I do? Why am I here? What am I good at? If we fast forward to say, for the sake of argument, mid thirties, right? People in Middle age hitting that. Are there any books that you would recommend they read? Well, there is a book that I'm recommending by Cal Newport.

1:55:14 is called So Good They Can't I Mm. This changed my mind. Because I'd kind of bought into the kind of New age California dogma of follow your bliss, you know, money will follow. And

1:55:27 He makes a really good argument and convinced me that's actually Not very good. Advice. That What you really want to do

1:55:35 Is to master Something. And to use your mastering of something as a way to get to your passion. So if you start with just passion. Is sort of paralyzing.

1:55:46 Because And I know this from my own kids. They're eighteen, they've really don't know. what they're passionate about. I mean some people are lucky enough to know. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people aren't. So this is a book for people who don't

1:55:58 kinda really know what they're really excellent at, don't really know what they're passionate about. And his premise is that you Master something. Almost anything at all, just something you master and you use that mastery to kind of move you into A place where you can begin to have passion and that you kind of keep recycling that the way you find your passion is through mastery rather than the other way around, which is people think that they're gonna get their mastery through passion. And I kind of believe that former you know the passion would lead to mastery, but

1:56:27 After thinking about it, looking at his examples and his argument. I'm pretty sure that for at least for m most people Mm-hmm. You can get to your passion through mastery.

1:56:39 And that would also give you a a currency or a lever to use in getting to that point. Excellent. Do you have a favorite fiction book? Yes. Oh, fantastic. This I usually don't get one answer. This is great. Yeah. Chantaran.

1:56:53 Uh. Yeah. Shaum it might take me a way to explain this. As author wrote one book'cause it's very autobiographical. The premise of the book and the author's life seems completely incredulous and kind of almost Hollywoodish.

1:57:08 But what you get from it, where it's set, it's set in India, sets in the slum of India. And you get a Incredibly vivid Immersive. Deep.

1:57:20 And in some ways, Uplifting view. Of In the uh And

1:57:27 The underworld in India. And that that part of Asia. And the the main protagonist is this very interesting Zen criminal. He's sort of a Coyote Trickster.

1:57:39 blend of someone who is You know, he does bad things, but at the same time Sorry about it. He has a kind of a cosmic perspective. It's very, very unusual, but it's a long book and I actually recommend that people are gonna

1:57:56 Try to is it you actually To get the audible version, listen to it. Mm-hmm. It runs like you know. On and on, but it'll be one of those books you the you wish will never end. And I'll just tell you the beginning of it, which is that And this is the true part. Mm-hmm.

1:58:09 Which is that the guy, the author Became a bank robber in New Zealand. He was Hooked on drugs, started robbing banks. Was eventually caught.

1:58:19 And escaped from prison. And he made his way to the slums of India where because he had a medical kit he was treated as a doctor. Got involved. and hooked on drugs in India, got involved with the mafia, was put in prison, tortured. Left.

1:58:34 abandoned, nobody knew was in even in there, started writing a book. Wrote this book, they ripped it up, destroyed it. He was recruited, found a guru in Afghanistan, was recruited in the Muajin Entire company was wiped out. I mean that's that's just the beginning.

1:58:53 It's really interesting that you would bring up Shantram for those people who haven't heard of Josh Waitskin. I also had him on this podcast. Josh was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fisher, the book in the movie. world class chess player also a very deep soulful guy and this is one of his favorite books as well. Oh oh yeah you would you would love Josh. Sometime I'll have to put you guys in touch. But any favorite documentaries? Well No, you're you've asked the wrong question because

1:59:20 I have a site called True Films where I for the Ten years I have Review the best. Documentaries and actually have a book called True Films, which is the Two hundred best documentaries that you should see before. Oh my god, no kidding. Wow, you have no idea how timely this is. So it's two uh T R U E films? True films. Okay. And so I uh there are a couple of films

1:59:41 That I would say have sort of universal appreciation. Like you know, they may have like a rating of like a hundred on Rotten Tomatoes or something. So The one documentary that I think everybody uh that I know who've seen it has loved it is uh Man on Wire. Such a good movie. Right. So it's just it's just transcendent. It's just a beautiful movie.

2:00:00 It's based the fact that this guy basically He's gonna walk to Twin Towers. I mean he the moment was he was a like fourteen year old kid in France, was at a dentist office looking at the magazine and saw that there were had plans And he saw those two twin towers and he said I need

2:00:18 To walk between them. He didn't know how to type walk. The towers had not been built. He was already planning. This thing. Then he was filming himself the whole way. Yeah.

2:00:27 So amazing. Okay, and so he d he does it. And how he does it is amazing. So another great documentary that I love because

2:00:35 It's very unusual among documentaries and that it films the villain side of the whole thing as well, which is King of Khan. Oh, I haven't this has been recommended to me. I still have not seen this movie. King of Kong is about a guy who

2:00:50 The video game arcade. Game King of Kong, he becomes the champion. But he is Basically competing against

2:00:59 cabal of people who were trying to subvert him and are doing all kinds of really terrible things to stop which all on film. Yeah. And so here's this really kind of Midwest really lovable guy and you're rooting for him the whole time while he's really Slea guys are trying to take him down. It's just fantastic. I have to watch that. So that's a second one. The third one

2:01:22 Is one that's not so well known. It's called State of Mind. Mm-hmm. And it's about the Spectacles in

2:01:30 North Korea. Which these two filmmakers had access to and they follow several different young athletes who were practicing for the spectacle and in these spectacles of course What it is is people are pixels. You know, they have these like huge

2:01:43 Stadium size things and they're like a little robots, they're cogs in this machine, which is like perfect. So you can imagine like a a picture that's made up of pixels, but every pixel is actually there's a little boy or girl holding up a card, color cards in sequence. So these things move. Which means that you know, there's not a pixel missing. So that means that nobody's sick is like, you know, this you're not allowed to be sick. You can't make a mistake at all.

2:02:06 And it's getting inside of North Korea, which turns out to be A nationwide cult. And I think that in fifty years when they're gone, nobody will believe that that was even possible. And this documentary will be there saying, No, no, no, they really was a nationwide cult and they really did believe this. It really is amazing just to see what's going on there. All right. Well I I know what I'm doing for the next few days.

2:02:32 Next few evenings. True films film. I only review ones that are great. So I don't do awesome. I I just say these are fantastic. Oh man. Alright, I've been looking for this. I cannot believe that I'm Only learning this now. I'm kind of embarrassed about that.

2:02:47 When you think of the word or hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind? Jesus? All right. Why would you say that? Well. There aren't that many people.

2:02:58 who've uh left their mark on as many people in the world as he has I think what he was up to, what he was doing, is you know Fastly Been

2:03:09 Twisted misunderstood. Whatever word you want, but nonetheless. What's remarkable is and here's a guy who didn't write anything. So I I think success is Also overrated. All right, I'd love for you to elaborate on that.

2:03:25 Greatness is overrated. A lot of you know, I I mentioned big numbers but it it's more of the impact that they had on people's lives. But I think We tend to have an image of success. That's somewhat been skewed. Bye.

2:03:39 You know, our It's like our sense of beauty. Mm-hmm. It's sort of like in terms of all possibilities, it's in a very small narrow defined, it's almost kinda ritualistic in a certain sense. I think our our idea of success is is often Today it means you have somebody who has a lot of money or who has a lot of fame or who has some of these other trappings which we assign, but

2:04:02 I think can be successful in By being true true and kind of being the most you that you could possibly be. And I think that's what I think of as One of the things that Jesus whether you take him as just a historical character or anything beyond was about

2:04:18 He certainly wasn't imitating anybody, maybe put it that way. Mm-hmm. The great temptation. The people have is They be someone else which is basically they wanna be in someone else's movie. You know, they wanna be the best rock star and there's so many of those already.

2:04:32 That you can only wind up imitating. somebody in that in that slot. And I think To me the success is like you make your own slot. You have a new slot that didn't exist before. And I think You know, that's of course what Jesus and many others were doing, but it was they were kinda making a new slot.

2:04:48 And that's really hard to do. But I think that's what I Chalk up as successes, you made a new slot. What is your new slot? You knew you knew that was going. Who says I'm successful? Well I may I'm trying to not make any assumptions here.

2:05:05 Yeah. Or what would be your slot. my thought would be Kevin Kelly. I mean that's the whole thing. It's not gonna be like a career or you would really ideally be something that would You had no no imitators. I mean you would be who you are and that's that is success, actually in some senses is you didn't imitate anybody, no one else imitated you afterwards. Right. So you know, in a certain sense you have if you become an adjective, that's a good sign, right? So I think success is actually you kind of make your own path. If they're calling you a successful entrepreneur, then to me that's not the best kind of success.

2:05:41 Mm. Because you're being confined to that category. Right, you're in a category. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I could sing.

2:05:51 Ah, you would like to sing. Yeah, I seem to be unable to carry a tune. I can't remember When my wife can hear something once and she can just I could hear the same song.

2:06:03 I have heard the same song and I couldn't. Three notes of it. I'm sure because I'm a Tim Ferris fan, I'm sure I could train myself to be that I know I could. But I I guess I haven't and it would be something that I have to really work at and I haven't, but I have trouble carrying a tune, staying in tune, remembering a tune. I love

2:06:23 Music in in there. I appreciate it. But in terms of actually singing and or play I don't play an instrument. So maybe I would say it feels a little easier for me that would be Something nice. Have you taken lessons or attempted to take lessons?

2:06:35 No. I got it. What's the so just in the spirit of trade if I've recently started exploring hand drumming with djembees and different types of drums. If anyone out there can get me a pan art hang. I would really love to hear from you.

2:06:50 Those of you that that me will mean nothing to most people who are hearing this. The research that is piqued my curiosity most recently. And of course you don't want to run out and just start swallowing these things, but There's a common anti epilepsy drug called Valproate, which apparently has some implications for

2:07:09 Opening a window for achieving perfect pitch in mature adults. Very fascinating stuff. So if I do any experiments with that, I will I will certainly report back. Well and now that you've talked about it, not the drug part, but I did remember I did take one class. You mentioned the drug. So I took a one class at a an adult summer camp. Which I highly recommend if w if your kids go to camp, you should go with them.

2:07:31 And it was a steel drum. Oh cool. Course. And I love that. So like you, I think if I did take up an instrument, it would be drums of some sort, because that I seem to have responded to and I did pretty good for the f intro course on steel drumming. I I find percussion to be so primal, it just satisfied some type of need. That probably pre dates Yes. Verbal communication even. Yeah. Certainly written notes.

2:07:55 Right. Um as your inner caveman just responding to Are there any particular let's just say in the first two hours of your day, any particular morning rituals or habits you have that when performed consistently you find produce better days for you. And I'm leaving better days undefined on purpose, but I love studying mornings and or what people do when they wake up. What time do you wake up? Are there any particular Habits or rituals that you find contribute to better days. Yeah. Yeah.

2:08:27 I'm a very good sleeper. I don't sleep a lot. These days I get up at seven thirty And I have r some rituals, but I I don't vary them enough maybe to to know whether they are I'm not a morning person, okay, to begin with. You're not a morning person. Well I mean Well the fact that you don't vary them is perfect. So who wants to I know but but that means uh necessarily optimized in any way. Or I can't tell which is better, but for better or worse Well the first things they do

2:08:53 is I read the paper version of the New York Times. Mm-hmm. It's a kind of like a sort of what I call a guilty pleasure. Mm-hmm. I don't know whether that makes me better at anything else I do, but um I don't drink coffee or anything. This is sort of it's a ritual. And when I'm not here I don't read it, so it's like I don't miss it.

2:09:14 I'm kinda curious. But like if I'm here, it's like I gotta do it. I don't know. It's kinda weird. Is that immediately after waking you read the paper or is there anything you're just about. I kind of In my pajamas or walk out to the front gate and I pick it up and I read it. I mean And I don't read all of it. I just kinda go through and I usually don't even read the news part or read the slower stuff.

2:09:37 Mm-hmm. I'm not sure why. Now that you're asking And that's it. That's the entire ritual. I don't have the same thing for breakfast or anything like that. It's just that morning hit. Do you do anything? throughout your day regularly. Maybe it's before bed or anything else that Most other people probably don't do. That's a good question.

2:09:57 No. Really? Okay. I have no special sauce. But you're very consistent. You don't your days seem to be don't vary very widely. So that in and of itself might be something that a lot of people don't do.

2:10:13 While I'm here in the studio I have a lot of control over my time. So What I do during the day is is greatly varied. I'll I do a lots of things for short amounts of times. And you'll go into my workshop, I'll read, actually read books it down and read books during the middle of the day. I go out I'll do a hike and bring my camera out almost every day. Maybe that is something that most people don't do is probably they probably aren't taking pictures with a camera every day.

2:10:39 Mm-hmm. Or reading books in the middle of the day for that matter. Well, maybe that's true, I guess. How do you choose your books? Oh. That's a paradox of choice problem for a lot of for a lot of people. It is. It's like what are you gonna listen to next to the music? I think the music becomes free and everybody has all the music in the world, but deciding what you're going to listen to becomes the thing you'll pay for

2:10:58 This has been my prediction about Amazon is that we're so gonna have like any book you want for free, Amazon Prime. you digital version of it, you can have it whenever you want. But you'll pay for us for the recommendations. And um That's a great point. That's a great point.

2:11:13 I have a network of friends and I listen to lots of podcasts. So I I get it from all over the place and like probably you are at this point. I long ago decided that in terms of the greater scheme of things The cost of books were really cheap, and if I Wanted a book, I would buy it.

2:11:29 Right. And the result is I I'm right now speaking in a two story high Library. of books that they have. And

2:11:38 Uh don't do the same with digital books.'Cause I finally figured out that oh, you know, if I purchase a digital book before I'm reading it, it's not going anywhere. It's just sitting there. So I shouldn't really purchase a digital book until like five seconds before I'm gonna read it. I have exactly the opposite habit. Because right? Because it's like well it's it's there. The whole point of Kindle is that you don't have to have it until like you need it. So on the digital books, I don't buy anything until like I'm seconds away from reading it. Then I'll get it. But uh

2:12:06 Paper books. I was near to the point of actually Digitizing and getting rid of all my paper books. I was that close about five years ago. But then I had an epiphany. I went to the

2:12:18 Private library. And I realized that books were never as cheap as they are today, they never will be as cheap. And that there's some power about having these things in paper. Always available, no batteries. Yeah.

2:12:32 Never obsolete. And that if you made a library now, you would never be able to make some of these libraries in fifty years. And so I decided to keep and to kind of cultivate this paper library. As something that was gonna be very powerful in the future. I like that. Or at least I can use it as a justification for keeping a lot of paper books around. Exactly.

2:12:53 I get tips from books from podcasts from Blogs from friends. from Amazon recommendations anywhere. And whenever I hear someone recommend a book, I'll go and check it out. And then I'm fairly free in buying it, but which means that I read A lot of really Mediocre books.

2:13:13 What's part of my job. the book that we were just talking about, which is this catalogue of possibilities that I self published That has been a little bit more. Oh I don't know, fifteen hundred. Yeah, maybe there's a couple hundred books that are recommended, but I probably read thousands and thousands and thousands of books.

2:13:31 In order to select those. So I see part of my job Reading through and I read a lot of how to most of the books I'm reading is nonfiction. And a lot of it is even instructional stuff on you know how to build a stone wall, how to

2:13:44 do orgami, how to send a satellite a micro satellite into space, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I'll look at it and I've seen Tens of thousands, if not fifty thousand how to books over my lifetime. I can Spot a really good one.

2:13:58 But still I'll read through the other ones so that someone else doesn't have to and I can recommend saying this is the best book on building a tiny house if you want to build a tiny house. Now do you when you read these books on Orgami or Stonewall, do you follow through and attempt these projects or are you evaluating it purely Based on your a massed experience of reading lots of these types of instructional books. No, actually so maybe one of the other things that I don't do every day, but one of the things I do in general that maybe everyone else is not doing is that I have like a thousand hobbies. I dabble in things.

2:14:32 So I have built stone walls. More than one. I have done orgami. I have made beer. I have made wine. I have you know, whatever it is, I I I've tried to do these things in my life and I continue to try and do them. I have home schooled ways. So I have And so as much as possible, this is what my you know I was talking before about my day. It's irregular in a sense that I'm here and I have s things, but I'm doing new things and I'm reading new things all the time. So I'm in my

2:15:02 Outside, um, you know, I'll make a go kart or we'll Do something That I haven't done before. And that's the basis for helping decide about these books. I don't have to be an expert in them, but I can know enough to tell whether or not The information they're telling me is

2:15:19 Useful. What odd project over the last year has been the most fun? Let's start there. For you. Yeah. Well just the last couple of months I finally built myself A real workshop.

2:15:31 Mm. I wish I could show it to you because one of the cool things I did it was, you know, if you go into like U Line or somewhere Mm-hmm. This is

2:15:40 They have these racks of bins. So I filled an entire Wow. of hundreds and hundreds of bins. So I can organize stuff. And uh I'm a big fan of Adam Savage. He has a principal for his workshops called First Order Access, which basically means that You don't want to store things behind anything. You everything has to be at the first level so you can look and see it. Mm-hmm. It has to be within reach and sense. You have to be able to see everything that you have and it's accessible. You don't want things hidden behind other things. Right. So

2:16:09 That's part of what I'm gonna do. I was doing with this workshop is this kind of first order access. And it's true powerful. I mean I just the few days or the weeks I've had working in it is just transforms Everything. It's like

2:16:25 I had the same problem with my books for many, many years. I had books like on multiple different bookshelves in the house. I had them in boxes, I had them this and that. And moving everything to one location into a library where there was two stories and I could see all my books. just transformed them and made it really useful because I could Find them.

2:16:43 Just really go and reach for them. And the same thing with I'm finally bringing that to my tools. Which is that you want to have things plugged in ready to go. labeled, organized, first order access. And it can make

2:16:58 Simple jobs really simple. Instead of like the you know, the hours of looking for something. Right, gathering all the tools. It's like cooking. It's just like cooking. Exactly. Yeah, it's having like a manual random access memory, right? You have your Misan Plus right in front of you. Yeah, you have where you know where the tools are. Yeah. Ah, that's very cool. If there were one object manual project building something. that you think every human should have the experience of doing. What would that be?

2:17:24 It was very easy. You need to build your own house. And it's not that hard to do, believe me. I actually I built my own house. And your house is amazing. I not not this house. I mean, I actually built one from cutting down the logs. Cutting down the trees in upstate New York. Wow.

2:17:40 doing the stone hearse and we you know, I mean unfortunately I don't recommend this we made like two by fours. From trees. You don't want to do that because It's a pain because No, it's standard standard lumber is very it's very good if your things are off a little quarter of an inch as they are with rough

2:17:55 Um so on Lember it's just It's a mess. But nonetheless. A large portion of the people in the world have made their own homes. Adobe, Ramed Earth. Bamboo, whatever it is. And like going back to what we originally started off with, um

2:18:09 Even if you don't wind up living in it. Mm-hmm. It's empowering. To know that you can do it and if you do wind up living in it. I have a friend Lloyd Cahn who built this m magnificent place in Bellina he built with salvage material from scratch over the many years. It gives you the power to alter it. So I believe that that your house should be an extension of you. That that really definitely it's another projection. So another way of of and also going back to what we're talking about, it's another way of to discover

2:18:38 who you are and discover what you're good at. And because A well designed house should really reflect you and and w what I've discovered, a lot of people design houses and they have this kind of imaginary fantasy idea about themselves and what they're gonna do. Well, you know, whatever it is. We're gonna um

2:18:55 Have a swimming pool well, you know it's like They're never gonna use a swimming pool, whatever it is. I mean very few people actually have a very good sense of who they are and what they're gonna use something for, but If you really study yourself and really are honest and design something That space can help you.

2:19:12 become successful in the sense of making a slot for you. Hm. Making your own slot. And it's another it's both a kind of a byproduct of who you are and it also can help you become more. It works both ways. I like that. Right. You're not just finding yourself, you're creating yourself.

2:19:28 Exactly. So this is a larger philosophical question, but this is something I talk about a lot. In a very high dimensional space, which means like space of many, many possibilities. Mm-hmm. The act of finding and the act of creating are identical. There is no difference between

2:19:45 Discovering something and inventing something. We could say that philosophically You know, Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. We could say that

2:19:54 Christopher Columbus invented America, we could say that discovery and invention are the same. So that Discovering yourself and eventing yourself. is really the same things would bring about that process. You have to do both at once. I really enjoy that.

2:20:12 Last question. If you could give your let's say You can pick the age, either fifteen or twenty year old self. one or a few pieces of advice. What would they be?

2:20:25 You don't have to do everything yourself. You can hire people To do stuff. Mm-hmm. I wish I had known that. When I was younger.

2:20:34 I wish that I had When I was twenty working for Halloween catalog. I wish I'd known that I could have hired a programmer to do something, I could have hired someone It took me a long time to understand that and then recently I've been really

2:20:49 big on at hiring people through E Lance. Mm-hmm. You know, because I came from a little bit of kind of a do yourself, I mean, I made a nature museum when I was twelve, I had a chemistry lab that I built myself, you know, building the stuff and I could buy in the glassware, but I had a whole chemistry lab. I had Nature museums. I did all the stuff and I did it myself and then of course I

2:21:10 moving into the whole earth catalog, which is a kind of a do it yourself thing. I really was um you know, I I just talked about building my own house. Well now I will hire. professionals to work. And it just took me a long time to realize that there's something about Being able to pay a professional to do what they do really well. It's not like a weakness. It's like it helps them. I'm happy. They're happy. We're all happy.

2:21:36 And I can do a lot more. Now there's certainly a pleasure in doing things yourself and dabbling it, but There's also this other thing which I didn't realise, which is there's there's this A leverage that you get. Bye.

2:21:49 hiring people who are really good Paying them fairly. Working with them. To amplify what it is that you want to do. And I wish I knew that when I was younger. That's a fantastic answer. And you have, if I remember correctly

2:22:03 An assistant and a researcher. Is that is that still true? Yeah, it's one and the same person. Oh, they are the same. Okay. So I thought that at one point you had believed that you needed those people to be two separate people, but you know here here's where what I was saying was that It's very unusual to find one person who can do both of those tasks. Both of those tasks are often

2:22:23 Not found in the same person because there's Yeah, the hunting, the researching, the kind of There's a hunter aspect to Research. There's

2:22:33 often found in a certain personality. And then they're kind of the The admin is more nurturing kind of um Making sure things gardening a little bit. So it's also rare to find someone who can do both. Mm-hmm. But it's possible. Was it luck that you happened upon this particular individual that you

2:22:52 work with now or did you have a a method. I found that I've had over the fourteen years I've had two. The place where I found that they're more likely.

2:23:04 than not to have accommodation was librarians. I love it. So we uh put out notices on the library and mailing lists and stuff. That is fantastic. I said last question, this will be the last question. Is there any other thoughts or advice you'd like to leave with the listeners and then Where would you like people to find more from you, your writing?

2:23:26 Anywhere else. I would say congratulations to the people who are listening to the podcast. I think podcasts are this fantastic new Medium. I'm spending a lot of time there. I think it's just Really great. We're in the early days of where this would go. I'm really impressed by the power of this medium to teach and to inform.

2:23:46 Sometimes to entertain. Again, I'm thankful to you, Tim, for having me on and having a chance to gab here. But for the people who are listening, I think keep going. Listen to more podcasts. Try to go wide. I know Tin mentions them here and there. Take a chance, listen to some more. So that's one thing I would say and as far as

2:24:03 Finding out more about me, I lucked out with a very easy Website it's my initials KK.org. I have a very public email for the past twenty five years. You can find it very easily on my website if you want to Email directly. I have not outsourced that.

2:24:22 Unlike other people that I know and my writings and books and whatnot are at dub dub dub. Dot KK.org. Cool Tools is a book that I really believe that each of you out there should have. It's on paper. It's sort of the best of the website cool tools, which has been going on for eleven years now. where we review every day one great tool, there are only positive reviews. Why waste your time on anything but the best?

2:24:52 And tools in the broadest sense of the word of things that are useful. Whether it's Elance or a book on how to um do psychedelics or a book on how to build a workshop or how to build a house or how to hitchhike around the world. I and others recommend the best here with some great context. And it's

2:25:11 Printed on paper, available on Amazon. Not so easily found in bookstores'cause it'cause because it's huge. I mean it's it's it's like it's like five pounds weighs it's really, really big. And if you don't find like five hundred things in there that you didn't know about that you wish you knew about, like last year, I I'll give your money back. So Enjoy that. So that's at uh Cool Tools or Cool Tools and Amazon. Excellent. Well, Kevin, this has been a blast. It always is. Every time we chat, I feel like we should chat more. So hopefully

2:25:38 We'll get a chance to spend some more time together soon back in Nor Cal or somewhere else. Or in China. It's been a long time I could get back. I'm I'm ready I'm heading back to Japan again, and I know that you have uh lots of roots in in Asia, but um I go there to renew my sense of the future. Because they are bulldozing the past as fast as they can and headed racing into the future. So uh I wanna see what Asia has in store for us because mathematically we don't count anymore.

2:26:08 Three billion with whatever three billion Asians and you know, three hundred million Americans. What can you say? Right. Study up, folks. Yep. Specialization is for insects. I think that would be a hine line. So enjoy your time on this planet and look broadly, like Kevin said. Kevin, thank you so much. I will talk to you soon and uh have a wonderful day. I will talk to you soon. Thanks for having me, Tim. Okay, bye bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

2:26:47 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim dot blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

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