Joanne just one day she gasps out to me

and it was just one of those moments.

It's just like etched in my emotional

memory. She just gasps.

I feel like I'm dying. And in a sense,

she was right cuz that identity as as a

world champion athlete, this thing that

she was so encoded for, that she so

loved doing was being taken away from

her. And I realized that one way to

study self-renewal

would be to look at people who go

through what in the book we call cliff

events. These times in life where life

in some really significant way changes

under your feet.

>> Jim, so lovely to see you yet again.

>> Absolutely. I I really really truly just

revel in the idea of a conversation with

you. We've had two previous dances and I

wanted to thank you slashblame you for a

very difficult morning because I had

done lots of research and reading

certainly on your latest work which took

quite a tour of duty to complete. And I

decided that this morning I would go

back

with a lot of coffee to reread the

transcripts of our prior two

conversations. And typically when I do

something like that,

>> I have a few highlights, a few

marginelia to refer back to. And I ended

up underlining about 50 different

things. And it caused a bit of a crisis

in terms of where to start and what to

do.

>> Yeah. But I do have a lot of notes in

the latest work, what to make of a life.

And we will certainly get to that, but

we're going to meander all over the

place.

>> You got it.

>> And I wanted to start with, and I'm

paraphrasing here, but

a line in this new work, which is

effectively that you have more energy at

67 than 37.

>> You are now 68. And I wanted to dig into

that for a minute or maybe even a few

minutes.

>> Yeah.

>> Because looking back at the last two

conversations, I wanted to spot gaps in

the terrain. What had we not discussed?

>> Yep.

>> And

I wanted to look at some of maybe the

mundane things related to routine

>> food. Do you consume caffeine? Are you

still rock climbing? Maybe we'll start

with rock climbing cuz I just had elbow

surgery and I'm looking to get back into

it. Are you still climbing?

>> Not so much. I've been doing cycling

with Joanne.

>> Okay.

>> She has gotten me into going off to

Italy and the Dolommites and places like

that to do these huge mountain passes

and

>> it's something we can share together.

>> Mhm.

>> With whatever years we have left. And I

think that maybe the intense aerobic

aspect of that, you know, if you have

your heart rate above 160 for an hour, 2

hours, I mean, and spiking into the

170s, that's I think that has does

something for you. I'm not sure what.

>> Mhm.

>> But I actually think that's part of it.

And then I just have other ways. I can't

really explain entirely. In fact, that

my team has heard me say multiple times,

where's all this energy come from? Cuz

it's only increased. I really do feel

that I have more energy. I had a lot of

energy at 37. I had a lot of energy at

17. I have more energy at 67 when I

wrote that. 68 now.

>> Mhm.

>> I need less sleep. My clarity, if

anything, I think is higher. And I I

mean, I really really look forward to

4:00 a.m. because that's the point at

which I give myself permission

>> if I'm awake to leap into the day. And

it really is true that I will wake up

and I will think to myself, please, oh,

please, oh, please let it be at least

4:00 a.m. so that I can get up and get

going. And that is it's hard to explain,

but that sense of almost childlike

anticipation

>> uh to get up and get rolling is is

palpable. It's there almost every single

day. Well, I do get one, we might have

spoken about this in our first

conversation, but I've always been a

morning person. So, I actually figured

out how to get two mornings a day and

that I I'm just really fortunate that I

have the ability to nap under any

conditions anywhere at any time I can

nap. And I I was doing a a talk once and

I was a few thousand people in the room

and they had a nice couch backstage and

I'm supposed to go on and I don't know

whatever it was 30 minutes or something

and I laid down on the couch and I just

went bang right out to sleep. I'm like

I'm dreaming and I'm having a sleep etc.

And they come back and they look at me

and they're like he's asleep. Oh my

goodness, he's supposed to be on in like

5 minutes and they shake me and I'm like

okay good to go. I I can go asleep

immediately and then I can wake up

immediately and then I can walk out

3,000 people and I was asleep five

minutes before. I don't know where that

comes from. That's just a fortunate

thing. But what that allows me is I get

two mornings a day. I get first morning,

you know, that when after a night's

sleep, but then I get second morning,

which is after a nap. And and in fact,

my team knows that I'll sometimes say to

them, "I'm going to go get ready for

second morning," which basically is,

"I'm going to go take a nap." And then I

get second morning. And then I've

learned really systematically

what kinds of activities

really fit with what times of day. So is

your first morning, Jim, sorry to

interrupt. Is that 4:00 a.m. to 7:00

a.m. Something like that? What does your

first morning look like?

>> That's ideal. I love I love the 4:00

a.m. to 7 a.m. Joanne tends to sleep

later than me. So, especially when I was

like really working on the book, but

this is a general pattern as well. I

love to be up at 4:00.

I have one cup of coffee that I make in

the day. I don't have caffeine after

that. I travel with my own coffee cuz

you you really need to. The only place I

go where I don't take my own coffee is

Italy. I make my own coffee and I start

the day and that's that one one cup that

I make and I get right into usually

that's when I do my most intense

creative work and I love that sort of 3

to four hours if I can get it of just

you know the light changing and bang

into it. I like within 15 minutes I'm

fully into it and just go.

>> When do you consume your first food

typically and what is what does that

meal look like if it's a meal? I always

have something with my morning cup of

coffee so that I I have enough calories

to keep my brain going. And I just I

just grab something that's fairly easy

to eat with with a cup of coffee, a Kind

bar or maybe a yogurt or something like

that.

>> And then I have breakfast with Joanne.

We have a morning when, you know, when

I'm in town, which is most days. I don't

like to travel that much. And once

Joann's up and going, I make her a

latte. We joke that I'm a coffee elf and

I make her a latte and then Joanne

curates stories from, you know, the Wall

Street Journal or from, you know,

wherever and she reads them out loud and

then we talk about them.

>> Is this after your first morning?

>> Usually after first morning. Exactly.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. Sometimes we might get up at about

the same time, but most times I'm up

early. And so then I have a pretty a

more robust breakfast and and really

listen to Joanne's curation. And I'm

always just really curious what she

thinks. Could I just add a little

running commentary if I could?

>> Sure, please. So, the first is that I've

noticed this across a few different

disciplines that

as a comparison, Marcelo Garcia,

ninetime world champion in Brazilian

jiu-jitsu, considered by many to be the

greatest of all time, he

is incredibly good at going from

effectively 1 to 10 on an intensity

scale. So even before his finals match

in the world championships, my friend

Josh Whiteskin, who is the basis for

searching for Bobby Fischer, also very

good at this, told the story of them

trying to track down Marcelo because he

was about to be in the final match

>> for his particular weight class. It

might have been the unlimited division.

And they couldn't find him because he

was sleeping under the bleachers.

Yeah, I kind of had to wake him up and

then he walked to the mat, kind of shook

his head and went from 1 to 10. And what

Josh has said,

and Marcelo echoes this certainly in

different language is avoiding the

simmering six. So basically not being in

this simmering

six, but oscillating between rest or

full activation, so to speak. The second

thing I wanted to comment on is the gear

shift to shared activities

>> and biking with Joanne because I have

seen in some of the most successful

relationships that I've observed and

certainly that I'm modeling now for

myself

>> that at some point there's often an

activity shift to focus on what you can

share together. Kelly Starret, very

famous performance coach, PT and other

things, has done this with his wife

Juliet, who's amazing, where he's

shifted from some of the things he used

to do to actually mountain biking. This

is in Northern California. So, just

wanted to make those observations to ask

a very very specific question. You said

you travel with your own coffee.

>> Yeah.

>> I have to scratch the itch. What are you

actually packing

specifically? So I take I pack Pete's

ground coffee,

Arabian mocha java, a cone filter, the

filters themselves,

a water boiler so that you can, you

know, make sure that you have hot water

and and have kind of the whole setup

that way. And then when I start the day,

you know, I I get the whole sort of

system going. And it doesn't really

matter where I am or what time of day it

is. It's actually an interesting thing

because if I'm doing some kind of

session that really requires me to be

absolutely at my best, which I expect of

myself anytime that I'm out there, there

is a ritualistic aspect of it, but it's

also kind of this sense of it doesn't

matter if room service is open. It

doesn't matter any of that kind of

stuff, that opening kind of bubble of

the day. And now if it didn't work, I'd

still be fine because you always have to

be able to like that, you know, if

something just went ary, you just adapt.

But for the most part, you got that

opening bubble of the day. And to be

able to basically replicate that

>> no matter where I am, no matter what

time of day, it could be 4:00 a.m. East

Coast time or it could be 7 a.m.

California time or wherever. Right. It

replicates that morning bubble.

>> Yeah. It's like a bootup sequence that

you're able to preserve.

>> It is. It's a bootup sequence. That's

exactly what it is. And I don't have to

control any variables or wonder like are

they going to have any good coffee or is

it, you know, does room service run on

time or the room service isn't open at

4:30 or whatever. You don't think about

any of that stuff. You just move.

>> So the the particular idiosyncrasies,

eccentricities, I think that's what you

say of successful people, right?

>> Yeah. Their own idiosyncratic encodings.

Yes.

>> Yeah. There we go. And we're going to

really double click on this word in

codings is endlessly fascinating to me.

I have a few of my own and certainly in

what to make of a life which I found

very inspiring because at least in your

cohort and we'll talk about this

>> they did a lot of their best work after

50 after 60 in some cases after 70 and I

am 48 at the moment. So

>> I found it very reassuring that there

were so many case studies.

>> Oh you're still warming up. I'm still

warming up which which is very exciting

on a lot of levels. I did note a few

things. For instance,

>> and I've got lots and lots and lots of

notes that I took while reading the

book. For instance, Allan Paige, former

NFL player, became very engrossed with

running. Woke up every morning at 5:19

a.m. Exactly. Right. 519. And you gave a

list at one point, this is going to be a

pretty odd segue, but you gave a list of

some of the, let's call it, side

passions or eccentricities of different

people. And one of them, a lot of them

were like, okay, okay, sure, I can see

that some of my friends do that. And

then one of them was studying the

occult.

>> And I'm just wondering who was who was

the person. You know, if I want to say

who it was, I would have put it in the

book. But that list was really

interesting because one of the things

that I was very curious about because

our people became really once they

really locked on to a big thing for a

given period of their life as you know

from the reading.

>> I mean they were really really really

focused and the level of intensity and

energy over years or decades or multiple

decades they put into it. And I was

really I was just curious though, did

they have any room for anything else in

their lives or were they just

monoomaniacally obsessed freaks? Right?

And and then I just kind of went through

just a very simple like okay on that

particular dimension did they have

really intense side passions of some

kind even if the big thing was over here

and I think I can remember there was

something like 80ome percent had some

kind of an intense side passion and what

I was struck by is the range of them. Oh

my goodness. I mean, disco dancing, they

the studying the occult, but also like

teaching Sunday school and running and

mountain climbing and some people were

really into just hosting interesting

dinner parties. Others wouldn't have

been interested in that at all, but they

had things that absolutely they were

incredibly passionate outside of the big

thing that they focused on. And I found

that a just an interesting data point

that they didn't make a life where they

had nothing else except the primary

arena of their work to focus on.

>> So let's set the table a little bit and

I apologize in advance. I know you like

to shine the spotlight on other people

and research and data sets, but I'm I'm

probably going to turn the spotlight

back on Jim.

>> Mhm.

>> The bug called Jim.

>> Oh yeah. That's a call back for people

that listen to the first conversation.

>> Yeah.

>> So when we spoke the second conversation

we had,

>> I asked you what was on deck coming up

and you said, "I'm 5 years into research

on self-renewal." And I really like this

term self-renewal. Y

>> and before we go back to Jim, I guess

this is related to Jim, but I'm curious

how you thought about framing this book,

>> self-renewal versus say the title, what

to make of a life as I'm looking at it.

How did you think about

>> presenting this? And then if you

wouldn't mind because we were chatting

before we pressed record. I think my our

first conversation was your first long

form podcast. Yeah. And I believe this

will hopefully be the first conversation

about the new book that comes out. Just

giving a little bit of context or

genesis on on how you wrote it. So you

can tackle it in any direction you like.

In my 30s, I came across a a remarkable

man, a w one of the many sages I've I've

had the joy to be affected by in my life

of John W. gardener who was kind of a

wise man in residence at Stamford

Business School

ameritus at that point just down the

hall from me when I was teaching there

and he'd written a great book a little

book back a number of years ago on

self-renewal and I was very interested

in the question of I don't know why I

was interested but I was just interested

in why would some entities or some

people

have a life of continuous self-renewal

rather than a a life of this followed by

you know just kind of a long degradation

>> peak and then a decline.

>> Exactly. And John encouraged me to

consider doing eventually some research

on the question of self-renewal and I

was off working on built to last and

good to great and I was working on my

company research but I still have my

notes from long conversations with John

about how you might think about

self-renewal and so that seed had sort

of been in there and it was justating

and I thought someday I might return to

that. Then what happened is I started

thinking that that question was always

there like how would you actually study

it and and then

a seed got activated that had been

planted back a decade before that in my

20s.

>> Joanne who you know is so central in my

life. We've been married 45 years and

Joanne was a world-class athlete. She

was world champion in the Iron Man. She

was the first female figure in the

original Nike just do it campaigns back

in the 1980 with Bo Jackson and Howie

Howie Long and she was really

constructed to compete and that sense of

we talk about when we'll talk later

about this being encoded for something

there's just some athletes that they

need to win it's a need they need to win

>> and that was Joanne when she came when

she gave up all these other

opportunities she had in life to focus

on ultimately trying to win the Iron Man

and went in on that. It's like

everything came together and we go off

to Hawaii and she raced in ' 84, 85,86

and 85 she won the world championship in

Hawaii and there was a backstory to that

race which is that Joanne had a

hamstring injury and that hamstring

injury just was chronic and it wouldn't

really go away. And in the race it began

to catch up with her. So, she had this

10-minute lead with 10 miles to go in

the marathon. As you know, it's 2.4 mile

swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile

marathon in sort of 90° temperatures and

80 some% humidity on the lava fields. I

mean, it's just horrendous out there.

And she had a good swim and a great

bike, and she had this 10-minute lead

with just 10 miles to go coming back

into town. and the hamstring caught up

with her partly because it did limited

her training and and you know that was

always there and she began to lose a

minute at a mile and I remember watching

the ABC feed cuz the wet will the sports

truck was in front of her and I could

sort of see the race unfolding. I could

watch it in real time with the camera of

the truck right in front of her and you

could see her starting to lose time like

she's a you know 9 minute lead, 8 minute

lead, 7 minute lead, 6 minute lead like

and you're getting closer and closer to

the end but is she going to get there

before somebody else does and there is

this moment I mean I'll never forget the

moment where she stops in the middle of

the lava fields and she has this

extraordinary discomfort and pain and

she's looking at her legs hoping they

would move. And she reaches down and she

sort of massages them and she kind of

like pounds on her quadriceps and she

looks up to the sky and it almost looked

like she was pleading with somebody to

help her somehow.

And then she just kind of fixed her gaze

on the horizon and there was this sort

of stoic

countenance that came over and she just

like started to move and then she

started to run and she ended up winning

a 10-hour plus race by about 90 seconds.

And it's like one of those things in

life like you have very few experiences

like that.

And then when we got back to Palo Alto

where we lived at the time, you know,

the hamstring just didn't heal.

>> Mhm.

>> And she tried everything. Surgery,

physical therapy, rest, stretching, you

name it.

And eventually she just had to confront

the brutal fact that her athletic career

was going to end at her peak.

And we were sitting there in a little

townhouse in Palo Alto. We're sitting at

our kitchen table and Joanne just one

day she gasps out to me and it was just

one of those moments. It's just like

etched in my emotional memory. She just

gasps,

I feel like I'm dying. And I had no

answer. It's not like you can solve that

or anything like that. It's just I feel

like I'm dying.

And it and in a sense she was right

because that identity as as a world

champion athlete, this thing that she

was so encoded for, that she so

loved doing was being taken away from

her. And in a sense, it was dying, a

certain kind of dying. And that seed

somehow mixed with the John Gardner

thing because what happened is

I somehow sort of fused these together

in my mind. I think that actually

Joann's experience is what gave me the

original interest in self-renewal

because I just didn't have the language

for it. I didn't really see the

connection so clearly. It was kind of

murky. But I think they fused together.

And I realized that one way to study

self-renewal

would be to look at people who go

through what in the book we call cliff

events. These times in life where life

in some really significant way changes

under your feet. Either you choose it to

change or or it happens to you. But

there's kind of a before and an after

and and and your life is so changed at

that time that you have to really

reorient and reconsider. And sometimes

those cliffs like Joann's are really

monumental moments in life. They are

real cliff events. And I thought if I

could find people, if I could study

people at the cliff and I could study

their lives up to the cliff, through the

cliff and after the cliff and how they

come out and how they how they kind of

constructed life after that, I would be

able to have a method for understanding

this thing that I used to sort of think

of as about self-renewal.

And so I just need to fill in a couple

other pieces cuz yeah sort of the

creative journey of how I got here. But

then as you know I always like pairs. I

like to have two entities in the same

situation to kind of set next to each

other. I did that in all my prior works.

And so the idea was wow what if you

could find pairs of people that were at

the same cliff and their lives were

really similar up to that cliff. And

then you look at how their lives, how

they come under the cliff, through the

cliff and out of the cliff. And then by

looking at that, I would understand this

process of renewal out here through this

methodology. And so that's when I

started the whole journey. Now let's

just zoom way out. As I got into it and

I really began I I selected my I had my

match pairs. I had my my people had gone

through these cliffs. I was studying

their whole lives. It was overwhelming

in scale. this project. I honestly

thought at times I might never be able

to finish it because it was just so

monstrously big. But it began to dawn on

me the more I worked on it because I was

looking at you couldn't understand this

cliff out thing if you didn't understand

the whole life. And so I had to study,

you know, from their entire lives,

right? And most of them are deceased. a

few were in their 80s, you know, but but

basically I I had the the record of

their lives pretty much intact. And all

of a sudden, I began to realize two

things. First of all, none of them

thought about self-renewal as like an

objective. And rather what I really saw

were people who achieved what I might

call self-renewal, but that's kind of

not what they were doing. They were

leading their lives. And they were

leading their lives through these cliff

events and in between the cliff events.

and somehow all the way through to the

end for the ones that had passed away.

And I began to realize that what I had

was a huge and rich data source for

really the big question. And and just

just so that you kind of grasp this,

this has happened to me multiple times.

back and built to last which was about

visionary companies and enduring great

companies and all that. Jerry Poris and

I set out our original question was to

study the concept of corporate vision

because it was sort of what would that

be was back before it was something that

anybody had ever studied. And then our

method of match pairs of these visionary

companies over long periods of history

led to a much bigger question which was

how do you build an enduring great

visionary company which is very

different than the smaller question of

what is corporate vision and how does

that work and so repeatedly in my

journey I've started out with what I

think is the question self-renewal

corporate vision whatever and I've ended

up with the method leading me to a much

bigger question that the method answers.

And so in this case, all of a sudden, as

I got deeper and deeper into it, I

realized I'm not studying self-renewal.

Self-renewal is a residual artifact of

really the big question. And the big

question is the title of the book, which

is the question we all face with, which

is what to make of a life. And we face

that question when we're young. You and

I faced it coming out of the fog of

youth. And what I came to grasp is that

cliffs are an amazing way to look at the

question of wrestling with what to make

of a life. Because

when you have a big enough cliff, like

Joannne's cliff, like the cliffs in the

study, you have to answer the question

again,

right? Partway through your life, when

you have one of a a big enough cliff,

you have to answer the question, well,

well, now what to make of a life?

because all that's done or all that's

changed. And then I realized there's a

third time which is when you're in the

later decades of life and many never get

around to answering this question and I

hope they will after reading this is

well now what to make of a life so that

my 50s 60s7s 80s maybe my 90s turn out

to be my biggest most creative most

impactful most interesting years rather

than sitting over here in inferiority to

my younger years. And so I essentially

it's very similar to what happened with

Bill to last with good to great

whatever. I started with a narrower

question. I came up with a method to

answer it and then realized that that

method was actually answering a big

question

>> bigger question

>> and then I just gave myself over to that

question and that's how I ended up

really framing the whole book. And then

as you know, and we'll probably get into

this, the seeds of that go all the way

back to a shattered kid, right? Trying

to figure out life. That is really kind

of the creative journey. And when you

get the book, it feels like God, it's so

it's almost like clearly linear, but you

write that way because you want it to

hang together conceptually,

but the creative journey of how you get

there is wonderfully dynamic. Well, a

few things. So, we are going to get to

childhood for sure, probably sooner

rather than later. And separately, as I

was reading this book, particularly

given the end of our second

conversation, I was really cheering for

you because I am in the middle of a fog

with a draft that is 850 pages long. And

I won't get into that, but I was like,

"Oh, so there can be light at the end of

the tunnel because honestly, I'm looking

at this thing and I'm like, this rock

just seems to get denser and denser. It

gets harder and harder to chip away at

it." So, congratulations. and I was also

very helpful as moral support to

>> me.

>> So are you in the fog on the book itself

or in a general Tim wandering in the fog

time? So I am I would say

in the inverse of where I've found

myself typically before and what I mean

by that is before

>> I would say I have had a lot of clarity

around specific projects. Here is the

book in front of me. Here is the podcast

I am building. Here is the

fill-in-theblank business project where

I would have extreme clarity.

>> Yep. And then in contrast to that I

would say broadly for life direction I

would feel like I had less clarity right

now and I I am quite content with this

for the time being. I have the flip side

which is I'm with a wonderful partner.

We are very clear on where we're headed

together

>> and I feel like that is the Archimedes

lever for everything else. I don't feel

like I have much to prove anymore from a

professional perspective, but I do also

want to end up where you are in the

sense of feeling like you have or in

fact having more energy, more fire

within you at 67 and 37, I do want that.

But on a project level, I have much less

clarity

>> in terms of what does Tim 3.0 4.0 look

like? because I do love the podcast. I

plan to continue doing it, but it's also

become one of the most saturated,

noisefilled playing fields imaginable.

And I think anyone who expects the same

music to play forever

probably does not anticipate the

inevitable, which is probably a cliff of

some type. Right? So, I have a fog as it

stands currently around a few things.

One of which would be writing. M so for

instance this 850 page behemoth do I

chip away at that which I find a little

bit draining to be honest. So, I've

actually put it on the back burner, or

do I say focus on a newer writing

project that I'm very, very excited

about. And is that in fact leaning into

my encodings, which is a term we should

probably define, or is it just the

allure of the novelty of the new? And

guess what? Surprise, surprise, as soon

as I get into the mud, I'm going to

still be paying the taxes that you need

to be prepared to pay. So that is a bit

of a

crossroads at which I find myself right

now.

>> My question for you is so first of all

just for anyone who's listening to this,

we're using the term fog and I'm just

going to put a quick context on that and

then ask a question

>> and so we just talked about the notion

of cliffs and as you you know the whole

study structure was around cliffs and so

forth and and so I I knew cliffs would

play a critical role in how I look at

things. I was really overwhelmed with

the prevalence of fog in the lives that

we studied. That was not something I

expected to find. And fog are these

periods of time where you're kind of

either in some portion of your life or

maybe overall in life at a given point

where you're lost, confused, befuddled,

disoriented, uncertain, right? And

there's kind of these clarity phases of

life. Like I'm in a clarity phase right

now. I was in a fog phase about 2013

2014 certainly in a fog in my 20s.

There's kind of fog phases and these

clarity phases and every person in our

study had these sometimes even extended

episodes of of fog which I found very

comforting in the end because the people

we studied had remarkable lives when you

summed up the entire thing but they

could lose a decade in the fog along the

way. And then in the wake of cliffs in

particular,

there seems to almost always be fog. So

fog can come at any time for a variety

of reasons, but the likelihood of fog

will follow a cliff based on what we

looked at in the study is that if you

have a big enough cliff, especially if

it was unexpected, the fog is likely to

roll in and can be very thick and very

befuddling. So that's why we're talking

about fog. So my question for you is I'm

curious as you are wandering around a

little bit in the fog and I think it's a

very interesting time as you describe it

of kind of well this question of the

things that you'd done up to this point.

Are you ready to be done with them? Are

you are you ready to extend out in a

different direction?

All these sorts of questions that are

swirling about. I'm curious if anything

in the book as you read it illuminated

for you or got you thinking about

navigating through this fog.

>> I would hope so. I took a lot of notes.

So, either I'm a very bad notetaker or

there are things for me to focus on from

the book. So, I would say a number of

things come to mind and I I could send

you photographs of these if if you're

curious at some point. Yeah. But in

terms of navigating fog, I think the

first is

rule number one, don't freak out. So,

and that was more of an interpretation

than something you said literally. But

in effect, like, hey, if you're in the

fog, guess what? Everybody ends up in

the fog.

>> That's right.

>> So, don't panic, number one. And then

there were a few there were more than a

few things but certainly a few things

that I found helpful and also a few

things that gave me terminology for some

explanatory power of things that have

happened to me in the past or things

that I've done in the past and we'll

we'll definitely talk about this but the

concept of return on luck and different

types of luck I found very compelling

>> and thinking of how you take advantage

of or widen the aperture on luck because

I I think broadly speaking luck is

thrown around as something you either

have or you don't

>> and it lands on you and exerts its force

but it's not quite that simple and I

think you put words to that that I found

very helpful and then in terms of

navigating the fog I would say you

talked about simplex stepping which I

think we may spend some time on but I

have I think upstream kind of cascading

questions that I want to ask you about

first principally around encoding.

>> Yeah,

>> I would say that with the fog

there were questions that I began to ask

myself that I've not yet answered and

this is part of the reason I was looking

forward to chatting with you. One of

which is how do I think about energy as

a core currency of life? And the reason

I say that this is not taken verbatim

from the book but it seems to be

fundamental right like outside of

accidents and so on like there is a

point when you die and that is the

sessation of energy

>> and if you have all of the greatest

intentions in the world the best laid

plans if you do not have the energy to

implement those things to execute

>> I don't want to say all is for not but

you're caught at a bit of a problematic

situation so when I'm reading about

these different case studies, these

profiles in the books and there were

there were so many fantastic ones. I

really have to say I love the Katherine

Graham

>> piece. Hard to love Katherine Graham.

>> Hard not to love because you see people

who are put into say cliff situations

and they are unprepared and then there

are counterex examples where people are

effectively have prepped for 10 or 20

years for the cliff they eventually face

and those are very very different.

>> Yes. in a lot of ways. And you also,

not to keep burying the lead on this,

have people who sort of methodically

find their encodings. And I want you to

distinguish that from strengths. You

have people who are forced into a

situation and thank God they just happen

to have an overlap with the

circumstances forced upon them and these

inner workings that allow them to find

their stride. as if you know Michael

Jordan was sent to like basketball

prison camp and like lo and behold what

luck you know he happens to be

incredibly good and and built for

basketball. So my question for you that

I want to hit on before we dive in if I

asked Joanne

why does Jim have more energy now than

he did at 37? How would she answer it?

because it seems to me like there might

be a piece of honing in on encodings as

a wellspring of energy, but you seem

like you've always been pretty good at

that, at least after some of your

experiences at Stanford. What would her

answer be, do you think?

>> Years ago, there was a profile being

done on me, and I I'm not big on a lot

of profiles. I'd rather just have people

read my books and take away the ideas.

But anyways, the profile was going to

happen. And so I said, "If we're going

to do it, we'll do it right." and I

invited the reporter out to Boulder and

he said, "I'd really like to spend some

time with Joanne." And I'm like, "Oo,

okay, here we go." And what kind of

profile is this going to be?

>> So, we're at breakfast and he says, "I

have one real question I really want to

ask you." If you just pick one word to

describe what it's like to live with

Jim, what one word would you use? Okay.

So, you got a picture.

I'm sitting there waiting for the answer

and I I'm wonder, you know, always an

adventure, inspired, energizing,

creative, right? All these things are

going through my mind as possible. She

gets one word and after a long pause,

she just kind of looks at him

completely, completely serious,

completely just straight, you know,

single answer, exhausting. You know,

it's hilarious cuz I knew that word was

coming. I like And that's me projecting.

I'm thinking about my partner. That's

hilarious. I literally in my head have

exhausted

>> exhausting.

So she would relate to the question.

I think what she would say is that yes,

I've always had a high energy set point.

And just as an aside, it's not something

I think I even put in the book, but the

way I came to think of it is that we all

have kind of an energy set point. And

maybe mine is just a reasonably high

energy set point. And just to be clear

though, I think that the thing I would

want people to take away from what they

read here is that whatever your energy

set point, you know, you can have

variation around that set point and and

the question is how do you lead your

life in such a way that you're on the

positive side of that variation in the

set point and it sustains until you run

out of breath. Because so many what

happens is they reach a certain point

and they go below the energy set point

because of whatever sets of reasons and

end up with maybe 20 or 30 years of

their life essentially off the table and

that's an unfortunate loss to the world.

I think Joanne would say one, I'm one of

those people who

really set out in life somehow to end up

expending my energy in things that I

derive tremendous

intrinsic

pleasure from doing the actual doing of

it. M

>> that sense of if you're doing it, you

can't not do it right. Like I like you,

I don't have to demonstrate that I can

do well at what I do. I don't have to

worry about do I know how to I don't

know have a teaching moment or whatever,

right? How to come up with the right

questions to ask somebody running a big

company. But if I sit down, I still get

joy out of preparing for a a moment or

being at it or or just a sense of

excitement that morning because the

actual doing is something that I so love

that I put in the book and Joanne is the

one that helped me sort of see this. I'd

always thought of myself as an

incredibly disciplined person and

everybody else saw me as really

disciplined and I kind finally came to

the conclusion I'm really not very

disciplined. I mean, I am somewhat. But

look, if you just can't help, you just

can't stop yourself

>> from preparing, from getting ready to do

the very best you can because you're

doing something that just so pulls it

like you can't stop yourself. Well,

that's not discipline. You're just

compelled. You're just it's it's almost

a form of compulsion, which isn't

discipline, right? and and if it's sheer

love of the actual doing itself,

well, how's that discipline? Just love

doing it. So, that's one. But I think

she would also say that like you love

having a big project and this has been a

huge project, right? So, for 12 years

from the time I first started noodling

on this till when I finally finished the

writing, when I wake up in the morning,

I don't have any question until the

book's done. Maybe I'll go into a fog

now. I had no question what was in front

of me at 4:00 a.m. There's always the

project, right? Every single day there's

the project and that's energizing even

if it's huge and monstrous. And and then

the third is this sense of extending out

and circling back that that I saw in all

the people in the study of that this

really interesting it'll be very

interesting to see for you as well as

happens with this with this sense of

this notion of kind of radical

reinvention isn't really what we saw.

There weren't people who quote radically

reinvented themselves. It was this

organic process of kind of extending and

pushing themselves out into new modes or

new things or new activities etc. Kind

of an extension outward. But then they

would always find a way to circle back

to things that they had built upon

previously as almost a form of fuel to

further extend out. Robert Plant's one

of my favorite people in the study and I

love how over the, you know, what keeps

him so full of fire for music and for

singing all these decades later. And if

you look at him, he's like, you know, he

sure he's no longer in Zeppelin. He

doesn't need to be. He's he was

extending out into bluegrass and he was

extending out into, you know, going off

to the desert and playing with trans

musicians and all these kinds of really

and learning to blend his voice with

Allison Krauss. I mean, utterly

marvelous extensions with Allison Krauss

or with some of his extensions. He'd

come back and rebring to life a Led

Zeppelin song.

>> Mhm.

>> And then they would do a bluegrass

version of Black Dog and just that sense

of this extending and circling back.

Well, this study for me, you could look

at it as I'm doing something radically

new. Yes, it's a new question, new study

set, all that. But I'm also circling

back

and to what I've always loved to do,

which is to take a big giant messy

question,

put a methodology around it, and spend

years figuring it out. Right? That's

consistent. That's a circle back. The

extendout is it's a different question

and different unit of analysis. So, as

both. And then the last is this, and we

talked about this, I think, a little bit

in one of our previous ones, but I would

really put it this way. When I was

younger, I had a lot of fire, but it was

really painful fire.

It was burning hot red molten lava in my

stomach.

Almost like channeled rage, chneled

ferocity.

>> Yeah, I know the feeling.

>> Yeah, you know that feeling, right? And

I used to worry that if I ever lost

that, I'd lose my drive.

And I think what's happened, I know

what's happened is the fire's changed.

The fire used to be like this molten hot

burning ferocity in the belly. And now

it's like this. It's not red. It's I

think of it as green and yellow and it's

like this sustained warming glow. And I

don't have that. I do not have those

kind of insecurity. prove myself kinds

of things that are driving me

and as a result my energyy's gone up and

I think that because the fire is

different because the fire is this

sustained warming glow it is just like

constantly generative and I think that's

a really really big part of it that

sense of like you write a sentence and

you look at it and you go wow

that's almost a good sentence

>> so let me ask you about

color shift, right? Going from the red

to the greenish yellow. Yeah.

>> Is that a byproduct of age in the sense

that you've amassed a corpus of work

that at some point you cannot with a

straight face to yourself justify being

redot because you're like, look at this

CV. I cannot with any sincerity say that

I have anything left to prove. Is is

that what provoked the shift? Is there

something else? What what actually

happened that led to that shift in fuel,

so to speak?

>> First of all, I would imagine that a

number of people and maybe you yourself

relate to the raging burning lava coals.

>> Oh, yeah. Oh, boy.

>> And you kind of cling on to them because

you feel you need them. And I guess I'm

just a data point of one that I don't

need them to have even more energy. And

so there is life without them that's

really wonderful. and your best stuff,

your best work coming from it. I don't

think it was, oh, I mean, it's nice that

Joan and I don't need to worry about

like are we going to hit the pavement

like having no safety net and all that

kind of worry and fear that we used to

live with of just genuine almost terror

of are things going to work.

>> So, it's nice to not have that, but I I

don't think that's the essence of it. I

think it didn't happen like a flash.

I think what a lot of what really

happened

happened as a result of studying the

lives in this book. I really mean it.

the last 12 now plus years since I

started the first nibblings of this

project in 2013

and the journey of doing this book so

transformed me and I think that I was

probably prepped for that but it was by

somehow living alongside them in their

lives it was like affecting me and I

think one of the ways it affected me is

was I saw them you just look at the

sheer rapturous joy of Robert Plant

blend ending his voice with Allison

Krauss.

Or you look at that this wonderful video

I came across of Grace Hopper, the great

computer scientist who invented software

essentially. It's amazing story. Silicon

Valley should know her story more. It's

really an incredible story. And she's on

Letterman at I think age 79. And she is

like one of the most sparklefilled,

firefilled. She just radiates out of

that Letterman interview. And it's just

absolutely marvelous. I could just go

through case after case where what I saw

was, you know, Barbara Mcccleintoch

solving the geneticist solving a

genetics puzzle and and her sense of she

didn't fear dying in a car crash because

there were all these car crashes that

she was driving across the country so

much as she feared dying in a car crash

before she'd solved the puzzle that she

had, right? Cuz she just so needed to

solve the puzzle. And every life was one

of these ones where it's like they got

to this point where the thing that they

were engaged in in doing was so

reinforcing in itself for itself.

And I think somehow just being so close

to their lives while I walked through

them had this effect on me and it began

to soften me. It's very hard to explain,

but if you spent years alongside them at

each step of the way through their

lives, which is what I did,

they like rubbed off on me.

>> Mhm.

>> And they all somehow got to this point

and I think that it just affected me. I

mean, I can't really explain it and

other than that is it just affected me.

>> Mhm. Let's look at another facet of this

same prism because looking at for

instance whether it's you whether it's a

geneticist or any real figure in the

book that you've profiled finding your

power zone with respect to encodings and

I want you to differentiate that from

strengths seems at the very top of the

pyramid in some respects or the base

depending on how you want to look at it

But if we're trying to put dominoes in

order, that seems like a very important

domino to tip over first.

>> It seems to be a prerequisite for a lot

of the other things. And I'm wondering

if somebody flew out to spend time with

you for a day and they were like, "Jim,

I know you're good at asking questions.

That's what you do. How the hell do I

find what my encodings are?" Because

without that, it seems like having the

conviction to know when you wake up

exactly what you're going to do becomes

a lot harder. And I'm not trying to

speak for you, but it does seem to me

that if you are always suffering from

decision fatigue, paradox of choice,

man, that's a great way to use up all

your chi and end up dead before you

should be. I mean, creatively or

physically or otherwise. What are

encodings? If they're different from

strengths, how are they different? And

how do you find them if you're not lucky

enough to be like a Yo-Yo Ma who gets a

cello handed to him when he's four or a

Tiger Woods whose dad's like here you go

buddy at age god knows whatever right so

we should go back and forth on this a

little bit because there's kind of two

strands that will come together and I

think they're for me were really

>> really really eye opening and very

uplifting in the end by looking you know

the study across these lives because

there's the luck piece of kind of how

the roulette wheel of your life spins as

to which encodings you discover.

And then there's what the encodings are.

They're actually kind of joined, if you

will, as an idea. We have multiple

examples in the book of where people it

was almost like by well chance in some

ways that they discovered the set of

encodings that they that they decided to

dedicate themselves to.

>> So first of all, let's just talk about

encodings. I'm going to describe what

encodings are and how they kind of work.

But if you don't mind, Tim, given that

you're in the fog, I want to ask you a

question about encodings for yourself.

>> Love questions.

>> Encodings are these kind of durable

capacities that reside within and

they're awaiting discovery through the

experiences of life.

And first huge thing about encodings is

most of us our lives will come to the

end with probably vast swaths of our

encodings never discovered.

And the way I think about it and and you

know this from the book but I really

like to help people who are listening

hear this is that I came to think of it

as like a constellation of encodings.

They're just you have a constellation of

encodings. I have a constellation of

encodings. Everybody on the planet has a

constellation of encodings. And it's

like a vast galaxy of encodings. But at

any given moment, your life is looking

through like a window frame at those

encodings. And that what happens is that

there's points in life where the window

frame, right, captures a set of a big

bright set of those encodings coming

through the window and you're kind of in

frame with them. And then if the window

frame shifts again and doesn't capture

very many encodings, you're kind of, if

you will, out of frame, you're not

really capturing many encodings. the

encodings are still there, right?

They're they're just there, but the kind

of your life can shift around whether

you're capturing a set of encodings or

whether you're really not. So, I think

about the test pilot John Glenn, who you

read about, and how he was not capturing

encodings when he was a young man. At

first, I mean, his parents thought,

well, maybe he'll come into the family

business or, you know, maybe you should

go try to be a doctor. But he just

wasn't I mean, the encodings were not

really in frame when he was like taking

chemistry and physics and things like

this. And then through a a happen stance

event, he was able to get a pilot's

license paid for by the government that

was looking to train some pilots. And he

goes and he signs up for this, convinces

his parents to let him do it. And the

moment he gets into an aircraft, it was

like

click. I mean, the way the aircraft

felt, eventually being able to wear the

aircraft like a glove, his encoded

ability that he only discovered, he

didn't add it. It was just there, that

under extreme danger and immense speed,

he could have a heart rate that is, you

know, everything slows down. If

somebody's flying behind me in a

supersonic jet trying to knock me out of

the sky over Korea in the Korean War, my

heart rate's probably not going to go

down. But John Glenn's would go down,

right? And then of course he becomes an

astronaut. Gordon Cooper is match pair

very similar. And so it's all of a

sudden bang. And then after his career

that came to an end. Very interesting

little story of how he thought they

finally concluded that John Kennedy had

pulled him out of the rotation so that

he wouldn't be able to go to the moon

because Kennedy felt he was too valuable

as a national hero. And so he couldn't

be an astronaut anymore really. And that

was his cliff. and 10 years and he went

off to Royal Crown Cola. And what I love

is this little detail where he's got of

his memoir, his time at Royal Crown Cola

is like almost 10% of his life and it's

0.2%

of his memoir.

>> Not much to report here.

>> Exactly. Exactly. And so he's still John

Glenn, but what happened is the window

frame shift shifted and it wasn't until

he got back into the Senate where it

shifted again. You know, he I'm sure he

was an adequate executive, but it wasn't

like when he was flying fighter jets and

>> going up and orbiting the Earth, right?

He was now kind of out of frame.

>> Yeah.

>> And so the essence of it is encodings

are there to be discovered by the

experiences of life.

And when they click into frame, it's

trusting them almost if you don't know

where they're going to go. In many

cases, the people didn't know where they

were going to go. And

yes, you turn encodings into more

strengths by training and discipline and

you know, all those sorts of things. But

John Glenn could have done 10 MBAs

and he would have never been as encoded

for being a business executive,

>> right,

>> the way he was encoded for being a

senator and encoded for being a fighter

pilot and an astronaut. And so the key

is

discovering some set of them and letting

them letting them go. And that's an

empirical set of observations. So now I

come back to the question for you.

you've written.

>> I mean, you clearly have encodings for

doing what we're doing today.

You have other kinds of encodings around

just sheer curiosity and so forth. So

have you thought about this as you were

making notes as you were thinking about

what are your encodings

as distinct from sure you've turned your

encodings that you've discovered into

strengths but the things that were

really have a basis of of encoding

coming into frame I'm curious what

occurred to you and especially as you

think about like what's going to be next

>> all right I'll return serve so I'll I'll

then have a ton of other questions But

I'll answer that in a maybe a bit of a

roundabout way. I have tried to ferret

it this out before for myself. I think

with different degrees of success. I

think I have in most cases because I

assume my self-awareness is very

imperfect at best

>> benefited from asking other people

questions who are very close to me. And

those have been

coaches, agents, friends, collaborators,

almost like a 360

degree kind of analysis. And some of

those questions have included,

when have you seen me at my best and

when have you seen me at my worst?

Right? What do you think I find easier

to do than other people? These types of

questions. And I suppose where I've

landed, but let me postpone the

punchline first to say that

I've really found it fascinating to look

at, this is going to be seem like a hard

left to people, but the sort of Soviet

and also Chinese approaches to sourcing

athletes.

>> How on earth are they so successful? How

were they so dominant for so long? And

yes, you can explain some of it with

kind of top- down autocratic

decision-m and policym and so on. But in

China, for instance,

they will scout by doing some very very

simple things. They'll go to every

elementary school you can imagine and

have kids do a broad jump, right? And

they'll make it fun. It's not some kind

of back whipping exercise, but they'll

have them do a handful of things. Hold a

broomstick overhead and get into a

squat, right? And that's how they start

to source potential candidates for

>> Olympic weightlifting gold. But

unfortunately, as a single person, as an

N of one, you don't have the luxury of

infinite time to try everything, right?

This has been an ongoing open question

for me and I haven't yet used any of

them, but looking at things like, okay,

well, is is a strength finder test

helpful for this? It's like could you do

five or six of these and look for the

overlap to try to get some direction so

that you're not penalized for trial and

error by losing decade after decade.

Where I've landed for myself is

through my own experimentation, I think

asking a lot of dumb questions. I'm very

good at asking seemingly dumb questions,

which often are not dumb. Sometimes they

are just straight up dumb, let's be

honest. But often times they're

questions that could be or already are

on the minds of a lot of people. And I

think I'm good at putting on beginners

glasses and being very persistent like a

dog with a bone if I don't get an answer

to a supposedly dumb question. And those

lead interesting places. I think I am

also good and this is a blessing and a

curse which will lead into some later

questions about not getting trapped in

various doom cycles and something we

talked about before which is sort of the

50 3020 from respected faculty.

I am a novelty seeker that's an

intrinsic drive that I have in a lot of

ways and the upside of that is that I

can do angel investing in in different

industries. I can interview people from

yet a different set of worlds

and I can borrow practices and copy and

paste different principles from one area

into a disperate area and sometimes

those really really work. So I think I'm

good at combining those worlds

separately and maybe people listening

can give me feedback if they're

interested in this. A friend of mine,

one of my closest friends said to me,

you know, you should really do some

podcast episodes where you are recording

conversations that you have with

founders because I've I've invested in

100 plus companies over more than a

decade, probably close to two decades.

And he said to me, he's like, "There are

things that you are really good at that

I don't think you realize you're good at

in terms of really pinpointing terms,

positioning,

and various other things that I do

routinely every week with startup

founders anyway. I'm having those

conversations anyway." And so I've been

experimenting with recording those.

>> And I even go back and listen to it and

I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think there's

anything special in here." And he's

like, "That's the problem." He's like,

"You don't think it's anything special

because it's so easy for you." He's

like, "It's actually not easy for most

people." So, those are a few scattershot

thoughts that come to mind, but for

myself and certainly also for people

listening, I I am still wondering if

there are ways that people can

facilitate the process of finding those

encodings. So I was listening very

carefully to what you're saying and a

couple things really popped into my mind

as as you were you were talking is that

first of all I think if we reround well

I did rewind the tape of their lives

right and you know I wouldn't describe

that the process of kind of coming into

a frame with a set of encodings was a

systematic process it was pretty organic

and pretty messy if you will and I think

the thing that really stood out is it

wasn't that there was some kind of you

know deliberate test taking or anything

like at it was that light kind of spun

them into a situation where

they could feel the the encodings kind

of light up if you will. And I think

what really stood out the more I think

about this the question is less about

well there are two ways in which I want

to kind of sharpen the question a little

bit for you. One is is that it's not

even entirely about discovering

encodings. I think people are getting

clues to their encodings based on their

experiences in life and input from

others, which is a very interesting

piece of this all the time.

>> What I think really stands out to me

about the people that I studied is that

regardless of whether they got support

from others, like John Glenn's parents

didn't want him to be a pilot and they

wanted him to be in the family business

or be a doctor, Robert Plant's parents

didn't want him to be a singer, they

wanted him to be an accountant. Think

about that. I mean with all that I mean

you know you go through these these

different ones. What really stood out is

that when they got a sense for them they

trusted them. It was their trust of them

when they got a glimpse of them. That is

what really stood out to me. They once

they felt them they didn't really start

questioning them or let other people

talk them out of them or listen to what

other people think they should do. And

so if you said Jim 100 points allocate

between two buckets. How much of it is

about discovering a set of encodings and

how much of it is it about trusting the

encodings you've discovered? I'm going

to put 70 points on trust because I

think we're getting clues all the time.

The second is that you said something

about asking people what you think you

do better than others.

>> This study changed my view on that. I

think it's about doubling down on what

you can do better than other ways you

could expend yourself.

>> Mhm. which is a very different question.

>> Yeah, it's very different. It's a very

different question. It's like I could

expend myself asking these supposedly

dumb questions or I could expend myself,

you know, in some other way. And it's

not competitive comparative to others.

It's this is in frame and this is out of

frame. And then I have learned something

in my own experience. This book is not

about business. It's not about

leadership. It's not about management.

There's a few ways though that it's

really affected me a lot when I think

back to my prior my classic work and one

way that it has really affected me is we

talk about the right people on the bus

from good to great still true but what

I've really come to see is it's about

the seats and whether people are in

seats where they're in frame in that

seat whether they are in a seat for

which they are encoded for that seat and

in a seat that feeds their fire and As I

began to study the people in in my work,

what I found is that they gravitated

towards some walk of life, some arena of

activity where they really hit a big

bright set of their encodings. It really

fed their fire and then they just kind

of went once they kind of clicked into

frame. And I think that I used to spend

a lot of time trying to turn people into

what they're not and feeling very

frustrated with what they're not. And as

I did this study, one of the things that

just really went over me like water and

like just softening me and softening me

and softening me is I began to realize

that what I really had to learn how to

do was to begin to find

what the people around me what their

encodings are. me for people on my team.

Part of my responsibility as a leader of

a small bus is to really be attuned to

me observing the encodings based upon

what people do of the people around me

and then to begin to shift in steps

their responsibility so that in what

they're doing here is increasingly

clicking into frame so that then what

happens is my emotional experience is

not being frustrated with what they're

not and truly being almost at a level of

almost awe grateful for what they are.

And when that happened, their lives got

better, my life got better, and I played

a role in helping them discover their

encodings, mainly by experiments, like

testing them with something, see how

something works, right? And then I could

see the encoding flash, and then I'd

move the responsibility, and I'd click

them some into frame. And it's been a

marvelous joyful journey to see that

happen. And I have people who are in

frame and they just it's astounding for

me to see. And so I think that notion of

other people, but I'd flip it around

which anybody who has teams,

anyone who leads organizations or

companies,

if you spend emotional energy feeling

frustrated with what people are not,

you've got them in the wrong seat.

They're out of frame. And the question

is, if you have a bus issue, you deal

with it. they're not they shouldn't be

on the bus. But the real question could

be you have them in a seat for which

they that doesn't line up with their

encodings that doesn't feed their inner

fire. And if you try to spend your life

trying to turn them into what they're

not, they'll be miserable and you'll be

miserable.

And I think you other people can really

play a role in helping you see what

those encodings are. I've had number of

friends who run large companies who and

not not to say this is the right tool

for everyone but who've used any

actually as a sort of huristic.

>> What's your point on the anagram?

>> Which type am I or what's my perspective

on it?

>> Both.

>> Have you identified an anagram point for

yourself?

>> I'm a self-preservation six which

>> honestly

>> I'm married to a

>> There you go. It resonates for me. I

have a bunch of caveats that I'm about

to put out, but it resonates for me. I

have found it to greatly inform doing a

post-mortem on things and people who

have not worked in my organization.

Organization is a very high flutin term

for a very very small team and people

who have worked over time. There are, I

would say,

to my mind, irrefutable patterns. Like,

it's so clear the types that work and

the types that don't. And there's no

right or wrong. It's just for me as a

strong willed, hopefully decent leader,

but at the same time very demanding

person with certain preferences and so

on. There are certain people on the bus

who work and certain people who don't,

and anyagram I found very helpful for

that. I think Shopify and Dropbox both I

think still use enagram as two examples

but very good for conflict resolution as

well. The the caveat is sometimes I

think at least say in Silicon Valley

that anyagram is an acceptable horoscope

for tech guys. Um,

I mean it definitely rhymes in some

ways, but when I read my particular

and it's helpful to have a person who is

experienced with typing do this. I'm

sure there are online tools that can

also help. Side note, also found this

incredibly helpful. People are going to

hate this. Some people are going to hate

this, but for thinking about dating and

ultimately ending up with a woman who is

an incredibly incredibly good match for

me and vice versa, I'm a good match for

her,

>> but the enagram was dead on. I was like,

this is nonsense for the like I just

don't believe it can be that simple. And

it's not that simple, but incredibly

helpful. So I would say there are some

people who go down the rabbit hole to an

extent that I think ends up turning

everything into an enagram exercise. I

think that's probably losing the forest

for trees. But as one input of many,

I've I've found it helpful. And let me

ask you a question for for you

personally, and this could also be

reflected in people in the book, but for

you, this is one of the 7,000 highlights

I had from this morning over my several

cups of coffee.

>> So, this is I I can't recall if this is

from our first or second conversation,

but let me just read for a second here.

All right. Well, here here's the the

recap. Jim was clear that he didn't want

a half-life of quality in his work. I'll

skip forward a little bit. When he was

invisible at Stanford, he could do deep

work and long cycles of reflection for

six years. He worried that if he became

visible, he might wake up years later

and realize his subsequent books were

only half as good because he hadn't

returned to the wellspring of quiet

solitude.

>> Yeah.

>> Separate note, people should listen to

these conversations, but one of the

commonalities of your plus two days in

your spreadsheets were either, I

believe, intense solitude or highly

socialized, but very little in between.

All right, coming back to what I was

reading. He wanted quality to get

better. Here's the part that I

underlined. He asked respected faculty,

this is at Stanford, how they spent

their time and got a consistent answer.

50 30 20.

>> Yep.

>> And to elaborate on that, it's pretty

simple. 50% equals new intellectual

creative work. 30% equals teaching. 20%

equals other stuff, committees, etc.

>> Yep.

>> Okay. And you organized your life and

tallying things. I do still to this day

>> and you still do that. So people should

listen to our prior conversations on

that. But this 50% new intellectual

creative work, 30% teaching, 20% other

stuff, committees, etc. And this might

feed into the going to screw up the

exact terminology, but the sort of doom

cycle of competence or or whatever it

might be. What I found is one of the

penalties of being a novelty seeker is

that sometimes I will get pulled into

things that I am quite good at. They

could be new, they could be older, that

do not align super strongly with my

encodings, right? Y and so the days end

up being very choppy. In other words,

I'm doing a lot of management stuff.

Maybe I've said yes to a speaking

engagement I regret. Maybe I've invested

in a few too many startups and all of a

sudden I'm on Zoom calls when I'm

quietly grinding my teeth because I feel

like I should be working on a book

project etc etc. And my question is a

have you ever succumbed to this type of

gravitational pull to other things where

you end up kind of managing more than

making perhaps

>> and then separately if that's true how

have you corrected course

>> there's kind of two aspects of how I

have really struggled getting pulled

first of all just way earlier in my life

I I was very close to you know I was

getting pulled into things that I was

not going to be coded for. And

fortunately, by a series of really good

events and choices, I ended up very much

in frame. But if id stayed too long

doing some of those things or taken some

opportunities that were very glittering

opportunities that my life may have

taken a very different path, I think I

would have ended up successful and out

of frame and I think that that would

have been an unfortunate outcome. I

think that so the two areas that I've

had to work with and I eventually

finally got my way to both to succeed at

both of them. The second one was harder.

First one was that you're right about

that thing about visibility.

I was always prepared for failure.

I was not prepared for success.

>> Yeah.

>> And when success came, it surprised me.

Number one, I was like, you know, okay,

I was prepared for the catastrophe on

the other side. I didn't expect this to

be coming and now I got to deal with all

this stuff coming at me. And all of a

sudden you have all these wonderful

things. Some of them maybe not so

wonderful, but they're all coming at

you, right? And you have all these all

these voices and and people and

opportunities and glittering things that

that could pull you out of what you're

really encoded for because of all this

wonderful opportunity and noise coming

at you. And early in that sort of

reeling from the su I was in sort of a

fog of success phase and I was I was

really trying to sort through like how I

would allocate my time and I was kind of

reeling on my back feet and I would say

yes to things that later that today I

would never in a million years say yes

to but I did whether it be involving too

much travel or whatever sorts of things

but I began to realize man my whole life

could be sucked away accepting

opportunities and so I had to really

fight that and to eventually just kind

of clamp it all down, but to do it in a

really systematic and disciplined way.

And that's when I started counting my

hours, right? I basically just like I

got to have above a thousand creative

hours every 365 day cycle every single

day looking back for 50 years without a

miss, right? I just set that I will not

ever break it. And and then the other

was to begin using very very disciplined

mechanisms for what I would say yes to.

We have a punch card system as something

that I, you know, was very impressed by

Warren Buffett's view of the world,

which is, you know, any use of you is an

investment. It's a punch and you can't

get it back. And so when we're laying

out for the year what sorts of things I

will say yes to, we literally have every

year we we will be talking, well, what's

the punch card look like? How many

punches are left? And it's not a

question if somebody calls up and says,

are you free to give a speech on October

17? It's irrelevant whether I'm free to

give a speech on October 17. The

relevant question is do I have any

punches left? That's the first question.

Or how many punches are left? And we

limit them. We limit them tightly. And

so that became another way of like it's

punches. It's punches and they go away.

And one thing I've learned I've come to

see now at age 68, life is the ultimate

punch card. I mean, think about it,

right? So you're 48. If any given

goodsized project is call it a five-year

project, you got a bunch of fiveyear

punches left. I'm 68.

I probably have really good health, but

I know the number of punches that I have

left is a lower number than yours. And

and so life is the ultimate punch card,

right? And if you end up spending 5

years or 10 years,

you know, pulled away from what you're

really encoded for in some way because

of whatever sets of reasons, you can't

get that punch back. And so I began a

punch card process and that's how I how

I managed that. But then the other goes

back to what we were talking about

earlier.

>> Could I pause for one second? Please

don't lose your train of thought. But

for the punch cards, are those on a

category bycategory basis? In other

words, or for example,

>> speaking engagements, I'll only do five

speaking engagements per year. They need

to be within X number of hours of my

home. Is it on a category bycategory

basis?

>> The way we've done it, it's taken us a

few years iterating on the exact

process, but every week we calculate the

punch card. And the way it works is we

have a point system. And the way the

point system works is,

you know, if I'm going to do an

engagement that involves an airplane,

it costs more points. If I'm going to do

a virtual presentation from here, it

costs fewer points. If I'm going to do

an intense, we have these lab sessions

where people bring their executive team

to Boulder for 2 days and be essentially

grilled by me for two days. If it's

going to be one of those, that actually,

even though it's in Boulder, it actually

takes a fair number of points because