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 encoded 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 might 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 the 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 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

the intensity of it is so high. And so

what we've done is we've kind of

basically kind of use a numerical sense

and then in any given period of time

there's only so many points. So if I end

up agreeing to do a commitment in

London, I'm just going to blow like the

equivalent of three punches.

>> It's like a reverse frequent flyer

program.

>> Oh yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

>> You just get points subtracted.

>> Exactly. And so that's how we do it. And

then we always have a running kind of

what the total of the punch card is. And

there's, you know, it doesn't have to

hit the exact number at a given time,

but you can't start going over. It's

okay if you get to the end of the year

and you haven't spent all your punches.

What's bad is if you get to the end of

the year and you did twice as many as

you should have. And so our

conversations are always everything is

in the context of where's the punch

card? Like there's only one and a half

points left on the punch card.