0
SPEAKER_01
So, we all have mental models.
0
SPEAKER_01
We ve grown up with them, we ve been taught them, we get them through culture, but we have some that we rely on so heavily that we re almost blind to it.
0
SPEAKER_01
We don t even realize this mental model, just this one way of looking at the world, has become our default, and we try to cram everything into that.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
0
SPEAKER_00
Today we re talking with my friend, James Clear, jamesclear.com.
0
SPEAKER_00
This guy s a unique thinker.
0
SPEAKER_00
I really like him.
0
SPEAKER_00
He is on another level, truly.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna be talking about decision making and mental models, collecting mental models, where and how, the 80-20 rule, nothing new for a lot of you, but why we need to live in what s called the fat tail, not the long tail, ruthlessly eliminating mediocre results and simplifying, and how to live in what s called the zone of good luck.
0
SPEAKER_00
Enjoy this episode with James Clear, and by the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC Toolbox.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s where we discuss things like reading body language, charismatic nonverbal communication, the science of attraction, negotiation techniques, networking and influence strategies, mentorship, persuasion tactics, and everything else that we teach here at the Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_00
You can check that out at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox, and also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast,
0
SPEAKER_00
That s where you find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show.
0
SPEAKER_00
Alright, here s James Clear.
0
SPEAKER_00
James, you re an interesting guy, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
You re a super photographer, and then you kind of got into this human performance space, and you think differently than a lot of people.
0
SPEAKER_00
Let s start from kind of the beginning.
0
SPEAKER_00
Why did you get interested in this stuff?
0
SPEAKER_00
What do you consider the utility here?
0
SPEAKER_00
The decision making and all the different thought threads that you run with are highly unusual for somebody who s just out and about taking pictures, for example.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, first, thank you.
0
SPEAKER_01
Happy to be here.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I guess I started looking at it as a personal journey.
0
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to get into human performance just because I was interested in trying to improve myself, right, to lift more weights in the gym or take better photos when I was out with my camera or
0
SPEAKER_01
write better articles when i was writing each week and so as i started getting interested in that i decided to launch my own business this is about six years ago and i realized that i had no idea how to get people to sign up for things or buy things or sell anything like selling was not a strong point for me and
0
SPEAKER_01
And so I started reading about consumer psychology and why people would buy stuff.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that took me down this whole rabbit hole of related areas around behavioral psychology and habit formation and performance improvement and just kind of the science of human nature and why we do what we do.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it started as a personal pursuit and then bled into a business pursuit and eventually just became the thing that I was really interested in and wanted to build a business around.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, yeah, and it s been obviously very useful.
0
SPEAKER_00
People are super interested in this stuff, from productivity nerds all the way to people who are just trying to get it together in the first place, and of course, all of us who are trying to constantly eke out 1% more out of any given day or any given business or endeavor are super into this stuff.
0
SPEAKER_00
One thing that you and I talked about pre-show and that I was really keen on covering here
0
SPEAKER_00
is that you assert that decision making, of course, is essential for success in life, which I agree with, and that most of us, even experts, are really terrible at decision making.
0
SPEAKER_00
How can that be?
0
SPEAKER_00
Let s talk about this.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, the answer to how can that be is that the world is very complex and interconnected space.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we silo information in our heads.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, when we go to school, for example, we take classes in biology or history or English.
0
SPEAKER_01
And those are individual siloed departments.
0
SPEAKER_01
But the world doesn t actually work that way, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like all knowledge is interconnected.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so it s very hard for our brains to fully comprehend just how interrelated the world is and how those forces play on each other.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so that makes predictions very difficult to be accurate over the long run.
0
SPEAKER_01
And there s some really great research by this guy named Philip Tetlock.
0
SPEAKER_01
He interviewed all kinds of experts in given fields and asked them to make predictions about what would happen.
0
SPEAKER_01
And these are people who literally, you know, like nuclear physicists and the best of the best for their given field.
0
SPEAKER_01
And they were only right about 33% of the time.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, two thirds of the time, even the very best smartest people were wrong.
0
SPEAKER_01
So you can imagine how wrong you and I would be on a daily basis, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like, yeah, it s just very unlikely that we d be able to make accurate predictions.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s troubling that nuclear physicists were wrong two-thirds of the time.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s not really giving me too much faith and confidence here.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, those guys should be right a lot more than that, I would think.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, obviously it depends on the problem, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
It s much easier to solve a math problem than, say, a political problem or to make a prediction about how humans will behave in a given environment.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
The point here is that our decision-making is very fallible and much more fallible maybe than even what we realize.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so the question becomes, well, what can we do about that?
0
SPEAKER_01
Are there any tools that we can use to make better decisions?
0
SPEAKER_01
And one of the tools that I have found most useful, and many people have found useful, is a strategy that s called mental models.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it s just this idea that each individual mental model is a way of seeing the world, a way of looking at the issues that we face, the problems that we deal with in our daily lives.
0
SPEAKER_01
One example is what s called the bell curve.
0
SPEAKER_01
The bell curve is just a mental model, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
We re all familiar with it.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s this idea that you have this kind of even distribution where there are a few people who are outliers at the bottom of something, so a few people get F s or D s in the class.
0
SPEAKER_01
Most people are getting C s and B s, so you ve got this lumpy middle.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then you have a few people who are outliers on the upper half that are getting A s or A plus or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_01
And this applies to all sorts of things.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it actually does apply in many areas of life.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like, for example, height.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, height is very bell-curved distribution across the population.
0
SPEAKER_01
There are a few people who are really tall, a few people who are really short, and most people are about, you know, in that middle range.
0
SPEAKER_01
But that s actually just one mental model, one way of viewing things.
0
SPEAKER_01
Another way of viewing is through what s called the power curve, this idea that there s like exponential distribution.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so in this case, very few people account for the vast majority of the results, and the bulk of the people account for very little.
0
SPEAKER_01
And one of my favorite ways of doing this when I m giving a speech or talking to some group is with something I call the shoe exercise.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so you basically, this is an idea I got from Perry Marshall.
0
SPEAKER_01
You have everybody stand up in the room and you say, all right, if you own more than two pairs of shoes, stay standing, you own less, sit down.
0
SPEAKER_01
If you own more than four pairs of shoes, stay standing.
0
SPEAKER_01
If you own less, sit down.
0
SPEAKER_01
Eight, 16, 32, so on.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so gradually, people start to sit down, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
The bulk of the room is sitting by the time you get to 32.
0
SPEAKER_01
Then there are a few people still standing when you ask, do you have 64 pairs of shoes?
0
SPEAKER_01
A couple more if you have 128.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I ve had one woman who was still standing when I got to 512.
0
SPEAKER_00
She owns a shoe store, that s right.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yes, right, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the point here is that if you get to
0
SPEAKER_01
adding up all of the shoes in a given room, you will find that the top three or five people own like 90% of the pairs of shoes, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like this one woman who owns 512 pairs of shoes is accounting for more than the other 90% of the room who everybody has six or seven pairs.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so the point here is that we have a very uneven distribution.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s not a bell curve at all.
0
SPEAKER_01
We got one or two or three or five people who account for 90% of the results.
0
SPEAKER_01
And this is true in many different areas, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
You can have one person on the sales team that brings in 80% of the revenue.
0
SPEAKER_01
You can have one hallway in your house that gets 80% of the foot traffic.
0
SPEAKER_01
You can have one section of your closet that you wear 80% of the time.
0
SPEAKER_01
This is commonly known as the 80-20 rule or the Pareto principle, this idea that a few things count for the majority of the results.
0
SPEAKER_00
Where does that come from?
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how do we know it s true?
0
SPEAKER_00
It s clever to say, oh, 80-20, and then it s like, okay, we just accept that as fact.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yes, good question.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, it comes from this guy named Vilfredo Pareto, who is this economist, and Pareto was this really mathematical guy.
0
SPEAKER_01
Around this time, you know, 17, 1800s, most economists were more like philosophers than mathematicians.
0
SPEAKER_01
They kind of like had these theories about how markets worked.
0
SPEAKER_01
And Pareto was this super math-oriented guy who wouldn t put numbers behind everything.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so one day he s out in his garden looking at these pea pods, and he realizes that few of the pea pods in his garden are producing the majority of the peas that he s harvesting.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so he has this idea like, oh, I wonder if this uneven distribution, if this applies to other areas of life.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so he starts looking around, and he first investigates the land distribution in Italy.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s Italian, so he finds that about 20% of the people in Italy own 80% of the land.
0
SPEAKER_01
Then he starts looking in other nations.
0
SPEAKER_01
He looks at wealth inequality in Great Britain, and he finds, again, like about 30% of the people own 70% of the wealth in the country.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so the numbers were never the same.
0
SPEAKER_01
A lot of times people hear 80-20 and they think, oh, it has to add up to 100.
0
SPEAKER_01
But that s not the point.
0
SPEAKER_01
The point is, a few people account for the majority of the rewards.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s just a small portion account for the bulk of the outcomes.
0
SPEAKER_01
We see this all the time in our world now.
0
SPEAKER_01
For example, if you take the NBA, the top six franchises, so there are 30 teams, the top six franchises have won 75% of the NBA championships.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the top two franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers have won 49% of the NBA championships.
0
SPEAKER_01
So just two teams account for almost half of the titles.
0
SPEAKER_01
you see very similar distribution of major league baseball, the NFL, the World Cup is even more.
0
SPEAKER_01
So you have three teams, Brazil, Germany, and Argentina, maybe, who have accounted for the vast majority of World Cups have been won.
0
SPEAKER_01
And you also see it in the natural world.
0
SPEAKER_01
So researchers just looked at the Amazon rainforest.
0
SPEAKER_01
There are 16,000 different types
1
SPEAKER_03
of trees in the Amazon, but what they found is that there are 227 hyper-dominant species of trees that account for over half of the rainforest.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then the bottom 11,000 species account for only like 1%.
1
SPEAKER_03
So the trees that are a little bit better at competing, a little bit better at capturing sunlight, a little bit better at surviving, they get almost all the rewards.
1
SPEAKER_03
And the bulk of the trees who are just average or a little bit worse than the better ones, they get almost no land.
1
SPEAKER_03
They capture almost none of the soil and nutrients and sunlight.
1
SPEAKER_03
So my point being, the 80-20 rule is displayed all over life, and so is the bell curve.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so by having these two mental models, we can look at the world in two different ways, and that can be very useful for making decisions.
1
SPEAKER_03
Because if you try to fit everything into the bell curve or everything into the power curve under the 80-20 rule, it s not going to work out well for you.
1
SPEAKER_03
You ll make decisions that are incorrect.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sure, so we gotta collect these different mental models, the bell curve, for example, the power curve, the Pareto Principle, for example.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we know which one to use and when, or am I getting ahead of myself here?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so it s a really good question.
1
SPEAKER_03
And I think the best answer is that you don t.
1
SPEAKER_03
That s what makes decision making hard.
1
SPEAKER_03
But, and this is what many great decision makers have done.
1
SPEAKER_03
So take, for example, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, the guys behind Berkshire Hathaway, you know, two of the most famous investors of the last century.
1
SPEAKER_03
Charlie Munger is really big on mental models.
1
SPEAKER_03
And what he says is that, you know, there are hundreds of these things out there, hundreds of different ways of looking at the world.
1
SPEAKER_03
But there may be 20 to 50 of them that carry the majority of the weight for your everyday decision making.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re going 80-20 on the mental models?
1
SPEAKER_01
That s very meta.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, interesting, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
He has a checklist of those, you know, 20 or so.
1
SPEAKER_03
And if he s making a big decision, he ll go through each one and try to look at the problem through that lens to see if it helps provide some insight.
1
SPEAKER_03
And I think what s important to realize is when we re trying to make better decisions, a lot of the time it s not about trying to figure out the exact right answer, but rather trying to avoid a stupid mistake.
1
SPEAKER_03
And mental models can help illuminate if there s something that you re overlooking that would have made this a grave mistake if you didn t have that lens or view available.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, so we basically want to collect these different mental models or ways of looking at the world that are, am I going to use this word right, heuristics, where we have kind of like a set of criteria.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right, we re looking at this 80-20.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right, let s look at this as a bell curve, the average, that type of thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we can start to look at problems in different ways.
1
SPEAKER_01
And this is useful because it allows us to get a grip on what otherwise, or a handle on, what appears to be random data, or what appears to be conflicting data, or what appears to have two answers to the same problem, et cetera.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so let me give you two really practical examples.
1
SPEAKER_03
Like what would this look like in everyday life?
1
SPEAKER_03
The first one is a mental model.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s called the Red Queen effect.
1
SPEAKER_03
It comes from Alice in Wonderland.
1
SPEAKER_03
There s this scene where she s running with this Red Queen and they re running faster and faster in front of this tree, but they never go anywhere.
1
SPEAKER_03
They just stay in front of the same tree.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, you see this pattern play out in everyday life all the time, especially in business.
1
SPEAKER_03
People talk about staffing up, hiring new employees, growing the business.
1
SPEAKER_03
And what ends up happening is they run into the Red Queen effect, where they go from five people on their staff to 10 people on their staff.
1
SPEAKER_03
And maybe they went from making a million dollars a year to making $5 million a year for the business.
1
SPEAKER_03
But with additional management expenses and salary expenses, they end up with the same amount of profit at the end of the day.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so by looking at the problem of should we hire somebody or not, through the lens of the Red Queen effect, you can try to figure out, is this a good idea?
1
SPEAKER_03
Like, is this definitely going to lead to additional profit?
1
SPEAKER_03
Are we just going to be running faster and faster, trying to move more quickly, but end up with the same thing at the end of the day, end up not having actually gone anywhere and just have a more complex machine running because of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so we get different mental models from where?
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, where do we find these other than, of course, on this show we talk about mental models all the time, but it seems like we should probably have a variety of sources here.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_03
And this is kind of the key thing.
1
SPEAKER_03
So we all have mental models.
1
SPEAKER_03
We ve grown up with them, we ve been taught them, we get them through culture.
1
SPEAKER_03
But we have some that we rely on so heavily that we re almost blind to it.
1
SPEAKER_03
We don t even realize this mental model, just this one way of looking at the world has become our default.
1
SPEAKER_03
And we try to cram everything into that.
1
SPEAKER_03
This is something that s called the law of the instrument sometimes, or people are very familiar with this proverb of like, give a man a hammer and every problem looks like a nail, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
It s like you just try to bang everything into one perspective.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so the answer is to read very broadly, to try to read a variety of books that give you a different lens, a different way of looking at them.
1
SPEAKER_03
What s nice now is that this topic of mental models has started to develop a little bit of steam.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so people are writing about them and creating lists of them.
1
SPEAKER_03
I was just looking at a list earlier today of the founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabe, who put together a list of like 80 mental models that he finds repeatedly useful, that he goes back to time and again to try to look at different business decisions through.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so now the nice thing is just a simple Google search can bring up a variety of different ones.
1
SPEAKER_03
The other way to think about it, if you re interested in putting together your own set of tools for looking at the world better, is to go through it industry by industry or silo by silo.
1
SPEAKER_03
I mentioned earlier that we have like silos for our knowledge, English, biology, history, chemistry, and so on.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, each one of those fields of study, they have
1
SPEAKER_03
core mental models that they rely on.
1
SPEAKER_03
So if you have chemistry, for example, you got the law of thermodynamics or something like that, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
So each of these different industries has kind of their core, let s call it five to 10 principles.
1
SPEAKER_03
And if you can learn the five to 10 principles that carry the most weight in each of these different fields, then you have a really broad, useful set of mental models to look at the world through.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, because if you only have the one mental model, you only have one way to solve the problem, there we have the law of the instrument, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
As you ve argued on your blog as well, if you are an expert in one particular area, you re smart, you re talented in this area, you ve worked at it for 10 years, you might also end up with that same law of the instrument, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
If you re a computer programmer, you re thinking,
1
SPEAKER_01
Wow, this light bulb in my garage, it turns off all the time randomly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe I should code something that sends me a notification to my phone, blah, blah, blah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Meanwhile, the electrician or even just your kid says, why don t we just get a new light bulb?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_03
You know, like one of my favorite examples comes from Robert Sapolsky, who s a professor and researcher at Stanford.
1
SPEAKER_03
And he talks about like, why did the chicken cross the road?
1
SPEAKER_03
And if you ask a biologist, they say, well, the hormones in the chicken s brain, you know, like they interact in a particular way that told the chicken to move across the road, or it saw a potential mate over there.
1
SPEAKER_03
And that made it want to go over and mate with the other chicken.
1
SPEAKER_03
If you talk to someone who s into like kinesiology and anatomy, they say, well, the
1
SPEAKER_03
knee of the chicken bent and the muscle like pulled the knee forward, and then the chicken propelled across the road.
1
SPEAKER_03
And if you talk to, you know, a psychologist, they give you a different reason.
1
SPEAKER_03
And the point is that we see the situations in our lives through the lens that we think about the most.
1
SPEAKER_03
And the goal here is to try to give you a different lens through which to look at the world.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s almost like each time you use a mental model, you put on a different set of color glasses, you know, like, first, we ll look at them through the blue glasses, and then we ll look at them through the green ones and the red ones.
1
SPEAKER_03
And
1
SPEAKER_03
Each time you shift that perspective, you give yourself a new viewpoint of the problem and hopefully unearth some thinking errors that you would otherwise not see.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, so it s about diversity in this area, whereas we usually, and do, encourage people to specialize, you have to be careful that you re not also handcuffing yourself to the mental models that you get from a specific area of expertise or from specific experiences, because the more you master that single mental model, the more likely it becomes that this is going to be your default and your downfall.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it seems like smart people can really fall into, I guess what would be confirmation bias, that would then, you re running yourself into a blind alley all the time, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
You re running into a dead end a lot of the time because you can t use that default mental model all of the time, and yet, there we go.
1
SPEAKER_01
So smart people, and I think you said this in your work as well, smart people have mental models and use them consciously.
1
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant people have multiple mental models and select the best ones to use on any given problem.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think expertise is wonderful.
1
SPEAKER_03
Mastery of the topic is incredibly useful.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s a rare and valuable skill.
1
SPEAKER_03
But the danger of becoming more of an expert or gaining more experience in an area is that progress becomes assumed.
1
SPEAKER_03
We think that because we ve been working on something for five years or 10 years, we are suddenly better at it.
1
SPEAKER_03
And in many cases, we re not actually improving.
1
SPEAKER_03
We re just reinforcing the habits and thinking patterns that we ve already developed.
1
SPEAKER_03
We re not broadening our skillset.
1
SPEAKER_03
I would argue that
1
SPEAKER_03
Having a wider range of mental models actually equips you to become more of an expert, more of a groundbreaking person in your given field, or more talented, more creative, because innovative ideas often happen at the intersection of seemingly unrelated areas.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so by having multiple mental models, you can start to make those connections across those intersections that other people just won t be able to see because they have a smaller toolbox, right, a smaller set of thinking tools.
1
SPEAKER_00
Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
1
SPEAKER_02
They say if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
1
SPEAKER_02
But if you re an entrepreneur, you know the hard work that comes with it.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s why you need Kajabi.
1
SPEAKER_02
Kajabi makes it easy to run your entire online business from one platform so you can focus on what you love, creating.
1
SPEAKER_00
Kajabi is the ultimate all-in-one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs build successful online businesses by
2
SPEAKER_01
unlocking predictable recurring revenue.
2
SPEAKER_02
No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, and experiences into enriching online courses, exclusive membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and more.
2
SPEAKER_01
The best part?
2
SPEAKER_01
Kajabi doesn t cut into your revenue because everything is owned and controlled by you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So keep 100% of what you earn.
2
SPEAKER_02
And with Kajabi, you also get robust analytics, easy payment options, email marketing tools, and customizable website templates, all built in.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t even need a huge audience to make sustainable income.
2
SPEAKER_01
There are thousands of creators on Kajabi making six and seven figures with less than 50,000 followers.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right now, Kajabi is offering a free 30-day trial to start your business if you go to kajabi.com slash charm.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s K-A-J-A-B-I dot com slash charm.
2
SPEAKER_01
Go to Kajabi.com slash charm and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over seven billion dollars.
2
SPEAKER_02
Hey Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
2
SPEAKER_02
Winning is an everyday mindset and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
2
SPEAKER_02
On Ways to Win podcast, Craig and Coach Cal use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems.
2
SPEAKER_02
Whether it s trouble at home or a workplace dilemma, the coaches will help you find a winning formula for success.
2
SPEAKER_02
You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them into the leaders they are today.
2
SPEAKER_02
And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
2
SPEAKER_02
Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how do we get a bigger toolbox, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You suggest reading unique books, not necessarily just tons of books, but you have a certain type of books that you re looking for.
2
SPEAKER_00
I thought this was pretty interesting, because most of us just try to devour everything that we can, or we read all the stuff inside our industry, but that s not quite what you re thinking here.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so there are a couple different ways to find good books to read.
2
SPEAKER_03
So the first one, just a little Amazon hack.
2
SPEAKER_03
If you find a book that you find really useful, go to Amazon and click on the three-star reviews, not the one-star reviews that hate it, not the five-star reviews that love it, but the three-star reviews.
2
SPEAKER_03
And these are often people who say, I really liked XYZ concept in the book, but you should actually read this other book because it explains the counter argument better, or it explains this topic better.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so that s often a good place to look for better reading suggestions.
2
SPEAKER_03
The second one is almost everybody tends to read new stuff because that s the stuff that gets marketed.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s the stuff that gets talked about.
2
SPEAKER_03
So if it s a bestselling book from this year or last year, everybody s heard about it.
2
SPEAKER_03
If it s a bestselling book, even like a Pulitzer Prize winner from 1970 or 1980s, nobody knows about it.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s too old at this point.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so the interesting thing is to look at books that are older
2
SPEAKER_03
And if they still are getting good reviews on Amazon, if they re still seen as a pillar book in that industry, then that actually means the ideas in that book are really, really good, because they ve had to stand the test of time for 25 or 30 or 50 years.
2
SPEAKER_03
There are a couple different experts that have theories about this.
2
SPEAKER_03
But the basic idea is the longer an idea lasts, the better the ideas.
2
SPEAKER_03
So like Charles Darwin came up with the idea of evolution over 100 years ago.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that idea is still super, super relevant and has all kinds of robust knowledge find it today.
2
SPEAKER_03
There were a bunch of other ideas that were thought up over 100 years ago, but many of them have been debunked.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so the idea is that anybody can have a good flash in the pan idea for a year or two, and then the real world comes and smacks it upside the head and shows that it s not actually that useful.
2
SPEAKER_03
And if an idea has lasted for a decade or two or five, then it s actually a really, really useful idea.
2
SPEAKER_03
So the idea here is read old books, don t just read the new stuff that gets pushed around.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, and this is used, of course, to develop mental models and create a web of ideas that shows seemingly unrelated ideas might connect with one another.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I find that this is very useful, especially for my work here at The Art of Charm, both on the show and in our live programs, because when we re reading a new book, we re listening to somebody else talk,
2
SPEAKER_00
and we re writing down the ways that this information might connect to something else that we already know, it s essentially the creation of new content.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like a new neural pathway in your brain, almost.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re taking something that nobody had ever thought of and plugging it in to something else.
2
SPEAKER_00
essentially the entire internet economy, or hey, let s electrify this thing and make it powered, or let s add a gasoline engine to it, or moving into the future, let s add artificial intelligence to it, and right now it might seem silly to have something that s a thermostat that has artificial intelligence, and yet look at Nest, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Look at these different things where you think, oh, this ain t broke, don t fix it, and now you ve made it so much better by adding something to it that you would never have thought of.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whoever thought of that was into HVAC,
2
SPEAKER_00
into machine learning and also various other types of disciplines, and that s why we ended up with something that was new, novel, and useful.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so I think there s a really important concept here that we should talk about.
2
SPEAKER_03
And it comes from the first person I heard it from, this philosopher named Ken Wilber.
2
SPEAKER_03
And the way that he describes it is transcend and include.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so our knowledge should transcend and include what came before.
2
SPEAKER_03
And the idea is that the mental models you have today, even if it is a relatively limited set of tools, there s truth in them.
2
SPEAKER_03
They re valuable.
2
SPEAKER_03
You just need to find additional ones and start to integrate them together so that you can transcend to the next level of thinking.
2
SPEAKER_03
And if you look at how any living system progresses, it follows this pattern of transcendent include.
2
SPEAKER_03
So the most basic example is, you take atoms, and then they build into molecules and molecules build into cellular organisms, and those build into organs, which build into, you know, humans, which build into societies and nations and so on.
2
SPEAKER_03
And if you want to get technical about it, societies are made up of atoms,
2
SPEAKER_03
But they all along the way they transcended and included to the next thing right and there was a new stable intermediate form.
2
SPEAKER_03
that was created because all the knowledge was integrated in a way that fit together.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you mentioned earlier this idea of, you know, once you read something, journal about how it connects to other ideas or write down how that knowledge integrates with what you already know.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that can be a really useful thing to do after you read each book.
2
SPEAKER_03
Just take a look at three or five books on your shelf and think about how does what I just read link to the other things that I ve read previously.
2
SPEAKER_03
and you start to develop a tighter web of mental models and understand how those ideas integrate so that you can then transcend to that next level.
2
SPEAKER_00
For me, it took me a while to learn this stuff because I went to a public school, and it was a fine school and everything, but I had ideas that were for math, ideas that were for social studies or whatever we call it, ideas that were for writing class, and ideas that were for history.
2
SPEAKER_00
There was one class that I had called Flex, which has nothing to do with the subject matter, of course, but it was essentially like English and history and
2
SPEAKER_00
a bunch of other things mashed together and all the other teachers hated it because all the kids that were in it had this three hour block and all the classes all four years were together and when we got to college and we were forced to plug ideas from one subject matter area into another, we were all good at that because we were all being taught that at the same time.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we would learn about the Parthenon
2
SPEAKER_00
and we d watch a movie about how it was constructed and we d learn about the physics of how it stays together and then we d learn the mathematical equations involved and the history surrounding it and the religion and the studying that went on around and in that and it was actually really incredible but it was so hard to get used to my freshman year because I had never been taught at any point in my entire life before essentially young adulthood
2
SPEAKER_00
to even think that ideas overlapped.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like when you re a kid and you re eating at McDonald s and you don t want the fries to touch the burger and you don t want your salad, which obviously you didn t get at McDonald s, to touch any of your other stuff, so you re separating them on the plate.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what we were taught growing up to do with ideas, and it doesn t really work, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Ideas aren t just for economics.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re not just for engineering.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re tricked into compartmentalizing because of how we re taught subjects in school.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s, I think one of the most fascinating things for me is that it provides, it puts a spotlight on human nature and why we act the way we do.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because a lot of times, if you only look at things through a particular perspective, or a certain point of view, you get very confused.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re like, why are people acting irrationally?
2
SPEAKER_03
Like, for example, I recently heard that people who live in areas that have the most pollution, are actually the least likely to vote for positive climate change measures to vote for, you know, decreasing pollution, and so on.
2
SPEAKER_03
And when you hear that, you think, well, that doesn t make sense.
2
SPEAKER_03
Why do people vote against their own best interest?
2
SPEAKER_03
But then you find out that these are also the people who are most likely to be working at factories that would be producing pollution, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
So they don t want to get rid of their own job.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so anyway, the world is very complex and interrelated.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so you can look at that problem of pollution through either a climate change lens and say, well, this doesn t make any sense.
2
SPEAKER_03
Or you can look at it through a business lens and say, oh, this makes a lot of sense.
2
SPEAKER_03
People don t want to lose their job.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so having multiple mental models and viewpoints helps you understand this conflicting decision making or confusing, messy nature of humans and why we do what we do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have a quote I think from your work as well from James Webb Young that says, So in other words, you have to be able to make connections between the options you have and the outcomes that you want, the options you have in terms of
3
SPEAKER_01
mental models and the outcomes that you re looking for.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the more options you have, the more connections.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s the point of reading broadly and trying to figure out like looking at the Amazon reviews or searching for old books.
3
SPEAKER_00
Another method that I really like using is if I have a book that I really respected and thought was was really great, go back to the end notes and look at which books those site and then you can dive into some good reading suggestions that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there are a variety of ways to find really good options.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I also maintain a really broad reading list on my site.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re welcome to look at that too.
3
SPEAKER_01
Tell me about the inversion technique.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is this a mental model in itself or is this something unrelated?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think it s actually one of the most practical ones.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, we talked about siloing information around different topics like English or history or chemistry, but we often silo information just on our viewpoint of the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
And one of the ways we do that the most is through goal setting.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we think about what we want to achieve, where we want to go, the type of person we want to become, what kind of business we want to run or the career we want to have.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s always focused on looking forward, right, what we want to achieve.
3
SPEAKER_00
The idea with the inversion technique is to flip that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And another phrase that you can use that I like to call this as a failure premortem.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re trying to figure out ahead of time, how are you going to fail, you know, envision failing at this task of not getting your dream job of not building a successful business of not finding the relationship partner that you want, and write out in detail, what is going to make that happen?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why is this not going to work out for you?
3
SPEAKER_00
And this failure pre-mortem should illuminate a lot of things that you can avoid or problems that you can rectify ahead of time rather than running into those issues after the fact.
3
SPEAKER_00
So rather than thinking about what we want all the time, let s think about how we will fail, and then we can develop if-then strategies for doing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this is also really useful just for daily habits.
3
SPEAKER_00
What would keep you from going to the gym each week?
3
SPEAKER_00
And once you write those things down, then you can develop an if then strategy for well, if my kids, you know, end up having to stay late at school on Monday, and I can t work out, then I will do 20 push ups at home that night, or I ll make sure that I get into the gym on Tuesday morning, or whatever it is that works for your schedule.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the point is, you can only plan for a problem after you ve identified it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the failure premortem or the inversion techniques helps you do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, because otherwise, and this is true in business, your personal life and every scenario I can possibly think of, otherwise what happens is you go, oh, well, my kids have to stay late at school.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you don t really have any plan for what to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to literally sit down at that point and go, how do I react in real time slash too late to this new problem that I had not thought about?
3
SPEAKER_01
And the answer is usually, ah, screw it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you microwave some lasagna and you forget about the gym.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the reason that we struggle to overcome a lot of these daily failures is not because we re incapable of overcoming them, but because we don t have a strategy for dealing with them ahead of time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we end up becoming victims of inertia, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I mean, that s just how life works.
3
SPEAKER_00
We, things happen, and we respond.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we end up living reactively rather than proactively.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the inversion technique is just one mental model to try to help get you in a proactive mode rather than a reactive
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, so basically we look at problems backwards slash inside out, figure out what s going, where the fail points are gonna happen, what we re going to do as a contingency plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
We had General Stanley McChrystal on the show before as well, and he talked about doing this type of thing with special forces because, of course, if you ve got Navy SEALs and Green Berets and Army Rangers doing something, there s going to be multiple fail points.
3
SPEAKER_01
These guys and girls have to be able to actually fall back to a plan B
3
SPEAKER_01
immediately, without thinking, together, with minimal communication, in real time, with bullets flying, slash, explosions, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So, this stuff becomes really, really serious, and whenever the special forces use anything, I tend to also figure out where I might be able to apply that same thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
It also helps us figure out where we can react based on our capabilities.
3
SPEAKER_01
You give the example of Jerry Rice, who basically eliminated the errors and mistakes that are preventing him being faster.
3
SPEAKER_01
He couldn t just get faster.
3
SPEAKER_01
He couldn t just run faster.
3
SPEAKER_01
He focused on running more precise routes in football.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as a result, when his opponents made mistakes, he was able to take advantage because he had honed that to a razor s edge instead of just going, gee, I hope I run really fast today, otherwise I m gonna get hit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, this idea of playing to our natural strengths, I think it s incredibly important.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this transitions a little bit from the mental model s idea to, once we re looking at a world in a particular way and a mental model reveals that, oh, we should attack a situation in a given way, how do we do that in the way that s best for our actual genetic abilities?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do we do that in the way that s best for our natural inclinations?
3
SPEAKER_00
And basically, how do we try to optimize the luck that we could have?
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, so if you take Jerry Rice, for example, he was fast enough to play in the NFL, but he wasn t going to beat people with his speed, whereas he was incredibly precise running routes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so he could actually leverage that strength to become a really great receiver and eventually to become the best of all time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so rather than trying to focus on that moderate or mediocre point in his game, he focused on the one that was the strength that was able to separate himself that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if we can do the same in our careers and our love lives and our daily habits and health, then the results can be really great.
3
SPEAKER_01
We do shows on luck, in fact we just did one recently with Robert H. Frank who talks about success and luck.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s kinda hard to decide to be more lucky.
3
SPEAKER_01
It usually ends up having to do with giving yourself more chances to hit, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And making yourself available, grit, determination, resilience, keeping yourself in the game long enough to get lucky.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do we live in the zone of good luck?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I think there are two ways.
3
SPEAKER_00
The first is repetition, which is what you mentioned.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of my favorite stories, this is a true story, comes from this guy who s a photographer.
3
SPEAKER_00
He runs a class at the University of Florida.
3
SPEAKER_00
And at the beginning of the semester, he had a group come in and he said, all right, I m going to divide the class into two sections.
3
SPEAKER_00
The section on the left is going to be graded purely on the quantity of photographs that you take throughout the semester.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, if you take 50 it s an A, take 40 it s a B, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
The group on the right is going to be graded on the quality of photographs that you create throughout the semester.
3
SPEAKER_00
You only have to take one picture, but it has to be the most perfect picture that you can take.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the end of the semester rolled around and it turned out that all of the best photos were taken by the quantity group, not the quality group, because they were out honing their skills, learning about perspective and composition and improving their abilities, while the quality group was trying to theorize about what the best picture would look like and what a perfect photo would be and weren t actually developing skills.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the repetition side of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, one way to increase luck is to simply take more chances or to simply hone your skills.
3
SPEAKER_00
And eventually, if you take 50 photos and try to do the best you can each time, one of them might turn out to be really good.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there is a second tool that we have.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that this one is maybe, I don t want to say surprising, but more overlooked of the two.
3
SPEAKER_00
That tool is measurement.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, so often we can live in a zone of good luck if we simply have feedback about what is actually working and do more of that and less of what isn t working.
3
SPEAKER_00
But many times we don t measure the things that we want to get good at.
3
SPEAKER_00
We just think, oh, well, I guess I just got to try harder.
3
SPEAKER_00
I need to put more work in.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Keep your head down.
3
SPEAKER_01
Good things will come to those who wait and other things that we were taught as kids that are not necessarily true.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s, you know, and hard work is important.
3
SPEAKER_00
Relying on that specifically and thinking that you don t need any feedback often ends up not leading you down the path to success.
3
SPEAKER_00
So one interesting side effect of this is something that I call the Goldilocks rule.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the Goldilocks rule, there s this great research on motivation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why do we stay motivated with something?
3
SPEAKER_00
And this ties directly into the repetition side of the zone of good luck, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like in order to repeat something over and over again, in order to increase your surface area for good luck,
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to maintain motivation to stay interested and invested in the task whatever it is the motivation research shows that the tasks are most motivated to the human mind are those that are just on the perimeter of our abilities so classic examples are playing a tennis match and.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you play against Roger Federer or Serena Williams, well, it might be fun for a minute or two, kind of cool to play them, but if you re playing a serious match, it s going to get boring pretty quick because you re going to lose every point.
3
SPEAKER_00
Conversely, if you play against a four-year-old, it might be cute for a minute or two, but if you re actually trying to win, it s going to get really boring pretty quick because you re going to win every point.
3
SPEAKER_00
Meanwhile, if you play against somebody who is just kind of at your level of ability, you win about half the points, they win about half the points, there s a chance that you ll win the match, but only if you really try.
3
SPEAKER_00
That is actually incredibly motivating to the human mind, to live right on that perimeter of our abilities, on that cusp.
3
SPEAKER_00
The only way to know whether you re on the perimeter of your abilities or not is to get feedback, to get some kind of measurement that tells you whether you re there or not.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the more that we can measure our success and figure out, one, where am I right now, and two, what would a little improvement look like, the more motivated we can stay and the more repetitions we can put in.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s much easier to be lucky when you re putting in those reps than when you re not.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, sure, so we increase the service area for luck through repetition, of course, and also through measurement and short-term feedback.
3
SPEAKER_01
Seth Godin says the best way to change long-term behavior is with short-term feedback.
4
SPEAKER_00
We want to increase our abilities to get that feedback, whether through coaching or programs that give us direct output, and tying this back into what we do a lot here at the Yard of Charm is a lot of guys and girls will come in wanting to learn to be better with networking and things like that, and we ll run them through 100 plus new interactions while coaches are watching.
4
SPEAKER_00
We ll videotape it.
4
SPEAKER_00
so that you can get years and years of experience in a very specific area and actually get feedback.
4
SPEAKER_00
If I meet you at an event, James, and I make an awkward introduction, you re not going to go, hey Jordan, it s nice to meet you.
4
SPEAKER_00
By the way, that was a little awkward.
4
SPEAKER_00
Here s what happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
You got bad breath and you leaned in too far.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, no one s going to give you that feedback.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have to create scenarios in which you re getting coaching or in which the situation itself is going to coach you and give you meaningful insight, leaving less up to your own interpretation.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because it s really easy, I m sure you get emails like this in your inbox as well, and I know I do, where someone will say, look, there s something going on at work, everyone s against me for some reason.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you get that and you go, you re doing something, you just can t see it.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s something that you re doing or not doing that s driving people up the wall or causing you to run into problems in your relationships or in your career, and when we leave this up to our own interpretation, it becomes problematic.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I might think I m not good at tennis because I can t run fast enough to hit the ball on the other side of the court, when really,
4
SPEAKER_00
A tennis pro would say, look, you re hitting the ball in such a way that I m always going to hit it to the other side of the court.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have no strategy.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna run back and forth around this court until you get tired and then you re gonna lose.
4
SPEAKER_00
And even if I could run an ultra marathon at sprint level, I would still lose every single match of tennis because I m doing something else wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what you re saying is exactly true that so often the reason that we don t improve, you know, we feel bad about our performance, but it s not because we re not good enough to achieve success.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s because we don t have the right feedback to show us what to work on.
4
SPEAKER_01
We don t have the right measurement or coaching to highlight the areas that we actually should be investing our time and energy in.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now, you re big on eliminating the inessential.
4
SPEAKER_00
You were one of the first people I ve read that even talked about things like 80-20, talked about Pareto Principle.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve been following your stuff for a really long time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve seen it years and years ago, and we met a really long time ago now that I think about it, or at least our first interaction via email was a super long time ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
This has been something that you ve worked on a ton, and for a while, correct me if I m wrong, you were traveling around the world, taking photos, and living in almost as simple a way as possible.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I ve never been like fully nomadic.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve always had a home base, but every year I publish my ultralight travel guide, show how I travel the world with just a single bag.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have taken a lot of effort to have a minimal design on my website and reduce, you know, all clutter, no advertisements, no sidebar, you know, reduce the amount of buttons, all kinds of stuff like that, improve the reading experience.
4
SPEAKER_01
But the point and the way that it applies to larger life is that minimalism... There s a great quote that says something along the lines of, minimalism is not about doing the least amount of things, but the optimal amount of things.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that, I think, is the approach I try to take.
4
SPEAKER_01
How can we optimize what we re doing so that we get rid of the stuff that s not providing value, and focus only on the things that are actually driving results?
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s something you can apply to whether it be your weightlifting habits, or your travel strategy, or the way that you design your website, pretty much any other area of life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, this kind of dovetails a little bit in an interesting way that I hadn t thought of with the fat tail idea that we were talking about earlier in that you really do have to simplify down to find out what that fat tail even is.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can we talk again about fat tails and the idea that any individual outcome, for example, is unlikely but needs to be done systematically in order to get success?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I feel like this is something we touched on and yet here we are talking about simplifying and we come full circle into the idea that success can only really be achieved
4
SPEAKER_01
Let me give you a story and a practical example of how to apply this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because I think the idea that a few things account for the majority of the results, you know, I think that we all have kind of this vague notion of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what I mean when I say vague is that it s not on the surface, but once it s explained or explicitly stated in a sentence or two, it s like, Oh yeah, of course, that makes sense that a few of our customers account for the majority of our revenue, or a few of the problems in our business account for the majority of the time and hassle and errors that we deal with, or a few of our clothes get worn the majority of the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the 80-20 rule makes logical sense.
4
SPEAKER_01
But how do we actually apply that when we have many things that we want to do on a daily basis?
4
SPEAKER_01
One of my favorite strategies is what I call the Ivy Lee method.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there was this consultant, his name s Ivy Lee.
4
SPEAKER_01
He was hired, I think it was back in 1918, by Bethlehem Steel, which was one of the largest steel companies at the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they brought him in and he said, look, I have a strategy.
4
SPEAKER_01
You just let me work with your top executives.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just give me 15 minutes with each of them.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to pay me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll just work with them to improve their productivity.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then in a month or two or whatever, you can bring me back in if you think it was worth it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Pay me whatever you think it s worth.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the CEO is like, Well, this is a deal I can t really lose.
4
SPEAKER_01
So go ahead, go talk to everybody.
4
SPEAKER_01
So he spends 15 minutes with each executive, and he teaches them very simple strategy.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like brain dead simple, but it works if you actually execute it.
4
SPEAKER_01
He said, Okay, first thing I want you to do is write down a list of the six things that you need to get done tomorrow.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then I want you to prioritize that list in its order of true importance.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the most important thing is at the top, second most important after that, and so on.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then when you come in tomorrow, I want you to work on the first task until it is completed.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t get to work on any other task until that task is done.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then move to the second one, and then the third, and so on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anything that s left over and is unfinished, you move it back to the top of the list for tomorrow, or you redo a list of six things and rank and prioritize them again.
4
SPEAKER_01
So he leaves, they repeat that strategy for the next three months, the CEO brings him in, he was so happy with the results that he wrote him a check for $25,000, which back in 1918, is now worth like over $400,000 today.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the point here is, you know, the idea of do the most important thing first each day.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that will, you know, simplify your life by just focusing on one task at a time getting that most important task done.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s very easy to say it s incredibly hard to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
how many days you actually do the most important thing to completion first each day and then move on to the second most important thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve done it sometimes on my best days, but very rarely have I done it every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what we find is that that level of simplicity and that level of ranking and ordering things forces you to make hard decisions rather than living in this gray zone where you just sometimes work on things that are useful and sometimes work on the power curve, the fat tail side of things that provides 80% of the results.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we usually know that a few things provide most of the results.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we often know what those strategies are, but we very rarely work on them with our core priority first each day.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s a good point, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I remember I spent years saying, look, the show brings in all of these great leaders, these great thought leaders, these great authors, and it gets people to spotlight our brand.
4
SPEAKER_00
They see what we re doing at AOC.
4
SPEAKER_00
It attracts a lot of attention.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I would do a bunch of, I don t know, random crap that I don t even remember now.
4
SPEAKER_00
for an entire week and then Friday or Saturday or whatever release day six years ago would roll around and I d go, crap, I gotta do a show.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I d be calling friends of mine like, hey, what are you doing tonight?
4
SPEAKER_00
You wanna go out to dinner?
4
SPEAKER_00
And we ll record a podcast.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sure, Jordan, what about?
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, think of something on the way here.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, we d show up and we d be hungry and we d buzz through a 30-minute, 45-minute show.
4
SPEAKER_00
Again, this is like six years ago, plus maybe even longer, I hope.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we d record it and I would do some cursory editing and upload it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I would then pay lip service to, well, the show s so important and all this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was only until I really decided, look, I need to focus on this over everything else other than maybe my health.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s when everything started to explode, because it s very easy to say something like, yeah, you know, family first, and then you re out hanging out with your buddies, or you re out screwing around doing something else, and then after a while you go, I don t know what happened, my relationships fell apart, but I ve always been such a family-oriented guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because we choose that to maybe be a part of our identity, or we choose that to maybe be
4
SPEAKER_00
something that we value, even in our office, and either we or possibly our boss says, yeah, yeah, we re all about the customer, but not this time, and probably not tomorrow either, but yeah, it looks good on the door.
4
SPEAKER_00
We have to focus on actually eliminating, simplifying, and focusing on those specific levers.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s kind of like humans are a lot like a rosebush, and that we think that we re like a tree.
4
SPEAKER_01
We think that we can grow wider and taller, extend our branches, continue to take more and more on.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the natural inclination of life is that more things creep in.
4
SPEAKER_01
The longer you re in business, the more business ideas you have.
4
SPEAKER_01
The more your network grows, the more people you could reach out to, the more projects that you have on your plate, the more time goes on, it s natural for new things to creep in.
4
SPEAKER_01
But we are not like a tree.
4
SPEAKER_01
We can t just continue to add these new things and grow wider and taller.
4
SPEAKER_01
We have a fixed amount of energy, a fixed amount of time.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re much more like a rose bush, which has this kind of constrained height and size, and in order for it to fully blossom, you have to prune away rose buds.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to prune away buds that could blossom into something good,
4
SPEAKER_01
So you can make room for the ones to blossom into something great.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the same idea applies to our lives, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
We have to simplify and that s really easy to do.
5
SPEAKER_01
when you have time-wasting activities, everybody s like, oh, yeah, of course, you shouldn t procrastinate for an hour, you should do something effective.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s much harder to do when you re choosing between good ideas and great ideas.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s where I think the forced ranking of that Ivy League method can be helpful, because it forces you to say, you can t rationalize spending time on number four on your list, because you know what number one is.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that one of the keys to making this simplicity strategy stick over the long run is being able to shift your focus from outcomes to process.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because living a simple life or focusing on a few things, like for example, for you, Jordan, focusing on this show each day,
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a practice of some sort, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like everything in life is a practice.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you re saying, I m choosing to make this the practice that I really like to show up each day and work on the show to make this the priority.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like, you know, making a morning cup of coffee or going to the gym each day or whatever, it s something that is a core feature of your day.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s a lot easier to stick to that simplicity and have that maintain that simple focus when it becomes a core practice of your day and not about the result.
5
SPEAKER_01
When it s about the result, you just chase whatever strategy you think can get you to the outcome.
5
SPEAKER_01
When it s about the practice, it becomes much easier to stick to that thing that is number one or two on your list because it s something that s a core feature of who you are and how you live.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
This sounds kind of like Jerry Seinfeld s write something every day and cross it off on the calendar strategy.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, if we re going to link together some of the ideas we talked about throughout this call, we have this idea of simplicity and practice and focus, this idea that a few things lead to the majority of the results.
5
SPEAKER_01
And one of the ways to increase that number of repetitions, increase your ability to do them consistently is to measure them.
5
SPEAKER_01
One of my favorite stories about this is what I call the Seinfeld strategy.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so Seinfeld very early in his career, the story goes, he was touring, and there s this young comic named Brad Isaac, who s opening for him.
5
SPEAKER_01
And he catches Seinfeld backstage before the show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And he says, Mr. Seinfeld, big fan, you know, I d love to become a better comic.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you have any tips for young comic?
5
SPEAKER_01
How can I succeed?
5
SPEAKER_01
And Seinfeld supposedly thinks for a second, he says, well, the secret to being a better comic is to write better jokes.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the secret to writing better jokes is to write every day.
5
SPEAKER_01
So here s what I think you should do.
5
SPEAKER_01
Get a big wall calendar where you can map out every day of the year, right, on this one calendar.
5
SPEAKER_01
And any day that you do your task of writing jokes for 15 minutes, just take a sharpie and put an X on that day.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you might have a couple false starts here or there, two, three days, whatever.
5
SPEAKER_01
But at some point, you re going to get a little bit of a chain going five, six, seven, eight days in a row.
5
SPEAKER_01
And at that point, your only goal becomes don t break the chain.
5
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter how good or bad the jokes are.
5
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter how you feel about them.
5
SPEAKER_01
Doesn t matter if they make it into the show routine or not.
5
SPEAKER_01
Just don t break the chain.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so what we have here is we have the 80-20 rule because we know that writing jokes is what makes the biggest difference for leading to success as a comedian.
5
SPEAKER_01
We have repetition and kind of increasing your service area for luck because we know that if you write more jokes, the odds are you re going to come up with a good one every now and then.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we have measurement to track and focus on doing that day in and day out because you have actual visual feedback whenever you look at that calendar that says, hey, are you staying on task or not?
5
SPEAKER_01
Are you doing the thing that you say is the number one most important task for this objective?
5
SPEAKER_01
And so by combining all of those, you end up getting a fairly strong connection that can drive all of it forward.
5
SPEAKER_00
James, thank you so much for your time.
5
SPEAKER_00
This has been super enlightening.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of good concepts here.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people will maybe have heard a few of these things, but either had no idea where they came from, how to apply them, or maybe knew all of those things and haven t actually managed to put them into effect.
5
SPEAKER_00
So hopefully that will change after this.
5
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, man.
5
SPEAKER_01
So happy to be here.
5
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate you having me on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Interesting stuff from James Clear.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of this stuff is not brand new knowledge for a lot of folks, but the application is definitely new.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the mental models are so useful.
5
SPEAKER_00
We heard about that from Dr. Anders Ericsson when we re talking about deliberate practice.
5
SPEAKER_00
You hear about it from masters in any subject, from chess to sports to literally any type of performance.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s always, always, always about the mental models.
5
SPEAKER_00
What sort of shorthand is your brain using to think of problems
5
SPEAKER_00
and opportunities in a certain way in order to capitalize on those and use them to our advantage.
5
SPEAKER_00
Great big thank you to James Clair.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ll link to his site in the show notes, of course, along with some of his other work, articles, things that we discussed here on the show.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you enjoyed that, don t forget to thank James on Twitter.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ll have that linked in the show notes as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Remember, you can tap our album art in most mobile podcast players, in other words, your phone screen.
5
SPEAKER_00
The show notes should pop right up.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm,
5
SPEAKER_00
great way to engage with us, throw a virtual tomato at us, or hand us some virtual chocolate, whatever you think of the show, or just get some interesting insight from us that we may not have shared on the show.
5
SPEAKER_00
Our live programs, which we mentioned and talked about earlier in the program, bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
5
SPEAKER_00
The live program, it is amazing.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s rewarding for me.
5
SPEAKER_00
I love seeing how people develop, and it s rewarding for everybody who comes through, obviously, because of how far it takes you and what we can see with our own eyes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Become part of the AOC family, bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
5
SPEAKER_00
We do sell out a few months in advance.
5
SPEAKER_00
Even if you re not sure if you can make it or you re not sure what it s all about, get in touch with us.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ll get you some info.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can plan ahead.
5
SPEAKER_00
Of course, we also have our AOC challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or you can text the word charmed, C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444 here in the States.
5
SPEAKER_00
That challenge is about improving your connection skills, your networking skills, your social skills,
5
SPEAKER_00
inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ll also send you our Fundamentals Toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show, and regular videos with drills and exercises, the practical stuff, to help you move forward.
5
SPEAKER_00
It ll make you a better networker, it ll make you a better connector, and it ll make you a better thinker.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or text charmed to 33444.
5
SPEAKER_00
For the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show, head over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
This episode of AOC was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
5
SPEAKER_00
Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor, and the show notes on the website are by Robert Fogarty.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
5
SPEAKER_00
Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
5
SPEAKER_00
Word of mouth is everything.
5
SPEAKER_00
So stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
5
SPEAKER_02
Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm.
5
SPEAKER_02
Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.