Greg McKeown

Welcome to the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, the show that examines the changing landscape of our world. We'll have candid conversations with VCs, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders grappling with our current challenges and providing solutions to key problems we face as a nation. I'm Jim Beer, president of CMBG Advisors. This podcast brings change makers to the table to discover the inner workings behind their decision making strategies and ultimately how they got to where they are today. I am so taken now with the idea, the principle of limitlessness.

And I don't mean it in the sense of no discipline. If my children don't practice the piano, they're not going to be limitless on the piano. They'll be locked. They won't be able to do anything. But if if they, you know, if they're disciplined is is obviously a key element of becoming limitless, what is possible?

I think we live in a limit time of limitless opportunities. I do feel something of the empowerment of that word and that idea. On today's episode of The Puck, I talk with Greg McKeown, a much sought after public speaker, leadership and business strategist, and the author of the best selling books, Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, and Effortless, Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. We take a deep dive into the heart of his approach to doing less while achieving more. We also cover the varying influence that helped him develop his process of simplification and how this focus can be applied to all aspects of our lives.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's get to it. Greg McKeown, welcome to the Puck. I'm a big fan. And for our listeners, can you take a moment and just tell us a little bit about yourself? I'm originally from London, England.

I quit law school twenty five years ago to pursue what I really wanted to do, which was to teach and to write. The opportunities have flowed from there, to be able to well, I ended up doing graduate work at Stanford. I'm doing a doctorate right now at the University of Cambridge that inadvertently doing a doctorate. I've written a couple of New York Times bestsellers, Essentialism and Effortless between them. They've sold 3,000,000 copies in more than 40 languages.

I've worked with several 100 organizations over the last, you know, couple of decades in implementing these ideas and sharing them. And, it's just like endless dream come true to be able to pursue these ideas and to to take my curiosity, where I feel pulled to go. That's, I have a podcast, the Greg McKeown podcast, and that that's probably a decent start to our conversation. It's perfect because it's time in with what I want to ask you which was can you tell us a little bit about what led you to write these two books? Well I mean at one level the answer to that question is my own genuine desire to be able to live a life that really matters and that that has lots of elements to it to me.

I mean one of them is just in a sense to try and live a limitless life or to to keep unlearning things that keep me from making a higher or deeper contribution. So whether that's things that keep me from being able to build a deeper relationship with my wife Anna, with our children, with extended family and friends, or on the other hand things that can keep me from being able to contribute and fulfill my own mission in life. You know so I am I'm driven and curious about those things and so the idea of small things that produce big results, the idea that you could do less and accomplish more or put in less effort or put your effort in in just the right way that you could leverage disproportionate output, these are things that start off in my own heart as a curiosity and what I have been happy to find is that they have struck a chord with with many other people who also sense the limited nature of time and and resources. They want to be able to break through to the next level in their life personally and professionally, but without burning out.

And that's a that's a tricky but interesting, set of equations and problems to solve. So for those rationalists out there, how can you accomplish more doing less? Well, I mean, let's start with Silicon Valley companies that I was observing and, you know, worked with Apple and Google and Twitter and, you know, just just all the usual suspects. And and then many of the startups too and the less well known organizations. And I noticed a predictable pattern, which was in the early days, they'd be focused on just the right few things at just the right time.

And that clarity led to success, that it was a causative relationship. And what comes with success is options and opportunities. Now all of that sounds like the right problem to have, but it does in fact turn out to be a problem if it leads to what Jim Collins has called the undisciplined pursuit of more. And if you fall into that pattern, then you start to plateau in your progress. And this is what happened to so many organizations.

And, of course, it's not just organizations that go through the phenomenon. It's not a business phenomenon. It's a human phenomenon because individuals can also go through what I've come to think of as the paradox of success. Now where they end up feeling stretched too thin at work or at home, they end up feeling busy but not productive, where their day is just constantly hijacked by other people's agenda for them. And so when we fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, there's all sorts of unintended consequences to that, but the antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less, particularly this idea less but better.

And so, there are any number of scenarios in which doing less but better is better and produces far better outcomes than just reactively doing a bit of everything in every possible direction. So if I summarize this, I could simply say, if you're making a millimeter progress in too many different directions, that actually isn't better than doing fewer things in fewer directions, that that can help you make overall a higher contribution. And how do you get people to suspend their disbelief and actually take the plunge into trying these new approaches? Well, I think that the pain that people feel, by pursuing without meaning to the strategy of nonessentialism, makes its own case. I I have had almost no organ rejection, you know, in in writing these books and then the articles and so on that that, that have written.

And so it's crossed cultures and industries of every possible kind, and then levels within those businesses and then people that aren't interested in business at all, but are interested in designing a life that matters. So the the organ rejection has been very low, and I think that's because people feel the pain of pursuing a strategy they didn't mean to pursue. I mean, you can think about it in terms of you know, I I sometimes will joke that Blockbuster, you know, had an executive off-site, and they put up on a screen, you know, our essential intent is to become irrelevant quickly, and and that they executed superbly on that, objective. And, of course, that's nonsense. They didn't intend to do what they ended up doing.

And and so just people everywhere feel the effect of having become nonessentialists by default. And so they're looking for a way out. They're hungry to do it. And and my job, of course, is not to well, what would you say? Not not to exaggerate what can be done about it because, no matter what your situation in life, you can't control everything.

And there are many forces, many people you're responsible to. If you're lower in a hierarchy, there are people higher that that that affect what you do each day. But one of the things I've become, one of the practical things that I have developed over time that I think is really helpful is to like, let's admit we can't control everything, but what if we could control half an hour a day? You know, like like, what if we could say I call it the power half an hour. And this is a a structured approach.

You could do it the first half hour of the day or the last half hour of your day or the first half hour of your work day. I mean, it's wherever it works best. But instead of just looking to your phone, I mean, we call it a phone, but whatever it is, that's almost certainly the last thing that it actually is. You know, instead of looking at this, well, let's give it some description. A a $3,000,000,000,000 military grade device engineered explicitly to make it effortless to be addicted and distracted and therefore disoriented through your day and life.

Okay? So that's what's in your pocket. So instead of looking to that to orient your day, here's an alternative process. So my I'm not a Luddite in technology at all, but I do still think that my favorite technology is is paper and pen. And so ten years ago, I was on a contract to create an essentialism planner, paper and pen, to try and outline the process someone might follow in a daily process, you know, procedure.

And after a while of working on it, I got out of the contract because I just didn't feel I had the answer to it. And I thought, well, listen, the world doesn't need one more plan or one more journal, you know, just because. But after years of trial and error and and exploring all different versions in my own work, in my own life, I finally got to something I was I thought could be very, very useful to people. And so, I mean, you're one of the first to hear about it, but it's the essentialism planner. It hasn't come out yet.

It comes out, December 31, right in time for new year, new you. But it follows a couple of things that I think can really help people. It starts with a personal quarterly off-site. So that is a a sequential process, a series of questions and reflections to help you think about where have I been over the last ninety days, over the last year so that I'm seeing it in context, and then let me prioritize and think through carefully what I'm over investing in that's nonessential or under investing that's essential, and then you can make a plan from there. So it starts with that.

But the thing that I think is most useful in it is this daily process of thinking. It's a planning tool, but it's really a thinking tool. And if you don't mind, let me just share a little of it. You start with what, that is you you flow out with no particular order, the answer to a general question like, what are you thinking about? What's going on in your mind?

And you your job is to take all that noise that all of us suffer through, that's so disorienting to us and just write it down. I think six minutes is like the perfect amount of time for it, helps you know there'll be an end, and you don't stop for that whole time. It's just everything. It's to do list items. It's problems.

It's noise in your mind on the paper. Step two is to ask, well, so what? That is to connect the dots between the noise, you know, to be able to to find the signal in the noise. And one way to do that that I found helpful is to imagine, like, you read your own list, but you imagine you're reading somebody else's list. And you look at it and you say, well, what does that mean?

If so if you read that about if I wrote it and you read it, you could look at it easily and be like, well, this is what that looks like to me. You know, that looks like he's overwhelmed or that looks like he's got too many things to do or maybe it looks like, these are really exciting projects, but he needs to get organized about how he would operate. There would be a piece of news, and the news in our lives gets lost because we're so perpetually reactive. Step three, the final step, is what I call the one two three method. This is answering the general question, now what?

So it's what, so what, now what? And under the one two three method, you're identifying the one priority for the day. Priority came into the English language in the fourteen hundreds. It's singular. The priorest thing, the first thing, the most important thing.

It wasn't pluralized for another five hundred years. And and so that's the idea. What's the priority project for today? A rule of thumb might be, well, I'll spend two or three hours on that thing. Of course, it might not be that much time that you can spend to it or it might be the whole day, but what's the most important thing?

So that's the one. And then the two is two things that are essential and urgent, and then three things that are maintenance items. Like I think of it as the, you know, in inverted commas, the laundry of our life. It's those things that if you don't do them, they will make tomorrow and the day after much harder than it needs to be. So it doesn't seem important today, but it does make execution easier over time.

And that becomes your done for the day list. When you're done with those things you can still do other things of course but you feel no guilt. These are the things that you've identified as the most important, the most useful to be able to make it as easy as possible to do what matters most in your life. And that daily process is the difference between people feeling frenetic and frantic, as I often do, and a sense of returning to purpose. It's a process for going from disoriented to oriented, and it's extremely useful for me in my life.

And so I've been happy now to be able to create this myself and design something that I'm proud of to be able to share with other people. Well and, Greg, you you talk about that you often will have these frenetic thoughts yourself. What was it that taught you these techniques that you now so eloquently write about? Well, I mean, I think if you're asking the process of sort of what was the process behind you know, what was the innovation process like behind this? I mean, I I would say that it was I mean, there's there's lots of parts to the recipe.

Yeah. I've I have read, you know broadly in in the space of leadership and productivity and so on I've written a lot in that space I've done research in that space so that's part of the background for it but then there's another part which is just trying to do it every day you know like I think most wisdom is two not exactly opposite ideas but something like that that exist and wisdom is living with them intention and so you have justice and mercy right? If you just try to have justice and you forget mercy you that's not wisdom. If you just have mercy and no justice it's not wisdom and everything has a tension like that and one of the innovation tensions is what does the customer want which of course is a true thing and then there's this other thing that I think that the real game changing innovators do which is I'm just going to create a product I want and that I use and I don't think you can just do one or the other. I think it's intention but that's how I've tried to think about it.

I'm really trying to be in service of people who deal with this challenge in their lives, but it's so easy if you just do that to create something that you think will be useful. You know, it's sort of like you workshop other people's lives. Well, that that will be good for them as you throw it over the fence. But you don't use it yourself. And every single meeting we've had and every time we've worked on this, each version of this planner, this has been the only test that's mattered to me is, am I using it?

Are you using it? Everyone that's put their fingerprints on this product, are you using this product? And if you're not, we're not there yet. You know, it has to be something we use, we like to use, we find useful. And so it's been a many, many iterations have revealed that this is something that helps with the re like, the real problem we all wake up with.

You know, we all wake up CS Lewis said this. We all wake up and there's like five seconds, maybe it's not even that, a micro moment where we're free. You know, we just wake and then, you know, it's like the the herd of elephants just suddenly comes upon us. And everybody oh, I think everybody knows just what I'm talking about. And so you need a process that deals with that reality that doesn't pretend that's not how it all starts.

And what I found what I found in the let's say the the honest innovation process I think I'm trying to describe here is quite a revelation actually it was to me anyway which is that there is a a natural process and I'll name it like chaos or confusion, clarity creation. And it's not that, oh get rid of all the chaos, we hate it. Although sometimes I feel like that and we feel like that. It's that that that's actually the raw materials we need from which to derive clarity. And then clarity is so powerful.

It it drives creation. So let me give you one simple example of this. Somebody that I interviewed on my podcast, she started her own business, and she wakes up at, like, 4AM in the morning panicked. She's just barely started it. So she's quit her old job.

Nothing's yet fully established, and she starts with this question, what have I done? And she's just hyperventilating. And she has this thought come to her to just just survival mechanism, to get out of bed, to grab a sheet of paper, and just to write with abandonment. And that's what she does. Just everything, all the noise, all of it out of her head.

And then she said to me, I noticed that within just a few minutes, I started getting clearer about what was really going on and where I was where I was, that sort of clarity. And then she said without any deliberate intent on my part, I naturally started finding myself writing out creative ideas of things I could do to address my concerns, you know, immediately. And so she was able to go back to bed after having done that. That natural process, I think, is an really helpful discovery, at least for me, in this innovative process. All of us start with the noise.

We have to use it in different ways, not react to it, but dissect it, eliminate what's not helpful, figure out the you know, connect the dots, maybe the most important skill of our times, be able to connect the dots in this noise and and then be able to create something out of it. You know, as I'm listening to you, Greg, I know you talk a lot about polarization being a big issue today. What I hear you talking about are universal principles, many of which come from the wisdom literature, including the Bible, especially the notion of the world was created, it there was void and chaos, and then there was order that came out of it. I'm wondering, is is and CS Lewis, is some of your wisdom, which you obviously have a lot of, how has that been influenced at all by the great wisdom literature? Well, I mean, there's I I feel like answering that question's a little like that quote of saying, I could as easily tell you all the dinners I've eaten is tell you all of the ways in which wisdom literature has impacted me.

You know? It's like it's like I I I can't even, you know, I can't even separate the two. There's there's no if you if you removed from me all the things I've gained from wisdom literature, there is no wisdom. And and I do believe that God is the source of all wisdom. So so I think that everybody else is just trying to articulate and and to to draw from behind the curtain, so to speak, and to put into words those things that that are real but outside of our understanding.

And and that this is what the the, you know, this is what wisdom literature is, and and these are what wise leaders are are pursuing. So in addition in addition to scripture, which is absolutely central to my own daily practice and my whole life, I have also, over the last few years, felt an enormous lack and therefore hunger for reading the classic literature. And so I've really been I mean, I've been hungrier to learn over the last few years than I have in my whole lifetime. And it's not like I have spent my life not curious and not reading and not interested, but it's been different. And so I've been I've gone back and working book by book through, you know, The Count of Monte Cristo or or Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment, and and I could just go on and on, you know, because I mean, it's one of my favorite phrases, but this this idea, it's almost poetic, but it's thy mind, oh man, must stretch.

And I I need that, And I think we all do because it's sort of like all of us begin in a locked position, prisoners of our own minds, unaware, certainly at first as babies, we have no theory of mind. There is no idea that we think about the world or we're looking through a lens or there's a paradigm or there's a meaning frame. I mean, there's no sense of that. You don't even know in any really clear senses as an infant that there is an entity separate from anybody else. And I think and I don't mean to say it in a patronizing way.

I think a lot of people go through life really still in that locked mode. So I don't mean they're not learning, but they're not they haven't yet stepped apart from their own mind to look at it, to that that meta process and said, well, how am I seeing the world? You know? And and why do I see it like that? And so the default positions for many of us is extremely limited.

And may maybe it's a family of origin challenge, you know? I mean, we we learn many, many of our ways of thinking and communicating from however our parents happen to communicate and speak, how our siblings happen to communicate and speak, you know, what country we're from, what culture we were from. I mean, this is it's strange to me, but I think it is it is self evidently true that a lot of people don't really get into the metaphase. Now getting into the metaphase where you sort of look at the limits of your own mind, look at what you don't know, doesn't make you limitless. I think you're still in a limited position then, but at least you're aware of it.

But but then once you start becoming aware of the limits, I think it is it is extraordinary what is possible and what you can do to improve the way you think and and to get a clearer sense to expand the postage stamp mental model in your own head, you know, that's that's just describing the world, you you know, that you're looking at, that we're all looking at, to expand it enormously from there. Of course, we none of us ever get anywhere close to the full complexity and richness of everything out there, no nowhere even close, but we can go way beyond the limits that we were born with or that we were, you know, inherited from others. And and I have certainly felt my own fair share of, of a desire to expand the limited, you know, the limited nature of my own mind and I know of no better way than reading the great literature, I mean the classics. What else are you going to do than than start with the best thinking and best writing of everybody who's ever lived? I mean like that seems like a very very simple accelerated way to better improve your understanding of yourself and the world and to experience what what, in Latin is, the the metanoia, which is the word that got translated in into the English bible as repentance, which I think is so interesting because metanoia doesn't really have any of the connotation of our modern sense of of the word repentance.

Metanoia means to see yourself with other people and God and the world through new eyes. And so it seems to me that that that metanoia is extremely expansive. So so repentance nothing about shame. It's not about exactly wrongdoing. It's it's just expanding.

Oh, I I now I see better. I can do better. And so that that to me is I feel like I'm on some sort of perpetual metanoia process now, if that's not too presumptuous to say it that way. Well and so it sounds like, again, you you've always been a learner and a curious person. But if I heard you right, it sounds like something accelerated in the last few years.

Mhmm. Was there something that you think in your life that triggered this even greater sense of urgency or curiosity? I think that there's been a few things, but it's an interesting question. One thing that stands out to me is that there was I had an invitation, not a personal invitation, it was a general invitation, but I thought, yeah, it's time for me to do that. And and it was a the invitation was to to read through every single scriptural reference to the life and mission for a nation and post mission everything of the life of Jesus.

And I just did it. It took me about six months. I did about half an hour every day for six months and I expected it to be useful because I I just don't see how it couldn't be useful. I expected it to maybe even make me a better person because again I don't really see how it can't. But what I didn't expect it to do was to be a sort of revelatory experience where there's an opening of the the conduit.

And so it became, not every day, but regularly, that as I was doing it, I would suddenly have the thought, you really should call this person. You really should do this thing. And that's not that unusual in my life, but they were clearer than normal. Some of them were really, really surprising things. Some of them were quite awkward to do.

One was to call someone that I had met only once twenty years before. I had a very vivid picture of how they were and just called them up. It didn't turn out to be hard to find the number and call them. And that that was the the image was true, and it was just that's an example. That was when I felt one morning to just reach out to Cambridge University and and just see if there was somebody there that, you know, might be interested in in working together and that led to this, doing this star trip at University of Cambridge.

And I I just I'd always wanted to go to Cambridge since I was a young man, but I thought that was there's no way that that was going to happen. And so it just was not I didn't think there would ever be a time when I would that it would somehow sync up, and so they had this very particular program. And so now I've been able to do that. One morning, I felt one morning, I was supposed to be preparing a keynote, but instead, I had this feeling to to reach out to a number of people one after another, and and one of them was, to reach out to president Jimmy Carter, and I don't know him or anything at night. Within about ten minutes of the thought, I was speaking to him on the phone.

And I really stepped away from that that morning. I just had a sense of just what is happening. You know, what is happening? What how surprising? What do you make of this as opportunity expands, as influence expands, as connections expand, as a sense of preparation expands?

I mean, this is one of the reasons I I am so taken now with the idea, the principle of limitlessness. And I don't mean it in the sense of no discipline. You know, well, for a start, because no discipline doesn't produce limitlessness. It produces exactly the opposite. You know?

You know, if my children don't practice the piano, they're not going to be limitless on the piano. They'll be locked. They won't be able to do anything. But if if they, you know, their their discipline is is obviously a key element of becoming limitless, but I'm really drawn with it now. Just just just what what is possible?

I think we live in a limit time of limitless opportunities. There's some complications that that get in the way of that, but I I do feel something of the empowerment of that word and that idea. As people explore this concept of limitlessness, is there an element of paradox in that? Does the dissolution of the ego tie into this at all? I mean, I think that I think that the ego is the most limiting, you know, force in the universe.

I mean, it's it's gravitational pull is absolutely immense. And part of its power, though, it seems to me, part of its power is not knowing about it. You know? I mean, if I step in a boxing ring and for whatever reason, I can't see my opponent, you know, I literally believe there is no opponent there. That's the most vulnerable I could possibly be in that fight.

And so I think that the very nature of ego is to is to pull people, is to keep them stuck in their heads, to operate as if in a in a literal sense, as if they are the center of a universe, you know, that everything revolves around us individually. Everything's about us individually. And, of course, it's extremely vulnerable way to live because we we we we use it synonymously, don't we? A fragile ego. I mean, but really what we mean is the ego is fragile, not not that, not that some people have a fragile ego.

It's like ego is fragile. It it wants to control everything so as not to change. And so I mean, I think I mean, sometimes I joke about this as a sort of that we can become a Siths. You know, we're, like, stuck in our heads. Or stuck in their heads, I think is the would be the acronym.

But I think that's the default setting. So ego is the default setting and and escaping it I mean, you can think about escaping it as being hard. You know, I'm not sure that's the best framing because I think that that might be a pretty clever lie of the ego. You know? He's just trying to maintain his own control and survival.

I think what's actually true, and I think there's the fastest way to overcome ego, I think, is to discover the other. That is that is not to listen to somebody else, from our own experience, our own world view, own frame of reference. It is to shelve our agenda so completely, just for a moment. You don't have to do it for your whole life. It's not possible, I'm sure.

But for a moment to exit your own mind and to enter the world of another. I had experience with that 25 ago, little more than that now. I've been taught effectively how to do it. I was listening to a cassette, and I've got so many weaknesses. But a strength for me is taking action, immediate action.

I have no hesitancy about that. If I if I learn something new, I wanna try it, and I don't care. I don't care. I'll get it wrong. I don't care.

It doesn't matter. I will try that new thing. And so I didn't ponder about this new way of listening, empathic listening and restating, you know, for weeks or talk about it. But by just the next possible opportunity I had, I was trying it, and it worked so well. It was life changing for me in that in that moment because I experienced first the liberation of being outside of my head and in theirs.

It was three people at the same time. They were all talking, and I was in a meeting with them, and I was supposed to be sharing sort of a lesson with them, but I shelved that because they seemed so totally disinterested in it that there seemed no point anyway, so there wasn't much to lose. But I entered their world sort of almost I don't think I did it at the time, although I do it now, like closing one's eyes. I will actually close my eyes to listen now. But that was metaphorically what I was doing, like close my mind, close my thoughts.

What's their world? And in entering their world, I found the richest, most technicolor experience I'd ever had. And that was formative. I mean, it's pretty amazing looking back that it happened that first time and that well and that richly, but it changed my life. And I've felt that same sensation experience so often since then.

It wasn't like some one off. And so I think that the truth is is you if you can put ego aside and be in somebody else's world, what you actually get is total relief from the burden of your own mind. And also, it is more colorful. And I don't know why that is. I don't really understand that fully, but it is for me anyway.

And, of course, then as a secondary benefit, not only is the experience of life better, you the opportunity you have to make a difference to somebody else, to have a life changing conversation with somebody else is it's not fifty fifty. I mean, I'll put it up there upwards of 80% probability that I will have a life changing conversation with somebody if I'm willing to do this. And part of that is because the people effectively it's like they're wait they've been waiting their entire life for somebody to really listen to them, to really enter their world so they're not alone, so they can really be understood. And I certainly think it's the first lesson we learn in life is if we're not heard, we will die. And that's what the baby learns.

Right? And I think that, to some extent, stays with you all through your life, cradle to grave. And so what I've learned in practice is that the moment I exit my mind and really enter the world of another, they will share everything. And it's sacred. It's unbelievable because you stop living your life with surface conversations, safe and surface.

You know, you can imagine like a sphere of the world. You know, you've got the core not the core, the crust, which is safe and surface. And then there's a red hot center which is valuable and vulnerable. And they can be so valuable and so vulnerable that it's kept from access to everybody including the person themselves. It's that vulnerable, it's that valuable that it's worth the adventure and exploration.

My experience is it doesn't even take long. You within an hour, you could have a light a truly life changing conversation with somebody, one that they'll never forget. And did you I never forget. And and can change it's really changed them. That's a great way to live.

It's a lot better than being suffocated with ego. My experience, Greg, and I don't know if you can relate to this or not, is that I'm able to do that more at this stage of my life than I ever have in the past. And Mhmm. For me, I believe it's because the more I forgive myself and the more I stop judging myself and learn to not make perfect be the enemy of good Mhmm. That the more I can tolerate my own weaknesses and imperfections, the easier it is for me to enter into the world of somebody else without judging them.

Well, I think that's really beautiful, and I think it speaks to a I don't know. I would normally frame it as ego exactly, but I do think that perfectionism is a very toxic kind of ego, and it's so painful for the person. And, of course, it's so it it causes suffering for the person, and it causes suffering for everybody around them too because perfectionism isn't I mean, I could distinguish it. Right? Like, okay.

Like, let's say there's OCD perfectionism. Right? So the books behind me are my sort of fastest way of just telling everybody about my own OCDedness, right, like you you know you want things to be in order in a certain way or you you you know you want things to be the way you want them to be, okay, that's a certain kind of perfectionism and and I'm not saying that's always good, But then there's another kind which has nothing really to do with that because what it's really to do with is to appear perfect. And see, with trying to appear perfect, you're not trying to control the books on a bookshelf. You're trying to control people's perception of you over which you have no control.

So the very act of trying to do it is a form of suffering. Because anyone can have any view they want, so that's first problem. You have no control over it. That's the second problem. But your attempt to exert that control will cause damage to your own self and, of course, to those people you're trying to control at that level.

And so I do think that this need or or or belief that we have to appear perfect is a truly warping meaning frame. It it it's it's it cause it's so painful. And so, of course, it's true that a person who is suffering under that kind of perfectionism, that kind of warped meaning frame, will be so full of noise within that that it makes it extremely difficult to listen to somebody else. Of course, that's true. And and, of course, it's also true that perfectionism, that kind of perfectionism is is an antithesis.

Like, it's an anti truth. It's not it's not a truth. It's an anti truth. It and and and to be able to engage in the way that we've been describing has, I think, two two yin and yang characteristics. One is to listen truthfully, which is the thing that probably I've emphasized most in this get idea of get out of yourself and into them.

And then the second is to speak truthfully. And if you're if when we're conscious constantly trying to appear perfect, we can do neither of them well. We can't listen truthfully because what if somebody says something that's inconsistent with the story that I have to maintain about myself as perfect? So that's not good listening. I mean, this is not even the beginning of listening.

But then we can't even speak truthfully because we can't say anything that's inconsistent with the story that we have, you know, the house of cards story we're trying to hold up, you know, with all of this effort. And so so, of course, every it's it's like something like impossible to have a truly intimate relationship. I I think maybe it is impossible, but I have to think about that. So I don't want to, you know, exhibit hyperbole and exaggerate for effect on it. I but I I think it may be actually impossible, because intimacy is being known, having the courage to know and be known.

And I I just interviewed on my podcast, Eric Newton, who, I didn't know before, but but his wife died, from cancer, and he he took to, social media and wrote a really beautiful, set of of tweets about, you know, in a in a in a flow about what he'd learned and what his experience was, and somebody sent it to me because they they they thought it would be you know, I might appreciate it, and I so did. And he said they were they were always close. You know, they had their ups and downs, like a lot of relationships. But he said, what ended up being six weeks before she died, she hits a point of regret. She suddenly could see it that she was that that she had not been open enough with the people who mattered most to her.

Yeah. So it's something like these protective perfectionist stuff or, you know, whatever, just just keeping it some level of the surface, something a little further down sometimes, but nowhere close to the vulnerable valuable center. And and she just, I mean, in the truest sense, repented of that way of living. And he just tried in all sorts of ways to express the level of intimacy and love that they experienced, and he he watched. And he he sort of concludes.

He says, if there's a purpose to it all, I guarantee you this is the purpose, ever deepening relationships with the people who matter most. He says, on your deathbed, you are not gonna care about anything but that. That was one of his takeaways. But that idea of those levels of intimacy, those being being, delayed, All of the noise, all of the nonsense, all of that lower value but safer stuff that we're pulling around with us, is a beautiful image and a beautiful message, I thought. Yeah.

Eric Eric Newton, I think his story captures in in as a real case study, you know, these ideas that, that I've been trying to articulate. So, Greg, I I could go on for hours. Is there any last observations or things you'd you'd like to touch on with the with the few minutes we have remaining? I think there might there might be two two really practical things. One, I I I wrote a book fairly, you know, a little while ago called Effortless, and and I it just aligns so well with the conversation we've had.

I just don't wanna miss this because it's really written it it's sort of like this. It's like an insecure overachiever's guide to healthy productivity and living. You know, something like that. I discovered that one of the meaning frames I had and I had observed in other people was something that people had shared openly, constantly, like it's a truth. And it's this, it's the more important a thing is, the harder it has to be.

You know, people say it they express it almost like a as a term of motivation, of inspiration. This is gonna be so hard, but it's gonna be worth it. This is suffering and challenge and problems but it's gonna matter. Once you have I mean there's many many meaning frames that get magnetically locked together. That once they've locked together, eve even if one part is true, it gets locked with something that's not true.

And then the the level of mischief it can cause in our lives is difficult to overstate. And it happens way down there at the center where we're not conscious of it. And that idea has hurt so many people. And I of course, it's true that sometimes something is really important will take lots of work to do it. Of course, that's true sometimes.

But the idea that it has to be true always causes so much suffering for insecure overachievers. I'm thinking now of somebody that I I, I've got two different case studies in my head now, but I'm gonna share I'm gonna share the the different one that I was thinking of, but it's, eighteen fifties, The there's a a the greatest, most physically arduous goal in the world wasn't to go to Mars like it is now or to go to the moon as it was, you know, with the great the moon race. It was to get to the South Pole, and no one had ever done it in recorded history. And then two teams set off and try and achieve it on this you know, sets off on the same day to get there. A Norwegian team, a British team.

The British team has this idea effectively, maximum effort equals maximum results. So day one, go as far as you can, thirty, forty, 50 miles if you can. And they kept doing that until they get the first terrible weather day. They're so burned out, they just stay in their tents. It's terrible for their psychology because they're making no progress, so they're writing in the journals where no one could make progress in weather like this, they say.

But one team could, and that was the Norwegian team who had a different mindset, which was something like this, optimum effort equals maximum progress. They learned it from the, you know, the indigenous people in Antarctica who taught him the following. He said, making progress in these weather conditions is about managing sweat. And so he interpreted that keen acute insight into this rule, we'll go 15 miles a day, one five. And that's what they did.

They one, two, three, first bad weather day. They've got enough energy to keep doing it. 15 miles so they don't have the trough of despair and exhaustion of burnout and so on. But the plot thickens as they get within 45 miles of the South Pole. And they're trying to decide what to do because they have perfect weather conditions, perfect sledding conditions.

And if they break the rule just once, they'll get there in one day, and they don't know where the British team is. For all they know, the British team is ahead of them, not behind them. To me, unbelievably, they still take three days, still average 15 miles. They get to the South Pole. They are the first.

They've beaten the British team by more than twenty days. It's impossible. That's not what should happen. Insecure overachievers everywhere, like me, incapable of understanding that. It it it just breaks something in us.

It breaks with a paradigm we don't even know we have. And not only that, they had a sufficient resources and a strategy that was sustainable enough that they got back to Norway, the 16,000 mile journey home, which is really nontrivial because the British team, every member of that group died on what would have been the journey home. That's effortless. In the book that's written about this, the the most accurate book that's been written is called a race to the polls. The the the biographer, the author summarizes their approach to progress, the Norwegian team, with these words.

They knocked this knocked me off my chair. I He said, the Norwegian team made progress each day without particular effort. And there's something about that that always makes me emotional because I'm not writing I didn't write effortless because I said, oh, be lazy or be make you know, just don't put in effort. It's how do you use effort to do amazing, extraordinary things, get a higher return on investment without particular effort? Imagine imagine making progress on the things that matter without particular progress and achieving something equivalent in your own life of getting to the South Pole.

Anyway, that that's something I wanted to share. No. It's a beautiful, beautiful story. And, Greg, I I've really thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you so, so much.

And this was wonderful. Thank you for taking the time, and it's been a been a real pleasure. Thank you. The POC Venture Capital and Beyond is produced by CMVG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.

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